Whatever it is, it’s a killer for startup marketing.  The startup marketing plan we deliver for our clients includes positioning, messaging, content, web design, SEO/SEM, marketing automation, demand generation, social media (among other disciplines)—all customized to fit the needs of each client.  Given the deadlines, budget, and client attention (after all, they’re often launching both a company and a product) we have to work with, it’s a given that we and our clients are going to need to prioritize and make some compromises in order to achieve our goals.

That doesn’t mean we are sacrificing excellence.  What we have a hard time helping tech founders to discern is that excellence doesn’t mean perfection.  And perfection across all marketing elements requires time and money that our clients often don’t have.  You can achieve “good enough” in the content of your product video, or in the completeness of your main white paper, or in the consistent application of your branding, for example, without damaging your launch or sales opportunities.  Iterating every step in every program or deliverable will paralyze your launch and distract you from those components that are truly critical to your success.  To get every little detail right is a luxury that no startup can afford.  We always guide our startup clients to strive for excellence, but we keep our eye on “good enough” in order to achieve their goals.

Our second tip; don’t start by talking about yourself.  Too many companies lead off their Sales presentations with an “About Us” slide– where you’re located, how many employees, how you killed your first bear when you were only 3, etc.

What’s wrong with that?  It’s like one of those bad first dates where the guy goes on and on about himself.  Finally he pauses and says, “But enough about me.  Let’s talk about things I like to do.”  If you take this approach you come across as full of yourself and uninterested in the person/people across the table from you.

That first slide is a chance to establish a relationship and rapport with your prospect.  We recommend a slide on ‘Market Conditions’ or ‘Today’s Market’ that basically flatters the prospect by talking about how their area of expertise (job) is so critical to their company’s performance—and, as a result, what the company expects in that area.  The goal is for them to nod their head that you understand their world and join the conversation with their own input, rather than sitting back looking at slides that are, in effect, the equivalent of you showing your date photos of yourself from high school to the present.

So, Tip #2:  You’re not that interesting.

In other words, it’s not all about you. It’s about them. Get them talking. Right away.

The site debuted with a very impressive list of content assets– 3 white papers, 3 use cases, 3 client case studies, a datasheet, and 8 videos of founders and customers. Customer response was also great; over 2600 unique visitors and 10,000 page views in the first 24 hours, with conversions of 43 demos and 15 trials.  These guys are a great company with tremendous upside in the hot big data space.

Congrats to the team.

When it comes to startup marketing, we’ve seen scope creep, or incrementalism, seep in from a new source:  The Lean Startup.

The religion of The Lean Startup is to get to market quickly with a minimally viable product feature set that can be tested by launching quickly to market, revising through incremental product iterations, and then releasing again to the market.  The overall iterative approach to building a successful product has worked for a new wave of software startups – mobile apps, cloud-based services among them.  But this approach is death to solid, effective marketing.

Marketing is effective when there is a differentiated, coherent and memorable value proposition that can be communicated consistently over time.  You can still be coherent if you frequently change your core marketing messages—but you won’t be differentiated or memorable.   It’s the repetition of your message to all of your core constituencies that will allow you to break through to your customer.  Incremental shifts and tweaks are fundamentally detrimental to effective marketing.

The really hard part is that tech founders raised on incrementalism don’t understand why they have to define their message and stick to it.  Their philosophy is:  it can always be better.  It works for their product, so why shouldn’t it work for their marketing?  Getting our founder/partners to differentiate between their product development and marketing practices is one of the biggest challenges that any startup marketing person professional will face.  How well you do it will go a long way to determining the success of your startup client.

Here are our Top 5 Ways to Recognize When Your Launch is F*@#d….

• The head of sales is not sure yet what defines a qualified lead.
• The product UI is being redesigned one week before launch.
• The press release draft is in double-digits and counting.
• The elevator pitch still hasn’t made it out of the elevator.
• There is some pixel polishing still going on with the new logo.

What are some other key “launch f-up” indicators?

Public Relations has been notoriously hard to measure.  Back in the day, PR was all about relationships (it still is) and consistency and availability (it still is) in order to cultivate those critical voices in the market.  Today, PR is measured using many different metrics:  website traffic, influence, sentiment, numbers of followers, friends, retweets, and more. The “authority” and reputation that PR helps to build over time is critical to track.  In fact, in the last ten years or so, we’ve gone from almost no measurement to a sometimes-confusing range of metrics.

What hasn’t changed is the number of capable, experienced, strategic PR professionals available to develop and own the PR program for a high-growth startup.  There are simply too few of them.  We’ve seen a lot of wheat and chaff out there in terms of the PR professionals that “speak startup.” To get the right PR team for your startup, here’s what to watch out for:

Hostage PR– This is where the PR team won’t make a move until the client delivers final versions of all documents, from PPT to FAQs to press releases.  They have no room for iterations or tweaks.  You’re on their schedule, rather than the other way around.  If your PR firm can’t handle double-digit revisions of a press release (which is fairly common when you’re in creation mode at a startup), you’ve got the wrong PR team.

Big Hat PR– A riff on the phrase “big hat, no cattle,” this is a PR firm that likes to talk big—especially about past successes—but in reality exhibits an inability to drive to decisions, deliverables and real action on behalf of the client.  Every startup needs their PR pro to elbow their way to the big table and to be able to hold their own when they get there — with senior management or with the board — by bringing real-world experience, domain expertise, current media connections and creative thinking.  Most of all, a startup founder is counting on a PR pro joining your team, not waiting on the sidelines.

Lightweight PR– When all of the heavy lifting seems to be on the client side, it’s lightweight PR.  There may be program calendars, deadlines for pitches and writing deadlines galore.  But when you look down your “to do” list, it’s your initials next to all of the deliverables, not theirs.  For example, if you’re doing all the first drafts, you’re not getting your money’s worth from your PR team, regardless of the monthly retainer or project rate.  If your PR team can’t deliver a first draft, for example, they haven’t learned your language and you need to make a switch.

All kidding aside, PR is a vital ingredient for a startup marketing plan.  In the early days, an effective PR team that “speaks startup” can play an essential, strategic role that will help put your company on the map.  Our advice, don’t settle.  There are great PR pros out there for you that can make a difference.

Let’s start at The Start.  Whether you call it the ‘opening slide’ or ‘introductory slide’, it’s the most underused/wasted slide in the deck.  A typical company (let’s call them You.com) sees this slide as something you get through to get to the meat of the issue.  So they lead off with something like: ‘Introducing You.com’.  Or worse, they go with some clip-art of two hands shaking underneath the title:  “You.com and ______(insert prospect company name): A Winning Team.”

We teach that the first slide should contain either a bold claim (“Measure every application for every user.”) or a compelling customer benefit (“Your face clears up. Overnight.”).  It can and should be a conversation starter—a way to make the meeting interactive from the very beginning.  The earlier it becomes a conversation and not a monologue, the better disposed the prospect is to you and your solution.

 So, Tip #1:  Don’t let your opening slide go to waste:  put it to good use.

More to come…

Virtual residue-

Like-jacking-  A common social-spam attack on Facebook, known as “like-jacking,” involves duping users into clicking on an image that looks as if a friend has clicked the “Like” button, recommending it.

Cloud watch-  Your product is not really a cloud-based offering.  Instead, you’re giving customers a managed hosting approach, so they’re really on a cloud watch more than a true, multi-tenant instance of a software solution.

Intellectual ostrich- It’s unusual to find creatures lurking about centers of technology innovation like Silicon Valley who lack the intellectual curiosity to stay on top of technologies, applications, trends and developments.  It’s the rare “intellectual ostrich” among us who cannot muster the mental effort to stay abreast of the latest.  But they’re out there…watch out!

What other trends do you think are out/in?

* infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, database as a service

The Blaise Pascal Law

The length of a startup’s press release is in inverse relationship to its news value.

The Headcount Rule

The number of suits attending the weekly PR planning meeting are in direct relationship to the size of your monthly retainer.

The Law of Missing Vowels

The more consonants in the name of the startup or its product, the smaller the marketing budget.

The Rule of Swag

The more swag that’s visible on employees at an early-stage company, the higher the mortality rate of the startup by a factor of 10.

The Law of Nepotism

The higher the number of employees related to board members or founders, the shorter the average tenure of your employees.

Buzzword Roadkill:  The Rule of Three

If the CEO speaks frequent ‘buzz’ (can use three terms like ‘engagement’, ‘resonate’ and ‘compelling’ in a single sentence,) short the stock.

Death by 1,000 Revs:  The Law of Camels

If the number of revisions to your sales presentation reaches double digits (due to “design by committee”,) the impact of the presentation falls by half.

The Law of Cheap Bastards 

As soon as a startup’s payables cycle stretches to 60 days, its access to top vendors and contractors falls dramatically.