7 Principles of Great Startup Marketing Strategies
- 3 hours ago
- 9 min read
"Strategy strategy strategy!" says The Marketing-Man-Without-a-Face.
"What's the strategy of this marketing campaign?" he asks, his faceless lips attempting to disguise his incompetence behind the 8-letter word, like the murderer, who convinced of his ethos, will hold the knife in one hand and the Bible in the other.
It's the kind of incompetence that can make a marketer see the light, wondering wonderingly if maybe it's time to quit this ding-a-ling gig and move back home with Mom for a while where at least the meals are hot.
Which is to say, the most the Marketing-Man-Without-a-Face had moved anyone to introspection since revealing the true origins of his facelessness, which was not the result of fluke or famine, he admitted. Or some extraordinary event outside his ordinary control.
But simply an origin of his own making because he never had the makings of a marketer with individual distinctions.
For the thoughts, ideas, and perspectives, all those very individual expressions that distinguish the face of one marketer from another, were nowhere to be found.
And how can you help someone who cannot find his face?
In startup marketing, "strategy" is meaningless without the principles that give it substance.
These principles are what this Stupid article is about. Its purpose is to not only give you marketing strategies for your startup. But reasoning behind why it actually make sense for you.
To do that, we'll explore 7 principles from my Mister Stupid's Original Marketing Principles.™
Together, we'll:
Look at examples of startup marketing strategy.
Define the principles behind the strategy.
Identify how these principles benefit you.
7 Principles Behind Great Startup Marketing Strategies
Jump to a principle
1. The Uncomfortable Truth
MISTER STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The A Million Dollars Isn't Cool Principle
→ Every Marketer Needs to Find Their Sean Parker
Before Stupid For Startups, several of my previous brand names were failing to resonate with even my mother's friends.
After reaching my breaking point, coinciding with 47 beers at my local pub, I surrendered myself to the truth about my creative crisis. I could no longer go about this alone.
Coincidentally, at the time, a brand strategist from Los Angeles, whom I had admired for a few years, had shared that he was offering his first mentorship program.
I signed up on the spot, feeling elated. I wasn't feeling elated, however, during the first minutes of our mentoring call, when he gave me feedback about the name of my consulting brand.
"It sounds like a 16 year-old writing online," he remarked.
Today, I can laugh. Especially, after he ended up being a great guy who was just simply very direct. But the fact of the marketing matter, is that I allowed myself permission to hear painful truths that I had been evading. And the best advice doesn't always come packed in a politely wrapped gift box.
It sometimes comes in the form of a Zoom call and a bitch-slap across the face of what's most important to you. Ultimately, that call got me writing under a new brand name people connect with. And that bitch-slap? It changed the trajectory of my consulting career.
In the movie that gave us 121 minutes of Mark Zuckerberg, inspiration can be found for "The A Million Dollars Isn't Cool Principle."
Sean Parker, played by Justin Timberlake, is the asshole, I mean "mentor," who inspires Zuck and The Facebook to think bigger.
"A million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A billion dollars," said Parker.
2. Finding Early-Adopters
MISTER STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The Internet Killed the Shopping Mall Principle
→ Who Are the Early Adopters That See Value
Are people really scared of change? Do they fear ideas? Love routine? Or does the mainstream majority simply need the societal stamp of approval before ditching the horse and buggy for the Ford Model T?
Don't die wonderin'.
But if you were to ask Mister Stupid, he'd recommend hedging your bets on micro-culture marketing. Or, what I refer to as "The Internet Killed the Shopping Mall Principle"
The principle states:
“Startups who embrace micro-culture marketing enhance their ability to acquire consumers via early-adopter audiences.”
Early-adopters in the startup sense are:
• Subgroups within society of an ultra-progressive leaning that tend to deviate from the status quo in their embrace of new ideas.
The best example is the plant-based meat brand, Heura, parking their OOH advert in front of the Barcelona Medical School on exam day. As potential early-adopters, these future doctors are likely to share similar dietary beliefs.
The Internet Killed the Shopping Mall Principle is a reminder to prioritize those who recognize your value today—not the future mainstream audience you hope to grow into.
When it came to Stupid For Startups, I needed my own early-adopters.
Who were they?
Not the Corporate America connections populating my LinkedIn network. Nor famous startups like AirBnB or Stripe who weren't in need of publicity.
But upstarts like—Seapoint—with founders like Sean Mullaney who actively participate on the frontlines of their marketing and could benefit from promotion.
He's an example of an early-adopter who saw value in Stupid For Startups content before others did.
3. Marketing-Against-the-Mean
MISTER STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The Rebel With a Cause Principle
→ Great Startup Marketing Defies the Industry Standard
I spent two years as a copywriter at Capital One. While it taught me that Corporate America wasn't for me, I learned a lot about marketing.
Humorous ads. Iconic celebrities. March Madness marketing campaigns. A famous slogan that people would parrot back to me at parties when I told them I worked at Capital One.
If that doesn't sound like typical bank marketing—it's because it isn't.
What makes Capital One different from several other bank brands I've written for, is their ability to defy their industry standard. Or, what I call "marketing-against-the-mean."
This is the basis for Mister Stupid's The Rebel With A Cause Principle.
It states that:
"The success of every startup marketing program, lies in its ability to position against the status quo of a traditional product category."
4. Product of the (Marketing) Environment
MISTER STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The White Wonder Bread Principle
→ Hire Boring Marketers, You Will Get Boring Marketing
I could get into trouble for this, but that just means the truth is worth sharing.
I've always believed you can tell how well a brand is doing by listening to one of the many speaking events a brand will book for its brand officer throughout the year.
Both, as an employee and an external spectator, I've witnessed Chief Brand Officers who are woefully incapable of producing an independent thought. Or, sounding like they weren't made in a robot laboratory, ready to self-destruct if the teleprompter takes a sh*t.
Everything permeates from upstairs. Likes attract likes. Especially, in a creative business built on getting buy-in about the very things it creates.
The White Wonder Bread Principle warns that if you hire boring marketers, you will get boring marketing.
Stupid Example #1
The hypothesis behind The You Are What You Hire Principle was tested when I listened to Chief Brand Officer, Marc Mentry, speak at Capital One.
He's known for having a polarizing personality that can be unfiltered, even unpredictable in his brand all-hands meetings. 'You never knew what you were going to get,' another creative had warned me.
But that's what made it so interesting.
Is it any surprise that the brand in which this polarizing leader presides—creates interesting advertising?
5. Holding-the-Line is Out of the Question
MISTER'S STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The Ardennes or Nothing Principle
→ The tanks won't fit through the forest—let's do it anyway.
When a Luftwaffe plane got lost and crash-landed in Belgium after the outbreak of World War 2, the Allies discovered the secret plans for the invasion of France.
That left two options for the German High Command:
Make several small changes to the original attack: Such as altering troop movements or tank pincers, additional air support, or even modifying the timing of the attack.
Make one big change to the original attack: Such as drive a modern army with tanks and mechanized equipment through the impassable forest terrain of the Ardennes Forest.
The Germans did the latter, and what was predicted to be a drawn-out, meat-grinder conflict like that of World War 1—ended in just six weeks.
Why do I tell this story?
I share it because of the fantastical misconception that refuses to die in millions of marketing departments across the world: That if we make a lot of small changes we can expect them to accumulate into big results.
No, you will only hold-the-line.
Nothing makes me feel like I got into the wrong career more than when I sit in a Creative Review of a brand that isn't relevant. And doesn't make good marketing that makes people think. And the only question their marketing leaders can summon is, "Are we sure we want to put that period right there?"
If your startup marketing isn't where it wants to be. If you're not the market leader you set out to become. Or the challenger that's taking advantage of the market leader's missteps.
No small moves or changes. No matter how many you make, will bring the big sweeping impact you dream about
(I decided not to put that period right there)
6. Own-Able Assets
MISTER'S STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The Can't Steal My Soul Principle
→ Trends die. Campaigns flop. But brand assets are forever.
In my first-ever paid marketing gig, I was a one-man-marketing-department at a 17-person company in Washington, DC. There was an Italian deli down the street that reminded me of home. I'd go there to evaporate my depression in their famous pastrami-on-rye when I felt like I was going to get fired because the engagement was sucking hard.
Luckily, I was very young, and my artery walls held out amidst the onslaught of cholesterol just as I was beginning to figure out the marketing.
This 17-person company I had been writing for was one of the only staffing companies branding only as "nonprofit staffing."
But even though they had this beautiful differentiator, instead of marketing-against-the-mean (#3), they fell into the trap of marketing the way everyone believed a staffing company should.
However, everything changed one day when I received a phone call in the office. A candidate for the firm asked about one of our brand swag items: a coffee mug with our purple branded font and orange heart that said, "I 🧡 LOVE MY JOB."
After that telltale, we decided to brand the entire shebang around this coffee mug. From social campaigns to key marketing taglines, even a dedicated landing page to the mug, and most importantly, "I 🧡 LOVE MY JOB" Stories featuring employees holding that gosh damn mug.
50 thousand new followers on LinkedIn later, it worked.
I laid off the pastrami, choked-down a few salads, and the rest is simply the history of my marketing career.
If you're interested in the name of the Italian deli—it's Loeb's Deli on 17th Street Washington, DC (Farragut Square)
Self-awareness in startup marketing lies in contrasting reality against what typically populates our content feed.
For example, if you're one of the 5.2 million people who follow Robert Half on LinkedIn, you'll notice they get surprisingly good engagement for the big stale corporation that they unabashedly are.
But if you strip away LinkedIn likes. If you take away the trends they must constantly (shamelessly) jump on to get them. What do you have left?
Life is easy when you can rely on your riches. No doubt. Startup marketers aren't afforded this luxury.
That's why we must think in terms of brand assets. Just like that coffee mug, it's the one thing we can own and control and unabashedly exploit.
7. Startup Child Stars — RIP
MISTER'S STUPID'S ORIGINAL MARKETING PRINCIPLE:
The Icon Has Nine Lives Principle
→ The Greatest Strategies Adapt to the Stage
That time eventually comes when the happy-go-lucky smile goes out of style.
For every child star at the peak of his powers, what lies ahead is inevitable: Children grow up. Innocence is lost. Interests change.
What happens next? Does the child star, now an adult, turn to pornography in the San Fernando Valley? Not in this story.
But paradoxically, it's a similar story parallel to what you may see with startups who outgrow their marketing phases.
For example, those who successfully build awareness in the product's Early-Stage, falter if they cannot evolve that functional marketing into emotional marketing demanded i the Growth Stage.
And likewise, those who cannot curtail that emotional marketing into a broader message capturing a wider net, will fail to meet the demands of the Late-Stage.
Here's an example of DASH Water and how their marketing messaging has shifted accordingly.
Stupid Example: DASH WATER, EARLY-STAGE
Stupid Example: DASH WATER, Early Growth-Stage
Stupid Example: DASH WATER, Later-Growth Stage
Congratulations.
You've finished this Stupid article.
And let me say...
The Marketing-Man-Without-a-Face doesn't stand a fat chance!
Dear John, that's all she wrote.
Warmly and wonderingly,
Charley
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