Even the best products can fail because of a sloppy marketing plan. Read on for the 11 essential points every successful startup marketing plan should consider.
In the first two articles in our”Startup success“ series, we focused on the importance of the right product and how to develop a product that is actually in demand . In our third and final article of the series we turn our attention towards marketing a product or service.
Marketing for Start-ups in 3 phases:

Marketing for Start-ups in 3 phases

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Find idea for product – develop product – market product. This process all too often leads startups into an expensive odyssee, which is going nowhere. To avoid going down the wrong route in the first place, here are 3 quintessential questions start-ups have to ask themselves before starting to develop their product.
In our previous article ”6 Big Mistakes that Make Startups Fail“ we talked about the fact that a staggering third of all startups fail because of a lack of demand for their product.
But how to develop a successful product? In a great article on unicornfree.com, Interface design and product development icon Any Hoy gives a surprisingly simple answer:
Find the problem first, then develop a product to solve it. You can achieve this by asking yourself the following 3 questions:

3 Essential Questions

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From poor hiring to neglected marketing, here are the main pitfalls that stop hopeful startups dead in their tracks.
At first glance, the message of the infographic serial entrepreneur Daniel Garplid posted on 100firsthits.com might be hard to believe. The reasons why startups fail seem glaringly obvious. All the more important to be aware of them:

Quelle: Daniel Garplid, http://100firsthits.com/2013/11/15/top-10-startup-mistakes-infographics/

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If you are running a small or medium business you will ask yourself the same question a lot of times: How can we market our business if we don’t have a lot of money? Let’s see how marketing pros will answer that question.
If you would ask the McLellan Marketing Group, an advertising and marketing agency based in Des Moines, IA, the short answer to that is you’d better find some resources for marketing or you are in a lot of trouble. But, that doesn’t mean they all have to cost an arm and a leg.
In the meantime, while you’re scraping together the money to spend on marketing – try this budget friendly tactics.
Hang out where your potential customers hang out and be helpful.
Do your clients read certain blogs? Then be there and share your expertise. Do they all run in local marathons? Be there, handing out clean, dry socks with your logo on them. Do they go to industry trade shows? Be there and host a free Q&A about their biggest problems. Don’t wait for them to come to you. Go out and find their watering hole.
Know your perfect customer and only take work from them.
This requires incredible discipline but pays big dividends. Rather than taking clients for cash flow, ONLY take on those clients that you can delight. And who delight you by paying you a fair price.
Create a referral network by delivering the first referral.
When you help someone, it is human nature that they want to return the favor. Why not set the example by making an incredible connection. Now of course to do that…you need to know who their perfect customer is. Which means you get to have a very meaningful conversation that’s all about them. See how the human nature thing is going to work?
Use handwritten thank you notes to show your appreciation.
In today’s high tech world, a personal gesture like a handwritten note means a great deal. It doesn’t have to be long or fancy. Just from the heart. And if you can’t thank a client from the heart, you should fire them before they fire you.
Let them have a taste.
Sampling is one of the most effective marketing tactics around. There is no substitute for actually experiencing your product or service. This is your greatest opportunity to earn their trust and their business. So do it the right way.
Bottom line on how to market without spending a lot of money – know who you can help the most and be relentless in your efforts on their behalf. Be generous and be grateful.
If you want to learn more about how easy and affordable it is to manage all these marketing activities with a cloud based marketing solution please see our product site here.
– Your MARMIND Team.

Call it organic marketing, call it inbound marketing or even content marketing – the practice of creating useful information to generate demand and attract an audience of buyers vs. buying ads to push messages out to them is one of the highest impact, low cost approaches to digital marketing a business can take.
The practice of optimizing content for better search visibility goes hand in hand with the broader approach of inbound marketing. SEO best practices can be applied to content across the entire sales cycle to surface brand content during awareness, consideration and purchase behaviors as well as after the transaction to reinforce retention and advocacy goals.
While SEO has evolved along with the changes search engines continue to make, it’s still full of opportunities. In particular, is the practice of creating amazing content and media only to rely on paid amplification for exposure – ignoring the value that natural search brings to the visibility of content. That said…

• The only thing worse than no SEO is “All SEO”?
• What’s working well with SEO and Inbound Marketing?
• How to integrate Content, SEO, Social Media and PR?
• What’s all about Marketing Automation?
• How can marketers improve the performance of their inbound campaigns?

What are some of the things B2B marketers need to consider as they plot their inbound and SEO strategies going forward?
Keep in touch with the MARMIND blog. We’ll discuss new strategies and possibilities and introduce to you surprisingly easy answers to all that questions.
– Your MARMIND Team