DO THE RIGHT THING
MARKETING FOR STARTUPS
By Jan Keil, Infopulse

About me
• German ;)
• Education: economical and industrial
engineering, business management
• Ran several companies as CEO and start-ups
as Business Angel
• Acted as interim manager for several IT
projects and well-known companies
• Currently contracted by Infopulse
(VP Marketing)
Jan Keil

Why Do You Need Marketing?
NO ONE WILL SEE
YOUR PRODUCT, NO
MATTER HOW
GREAT IT IS.
SALES WILL FAIL
AND THE COMPANY
PROBABLY WILL
CLOSE.
In a nutshell

Successful Companies Never Stop
Marketing
They all start small, but they start!
They continuously develop their strategy,
execute campaigns and optimize their actions!
Startups view marketing as a matter of survival:
their business will disappear if they don’t invest in
it.
Coca-Cola is now one of the most recognized
brands in the world, but they nevertheless spend
billions of dollars every year on their marketing
efforts.

”Because the purpose of business is to create a customer, the
business enterprise has two—and only two—basic functions:
marketing and innovation. Marketing and innovation produce
results; all the rest are costs.”
- Peter Drucker, one of the leading
experts on management theory

Research Shows…
The total number of small businesses has increased by 49% since
1982, and these businesses use a mix of digital and traditional
marketing (SBA)
64% of small businesses see a great importance in marketing and
advertising (Business Insider)
A careful survey of failed startups determined that 42% of them
identified the “lack of a market need for their product” as the
single biggest reason for their failure, closely followed by “having
poor marketing” (Fortune)
Almost 50 % of new businesses, independent of the industry, fail
within 4 years (Brain Research Institute)

”I don’t care if it’s on paper or in your head,
just make sure you have a marketing
plan!” - Kristin Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

First Marketing Step
Vision. The company’s long-term goals. Why did you
create your company? What you want your business
to be known for?
Mission. The main purposes and goals of your
business. What is the spark, which will make your
business differ from other?
Strategies & Tactics. Your business roadmap.
What are you going to do to achieve your goals?
Nail it down!
S M A R T
Specific (Goals), Measurable (KPI’s),
Achievable, Relevant (Alignment),
Time-bound

Follow the four Ps rule!
Product. For sake of marketing understand your product and
your customers’ needs, as it is the nucleus of your business.
Price. Determines your profit and makes your product
desirable. The price you set has to come up to its value.
Remember that everything has its price, either it is resources or
time.
Promotion. Use all of the methods of communication you’ve
mentioned in Strategies & Tactics.
Place. Choose where (place, platforms, areas) and to whom
(customers) you will sell your product.

I don’t need a marketing plan. I’ll act on a
hunch!
My product is perfect. I don’t need to be
innovative.
Kodak, a huge company with innumerous opportunities, significantly failed
in digital photography.
Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer who invited the first digital camera in 1975
received negative response on his invention:
“That’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it”…
San Francisco eatery Casa Sanchez faced some problems within their
radical advertising. Casa Sanchez started a new campaign, which
promised perpetual free meals to those clients, who will get a tattoo
of the Casa Sanchez logo. Who knew, that a small tattoo for lifetime
may be a reasonable cost for free food.
Widespread Mistakes Everyone Can Do

No researches are
needed
A toothpaste brand Pepsodent entered the South Asia market with a slogan “You’ll
wonder where the yellow went”. Marketers didn’t check local traditions. For this part of
the world one of the main status symbols is blacken teeth, thus majority of people
chew betel nuts to have a dark smile
Widespread Mistakes Everyone Can Do
Horses for courses
In 2005, Yahoo owned 21% of the online advertising market, and was first among
other big players. Today the company has only 4th
place after Google, Facebook and
Microsoft.
Yahoo decided that consolidation of it stand as search engine is not so important as
opportunity to become a media giant. If Yahoo continued its search engine
development, today everybody could “yahooing” instead of “googling”

Impact is not created by big budgets, it is
created by innovative marketing approaches

Digital Marketing –
The Main Startups’ “Weapon”
• Content marketing + Video
• SEO
• Social media marketing
• E-mail marketing
• Webinars
TARGETED IMPACTFUL TIME & EFFORT
SAVING
FLEXIBILE INSTANT
FEEDBACK
REAL TIME
ANALYSIS
COSTS 62%
LESS THAN
TRADITIONAL
MARKETING

What Happens Online in 1 minute?
* Smart Insights
*

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused
on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent
content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience — and,
ultimately, to drive profitable customer actions.
Content Marketing Value:
INCREASES
DIRECT
SALES
KEEPS
READERS
ATTENTION
IMPROVES
BRAND
LOYALTY
GENERATES
LEADS
Content Marketing

27 MILLION PIECES OF CONTENT
ARE SHARED EVERY DAY
(AOL/NIELSEN)
4 OUT OF 5 MARKETING LEADERS HAVE
INTEGRATED CONTENT INTO THEIR ADVERTISING
PROGRAMS, TYPICALLY AS PART OF THEIR
BRAND MESSAGING
(CONTENT MARKETING INSTITUTE)
60% OF PEOPLE ARE INSPIRED TO
SEEK OUT A PRODUCT AFTER
READING CONTENT ABOUT IT
(DEMAND METRIC)
61% OF CONSUMERS SAY THEY FEEL BETTER
ABOUT, AND ARE MORE LIKELY TO BUY FROM, A
COMPANY THAT DELIVERS CUSTOM CONTENT
(THE CONTENT COUNCIL)

Pay a professional
writer
Wang Laboratories didn’t mind to think about their slogan
for a new Wang Computers’ campaign themselves and
chose:
“Wang Cares”, which sounds like “Wankers”.
Not the best association for a company, don’t you think so?

Content Marketing Tools The Most Popular
Content Types:
• Blog
• Case Study
• Whitepaper/eBook
Don’t forget
about Images
and
Infographics!
You don’t need to be a good writer to have a good
content!
Engage external
experts!
Contently provides its customers with high-quality content in English
eTXT is a platform for authors and businesses,
which allows to order a proper content in Russian
Scripted allows businesses to choose the author they need

Successstory
Xerox Corporation is an American global
supplier of business services ad
document technology products.
Since Xerox is so widely known for its photocopiers, many customers couldn’t
even imagine that company has other services, such as IT outsourcing
Xerox find the solution of its problems in
content marketing. Company built its
marketing plan on strong will to show its
expertise in other business verticals.
One of the biggest components of the
strategy became Xerox’s digital magazine,
Real Business. Here Xerox changed
customers perceptions of the brand and
presented more info about the whole range
of company’s services

It is generally agreed, that Video is the most powerful digital
marketing resource. It is better for sharing, search engines love it
and, of course, it is really persuasive. Video creates a good
impression about the company and helps your competition
improving consumers engagement.
It helps to manipulate your customers’ emotions with the help of
sight and sound.
Video Marketing Value:
YOUTUBE &
Vimeo
MORE
CONVICING
BUILDS TRUST
& CREDIBILITY
SEO FRIENDLY
Video Marketing

Video Marketing Channels
• 170 million monthly viewers
• Constructive feedback
• Storage limits according to packages (Free,
Plus, Pro)
• Replacing the video without losing stats
• No pre-roll advertising
• Customizable player and embed options
• 2nd
most popular search engine in the
world
• No guarantee to receive a constructive
feedback because of mixed audience
• Free and $10/month ad free packages
• No limits
• No opportunity to replace a video with a
new version and maintain analytics
• Ads as a plus and a minus
• Scheduling releases

Successstory
Red Bull GmbH produces the
highest-selling energy drink in the
world.
Red Bull TV is a website that provides videos
and live streaming of events from across the
world. According to Target Marketing
Magazine, Red Bull was one of the first
companies to create content that its
customers actively sought out.
The Red Bull company is famous for its marketing
campaigns. But to cover huge audience you need
something more than just X-treme competitions
all over the world. You have to show this
competitions to the whole planet. And that is why
we have a Red Bull TV.

SEO
SEO is a marketing activity focused on growing visibility in organic
search engine results. Remember, that each search engine aims to
provide it users with relevant and up-to-date information. Thus, you
have to show, that your site fits the bill. That is why you need SEO.
In fact, SEO is that invisible pathway, which makes your site visible
and natural not only for humans, but also for search engines bots.
SEO Value:
INCREASED
TRAFFIC
ORGANIC
LEADS
COST
EFFECTIVENESS
BRAND
AWARENESS

SEO Tools
Google Analytics is the most popular free SEO decision.
Analyze your traffic, conversion, users’ behavior, activity,
ads campaigns etc.
Yandex.Metrica is a popular free SEO tool for web
analyzing floating around the Russian Internet

SEO Tools
Ahrefs is a tool for searching backlinks for your and opponents’ websites
Use different resources to manage your SEO campaign
SimilarWeb helps to make a quick traffic evaluation for
opponents’ websites.
SEMRush is a useful tool for
opponents analyzing and key words
generating

Successstory
46%
ORGANIC
TRAFFIC
177%
# OF RANKED
KEYWORDS
OVER
1000%
RETURN ON
INVESTMENT
Dell is a world-known company, which develops, sells, repairs and
supports computers and related products
Dell had some problems with its search results organization. It happened, that
searching for Dell in Australia you could receive page for Canada or France as a
first page result.
The company started aggressive strategies across the countries,
which reorganized its search presence and increased its organic
rankings

Social Media Value:
SEARCH
ENGINE
VISIBILITY
INCREASING
BRAND
REINFORCEMENT
AUDIENCE
BUILDING
DIRECT
FEEDBACKS
Social Media Marketing
Social Media Marketing uses social media platforms to market a product
or service. Companies can address directly their customers, suppliers
and partners.
In addition, nowadays almost each of the platforms has its inbuilt
analytics, which helps to manage all campaigns, track success and
processes and create new strategies.

Social Media Marketing Tools
Hootsuite is a social media management platform, which
helps to manage all social media channels, as well as to
delegate tasks with other users, making it a great option for a
team platform.
Buffer is a content publishing platform, which helps to
publish and schedule content to social networks.

Successstory
Microsoft Corporation is an American provider of
computer software, consumer electronics and
personal computers and services
Microsoft created a huge network and social media following. Company manages separate Facebook pages for each of
its sub-brands and products, such as Office, Bing, Xbox etc. Their page on Facebook posts regular questions called
Trivia Tuesday, Friday Question intended to garner discussions and engagement from their fans.
Additionally, Microsoft has many Twitter accounts, which cover everything from the latest news, careers to Microsoft
products such as office and Windows. Microsoft uses it’s Twitter account mainly to share interesting content with its
community.
20
TWITTER
ACCOUNTS
2.7 M
FACEBOOK
FANS
2.2 M
TWITTER
FOLLOWERS
6 184
GOOGLE+
MEMBERS

E-Mail Marketing Value:
COST
EFFECTIVETARGETED
INCREASES
BRAND
AWARENESS
EASILY
SHAREABLE
E-Mail Marketing
E-mail marketing intends using e-mails for direct message
sending to the group of people.
Thus it is the best tool to deliver your business offer to your core
audience

E-Mail Marketing Tools
Allows to upload up to 2,000 contacts
and to send 12,000 emails per month for
free
Over 10 billion e-mails per month are sent from this
tool

Successstory
BuzzFeed is an Internet media company providing the
most shareable breaking news, original reporting,
entertainment, and video.
The main aim of BuzzFeed e-mail marketing campaign is to drive subscribers back to its website.
Each e-mail that is sent contains a small snippet of the original content with a dedicated link from the BuzzFeed site.
IN 2014 TRAFFIC
FROM E-MAIL
GREW BY 20%
ON A MONTHLY
BASIS
+ 1 M
NEW
SUBSCRIBERS
FROM E-MAILS
20 VARIANTS
OF E-MAIL
NEWSLETTERS
ACCORDING TO
SUBSCRIBERS’
INTERESTS
5 PEOPLE
WORKING ON
E-MAIL
CAMPAIGN

Webinars Value:
LEADS
CAPTURING
INVOLVEMENT
DIRECT
INTERACTION
ACCESSIBILITY
ALL OVER THE
GLOBE
Webinars
Webinars help to use the interactive elements for your marketing
campaigns, such as ability to share, receive and discuss information about
products or services in real-time

Webinars Tools
GoToMeeting is an online meeting, desktop sharing, and video
conferencing software that enables the user to meet with
other computer users, customers, clients or colleagues via the
Internet in real time.
Basic features are available for free for you and up
to 3 participants. Pricing plans with more features
are very affordable.

Successstory
SAP HANA is an in-memory, column oriented,
relational database management system
700 WEBINAR
ATTENDEES
SAP provides bi-weekly webinar series – Customer Spotlight Program, which nurture leads by enabling these
prospects and existing SAP customers who have shown an interest in HANA to hear customers’ first-hand
experiences with the SAP HANA platform
+ 2,600
REGISTRATIONS
AND OVER
CREATED +200
OPPORTUNITIES
GENERATED OVER
$100 M
REVENUE

Additional Marketing Channels for
Startups
• Media
• Conferences attending
• Partnership with other businesses
OFFLINE
AUDIENCE
COVERAGE
MEDIA
CREDIBILITY
INFLUENCE
FACE-TO-FACE
CONTACT
PARTNERSHIP
CREATION
NEW
EXPERIENCE
PUBLICITY

Media
• TV
• Radio
• Newspapers
• Magazines
Build your network of
journalistsMake friends with journalist through
Twitter, or during the conference. Wind up
your brain!
Give answers when they are
needed
There are a lot of answer seekers in the Internet. Try to find these,
whom you can give a piece of advice and don’t forget to mention your
company!
Use such resources as Quora and Medium

Conferences
Even as just an attendee you have a lot of
opportunities:
Attend conferences as you
can
• Communicate with targeted audience, suppliers and
opponents face-to-face
• Present your business
• Exchange business cards
• Make business dealings
• Discover up-to-date innovations and trends in your and
related business areas
• Participate in open discussions
• Communicate with journalists
• Analyze your opportunities

Partnership
Partnership with other businesses sharing your expertise
If you don’t have an expertise in something, find somebody, who has it!
For example, you sell portable refrigerators, which operate from a
rechargeable battery. It is sure, that you don’t need to produce such
batteries, but you may cooperate with company, that does.
You may start mutual advertising:
You sell refrigerators and advice your partner - rechargeable batteries
supplier. And vice versa.
Or you may create a special offer for complex purchasing both companies’
goods

Recommendations
1. Nail your product value
2. Have a marketing plan
3. Set Goals. Track Progress
4. NEVER cut down marketing expenses, but change the tactics
5. Configure all of your process, especially interaction between
sales and marketing
6. Hire a copywriter who understands your audience
7. Use an innovative approach
8. Market every single day

IF NOTHING WORKS – GET NAKED ☺

jan.keil@infopulse.com