Messaging 101 for Startups

April Dunford @aprildunford

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A Definition of Marketing

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Messaging is Important

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Why is it So Hard?

Based on this

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Why is it So Hard?

Effects all this

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Before You Start

1. Know your audience

2. Know yourself

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Know Your Market: Market Segments

Your market is not everyone

B2B Segments can be described by company size, company type, company growth/stage, spending, etc.

B2C Segments can be described by geography, age, income, employment, hobbies, etc.

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Know Your Market: Personas

Go beyond market research data

Describe the flow of a day, skills, attitude, environment, goals, fears/anxieties, experience, etc.

Techniques for gathering information: fly on the wall, interviews, apprentice/master

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Know Yourself: Your Market Category

Important and not always obvious. The first step to getting people to understand what you do.

The category is the frame of reference that customers will use when evaluating you,

Categories can be described by value you deliver, problems you solve, competitors in the market today, etc.

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Know Your Market: Your Value

What problem do you solve for customers?

How do customers describe the value that you deliver?

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Know your Market: Your Competitors

What type of customers love them and why?

What type of customers hate them and why?

Where does your offering overlap (from a customer’s perspective)?

How is your offering clearly superior (from a customer’s perspective)?

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Good Messaging Answers 3 Questions

Answer these questions:

1. What the heck is it?

2. Is it for me?

3. Why buy it from you?

(In this order!!)

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Paris Hilton Marketing

beautiful but makes no

sense

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What You Do?

Netflix – Watch as many movies as you want for one low monthly price.

SalesForce.com – the world’s favorite CRM software as a service.

Wikipedia – A free encyclopedia built collaboratively using Wiki software.

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You do WHAT?

Sun Microsystems – Innovative products and services that power the network economy.

Sterling Commerce – helps companies optimize and transform their dynamic business network to accelerate revenues and reduce costs.

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Step 1: What the Heck is it?

Keep it brief

Use simple language

Put it front and center

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Segmentation is not a Dirty Word

Market to Everyone, Sell to No One

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Explicit Targeting is Powerful

ThinkGeek: Selling geek t-shirts for programmers, linux

hackers, and open source geeks.

VS

Customink: your t-shirt expert for teams, schools, companies

and individuals.

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Go Deep – The Janna Example

CRM for Investment bankers:

• Use cases, day in the life of a banker

• Demos, example data

• Whitepapers, articles, opt-ed

• Sales Enablement: the IB dictionary

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Step 2: Is it for Me?

Be explicit about who you target

Use their language

Go as deep as you can

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Why Buy from You?

The terrible secret they don’t teach you in engineering school

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Why Buy From You?

The terrible secret they don’t teach you in engineering school:

Customers Don’t Care about FEATURES

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Why Buy from You?

Value Features

Make sales more productive Integrates customer data from any source, show relationships between customers.

Deploy new applications 20% faster

Extract and transform data from heterogeneous sources

Resolve IT issues faster Monitor cpu and memory usage in real time.

Pay off your debt sooner View all account information in one place, graph spending patterns.

Sharper, more realistic images Megapixels

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Step 3: Why Buy it from You?

Value not Features

Focus on Differentiators

Get Specific

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Bonus Points: Tell a Great Story

Memorable

Stories are the vehicle for your messaging between people

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Thanks!

@aprildunford

aprildunford@gmail.com

RocketWatcher.com