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My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault

Brad Montgomery
November 01, 2014

My Startup Failed and it's all Marketing's Fault

A presentation from TechCamp Memphis, 2014.

Brad Montgomery

November 01, 2014
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  1. –Marc Andreessen “The number one reason that we pass on

    entrepreneurs…is their focusing on product to the exclusion of everything else. Many entrepreneurs who build great products simply don’t have a good distribution strategy.” !
  2. Who would use this? Number of Employees 0 250 500

    750 1000 Number of Companies 10 100 10k 1M
  3. Marketing mar·ket·ing! /ˈmärkədiNG/ ! noun the action or business of

    promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.
  4. Marketing • Everything you do. • Every word on your

    website. • Every Tweet. • Every Email. • Every Interaction in your app.
  5. How we thought we should do “marketing” • Twitter. •

    Hacker News/Reddit • Meetups/Conferences (attending & sponsoring) • Email. • Our Blog. • Press.
  6. WTF Goes on the Homepage? • Who do we speak

    to? • Companies? • Hiring Managers? • Developers? • “Internal” Recruiters.
  7. Email • We were way too shy (with our developer

    side) • We should have been more analytical about sending email. • A/B Test copy, track calls to action.
  8. Sales The process of generating leads, qualifying them, and converting

    them into paying customers. Then being able to repeat this.
  9. Sales • We sent a lot of cold emails. To

    lots and lots of companies. • We hired a “sales as a service” company. • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY
  10. Sales • We sent a lot of cold emails. To

    lots and lots of companies. • We hired a “sales as a service” company. • Heed the Maxim: Never hire until you can’t DIY
  11. Press • We made friends with a couple journalists and

    got in Mashable and The Next Web. • Great for new features. • Not Sustainable.
  12. Paid Advertising • Lots of targeted Landing pages. • Target

    ads to those companies/managers/people that we wanted to work with. • Focus on Exposure.
  13. Content Marketing. • More Blogging. • Developer Interviews. • How-To

    articles. • Fewer here’s what we’re doing articles.
  14. Engineering as Marketing • We had technical ability • Build

    Useful Micro-sites. • APIs • “Widgets”
  15. BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups

    did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.
  16. BD: Business Development • “Strategic Partnerships” • Most large/successful startups

    did this at some point. • Team up to make both of your services/products better.