#2 How to create good marketing in a startup? | Podcast Startup Starter

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• the role of marketing in a startup
• brand, communication strategy and its recipients
• marketing tools supporting sales and/or building brand image
• building a marketing team/marketing competencies in a startup
• cooperation between marketing and sales

Marketing today is branding – building a brand. It must tell the truth, it should show what is in the DNA of our business. Klaudia Szajdecka emphasises that marketing is not about packaging, promotion, banners or discounts – a brand is a product that has specific functional and emotional benefits, it is the personality of a company, it is an expression of our values. To create a good brand, it is important to be open-minded, to be willing to develop, to actively listen and look for and possibly change direction, to accept that something is not working and to react accordingly.  Especially a startup should look for new paths, because old ones get outdated quickly. The last two years are fifty years ahead in marketing, completely new tools and a new reality.

We should consciously think about the brand from the very beginning, right from the conception of the idea and our communication with the market. Authenticity is also important – the more genuine and sincere actions we take, the more loyal our customers are.

Marketing in a startup

Whether and how to create marketing in a startup? According to our expert, without building your brand and community around it, a startup has no chance of success. As a rule, customers have more faith in companies that have already been on the market for a long time – a startup has yet to establish its position. What will definitely work for a young brand is building a community, referrals – so-called referral marketing, cooperation with influencers, or word of mouth.

Among the tools that every startup should use, Klaudia Szajdecka mentions a well-prepared website, which is a showcase of our company, SEO supporting promotion and providing valuable data, and social media, where it is very important to remember about our target group – we do not have to be in every social media, or not in every media with the same engagement. Tools are ultimately just tools to achieve goals. According to our expert, a common mistake companies make is that they use a lot of trendy, popular tools but fail to use them and get 100% out of their functionality. This is very important not only for achieving our goals, but also for estimating marketing budgets. There are a lot of tools, and the most important thing in marketing is the effectiveness of actions – that is, not having a tool, but knowing how to use it should be key. And this is how marketing in a startup should be evaluated – not for the tools, but for the number of leads, conversions and customers.

According to our expert, it is also a mistake to think that we all know marketing. Startups often do marketing without plan, and such an approach will bring commensurate results. It’s worth remembering that the marketing department doesn’t always have to be an in-house competency – sometimes it’s better to use experienced agencies to lead our marketing, at least initially. However, as the company grows, the marketing department should develop in the startup.

Marketing and sales

And what is the relationship between marketing and sales in a startup? Klaudia Szajdecka says that it’s actually a unity and these departments should work very closely together: they should jointly define what their goal is, what their lead is, how they want to acquire clients together. Then the startup has a good chance of success.

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