The following may come across as offensive, but my intentions are good so I’m going to go ahead and say it. Having your startup mentioned in the press can be exciting. You’re now a big shot and success is celebrated, yet too many times it’s celebrated regardless of your actual success.  It’s OK, it’s the name of the game, positioning matters. BUT don’t let your ego overwhelm you on the path to actual success that’s truly worth press mentions. My advice? Play the game, let mom brag to the entire neighbourhood, but keep your business goals in mind.  Don’t forget – PR without proper marketing to back it up can only get you so far. If you don’t achieve your business goals, your exciting press mention will literally become yesterday’s news, and unfortunately, so will your startup. So, here are my humble 2 cents on what you need to consider when putting together your growth budget and planning your next steps.

Ground control to Major founder – what are your business goals?

If the answer is “to become a unicorn and then monetize” – that’s cool. A company that does not shoot for the stars, doesn’t stand a chance of getting there. However, I strongly advise combining your stretch goals with specific, measurable, realistic, and time-bound goals. I know, you do not want to enter a state of mind that locks you down to only attempting achievable things. Having high aspirations is great but if you don’t have a roadmap and you’re counting on your product or service being so amazing that it’ll shift to exponential growth mode and navigate itself, odds are against you. Your goals should sound something along the lines of “we’d like to reach X free users within 6 months, that will enable us to do ABC and through that expand to XYZ”. Now consider, how are you going to reach your goals?

Be clear on whose attention you’re trying to grab

Who are the people who are your ideal customers? The early adopters that will help ignite your growth? The members of the tribe you’re nurturing? When focusing on a PR approach it’s sometimes easy to forget that you’re not selling to “everyone”. I love this quote by Derek Sivers the founder of CD Baby: “It’s a big world, you can loudly leave out 99% of it. Have the confidence to know that when you target 1%, that 1% will come to you because you’ve shown them how much you value them”.

The smart way to approach this is to map out who your buyer personas are. That means portraying a fictional representation of your ideal customers. Research and be crystal clear on who you are aiming to turn into customers:

• What are their demographics?  Hobbies, occupation and family status?
• If relevant, speak with your current customers, find out why they chose your company, what are the benefits that appealed to them.
• Where do they go to for information?
• What slang do they use?

Once you understand the above you’ll be able to align your entire messaging so that it adds value to them alone. But how?

Step out of your shoes and into your target audience’s shoes  

No matter what you’re selling, the sum of the features you’re offering is greater than its parts. Good marketing is about a story, with a narrative and a hero. The hero isn’t you, it’s your target audience. Your solution is the catharsis, but the journey is theirs and the deeper you understand them and where you fit into that journey, the better you’ll do. Instead of focusing on yourself and how amazing you are, focus on them. Don’t interrupt them and try to sell to them before they’re ready. Understand their journey.  There are 3 typical stages to the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading to a purchase:

1. Awareness – your prospects are experiencing symptoms of a problem and are researching online to find a solution
2. Consideration – based on the research they’ve conducted your prospects are now more informed and aware of the possible solutions to their problem. Ideally, they are now considering your solution as well.
3. Decision – your prospects decide who to buy from

What can you do to get in front of your prospects during the different stages of their buyer’s journey and leverage it?

• Create content that is oriented to helping your prospects figure out what they’re looking to learn at the different stages of their journey
• Promote that content through:
  • Social media
  • Paid advertising
  • SEO
  • You’ve guessed it – PR (more about that a little further below)
• Do your best to capture the details of the people reading your content using calls to action such as this one:

• Once you capture their details, nurture a relationship with them through emails and social media
• Only sell to them when they’ve shown concrete interest in your solution

So where does PR fit in?

Understand that PR is a megaphone that can help amplify the rest of your efforts. you can leverage and adjust your mindset to align with the above in two main ways:

1. Make sure you get mentioned in relevant publications that your target audience is exposed to. They’re the ones you should care about, if they’re not the readers of the publication that mentioned you, how does the mention truly help your positioning?In this respect here’s how PR can be leveraged per each stage of the buyer’s journey:- Awareness – when searching for a solution to a problem, stumbling upon an expert opinion published by one of your team members in a well-known publication can help add credibility to your content in the eyes of the prospect
   – Consideration –  when deliberating between different solutions, PR can help make your solution stand out.
   – Decision – being mentioned as a recommended solution can definitely help tilt the scales in your favor.
2. When getting mentioned, ALWAYS MAKE SURE TO GET A LINK BACK TO YOUR WEBSITE FROM THE RELEVANT PUBLICATION.
   This one is painful. I see many startups spend embarrassing amounts of money on PR, nail a prestigious mention but don’t get a link back to their website. What a waste! A relevant link to your website from a publication that has a high authority in the eyes of  Google is an SEO jackpot.

Final thoughts,

It’s nice to get mentioned in the press but don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t crack open the champagne and celebrate the mention as an end goal of success. PR is a means to an end.

Always remember your goals, who’s radar you’re trying to get under, how you can add the most value to them, and get ahead of them during the different stages of their buyer’s journey, eventually helping them choose you. To paraphrase great Steve Jobs “Stay Hungry. Stay Focused”.

Desires and possibilities are two vastly different things. We all know the important role marketing plays in the success of a business undertaking, but not everyone has the resources, both human and financial, to create a marketing campaign as they would desire.

But just because you are at a place where your best bet is a DIY marketing effort, that does not mean it has to be poor, or lacking in any way. As a matter of fact, with the help of some cool software, you can build a strong marketing campaign and grow your business all by yourself.

Below you will find a list of ten DIY marketing tools that will make your life easy and help you grow your business until you can even out those desires and possibilities.

1. Canva

Designing banners and ads is a scientific discipline in itself, and the mainstream software (read: Photoshop) is not exactly helping, as the sheer amount of features can be intimidating. However with Canva you can awaken the DIY master inside and create simple yet effective banners in mere minutes. It comes with a number of presets and design templates, and organizes its UI around dragging and dropping different elements. It offers a ton of photos and fonts, making sure that your banners and ads stay unique despite being in a template.

2. WordPress

Modern marketing is unimaginable without a strong inbound effort, so the WordPress blogging tools will be your biggest ally in that endeavor. It is extremely easy to set up, as it takes literally minutes to get everything up and running. It comes with a whole sea of different add-ons and tools, helping you create a unique, stand-out blog that is bound to draw in many visitors.

Among add-ons and tools that are particularly worth mentioning are landing page builders, like Pagewiz or Elementor. Landing pages will be your biggest allies in your quest towards marketing success, so being able to build them on your own, quickly and efficiently will be a key consideration. These tools will allow you to create landing pages that combine text, images and other multimedia (for example YouTube videos), as well as simple call-to-action and social media sharing features.

Those looking beyond WordPress for landing page builders can also consider Wix, as it is a strong contender with a large userbase and a good overall image among marketers.

With cybercrime being as widespread among businesses as it is today, it is important to note that WordPress comes with regular security updates that keep your blog safe and secure.

3. Portent Title Maker

Image Credit: Screenshot

The first couple of months, creating content for your inbound marketing is relatively easy. But what do you do when the well of ideas runs dry? How do you keep coming up with new, exciting and relevant topics for your audience week in, week out? With the help of the Portent Title Maker, of course. This is a great tool for coming up with fresh content. Just feed it your desired topics, for example, “content marketing”, and let it do its thing.

4. Hootsuite

Being so popular and virtually omnipresent, social media are a vital part of every marketing campaign. However, choosing the right content to share, and picking the right moment to share it can be a tedious, time-consuming task. With Hootsuite, you can easily automate these tasks, scheduling posts to go on various platforms, exactly when you want them. One of the more interesting features of Hootsuite is Bulk Upload, allowing you to schedule up to 350 social media posts at once.

5. BuzzSumo

Social media marketing can be touch to track, and its success hard to measure. However, with the help of tools like BuzzSumo, that too can be achieved with relative ease. For example, this tool allows you to track top content, seeing which content gets most shares across the social media plane. It can help you spot the biggest influencers in your industry, as well as track mentions of a brand and topic. All this information can be aggregated and exported through its social reports feature.

6. Google Analytics

The alpha and the omega of all website analytics tools. Mastering Google Analytics is the first step to every successful marketing effort. This free tool gives you a full picture of your website and its visitors, including where they are coming from, what they do when they visit your page, or how long they stick around.

The depth of the tool makes it appealing to everyone – from startups, to small businesses, to large, multinational enterprises. This tool is a must-have for everyone.

7. Hotjar

Though essentially an analytics tool, do not mistake it for a Google Analytics alternative. Rather, consider it a complementing tool, as Hotjar tackles analytics from the perspective of user experience.

Its Touch Heatmaps tool allows you to see exactly how the visitors interact with your site, presenting all clicks, taps and swipes in a visually appealing, easy to consume way. The Recordings feature offers a real-time recording of your visitor’s interaction, simplifying hunting for bugs and roadblocks in user experience. Finally, the Forms tool helps you create forms for users, an amazing tool for getting valuable user feedback.

8. MailChimp

Even though some might tell you otherwise, email marketing is still an amazingly effective tool. It will help you nurture your leads and create a meaningful, lasting relationship with potential clients. It will boost website visits, increase conversions, and reduce bounce rates. MailChimp allows you to automate email marketing. Build great newsletters through its built-in templates, create customizable sign-up forms and track the entire performance with its built-in reporting tools.

9. Smoove

Smoove is a marketing automation platform that takes automation to new levels. It allows you to build personalized email templates, set behavior-based triggers on when the emails are sent, and attract new visitors through smart landing pages, pop-ups and personalized forms. It is an all-in-one tool which likes to present itself as a platform for “smart marketing“.

10. Snip.ly

With Snip.ly, you can add a small pop-up with any sort of CTA, to virtually any website that you share. Basically, it allows you to use the power of anyone’s content to promote your own website or page, as long as the content is being spread around via a link that you provided. It is very simple to use. Just choose the content you’d like to share, paste the URL into Snip.ly, and it will provide you with a shortened link. That link, when opened, takes the reader to the exact same original piece of content, but this time it has the pop-up with your CTA.

Final words

There are a lot of things you can do for your startup’s marketing, including paid media, inbound, email marketing and analytics. On the outside, looking in, it might seem overwhelming and too much for a small startup to handle. But with the proper mindset, and the right tools, it becomes a walk in the park. You get to see your startup grow, and there’s no one to tap on the shoulder for that but yourself. Well done.

Introduction

In my time doing BizDev here at Bold Digital, 68% of my initial outreach includes telling startups that their blogs are great, but are missing or misusing one critical piece: a strong, persuasive, relevant CTA.

Speaking to a lot of these startups on the phone, there seems to be an understanding that blogs will help with SEO, generating traffic, and overall brand awareness. That’s 100% true, but what they don’t realize is that their blogs also have the intrinsic ability to turn readers into valuable leads. Using a Call-to-Action (or CTA), they can create great leads right from their blog, but if not done correctly, these CTAs can have low conversion rates by missing out on some key elements.

To be sure your CTAs are up to par, here are the 10 CTA mistakes you could be making on your blog and how to ensure you’ve got them set up for success. Not using any CTAs on your blog right now? It’s time to get started, but make sure you’re not fall into these common pitfalls.

1. CTAs for the wrong buyer persona. For those of you creating content that are specific to your different buyer personas, first of all, that’s awesome! Creating content for specific kinds of people you’re looking to attract helps you build that priceless ‘they just get me’ feeling. Be sure that’s also seen in your CTAs. If a given blog post is written with a “Joe CEO” persona in mind, be sure to not offer an eBook written for your “Developer Dave” persona as a CTA. These different personas have unique interests and pains, and therefore should be offered ‘next step’ content at the end of each blog post that suits who they are as an individual.
2. CTAs unrelated to the article’s pain point topic. Imagine you’ve just finished writing a blog post on employee productivity and you know you need a CTA at the bottom. You’re also just finished a report on email marketing, so you decide to make that the CTA so you can start getting a feel of how well it converts. The problem is your report is unrelated to pain point discussed in the post, and therefore will seems pretty left field to your reader. Remember that CTAs are your way to offer a deeper look into a topic that your blog post reader just learned about. If the topic of the post and the CTA are night and day, it’s fair to assume it will have a low conversion rate. Match the CTA to the post, and watch your conversation rate skyrocket.
3. CTAs disregarding the reader’s buyer’s journey stage. This is probably the biggest culprit of them all. I’ve seen way too many B2B blogs that are pretty much autoset to end in “request a demo”, “start your free 14-day trial”, or “schedule a free consultation”. The problem with this is that you’re not respecting the buyer’s journey, which is sort of the reason you’re blogging in the first place. Unlike advertising that sells too soon instead of honoring where the reader is on their path to purchase, blogs are meant to respect that journey. Take the screenshot below for example.

This is a company that offered a blog post relevant for readers at the top-of-the-funnel, who aren’t ready to be sold to. Nevertheless, they offered a free trial CTA, in attempts to expedit the buyer’s journey. A big no-no. By adding these bottom-of-the-funnel CTAs, you send a strong message to your readers that you’d rather sell than add value; a poor recipe for any relationship building strategy.

4.CTAs for past webinars. Live/ time sensitive offers provide a novelty effect, creating an incredible sense of relevancy to your content. If you want to offer an upcoming webinar as a blog post CTA, be sure to record the event so that after the event is over you can change the CTA and landing page to offer readers the recording. As marketers, it’s important for us to keep to promises we make with our prospects in order to establish trust. If you say clicking on a CTA will lead to a webinar that already happened, and you don’t offer a way for them to access it, you’re about to lose some serious brownie points for that let down.

5.“About us”/ “Contact us” CTAs. Similar to #3, by ending blog posts in these two catchphrases, you’ll be turning an adding value experience into an ‘all about me’ experience (see image below).

We’re so lucky to be alive in an era where knowledge is endless. Nowadays, anybody who wants to learn anything can have multiple mentors in the form of books. Exponential growth and improvement are within reach. The following books contain the secret sauce that can change mindsets and help you approach marketing challenges with a wiser vision.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

The success story of CD BABY provides insights on how to create an entire movement around a product.

Here are a few quotes that resonated with me:

“It’s a big world, you can loudly leave out 99% of it. Have the confidence to know that when you target 1%, that 1% will come to you because you’ve shown them how much you value them.”

“No business goes as planned so make 10 radically different plans.”

“Any business that’s in business to sell you a cure, is motivated not to focus on prevention.”

“The first follower is what transforms a lone nut into a leader.”

“No business plan survives first contact with customers.”

Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a media manipulator by Ryan Holiday

This eye-opening book was written before the Trump era and yet becomes even more relevant in light of it. The book, written by media strategist and former director of marketing for American Apparel provides an uncensored version of how the media “really” works. The ability to create spins and manipulate information is actually easier than one might imagine.

Quotes that resonated with me:

“The link economy encourages bloggers to repeat what “other people are saying” and link to it instead of doing their own reporting and standing behind it. This changes the news from what has happened into what someone said the news is.”