Flat-out: start-ups won’t succeed without having strong marketing and PR programs in place to support product/s and the business (translation: limited to no customer/client acquisition).

In 2014, I left corporate America due to micro-management work styles. I ventured into start-up land, only to find that start-up leaders are even worse micro-managers. And, many of them are a fresh or a few years out of colleague with zero management experience.

The success of a start-up depends on a number of factors, so take note:

1. Marketing audits – After the product is ready to go-to market, the business strategy is place, headcount and budgetary resources are nailed down, a marketing audit needs to be conducted. What needs to be looked at is:
   – What is your key demographic/s, what are they looking for from brands like yours, what are they not looking for?
   – Who are your competitors (both direct and in-direct)?
   – What are they doing in the social space, email, web and mobile? Check their Alexa and Klout scores, read their product reviews.
   – Where are they seeing success? Capitalize on what they are doing, and one-up them.
   – Where are they not seeing success. Another opportunity exists to out-do them.
2. Consultation – Start-ups won’t survive without hiring an experienced marketing and/or PR strategist to help them define and refine their brand identity, messaging, message targeting and customer/client acquisition. Too often, I see young start-up CEOs throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping it sticks and then calling it strategy or strategic tactics. They are neither. They are blind set-ups for failure.
3. Experienced marketers and PR pros – These are the guys and gals who take you from Rocky 1 to Rocky 5 without as much as the bat of an eyelash. Ideally, you want someone who has a corporate background in both internal and external marketing and PR/communications roles; someone who is strategic, a project manager and a writer; someone who understands who to make things work on a shoe-string budget and report out on ROI. Someone who has experience with start-up marketing is helpful, but NOT necessary. We, marketers, are smart and catch on quick.
4. Growing junior talent – Most of the time, hiring a senior or season marketing and/or PR pro doesn’t work for start-ups. There is too much change in a short period of time, too many ups-and-downs, and way too much stress for an experienced pro to stay sane (at least early on, a seasoned pro may work for a late-stage start-up). They’ve been through this early in their career, and are looking for more stability. Because start-ups need in-house marketing support, hiring and growing junior talent with the help, counsel and mentoring of a consultant is the best bet.
5. Micro-management from the top – This is the top reason start-ups fail. CEOs, COOs or CTOs at start-ups DO NOT – I repeat DO NOT – understand marketing, or if they do have a strong background in marketing (this is rare, like a needle in a haystack), they don’t have the time to focus and nurture a branding and promotional program in support of their business. Start-up leaders need to step back, trust marketing experts and hold consultants and junior accountable when the time comes. Start-up leaders, don’t micro-manage marketing strategy or tactics. You don’t have the time to do this, and in most cases, you don’t have the expertise.

As always, these tips are based on my experience, and conversations I’ve had with colleagues and contacts in the marketing and PR field.

There may be situations where a different approach works, but I’ve found with the handful of start-ups I’ve been asked to pitch to, and worked with, that this is the song-and-dance.

Start-up guys, it’s time to change the song, and step to the side to allow real experts to Cha-Cha slide you to success.

I don’t need to tell marketers and small business owners what they already know: You’re so busy that you barely have time to blink before something else gets slopped on your plate in a manner messier than the old cafeteria lunch lady.

This how-to is going to focus on SEM, search engine marketing, so before you consider this component to your overall marketing and website traffic driving strategy, you should already have considered and implemented plans for SEO, social media, email marketing and content strategy. See my previous blog posts.

SEM is really a supplement to organic marketing plans and traffic. A website’s traffic really shouldn’t be compromised of more than 10%-20% SEM traffic. For instance, if your website receives 20,000 monthly visitors, then you want to have 10% or less of that traffic via SEM.

This is only my experience, and it will vary per each individual’s expertise and industry, but I’ve had the most success with SEM campaigns run on Google AdWords – this was before the express version was even rolled out. I’ve used Bing and Yahoo some, but Google is the world’s top search engine (that’s all I should need to say).

The reason that I love the Express version is that so much of the manual process has been removed, thank God. Adios to the burdensome SEO keyword research. Bye-bye to the complicated dashboard to build campaigns (the UX was like navigating through the 9th circle of hell). No need to get on the phone with a Google rep. to refine and re-tinker your campaign every month or so.

OK, let’s step-by-step this out:

1. You need a Gmail account.
2. Go to http://www.google.com/adwords/express.
3. Select create a new ad.
4. Select your audience.
5. Target by distance from your business.
6. Target by city, state or country.
7. Select the language you want to advertise in.
8. Select the product or service you want to advertise. Go to Google itself and type your product or service first and see what auto-populates to identify your different, top search options. The idea being you want to go with the option that gives you the largest potential audience in the pop-up screen on the right-hand side of the screen.
9. After selecting the product or service option, it will give you several options to show your ad to people searching Google for… For instance, when I type “marketing,” these options come up: marketing, advertising, marketing mix, marketing plan, what is marketing, online marketing, marketing strategy, direct marketing, marketing definition. The more options you check, the larger your potential audience becomes.
10. If you’ve gotten to your largest potential audience, then hit next.
11. Write a headline, text and include your website link and a phone number to call (optional). No need to get fancy with these items. In fact, use as many keywords from the previous exercise as possible.
    Move to the next screen, input your credit card info and the ad will go live.

You will receive a dozen of so pages or search phrases, and you will be shown the views and ad clicks for each search term. Refine your ad as needed with this data. With regard to ROI, you will see overview views, ad clicks, amount spent and visits from the ad, as well as average time spent on your site and average number of pages viewed.

I recommend a monthly budget of 1,000 with a daily budget of $33 per day. Once your ad is up-and-running give it 2-3 days to reach maxium impact then get into the dashboard and spend an hour or so looking at its impact. Make adjustments as needed. Keep in mind, the more money you spend and the more often you refine your campaign, the better your results.

Overall, you are looking at about 1-2 hours of time commitment to get the ad campaign set-up. You are looking at another 1-2 hours once the campaign is running for a few days. After that, you should spend 15-20 minutes every day or every other day checking your ROI dashboard.

Good luck!