I was very fortunate to have this course coincide almost perfectly with starting a new job as head of marketing at an early stage tech company. The new job demands deep knowledge of leading Internet marketing practices and this course provided an excellent review and food for thought on a very wide range of strategies to consider applying in our company.

I’ve provided a summary of some of my key takeaways below:

• Using Hootsuite: Something I introduced to my day-to-day work routine basically immediately was using Hootsuite to begin to build my company’s social media presence. My role for the team project was Hootsuite scheduling. I learned how to build a social media content calendar and schedule it in Hootsuite – a tremendously valuable time saver for my recurring posts. I’ve set up a tab in my Hootsuite specifically to track competitors and influencers in the FinTech space. I’m monitoring the strategies of some of the leading companies to determine who is attracting a lot of attention and why.
• Activating people: We had a few discussions about empowering social media influencers to do the talking for you. Julio introduced tools such as Buzzsumo and Klout to help identify the most talked about content on a particular subject (in my case it was FinTech) and determine who the thought leaders and authorities on the subject were. I’ve now identified a network of FinTech thought leaders who I plan to engage over the next few months with the hope that they will eventually share our company’s content. In other words, I plan to act as a bridge influencer for a while until I’ve built up enough content and a big enough following to become a hub influencer.

• Other Tools: One of the most invaluable takeaways was being introduced to some useful tools (Unbounce, Hubspot, MailChimp, E-Marketer, website grader, etc.) that I intend to access on a regular basis in the design and implementation of my company’s Internet marketing strategy. The idea of trying to attract attention and stand out on the Internet amongst countless other companies who are trying to access the same customers seems quite daunting, but I’m starting to get a better appreciation for the suite of tools I can use to help me succeed.

• Inbound Marketing: The inbound marketing module was probably my favourite part of the course. The idea of pulling customers into your business by creating content that’s valuable to them resonates with me, and I think it’s going to resonate with our target market. Producing whitepapers, case studies, videos, infographics, etc. may be time consuming and onerous but I think it’s going to pay off. Julio shared a few check/balance questions that I’ve been using to evaluate the effectiveness of my inbound marketing plans:
  • Am I regularly creating new, share worthy content?
  • Am I optimizing my content for search & social?
  • Am I promoting my content in social media conversations?
  • Am I converting as many visitors into leads & sales as I can?
  • Rules of thumb for social media – Of every 15 social media posts, 10 should be valuable info for the industry; 4 should be our blog posts; 1 should be soft sell (e.g. sign up for webinar)

The Group Project

We ended up with quite an interesting challenge for our group project. Alex’s company, Afterguard, launched a pre-sale campaign in early 2014 with a very strong promotional video and PR push. Unfortunately, the campaign didn’t go as well as planned and the company simultaneously faced a few challenges with its vendors.

The result was that the company had been sitting in limbo for several months waiting for the opportune time to start building a following and hype for its second kick at the can While the company did have a Google AdWords campaign and a modest social media presence, I think the holistic framework we were introduced to in the class provided a good foundation for the company’s next big push.

The company has a few things to figure out before implementing many of the initiatives we set up; however, I’m optimistic that the work we’ve done will better position Alex to run a successful pre-sale campaign once it is ready.

I’m quite excited to apply the strategies I’ve learned in this class to my new company and know that a substantial amount of experimentation will be required to find the right mix. Even if we still need to engage external experts to help us succeed in the customer acquisition phase, I will be much better positioned to manage this process and ask the right questions.

In short, it probably won’t!

There’s nothing like a novel noble cause to inspire and capture the imaginations of millenials – something I know first hand. In an increasingly collaborative and tech savvy world, the name of the game for entrepreneurs is to make things that are simpler, more accessible, cheaper, and more customer centric… and we millenials expect nothing less.

But in an age where content is being shoved down our throats at an unprecedented rate through every conceivable channel, entrepreneurs like myself face a new challenge – how do we reach our customers and make our offerings stand out amidst all the noise?

Obviously this is a complicated question that can be attacked from a number of different angles, and an integrated and multi-faceted internet marketing strategy is almost certainly necessary for any company wishing to get its product in the hands (and eyes) of millions of mainstream customers.

In the past year, I’ve worked with and followed a number of early stage FinTech companies that assume their products are inherently viral, and I’m starting to see a pattern; many brilliant entrepreneurs in sector of the start up world erroneously assume their company’s value proposition will speak for itself. In other words:

Many entrepreneurs fail to recognize the importance of defining and developing consistent messaging on the company’s values, customer experience, and the grand vision that underpins everything.

I believe any entrepreneur wishing to be successful needs to understand that their target market (especially if it’s millenials) is unlikely to adopt, share, and become ambassadors for new products and services if they don’t identify with the name, the brand, and what it all stands for.

I’ve recently accepted a new challenge as VP of Marketing at an early stage tech company and have spent a significant amount of time in my first few weeks working with the team to define our brand vision. More specifically, there are concerns that we are going to market with a company name that doesn’t resonate with the target market.

I’ve conducted a significant amount of primary and secondary research to inform our decision, which I’ve compiled into a reflection and 4 step guide that I hope will help other entrepreneurs tackle this challenge in the future.

Step 1: Start with Brand Self-Awareness

 Before selecting a name and attempting to build a brand, you should be able to answer the following questions:

1)    Who are my customers and what do they value?

2)    Where does my company come from and what are its ambitions?

3)    Who will be our influencers and advocates?

4)    What’s my brands personality and attitude?

5)    What does my brand stand for and what makes it special?

 If you haven’t thought this stuff through, then you aren’t ready to select a name that will resonate with your target market and energize your team. Do this work first!

Step 2: The Exploratory Stage

Unless you’re really lucky, you probably won’t come up with the perfect name and brand concept by sitting around with your colleagues over a few beers and some unstructured brainstorming.

Your goal at the beginning should be quantity, not quality – you’ll want to cast a wide net and come up with a wide range of possible concepts before you start narrowing it down. Fortunately, there are a number of online tools you can use to help you automatically generate synonyms, rhymes, prefix/suffix combinations, and puns that can provide good inspiration and stimulate further discussion. The graphic below provides a quick summary of a few notable ones.

http://www.slideshare.net/purewest/howto-namethings

I highly recommend that you conduct a couple idea-generation sessions –  I found that 6 to 8 people works pretty well. Keep it somewhat structured (I get a lot of my brainstorming techniques from IDEO) and make sure you talk about who your customers are and the value proposition. Once everyone has the appropriate context, put them to work on proposing some name concepts and selectively use some of the language generated from the 10 tools mentioned about to stimulate discussion. Encourage crazy ideas and keep the focus on quantity – you should endeavor cover the wall in 100+ sticky notes.

Step 3: Think about deal breakers

Before you get too excited about some of the name possibilities you’ve come up with, you’ll want to think through a few key considerations (many of which are technical). I’ve developed the following checklist based on a collection of Internet articles that discuss the DO’s and DON’T’s of naming a company.

Step 4: The Confirmatory Stage

Ultimately you want everyone in your team to live the brand, so of course it matters to have a name that the founders and the team love that meets all the requirements of the above checklist. Creating a vibrant, dynamic, and authentic organizational culture will help you attract and retain the best talent and is arguably critical to ensuring your company can go the distance.

However, when it comes to your customers, the effectiveness of your name and the response it evokes is an empirical question. Once you’ve arrived at a short-list of names, why not consult your target market and see which name they like best? Instead of guessing, why not validate which name is most likely to maximize your exposure and corresponding success? There are countless ways to get quick and meaningful feedback without spending any money at all – free survey tools, starting a Reddit thread, or crowdsourcing feedback through a forum frequented by your target market are just a few examples.

Despite all the tools, resources, and wisdom available to you, naming your company and building a brand, particularly in the world of tech startups and Apps, is extremely daunting and time consuming. However, if you are tech entrepreneur responsible for marketing a new product, or service, don’t make the potentially fatal mistake of assuming your value proposition will speak for itself.

There are always exceptions. Perhaps there’s some obscure possibility that your product will reach your customers and be overwhelmingly successful even with a name that doesn’t resonate with your target customers. But why take the chance? Do you really want to say you think you will be successful in spite of your name and branding?

References:

http://www.slideshare.net/purewest/howto-namethings

http://mashable.com/2012/10/04/startup-naming/

http://www.creativebloq.com/tips-naming-app-9112818

https://blog.sensortower.com/blog/2013/07/10/5-mistakes-to-avoid-when-naming-your-app/

http://thebitchwhocodes.com/2013/09/05/developers-guide-to-marketing-an-app-how-to-name-an-application/

http://branditory.com/business-report.html?gclid=CjwKEAiAhIejBRCKm_fTxIWyyXcSJABXY0XYZOJHnNzOt9Z0SaRDM8MZyoE_8E3XDYm7d8JDeFJEPBoCnFLw_wcB