It’s Not So Complicated: Marketing for Early-Stage Startups with Sonam Dave

Spyros Tsoukalas: Everyone, today we have Sonam here who is a brand strategist, and I’m excited to discuss with her Marketing for Early Stage Startups. Sonam, welcome to the Growth Mentor Podcast.

Sonam Dave: Hey, thank you so much. I’m very excited to be here.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Yes, likewise here. So, let’s cut to the chase. Sonam, would you like to tell us something we don’t know about marketing at early-stage startups?

Sonam Dave: I’d like to say two things, instead of one. First, it is extremely painful to do marketing for early-stage startups. It comes with a lot of patience and perseverance. Something that a lot of founders, and a lot of marketers overlook, and think, Oh, this is going to be a cakewalk. But a lot of times it isn’t. And the second is, while you can have budgets, you can do brilliant performance, marketing campaigns, all of that. But it is actually your content. Your content will actually be a game changer for your startup. So yeah, those two things.

Spyros Tsoukalas: That’s extremely interesting. I will ask more questions about the second point later. So, what do you see going wrong with marketing or early-stage startups? On top of what you already mentioned?

Sonam Dave: I think it is two things. First, I think the most crucial piece that a lot of people miss out on seeing is clearly defining your north star. If you don’t know your north star, if you don’t know which direction you’re going in, but all the investment happens in you know, doing more, it is bound to fail. So, it’s like for example, if I am a chocolate producer, and I say the world is my oyster? Well, I think you’re setting for failure, because then you need to define your niche to say I’m selling to people in X, age group, y city, you know, with the Z spending power, I think that somebody who is interested in chocolate like this, I think that is going to be something that you really need to define early on. And the second thing that a lot of people miss out on or don’t do right, is they end up early scaling. What I mean by that is, a lot of times, founders, and marketers end up spending over their budgets on performance marketing, thinking that it will help them reach faster, help them make them successful faster, and all of those things. But that is not really true. Spending more than your budget, and doing it too early will only lead you to not investing more in content or exhausting your budget before time. Before that it’s time you know, I think those two things.

Spyros Tsoukalas: These are really interesting. It’s the first time I hear some of them. And maybe I relate somehow to the way I think, at least with what you mentioned. So, what marketing advice would you give to founders who go there through their first years, and have to deal with marketing? Like, when should they hire for example?

Sonam Dave: Um, so I think I’d like to slightly zoom out and say it. I think I’d like to advise founders to say they really need to decide when they need marketing for their startup. Because that will be an interesting point. I mean, have you got your product market fit? If yes, then it’s the right time to bring in marketing to decide how soon you can reach your target audience. So, the timing of introducing when marketing comes in will be very, very critical. Beyond that, I think, who should you hire, I think the first person you should always hire will be your marketing lead, somebody who comes in works with the founders and defines the strategy, deciding on how the execution will look and if required work in an individual contributor role to take the strategy forward. If founders have budgets, then maybe the second hire after three to six months of getting your marketing lead, will be to get somebody in demand generation, somebody who comes in executes your performance marketing campaign, and helps you grow and scale. And the third most important hire will be somebody in content, somebody who comes and creates the right kind of content, which matches the brand and marketing strategy. I have two more things that I like to really advise our founders. I think first and foremost will be to define your marketing strategy, and who you are as a brand, I think before even marketing it will be the brand who you are as a brand. What do you stand for? And who are you really solving the problem for? If these three things are clear, I think it lays a very strong foundation to say, this is where we are going, this is what I’m solving for, I’m solving for this audience. And this is the kind of budget I have to move forward and grow, grow my brand. And from the brand strategy will emerge your marketing strategy to say, what are your channels? How much are you going to spend on each channel? What should your content look like your visuals look like so on and so forth. But all of this should also be taken with a little pinch of salt to say how agile you are because you’re a startup, you might need to pivot, you might need to respond to market conditions, you might need to do something so different that you go wide. So, I think that space is also something that we should leave for.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Are there any resources that have inspired you to develop these ideas? Or, like, obviously, you got them through experience as well, but like, are there any resources that you recommend to listeners?

Sonam Dave: So, I really look up to what Mark Ritson talks about in his blog, as well as in his training to marketers, it is so much bang on especially for early-stage startups. So I would highly recommend that.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Let’s go back and focus on your expertise around brands that brand strategy, would you like to share with us how this very foundational activity is related to what we’ve been saying so far?

Sonam Dave: So, at any point in the startup journey, the founders really need to define how are they going to be represented in the market. And it’s not just your name, it’s not just your logo you’re just saying your visiting card, that’s going to define your brand. Sure, those are ways of defining the brand, but what really makes your brand stand out is to lay that foundation and say, How do I you know, differentiate from my competitors, if the pie is 100%? in my sector or in my industry? How many shares am I going to occupy? And what is my positioning going to be like? So, if I am a CRM company, then will I be you know, a company that will be available for the masses? Or would it only be available for classes? Is there going to be a specific feature or a specific problem within the CRM space that I will solve hence, my positioning will look slightly different from my competitors. I think that will be the first starting step. And then you go forward into saying, what will the tone of voice be will I be a conversation to say, Hey, this is what we are, and this is how we will always be, or will I be a lot more formal to say, Hello world, we are this new CRM company, and this is how we are going to help you. So, that also becomes a very important aspect of your defining how your brand will be, and how your brand will move ahead. And third, will say, how do you want to be perceived? Do you want to be perceived as a brand, which is easily approachable? Or a brand, which is a large brand takes a lot of processes and its hierarchy, and so on and so forth. So things like that also become very important when you’re defining your brand strategy. And does it happen overnight? Not necessarily. But does it have to happen? 100%. And all founders might find it slightly difficult, and complicated. Some people might just avoid it to say, I don’t need a brand strategy. Short people can operate like that, but not for too long, because it’s going to take them off that track to say, Am I really going in the right direction? Am I really solving for the right people? Unless you don’t define the brand strategy, those kinds of questions keep coming over and over again.

Spyros Tsoukalas: What exercises can be done when a startup is looking for its brand strategy, like how can someone define it?

Sonam Dave: So there are multiple things that can be done. First, when I say the tone of voice, there is an exercise that you can do where you list all the adjectives as to how would you want your brand to be perceived. Like, should your tone of voice be conversational, informational, formal, technical, and so on and so forth? So, there is an entire exercise where you list down about 47 tones of voice, and then the founders sit together along with the marketing lead and try and eliminate the ones that are not relevant. And the ones that are relevant are then divided into two buckets. First, say who we are today, and what will we be in the future. That’s the first thing that can be done. The second of course will be to say, defining your logo, your name, your tagline, and your identity in terms of font to be used, columns that are right for you, and so on and so forth. The third will be to define and say, what is that competent a pie look like? And then where do I want to be positioned? So that will require research. And that will also require you to find out where out of this 100% or 40% of the pie that you will be consuming. How do you want to be? How do you want to position and be perceived?

Spyros Tsoukalas: So, this was really clear Sonam. Can you bring a practical example of this process, like you have seen multiple times being executed? Do you have one in mind? You don’t have to name the company, by the way.

Sonam Dave: Sure. I think I have a couple in mind, but I’ll pick one. I’ll pick one, which is in the services industry. So, this brand actually focuses on accounting services, selling basically to accounting business owners. So, when the brand was set up, the first question was, what would we name the brand? And then once the naming was decided, then the question was, what colors will represent this brand? Will it be yellow or purple or pink or blue? Which colors will ideally form this brand? So we went into the exercise of saying, how will this brand be perceived? And how do we want this brand to stand out, and we realize that we would want? Well, while accounting is something that doesn’t need a lot of trusts, it is also an activity, which will lead to people, it is fast-paced, and it will need a lot of accuracy. So, that’s when we define both of these things, then we chose a brand color, which represented both of these aspects. Then came into the factory to say, what should the tone of voice be? Should it be very friendly? Should it be something that feels like your neighborhood accounting service? Or should actually come across as professional? Now given that this was a large organization, and they wanted the brand to be represented as professional, somebody’s a brand that can be looked upon? So we chose a very formal tone and a very technical tone. Because we would want to go ahead and describe everything that you do in accounting? How does it work for smaller businesses, larger businesses, and so on and so forth? We also did a slightly longer exercise in defining your visual identity, the tone of Why sorry, the fonts, and so on. What we led to a little bit more, we extended this whole exercise to say, now that we have sort of made a base brand guideline, what will the positioning be? Will we be a mass brand? Or will we be a class brand, will our services be expensive, mid-priced, or lower price? And we realized that, okay, it’s going to be a mid-market price. So, the tone, the way the marketing was done, the channels that were chosen, for example, we chose LinkedIn, we also chose to move towards, offline events, we chose to do thought leadership content, we chose to speak at industry events, and so on, so that we are perceived as people who are experts in this field. And then we slightly moved ahead and made it a little broader and said, Okay, what will the marketing strategy be for this, while I’ve slightly touched upon the marketing channels, just elaborating and making it more sure to say we chose social media because that was easier to reach. We chose impersonal events because that made us more in front of our audience, and times when, you know, during COVID, where it was not possible to be in front of people, webinars were chosen as a way to reach out to a larger audience. We got industry experts to come and talk about our brand. So, we are also perceived as people who are more familiar with influencers. And last but not the least, we chose thought leadership content. We produce our own content and also got some influencers to come in right on our website, slightly leading to increased credibility for the business in the brand.

Spyros Tsoukalas: That was great, Sonam, thanks for getting in so many details. The storyline of how the decisions were put in order to end up with such a result. I mean, when you view it from the end line, it sounds really, really smart and concise. When you have to execute it, though. It’s more complicated in my opinion.

Sonam Dave: Yes, for sure it is.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Thanks for joining us today and for taking the time to share your experience with our listeners. I hope that they will enjoy learning about brand strategy and marketing for real estate startups today with you.

Sonam Dave: Sure, yes, I hope the insights were helpful, and thank you for having me.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Thanks a lot.