Building an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Startup

Learn how to set specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for your marketing strategy. Understand the current state, determine percentage increase, check budget and alignment, and set timelines. Includes reflection exercise on current marketing goals.

“Every single goal you create should be specific measurable attainable relevant and timed in some sort of way hence the acronym Smart”

Conduct thorough research to base your marketing strategy on facts and figures. This includes analyzing the need for your solution, assessing client pain points, and defining your target audience. Includes a quiz to assess understanding of research methods.

“Your marketing strategy should be based on carefully researched facts and figures.”

Create an ideal customer profile (ICP) and laser-focus your marketing efforts on targeting this type of customer to avoid wasting your marketing budget. Includes a reflection on building an ICP for the user's startup.

“I'm a big believer in not building a hammer and looking for a nail but building the nail that the hammer actually needs”

Select marketing channels based on your research, focusing on those that will drive the most impact for your target audience. Avoid wasting money on channels your ICP doesn't use. Includes a brief experiment to test channel effectiveness.

“Diversification is great especially if your ICP themselves are using multiple channels to reach Their audience and their clients”

Create a marketing budget to avoid scaling your marketing efforts faster than your company can grow. Consider onboarding a fractional CMO for expert advice. Includes a budgeting exercise.

“While creating a marketing budget is often the dullest part of marketing it's essential to avoid scaling your marketing efforts faster than your company can grow”