I recently read with amusement a post on LinkedIn by a startup company’s sales rep that “we spend a pittance on marketing because we put all of our money into developing our product.” While that may be true (or a personal complaint about his company’s predicament), it’s less about the $$ you spend, but more the strategies and innovating marketing ideas and techniques you execute on that ultimately differentiates you from the crowd.
Most companies are well versed in “joint partner marketing”, and how to pool costs in the effort to deliver a unified message to your target audience. What many startup B2B companies are less skilled at is extending their brand exposure beyond traditional banner ads, sponsoring industry events and alike.
There are so many innovative ways to impress and gain impressions without spending a penny. But it requires innovative thinking. The same innovative thinking that is going into the development of your software platform or product, should equally apply to your marketing efforts.
A simple example involves working with consumer products and brands that have large budgets to distribute and place their products among the very same demographic and consumers that you are targeting. This is the whole basis upon which advertising is predicated, not just to target impressions at your prospects in their daily work habitat, but within their social realms. Buying Superbowl Ads, and plastering billboards on highway 101, or in commuter locations are out of reach of even the most well funded startups, but there are other ways. Some involve a little luck, but most are based on savvy and innovative partnering.
A few years ago, as director of product management and marketing at GoldenGate Software, I came up with a positioning for Release 8.0 of our product which was predicated on the concept of “the 8 ball” in the game of pool. The concept was that each ball in the rack, represented a unique feature in the release, with the 8 ball branded with the release logo. We were to launch the release at the largest industry tradeshow for HP Tandem users competing with the likes of Informatica, Oracle, Dell, IBM and others. Rather than just having a boring traditional booth, I procured large floor area and decided that we were going to have a pool table on the show floor, and raffle away this high-end table to attendees that came by. Unfortunately the cost of a high-end table was ironically $8k, and well beyond our budget.
Rather than just throw in the towel, I called all of the major pool table providers and asked to speak to their heads of promotions. I explained to each the demographic of the attendees (high disposable income, and tech geek crowd), and the branding opportunity they would have at this event. It didn’t take long for a smart individual, with brand distribution and placement quota to fill at a leading pool table company, to agree to my proposal. They essentially shipped, assembled and gave us their best model pool table for free. And even disassembled, and shipped it to the winner of the raffle. Win-win. As an added bonus, the booth won “Best of Show”.
Where savvy meets luck is a most recent example here at Reltio. In order to reward employees, and to provide gifts to our valued customers, we asked Land’s End to set up a Reltio Store, so that employees, customers, and partners could order merchandise of their choosing, and have the Reltio logo custom applied. A win-win for the company from a branding and personalized appreciation perspective. In a similar manner to the pool table company example, Land’s End has marketing objectives of their own and need real company logos to feature on their catalogs and email campaigns. So through putting ourselves out there, having a cool logo, and looking to participate in such a manner, we find ourselves part of Land’s End business catalog with a print and electronic outreach to thousands of businesses across the US. The Reltio logo was custom stitched into their merchandise, and they executed the photo shoot. Cost $0.
Beyond this example, creating useful content (like this blog post), briefing analysts, actively participating in tech community groups costs little to nothing as well.
Next time you hear someone complaining about lack of budget, or claiming they are redirecting marketing spend to focus on developing their product, you might want to help them by letting them know that there are other ways to get their brand and name out there.
Innovative marketing does not take away from $$ to be invested in product development.
