Go-to-market: Why customer research is the vital ingredient for startup success
In The Pulse's Go-to-market series, startup marketers share their advice and insights on marketing for startups. In this edition, Stella Startup’s Gemma Clancy shares the importance of in-depth customer research, community hacking and product-led growth for early-stage startups.
Stella Startups isn’t your typical marketing agency. They don’t even like being called an agency because it can bring to mind bureaucracy, bias, and way too many meetings. What they are is a team of marketing experts who help early-stage startups build profitable brands minus the overwhelm. Head of Marketing, Gemma Clancy, credits their success to a process that builds essential marketing foundations grounded in customer research before approaching tactical execution.
Over her decade in marketing, Gemma has seen many a startup grapple with how to efficiently allocate their marketing budget for maximum impact. This can see founders create a long list of tactics copied from competitors without any real substance behind them. Instead of adopting a “spray and pray” approach, Gemma says investing in early foundational work can help extract the most value from your marketing budget.
During customer interviews, Gemma says a lot of startups make the mistake of only focusing on product testing or user experience, that’s if they do any research at all. “I’m consistently surprised by how many startups don't do enough customer research, or the kind of customer research they do is just focused on their product, its features, and what they think the customer wants. For example, they show people their app and ask them to use it but they haven’t gone back to the basics of understanding customer needs.”
Gemma’s approach analyses the problem a startup seeks to solve, how the customer describes the problem and solution, and the motivational drivers associated with both. “We need to ask - what is the problem we’re trying to solve? Are we describing that problem the same way as our customers? And how do our customers describe ways to overcome the problem? We also need to understand how it would feel for the customer if that problem was solved for them so we can create that feeling with the solution. Just focusing on the product is a very closed-minded view of how a customer views the problem because there are likely a lot of different ways they can solve it.”
We all like to believe that once we introduce a great solution to our ideal customers, they will jump on it. But Gemma says that part of understanding customer behavior is realising that people are hard-wired to take the easy route and that often means doing nothing at all. “The status quo is usually the most likely outcome. Somebody will have a problem but they won’t do anything about it because it’s easier not to change. It’s important to understand all the intricacies of customer behavior before you introduce your idea or product.”
My email deliverability sucks — how do I fix it?
Worried about your email deliverability? First things first: It's probably your fault, writes Travis Hazlewood, Head of Email Deliverability at Ortto.
The first step to finding the solution to a deliverability issue is admitting that it may be your fault… because it more than likely is. Most non-technical people want to approach technical problems as if something’s broken in the system. But anyone who has worked in technical support can tell you that most support tickets end with educational solutions rather than technical ones. On top of this, the unwillingness to acknowledge the truth is why so much time is wasted waiting to talk to support people.
Beyond all of that, even if there is a broken cog in the machine, it is important to do your due diligence first if you want to speed up any support assistance. Once you can admit that maybe something’s not broken and the solution is likely a learning experience for you, then you can troubleshoot things correctly.
When I help customers, most deliverability issues can be resolved by using the resources already available. What resources should you look for and lean on the most:
Now you have your resources ready, it’s time to ask the important questions.
Co-founder, Head of Communications @ Stella Startups ✨
1ySolid no-nonsense advice for founders. ✨