Presentation made at MIT Enterprise Forum of Russia Startup Bootcamp (9-11 December, Moscow). http://mitef.ru/ru/events/recent-events/282-startup-bootcamp-2011

1. Do’s and Dont’s of
Marketing for Start Ups
by
Yelena Kadeykina
©Yelena Kadeykina

2. Why Are We Here?
Because you
want to solve
a business
problem!
©Yelena Kadeykina

3. ©Yelena Kadeykina

4. Value Proposition
“The brand promise”
Find relevant
information
quickly and easy
Find any item
you need
©Yelena Kadeykina

5. Developing Your Value
Proposition
• Who you are?
• What you do?
• Where you do it?
• What makes you different?
©Yelena Kadeykina

6. Examples of Value Propositions
• Price competitive
• Quality customer service
• Superior quality
• Easy-to-use
• Huge selection
• Customizable
• Community
©Yelena Kadeykina

7. Identify Your Target Market &
Assess Market Conditions
• Size, growth rate and maturity
• Niche market or large market
• What segment exists
• What their basic needs
• What channels they consider
©Yelena Kadeykinana

8. Outbound vs. Inbound Marketing
Outbound Marketing - a Inbound marketing is a
traditional form of marketing marketing strategy that
strategy that focuses focuses on getting
on finding customers by found by customers.
building brand awareness
This sense is related
through advertising and
promotion. Seth Godin's idea of
permission marketing.
©Yelena
Kadeykina/@ykadeykina

9. Why Inbound Marketing is So Powerful
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

10. How Do You Gauge Success?
Blog/Content
• Inbound Links
• Subscribers
Social SEO
Media •
•
Indexed Content
Inbound Links
• Fans, Friends & Contacts
• Content
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

11. Blogging: When to Publish?
• Start BEFORE you have a product
• Start BEFORE you have a website
• Start BEFORE you have anything!
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

12. Biggest Mistake to Avoid…
• Always host a blog on your own domain…
• Blog.company.com
• Blog sits on a subdomain of the main domain
• Company.com/blog
• Blog sits on a subdirectory of the main domain
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

13. How Often You Should Blog
• That depends on your goals…
• Steady readership
• At least weekly
• More is better
• SEO – getting ranked for important key words
• Frequency is less important
• However, more content creates more opportunities to
rank
©Yelena Kadeykina

14. Blogging Do’s
• People love stories: take a recent experience and
share it
• Make numbered lists of ideas, trends or thoughts
• Answer questions you recently received
• Comment on other blog posts you read
• Write blog entries as responses to breaking news
in your industry
©Yelena Kadeykina

15. The Value of Social Media for Business
©Yelena Kadeykina

16. Social Media Do’s
• Build great relationships
• Meet people
• Start conversations
• Answer questions
• Help people
• Follow the golden rule; give to get
• Think before submitting your own stuff, no one likes a spammer
• Keep it relevant
• Make it useful
• Make it controversial
• Make it thought provoking
• Keep it brief
• Commit the time
©Yelena Kadeykina

17. The Biggest Social Media Don’ts
• Creating profiles everywhere
• Friending, following, connecting with anyone you can find
• Selling to everyone, immediately
• Using the same strategy in every environment
• Facebook is not LinkedIn
• Failing to measure what works
• Having un-optimized and inconsistent profiles
• Expecting instant results & failing to invest sufficient time and
effort
• Focusing internally; nobody likes a spammer.
©Yelena Kadeykina

18. What is Call-to-Action (CTA)
Words that urge the
reader, listener, or viewer
of a marketing promotion
to take an immediate
action
©Yelena Kadeykina

19. Call-to-Action (CTA) Best Practices
• Action oriented
• Tell them what to do and start with a verb
• Clear
• Indicate exactly what action to take
• Stress the benefits to viewers/readers
• Brief and focused
©Yelena Kadeykina

20. What is the Weakest Call-to-Action?
©Yelena Kadeykina

21. Create Buzz
• Quizzes
• Polls
• Interactive Q&A
• Viral games
• Marketing Stunt
©Yelena Kadeykina

22. Why Video?
©Yelena Kadeykina

23. Video is Powerful
• Online video more than doubled from 2010 to 2011
• On YouTube alone over two billion videos are
viewed every day
• Having video on your website makes you 53x
more likely to appear on the front page of
Google search results…
• Video into your e-mail marketing increases
clickthrough rates by over 96%
©Yelena Kadeykina

24. What Types of Videos Can You Create?
For Brand Awareness:
Fun TV series Meet the Team Video Podcast
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

25. What Types of Videos Can You Create
For Lead Generations:
Webinars/Presentations Event Invitations Email
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

26. What Types of Videos Can You Create?
For Sales Empowerment:
Case Studies Product Demos
Source: HubSpot
©Yelena Kadeykina

27. Promote: How Do Your Videos Get Found?
• 30-40% of video views:
Search queries
Google, YouTube, Bing
• 30% of views:
Social sharing on Facebook,
Twitter, blogs, etc
• The rest:
Discovered the video right on a
website or a video platform
Source: Pixability, Inc
©Yelena Kadeykina

28. The Top 3 Things Successful
Video Marketers Do Differently
1. Produce way, way more videos:
Top marketers published 11x more videos on
YouTube
2. Invest in metadata that drive SEO:
Top marketers used 52% more tags, 20% longer
description texts and 585% more playlists
3. Use video assets on all channels:
Top marketers had 53% more videos on their
websites
Source: Pixability, Inc
©Yelena Kadeykina

29. The Methodology
• Get Found
• Create great content
• Optimize your content
• Promote your content
• Convert visitors to leads & customers
• Landing pages of your blog, website, ANY marketing
initiative you run
• Track, analyze , optimize
• Test
©Yelena Kadeykina

30. Marketing Lessons for Early Stage Start Ups
• Startup success = 5% ideas + 95% is in the
execution
• Marketing is like dating: build relationships,
create dialogues with your partners and
customers, etc.
• Be realistic!
• Establish your own identity
• TEST, TEST, TEST
©Yelena Kadeykina

31. A final Question…
How Agile Are You?
“It is not the strongest
of the species that
survives, nor the
most intelligent that
survives. It is the one
that is the most
adaptable to change”
©Yelena Kadeykina