In my career, I have worked with some very large, mature companies while on the agency side, and in-house with a small-to-medium sized business, though closer to small at the time when I joined. I bring this up because a colleague of mine recently decided to leave our thriving enterprise to join a start-up, as one of the 'first five.' I think that everyone considers what it would be like to work for a company from the very beginning, no matter his or her profession, and so it got me thinking about what I would do in that position.
I would guess that for many people, myself included, the attraction of working for a start-up as an early employee isn't about the beer cart, the foosball Fridays, or even the stock options, but about the ability to come in and practice our particular craft on a tabula rasa. Deep down, almost everyone who is good at what they do thinks that they could be a little bit better if not burdened by the ghosts of business past. Every company evolves over time, but like a city, new growth is inevitably on top of the old, no matter the lengths that you go to clear the site. I've never met a developer who hasn't been frustrated by old code, an SEO who understands why a website was built a certain way, or a DBA who would design a database the way he found it.
Obviously, I think that it probably goes without saying that most of these legacy problems are not the result of incompetence, but rather a combination of a lack of foresight, and the normal "things that happen" over time. We can assume that most of the people who build the legacies that the rest of us inherit have good intentions, but lack the luxury of building a foundation that will stand the test of time. The key, for our hypothetical selves at start-ups as it was for our real-life predecessors, is to wed the long-term concerns with the immediate business needs of the fledgling company.
So as a thought exercise, here are some considerations and strategies that I would prioritize if I found myself moving to a brand new company:
Advertising:
Think about your target audience, and how they gather information. Chances are, budget will be an issue, so the most important things will be efficiency and extremely narrow targeting. There is always a natural progression of one platform at a time, but that's a mistake. The evidence all points to a multi-platform strategy from the beginning. I hate to fall back on a cliche like "synergy," but it is easier than actually explaining the math. The point is, launch your content, social, paid social, and paid search all at once, even if you only do a limited amount of each one. Coordinate them, because they amplify one another, and you will maximize the effect of your spend.
- Know your audience
- What need does your product fill, who has that need?
- If you had that need, how would you go about satisfying it? Try it.
- Make sure that you have a keyword strategy that looks beyond CPC to CPA/CPE or whatever your target user action is
- Note that this means you will have to track everything FROM THE START
- Know your budget, and what will fit into it
- Set some money aside for testing, maybe 10% at first
- Start with very tight keyword groups, be proactive with matchtypes and negative keywords, and watch any GDN or YouTube spend carefully
- Careful targeting is better for conversions and budget, so start with only your own country
Content:
Produce as much of it as possible, make it valuable, don't make it sell your own product. Mix your mediums, make sure that you think about the life cycle of each piece, and how you can distribute it.
- Ensure that you have a place for content to live permanently, preferably on your site. You want a link that can live forever
- Use your content as a source of advertising material, from keywords to messaging. If you find yourself saying something a lot in your content, it's probably important in your industry
SEO:
This is one is simple on the face of it, but also one of the easiest matters for a new company to overlook and one of the hardest things to plan for as it grows. Generally speaking, your best bet is to everything right, but here are a few ideas that you can start with:
- Make sure that every page that has clear focus
- that you explain that focus on that page with at least a few hundred words worth of text
- and that you repeat that focus very concisely in the metadata
- Make sure that your URL structure is logical
- clear hierarchy in the sitemap based on importance of the page
- hyperlink deeper pages to appropriate higher-level nav pages using relevant anchor text
Data Collection:
Set yourself up with a Google Analytics account immediately. It doesn't matter if you plan to use another web tracking platform down the road, you want to make sure that you are measuring out of the gate. This is free, and it will join to your AdWords account to give you significant targeting benefits.
- Don't just stick to the out-of-the-box defaults with GA, spend the extra time to make it fit your needs
- Activate ecommerce tracking if need be, and add the little bit of code (seriously, like one line) needed to gather demographic data
- Add events and goals to customize your map of the customer journey
- are there key pages you want to track? forms? videos?
- think as you build your site, about every key interaction you will have with visitors from discovery through whatever signifies success, and be ready to track each step
The point is, track everything. Collect all of the information that you can from the get go, because you will always think of things down the line and wish that you had tracked them all along. Starting with day one, you will be asking questions about your customers and your business that will have profound effects on your marketing strategy and execution. Give yourself every chance to make informed decisions whenever possible.
There may be more to follow this, but I wanted to get it out before the new year. Good luck in 2015, especially if you work at a new business!
Don't limit yourself
