Just saw this awesome post from one of my favorite Boston-area marketing guys, Mike Troiano on OnStartups. In the post, entitled “Startup Branding: A Practical Guide for Entrepreneurs“, Mike answers the following:

1. What does startup branding really mean for an early-stage company? Is it just picking a name and a logo?
2. Any favorite startup examples that they think are particularly clueful about brand and drawing out the right emotional response?
3. Speaking of names, how do I pick a great name for my startup? Does it really matter all that much?
4. What about logos? Can I just hack something together? Use a crowdsourcing service like 99Designs? Or is that a waste of time?
5. Any tips on where to find a great freelance designer for a startup logo? And, what would you consider reasonably priced?
6. How do I decide what category my startup falls into? Is it better to find an existing category, or blaze the trail of a new one?
7. How much does good branding matter when trying to raise capital? Is smart money really fooled by that kind of this? Will I look foolish for having invested in brandinged in one?

Awesome article, with questions that every startup out there has to answer.

Startup Marketing: The Land of Carnies and Rubes

As a marketer at a startup, I am always looking for ways to get our product in front of potential customers in a way that is repeatable, not annoying, scalable, and affordable. Along the way I’ve tried just about every kind of advertising, lead generation program, lead guarantee whitepaper syndication, webinar…..the list goes on. Because of that, I’ve found several insanely outdated, arcane practices that are just accepted by marketers. I hate that.

So this list includes things that need to die in startup marketing:

1. Lead Guarantee Programs That Refuse To Screen Leads Based On Qualifying Questions – Allow me to explain. I’ve done several lead guarantee programs with large technology vendors, and they typically will syndicate a whitepaper across their network, require a registration form, and will then give me the info from the registration forms. Many of them will allow us to add a qualifying question (in our case: “Do You Use Google Apps at Your Company?”). But rather than just paying for those leads that answer in the affirmative (which makes them qualified), some vendors make you pay regardless of the answer. They’re basically making you pay for leads that – by definition – are not what you want.This doesn’t apply to all lead generation vendors, as I’ve worked with a few that will only count those leads that pass qualification criteria. Just recently a large vendor pitched me on a program to get our whitepaper in front of our target market and the price was decent. I said “I only pay for the leads that answer yes to my qualification question.” There was a long pause on the line and I was told this is impossible. Okay. That’s fine. We can’t work together.
2. Overused Buzzwords and Meaningless Terms – “The leading provider of”, “a one-stop-shop for”, “disruptive PAAS as a service”, the list goes on. You’re not being paid by the word, and no one has ever bought a startup’s product based on the verbosity of its website.
3. Ridiculous Costs At trade shows – The cost of renting a chair at a major tradeshow? $150. The cost of buying that same chair? $100. It’s amazing how we just expect to be extorted at trade shows when we’ve already paid $10K to buy a booth. When renting a piece of equipment for 2 days costs more than buying, we have to ask why. This system is broken.
4. Unacceptable Minimums – This might come off as a whine, but as a startup, you have to account for every marketing dollar spent. Because of that, it’s nearly impossible to justify a gigantic spend the first time working with a vendor. Back to the lead guarantee example: jumping into a $30,000 program to deliver qualified leads just isn’t doable. And when I ask to do a $1,000 test spend, I’m told it isn’t worth the vendor’s time. To me, that’s a good way for a vendor to say they don’t stand behind their product. If you won’t do a small program where the program’s success would result in a large spend, you have no confidence that you can deliver what you’re selling.
5. The Kick-Back Threshold - My hand is shaking trying to write this. A while back I worked with a company that wanted to host our whitepapers, and deliver us 100 leads that sign up and read our whitepaper. Fine. As part of the contract, we specified that leads have to answer affirmatively on a qualifying question, and they had to be from companies with 500 or more employees. Sounds like a plan.When they started sending me a weekly spreadsheet with those that have signed up and read our stuff, I noticed something: 99% of the leads were garbage. A simple Google search showed that these leads were from either very small companies, companies that didn’t exist, or “ABC123″. Every week I’d send the garbage back, and the vendor was getting angry at me! They told me “Normally we have a 10% kick back threshold but we value your business so we will take these out.”

   A kickback threshold is the vendors way of saying “We know that at least 10% of the leads we send you are garbage. That’s not in your contract. In fact, we told you we’d only charge you for qualified leads. But because you aren’t blindly accepting these obviously worthless leads, I wanted to let you know that everyone else automatically assumes that 10% will be garbage. We’re really annoyed that you’re calling us on our bullshit, and just want you to know that you’re being a real pain in the ass by asking for what you paid for and not wanting to pay for junk.”

   To say I was steaming mad would be an understatement. It’s amazing to me that there are so many built-in processes to rip people off, and they’re not even questioned!

Okay, rant over. Feel free to add your own.

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of Marketo’s user community, and the company has created a full week of activities and prizes to celebrate. I think there are a few takeaways to note around building a community, becoming a central hub of helpful information, and motivating users to promote your brand.

The Marketo Community

In case you’re not familiar with Marketo, it is a company and product focused on marketing automation, or as Marketo refers to itself “Revenue Performance Management.” Basically it is web-based software that manages a lead from anonymous visitor throughout the entire sales and marketing process (registration, email nurturing, sync with CRM systems, workflows, etc.). If you’re a marketing professional for a B2B company that does lead acquisition online, you’ve likely used a combination of tools or a Marketo competitor to do the same tasks.

The Marketo Community was launched last year, and the goals were:

“The online Marketo Community was created for customers and partners to collaborate with each other, learn best practices, share tips and tricks, and forge new relationships,” said Heather Watkins, senior manager of customer communities and programs at Marketo. “We could never have predicted the community’s first-year growth would keep pace with Marketo’s own terrific numbers. Through the Marketo Community, businesses of all sizes learn from one another and help us continue to innovate the Marketo product suite.”

Let’s unwrap that from a couple of different perspectives:

• As a marketer - The community helps answer questions about using the Marketo software and gives marketers the opportunity to exchange ideas about topics broader than simply using the software.
• From Marketo’s Perspective – The community lets users find help in a self-service model rather than simply contacting support, gathers feedback for their product roadmap, and creates loyalty through creating experts on their own community site. Brilliant.

Becoming A Central Hub of Helpful Information

A proponent of the “create gobs of useful content” inbound marketing strategy, Marketo is constantly adding content to their site. And rather than simply creating content that asks the questions that their software answers, Marketo spends a good deal of time on content that doesn’t just explicitly plug their product. For instance, they do studies on email deliverability rates. Sure, that’s tangentially relevant to their product, but it’s not a shameless plug. Instead, it gives data to a question that every marketer wonders “Are my emails getting to my leads?”.

Using the community site, Marketo is then able to quickly disseminate their content to those members that are looking for the data. Rather than looking around for information in many locations, community users simply log in, and the discussion forums and articles are available in one spot.

I think this is a huge takeaway for marketers in early stage and emerging companies: don’t just create content focused on the immediate sale. Think of your own buying behavior. If you’re going to buy a big ticket item, you’ll probably spend some time looking around and doing research. In this phase, you’re probably not ready for the hard sale yet, but you’d definitely be willing to look at content that answers the questions you have that are related to the problem you’re trying to solve.

In the Marketo example, they’re trying to build content for marketers rather than building only content for marketers looking for marketing automation software. Sure, they have that. But they understand that not everyone is ready to buy this second. Because of that, they’re willing to give you information you can use that second, and maybe you’ll come back over and over again. And maybe you’ll remember them when you’re actually looking to buy.

Motivating Users to Promote Your Brand

This is the Holy Grail of Marketing: getting your customers/users to promote your brand for you. And it is so hard to do and so easy to seem manipulative and inauthentic. In fact, the only real way to do it is by creating something they want to share with others.

In general, Marketo has done this by creating content worth sharing and giving users motivation to do so. For instance, in the birthday promotion, they’ve offered prizes to the most retweeted tweet (motivation for viral sharing), the most creative video (users creating content for the brand for legitimacy), and the best blog post (more content talking about the brand). And they’ve got some pretty nice prizes for a promotion that is timed to coincide with the holidays:

To Sum It Up

If you’re a marketer at a startup that is looking to build a community, look at what Marketo has done to build a community, establish expert members within that community, motivate users to promote the brand, and give them reasons to create promotional content.

If you’re a marketer using Marketo’s software, take a look around the community; there’s more than just stuff about using the software (but there’s helpful info on that as well).

Disclosure: this post was submitted as an entrant in the Marketo Community Contest described here.

One of my favorite places to read about startups is reddit’s startups subreddit, and today I found a really interesting link. I found a site called Rocket Watcher, which focuses on product marketing for startups by April Dunford.

The post I found was called A Startup Marketing Framework Version 2. From the post:

This Framework makes the assumption that you have a product in market, you feel fairly confident that you have a good fit between your market and your offering and you are ready to invest in lead generation. If you aren’t there yet, there is a lot here that you won’t need to (and more importantly, shouldn’t) worry about yet.   Lastly, my background is more Business to Business marketing so like everything else on this site, this has a B2B slant to it.  That said, I think most of it is very applicable to a B2C startup.

It’s a very good post, and since I focus more about tactics here, I thought the post was definitely worth sharing for those that are interested in taking a step back to think more about strategy.

My latest column for VentureFizz, First Look: Fundraise.com is now available. This month I talked with Nate Drouin, founder of fundraise.com to discuss how he got the idea for his online giving startup, what differentiates fundraise.com from its competitors, and what’s coming soon. Oh, I also was able to sneak in a Horatio Alger reference, which has always been a goal of mine. Check that off the list.

In the past few weeks I’ve been hearing from a few recruiters and HR people from startups that are looking to fill startup marketing jobs. <shameless plug>Since I run the Boston-area Startup Marketing Meetup </shameless plug> I’ve been sending emails to the entire group whenever I hear of a job.

A few issues with that:

• Not everyone in the group is interested in hearing about startup marketing job openings
• Those that aren’t interested might unsubscribe from the group so they stop hearing about the openings
• It feels kind of spammy

So I came up with an idea. Okay, two ideas.

1. StartupMarketingJobs.com – It’s a quick and dirty job board using Jobberbase that I’ve set up to post jobs that are strictly related to startup marketing. The site is incredibly slow and only has a handful of jobs on it right now, but it’s brand new.

2. A Mailing List – Retro as all hell, I’ve set up a mailing list. If you want to be notified when a new startup marketing job is available (or posted), send me an email at nathan (at) startupmarketingjobs.com with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject line, and I’ll let you know when I hear about a new job opening.

A couple of quick notes:

1. I won’t share your email address with anyone.
2. I’m only going to use this list to send emails when I hear about an opening that is relevant.
3. A giraffe’s heart is 2 feet long and weighs about 25 pounds.
4. If you’re a recruiter or are from a company looking to hire for a startup marketing position, email me at nathan (at) startupmarketingjobs.com and I’ll post your job on the site. It won’t cost you anything.

TLDR; I’ve been hearing about open startup marketing jobs. If you want to hear about them, send me an email or check out the site.

It’s finally time to have another meetup. On May 5, we’ll be holding our Boston-area startup marketing meetup at the Foley Hoag Emerging Enterprise Center in Waltham.

And this ought to be a good one. The details:

Selling the Dogfood: Startup Marketing Before & After Product/Market Fit

Startups fail because the dog won’t eat the dogfood. Not because they can’t make the dogfood, or price the dogfood, or even sell the dogfood. They fail because – having solved all those problems – the dog doesn’t want to eat it.

So how can you approach Marketing in way that evolves your “dogfood” in the direction your “dog” wants? And having done so, how do you get the other dogs in the neighborhood interested?

Join 5-time startup veteran and brand guru Mike Troiano (@miketrap) for an exploration of the marketing challenges unique to venture-funded startups, at the intersections of entrepreneurship and branding, product strategy and communications, new technology and enduring truths.

No dogs, please.

Thursday, May 5, 2011
6:30 PM

Emerging Enterprise Center at Foley Hoag
1000 Winter Street – Suite 4000 Waltham, MA

And make sure to check out Mike’s site, SellingTheDogFood.com

Just about everyone has an idea that they’d love to turn into a startup. But how do you find the right co-founder(s) to get started?

Recently two new sites have launched (or have launched betas) with exactly that problem in mind.

The first one is called fowndr, which is currently in invite-only beta. From their site:

Fowndr brings together founders, co-founders and investors from all over the world to share ideas, thoughts, link, get feedback and even share files.

Once you become a part of the network you can start building relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs, form private networks, post comments, and share files with the wider network.

There’s a lively conversation thread on Hacker News about fownder, where commenters are debating the choice of the site’s name, the definition of a “founder”, and the development of cliques in the startup community.

The second is called StartupCrave, which is currently open for registration for early adopters. I spoke with StartupCrave’s founder, Dan Cote to see what his site is all about.

At its core, StartupCrave is a place for people to find co-founders, employees, funding, etc. to start an internet business. Dan Cote describes the site as “specifically focused on internet entrepreneurs that know they need someone else to get going.”

The Marketing Challenge

As is the case with any site that depends on a quantity of users and content to provide value, both fowndr and startupcrave face the “chicken and egg” problem. Since there are very few users to start with, there’s little value. Since there’s little value, there’s little incentive to sign up.

Fowndr and StartupCrave have taken different approaches to try to solve the chicken and egg problem and boost registration.

Fowndr has gone with the “request invite” method of pre-launch demand generation. They’ve decided to target sites like Hacker News and Reddit’s /startups subreddit to create initial demand.

StartupCrave instead is offering free registration for its (eventual) paid membership services:

Those that sign up for StartupCrave during the beta become “Pro-level members for life”.

StartupCrave was created to solve the problem Cote faced: as a marketing guy, he had plenty of startup ideas, but lacked the technical background to make those ideas happen. He met StartupCrave’s co-founder a year ago while working on another idea, and decided to create a site that helps would-be entrepreneurs share ideas and find a complimentary business partner.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best ways to reach the largest number of qualified leads possible in an automated, easy-to-replicate method. But today I got something in the mail that really impressed and surprised me.

Coming back into the office from lunch I saw this envelope:

Definitely handwritten, and from an address unfamiliar to me. Of course, I open it, and here’s what was inside:

If you can’t see what it says, allow me:

Nathan, you’re invited

www.whatisthisfor.com/NathanBurke

This was written on a napkin with a logo for “Crescent Bluffs Hotel & Resort” along with a hotel door key card. You’ve got my attention.

Seconds later, I’m at the web site, which looks an awful lot like a real hotel’s web site. It’s a flash based site that asks you to join someone in the hotel’s restaurant. It then asks what you’d like to eat/drink before revealing to you that it’s not actually something from a hotel after all. Instead, it’s from an interactive marketing agency called VLG.

They then ask if you’d like to do a call to find out more about the agency’s offerings. Very, very clever.

I didn’t fill out the form to do a call, but minutes later I received a phone call and email asking to set up a call. Very aggressive. I love it.

Doing a call with them on Thursday.

Just learned about these this week, and thought I’d share. (From the job posts on the two respective sites…not my own wording)

Maketing Coordinator

Nasuni is looking for a creative, energetic and enthusiastic candidate to join its marketing team. This is an excellent opportunity to join a dynamic and growing technology start-up and directly contributing to the growth and success of the company.

The marketing coordinator will help manage lead generation and advertising programs, create marketing collateral (including videos), update website pages, track and analyze progress, and more. This is an ideal position for someone with a few years of marketing experience, looking to make an impact while advancing a career in marketing. If you are a driven, creative and energetic individual with strong organizational skills, attention to detail and interest in marketing and technology, we want to talk to you!

Responsibilities include:

• Coordinate and manage marketing campaigns, from the beginning to the end, including vendor selection, negotiation, design and implementation across online mediums such as banner ads, email campaigns, social media ads, etc.
• Create and write marketing collaterals and ad copy, create and edit HTML emails, track and report metrics
• Work with salesforce.com and our marketing automation tools to manage and nurture leads
• Use analytics tools to track website and leads statistics and regularly report on progress of all marketing programs
• Create, maintain and update website pages on a continuous basis as needed
• Maintain a line of communication between Nasuni and potential customers by monitoring and responding to comments, updating Nasuni’s social media outlets, creating a relationship with bloggers, etc.

Requirements:

• A Bachelor’s degree, preferably in marketing
• Minimum 2 years of experience in marketing
• Experience with vendors and marketing lead generation programs is a plus
• Strong analytical and organizational skills; Extremely detail oriented and creative
• Proven ability to develop effective and high quality written marketing material
• Comfortable with online tools. A fast learner for a variety of tools.
• Experience with salesforce.com is a nice to have
• Basic knowledge of HTML
• Able to work independently with little direction
• Excellent spoken and written communication skills. Excellent listening skills
• Flexibility: able to perform a wide range of tasks and change focus quickly. Adapt to varying business needs
• Effectiveness: able to work fast and under pressure to deliver the projects on time.

Please send your resume and a sample of previous marketing material you created to jobs@nasuni.com.

Online Marketing Manager

neoSaej is the Burlington MA-based online product company with an innovative technology that opens new frontiers in online marketplaces. We are an exciting startup looking for a hands-on Online Marketing Manager to develop, implement and maintain our paid search and display advertising programs. This is position is for someone with excellent analytical skills and a demonstrated passion for internet marketing. The successful candidate will also have experience measurably increasing qualified traffic at a positive ROI. The candidate’s success will be measured by quantifiable improvements in traffic, visitor conversion and overall monetization.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the execution of online search marketing, and display advertising strategy which includes exploring and testing new online channels to generate qualified visitors while meeting cost-per-acquisition targets.
• Work with marketing, design, and engineering to deploy lead generation campaigns across multiple media channels.
• Manage, measure and optimize site conversion and monetization.
• Design and manage web analytics, A/B split testing, and multivariate testing.
• Maximize revenue per visitor from various channels including SEO, PPC, Affiliates/Partners.

Requirements:

• 2+ years of direct-to-consumer online marketing ideally with experience in the creation, implementation and measurement of customer acquisition campaigns across a variety of online channels, including organic and paid search, email, and social media.
• Deep understanding of CPA, CPL, CPM SEM, SEO, CPC and PPC.
• Proven track record with search marketing and/or display advertising.
• Passionate about maximizing website conversion and monetization.
• Experience with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer is a plus.
• Bachelors degree in a related discipline such as Statistics, Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science, Economics or Business. Masters degree or MBA is a plus.

The Online Marketing Manager (OMM) will play a leading role in crafting MoneyAise’s online & social media marketing strategy, manage its execution and track its effectiveness. A primary focus of the SMM role will be in the expanding the Company’s consumer outreach via organic search, PPC & Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, ect). You will have the opportunity to operate on both a strategic and tactical level while taking ownership for the Company’s consumer outreach. Expertise in creation of social media strategy is of particular interest for this role.

Please send your resume to careers@neosaej.com