Paul Cheek and his new book in a bookstore in Cambridge./Documentation in social networks according to Section 27 A of the Copyright Law
This article is based on an excerpt from Paul Chick's new book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship Startup Tactics published by Wiley, published on the entrepreneur website.
Cheek is the senior director and founder of the Martin Foundation Center for Entrepreneurship at MIT, a senior lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the founding CTO of Oceanworks.
In the book, he lists 15 tactics for startups in what he calls "disciplined entrepreneurship," taken from classes he teaches at MIT.
In this article Chick teaches:
How to build a "mousetrap" to quickly test value propositions with end users within your target audience - in the real world
How to identify the most appropriate advertising platform, set a budget and plan a digital advertising campaign targeting end users with your value proposition
How to develop an understanding of the important metrics when running early advertising experiments
How to turn those who responded to your ads into a list of people who are interested in your quantified value proposition - and may become your first customers!
Marketing strategy for the first days of the startup
Your business will use a variety of marketing approaches over time and will require a comprehensive and flexible marketing strategy. This tactic looks specifically at how you can leverage digital advertising in the earliest stages.
Why? Because the advertising platforms provide the most control over input data, such as targeting the target audience and optimizing the advertising times, even when you don't have customers yet or you are looking to experiment with new customer segments. Not to mention that internet advertising is relatively cheap and allows you to conduct micro-experiments through small ad purchases.
The ability to define very specific parameters for who will see the ad allows more control than any other means. Unlike a billboard - where a wide audience sees the ad and the only targeting parameter is location - online advertising gives you full control over who exactly will see your ad. This control saves you money by reaching only those people in your ideal beachhead market - and saves time by generating leads from only that limited pool of ideal prospects.
In addition, digital advertising provides data on current and previous advertising campaigns to make future decisions, including further refining your messages and visuals. Finally, digital advertising provides you with the ability to make changes and run quick experiments to test new hypotheses.
The benefit of mousetraps to an early stage startup or a business looking to expand with new products or market segments is huge, but even in the long run they will need a holistic marketing strategy to optimize the cost of customer acquisition.
Your business is unique, so while you may choose to use a different advertising medium, remember that you need the same level of control to exclusively target your beachhead market. Also remember that while you may be focused on direct and outbound sales to get your first customers, every business also needs some marketing to bring in new leads and build a sales process that can be expanded later.
How to apply the "mouse trap" model
Mousetraps are a way to determine if your potential end users are tempted by your value proposition before you've even built the product.
First, you need to provide "bait" - that is, messages and images around your quantified value proposition - and see if people are caught in the trap - in this case adding a name and email to a waiting list, a newsletter, a live demo or even a pre-order. Just as you can try different bait foods to catch a pesky mouse, your mouse traps can test how different value propositions and messages work as bait for potential customers.
Fortunately, building such landing pages is quite easy and cheap. You really don't need much in these pages; The more information there is, the less certain you'll be about what element ignited potential customers and caused them to sign up for your mailing list.
Usually, one image that represents the persona, problem or solution is enough to attract the target audience, along with just a headline and a few lines of text. This means that you should resist temptation and not be too creative with a future feature list for a product you haven't built yet.
Once you've built a mousetrap, you'll want to run an ad on an advertising platform that targets your ideal user or buyer persona. The advertisement should be the same or similar to the presentation and messages in the mousetrap, with a link to the landing page.
Once the ad is live, you can determine the level of interest of the end users based on the number of clicks on the ad and then, the number of users who provided their information through the registration form on the landing page. This data offers an indication of whether the ideal end user really wants the quantified value proposition.
Matching mousetraps to segments within the Beachhead Market
Because these landing pages are so easy to create, it may make sense to create multiple versions of your landing pages and ads that tailor your messages with different potential value propositions to optimize your ultimate go-to-market approach.
For example, suppose we are developing a new product in the food industry and our ideal target audience is Tel Aviv families with children up to the age of 10. The first landing page will target Tel Aviv mothers; A second landing page will target high-tech male and female workers, a high percentage of whom meet the criteria; A third landing page will target potential affiliates such as dietitians and nutritionists and so on.
Emphasizing different parts of the value proposition, using different wording and terminology, or even just rearranging the order of selling points on the page will allow you to compare results between different mousetraps to identify which particular combination of messaging and end-user targeting works best. When you're willing to invest more money in lead generation, the team will have more confidence that the project is starting off on the right foot.
For more information on Paul Cheek's work, follow the link.