Each day, numerous new startups emerge globally. Unfortunately, statistics reveal that 90% of them fail to survive beyond their first year of existence due to various reasons such as a weak team, inability to find Product-Market-Fit (PMF), insufficient expertise of the founders to establish a business, and limited budgets. To shed light on these aspects, I interviewed a startup and marketing specialist, Julia Doronina, who has over four years of experience in leading marketing and growth positions in international startups. She graciously shared her insights with me.
Can you introduce yourself and give a brief overview of your marketing experience, particularly with startups?
Doronina: I am a graduate of the Faculty of Advertising and Public Relations and I always knew that I would pursue a career in this field after university. My journey took a slight detour from advertising to marketing, primarily because I wanted to take on a broader range of responsibilities and channels beyond advertising platforms. I have always been interested in being closer to business processes, and marketing presented an excellent opportunity to achieve that.
Like most advertising graduates, I began my career in advertising agencies. I worked in two large-scale agencies, Grey Group and Ogilvy, which are part of the WWP international network. It was a tremendous experience because I was not working with small customers, but instead, with renowned brands such as Hugo Boss, Gucci, Ford, Volvo, and IBM. The agency experience provided me with opportunities to try myself in completely different business sectors. However, I started to feel limited at some point, and the tasks I performed were strictly dictated by customer needs and brand managers. Essentially, in an agency, you are just an executor. I wanted more, so I decided to switch to the client's side to be closer to the business itself and observe the direct impact of my actions on business indicators.
This led me to one of the hotels in the Marriott Inc. (Renaissance by Marriott), where I worked on not only standard advertising channels but also the organization of events, partnership marketing, customer loyalty, and many other aspects that were previously unavailable in an agency. After some time, I realized that working for such a cool client had its drawbacks, such as guidelines, restrictions, and supervision from the leadership and global office. I wanted more freedom to test marketing channels. This is how I started my journey in startups, where I have been working for over four years, building my career from an SMM manager to the position of Director of Marketing and Growth. During my career, I have worked on several projects, including a travel-tech project, an entertaining mobile application, and currently, an IT startup in the field of information security.
What inspired you to pursue a career in marketing for startups?
Doronina: Marketing in startups involves constant testing of hypotheses. It provides an opportunity to generate new ideas every day that can be explored without limitations, unlike working with large clients. Marketing in startups offers freedom of thought as you can experiment with diverse ideas. However, marketing in startups presents a significant challenge. It is a challenge to oneself since you will have to handle a considerable amount of work in the initial stages, and it is also a challenge regarding the limited budget available.
Can you describe your understanding of the unique challenges
that startups face in terms of marketing?
that startups face in terms of marketing?
Doronina: Time, budget, and lack of employees for implementation are the three main difficulties that I would highlight for marketing in startups. Let me explain why. Firstly, an Early-Stage Startup is always comprised of a small team of founder-experimenters who believe in the idea and are willing to do anything to grow the product. However, at the initial stage, they usually lack extra funds to hire workers to delegate tasks. If the idea is truly exciting, people might agree to work for free for some time out of interest or for experience, but this is not a sustainable solution.
Therefore, startups often struggle with the fact that each member of the core team is responsible for a wide range of tasks, and this can cause delays in implementation. Startups need to move quickly, so it is important to constantly look for optimization paths (for example, using ChatGPT, which I recently wrote an article about). Another challenge is the budget. At an early stage, most startups have either no funds or only minimal personal savings. Therefore, for a marketer, it can be a significant challenge to achieve great marketing results with minimal investments.
How do you approach marketing for a startup that is just getting off the ground compared to a more established company?
Doronina: Well-established companies are mostly characterized by using traditional marketing channels such as radio, television, print advertising, contextual advertising, targeted ads, social networks, and more. However, these traditional channels are often expensive and challenging to scale effectively, which makes them difficult for startups. As I previously mentioned, startups rely on hypotheses. They try various methods, such as viral videos, guerrilla marketing, collaborations with influencers, guest publications, and more, to see what works.
Doronina: Well-established companies are mostly characterized by using traditional marketing channels such as radio, television, print advertising, contextual advertising, targeted ads, social networks, and more. However, these traditional channels are often expensive and challenging to scale effectively, which makes them difficult for startups. As I previously mentioned, startups rely on hypotheses. They try various methods, such as viral videos, guerrilla marketing, collaborations with influencers, guest publications, and more, to see what works.
What role do you see marketing playing in a startup's success?
Doronina: For a startup at the initial stage, I believe that marketing accounts for 80-90% of its success. It is essential to recognize that this not only involves standard channels but also encompasses competitor analysis, market research, consumer behavior study, target audience analysis, conducting CustDev, personal sales, and many other aspects necessary for the startup's growth.
Can you describe your approach to developing a marketing strategy for a startup?
Doronina: Our startup is quite complex and designed for a sophisticated B2B target audience, meaning it's sold to other companies rather than end-users. The B2B transaction cycle can be lengthy, taking up to 1.5 years. For instance, I recently spoke with a French startup about participating in a major event, and they shared that a lead they received at a past event only converted to a purchase after almost 2.5 years.
Therefore, B2B startups must devise both long-term strategies to support deals and short-term strategies for finding new leads. Currently, we're building our marketing strategy by conducting in-depth research on our potential audience. We identify relevant users and conduct interviews with them, then use their feedback to improve the product to meet their needs. Additionally, I'm focusing on several key areas in our startup: content marketing, SEO optimization, launching an Early Adopter Program, guest publications, and email marketing. Furthermore, we're constantly testing different sites to increase traffic, including Indie Hackers, HackerNews, G2, and launching on Product Hunt (where we've already been featured three times and made it into the top 5 products of the day).
How do you balance short-term and long-term marketing goals for a startup?
Doronina: In terms of short-term goals, I focus on testing hypotheses. For each hypothesis, I allocate 3-5 days to determine if it works or not. For instance, if I decide to launch an email distribution for a particular audience, I assess the outcome. If it's not effective, I try another audience. I continually experiment with different texts, headings, and approaches to determine the optimal ones.
Regarding long-term strategies, I prioritize the development of our blog and enhancing our search engine rankings through proper SEO implementation. For example, it took us around five months for one of our articles to begin driving significant traffic to our website. It's worth noting that keyword optimization takes around six months to show real results. Therefore, I allocate a separate timeframe to focus on this direction, knowing that after some time, this channel will work for us.
What tactics have you found to be particularly effective for marketing a startup on a limited budget?
Doronina: I focus on both standard marketing channels as well as all possible start-up platforms. Firstly, I prioritize the following: development and continuous updating of the site, ensuring its usability; content marketing and SEO; email marketing; social network development; holding free events (webinars); cross-promotion. These are all free channels that a marketer can independently work on in a project without incurring marketing costs. I am implementing all of these in my project.
Regarding the second direction, I would recommend that start-ups first create profiles on all the top start-up sites, such as Crunchbase, Angel.co, and F6S. Additionally, I have placed our product on Betalist. Next, consider sites such as Product Hunt or AppSumo, and choose the one that best suits your business goals.
Can you walk me through a recent marketing campaign you worked on for a startup?
Doronina: One of our major advertising campaigns for a startup was the launch of Product Hunt, mentioned earlier. This campaign involved developing product positioning for the launch, creating creatives and texts, and expanding the community through personal communication and announcements on various sites (such as Reddit). I began preparing for the launch about 1.5 months in advance to have enough time to improve both the product itself and its non-technical aspects, which later helped us on the day of the launch at Product Hunt. As a result, after the launch, we received more than 5,000 visits to the site, 1,400 leads that subscribed to the product for a trial, and a request from a major Fortune 500 customer. (I am not 100% certain that this customer was from Product Hunt, but we did receive the request on the same day as the launch, which was a pleasant coincidence :)
How did you ensure that the campaign was delivered within a limited budget?
Doronina: The most important point to note is that launching on Product Hunt does not require any financial investment from you unless you choose to create a high-quality video, hire a producer, or invest in other production-related costs. I can confirm that the only expenses we incurred were for purchasing a few stock pictures and videos that we used in our short video.
What challenges did you face in executing the campaign for a startup, and how did you overcome them?
Doronina: The main challenge when launching on Product Hunt is to prepare the product correctly for the launch. As I mentioned, our product belongs to the B2B category, but for Product Hunt, we adapted it for the B2C category so that people could also test our technology. This required additional time for inventing and optimizing the system, but it was worth the effort.
How do you approach branding for a startup?
Doronina: The positioning of a startup should be memorable because it is essential to accomplish two crucial tasks: increasing the number of users and finding investors. In order to achieve both objectives, the startup needs to be noticeable so that people remember it and associate it with something unique. For example, I have friends whose brand has a corporate color of purple. They always wear purple sweatshirts to all events, which makes them stand out in a crowd. In our case, we also have a distinctive corporate color - orange. We incorporate it into all our materials to make our startup memorable.
How do you use data and analytics to inform your marketing decisions for a startup?
Doronina: The use of various analytics systems is essential for a marketer, and in my case, I use several platforms to track different indicators. First and foremost, I use Google Analytics. Additionally, for SEO optimization, I use Semrush and Ahrefs. To track user actions and their activities, I regularly check the notes through Hotjar and use Amplitude. There are also analytics tools for email newsletters, and I enjoy working with Apollo. The most important aspect is that all of these systems are either free or reasonably priced, which is crucial for a beginner startup that aims to use the marketing budget efficiently.
You know so much about the systems and nuances of working with startups. Do you share your insights with other marketing specialists?
Doronina: Yes, definitely. I believe that a marketer should be able to collaborate and exchange ideas. For instance, I regularly schedule meetings with various other marketers from startups to discuss the tools they use and share their effectiveness. This helps me discover new ideas for testing.
Moreover, I enjoy sharing my developed methods and perspectives. So, recently, I started conducting mentoring sessions for other beginner startups. For example, I hold a marketing session on the ADPlist platform about once a week. Additionally, I am currently a mentor for the Women in Tech international program. I am particularly proud of this participation because I think more and more girls should join the IT sphere. I am presently mentoring three startups with whom I have been working on developing their projects together for over three months.
For me, this is an engaging experience since I can view the products of the teams from an outside perspective and offer them fresh ideas. I am even thinking of finding a mentor who can provide us with an unbiased viewpoint on our project.
Is there anything else you would like to add about your marketing experience with startups or your approach to marketing for startups?
Doronina: During my work with startups, I have realized that it is a completely different world with its own laws compared to the corporate world. It is a field for creativity but also involves risks. If you decide to become a marketer in a startup or start your project, it is essential to weigh the pros and cons. Here are some pieces of advice for startup marketers:
- From the very beginning, build a network with other projects in the startup world. This will be your source of new ideas, and maybe even one of them will bring you to a future investor.
- Constantly explore market trends and try to incorporate them into your business. No one knows which hypothesis will work. For example, when ChatGPT gained popularity a couple of months ago, in my experience, many projects did not even try to figure out what it was. I started testing it almost from the first day, and now this tool is consistently optimizing my work.
- Study the approaches of others from the point of view of budget but effective methods. Make a list of your competitors and a list of projects that simply inspire you, and monitor their activity, analyzing it in relation to your startup.
- Do not be afraid to offer the CEO of the project new ideas. Even if he or she seems conservative, always try, but be sure to prepare a justification before presenting the idea, preferably supported by facts and numbers.
- Startups are also about personal development. Therefore, while working in them, try to strengthen your diverse qualities as much as possible. This is a field for self-expression. If you suddenly like numbers, you can easily ask to be involved in the fundraising process. If you like the technical side, ask to be deeply involved in the development process.