Educators designing courses on startup marketing may wish to review the syllabus for the Harvard Business School MBA elective, Entrepreneurial Sales and Marketing.
Companion pages listed to the right and also in the nav bar above cover resources and insights related to lean startup logic/methods; UX design; product management; business development; and sales, among other topics.
Marketing Fundamentals
- The Old Testament: Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado
- The New Testament: Steve Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany
- The book Traction, by Weinberg and Mares, is a terrific, practical guide to early stage startup marketing, offering a chapter on each of 19 customer acquisition methods
- Summary presentation on startup marketing from my course, Product Management 101
- Rob Go of NextView Ventures succinctly summarizes marketing fundamentals and their relevance for startups
- Paul Graham: Do Things that Don't Scale
- Wealthfront CEO Adam Nash on when to use each of the five sources of traffic for user acquisition: organic, email, SEO, SEM, and social
- HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah offers tactical tips for pre-seed startup marketing; Dan Shipper on how to get your first ten customers
- Simon Schmid on some foundations of effective marketing campaigns
- Dozen Digital provides checklists for good execution of most customer acquisition methods
- William Mougayar covers the what/why/how of positioning; Andy Raskin on the same topic; ex-Netflix product lead Gib Biddle on the same topic
- Orbit Media's Andy Crestodina on how to build trust in an online business; Brandon Redlinger on the same topic
- VC Mark Suster on the "underbelly" of online marketing: startups' use of spammy or non-scalable tactics to drive the appearance of traction
- Saar Gur on why most startups fail at customer acquisition
- Brian Balfour on how to build customer acquisition skills and on testing user acquisition methods and how to choose your lead customer acquisition channel
- Andrew Chen contrasts marketing methods that do and do not scale
- Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture on distribution, marketing and sales
- HubSpot's Marketing Hubs collect a wealth of resources and articles on online marketing
- Fred Wilson and Mark Suster each offer general advice on startup marketing
- Jay Soriano offers a compilation of posts on startup marketing
- VentureHarbour provides a comprehensive guide to startup marketing
- David Skok of Matrix Partners on adapting marketing and sales tactics to stages of the customer buying cycle
- Renee Warren of Onboardly offers comprehensive coverage of marketing basics in KISSmetrics' "Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing"
- Presentation on startup marketing by Highland Capital's Michael Gaiss. See links to SEO/SEM online resources on slide 33
- Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz published Lean Analytics, a book which reviews key performance metrics for various tech startup business models
- Dave McClure's classic "Startup Metrics for Pirates" -- the AAARR!! framework; Edith Yeung adapts the framework for mobile apps
- Avinash Kaushik, analytics evangelist for Google, is the author of the Occam's Razor blog and Web Analytics 2.0, a book that provides comprehensive and practical guide to startup marketing analytics; Kaushik presents a comprehensive marketing analytics framework; describes why and how marketers should use controlled experiments; and provides a guide to Google Analytics
- Measure What Matters Most, white paper by Neil Hoyne, discusses the problem of attribution when customer acquisition is influenced by multiple marketing messages through different channels
- A post I wrote on LTV/CAC analysis; Rajiv Dham and Nino Marakovic on the same topic
- Andrew Chen on how/why to use net promoter score; Brennan Topley on the same topic
- Nikos Kaliagkopoulos on cohort analysis; Nicholas Wittenborn on the same topic
- Dan Wolch on activation measures and why growth teams track them
- Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, on how to set up a new site for analytics; Ben Porterfield on why/how to use analytics
- Onboardly's Shanelle Mullin offers a beginner's guide to startup marketing analytics; Kristi Hines on the same topic
- Six Revisions provides introductions to web analytics and Google Analytics
- David Skok on the need to balance average customer acquisition cost with lifetime value of a customer and on metrics-driven business model analysis
- Skok on how to calculate LTV; Erik Jorgenson on the same topic
- Mark Suster reflects on how and why startups should use metrics
- Ryan Battles examines key traction metrics for content, social media, email, and advertising
- Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners on how to calculate lifetime customer value with cohort analysis
Growth Marketing
- Brian Balfour has written extensively on growth marketing, including these posts on building a growth machine; reasons why companies fail at growth; and recognizing product market fit
- Andrew McInnes on organizing a growth team; GrowthHackers.com exchange on the same topic
- What is "Growth Hacking," Really? by Josh ElmanStartup Marketing: A Guide to Growth Hacking, by Donald Donckers
- First Round Review interviews Eventbrite VP Growth Brian Rothenberg and Wealthfront VP Growth Andy Johns
- Qualaroo CEO Sean Ellis helped launch GrowthHackers.com, a community for exchanging articles and insights about accelerating tech startup customer acquisition. The site published several detailed case studies of demand generation efforts
- The concept of "growth hacking" is examined by Bronson Taylor and in an ebook by GrowthHacker.tv's Taylor and Neil Patel; Shanelle Mullin compiles early posts on growth hacking to define the discipline and dispel some myths about growth
- Mark Hayes's Growth Hacking Sourcebook provides a comprehensive overview of tactics, organized by AAARR objective
- Zach Bulygo provides a comprehensive list of resources for learning about growth marketing
- Startup metrics discussed in this classic presentation by serial entrepreneur and angel investor Dave McClure, in which he describes his "AARRR" framework: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue
- Dave King on using Optimizely for A/B testing
- Posts on A/B testing and conversion rate optimization by Oli Gardner; Gardner again and again; Dustin Sparks; Brian Dean; Craig Sullivan; Steven Walsh; Brad Tiller; Eric Sloan; Jason Davis; Greg Digneo; Samuel Hulick; Michael Zipursky; Pratik Dholakiya; Peep Laja; Stavros Korokithakis; Eric Sloan again; Gregory Ciotti; Zach Bulygo and Sean Work; Siddharth Deswal; and Robin Johnson
- KISSmetrics' Zach Bulygo presents 100 case studies of conversion rate optimization; Qualaroo offers a 12-chapter beginners' guide to conversion rate optimization
- Eric Siu offers tips for structuring A/B tests; Lance Kidwell on the same topic with specific application to landing pages
- Landing page critiques from Amanda Durepos and Oli Gardner
- Jen Havice presents a cautionary tale of a summer wasted as a beginner running A/B tests on a low-traffic website; Optimizely's Kyle Rush counters the myth that low traffic precludes A/B testing by early-stage startups; statistical significance calculator for A/B tesing from Jeff Pickhardt
- Sean Work of KISSmetrics and Zach Bulygo describe best practices of high-converting websites
- Fred Wilson describes conversion metric targets for social media companies
- Presentation by Cindy Alvarez of KISSmetrics on conversion rate benchmarks for different types of web businesses (warning: big download). Data is from 2011, but probably still relevant for many segments
- Avinash Kaushik describes key metrics for small, medium-sized, and large ecommerce sites and offers three techniques for analyzing website conversion rates
- Cindy Alvarez on how to analyze reasons for low signup rates
- Design firm slicedbread on when to use A/B testing vs. qualitative user research
- Case study by Luke Wroblewski on how Twitter boosted sign-ups through gradual engagement
- Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, on statistical significance in A/B testing
- David Skok on customer acquisition funnel optimization
- Josh Porter of HubSpot explains why A/B testing shouldn't be limited to small changes
- This infographic from FormStack (via Boston Innovation) analyzes the anatomy of a perfect landing page
- Comprehensive list of conversion rate optimization tactics from Brian Dean
- A post I wrote on virality and network effects
- Adam Nash on virality coefficients
- Andrew Chen on viral loops
- Bustle.com founder/CEO Bryan Goldberg lists the 20 most viral startups of the decade and tracks their long-term performance
- Rahul Vohra of Rapportive on modeling viral growth.
- Mark Suster interviews Buzzfeed's Jon Steinberg, discussing strategies for building website virality
- Mashable on how startups build online communities
- Viral marketing analytics, including viral coefficients, explained by David Skok of Matrix Partners; Skok on the science behind viral marketing
- Vin Vacanti of Yipit on ways to drive virality
- Google SEO Starter Guide
- RavenTools on what to expect at the start of an AdWords campaign
- Avinash Kaushik on how to use Facebook advertising
- Google videos about SEM
- Steve Macdonald on boosting conversion with email marketing
- The book Inbound Marketing by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah offers advice on how to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to drive traffic to a website; presentation by Mike Volpe of HubSpot on this topic
- Drift's Dave Gerhardt offers lessons learned about content marketing
- How to Map Content to The Buyer's Journey, Julie Kukesh
- Posts on inbound/content marketing by entrepreneur Ross Simmonds and Henneke Duistermaat
- Content Marketing for Startups: A Blueprint to Get Started Right, Nextview Ventures
- Get Found Using Inbound Marketing, David Skok
Social Media Marketing
- 7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy, Michael Petterson
- 42 Posts on Social Media Marketing Strategies, Jason Acidre
- 10 Tactics for Launching a Product Using Social Media, Joan Schneider
- First Round Review interviews Facebook's Caryn Marooney, Square's Khobi Brooklyn, and Marked Point's Jennifer Hirsch
- Posts on effective PR tactics and trends in PR by Jennifer Jacobson; Vanessa Camones; Jess Champion; Conrad Egusa; Peter Kazanjy; Natalie Bartlett; Leo Widrich; and Katie Burke
- Brooke Hammerling of Brew Media Relations interviewed by First Round Review
- Mark Suster on why startups should not launch at major tech events like SXSW
- Susanna Gebauer of exploreB2B on managing PR
- Chris Dixon offers tips on interacting with the press
- Mark Suster on how startups should use PR
- Joel Spolsky and Charlie O'Donnell each discuss the pros and cons of launching at a conference like SXSW
- TechCrunch post on PR impact of SXSW launches of Twitter and Foursquare.
- Mark Suster of GRP Partners on how to manage relationships with journalists
- Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis on why you should fire your public relations firm
- TechCrunch's Michael Arrington on public relations in Silicon Valley.
- Xobni founder Matt Brezina on how to drive early traffic through PR strategies. Be sure to follow link in post to slideshow.
- Erica Swallow offers 10 tips for managing startup PR
- Kim Shandrow on logo design
- Cezary Pietrzak offers tips on naming a startup; Andrus Purde of Achoo on the same topic
- Mike Troiano offers startup branding tips
- Fred Wilson and Dharmesh Shah each offer advice on how to name a startup
- Rules for naming a web startup by SEOmoz.org
- Mashable post on naming your startup
- Calacanis on naming your startup; his podcast on the same topic
- A SaaS Marketing Plan for High Growth Companies by Matthew Buckley
- Business development veteran Tamara Steffens on ways to drive app installs
- Tanuj Mendiratta on A/B testing for mobile commerce
- Andrew Chen on low retention rates for mobile apps
- Adam Nash on native apps vs. mobile web
- Post on marketing mobile apps by Matt Palmer; Alex Austin on the same topic
- John Koetsier shares pointers for marketing a mobile app