A CTO’s View of the Startup Process

Stage 3 – Marketing, sales and networking:

This stage can sometimes be swapped with, or run parallel to, the next stage. In many cases, you will want to have some clients before going to an investor – it will give you better chances and put you in a better bargaining position. I will be able to give you some advice on what to do when, but this is normally something business, marketing, and funding advisers can give better advice on than myself.

You should:

✪	Go to as many networking events as possible – talk to people and see how you can work together, who they know, and maybe even find potential investors and clients. You will learn that some free events are as good as the very expensive ones, but sometimes it is worth paying a small fee if the event in question offers good opportunities.
✪	Get a marketing consultant or a marketing company. Marketing is done in different levels and in different domains, and for many startups most of your marketing will be done online. Nevertheless, remember that sometimes TV or magazines ads may be useful for you, but they are much more expensive in most cases.
✪	Do social media marketing - Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter. This can be organic marketing, paid advertising, and many times a combination of the two.
✪	Do email marketing – ask people you talk to, people who try your app, and everyone else that may be interested in what you do for their email address and ask them if they want to join your mailing list. Make sure that newsletters you send gives them additional value, and not just advertise your services if you want them to stay engaged (remember to read a little about GDPR before you do – your users must be informed what their email address and data are used for).
✪	Do SEO (search engine optimisation) for your website and ASO (app store optimisations) for your app. This will put your site or app in a better position when people search for what you offer. You can also do paid advertising on search engines.
✪	Write articles – share your knowledge with the world, it’s good for karma, and also gets you noticed.
✪	Get a sales professional or consultant if your business relies on paying customers and is not selling straight through the app or a website.

Like in the previous stage, some people will say – ‘I can do this myself’. And this time I’ll agree with you – you can, and you will. But you will also need marketing people and, depending on the product, sales people. Marketing is important for the success of any business and is crucial for a startup. You may have the perfect product that solves the biggest problem in the world, but if nobody knows about it, how does it help you or them?

Also, when doing paid marketing, you may spend huge amounts of money if you don’t know how to do it right, so many times it’s more affordable to just hire someone who does.

My part in this stage:

✪	I will help planning changes to the app to suit the marketing and sales needs.
✪	I will work with the SEO and ASO people to decide on the most cost-effective ways to promote it (sometimes marketing people may request something that will take a month to change but will only add little value to the marketing process).
✪	If needed, I will work with you and the marketing and sales people to decide on changes needed in the app functionality to make it sell better

➠	Go to the next chapter