After several false starts, we really are going to have the first Boston-area Startup Marketing Group meeting on June 16th in sunny, historic Waltham MA. And unlike the previous shots at having meetings, we actually have a venue this time! Depending on the turnout we have two options…if there are 25 people coming we can have the meetup at my office here at Aprigo world headquarters at 460 Totten Pond Road. If we have an even better turnout, we have a sponsor that is willing to hook us up with a bigger space. Depending on the turnout, I’ll send venue information when the date approaches.

The details:

6:30-7:00- Networking- Come on in, introduce yourself to other startup marketers, trade business cards, etc. 
7:00-7:25- Getting Your Startup Noticed Online– Nathan Burke (the guy writing this who has now switched to the third person) will give a presentation on getting your startup noticed online. This will be a blend of his Podcamp Boston presentation on “Discovery: How People Find Blogs, Video and Podcasts They Love & What That Means To You” and his posts on MarketingStartups.com 
7:30-8:30- Open Forum– Hey, it’s our first meeting, so let’s talk about the issues you’re facing as a startup marketer and how we can help as a group. We can talk about future meeting topics, future speakers, etc.

Again, I will send out more details when the date approaches. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at nathan at aprigo dot com.

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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.

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Well, it’s been a while. I haven’t posted in quite a while, as I’ve been waiting for this very day. See, this is my second day at my new job as marketing manager at Waltham, MA based aprigo.

I started this blog right after the last startup I worked at shut down. The idea was to share what I knew about marketing as it applied specifically to startup internet companies. It was also a nice way to connect with the kind of companies I wanted to work with on a consulting basis. I think the blog worked well in both respects.

Consulting was great, but the opportunity to work at another startup was simply too compelling. I just had to do it, and I am so excited about the challenges of building the marketing organization within a new company. So now it looks like this blog is going to make me put my money where my mouth is by actually doing what I’ve been evangelizing in order to start promoting this company.

But don’t worry. This blog isn’t going to turn into the cheerleading wing of my new company. Instead, I’m going to use this blog to show you what techniques I’m actually employing, what works and what’s not worth the effort. The best part is that I will start writing with more frequency here.

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