Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

Startup Marketing Essentials: #7 How to Build a Great Website

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Every startup needs a website. I’m stating the obvious. So I’ll restate. Every successful startup needs a great website that meets its business goals: awareness, reach, virality, conversion. Building (or rebuilding) the right one takes a lot of effort. Here are some pointers on how you should conceive and plan your site. – TM It’s funny to think that the web, which hundreds of millions of people use every day for shopping, dating, gaming, news, and socializing, began as a technology to help … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: What is Parallax?

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You've probably seen a parallax website before. Especially common on long, single-page scrolling sites, images in the background seem to scroll at a different speed than the text or images in the foreground. That's called parallax. According to web design site Awwwards: The parallax effect uses multiple backgrounds which seem to move at different speeds to create a sensation of depth (creating a faux-3D effect) and an interesting browsing experience. They have some great examples. Since, … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #6 How to Write a Press Release

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The workhorse of public relations is the press release. Written in the form of a conventional news story, a press release alerts the media to an organization’s news and presents it in that organization’s point of view. Editors and reporters use facts, quotes, and other information contained in releases to flesh out their stories. Blogs are great, but if you are really going to grow, you need to know how to write a good press release. – TM There is a standard structure for press releases. Your … [Read more...]

Startup MarketingEssentials: #5 How to Build a Funnel Model

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How many leads do you need, exactly? Don’t know? It all starts with the funnel model. If you are in a startup and your product is ready to sell, you need to model your sales process to understand how much to invest in your sales team and marketing budget. The model also acts as a set of guideposts that will let you know if you are on track to hit your numbers. Learn how to reverse calculate from your revenue target back up through the funnel to visitors on your website. – TM To effectively … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #4 How to Create a Killer Presentation

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Many presentations are, well, not good. If you want to stand out among the other startups and gain more press attention, buzz, investor dollars, and early customers, good presentations can help a lot. And I’m not impressed by war stories about busy execs to create their slides ‘in the cab from the airport.’ Chances are their audience could tell. Do yourself a favor and put in some real prep time and practice. – TM Presentations are used in every marketing program. Your CEO may burnish your … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #3 How to Develop a Positioning Statement

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Positioning is sometimes referred to as the fifth P, along with product, price, place, and promotion. Founders spend the formative years of their companies answering a constant stream of questions from prospective employees, investors, and investors: What are you? Is that like so-and-so? How are you different from [insert large company that will no doubt crush you]? Developing a desired position, and formalizing it with a positioning statement, are critical steps on your way to profit and glory. … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #2 Market Sizing and Segmentation

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If TAM, SAM and CAGR mean nothing to you, you have a problem. Whether you are creating or disrupting a market, knowing how big it is, and what segments are most ripe for the picking are critical. – TM There is a common sin that marketers frequently commit. In their rush to build a website or create an attractive logo, they forget something very important: who is the buyer? These marketers are firing without aiming. They are being tactical and not strategic. Sometimes they are simply shooting to … [Read more...]

Startup Marketing Essentials: #1 The Four Ps

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I was introduced to E. Jerome McCarthy’s four P's later in my career. I wish I had known them earlier. There is no more perfect summation of marketing. Each of the P’s is a lever at your disposal. As a startup founder or CEO, understanding the four P’s will help you know which of the four levers to pull to beat your competition. -- TM What is marketing?  Ask one hundred marketers, and you are likely to get one hundred different answers.  Consult the dictionary, and you find stolid definitions … [Read more...]

Is Growth Hacking a Marketing Function or a Mindset?

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Around the time I was making my final edit to the chapter on building a marketing department in The Professional Marketer, I happened to be part of a number of conversations on the “growth hacker,” aka “growth hacking.”  The job title “growth hacker” wasn’t in the chapter, and I wondered if it should be. For those not familiar with growth hacking, it is “a marketing technique developed by technology startups that uses creativity, analytical thinking, and social metrics to sell products and gain … [Read more...]

Six Lessons Learned Managing Agile Marketing Teams

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Are you interested in adopting agile marketing, but unsure if it will fit with your organization’s culture? Or, perhaps you started and it’s not working. Having practiced agile for several years now, I can fully recommend it, but there are few gotchas to avoid. For those still not familiar with the concept of agile marketing, which is borrowed from software development, the idea is to create time-bound sets of objectives, prioritize them critically, and measure achievement frequently. Here’s … [Read more...]