Hvordan markedsføre en oppstartsbedrift?

Veldig mye er skrevet om det å markedsføre bedrifter, og i særdeleshet oppstartsbedrifter. Men det går er skille mellom “ordinære” bedrifter og nettbaserte selskaper som lever sitt liv på nettet og har hele sin verdikjede fokusert der. Om sistnevnte er det sagt mye mindre fordi det er nytt, men stadig mer sies fordi nettbaserte bedrifter basert på moderne programvare får en stadig økende samfunnsmessig og økonomisk betydning.

Hvorfor sier jeg dette? Jo, fordi jeg selv er gründer og bedriftsentreprenør som jobber med programvarebaserte innovasjoner og forretningsmodeller. Sist ut er Invenia iLab AS som nylig har lansert det nettbaserte produktet Yoobits for sikker lagring, deling og samarbeid via Internett. Og da tiltrekkes jeg naturlig nok av informasjon om slike type selskaper.

Så til saken: For for et par dager siden la bloggeren Dharmesh Shah ut en ny og nyttig artikkel om dette emnet med tittelen “Startup Marketing: Tactical Tips From The Trenches” der han gir 21 råd til oppstartsselskaper som ønsker å fyre i gang en virksomhet med et begrenset budsjett – noe som er nyttig i disse ulvetider. Man kan lese hans blogginnlegg selv, så hvorfor referere det her? Jo, jeg vil slå et slag for både hans blogg OnStartups.com og viktigheten av oppstartselskaper i norsk næringsliv; og da programvarebaserte bedrifter i særdeleshet fordi jeg jobber med det til daglig.

Før jeg gjengir hans 21 råd, kan det være nyttig å vite litt mer om Dharmesh Shah. Her er det han skriver om seg selv: “As a professional geek I used to work in a reasonably fun job doing what I liked to do (write code). Eventually, I got a little frustrated with it all so at the ripe old age of 24, I started my first software company. It did pretty well. It got a bunch of awards, attracted a bunch of smart people, reached millions of dollars of sales and was ultimately sold for millions of more dollars to a much larger technology company. Since then, I’ve started more companies, invested in a few and advised a few more. During this entire process, I figured out that there are others out there that are also fascinated with startups and what it takes to make them succeed. So, I started this blog. So basically, this site is for and about software startups.”

Det er mange som mener noe om dette emnet på nettet, men Shah har en praktisk og vellykket erfaring som gründer på området. Så jeg synes det er verdt å lytte til ham.

Så til de 21 nevnte råd. Jeg gjengir dem i forkortet versjon nedenfor selv om de kan leses i full størrelse på hans eget blogginnlegg. Mye kan virke selvsagt, men det er verdt en gjennomlesing da det er mange gode og tungtveiende råd her basert på hans egen erfaring.

God fornøyelse; det er mye klok visdom her for oss gründere! :-)

1. Pick a name that works. Needs to be simple, memorable and unambiguous. The “.com” domain should be available without playing tricks with the name.

2. Put a simple website up. Doesn’t have to be fancy. The goal is to put enough content on the site to start the Google sandbox clock. Don’t worry about the site not saying much.

3. Get some links into the new startup website. If you have a personal website, link to it from there. The goal is to get the Google crawler to start indexing your site.

4. Setup a twitter account. Name of the account should match your company/domain name. Link to your twitter account from your main site and to your main site from your twitter account.

5. Add e-mail subscription. Let people sign-up to get an email when you’re ready to show them the product. A simple email signup form is sufficient.

6. Get a nice logo. Run a quick contest on CrowdSpring or 99Designs and you’ll wind up with something decent enough. Make sure you get the vector file as part of the final deliverable.

7. Setup a Facebook business page for your startup. You’re not going to get many fans in the early days. That’s OK. Just get something out there.

8. Create a clean Facebook URL. Facebook doesn’t allow simple/vanity URLs. So, to make things easier on yourself (and your users), setup a sub-domain and redirect it to your Facebook page.

9. Kick off a blog. You can use one of the free hosting tools (like WordPress.com), but don’t use their domain name. Put your blog on blog.yourcompany.com.

10. Write a blog article that describes how you got to this point. What problem you’re hoping to solve. Why you picked this problem. It should feel a little uncomfortable revealing what you’re revealing.

11. Setup Google Alerts for at least the following: Your company name, link:yourdomain.com and “industry term”. Try to find a good balance for your industry term so you don’t get flooded with alerts.

12. Find three closest competitors. Pretend like someone is paying you $10,000 for locating each competitor. Really try hard. Barely managed to find three? Take a lot of effort? Great.

13. Update your LinkedIn profile. Mention your new startup, and add a link to your startup website to one of the three slots for this purpose. Make sure you specify the anchor text.

14. Get business cards printed. Don’t go overboard, but don’t use a “free” option. I don’t believe in business cards, but you need them to avoid the discussion as to why you don’t have a card.

15. Use the Twitter Grader search feature to find high-impact twitter users in your industry. Start following them. You want to start forging relationships. Start building your twitter network.

16. Create a StumbleUpon account. Specify your areas of interest. Spend 10 minutes a day (no more!) stumbling and voting things up/down.

17. Subscribe to the LinkedIn Answers category that best fits your area of interest. Answer one question a day that you feel like you’ve got some expertise in. Don’t self-promote.

18. Find the bloggers that are writing about your topic area. Subscribe to their feed, and read their stuff regularly. Leave valuable comments and participate in the conversation.

19. Start building some contacts on Facebook. Organize your users into groups. This will come in handy later. Don’t spam people and ask them to visit your website.

20. Grade your website on Website Grader. Fix the basic things. You should be able to get a 50+ just by doing the simple things it suggests.