At HubSpot I have carved out a little business inside of our business. Overtime in sales here I have learned what makes a good fit for HubSpot (our product) as well as our methodology of inbound marketing and sales. I have found that I enjoy working with startups – early and later stage. The thing startups all have in common is that they are usually trying to figure out their short term and longer term marketing strategies. Most of the companies I work with are startup in the software and tech space. They are usually VC backed and they are usually going through funding to help them to grow. Usually HubSpot and inbound marketing methods are timely for a company like this because they are actively trying to figure out how they are going to go about growing their company.
My job is to help a startup figure out how inbound marketing can help them to grow. I have noticed that a lot of of startups really need advice on how to build out their marketing and sales for sustainable growth – not just in the short term but how to make their marketing and sales work for the longer term goals they have. Startups are awesome because they all have really, really big goals. They are trying to disrupt something. Better yet, they are trying to change the way something is done currently. They saw a need or a want in a market and built something to fix that. I love helping startups figure out how to tackle that market.
I talk about how to do this every single day, multiple times a day. I need to get this out so all startups can learn how to grow using inbound marketing. A startup is not like a normal business that has been around for years and then decides one day that they want to market better. I like working with those companies as well but I get more joy and happiness out of helping a new company figure out how to CRUSH IT.
I am going to start writing posts specifically around how to do startup marketing. Stay tuned for guides and posts on how to build out your marketing team early on, how to build out your sales team, how to build your strategies the right way from the start.
Here are a couple things to think about up front as you start thinking about how you want to grow your company:
1. Really define who you are marketing your product to.
2. Have you validated that the market/s you are going after are actually responding to what your value prop is?
3. Do you fully understand how to define your value prop and why someone would use your service or product?
4. What problems are you solving for and why? How does this help the market you are going after?
5. What are you doing differently and better than how things are done today? What are you trying to change and why is that more beneficial than how someone does this now?
6. What are your goals for 2014? Why? Write down your short term and longer term goals as well.
7. How are you going to hit those?
8. Who is going to do the work needed to start to drive net new lead gen for your company?
9. How will you take advantage of the leads you will bring in to your company? No really, think about this. Not just in the short term. Every lead is valuable… You need to define how you will sell to those leads over time as well as how you will market to them if they aren’t ready to buy NOW.
10. Do you have the mechanisms and systems in place to take advantage of lead generation and growth?
