Helping a 'Techy Person' Understand Marketing
Content:
Intro
It's no secret that marketing is important for startups. But for many techies, the world of marketing can be confusing and daunting. In this blog post, we're giving you a crash course in startup marketing. If you're a techy person then by the end of this post, you should have a good understanding of startup marketing and how to make it work for your business the business you work for.
The Basics Of Marketing For Startups
Marketing is an important part of any startup’s success. Not only is it about finding customers, which is essential for long-term growth, but it's also about the voice of a brand.
Unfortunately for people with a tech-orientated way of thinking, marketing is also based firmly between hard data and vague gut instincts, this can make it feel more like an art at times.
So what is Marketing?
Marketing is the process of creating initial and continuing demand for a product. The goal of marketing is basically to generate leads that turn into sales.
Let’s put things in real terms- if you’re a software developer working at a startup, once you are at the point where your excellent coding has created an MVP (a product that is ready to be tested on paying customers) you will need to generate some business, you will need to get some uses, and the business will need to generate revenue. This is where marketing comes in.
What's the process?
The marketing person, department, or agency will first devise a plan, based on who they think the target audience will be. They will then get to work creating content, creators for ads, and strategies for partnerships to sell that product. A good marketer will look at the data, analyze the product, research the market, and then based on instinctual feelings, devise a go-to-market strategy (GTM). And this is where most tech-orientated people struggle- sometimes marketing might look chaotic, it might look emotional. It might look like sometimes people are making decisions based on hunches, well that’s because it is. See the difference between marketing and coding is with coding, there is always a right or wrong answer, there’s always a way to measure if your work is a success or a failure, and there’s always some work you can reference that will give you guidance. Well with marketing, that’s often not the case, especially with a new product
Why is it important for the development team to have contact with the marketing team?
If you build a product you’re probably going to have some insights that are useful to marketing. And if you market a product, you are probably gonna have some insights that are useful to product development. Understanding each other’s jobs is the key to building a successful product.
Nuts & bolts
There are a number of different metrics that marketers use to measure the success of a marketing strategy. Some key metrics could be:
1) Acquisition Rate - This metric measures the percentage of new customers that your startup acquires each month.
2) Conversion Rate - This metric measures how many visitors who visit your website or ad convert into customers.
3) Average Order Value (AOV) - This metric determines how much money your customers spend on average per order.
4) Lead Volume - This metric determines how many leads your effort generates each month.
5) Cost Per Click (CPC) - This metric determines how much money your company spends on advertising per click.
Take Away
If marketers and coders both make an effort to see each other's perspectives and take the time to answer questions the company wins. The product improves, the marketing improves, and the revenue improves.
Check out our article How to Make Sure Your Startup Doesn't Die for more reading