My View on Marketing
Marketing is a very nebulous term – it means many different things to many different people. Over the last few years I’ve worked at several startups in various marketing roles and have come up with my own way of thinking about marketing which I’ll share with you in this post.
In order for marketing to be effective, it needs to make a measurable impact. I’ve found that marketing is most effective when it’s used as a tool to drive users through the customer acquisition cycle (acquisition, activation, retention, referral).
At DashLocker, I designed the marketing strategy for our initial product release and linked each release phase to a customer acquisition phase. The idea is that as a product goes through the different phases of release, consumers are similarly going through the different phases of the customer acquisition lifecycle – with the main goal of turning consumers into customers and customers into advocates of the brand.
At a very high level, this is what the plan looked like:
Stage 1: Pre-Release (acquisition phase)
Goal: To increase consumer awareness and get users to sign up for product/service
Initiatives: Work with development team to understand product and customer needs, create competitive analyses to determine positioning of product, create video walkthrough explaining product, create in-store messaging directing consumers to video, begin to partner with strategic partners to gain access to target demographic
Stage 2: Release (activation phase)
Goal: To get users who signed up to use the product/service
Initiatives: Educate consumers through in-store demo, create videos explaining service in more detail, create FAQ to address customer questions, work with development team to optimize website, work with external agencies to develop DashLocker brand messaging, create analytical dashboard to track key metrics
Stage 3: Post Release (Retention/Referral Phase)
Goal: To get users to continue to use the service and to sign up their friends - become brand advocates
Initiatives: Create retention and referral program, refine marketing materials to simplify product description (based on analysis of consumer data and metrics)
Ongoing Initiatives: Analyze key metrics and continuously refine strategy to increase effectiveness, work with cross-functional team (e.g. all employees) to make sure marketing efforts are aligned
**Note - the initiatives listed are only a subset of what we executed and don’t encompass everything**
I understand that these initiatives usually fall into the hands of several different teams. However, at a startup, things are scrappy and by the nature of the job you just keep doing what needs to get done. Holistically, I see marketing as connecting people with products, so in my mind all of these initiatives are linked to marketing.
