No, this blog isn’t dead. It was just taking a long nap. Over the last month or so, posts have been minimal as I have been working on the marketing plan and strategy for the b-to-b startup company I’m with now. Though we’re currently in private, invitation-only beta, I’m working on the plan for our free version. We’re developing a suite of SaaS tools for IT managers that lets them take control of their unstructured data. Vague enough for you? Sure. But we’re not ready to give away too many details yet.
Anyway, in a few short months we’ll be opening up a little bit more, giving people the opportunity to try out a free version of our offering. As a result, it’s my job to find ways to get people to sign up. Since our current site gives almost no information whatsoever on what we’re eventually offering, I essentially have a blank slate. That’s awesome. So let me give you, the startup marketer an idea of where I’m starting out.
1. Understanding the market– Notice I didn’t start with understanding the product. That was a conscious decision. See, the product isn’t fully built yet, so it’s impossible to understand it. Instead, my focus is on understanding our market- in this case, mid-market IT managers with an abundance of data and a shortage of time. These are the people responsible for keeping all the data on their network secure, backed-up, and accessible by the right users and groups.
2. Understand the market pain– This market is incredibly short on time and budget. They need to understand problems before they happen, and need to solve them quickly when the inevitably occur. A few examples
- Understanding user and group access- With all the data on the network, IT managers need to know which users and groups have access to which data. Should everyone have read-access to the HR folder that includs salary information?
- Knowing what kind of files are on the network– Is there an MP3 folder on your corporate network taking up valuable space (and letting users share music in a less-than-perfectly-legal way?)
- Staying on top of storage usage– Which users and groups are taking up the most space and why?
- Planning for the future– When you know the growth rate of your network, you’ll be in a lot better shape for capacity planning, backup analysis and so on.
3. Find your target– Starting from the pain points above, I’ve been looking to find where the potential customers are. To me, this is a process consisting of:
a. Keyword Research- We’re using Hubspot, an inbound marketing SaaS product that is great at helping b-to-b companies understand where their potential customers are and what they’re looking for. I’ve started with a small list of keywords, and it’s grown to a few hundred.
b. Visit blogs and forums- When I see someone post a question like “how can I find out how to save money on network storage?” I’ll go to the forum and check out how the conversation goes. This isn’t an opportunity for me to jump in and say “Hey!! We’ve got something that will solve your problem,” as that’s both lame and useless. Instead, the real value is understanding how people are currently solving the problem and getting acclimated with those that will be using your product eventually.
4. Plan your content- Since we’ll be primarily a low-touch sales organization highly focused on inbound marketing, it’s essential for us to create content for the search engines. I cannot stress enough the idea that you should start early, and put something out there even if it is not perfect. I’ve spent hours on writing copy, only to have it fall flat. Instead, figure out what you want to write about, get feedback, and put it out there. For our free offering, we’ll be focusing on one main feature, so instead of trying to cover everything, I’m focused on that one part of the suite.
In fact, I’ll be writing copy today for something that won’t be available until June. My first thought was: “why would I do that? If people get to the content, decide they love the idea and then find out they can’t use it yet, won’t they be angry?” I then realized that, sure, that could happen. But if I can get them to sign up to be notified and they are still having the same problem when we launch, I think they’ll be more interested in solving their problem than griping about the fact that we weren’t ready when they first heard about us.
5. Create whether or which content- When you have a product or service to sell, prospects will come from two camps: whether or which.
Whether– These are people trying to decide if they need the product. For instance, a generator is an item people wonder whether they really need.
Which– These are people that have already decided they want the product, they’re just deciding which brand or version they want.
Whether content usually focuses on the benefits, where which talks to points of differentiation.
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All right, enough talk for now. Time for me to actually practice what I preach.
