Scrappy Marketing
How to embrace scrappy marketing
By Robin Anderson
Scrappy marketing is being able to direct your marketing efforts to the type of marketing that helps you to reach your audience the easiest and in the most cost effective way. Digital marketing, any type of marketing online such as social media, email and more is popular for a range of reasons - cheaper, instantaneous, and gives you the ability to reach a more targeted audience. With digital, you will also have access to insights and analytics for performance review. When direct interactions with your target base are warranted, take advantage of traditional marketing tactics such as participating in an in-person event that targets your base. Leveraging an industry-wide event, or one with a strategic partner will help keep your participation costs.
Understanding your industry, and knowing how to interact and drive your customer to buy, will be driving factors as to the degree of traditional vs. digital marketing you will employ to reach and engage them.
“Scrappy is thinking like an underdog (even if you aren’t) with a winning and determined mindset. Getting scrappy is more than just being cheap. Scrappy also isn’t about dumbing down your marketing and saving your brain cells. In fact, getting scrappy is about using more of your brain to help you do more with less. That’s why a key tenet of the Scrappy Mindset is putting your brains before your budget. To do more with less, you need to first define what it is that you’re doing.”
Prior to spending any amount of time starting to market, begin your marketing efforts with planning your marketing strategy - identify your marketing goals and set benchmarks so you know what metrics you are working towards. To use your resources efficiently and to get the most out of your efforts (BE SCRAPPY) make sure you are clear with your persona, who are you trying to reach, and your call-to-action, what action do you want them to take?
So while startups may dream of having an endless budget to run large-scale marketing campaigns letting the world know they are open for business, most start with little to no budget. CEO’s are often faced with making the decision of having to redirect product development funds for marketing. And while the result of funding for product development is somewhat guaranteed, the results of marketing efforts tend to be more variable.
So how does a startup kickstart their marketing without spending a lot of money?
Scrappy marketing.
According to Andrew Warren-Payne:
“Scrappy marketing is all about just getting something out there in front of your buyers. It’s quick and a bit unpolished, but it provides quick feedback and allows us to see what works and what doesn’t without going through the long process of nit-picking every aspect of a campaign before sending it out into the world.”
Part of being scrappy is not trying to do everything and be everywhere. Focus your efforts to where you can have the greatest impact. Being resourceful and finding ways to get the most out of your marketing while still trying to figure it out.
Benefits of scrappy marketing
Looks like you - you are a startup, with limited resources, design marketing campaigns that look like you, create videos using your smartphone and produce social media posts with imagery taken around the office.
The focus is on getting it done and out there even if it isn’t perfect - Short sprints, similar to using the Agile methodology, with quick process and implementations to see what is working and what resonates with your target audience. Your ability to create quickly will contribute to an increase in engagement when it matters the most.
Your nimbleness with development and execution of quick marketing campaigns (aka micro campaigns) relies heavily on analyzing the data throughout to adjust when needed.
What is a micro-campaign?
A micro-campaign is a small, low-cost and highly-targeted effort to test an idea or a target market.
As its name suggests, micro-campaigns are just that - micro. Your investment is minimal, the time and effort to get it up and running is quick, and because of this nimble nature, you can try new things, new ideas to see what best resonates with your audience. Like an MVP in product development, a micro campaign is the MVP for marketing. Small, low-cost, targeted.
A few examples of a micro-campaign include:
Testing paid search terms beyond your typical radius
Promote impactful content (blog/ebook) targeting a niche audience
Create ads on a variety of social platforms to see what converts
Test call-to-actions on one platform to see what converts
Your marketing environment needs to be one that encourages new and innovative ideas. That is one of the top benefits of implementing micro-campaigns - the opportunity to test your ideas quickly, remove those that don’t work, and extend and broaden those that do.
When researching a purchase, consumers now seek out twice as many sources as they did a few years ago. Therefore, provide resources to enable prospective buyers to see your key advantages and differentiators through content. Providing content always drives interest, in fact, it is the number one way to start attracting customers. So create, repurpose, and take advantage of user-generated content. And with many buyers researching before buying, such as looking at reviews, sharing user-generated content, such as customer testimonials, will give you an advantage over your competition.
“Marketers can say everything they want, but the brand must be communicated across touchpoints that comprise a meaningful experience. If something isn’t resonating, take a step back.” –Nick Westergaard.
Creating content is the number one way to start attracting customers. The key to your success with this is to leverage the content you develop for EVERYTHING. From email, social media, etc. Content ideas come from knowing what your customers want to learn more about. One way is to take a look at the comments within your social posts, see what needs to be addressed via your customer support, ask your sales team. Once you create content, make it available everyday to everyone via your website. Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose.
How to leverage content from a White Paper
Based on a graphic from Search Engine Land, this example demonstrations how a white paper can serve as the foundation for the creation of a multitude of content pieces for your target audience. From multiple blogs, to video, podcast, representation and paid search. Social media posts, webinar and for a speech - all which then end up in the creation of a newsletter.
Keep track of the multitude of content you create from that one piece with the use of an Editorial Calendar. An editorial calendar will help to put structure to your communications, set up a routine for publishing, ensuring the messaging is clearly communicated and that content is published on a consistent basis, something your customers will come to rely on, knowing when to look for something new from you.
For digital marketing, take advantage of the plethora of free tools available for social media posting and email marketing. The tools allow you to automate the distribution of your social posts as well as sending an email to your ever growing email list. Get analytics as to how well your social post performs and how many opened, viewed, and clicked through your email. And the best part is the ability to upgrade your platforms as you grow.
Don’t waste time, get started with marketing. Set your marketing goals so you know what success is when you achieve it. And keep trying. Once you begin gaining traction, take extra time and put more resources into creating what your target audience responds to.
Need help getting your scrappy marketing started? Contact us today.
FunFact Friday
An example of successful scrappy marketing comes from the Dollar Shave Club. Unlike their competitors with large budgets, startup Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dubin didn’t have a million dollar budget to market his new product. So he wrote, directed and starred in their commercial which went viral. Their focus was to market to the ‘regular American guys who don’t like getting ripped off’ fit the style of the ad.
(Source: Kunocreative)