What is your Brand Personality? Choosing a Brand Archetype

When it comes to choosing your brand archetype, it's important to consider your company's values, goals, and target audience. You want to choose an archetype that not only embodies your brand but also resonates with your audience. Once you have chosen your archetype, focus on aligning your messaging, branding, and marketing efforts with the characteristics of your chosen archetype to create a cohesive and compelling brand identity.

Here are the details of the 12 archetypes to consider.

ARCHETYPES ROOTED IN MIND & SOUL

The Innocent

Simple, pure, optimistic, and honest

Represents simplicity, purity, trust and optimism. They value honesty and transparency, and their messaging is often direct and straightforward. Their goal is to experience paradise.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Coca-Cola, Dove, Aveeno, The Honest Company

BRAND VOICE: Honest, Optimistic, Simplified

The Explorer

Adventurous, independent, and seeks new experiences

Represents adventure and independence. They value new experiences and discovery, and their messaging is often focused on pushing boundaries and exploring the unknown.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: The North Face, Jeep

BRAND VOICE: Guiding, Fearless, Daring

The Sage

Wise, knowledgeable, and analytical.

Represents wisdom and knowledge. They value analysis and critical thinking, and their messaging is often thoughtful and insightful.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Google, The Economist, BBC

BRAND VOICE: Knowledgeable, trustworthy, assured

ARCHETYPES ROOTED IN LEGACY

The Hero

Courageous, determined, and inspiring

Represents courage and determination. They value strength and perseverance, and their messaging is often focused on overcoming challenges and achieving success. They never quit.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Nike, FedEx, Adidas, Gatorade

BRAND VOICE: Honest, Brave, Grit

The Rebel

Bad-ass, unconventional, and challenges authority

Represents rebellion and nonconformity. They value freedom and individuality, and their messaging is often provocative and challenging.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Harley Davidson, Vice, Vans, Virgin

BRAND VOICE: Rebellious, Risk-taking, Disruptive

The Magician

Visionary, transformative, and spiritual

Represents transformation and spirituality. They value vision and imagination, and their messaging is often focused on the power of the mind and the ability to create change.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Disney, Dyson, Tesla

BRAND VOICE: Mystical, Informed, Encouraging

ARCHETYPES ROOTED IN CONNECTION

The Everyperson

Genuine, honest, and trustworthy

Represents genuineness and authenticity. They value honesty and simplicity, and their messaging is often relatable and down-to-earth.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Ikea, Target, McDonalds

BRAND VOICE: Authentic, Friendly, Simple

The Lover

Passionate, romantic, and sensual

Represents passion and sensuality. They value emotional connection and intimacy, and their messaging is often romantic and seductive.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Victoria’s Secret, Chanel, Baileys

BRAND VOICE: Sensual, Intimate, Soothing

The Jester

Playful, humorous, and irreverent

Represents playfulness and humor. They value fun and lightheartedness, and their messaging is often entertaining and irreverent.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Dollar Shave Club, Skittles, Old Spice

BRAND VOICE: Playful, Fun, Happy

ARCHETYPES ROOTED IN STRUCTURE

The Creator

Imaginative, innovative, and artistic

Represents imagination and innovation. They value creativity and self-expression, and their messaging is often focused on the power of ideas and the ability to bring them to life.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Apple, Lego, Adobe

BRAND VOICE: Inspirational, authentic, provocative

The Ruler

Powerful, influential, and confident

Represents power and authority. They value control and influence, and their messaging is often focused on leadership and dominance.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: Rolex, Mercedes Benz, American Express

BRAND VOICE: Commanding, Articulate, Respected

The Caregiver

Compassionate, nurturing, and helpful

Represents compassion and support. They value empathy and nurturing, and their messaging is often focused on helping others and making a difference.

EXAMPLE BRANDS: UNICEF, Johnson & Johnson, Habitat for Humanity, Toms

BRAND VOICE: Caring, Reassuring, Positive

Fill in the blanks:

My audience feels/wants: Often brands will focus too much on who they are vs. what their customer wants. Here we want you to keep your brand in mind, but really think about your customer. What do they feel or want?

Which archetypes represent the desire you want to evoke + how I will deliver that to them: Look through the archetypes and find one that stands out. Can’t pick just one? You can select up to three but only if needed!

Prioritize your archetypes: If you have chosen more than one, you will need to prioritize. It’s impossible to communicate all in one - that’s what you might refer to as a “multiple personality” and as you can imagine, it would be confusing when the message hits the customer. We recommend 80/20 or 70/20/10 splits.

Create your brand personality: Based on what you have chosen begin to create a personality. In some cases, if you have chosen just one, the archetype can be your personality. If you are combining, you’ll want to modify your description to encompass all. Below are some examples.

What Is Sustainable Growth Marketing? The 5 Things You Need to Know.

We’ve all heard of growth hacking. And if you haven’t, growth hacking is a marketing strategy that focuses on rapid experimentation and testing to identify the most effective ways to grow a business. It typically involves a combination of marketing, analytics, and product development techniques to acquire and retain customers. But growth hacking doesn’t establish early-stage companies for long-term success. It might be tempting to dive right into marketing activities with a growth-hacking mindset but marketing is not just about the now. Taking a sustainable approach to growth marketing is what will set you up for success in the long term.

What is Sustainable Growth Marketing?

Unlike growth hacking, sustainable growth marketing is a marketing strategy that prioritizes long-term growth and sustainability over short-term gains. It’s a holistic approach to marketing that factors long-term success into the equation through a combination of multiple tactics that can grow and change along with your business.

Why is Sustainable Growth Marketing Important for Early Stage Companies?

Marketing at any stage of growth can be challenging. Budgets are small and resources are scarce, but this is exactly why a sustainable approach to marketing can yield real and long-term results. Instead of focusing on one or two tactics and burning through resources to test a hypothesis, sustainable growth marketing builds foundational marketing elements along with micro efforts that allow for testing and optimization.

Top 5 Things You Should Know About Sustainable Growth Marketing

1. Build a marketing operations foundation first. Foundational elements are the ultimate key to success when thinking about sustainable growth. A core component of this is marketing operations. Marketing operations refers to the processes, people, and technology that enable a marketing team to execute campaigns and initiatives effectively. It involves everything from project management, budgeting, and resource allocation to data management, analytics, and reporting. For early-stage businesses building a functional marketing operations program is simple. A good place to start is by outlining the processes for how leads or sales enter the marketing funnel and what happens to them during the process. This will help determine gaps in your current process and a thousand-foot view of the customer journey. Check out this blog from HubSpot for a more in depth guide to building a marketing operations foundation.

2. A marketing strategy is a must. It’s tempting to skip over the strategy component and get started. But without a clear strategy, it will be not only difficult but practically impossible to track the effectiveness of your programs. Also, marketing strategies help to align stakeholders across the entire business and set expectations. Comprehensive marketing strategies include the following:

   • Clear goals and KPIs

   • Target audience analysis

   • Competitive analysis

   • Full funnel marketing plan

   • Budget (at least six months)

3. Budget over time. Developing a comprehensive six- to twelve-month marketing budget is necessary when creating a sustainable growth plan. What’s important to remember is that every marketing effort doesn’t have to be executed at once. A budget will help manage spend over time and allow for the flexibility to move money into efforts that work as the year progresses. It also holds the team accountable and prevents overspending in areas that may not be effective. Check out our Crowdcast on how to build a budget.
   

4. Know your audience and know them well. A sustainable growth marketing strategy requires a deep knowledge of the target audience. When building target audience profiles, it’s important to include the following:

   • Demographic or firmographic profile

   • How to reach them

   • Pain points

   • How product/service solves their problem

5. Be thoughtful with messaging. Once audience profiles are built, messaging should fall into place. What’s important to remember is that messaging evolves over time. When things aren’t working, it’s easy to ditch a tactic entirely but it might not be the medium but the messaging. The best way to test messaging and creative is to A/B test. Read more from Meta and LinkedIn on how to run a successful A/B test.
   

Using the framework above is a great way to get started building a sustainable growth marketing strategy. If you need more help, we’re here! At Fivefoottwo Marketing, we help early stage businesses build and launch sustainable marketing programs. Reach out to laura@fivefoottwomarketing.com for a free 30-minute marketing consultation.

Avoid These 5 traps if You Want to Build an MVP

At Fivefoottwo Marketing, our blog is your go-to resource for all things startup marketing related. But, we are excited to feature a blog from a valued partner in the product development space, Jetrockets. Jetrockets is a team of experts that designs, develops, and supports unique software solutions that help clients achieve their unique business goals. The team has deep domain expertise and technical skills to help build custom web and mobile app experiences. This blog covers one of Jetrocket’s specialties; developing your minimum viable product (MVP).

Check the blog out below and Jetrocket’s page for more!

Avoid these 5 traps if you want to build an MVP

A Minimum Viable Product, or MVP, has one goal: collecting information. An MVP is a basic prototype you build to determine what your market wants.

But entrepreneurs often get the wrong idea and think their MVP is something it is not. In most cases, it won’t make very much money at all. Instead, it will show you how you can solidify your business model to make money in the future.

Because of this, startups can fall into several traps, including:

• Choosing the wrong problem to solve

• Skipping the prototype step

• Targeting the wrong audience

• Inappropriate development method

• Analyzing feedback wrong

This guide will first examine what an MVP is and is not and how you should build one. Then, we’ll go over all the development traps you should avoid.

What an MVP is not

An MVP is not:

• a proof of concept

• a beta

• a prototype

A proof of concept is an early model you build that shows your business can work. Its primary purpose is to convince investors to buy in, not for customers to buy.

A beta comes before an MVP, and is buggier and less polished. The beta's point is to elicit functionality feedback and search for glitches. An MVP, by contrast, should be free of glitches and used to test out the marketplace.

A prototype is a toy model of your system that you use to help build an MVP. It should gesture towards how things will work but doesn’t need to be a functional product. Skipping the prototype phase is a common problem that startups face- see below.

6 steps to Building an MVP

A good Minimum Viable Product is the product of these steps:

1. Market research

2. Product scope

3. UI/UX design

4. Prioritizing features

5. Launching

6. Testing

Market Research

An MVP is a form of market research in and of itself. It is an experiment you perform with a hypothesis: If I offer this product, people will buy it.

But before you can have a hypothesis, you must have a theory. You need to have some ideas about what the market is like in the first place. Then, you make an MVP as an educated guess about what people want to buy.

Market research is critical: an estimated 35% of all startups fail because their product does not fit the market.

Defining Product Scope

The “V” of “MVP” stands for “Value”. What value do you provide to customers? What sets you apart from competitors?

This is important because it is this value you will primarily be creating. Your final product will have more features, but an MVP will center on the core product scope defined in this stage.

UI / UX Design

People don’t use apps or websites that are poorly designed or uncomfortable. User interface and experience are just as crucial to core functionality when it comes to the success of your product.

Good UX for an MVP is more complex and accessible than for a full product. It is easier because fewer features lead to a more straightforward interface. But it is also more challenging because you have to nail the few features you do have.

Money spent on UX is money well spent. On average, $1 spent on UX results in a return of $100.

Prioritizing features

Of course, you will want your final product to offer the latest and greatest technology, whether AI features or Blockchain integration. But with every proposed feature, ask yourself: Do I need this to offer the core value of my product?

For example, if you are building a cloud-based calendar service, you want to focus on its ability to record events and sync with the cloud. While you may want to offer a zillion fun alarm sounds in the final product, that is something you should probably ignore for the MVP.

Launching the MVP

An MVP must be launched just as much as a finished product. To that end, you will still need some advertising and marketing. You must consider the best way to reach potential clients and customers. 

But you must remember that this is only part of the final product, so you should spend less on marketing. Instead, you need to spread awareness just enough to get reliable feedback data. 

Observe, Test, and Learn

MVPs are experiments. Your goal is to see how potential customers react. Hopefully, they will find the core functionality of your product valuable and want to buy it. 

But even if they don’t, there are valuable lessons to learn. You might need to change gears and offer a slightly different product. And you can listen to what people say to find out what they might want.

Never forget that Edison was happy with his first 2000 failed attempts to make a lightbulb because they were, in his eyes, successful attempts at figuring out how not to make a lightbulb.

5 Common Mistakes In MVP Development

Many things that could be improved in MVP development come down to trying to make your MVP do the wrong thing. An MVP is primarily an experiment to see if your core idea will sell. It doesn’t need extraneous features, but that doesn’t mean that your offer should be wrong or poorly made. A good MVP will be polished but straightforward.

Here are five of the most common mistakes in MVP development: 

Choosing the wrong problem to solve

This is related to the Product Scope and Prioritizing Features phases. Don’t jam-pack your MVP with features so that it will appeal to everyone. Instead, hone in on the exact problem you want to solve to attract a specific audience. Quality over quantity is the insight here.

Skipping the prototype step

Some people confuse the prototype with the MVP and think they are the same. But a prototype is more like a simple model you build to help you develop the MVP. It is not intended to be put on sale.

To that end, build a toy prototype of your MVP first to get an idea of what you are trying to build. If an MVP is minimal, a prototype should be less than minimal- it might not work so much as offer a general experience of what your product should look like and an approximation of how it will work.

Targeting the wrong audience

Your MVP should have a specific audience. It’s like chemistry, where you experiment on a specific chemical to see the result. In business, you want to know precisely how your intended audience reacts. Don’t get feedback from friends and relatives if you don’t expect them to be future buyers.

Inappropriate Development Method

The idea of an MVP goes hand in hand with Agile: small, frequent changes based on constant feedback. It does not work as well with Waterfall, which is based on the idea of big, pre-planned development cycles. Think fast, flexible, and lean.

Analyzing feedback wrong

It is infamously difficult to get helpful feedback from human beings. Polls can ask the wrong questions, and people may need to answer the way the feel.

To make the best out of your feedback, consider the difference between the quantitative and qualitative data you collect. Quantitative data will include precise numbers and metrics about your product’s functioning. Qualitative data, however, will supply information with less structure that tells you how people feel about your product.

One helpful way of thinking about this is to use qualitative data to scan for problems and then examine quantitative data to pinpoint the issue. For example, people may generally complain that a website runs slowly. You can then look at runtime data to determine which pages are loading slowly and why.

Conclusion: Building An MVP With A Third-Party Developer

Some MVPs are so simple that they require little to no technical buildout to implement. For example, Groupon’s MVP was just a manually operated website. The founders had to take each order, buy the product, and ship it alone.

But most MVPs will want to showcase some sort of novel technology or functionality. Their core value will be to do something that no one else does. In this case, someone will have to build the product.

If it is simple enough, you could go through the expense of building it yourself or hire a team to build it for you. But this will take valuable time, energy, and money away from your efforts.

Another approach is to hire out the development of your MVP to an existing third-party software firm like JetRockets. This has several benefits:

• You get a vetted, functioning, and experienced development team from day 1.

• There is less risk if your MVP fails and you have to change directions.

• You can take advantage of any technical expertise the development team may have.

• Experienced teams can watch for obstacles they have seen working on previous MVPs.

If you or your company wants to build an MVP, send us a message to chat about it!

Marketing Funnels 101

Driving leads—and ultimately, sales—is one of the major objectives for every startup marketing team. But that’s easier said than done.

Developing a consistent flow of new prospects can be a challenge. To build a thriving pipeline, it’s time to prioritize your marketing funnels. Creating a marketing funnel is key to understanding your customer journey and making it as seamless as possible to get more customers to convert. 

Why Do You Need a Marketing Funnel?

Marketing funnels are a must-have for early-stage startups and, when done early, can accelerate leads through the funnel at a much faster rate. Having a fully built-out funnel makes it possible to assess your performance in a strategic way, allowing you to work smarter and grow faster in several different ways.

Properly Track Leads and Attribution

Establishing a marketing funnel early on is an integral part of accurately measuring the effectiveness of every startup’s marketing efforts. Instead of just throwing money randomly at marketing, implementing a full-funnel allows you to measure your ROI and understand what’s working—and what’s not—so you can be more efficient in the long run. You’ll be able to determine: 

• Which marketing efforts have the most impact and generate the most interest 

• Which marketing efforts convert the most leads to sales 

Better Understand the Buyer Journey

Implementing a funnel also allows you to get a clearer understanding of your buyer journey from the very beginning. You can see how potential buyers engage with your brand from their first interaction through the final sale. It also allows you to determine how long it takes someone to move from the top to the bottom of the funnel, so you can project how marketing will impact your business over time.

Accurately Adjust Marketing spend

You want to put dollars behind activities that actually work—but you can’t do that if you don’t have a full funnel in place. Creating clear top, middle, and bottom-of-the-funnel efforts will help you adjust your spend, set your own benchmarks, test, and improve.

Create a Marketing and Sales Machine

The relationship between marketing and sales is pivotal to success; an effective marketing funnel provides your sales team with transparency into the pipeline to help them be more effective. You can also share your learnings and clearly show them the user journey, ensuring that by the time a marketing-qualified lead gets to your sellers, they’re armed with the information they need to close the deal.

Stages of the Marketing Funnel 

Understanding each stage of the funnel—and what leads are looking for in each—will make it easier to craft a startup marketing strategy that effectively moves them from one stage to the next.

Top of the Funnel: Awareness

At the top of the marketing funnel, your audience is in a learning phase. And to help them, you’ll want to share educational content. Videos and articles shared across channels like social media, blogs, and email marketing allow your prospects to self-educate. A few things to consider: 

• At this stage, avoid trying to directly solve their problem with your product—because they don’t yet understand the problem fully, they’re not in a place to be searching for specific answers. 

• You also shouldn’t reach out more than once per day. Selling yourself too hard and too fast can be off-putting and ineffective.

Middle of the Funnel: Consideration

At this point in the sales funnel, your audience understands their pain point and has started to look for a solution. Instead of only serving content that frames the problem, you can also begin presenting them with the solution. At this point, it’s an opportunity to evaluate which marketing channels to leverage. Email nurture campaigns and paid media retargeting are often effective in the middle of the funnel because they give you an opportunity to provide warm leads with more information about your products and services. Videos, long-form blog posts, eBooks, guides, and case studies can be shared across social channels and landing pages to help you continue to move these leads through the funnel.  

Bottom of the Funnel: Purchase

The last stage of the marketing funnel is the point of conversion. By now, you’ve narrowed down your audience and have qualified leads that are ready to buy your product or service. They’ve shown interest and are likely comparing your products to your competitors before making a final decision. 

This is your opportunity to showcase your product; what it does, how it works, and its primary benefits. You can also highlight how your product is different from your competitors to set yourself apart. Product demo videos, product comparisons, and free trials can all have an impact at the bottom of the funnel and encourage prospects to convert. You can also up your outreach at this stage to up to three times per day to encourage action. The bottom of the funnel is also a great time to engage the sales team for some direct outreach. 

Measuring the Marketing Funnel

Once your funnel is built, it’s important to measure the performance and identify opportunities to improve and optimize. But where do you start? 

Look at Industry Averages

Evaluating the benchmarks in your industry will give you a proper baseline. Look at your peers to determine their performance. If you’re looking for your industry benchmarks, here are a few good places to start:

• eCommerce

• Saas

• Financial Services

While industry averages give you a starting point, nothing beats your own data. You should always measure and iterate against your own benchmarks, too. Collect at least 2-4 weeks of data before making any big changes—anything sooner doesn’t give you an accurate sense of what’s working vs. what’s not. If you can, waiting longer than 4 weeks will give you an even clearer picture. 

Create Conversion Goals 

Creating conversion goals for each stage of the marketing funnel will help you optimize the experience at every stage, and eventually, lead to a higher overall conversion rate. 

At the top of the funnel, you’ll want to optimize for high-volume metrics including:

• Website traffic

• Bounce rate

• Brand recall

• Email opens

• Ad clicks 

These metrics help you understand if your product is resonating with the audience. If they’re not performing, ask yourself if you’re solving their problem enough to capture their attention. If the answer is yes, it may be a matter of tweaking your messaging or creative ways to stand out from the crowd. 

In the middle of the funnel, you’ll measure metrics that indicate of your offer is resonating, including:

• Qualified leads

• Free trial signups 

• Add to carts

• Sales pipeline 

These help you understand if your audience understands and appreciates your value proposition enough to want to learn more. 

At the bottom of the funnel or the point of conversion, you’ll want to measure closed deals including:

• New ARR

• Purchases

• Paid upgrades

Assessing these metrics will give you a sense of how many of your total leads are ultimately converting.

How to Fix Marketing Funnel Leaks

Identifying issues throughout the stages of your marketing funnel will help you move leads through the funnel more effectively, and ultimately, drive added value for your business. 

Top of the Funnel

Common problems at the top of the funnel include low website traffic or high bounce rates. If your metrics aren’t measuring up, ask yourself:

• How can I keep users on my website? 

• Can I make improvements to SEO?

• Why aren’t people clicking on my ads and posts? 

Low performance may mean that you’ve misidentified your target audience. Adjust your messaging and creative or consider additional customer research to find the best possible fit. 

Middle of the Funnel

In the middle of the funnel, issues with traffic quality and messaging are the biggest concerns. These often manifest as high cart abandonment rates and low visit-to-lead conversion rates. To address these issues, ask yourself:

• Is the messaging on my product pages compelling?

• How is the quality of my traffic? 

Low performance in these areas often means that people are interested, but something about the product or offer isn’t resonating. Try tweaking your welcome offer or experimenting with new messaging.

Bottom of the Funnel

At the bottom of the funnel, low purchase rates and low lead-to-pipeline conversions mean that your leads aren’t crossing the finish line. Ask yourself:

• Am I driving quality leads?

• Is my offer and pricing compelling?

To improve your performance, consider experimenting with your pricing model or different promotional offers. It may also mean there’s a bottleneck in your sales process that needs to be evaluated to ensure marketing-qualified leads convert into customers. 

Tips & Tricks to Optimize Your Marketing Funnel

Now that you understand every stage of the sales funnel, use these insights to make it as effective as possible.

Create Effective Lead Magnets

Using lead magnets can help you create a cohesive experience from the moment a lead enters your marketing funnel. Assets like quizzes, eBooks, and whitepapers give them the information they need to evaluate the problem—while also positioning you as a solution. Be sure to create a seamless user journey to accompany your lead magnet. From the landing page to the follow-up emails to the sales call, everything should work together to move them through the funnel.

Make Sure Your Offer Resonates 

Finding an offer that speaks to your target audience is a must. Try testing a few different offers to find the best one for your business. Whether that’s a month free, extra features, or additional training, the ways you can entice your audience to convert are nearly endless. 

Don’t Skip the Nurture

The middle of the funnel is often overlooked but is arguably the most important phase. Once you capture someone’s attention at the top of the funnel, you need to nurture them to keep them interested. It takes, on average, six to eight touches before a lead converts. Use the middle of the funnel as an opportunity to educate and engage your leads to position yourself as the solution to their pain points. 

Implement Proper Systems

Before you get your funnel up and running, be sure you have the infrastructure to support it. Many times, businesses hit the ground running without any mechanisms for tracking in the back end. Onboard a CRM and marketing automation system, like Hubspot, that will help you get the data you need to understand how you’re performing. 

Getting Started

Using what you’ve learned, it’s time to start mapping out your own funnel and iterating to see what works for you. Set up your systems, collect a few weeks’ worth of data, and start mapping your customer journey. You’ll be able to identify any leaks in your funnel and streamline the process to make it as easy as possible for leads to get from Point A to Point B.

Soon, you’ll have a marketing engine that’s up and running. But if you’re still unsure where to start, don’t worry—we can help.

Contact us today for a free 30-minute consultation.

The Top 4 Challenges for Startups and How to Overcome Them

As startup founders, we know marketing can feel like a necessary evil. And not only can marketing feel overwhelming, but it's also constantly evolving. As social media platforms change their algorithm, Google makes another update, and new platforms break onto the scene, it can be stressful to keep up in this ever-changing industry.

But there are certain things you can control that will help put you in the driver’s seat. We’ve rounded up some of the most stress-inducing factors for digital marketers and provided some tips to help you find some zen. 

Challenge #1: Audience

If you’re struggling with low engagement or low conversions, you may not be reaching the right people with your marketing efforts. 

The Challenge:

To generate quality leads, you first need to know who to target. Many times, founders think they know their audience, but they really don’t. Remember, you are NOT your audience. 

On the flip side, you might have done your homework but you’re left with five or more potential personas, and it’s just too many.  

The Solution:

Grounding yourself in the fact that this is an iterative process and you probably won’t get it right the first time is a great step.  Here are our tips for quickly assessing and understanding your target audience: 

1. Create personas. If you’re just launching, you likely have some assumptions about who your target is. Take this a step further by researching more details including demographics, where to find them, their challenges, and how your product solves them. Do this for each audience. Here’s an example template to get you started.

2. If you have time, take the above a step further with market research. You can utilize research that already exists, also known as secondary research, or conduct your own, aka primary research. We suggest a survey of current or potential customers to get started.

3. Consider adding in a competitive SWOT analysis. If you don’t know, SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s a great way to understand your competitors and seize opportunities. You can find several templates here to get you started. 

Challenge #2: Metrics

Metrics are key to marketing success but you may not know what and how to measure your marketing efforts. 

The Challenge:

An important focus of your digital marketing efforts should be measurement and optimization. But many times, you have no benchmarks or don’t understand how to set the appropriate KPIs. You may already have these benchmarks in place but are struggling to meet them.  

The Solution:

First, let’s talk about what you should be tracking at each stage of the funnel.

• High-volume metrics like website traffic, bounce rate, and email open rates usually are tied to top-of-the-funnel performance. High performance of these metrics indicates that you’re targeting the right audience. Low performance, on the other hand, may mean your message isn’t making it to the right people. 

• In the middle of the funnel, look to metrics like qualified leads and adds-to-cart. If you’re hitting your numbers, it means you’re effectively moving your audience through the sales funnel. If performance is low, it could mean your product positioning is off. 

• Bottom-of-the-funnel indicators include things like purchases and sign-ups. If they’re low, it could mean you need to adjust your pricing. 

Second, let’s talk about benchmarks. Industry benchmarks are a good place to start to help you get a sense of what’s typical. Performance varies widely across industries—but for example, most websites see between 1,001-15,000 visitors per month. Average email open rates usually fall somewhere between 15 and 25%, while the average click-through rate across industries is 2.62%. 

Industry averages are important, but what’s even more important is your performance. Once you establish a baseline, set your benchmarks according to your data. You can iterate and refine these goals over time as needed. Evaluate each funnel stage critically to find the leaks—and fix them—to help increase performance in the long run. Depending on the channel, it can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months to start seeing results so don’t give up! It’s tempting to give up on something after a few days but it’s important to let your marketing activity fully mature. 

Challenge #3: Messaging

When you’re juggling a million priorities, maintaining consistency across your entire team can feel nearly impossible. But there are a few easy steps to take to stay true to your brand.

The Challenge:

As a founder, you know your company inside and out. But it’s still important to work through all of the steps to create a strong brand foundation. Without a message and consistent look, feel, and tone of voice, your brand will start to feel confused. As a result, you won’t be able to build brand awareness, and your target audience won’t immediately recognize your brand when they come across your materials.

The Solution:

Take time to do a positioning and messaging exercise. Sit down and align on your brand’s vision, mission, values, and positioning statement. These will serve as the north star for all of your future marketing materials and allow you to create consistent and recognizable messaging across teams and assets.

When you are done with your messaging, develop brand guidelines that establish the ground rules. Create consistency around how anyone and everyone communicates about your brand with words or visuals. What core messaging should never be altered? Where can employees have flexibility without damaging the brand? How should creative partners use your logo? What colors do you use, how often, when, and where? 

You can use these not only for your marketing team, but other customer-facing teams like sales or customer support, to ensure that everything feels like it’s coming from the same brand. You can also share them with partners to ensure that any third-party materials still uphold your brand standards. 

Challenge #4: Budgets 

When you’re in early stages, dollars are a precious resource. Strategically allocating your marketing budget can help you get more for your money. 

The Challenge:

Your budget is based on your runway, likely until your next round of funding or an expectation of growth. So making sure those dollars are delivering ROI is key. How can you effectively engage leads and move them through your marketing funnel in a way that delivers that ROI? It’s not always easy to tell at this early stage, and there’s a lot of needed testing that needs to place. When you’re allocating funds, you need to determine your goals to decide how to best use your marketing budget to help the business meet its bottom line.

The Solution:

Before you jump in head first without planning, be sure to determine your goals. If your goal is brand awareness, you’ll want to allocate more money towards brand awareness in the form of events or top-of-the-funnel advertising. If your goal is lead generation or user acquisition, you’ll want to focus money more on bottom-of-the-funnel tactics like demos and product reviews. This will give you a clearer picture of how to structure your marketing budget and allow your dollars to work smarter—not harder.

Tackling these big-picture problems is an easy way to take some stress off of your plate day-to-day and help your startup thrive—it’s a win-win. If you’re struggling with where to start, we’ve helped countless startups get their footing and set their marketing efforts on the right track. 

Get in touch today to tap into our expertise with a free 30-minute consultation.

Conversion Rate: What Every Startup Should Know

When we work with our clients at Fivefoottwo Marketing, it’s not uncommon that we see the confusion in the eyes of founders when we start to talk conversion rates. Most early-stage founders know that conversion rates are an important metric, but it can be overwhelming to figure out what results really matter. It’s all too easy to become hyper-focused on one channel or benchmark (we see this a lot), and then get discouraged when the outcome isn’t what was expected. 

But conversion rates don’t have to be as overwhelming or confusing as you think. In this blog, we’ll break down the basics of conversion rates, from why they matter to how to put them into action. Read on to learn how to build a realistic plan for effectively measuring all of your marketing efforts—and determine how you stack up. 

Why Does Conversion Rate Matter?

Before we really dig in, let’s properly define conversion rate in the context of marketing. Conversion rate is the number of people who have completed an intended action—or converted. Typically, conversion occurs when someone provides you with information—like their name or email address—to get something in return, like an eBook, newsletter, or referral code. Conversion rates are also used to measure the number of people who have clicked on an ad, have booked a sales call, or have purchased a product. Higher conversation rates are almost always better because they indicate that more people have completed the desired action.

So why are they important for startups? 

Let’s talk about a few important things to keep in mind when establishing your conversion rate benchmarks. 

1. All conversion rates are not created equal. Benchmarks vary widely depending on the type of marketing, the vertical, and the tactics used. Organic channels, like your email newsletter for example, have an average conversion rate around 16% —while paid advertising has an average of 2.5%. Social media typically has the lowest conversion rate, which averages less than 1%. 

2. Conversion rates also vary significantly from industry to industry. For landing pages, retail conversion rates average around 3%, while SaaS average around 7%. Media and professional & financial services tend to have the top-performing interest rates, averaging about 10%. 

3. Whether your performance meets or exceeds industry benchmarks, the most important thing is to develop your own internal benchmarks. Understanding your current performance—and improving it—is vital to a successful marketing strategy. Conversion rates allow you to measure the performance of your marketing across different channels to help you better gauge success. Having the data and insights into performance allows you to measure things like cost per lead, customer acquisition costs, or general brand awareness. No matter what you choose to measure, having conversion metrics is vital to determining whether or not you’ve met—or exceeded—your goals.

PRO TIp: To get a better sense of benchmarks for your industry, check out thE Ruler Analytics Benchmark report or the Unbounce conversion benchmark report. These will help you measure your performance against industry averages to get a sense of where you stand.

How to Improve Conversion Rates

If your conversion rates aren’t hitting your goals, it’s time to optimize. Before you start updating your assets, first take a look at the entire user journey.

If you have a newsletter or an ad that is driving a lot of traffic—but there is a steep drop off in conversion rates—it could be because your landing page isn’t delivering a great user experience. Creating a lead magnet or landing page that is well-designed, has clear messaging, and maintains continuity throughout the sales funnel is pivotal to increasing conversions. 

Conversion drop-offs could also be a result of incorrect targeting. Take a second look at your ideal target audience and evaluate who is landing on your site. If the two don’t match up, this could be the culprit for low conversion rates.

You should also evaluate your call to action or your offering. Whether that’s a demo, a discount, a promotion, or a purchase, it’s important to ask yourself, “What is the benefit for the end-user?” Be sure that you’re offering something that sets you apart and is likely to pique their interest. Standing out with a unique offer is integral to driving interest, and as a result, high conversions. 

Once you’ve solidified your offer, start testing different elements within your assets to determine what resonates more with your target audience. For example, the headline you’re using could be missing the mark, or the image could be too generic to catch anyone’s attention. Low conversion rates can be caused by many things, so the first step towards improvement is to identify the problem.

One of the best ways to quickly improve your conversion rates is A/B testing. Test different headlines, images, calls to action, and layouts to gather more data and find the perfect combination to maximize your marketing performance. Just be sure not to test more than one element at once, because it can muddy your metrics. A/B test one thing at a time—like a headline, for example—to get clear and conclusive results that will help you improve incrementally. 

PRO TIP: Develop a three-to-six month testing plan, so you can create more structure around your A/B testing. This will help ensure you’re not testing things at random and can instead incrementally improve your results over time.

A few best practices to keep in mind across all channels:

• Use clear, concise copy that strongly highlights your value proposition

• Add a clear call to action, so users always know what to do next

• Use only high-resolution and high-quality images

• Add video when relevant

• Optimize all of your channels for mobile devices

• Only ask for the information that you need—the less that is required, the more likely people are to take the action

Keeping these things in mind will help you optimize for conversion across all of your different channels, from your website and landing pages to your paid social ads and SEM efforts.

3 Quick Tips for Increasing Your Conversions

Ready to improve your conversion rates? Implement these changes and watch your performance tick up and up.

Rewrite Your Call to Action

If you feel that your design, images, and copy are hitting the mark, there might be one thing you’re missing: a strong call to action. The call to action is pivotal to increasing conversions because it’s the last thing a user sees before they click. Instead of the overused “Learn More” or “Contact Us,” options, think more creatively. When developing your calls to action, keep these best practices in mind:

• Use action-oriented language, like “Download,” “Sign up,” or “Buy now.” 

• Play around with the color of your call to action button. A bright, contrasting color may work well, but be sure to test a variety of color options to see what works.

• Test different button shapes. While square and rounded squares are popular, a more unusual shape may work well with your audience.

• Keep it short and sweet. Calls to action between two and five words tend to perform best.

• Put your call to action button at the top of the page or above the fold. Removing a scroll on your web page or landing page will make a big impact on your conversion rate.

• Only use one call to action. Adding multiple CTAs can cause confusion and dramatically lower conversion.

Whatever changes you make, be sure to test and try new versions to see what delivers the top-performing results.

Improve Customer Support

Making customer support readily available on your website is a fast and easy way to up your conversions. When companies focus on improving their customer service, they also see a higher overall conversion rate on their website. While customer support and conversion rates might not seem directly related, it’s all about making things easier for the customer.

For example, if a customer wants to know more about a particular product or can’t find something on your website, they’re likely to just call it quits and search for another option. But if your site has a live chat feature, it’s easy for them to simply pop their question in the chat, get the answer, and convert. Streamlining this process and simplifying it for the end-user has been shown to increase conversions by as much as 156%, making it a strategic investment for both businesses both big and small. 

Optimize Your Website 

Creating a cohesive user journey is pivotal to help increase your conversions. From consistent messaging to strategic design, it’s important to look at your site with a critical eye to ensure it’s making it as easy as possible for visitors to convert. 

Create one clear call-to-action so users aren’t overwhelmed by choices, use the rule of thirds to create a streamlined design aesthetic, leverage high-quality images, and write clear, compelling copy. By implementing these website best practices, you’ll create a smooth user journey from the very moment visitors land on your website.

It’s also important to take a closer look at your load times. There’s nothing worse than landing on a webpage and waiting seconds or even minutes for it to load. Even worse, even a one-second delay can lead to a 7% loss in conversions—and if a page takes more than three seconds to load, 40% of users will abandon the website altogether. Load time is also a ranking factor for Google both on desktop and mobile, so it’s also an important part of making your site more visible for organic search.

To help your page load faster and keep users engaged, be sure to:

• Check that your photo files aren’t too large. Images over 1MB will drastically slow page load time.

• Keep your HTML clean and streamlined.

• If you have extra media stored in your backend, it can create a lag. Be sure to clean up your media library to get rid of unwanted or large files.

• Invest in your web hosting. Often, your site’s load speed is directly tied to the hosting platform. Opt for a managed hosting platform for faster load times. 

Making all of these small changes will add up in a big way to help you speed up your webpage and, as a result, increase your conversion rate. 

Putting it All Together

By understanding why conversion rate matters and evaluating current performance, startup founders can make strides in understanding how they stack up in their industry, against competitors, and overall. Whether you’re beating benchmarks or need to make steps to improve, assessing the current status quo should always be step one.

If the marketing strategy isn’t meeting standards, there are actionable strategies you can use to bolster your performance. From something as simple as swapping out a CTA to a more comprehensive overhaul of your existing tactics, you know have all of the tools you need to take your conversion rates to the next level. Using these quick tips, come up with a cohesive and actionable plan that will help you incrementally improve performance—and you’ll be crushing those benchmarks before you know it. But if you’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed about where to start, don’t worry—we can help. Contact us today for a free 30-minute consultation.

Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Does any of this sound familiar?

• You’re a startup founder or part of a small business that just doesn’t have the budget (yet) to hire a graphic designer, so you’ve been trying to DIY materials but things just look… amateur. 

• You want to be able to create your own marketing assets that will have an impact (and be proud to show them off). 

• Design fundamentals were never part of your background training or experience.

If so, don’t worry! As a graphic designer, I’m here to share some insider tips along with a few common design mistakes and how to avoid them. With a lot of free and (relatively) easy-to-use tools out on the market today, it’s more common for people to want to take on creating marketing assets themselves rather than hiring out a designer. However, as someone who has been doing this for years, I can always spot the DIY graphics mixed in my social feeds and emails. Here’s how to not be a newb.

Color

Did you know there is actually a ton of research that goes behind color psychology? Designers don’t just pick something because it looks pretty (ok, like 98% of the time we don’t do this). Different colors can evoke different emotions and resonate differently across demographics. I could go into a lengthy post on this topic alone, but here’s a quick breakdown of what I mean by different colors having different meanings:

https://www.usertesting.com/blog/color-ux-conversion-rates

The other thing to take into consideration with color is accessibility. You want to make sure that colored text on a colored background is readable at both large and small sizes, and even to someone who is color blind. There are free websites like this one you can use to check for this.

RGB vs CMYK. No, that’s not a typo for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RGB and CMYK are different formats of color and their priority depends on where you plan to use them. 

RGB -- Red. Green. Blue. RGB colors are used when creating screen-based marketing collateral. RGB are subtractive colors, as you can see above they cancel each other out to form white. This works well with electronics as monitors, televisions, phones and tablets emit light.

CMYK -- The most common method of achieving color in printing is referred to as CMYK or four–color process. To print a color image, a file is separated into four different colors: Cyan (C), Magenta (M), Yellow (Y) and Black (K). CMYK are additive colors, and paper absorbs light, which is why documents might look differently from your screen to a printed sheet of paper.

Spot -- A spot color is a special premixed ink that is used instead of, or in addition to, process inks, and that requires its own printing plate on a printing press. Use spot color (the Pantone color code) when few colors are specified and color accuracy is critical.

Working with Type

To keep things simple: Serif fonts are ones with the extra strokes on individual letters, and sans serif fonts are without and tend to have a more modern feel. Then you also have script/handwriting, display, and monospace options to use.

Choosing a font depends on the mood you’re trying to create as well as the legibility requirements necessary. Typically, serif fonts are better for reading small text (think newspapers) and serif fonts are better in a digital format.

When you’re creating a graphic, a good rule of thumb is stick to only two fonts (three at the maximum) otherwise it’s messy and lacks hierarchy and brand consistency. You want your use of typography to work in your favor and serve a purpose: help the audience understand which is the most important thing to read first, then the second most important, and then additional details. Also, for the love of all that is holy, please do not use scripted fonts for the body text nor use them in caps lock. 

Symmetry & Space

Not everything needs to pop, and the logo doesn’t always need to be bigger. Just as in architecture, balance and symmetry is important in graphic design as well. If there is too much going on all at once, the reader doesn’t know how to process it. Also, people are lazy and if it takes two seconds too long to figure something out then they’re going to keep scrolling. 

I cannot stress enough the importance of white space, which is any area of a design that is not filled with text, photos, or any other elements. However, don’t call it blank space because it’s not purely blank. White space is a choice and it serves a purpose to be left open. One of my favorite ways to describe why you need to use white space is by comparing it to your home. Let’s say that you just bought a new house and you’re moving into an empty living room (aka the design artboard on your computer). You add in a sectional couch to be the main focal point (aka the headline), and then some oversized accent chairs, a coffee table, a thrifted chest of drawers, some paintings, some plants, a desk, a rug, another loveseat that you saw on sale, a pool table, an oversized chandelier, some more side tables, a shit load of candles, some photo frames, and so on. Individually all of those pieces are great, but they’re not all great together. Now when you step into your home you can’t even get past the front door because it’s too crowded and looks like an episode of Hoarders. This is the same with graphic design: just because there are a lot of cool elements and effects you could do to a single artboard doesn’t mean that you should. You need to give the most important elements and content room to breathe. You need to be able to walk around your couch without tripping. Don’t be a hoarder. 

A few reminders: if you have a text box, it needs a margin. Don’t let the words run right up to the side of something. A logo needs to be legible -- don’t place it on top of a busy background or squish it too close to something else. Sometimes you just have to find a better photo to use. And, less is more.

Trends

This tip is both sides of the trendy coin -- I want you to pay attention to them, but don’t always follow them. Trends aren’t always cool, but it’s important to keep an eye on what’s going on. History usually repeats itself.

Lately I’ve seen a lot of neutrals and pastels in design, and creators of all kinds are jumping on that bandwagon like it’s the last escape out of town. But here’s the thing -- just because it works for someone else, doesn’t mean that’s the best strategy for you and your business. Also, just because you personally might like how it looks doesn’t mean that’s the right strategy for your target audience.

You can always tell when someone is just pulling out the most popular templates from Canva because of the complete disconnect between the aesthetics of the graphic and the reality of who they’re supposed to reach. You know those decisions were based on a whim and not brand strategy. Even if you haven’t done a full, in-depth brand strategy for your biz, still always try to put yourself in the mindset of your audience when creating and writing content. 

---

Jessica “JB” Brightman has been an integral part of the fivefoottwo marketing team since 2018. Check out her website at Bright Thoughts Design or contact her directly at hello@designbrighter.com.

Marketing Budgets for Startups

Planning a marketing budget for founders can be a daunting task. Usually it starts with just figuring out where to begin. We’ve broken down the important considerations to make it easy for startups like yours. 

WHERE TO START

When thinking about your marketing budget, you will feel overwhelmed with all the considerations, not knowing what things cost or even how much you should be spending. But before you even get to that point, there are four important questions every founder should ask themselves.

1. What is your marketing goal?

Do you have a marketing goal? At fivefoottwo, we don’t do anything without a goal. So before you start to think about what money you are spending, think about what you want to accomplish. And be specific - use SMART goals. 

We have a funnel exercise that we recommend using when you are initially thinking about how much you need to spend against the goals you have. The funnel varies depending on your goals but also your type of business. Here’s an example of a B2B Startup funnel, making an assumption on some industry conversion rates. 

If your revenue goal is $1M and you need to get 100 customers to meet that goal, then you want to think about a marketing budget that allows you to reach 12,000 people to start. When you build out your marketing plan, you will identify where and how to reach those customers and in turn have a better idea of how much to spend.

QUICK VIEW: Here’s an example of how your goals affect your budget:

• If your marketing goal is brand awareness, your budget needs to focus on PR, partnerships

• If your marketing goal is drive new sales/customers, you should have already accomplished some level of marketing awareness or require both tactics for awareness as well as growth

2. Are you generating revenue? Have you raised capital?

Next, let’s talk about how much money you have. You need to spend money to make money - we get it. But if you have no money to spend, well, then you should not be spending money. We see many founders reach into their own pockets to pay for marketing and that can be risky for two reasons; one, you may not get that money back and two, you are likely looking at how much you can spend on a short term basis which does not work for marketing.

We recommend thinking about a budget that spans 6-12 months for marketing. It’s going to take that much time to reach your goals, so you should have the budget to pay for that over time. If you are not generating revenue to support those efforts, you might consider holding on spend until you can do so.

• We recommend starting with 10-20% of your total revenue ONLY IF your product is ready - more to come on that point.

• However, if you have no money, you have no money. Bootstrapping is not fun, but this is where we suggest joining an accelerator or doing some fundraising. 

3. Is your product ready to go to market?

This might be the most important question. Yes, marketers and the product teams will always be fighting over budget - but the reality is that at this stage of your business, you should be investing in the product. It’s incredibly difficult to market a product that does not work and worse - you will eventually lose customers from an incomplete user experience. 

First figure out what money is needed to make your product awesome. When you can budget properly for that, then extract what is left to build out your marketing budget. 

4. What is driving your decision to spend money on marketing?

And our final question is a bit personal. Yes - you have a great idea, product or service. When it comes to spending money, make sure you are not making decisions based on your ego or what you think you need. Listen to your advisors, and keep your marketing dollars focused in the right places - when you need it. We’ve seen founders lose focus and get stuck on spending an entire marketing budget of $50k designing a new brand or website when their current brand or site does the job just fine for the time being. That money would have been better spent growing an audience while finalizing the product. 

BUILDING YOUR BUDGET

Now that you know if and when you should be spending money on marketing, let’s talk about what that budget will look like and what you must keep in mind.

This is a fairly complex example of a first year budget. There are three key components: 

1. It’s a full-year budget. As we noted earlier, your marketing budget needs to extend over time to be effective. Figure out what this looks like for you, but in this example, we make sure we have enough budget to build our brand and assets before going to market.

2. It is sectioned out by areas of spend. This will help you adjust based on your total monthly budget, allowing you to think about each area holistically.

3. It feeds into an estimated cost per lead (CPL) or customer acquisition cost (CAC) - see next example.

Using the funnel exercise mentioned earlier, we can take our goal and see how our budget is affected by that goal. We recommend in your first year to consider your CPL/CAC when you are effectively in-market, not while you are building assets to ensure you are looking at a direct effect of the marketing spend. You may also want to consider a 50% view if you have a strong sales organization also generating leads. 

Get the sample budget HERE. 

TIPS & TRICKS

TIP 1: MANAGE YOUR MARKETING ROI

Simply creating an ROI for the spend vs. sales is not going to tell you much about the success of your marketing at this stage. If no one knows who you are, then why are they just up and buying your product? You have work to do, so think about measuring the effort of your marketing foundation. Listen to the Wondery Secret Sauce podcast!

Consider creating success metrics for each stage of the marketing funnel. 

TIP 2: MASTER YOUR TACTICS

1. You need to know what stage of the marketing funnel you are in so that you are focused on the tactics that drive towards those goals. But you do not need to do ALL of them. Prioritize and be selective then master it. 

2. Do you already know what channels work for you? Did you know that if you try them all at once you may never know (this goes slightly against the reality of a media mix, but you have to start somewhere).

Some examples of how you might do this:

• Brand building - this requires a lot of a founders time. Do you have time for this? Can you work with what you have for now? Can you do a modified version of your brand or website that is enough to communicate who you are and focus more on building your messaging?

• PR - consider what you really have to say and take it to small markets and test it out before spending a ton of money on a national plan

• Social - you don’t need to be in every channel when you start. Pick 1-2 and master them. Find what works and then duplicate 

TIP 3: DON’T BUILD A BAD BUDGET

• Does not allow you to look at categories for flexibility on how you will spend

• Does not spread across time to give you the best opportunity of how to spend your money

• Has over or under-inflated ideas of costs

AND REMEMBER TO CHECK IN MONTHLY!

7 Steps to Successful Demand Generation for Startups

So you need more leads. And someone told you “just implement a demand generation strategy!”  While that might sound intimidating as a startup founder, the good news is anyone can implement a demand gen strategy that drives results no matter what stage your business is in.

Knowing you are busy running your business, we’ve put together 7 simplified steps for launching a successful demand gen strategy. Whether you are doing this yourself, or working with one of the few members on your team, you should be able to get up and running in no time. 

Before we really dive in, let’s dispel a few myths around demand generation. 

MYTH 1: I need a large budget to be successful 

FALSE. Having a lot of money does not guarantee success. Having a well planned approach does. Budget should not be holding you back from getting started today. 

MYTH 2: I need to be marketing in every channel for performance

FALSE. In fact, this statement is quite the opposite of true. You don’t have to spend time and money on every channel because most likely your target audience isn’t on every channel. You need to determine which channels resonate with the people you want to reach (more on this later). 

MYTH 3: I need to have complex and expensive tools in place in order to track effectiveness. 

FALSE. There are several simple (and free) ways to track demand generation performance. It’s important not to over complicate your process. Here are a few of my favorite tools to help you get started. 

• HubSpot (marketing automation and crm) - HubSpot is super user friendly and built to grow with your business. They have free options and deep discounts for qualified startups. 

• Mailchimp (email marketing) - Mailchimp is great option if you’re just getting started and not sure what you’ll need. It’s easy to use and guides you through the necessary steps to get started. A word of caution, it can get expensive based on the number of contacts in your database so make sure you understand the pricing per contact band. 

• Buffer (social media management) - If you’re not managing your social media through a social media management system, Buffer is a great way to get started. Cost for the pro plan are $15 a month for up to 8 channels and 100 scheduled posts. 

• Google analytics and Google data studio (metrics and visualization) - Both are free and very powerful. If you haven’t used Google data studio, you’re missing out. Check out a sample Google data studio dashboard below. 

Google data studio example dashboard

Now that demand generation misconceptions are no longer standing in your way, let’s dive into the 7 steps so you can get started. 

Step 1: Set Your Goals

You’ve probably heard of the concept of SMART Goals and if you haven’t, you can read more here. This concept applies to the goals you set for your demand generation campaigns. Let’s talk about what each of these steps means in the context of your campaigns. 

• Specific. Goals that are too vague leave too much room for interpretation and will be hard to work towards as a team. Hone in on exactly what you want to accomplish and what it will take to get there. 

• Measurable. Goals need a method of measurement. Measurable goals will answer one of the following questions: 

  • How much? 

  • How many? 

  • How will I know it’s accomplished? 

• Achievable. Are you setting realistic expectations around achieving your goal? We recommend setting two goals: A realistic goal and a stretch goal. Doing this will help you understand how to push yourself. 

• Relevant. Aligning your demand generation goals with your larger marketing goals (and company goals for that matter) is critical to success. If you’re setting goals that lie outside of your bigger objectives, it won’t have a greater impact. 

• Time-based. Probably my most favorite criteria for setting goals because it really drives action. If you don’t make your goals time bound, you will have no motivation to achieve them. 

Here’s a great example of what your goals should look like: 

Goal example

Step 2: Define your Audience 

Defining your target audience(s) is the most critical part of successful demand generation planning. Doing a deep dive into your audience will give you the opportunity to speak directly to their needs and how you can help them solve their biggest challenges. For more details on how to define your target audience, check out this article from Neil Patel. 

Once you’ve identified your target audience, group them into decision makers and influencers. The idea is that you can go after both groups and they will, at some point, meet in the middle. 

What’s critical to this part of the exercise is really understanding what will engage your audience and where they spend most of their time. This will enable you to shape your campaign tactics and messaging. 

Step 3: Develop Key Messages and CTAs

Having a clear, concise and cohesive message across all channels is the backbone of your efforts. The right message to the right people will drive action. Consider the below when defining your key messages: 

• Addresses pain - What is your audience struggling with that impacts success in their day-to-day and how can your product or service solve it? For example, maybe your audience is struggling to collaborate across the organization. How does your product help increase collaboration and overall business efficiency? 

• Solves a problem - Sometimes your target audience doesn’t even know they have a problem until you show them they could be more efficient. Can you save them time? Can you save them money? Can you help keep their employees happier?  

• Creates a sense of urgency - Can your product address something in the short term that would have a long term impact. The quicker your customer does “X” the faster they can see results.

And don’t forget, you need strong calls to action to push your target audience to take the next steps. For example using the words “download now” as opposed to “submit”. 

Step 4: Determine Tactics and Channels 

If you follow steps 2 and 3, you’ll be set up to tackle these steps no head-on. First, there are a few key questions here you’ll need to answer: 

• What types of content will my audience interact with? 

• Where will they be most likely to see my message? 

Let’s take a look at two different target audience segments as examples. 

Audience 1: Director of Digital Marketing

What do we know about the Director of Digital Marketing? 

We know: they are progressive, they need to keep up with the latest trends; they are connected, they like to see what their peers are doing; they love data, it is what drives them to be successful. All of this considered, we could find them on LinkedIn (where they go to stay connected) and offer them a data driven report that will help them be one step ahead (data!). So a viable approach could be targeting them on LinkedIn with a data driven report. 

Audience 2: Chief Financial Officer  

What do we know about the Chief Financial Officer? 

We know: they run a tight ship, it’s their job to make sure the company is spending fiscally; they are thought leaders in their space, they are leading the way for companies to scale their businesses. All of this considered, we could find them reading industry publications (to stay ahead) and offer them resources to help their organizations have transparency in spending and budgeting (leading the pack). So a viable approach could be offering a budgeting template via an industry public like CFO Daily. 

Step 5: Build Your Funnel and Funnel Stages 

Once you’ve mapped out your channel and tactics, you can slot them into specific places in your marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is made up of three stages: 

Top of the Funnel (TOFU) - This is the awareness phase where you want to hook your audience with compelling and relevant content to get them to take action. 

Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) - This is the consideration phase where your audience is engaging with your brand and considering a purchase. 

Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) - This is the purchase phase where you need to communicate with your audience about the value your product provides and give them case studies as well as proof points to push them to buy. 

Funnel

The best way to map this out is to create a visual funnel and drop it in. I’ve created a template that you can access here. You can read more about how to map your content to your funnel stages here. 

Step 6: Measure

Measuring the outcome of your demand generation campaigns is a no brainer but what to measure can get tricky. Every channel has different key performance indicators (KPIs) that need to be considered to effectively analyze and make changes. For the purposes of this blog post, there are a few metrics that are key across the entire demand generation funnel. 

• Number of Leads by Stage - Having clear definitions and guidelines for lead qualification across your marketing and sales funnels are a great way to quickly assess how well marketing programs are working. Below are the three most critical stages in the lead lifecycle from a marketing perspective. 

  • Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) - Leads that marketing has qualified and deemed “sales ready” 

  • Sales Accepted Leads (SAL) - Leads sales have accepted from marketing and are reaching out to for further qualification

  • Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) - Leads that sales feels have a probability of becoming a deal. Most of the time, an opportunity is opened at this stage. 

• Conversion Rate - Conversion rate is the percentage of users who have completed a desired action. Conversion rate is an important metric because it gives you a clear picture of where people are getting “stuck” in your process. If you can identify stages with low conversion rates, you can implement new strategies to increase their movement down the funnel. 

Example: You have 500 leads in the stage MQL and 50 in the stage SAL. 

Leads in stage SAL/Leads in stage MQL = Conversion rate 

50/500=.10*100=10% conversion rate

• Cost per Lead (CPL) - Cost per lead measures how cost-effective your marketing campaigns are when it comes to generating new leads. Cost per lead also helps to establish the return on your investment for marketing campaigns. 

Example: You spent $1,000 on paid media and generation 10 leads

Spend/number of leads generated = cost per lead

$1,000/10 = $100 cost per lead

A quick note about industry benchmarks: they are a great way to get you started but benchmarks unique to your business should always be established. 

Step 7: Make Changes and Repeat 

Marketing campaigns should never be static! Be sure to monitor your marketing efforts weekly and make optimizations based on the results you see on a monthly basis. Each time you need to make adjustments, run yourself through these 7 steps again. 

Follow these steps and you’re guaranteed to see repeatable success across your marketing campaigns. We get that it seems easy in a blog post, but still feels overwhelming. But if you can start implementing each step, you will be on your way to getting there. One of the worst things you can do is not get started (remember when we mentioned those benchmarks?) And if you’re still feeling a bit overwhelmed, we can help. Contact us for an initial 30 minute consultation. 

PR For Startups: The Myths and What You Need to Know

PR is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Most often, when founders consider PR, it’s grounded in the notion that you have a product/service/idea that you believe the press should write about. When a marketer thinks about PR, it’s about added reach to deliver on goals. Why is this important? Because the first thing you should always be thinking about is goals and what’s needed to achieve them.  And when it comes to PR - this is a critical channel to reaching the goals of early stage startups.

PRO TIP: Don’t know where to get started with goals? Check out the Goals and KPIs section of this blog post. 

We see this lack of alignment contributing to what we consider to be “myths” that many founders have about PR. We’re often approached by founders who want to implement PR strategies desperately, but refuse to hire an agency because of stories they have heard from other founders. The reality is, it is their personal experiences that lead them to tell those stories. By identifying these myths, we will help you make the right decisions when it comes to PR.

MYTH #1: PR AGENCIES ARE VERY EXPENSIVE AND DON’T DELIVER

Yes - PR agencies can be expensive, that in fact is true. But let’s break that down a bit. First, it’s important to remember that you are paying for the experience of the individuals you have access to at these agencies. PR is not something you learn overnight - it’s years of building relationships as well as learning from hits and misses. Second, most agencies are designed to handle more than just pitching a single story. Their role goes beyond getting your name in Techcrunch for example, it includes securing thought leadership opportunities such as speaking engagements, negotiating influencer partnerships, efforts towards maintaining a positive public image, and much more. You’re probably thinking, “but I don’t need all of that!” and that might be true. Keep reading and we’ll share all the options you should be considering to reach your specific goals. 

If hiring a PR agency is a non-negotiable for you, there are a few things to think about before overspending (as many founders have done before you, hence the myth). This brings us back to our goals - if you’ve established your goals and can proactively discuss them with the agencies you are considering, they can give you their recommended strategy and associated costs.

WHAT TO KEEP IN MIND:

1. The right agency will not only recognize the stage your company is in and the budget you have but will be honest in what is truly accomplishable from a PR perspective. 

2. When choosing an agency, think about the relationships they have and the team that will be dedicated to you. You want a proven record of securing press opportunities within the RIGHT publications and a team that will work hard for you. 

The bottom line here is that there are agencies that are built for early stage startups. Some have “30 day packages'' that cost around $3000-$4000 and are designed to promote that big news story you have. Others build out more long term agreements that are low-cost initially and grow as your business does. If an agency says they start at $10k/month - walk away. They don’t understand your business at this stage and you will be that founder sharing the story of how agencies are too expensive and don’t deliver. Speaking of delivery… let’s jump into the next myth.

MYTH #2: A SIMPLE PRESS RELEASE IS ALL I NEED

If only it were so easy! And listen, sometimes it is. But journalists today receive 500-1000 emails a day (A DAY!) with pitches and the likelihood that they are going to write a story from a mass release is pretty slim. 

Press coverage does not happen overnight. This actually applies to ALL marketing. Unless you’ve got a friend who can connect you directly to Oprah or a product that would put Tesla to shame, then you need to think about this as a minimum 6 month engagement. We’ll share some options for how to implement this at the end of the blog. 

And listen - it’s not to say you would not get coverage by pushing out a press release. We will take this approach if we just need to have something published for the sake of building press coverage from at a later date or to help with SEO. Keep in mind that coverage will be a list of random outlets that actively pick up news from the wire - it’s not going to be the homepage of Forbes. You can work with companies like Cision or Business Wire spending anywhere from $500 - $1500 to do this. 

MYTH #3: SIMPLY LAUNCHING  MY PRODUCT SHOULD GET ME ALL THE PRESS I NEED

Look, we agree that your product or service is brilliant. You’ve spent your life savings, every waking hour and every ounce of energy to bring it to market. But the truth is - without a compelling story, you won’t get any traction with journalists. We see founders complaining about their agency not being able to sell in the launch of their service to their coveted publication. The hard reality is the story was just not good enough. But have no fear, we suggest identifying the following three things to get you on the right track:

1. What is your angle? So you’ve developed a new app that makes people happy, but how is it different from everything else that exists? NOTE: don’t answer that question, let your customers/prospects answer that question. If they don’t have a compelling answer - you are not quite ready on that front. You might choose to focus on you, as a founder - what is different about you from anyone else that the media should listen to? Again, run this by someone who does not quite know you to get the true litmus test.

2. Is your story timely? Look, the pandemic and political scene has clearly taken over all media this past year. Getting a story that wasn’t current event focused in the hands of a journalist was (and still is) pretty unlikely. However, typical strategies might include how your story connects to things going on in the world at that particular time. This spans from the pandemic to national smile day and will need to play well with our next point.

3. Does the journalist care? Do your research - before blindly pitching your story, make sure the journalist actually writes about these topics. Customize your pitch and ideas so that it benefits the writer more than anyone. Remember, they have THEIR job to do, not yours. 

Now that you have the facts, you can think about PR strategically. Again, starting with your goals. Hopefully you are thinking about this at least six months out from the date you want to hit those goals. At fivefoottwo marketing, we examine the goals of our clients and offer up three options to help you get started with PR.

1. The FFT Grassroots Strategy: Costs starting at $2k

   • We work directly with you and your team to give you all the tools to start building your relationships with targets and initiate a team-focused approach to obtaining contributed content opportunities.

2. Working with a strategist: Costs $3-4k/month

   • In addition to the above grassroots strategy, you can work with an experienced, dedicated strategist to perform all the ongoing outreach generating 5x the opportunity.

3. Working with an agency $5 - $7k/month

   • After clearly outlining your goals for the next 6-12 months, we partner with one of our industry-specific, startup-focused PR agencies to manage them towards achieving your objectives.

Let us know where we can help you gain the reach you need through PR.

4 Startup Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Founders are pulled in a million different directions and their decisions often have to be made on the fly - especially when it comes to marketing. Part of this process is failing in order to succeed. But knowing what mistakes to avoid within that process can propel a startup’s success into the positive, so we decided to share a few here to keep you on track. 

1. Hiring a Marketer Before You Know What You Need 

This is the number one mistake founders make and the reason we founded fivefoottwo marketing. Founders often rush to hire a full-time marketer without really understanding what level of skill and what type of experience they need. 

We’ve seen the following scenarios play out: 

1. Hiring a marketer that is too senior. These people certainly have the right experience but they come with a high price tag. Also, they aren’t as willing to get their hands dirty and really dig in. 

2. Hiring a marketer that is too junior. While these individuals are less expensive and eager, they tend to lack the experience and need a lot of guidance. 

3. Hiring a great growth marketer when what you really need is a product marketer. NOTE: finding one who can do both puts you back in scenario one above.

What we recommend: 

Work with advisors and those with experience in marketing at startups to assess your marketing opportunity. Before jumping into creating that job description and throwing it on Angels List, consider hiring an agency that specializes in the stage of business you are in. 

Spend some time to build out your goals and marketing strategy. Then determine what you need for a marketing foundation around it. The right agency can be agile and pivot quickly when things need to be optimized. For example, an agency can help you shift back to product marketing when you realize you don’t have what you need just yet to dive into growth marketing. They can also help determine when you’re ready to hire a full-time marketer and bring on the right person. All of this can be done for the fraction of the cost of a full-time hire so you can put your money into the actual marketing. 

And when you’re ready to hire, check out our quick guide to hiring marketing.

2. Not Taking Time to Know Your Audience

Founders are passionate. The reason you founded your business is because you experienced the problem you are trying to solve either directly or indirectly. This immediately makes YOU the audience and you KNOW what your audience wants - right? It’s not that simple. It’s important to step back and analyze your target audience from a third-party perspective for two reasons: 

1. You are too close to your product/service to understand what your audience needs to know or learn

2. You will learn things from your customers that you never expected, so you need to be listening!

What we recommend: 

Do a full audience analysis. Start by building out personas (product marketing function). Next, talk to someone who fits each persona and get to know them better. Your customers are your most valuable assets, so use them. The following can help you organize your thoughts to make sure your audience analysis gets you the information that you need. 

• Who they are: For B2B brands, start with demographic data like title, industry, company size and location. For B2C brands, start with  demographic data like age, gender, household income, education and location. Once you identify your key demographics, you can begin to segment your target audiences by slicing and dicing that data to really hone in on the low hanging fruit. Check out our crowdcast on marketing hacks for startups to learn more about defining audience attributes. 

• Where can you reach them/where do they spend their time: Determining where your audience is getting their information is critical to marketing success. You must think outside the box and do the research. For example, think about penetrating specific groups on social media or community platforms. And don’t go based on what you think or have experienced - get real data to drive these decisions.

• What is your customer's number one problem: Once you’ve identified your audience segments, Identify the number one problem that they face in their work or personal life. Keep in mind, even though the high-level problem might be the same, there is nuance for each persona.

• How does your product or service solve the problem: Once you’ve identified your audience segments and their specific needs, you can develop messaging targeted towards solving the problem. You can take these concepts and apply them across your content and campaigns. This leads to our next section, consistency of that message for effectiveness!

3. Lack of Consistency and Frequency of Message

Consistency of your message is key. Do you re-write your value props every time you create an ad? Does everyone in your organization use a different “about us” message in customer communications? Then you have made a huge mistake! The more consistent you can all be in how you communicate your message, the more effective it will be!

Now, if you have a clear message, you need to make sure your customer sees it - frequently. A customer will not retain your message in one sighting. On average, it takes 3+ views for them to retain the message and often more before they act on it. And that’s being soft on the matter - some say you should adhere to the “rule of 7” and others will put that number as high as 20 as seen in The Financial Brand Blog.

What we recommend: 

• Spend time to effectively develop your core messages for your elevator pitch, about us, value props and key product feature information. Then train every employee to use these messages exactly as you have defined them

• Determine your communication plan within your marketing strategy. Ensure that everything that a customer/prospect sees is consistent.

• Create a guide for all communication moving forward for everyone to have access to.

• Make sure both your paid, owned and earned media efforts map out an effective frequency of delivering that message.

4. Choosing the Wrong Marketing Technology 

If you’ve seen the marketing technology landscape, you know how overwhelming it is. Many times, founders and startup marketers will implement a technology solution that they don’t have the time to fully understand and has an expensive subscription model. 

What we recommend: 

Analyze your current and future (up to six months) needs for your technology. The key is to implement systems that will make your life easier, not harder. Recognize when there may be a need to bring in an agency to both select and manage your implementation so that you know what you need before paying a lot of money for something that does not work as you need it. A technology vendor that truly wants to partner should be honest about their solution and if it’s the right fit for you. Many of the initial marketing technology implementations we see look like the following: 

• Marketing automation/email marketing: Most likely you have some sort of contact database. The sooner you implement a marketing automation tool, the better. Consider using a tool like MailChimp or HubSpot. They are easy to set up and use. A word of caution - the price can tally up quickly on these products based on the number of contacts and/or features.

• Social media management: Social media doesn’t have to be hard. Many social media management platforms are free and will save you a ton of time by allowing you to schedule your content in advance, so you can set it and forget. Check out Buffer or Planable. 

• Content management system (CMS): You don’t have to build your website on a CMS but unless you have a development team willing to make updates to your site or money to spend every time you want to make a change, we highly recommend it. At the very least, your blog should be built on a CMS so you have control over posting. A CMS will give you the autonomy to make updates to your website as well as help you optimize your site for search engines. A few options we like are WordPress, Netlify and Webflow. 

• Google analytics: GA is free and is a wealth of information. This blog from Hootsuite will help you get started in 5 easy steps. When you’re ready to get more advanced, check out Google Data Studio to help you visualize your metrics. 

PRO TIP: A lot of marketing technology has startup pricing. If you don’t see it on their website, ask. We’ve seen up to a 90% discount. 

Make Failing Less Painful

At the end of the day, failing is part of the game of growth and success. But if you can apply small practices when it comes to marketing, it won’t hurt as bad - at least financially. Should you decide to go a bit deeper into any of these ideas, we are here to help. Feel free to send me a note directly at laura@fivefoottwomarketing.com.

How to Jump Start Your Marketing in 2021

Between Covid, the election, and murder hornets, we’re all ready for a fresh start in 2021, am I right? We can agree that the unpredictability in 2020 had an impact on our society; fundamentally changing the way we market. According to AdExchanger, digital ad spend grew 6% in 2020 despite the pandemic. While we anticipate a stabilization in 2021, it’s a good time to evaluate your marketing strategy for the new year. 

We’ve compiled a shortlist of key points to consider in preparation for success in 2021. 

Conduct An Audit 

Deep dive into everything starting with an evaluation of all your marketing performance YTD. Can you break down what channels worked for you in 2020 and which did not? Now is the time to be critical! This is what makes us good marketers; fail fast and make changes for optimal growth in the new year. Once you know where everything sits, breakdown what you want to do next year based on your data. We recommend dedicating 70% of your budget to what works, 20% to what looks promising and has potential, and finally 10% to try something new.

Next, audit your marketing technology. Have you outgrown your email marketing platform? Are you ready for a more robust social publisher? Is everything working as expected? Are your costs in-line for the benefit of your tech? Need help? Check out this post from Intercom.com on the ultimate marketing technology stack for 2020 to see where you might make changes for the better.

Analyze your website. This is a tough one because EVERYONE has an opinion about your website.  Ask yourself this question: What is the number one goal of my website? Is your current website meeting that goal? If not, it may be time for a reset. The Hot Jar has a very thorough blog series on how to perform a  website evaluation. You might be surprised at some quick fixes you can make towards better performance.

Spend some time reviewing your social profiles. Do you have a rogue Pinterest account you’re not using? Maybe your LinkedIn page needs updated branding. How did your socials perform over the last year? Ever consider reducing your social channels to the ones that have the most impact? Think through what you could be doing more of in social and what might have to shift in order to do those things well or better.

And last but not least check in on your brand. We get caught up in sales, social followers, leads (all things growth) in the early stages that brand sometimes takes a back seat. Remember that brand is how your customers connect to you, remember you, choose you, and share you. While you may lack resources for branding in the early stages, you should always be thinking about its importance to the bigger picture.

Start by looking at your messaging as a whole. Does everyone talk consistently about the brand? Is the message clear? Does the message communicate well from your salespeople, to the website to your emails? Perhaps you want to take time to reset on your overall positioning to improve messaging. An exercise like this could have a huge impact.

Next think through your logo, fonts, palette. Do they still represent your brand personality? Do they feel outdated? Are you using them consistently? Have any members of your team started to improperly use the assets? Remember, this actually hurts the brand in the long run. Take the right steps to keep things in line so you can continue to grow.

What can you do that won’t break the bank but will help you, as we like to say, uplevel. Need some more about branding? Check out our blog post: To Brand or Not To Brand. 

Establish Goals and KPIs 

I know, you’re probably rolling your eyes but without goals, you have nowhere to go! You should be using the overall company goals (i.e. Revenue, new deals, retention) to plan out your marketing goals. Once you have these, it’s easy to set your marketing budget. If you can establish a cost per lead, you can put a marketing budget together working back from your lead goals and cost per lead. 

Sample marketing conversion funnel from fivefoottwo marketing.

PRO TIP: GOALS AND KPIs ARE NOT THE SAME THING 

A goal is the desired result while a KPI or key performance indicator is the means by which you will measure your progress. For example - a goal would be to increase website traffic by 10% and the KPI you would use to measure that goal is unique pageviews. 

So what KPIs are important? It’s easy to get bogged down with all the numbers and acronyms but here’s the short answer - KPIs should be dictated by your goal (see the example above). We love this ultimate guide to marketing metrics from Marketo.

Take Risks 

Marketing is a combination of the things you know work, things you are learning to optimize and the things you are willing to test - and take risks on! As mentioned at the start of this post, we always recommend to reserve a small portion of your budget to test some of your wild ideas. Here are a few to get you started: 

• In lieu of an in-person event, consider sending a drizzly gift card along with an invite to a virtual party. Have you seen all the great new virtual party apps? I don’t mean appetizers! There’s more to virtual than zoom guys. Check these out:

  • Icebreaker

  • Remo

  • Thriver

• Create a unique creative campaign that only your target audience would relate to that you’ve always wanted to try. Make it mysterious, suspenseful, exciting. Surprise and delight!

• Shift some budget to a guerrilla tactic that could potentially drive earned media

This all sounds great and you are ready to to right? Or maybe you need a little more guidance…don’t worry! We’re here to help! Contact us for a free marketing analysis or visit our blog for more insights. And cheers to a new year!

Marketing Hacks for Startups: Content Calendar (Simplified!)

The secret to getting started with your content calendar is to keep things simple. It’s easy to jump into the deep end with content marketing and get overwhelmed with all your brilliant ideas. What we’ve learned is that if founders stay focused and keep things streamlined, they can get up and running quickly.

We’re going to make it really easy for you but in order to set this up right, you must commit three hours of your time. Your resulting highly effective plan and calendar will set you up for content marketing success!

STEP ONE: Set Your Goals

Before you get started creating your calendar, first decide how you’ll measure success. After all, what’s the point of producing content if you don’t have a goal you’re working towards? Choose measurable goals, like revenue, total new customers or sales, or increased percentage of page views. Keep these goals specific so you can get a realistic sense of whether or not your content is helping you in the ways that you want it to.

PRO TIP:

Goals are not “publish to instagram 3X a day” or “create more content for facebook”. These are TACTICS that help you achieve your goals!

STEP TWO: Identify Your Audience

Next, you need to think about your target audience. We never miss a chance to remind you how important knowing your audience is (and even if you think you do, you should still read our blog post to be 100% sure!). 

When creating content, you need to understand who you’re communicating to in order to do it effectively—pushing out content just for the sake of doing it won’t help your business. Map out the details of what you know about your target audience: what they like, what they’re looking for, and how they communicate and engage with content. This will help inform the rest of your plan and ensure you’re creating relevant content. 

STEP THREE: Choose Your Content Pillars

Before you get started making content, choose four or five high-level themes. These are the pillars that you’ll use when planning and creating your content. Each of these pillars should be closely related to your brand and be something your target audience is interested in. For example, you could choose products or inspirational quotes or founder spotlights—any of these ideas can serve as a content pillar as long as they’re relevant and related to your business.

Some examples of content pillar groups: 

• Motivational quotes, Customer Testimonials, Product Features, Team

• Product Highlights, Holiday, Competitive, Educational, Inspirational

• Customer Highlight, Fun, Promotion, Training, Events

STEP FOUR: Map Out Your Channels

The key to this hack is minimizing your effort to guarantee performance. When crafting your plan, be sure to focus only on the channels you can execute well instead of trying to do everything. Where are the best places to engage your audience? Where does your audience engage the most? Then make a choice: choose up to three channels where you can distribute your content to reach your target customers. By being focused, you will be sure to knock it out of the park and prevent scrambling which always leaves you with nothing in the end.

STEP FIVE: Pick Your Content Types

Objectively evaluate your resources and decide which content types make the most sense for you. If you’re a good writer, for example, you could choose to focus on blog content. Or if you have a relationship with someone skilled in photography or videography, instead focus on photo and video content. Think critically about how you can create the most high-quality content with what you have readily available, and then choose the channels that make the most sense. 

Again, you want to be focused here to produce the best possible quality. If you are spread too thin not only will it not get done, it will not be good. 

STEP SIX: Determine Your Publishing Schedule 

When you’re first getting your content going, you should organize a schedule you can stick to. This all depends on your resources.

1. Just me, doing it all on my own: Then your publishing schedule is simply when you can commit an hour each day to doing it. Don’t overcomplicate it! If you can only commit to three days a week, then only do that. Block the time in your calendar and commit to those days/times.

2. You have an individual who is dedicated to managing your social: Same as above, but hopefully they can commit to daily publishing.

3. You have budget to invest in a tool: This is your best option for success because the tools out there make it easy to schedule in advance and basically set it and forget it. We do not recommend any of the free tools available as you will be wasting your time on software that does not perform. Tools we love because they are inexpensive and easy to use are Buffer and Planable. If you are only using Instagram, consider Planoly. 

STEP SEVEN: Create your Content Calendar

Once you’ve picked your content pillars, chosen your channels, and mapped out your publishing scheduling, you’ll need to put it all together in a centralized calendar. You can use something as simple as a spreadsheet, or find a free or paid tool online (our favorite free tool right now is Asana) to help you visualize all of your upcoming content. Map out your ideas for the next month on a high level. Don’t work about the details, that you will do in your weekly planning. 

The most important part is that you create a system that works for you. That is the hack - keep it simple, and let it work for YOU!

Once you have this set up, your regular content planning will require minimal time. 

MONTHLY: Schedule an hour each month where you input your ideas into your calendar. Again, just high-level, in sync with your pillars.

WEEKLY: Schedule an hour each week to go in and check in on the upcoming content schedule so you always have a sense of what’s in your pipeline. 

CREATE & PUBLISH CONTENT: From there, it’s just about creating the content and getting things posted on a daily or weekly basis to engage your audience and work towards your goals.

To learn more about creating a content calendar or for more start-up marketing hacks,

check out our free webinar. 

Marketing Hacks for Startups: Social Growth Without a Budget

When you’re first starting up, social media can seem like a daunting task because it takes a lot of time, resources, and above all else, is a big line item in your budget. But that’s not always true. By taking just one hour per day for 21 days, you can improve your follower count, up engagement, and effectively reach your target audience without wasting your most precious resources: time and money.

STEP 1: Pick Your Platforms and Content Types

It’s important to pick the social media platforms that will work the hardest for you. To make a difference in just three weeks, you’ll need to keep things simplified and focused, so try to choose no more than three platforms. If you think your target audience is most active on Instagram and Facebook, for example, focus your time and efforts on those two platforms to see the biggest return on your time investment. 

When it comes to content types it’s simple: what do you have the resources to create well? If you are terrible at producing video - don’t even think about it. If you’re a great writer, start there. Be reasonable and save the ambitious goals for your product/service. 

Need more help? Read more about choosing your platforms and content at The Digital Marketing Institute. 

STEP 2: Engage With Your Audience

Knowing your audience is a crucial step for every business. You should have a detailed idea of who your target customer is, what’s important to them, and how to best communicate with them effectively. If you know all of these things, it’ll make it easier to engage directly with them through your social media channels.

PRO TIP: Forgot about the importance of knowing your audience? Go back to basics here. 

First, start by following members of your target audience from your accounts. Your ultimate goal is to have them follow you back so you can not only up your follower count, but hopefully engage with potential leads. Along with following members of your audience, it’s also important to follow brands that attract similar audiences—like your competitors. Even though it might be counterintuitive, engaging with your competitors will help you increase your reach through their audience, which in turn can help expand your own. 

Be sure to also follow accounts whose content resonates and reflects your brand values and style. That way, if they share a post you love, you’ll be able to easily reshare it if you think it’s something that will hit home with your target audience. FYI - this is what we call “Curated Content”. 

Step 4: Partner with Liked-Minded Brands

Partnerships with other brands are an easy way to expand your reach, free of charge. You can partner with other companies in a lot of different ways. You could author posts for each other’s blogs, co-create content, share a photo and tag your partner brand, or create a promotion or giveaway—the options are endless. Just be sure you’re teaming up with another brand that has a similar target audience as your own so the content you create is something they’ll want to engage with.

Another way to create a more behind-the-scenes partnership is to create an engagement pod. Create a group or chat with a group of brands, and share with the group when you post on your platform. By getting engagement quickly from members of your pod, it will help expand your post’s reach and encourage engagement from the rest of your audience. 

Remember: Engagement is Key! 

Though social media can seem intimidating, it all really comes down to one thing: consistency. You shouldn’t gauge your success based on your number of followers, but instead on the level of engagement from your audience. 

STEP 5: Utilize the Algorithm Hacks

Here are some recent algorithm hacks that can help you on different platforms:

• LinkedIn: Relevance is key. Be sure to use good hashtags, tag other people or companies, and ask open-ended questions to spur conversation.

• Instagram: Frequency is important to Instagram’s algorithm. Be sure to post at least three times per week, and try to boost your comments and likes with an engagement pod. 

• Twitter: Timing is key on Twitter. Share rich media and engage with other accounts to try and increase the retweets and likes on your own content. 

• Facebook: Engaging content matters on Facebook. Try using the Facebook Live Video functionality to share videos longer than three minutes or create a group for more discussion and conversation. 

By committing to dedicate the time—even it’s only an hour a day—busy founders can find success on social. Hack the algorithms, reach your audience, and communicate clearly what your brand is all about.

Want more marketing tips?

Check out our webinar about the best free marketing hacks for start-ups. 

A Startup's Quick Guide To Hiring Marketing

Let’s face it - you have this brilliant idea/product/service and you are ready to bring it to the world! You realize you need someone to help you spread the word and immediately think marketing. But rushing to hire a CMO is a mistake no matter how great your idea, product or service may be. We get it - we’ve been there, and been that marketing hire. But it’s important to take a step back and understand when and how you should think about your first marketing role.

Founders we have worked with sit in one of two courts: 

• Court 1: They have a strong understanding of marketing

• Court 2: They know nothing at all 

What remains the same between both sides is the anxiety around all the areas of marketing and what to focus on first. We do know one thing for sure - founders have a lot to do and trying to run a full scale marketing program should not be one of them.

When to hire

First, consider your budget. Yes, there are many things your marketer will do that will not require budget, but to do things right - money is always needed. If you do not have a marketing budget line assigned yet, or that budget is less than $100,000 for the year - you should hold.

Second, what stage are you in with your product/service? If you are still in development and not ready to bring your product/service to market, there are probably a few things you need to do before you “launch” and you may not need a full time marketing role yet. 

Things you will need locked down before you launch include an established audience analysis and a brand (visual ID, positioning and communication architecture). Hiring a marketing person for these items can be premature. We’ll talk specifically about the roles you should consider as your first hire, but in general your marketing hire would need to bring in a specialized agency for this work so you should consider finding an agency and overseeing that yourself.

Third, do you have organized sales and product teams? Your marketing hire will rely greatly on both teams to do their job well. The last thing you want is your new marketing person spending all their time doing sales or lost without an established product to market.

The different types of marketing hires to consider

OK, you’ve got a marketing budget, a brand and your sales and product teams are in place. Now who do you hire? We’ve identified three options we see work best for startups, depending on the stage of their business. However it’s important to point out that you want a “jack of all trades” at a startup. Just like you, you need a partner on the team who will “roll up their sleeves” and do things outside of their comfort zone. Some of the items not in the job description you can rely on them for include: event marketing, PR/comms outreach, copywriting and owned media marketing. The right candidate will thrive in this environment - again, we know because we were those marketing hires once upon a time!

Product Marketing: Whether you are b2b or b2c, you have a product and/or service that requires the four P’s of marketing. To some degree, you move in order of those P’s - so a product marketer can bring the skills to determine product positioning, messaging and pricing. Additionally, this person will be proficient in creating content for the growth of your brand and business.

What to expect from your product marketing director:

• Work closely with product development

• Market research, consumer and product insights

• Pricing and packaging strategies

• Product documentation

• Sales collateral

• Content marketing

Read more about Product Marketing Manager Skills 

Growth Marketing: If your product is ready to go to market, then you are ready for a growth marketer. Honing into those two other P’s, Promotion and Place, this marketer is going to focus on growing and scaling your business. 

What to expect from your growth marketing director:

• Work closely with CEO and Sales team

• Data-driven consumer acquisition

• Customer engagement and retention

Read more about the Growth Marketing Role.

What level to hire: This usually comes down to budget, but you should aim to hire a director who has the potential to become your CMO in two years (and sometimes sooner). In NYC a director level marketing role ranges from $125 - $180k/year, so keep that in mind. Regardless of level and which role you choose, the individual should be able to cross over into all areas of marketing and have a passion for getting into every tactical approach to support your business.

PRO TIP: Hire someone you trust. Regardless of who you hire, there should be a high-level of trust between CEO/Founder and marketing. The more the marketer knows what’s going on, the more they can do. The more you trust them to do the job well, the less you worry about the small details that get you where you need to go.

Tools for hiring

We believe you can find the right person to be your first marketing hire when you follow some basic guidelines. 

1. Start building relationships early - and don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Remember that pro-tip about trust? We mean it. Start your search before you are fully ready and get to know the type of individuals you would want on your team. And make sure you are actively engaging in more than one relationship in case one does not work out.

2. Let marketing hire marketing. We marketers who want to work at startups have had our share of interviews that turn us off from the company. Why? Because founders are using the wrong interview tools and asking the wrong questions. What’s worse, without the right interview, you will not hire the right skills. Benji Hyam proposes this: Would you trust a marketer to hire a developer? An accountant to hire a product person? Read more

   REMEMBER: There are great recruiters dedicated to marketing and worth the cost to get the right people - use them.

3. Know what to look for when hiring! We love Lisa Schneider’s breakdown of 7 things to look for when hiring marketing: Initiative, Creativity, Numeracy, Legal Grounding, Testing Chops, Social Media Savvy, Curiosity Read more

4. Give your candidate a project A good candidate for your team will be excited to show off their work. Here’s some ideas:

• Write a blog post (we recommend giving them a topic/outline)

• Create a one-sheet project brief 

• Initiate a website requirements doc

• Outline a digital marketing plan based on your google analytics (you would need to give them a report or access to GA, but it would be worth it)

NOTE: It would be worth having the candidate sign a quick NDA before doing any work.

At fivefoottwo, we make it our mission to transition early stage startups from an outsourced team to an internal marketing team. Our company is founded on the premise that companies are spending too much money on marketing hires before they are fully prepared to stand up a marketing program. Our philosophy is to build you a strong, well rounded marketing foundation so your future marketing team is set up for success. Take the right steps when it comes to your marketing and you will be headed in the right direction.

7 Things Every Startup Should Know Before Building A Website

I’ve built and managed a lot of websites over the course of my career from simple to complicated with a wide range of requirements. I’ve consistently seen the same mistakes made over and over again. Understandably, most startups are working with a limited budget, limited resources and limited time. But budget, resources and time don’t need to be constraints against producing a beautiful, functional and optimized web experience. Below are 7 critical steps to ensuring you have a great website now and in the future. 

1. Start with requirements

I put this as number one because if you only choose to do one thing on this list, do this one. Your ideas and expectations can’t solely exist in your mind or the mind of your marketing team. Requirements are critical to the success of any website build for the following reasons: 

• They set the expectation. Requirements define a clear objective and goals for your project - no one should ever be asking, “Why are we doing this?” 

• They move the project forward. What if you or your team were gone tomorrow? Would the next group of people be able to pick up where you left off? If you have a well-structured document, anyone should be able to pick up where you left off. 

• They help enroll stakeholders. Most executives (and boards) like it when you’re organized with a plan. Requirements help you communicate your ideas, plan and timeline in a clear and logical way. They also let people know what’s expected of them and when. 

• They hold you and others accountable. Bottom line, no one likes to miss a deadline. 

• They ensure you don’t forget anything. Analytics! Navigation! SEO! And the list goes on. There is SO MUCH TO REMEMBER but you won’t forget it if you write it down. 

• They help you iterate. You might not be able to get everything for the launch of the site and that’s ok. Your requirements document can help you identify what’s critical for launch and what can be rolled out in subsequent versions of your site. 

Requirements don’t have to be complicated. Check out this template from Demand Metric to help get you started. 

2. Select the right CMS

I mean, just select a CMS! One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen startups make (especially tech startups) is that they have their product team build a static website. While this might seem like an efficient solution, it’s not. Websites are not inherently static, and any good marketer knows that content and SEO play a huge role in success. Without an easy way to update or add new content to your site, it will be impossible to scale and maintain. OK, fine, I sold you on the CMS but which one is the best? Really it depends on the capabilities of your team. Check out this article for a more in depth breakdown on the pros and cons of a few of the most popular CMS platforms. 

PRO TIP: WebFlow is an up and coming CMS that I’m particularly fond of. Learn more here. 

3. Think beyond your current website needs

It’s easy to get caught up in the now but remember to plan for the future state of your site. For example, maybe you only want one page to start with but in six months, you might want to add additional pages and a navigation. Or, you might want to add a resources section with forms. Build with this in mind. 

PRO TIP: You’re a startup. Your business will and should change quite frequently in the first few years. You probably do not know what you will want in the future. So save yourself the chaos and just know you will need more at some point soon.

4. Design for the end-user

Everyone has an opinion but remember, the site isn’t for you or your CEO or your marketing team: it’s for your customers and prospects. Part of your planning process should involve identifying your website’s potential visitors are, and why they might be there. Your site should be constructed in a way that makes it easy for everyone that visits to find what they are looking for. I wouldn’t be a good demand-marketer if I didn’t say you also want to make sure there is a clear path to conversion. A good way to get started with user journeys is through a card sorting exercise.

5. Design with mobile in mind

Almost 50% of web traffic comes from mobile devices. You probably know this already but I often see confusion between desktop and mobile experiences. Think about how people interact with content on a desktop versus on a mobile device. 

6. Don’t forget analytics

Measurement and tracking are necessary for to success. Google Analytics is free and takes less than 30 minutes for any individual to implement. Do you also have other systems that track data from your website? For example, most marketing automation systems ask that you had a universal tracking script to each page for conversion tracking and the same goes for most advertising platforms. A simple way to manage tracking scripts is through Google Tag Manager which I recommend implementing as part of your initial site launch. 

7. Put together a “how to” guide

Make sure your web developers provide you with a user manual and/or training. You want to make sure you and your team feel empowered to begin updating the site immediately. Make sure they include things like how to update images and text as well as how to create new pages. 

If this feels like a lot, that means you’ve read through it all. Which means you are ahead of the game! Honestly, when you keep these things in mind, your website will be amazing. If you’re still feeling overwhelmed, we’re here to help! Contact us today for a free 30 minute consultation.

To Brand or Not to Brand: Solving the Startup Dilemma

INTRO

We are often witness to the frequent internal debate regarding spending the time and money to design a brand. Many of our clients initially hired a friend or family member to create a quick logo as they got their idea off the ground and are desperate in year two to build a formal brand. While this is one of my favorite parts of being a marketer, it really is important to assess the timing of branding/re-brand. For an early stage startup, it’s pretty likely you have a limited budget and when it comes to marketing you want to spend your budget the most efficient and effective ways.

For startups facing this dilemma, we’ve put together a few questions that can help you determine your re-brand readiness. 

First: where are you in your product development?

Is your product out of beta? As an early stage startup, your first goal is to develop a proof of concept so you can raise the necessary money to bring your ideas to market. But have you had real customers touching your product, telling you what they think and feel about it? As we say all the time, the number one rule of marketing is knowing your audience and your brand depends on this. 

Here’s what we recommend:

Suffice it to say that if you are not out of beta, keeping some simple branding until you are is the best move here. Once your customers are engaged, a lot can change (you learn a lot from your customers when they start using your product!) and considering the expense of branding, it’s best to keep your brand in “beta” as well.

Next: So you are out of beta, you’ve done some audience testing/analysis, but have you established your positioning? 

What are your vision, mission and values? Have you established product names and value props? Are you organized around communicating what your company and product do? 

Here’s what we recommend:

Spend time on brand and product positioning first. Nine out of 10 times we meet with companies and employees that cannot consistently talk about what the company or product does. This process typically takes 4-6 weeks and you can research how to do it online - or you can hire fivefoottwo marketing to knock it out in less time! Here’s the template we strive to complete in our positioning exercises:

Your brand house is the basis for how you communicate your brand message. Start here by creating pillars/values, a vision and mission.

---

Establish your positioning architecture as structured here.

---

Finally, when your brand house and positioning architecture are complete, you (or a skilled copywriter) should complete your messaging hierarchy.

PRO-TIP: CONCISE AND CONSISTENT ALWAYS WINS!

Consider a logo and temporary visual identity that will give you consistency in all your communications. At this stage, clear communications and consistency throughout your message is most important. And you’ll want to save the creative agency fees for when you can spend what it takes to do it right.

Finally, what is your marketing budget? 

If you are post-series B, you should have the budget. In fact, this is when we 100% recommend you consider building a strong brand for your business. But if you’re still early stage, think about how much budget is needed toward product development first - the most important part of this stage. What is left? If your marketing budget is less than $50k for the year, you will want to hold on any branding efforts outside of positioning.

Here’s what we recommend:

Generally, we recommend if you are looking to spend less than $10k on your brand, you are not ready. A proper creative shop for this part of your business plan will be closer to $15k - $50k. What do you get for that range? Quality and a level of comprehensiveness. You do not just want a logo and fonts, you need a visual ID and an understanding of what your brand means across every medium. Creative shops will do a deep assessment of your company/products, competitors and utilize not only experience and the proper process but they can tap into teams of different creative minds to bring you the best, most applicable ideas.

Other considerations

The timing for when you build your brand might depend on your market - whether you are B2B or B2C and what your marketplace looks like. Competition could require a jumpstart to your visual identity in addition to your positioning. 

• For B2B, it’s important to look at your competitive landscape. If you are entering a highly-competitive space, a strong brand is necessary. You want to stand out and you want to be memorable. At Buddy Media (acquired by Salesforce for $850M), we were faced with almost 30 competitors in less than a year. We updated our brand and built a highly-focused creative campaign that combined with our PR efforts had a huge impact.  Many times your positioning alone can accomplish this. Just having a concise, consistent message can go a long way. HOWEVER! Even with our brilliant, refreshed creative, we needed to spend money to get the message out there. Just because you have a message does not mean people will hear it. Earned media, if you can obtain it, will go a long way. But if not, be prepared to spend on paid media. We love to reference this article from Chief Marketer.

• For B2C/D2C, competition is also a strong consideration but it’s more about your audience. Having a brand that appeals to your audience and communicates the emotional response you want from your target is very important. As with all branding however, it only matters if you can remain consistent in how you use your brand. Set rules and abide by them.

Branding is really an exciting part of building a business. And it’s long been a favorite part of marketing for us. However now that we work so closely with early stage startups, we’ve realized the exercise of positioning can not only be exciting but it is highly effective. Please let us know if we can help you initiate this process for your brand by sending a note to melissa@fivefoottwomarketing.com 

Content Marketing: A Guide for Startups

I’ve become weirdly passionate about content marketing. It’s one of those tricky phrases lately, because it’s the sort of thing people either a) are puzzled by, or b) eye-roll at—and I get it. But, when done well, creating and publishing content can actually be a cornerstone of your overall marketing strategy, especially because you can tailor it to your business’s specific needs and goals.

So you know content is part of your marketing, but maybe you don’t know exactly how you should be thinking about content. Even large brands struggle with this part of the plan; I know because I’ve seen it from the inside. I’m going to make it a little less daunting and a little more applicable to your business in this quick guide. 

Let’s dig in:

The Differences between B2B & B2C Content Marketing

First, let’s identify the difference between creating and publishing content for business-to-business vs. consumer marketing. Regardless of your business type, we recommend that all brands establish personas before jumping in, because you should always be talking to your customers directly. 

B2B content strategy is all about driving awareness and leads. This means you need content that educates as well as engages your audience to take action on specific behaviors. The key is having content they want or need. Typically this includes stuff like ebooks, data reports, webinars, videos, demos, events, or infographics. Give them a taste in your posts through social, and then make sure you capture the info you want about them—especially their email address (hello lead!)—before giving them full access.  

B2C content strategy is all about making an emotional connection with the people you’re speaking to so that they stick to your brand. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a single brick and mortar in a small town or if you’re slinging CPGs to the masses online. Take the time to determine your target audience’s values & behaviors (a.k.a. psychographics), as well as their basic demographics, and then create photo, video, and copy that speaks to—and with—them. Which brings me to my next point . . .

For both B2C and B2B, content publishing is really all about finding the right channels, and being consistent. Where does your audience live online? (Here’s where that customer advisory board also comes in very handy.) Yes, you can try to “be everywhere” and snag lots of eyeballs—but you might not need that. (Hint: you probably don’t.) The right channels with the right content are usually enough. Focus on high quality on the right channels, rather than low quality on all the channels. Establish a posting schedule you can stick to, and utilize publishing tools like Planoly or Buffer to streamline your efforts.

---

PRO TIP:

Are you post series B and need to accelerate your content? Explore high-impact tools like Social Native or consider hiring specialized companies like SocialFly (yay fierce female founders!) to get what you need.

---

Content Marketing Strategy & Production

Strategy

• First, set your goals. More on that in the next section. 

• Take the time to build a company/brand voice—a few keywords that define the way you speak to and with the market, that remind you of who you are as a brand. For example, a brand with voice keywords like “irreverent and whimsical” is going to have a very different tone from, and likely different conversations than, a company whose keywords are “classic and trustworthy.”

• Define your “pillars.” What 4-5 signature topics will you come back to again and again? It helps if you’re not always selling all the time. (File under: Stuff You Already Know But I’m Telling You Again Anyway.) Make sure the topics you select are relevant and adjacent to the product or service you’re bringing to the market. 

• Know your channels. We already talked about finding the right ones, but also consider what’s “owned” (like your website) vs. “earned” (like great press or a positive customer review) vs. “paid” (ahem, your ad budget). You should be driving people to your owned channels most of the time, so that you can learn more about them, and capture all the information about them that you need in order to optimize your marketing efforts for the long run.

Content Production

• Once you have your pillars, build a calendar that identifies what media you’ll need to produce.

• From that calendar, create a production plan for all the owned content you need. You may need to hire a project manager or content producer who can manage the process, and execute on tasks like managing photo shoots, or referring/hiring other specialists like videographers or photographers to capture what you need on a monthly basis. 

• Think about what you can use outside of your own content, such as curating images from other accounts you re-post or re-share to your own. Don’t forget to give others’ their credit—that’s how you make new friends.

• Optimize per channel. You likely don’t need a fresh blog post on your website every day, but a daily new Instagram post will keep your brand top of mind and help you gain new followers...because IG likes it when you feed the beast. 

---

PRO TIP:

Remember that you can chop up larger pieces of content—stuff like blog posts or video—into smaller, bite-sized pieces that get spread out over a few tweets (or IG posts or FB updates) so that you’re saving yourself time and resources. 

---

Goals & Measurement

First of all, remember to have goals in the first place. No joke, many companies roll out just hoping for the best—but then never have a benchmark to gauge success from. Start with considering your company goals. TIP: Revenue is probably the best one. Next, how will your content help to achieve that goal? How many leads do you need in order to meet your revenue target? If it’s awareness, how many impressions will your content give you?

Once you’ve determined for yourself what success looks like for your current content marketing plan, and are creating and publishing content on a regular schedule, be sure to track results consistently. Resist the urge to scrap everything and start again if your numbers plateau—because if you switch strategies on a whim, you’ll never actually know what worked...or what didn’t. Ask yourself what you’ll do once you reach that goal, because you might as well be confident enough to assume you’ll make it(!). 

After hitting your initial goal(s), step back and reflect on what you did well, what conversations your intended audience is most responsive to, how your audience may have changed, and what needs retooling—or to be scrapped altogether. While you can often simply optimize your existing plan, refining your content marketing strategy over time is what keeps your conversations with customers fresh, and worthy of (both) your time.

Jessica Kulick is the brilliant (also 5’2”) Content Specialist here at fivefoottwo marketing. She’s a marketing consultant, content producer, and yoga teacher based in Brooklyn, known for her versatility across a broad array of media. Follow @jess_kulick or connect with her.

Stress-free CRM Setup

Customers are the most important component to your continued success. So big or small, B2B or B2C, you should be collecting the most accurate and informative data you can from the very beginning. For many startups, this is a time consuming task that is often put aside. In our experience, taking the time to figure out your data strategy from the beginning can help save you time and set you up for long term success.

Let us help you make it little less daunting for you. Here’s our quick guide to help get you started.

Database Management

Make a list of all of the data that you want to collect for each new contact you add. Think about it this way: If you wanted to send a targeted communication to all of your contacts who work for a brand and are located in California, would you have collected the data to make it possible to segment that way?

PRO-TIP: In your CRM you can't always rely on company level information like location. The HQ might be in New York, but your contact might be in California. Make sure to distinguish the difference so you can segment.

Here is a list of suggested fields to get you started:

• First name

• Last name

• Email address

• Company

• Phone

• State

• Country

• Contact Type (example: brand, agency, artist)

• Lead Lifecycle (where is the lead in the marketing/sales funnel

• Lead Status - this is super important, you want to know what's going on with your leads. You can even create sequences to target these people (oh you said reach out to me in three months? ok I'll put you in the three month follow-up sequence or oh hey, you don't have budget for this? well here is a sequence all about how we actually SAVE you money.)

MAKE YOUR FIELDS REQUIRED!

otherwise, what’s the point?

What's the point in trying to collect the data if people aren't required to fill it in. Think about the data you want to standardize, make it a pick-list and never make one of those values “other” because people will always choose that and then you have no data.

Simple Nurture Program

Most marketing automation or CRM tools give you the ability to build simple nurture programs. Why are these important you ask? For a few reasons. First, they keep your audience engagement and remind them you’re there. Second and maybe most important, they save you time.  

PRO-TIP: If you’re a Hubspot user, you can use the sequences they provide to help you build out your nurture programs. Here’s how it works: enroll individual contacts in to a sequence by navigating to the contact name, selecting email, selecting sequence and selecting the sequence. You can also mass enroll people in your sequence once it's created. You can create new sequences under the automation tab. HubSpot has pre-built templates you can modify or you can start from scratch.

CHECK IT:

It’s important to go back through and do this. just remember to take the valuable time to think about your message. and if you need help with messaging, fivefoottwo is here to help!

It’s important you don't bite off more than you can chew when developing the sequences. You don't want it to be difficult to manage nor do you want excessive emails in your sequence. Always make it personal. Most email marketing tools will allow you to add a dynamic field that pulls in the contact name in the salutation and the lead owner name in the closing.

KEY THINGS TO REMEMBER:

• Three emails is typically the sweet spot. Start here and measure engagement on each touch.

• You need a human touch! Work a call into your email sequence.

• Think about what content resonates with your target audience. Address their pain -how do you solve it? Feed their ego. I would stay away from trying to be clever, it's becoming a bit over done.

• Avoid spammy subject lines! Read this HubSpot Blog for some solid tips: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/30684/the-ultimate-list-of-email-spam-trigger-words.aspx

• Does your message resonate with everyone who will be added to this nurture program?

Reporting

Evaluate what is relevant to you and what specifically you want/need to report on. Most CRMs have good out of the box dashboards. Beyond this, we recommend you think about creating SDR specific reports so you can wake up, open your dashboard and know exactly what you need to do for the day. You should also consider creating marketing dashboards to monitor the health of your marketing programs. See below one of our favorite examples from Klipfolio.

3 Things Every Startup Should Know (about marketing)

We’re excited to kick-off our first blog post with content that came from our hearts. We have very strong feelings about marketing and in particular for startups, so we threw together our top three things we think you should remember as you kick off your amazing idea.

#1: Know Your Audience (From Melissa)

“What is the one thing you recommend I do with my marketing?” I’ve heard this question from those I mentor, employers and cocktailers. And I always answer the same thing “know your audience!” The fact is, if you don’t do this correctly, then all your other marketing will fail. It sounds pretty basic, but you would be surprised how complex it actually is.

Let’s simplify it with a couple quick tips:

1. Never consider yourself “the audience”.

   Let’s face it, you created the company/product/service, so of course you are the audience, right? Well, not quite. You must remember how close you are to not only your idea, but every detail surrounding it and therefore your perceptions and emotions are skewed.

2. Make informed decisions.

   Even if you are 100% certain you know your audience will like something, test it anyway. And don’t be afraid to hear something that goes against your thinking. It’s your company, you will always make the decision, just be open to seeing all sides if you want to properly reach that audience.

3. Make time to do audience analysis.

   It seems daunting, time consuming, and as if you don’t have the resources to do it right. But when it informs all of your marketing, it’s simply a small piece in an important puzzle.

   • Find what works with the resources and budget you have and do your best repeat this at least every year (depending on your product/service)

   • Keep it simple and remember this market research is “insight” and not “answers”

4. Listen and engage with your audience.

   My favorite way to do this is by developing a customer advisory board to throw ideas at. There are many ways to do this and it should be designed to fit your company’s specific needs.

   Custom build products for clients with budget to do so. Building products/services your customers want should be part of your roadmap (note, this does not mean building everything your customers ask for!)

   Reply to comments on social even if you fear for the worst.

#2: A Powerful Foundation (From Laura)

Don’t underestimate the power of a solid foundation. But Laura, what does this even MEAN?!

1. Your brand image is important but so is the machine that powers it.

   One of the first things you should do is consider what tools and platforms will drive your success.

   • Consider email, social media, CRM, paid advertising and don’t forget analytics!

2. You don’t have to break the bank on tools.

   There are so many free or low cost solutions available to marketers. But remember, try to find solutions that will fit the needs of your business in the short term and the long term. Check out this blog article from Hootsuite for a list of ideas: https://adespresso.com/blog/marketing-tools/

3. Build a library of content that can repurposed across multiple mediums.

   Don’t get bogged down in the “I have to write a white paper to be a credible thought leader” approach. Create content that will engage your audience and use it, use it, use it. Create a month long social media series, use it in nurture emails, have sales put it in their email signatures, and the list goes on.

4. Do your lead management due diligence up front.

   Define your demand waterfall! OMG what the heck is a DEMAND WATERFALL?! The demand waterfall helps you track leads through your marketing and sales funnel and ultimately gives you the ability to measure the ROI of your marketing spend. Check out this two part series from MarketOne for an in depth explanation: https://www.marketone.com/articles/sirius-decisions-demand-waterfall-explained-pt-1. Trust me on this one, your investors will thank you.

5. Keep your eye on the prize.

   Get in the habit of assigning KPIs to every single thing that comes out of marketing. It will become second nature and you’ll quickly be able to evaluate the success (or failure) of your efforts and you can do more (or less) of that particular things. Also, you’ll be able to quickly assess how a campaign as a whole is performing.

#3: Take Chances! (From us both!)

Let’s face it, you didn’t startup because you were afraid, right? No! Entrepreneurs are FEARLESS! It’s a beautiful thing. And you should take that approach with your marketing. We’re not saying to go out and waste your entire budget on a single TV ad, but we are saying you should consider it.

1. No matter what, dedicate at least 10% of your marketing budget to a gut idea, something that excites you or something you’ve never done before (don’t forget to give it a KPI!).

2. Fearless ideas in marketing should be perfectly aligned with any strategies you have with earned media (PR or Influencer) for maximum potential.

3. Don’t be afraid to spend money on marketing. If you’re willing to put budget behind sales people, then you should match that with marketing. Not only will you grow awareness of your brand, but that awareness will support every effort your salespeople make.

4. Plan but also act. Marketers in general need time to properly plan and measure. The challenge is to act on a wild idea that may not be data-driven or supported. Now and then, the right wild idea pays off, so don’t be afraid to act on them.

5. Awareness: we could talk hours on this and how to formulate the right strategy and timing for your brand, but for right now suffice it to say that you need it. Period. So take the time to determine what your strategy will be and make budget for it.