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If I build it, they will come. One of the most egregious mistakes new entrepreneurs make is ascribing to this cardinal, early-stage marketing assumption. In crowded verticals, which is nearly every vertical, save for those few emerging technologies that hit the market every so often, this is a grave strategic error. This is also common across development- and product-oriented startups and companies.
The truth is, a company must start with market orientation, now called customer centricity. In 1998, Rohit Deshpande, a Baker Foundation Professor and Emeritus at Harvard Business School, introduced the term. Renowned “Father of Management” Peter Drucker, in The Practice of Management, published in 1954, stated, “It is the customer who determines what a business is.” Let’s dig in.
Related: 5 Mistakes To Avoid in Your Digital Marketing
Start with market orientation
Customer obsession is the key to great marketing. And marketing is far more than advertising and tactics. The “Promotion” tenet of the Four Ps of marketing, now termed omnichannel or integrated marketing communications, is not where you should start.
Returning to Drucker, he defines marketing, whether digital or traditional, as “The whole business seen from the point of view of its final result, that is, from the customer’s point of view.”
Start with getting market-oriented. In other words, don’t jump straight into tactics such as social media planning and campaign building.
Reflect on the 2003 research put out by Deshpande and the late John U. Farley, a former director of Wharton’s Lauder Institute and emeritus professor of marketing, in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.
The study looked at the top-performing firms, over 600 of them, across industrialized nations and compared them to the largest, most successful firms in the then-B.R.I.C. (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies.
The researchers concluded, regardless of location, those top, high-performing organizations all had the same “success profile.”
The profile, of course, centered around being customer-obsessed, rather than product or technology-centric.
Talk to your market
Another common, and dangerous, pitfall new entrepreneurs make is not taking the time to connect with their target market before developing a software product and marketing plan.
When personas evolve from authentic stories relayed by actual buyers in the form of one-on-one interviews, you can best capture the buyer’s expectations.
Too often, development teams and product-led organizations fall into the trap of making sweeping assumptions about their market.
Relaying past experience, this can end up wasting resources and valuable time in the market as you grapple with a product or service that fails to meet customer expectations.
Don’t make the mistake of assuming you know your market better than the buyers themselves.
Weak strategic positioning
Weak positioning will kill your idea from the start. It is one of the most overlooked strategic marketing pillars new entrepreneurs make in marketing, including myself, years before I founded Selzy.
From a high-level perspective, positioning is your outward-facing why. Why should a buyer — B2C, B2B or otherwise — purchase from you instead of competitors?
Customer behavior — human behavior — searches for reference points. Then our brains catalog, sort, assess and then make a purchase based on personal or advised (think B2B buying groups) criteria.
Reflect on this because the essence of your positioning lives within your company’s messaging, website copy, sales collateral, one-on-one conversations and so on. It’s embedded in everything, and in the beginning, it will be tantamount to how your brand is perceived as a whole until market awareness takes hold.
So take heed and don’t make the mistake of glossing over this strategic pillar within your digital marketing strategy.
To build strong positioning, start by assessing the market category in which you are competing. Scan the competitive landscape and take comprehensive notes on competing products, product names, key selling points and features. And review competitor ads and creative, if available.
From this, you can then build a SWOT analysis, or use a similar analysis framework, to assess internal strengths and weaknesses against available market opportunities and threats.
This market research and competitive analysis is the only route to establishing a strong position in the market that stands out from the competition. And remember, positioning isn’t just about the messaging and product.
Pricing, promotional activities and distribution all affect how consumers perceive your product in the market. Be authentic and be customer-centric.
Related: 5 Steps to Position Your Brand for Maximum Success
Nail, then scale
This is a critical adage most entrepreneurs may know from the 2011 bestselling book, Nail It Then Scale It by Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom. However, the principle isn’t just to be applied generally to a lean startup or product launch.
It’s easy to get caught up in blitzkrieg tactics. With enough capital and proper resource allocation, you can dominate impression-share, run advertising across a multitude of channels and drive awareness to global heights.
Not only can this get expensive, but what are the future ramifications? What if your messaging doesn’t resonate? What if onboarding isn’t a smooth process? What if things within your product are rough around the edges or broken?
You risk tarnishing your brand reputation and unnecessarily generating chaos for your entire go-to-market team.
Start with what I call “sample-size marketing.” Test your marketing assumptions, the market research and positioning. Allocate your budget in phases until you see digital activation, conversions or trial users.
Once you recognize something resonating, and you feel like your process is ironed out, then you scale your spend and shoot for more lofty goals.
When placing dollar-figure allocations to your digital marketing program, you don’t ever want to spray-and-pray. Return on investment is the name of the game.
The lifeblood of trust
Content entrepreneur and speaker Joe Pulizzi, author of over a half-dozen content marketing books, consistently discusses the value transfer in content marketing.
The key to competitive advantage is being proactively trustworthy.
High-quality content drives trust. The issue in the market today is that content carries very little value, save for those thought leaders who really get it. You see them on LinkedIn, at times on Instagram and TikTok, and they’re the ones you tend to follow back and whose content you print out, save and share with colleagues.
But it’s rare. It’s rare because it’s difficult to do on a regular basis.
For that very reason, top-quality content marketing can drive business growth, help establish a market position and build trust in an audience in a format that competitors will often struggle to imitate. What’s more, don’t underestimate the power of original, authentic brand content in an era of AI copy and blogging currently diluting the value to readers and consumers.
Content marketing is the lifeblood of organizations big and small. Don’t make the mistake of overlooking this powerful, brand-building vehicle.
Related: How New Businesses Can Create a Content Marketing Strategy
Emerging from a sea of noise
Successful marketing isn’t about bold assumptions, loud promotions, or racing to scale — it’s about discipline, insight and connection.
It begins with a deep market orientation. It demands that you listen to and learn from your buyers before building or branding. It requires strategic positioning that makes your value unmistakable.
It asks you to validate before you amplify. And throughout it all, it depends on creating meaningful, trust-building content that sets you apart in a sea of noise. The entrepreneurs who win aren’t the ones who just build — they’re the ones who build with their market, not apart from it.
