At the Atlassian Starter Day I had a chance to share some of my thoughts on startup marketing based on doing marketing at HubSpot and helping to grow the company from 5 people to over 160 people and nearly 3,000 customers over the past 3+ years.
Seth Godin is a smart dude. This article talks about how you should start marketing before you have a product. This is something I have talked about a lot at HubSpot on our blog, in webinars and in interviews.
For startups, you used to spend 1-2 years building a product and then hire a marketing guy or gal. Now a marketing pro should be part of the founding team. Build an audience of fans, beta testers, future customers. No product required.
Start Marketing Before You Have a Product
- Start blogging before you have a product.
- Start engaging in social media before you have a product.
- Start SEO before you have a product.
- Start building your database and capturing leads before you have a product.
- There is nothing stopping you, and it makes product launches easy.
HubSpot started marketing before we had finished the product. Its one of the reasons we got to 1,000 customers so fast. You should try it too.
PS - If you want to get started, there's a free trial of inbound marketing software at www.HubSpot.com (if you're lucky - it goes up and down as we test some things).
Flickr Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photos/learnscope/