Beyond the Pitch Deck: Understanding Marketing Strategy for Startup Founders

As founders, our focus is often on securing investment. As such, we fall into the trap of believing that our pitch deck doubles as our marketing strategy. To achieve significant and sustainable growth, we should use a more focused approach to marketing. This was one of the central themes in our recent Fractional Marketing Masterclass with Openspace’s portfolio companies. Openspace Ventures is a leading venture capital firm focused on supporting innovative Southeast Asian companies.

Your Pitch Deck Is Not Your Marketing Strategy

While a well-crafted pitch deck is essential for capturing investor interest, it does not cover the full scope of a comprehensive marketing strategy. A pitch deck typically provides a snapshot of the problem, solution, business model, financial projections and growth potential, all aimed at building investor confidence. A robust marketing strategy requires a much deeper understanding of your target audience, competitive landscape, and the channels where you can engage potential customers.

Why Narrow Targeting is Important at the Beginning and How to Grow Your Audience Over Time

In our discussion, we spoke about the importance of focusing on narrow target customer segments during the early stages, rather than immediately chasing large addressable markets. This is a common struggle for many founders as they want to target a broad audience right from the start in order to boost revenues and attract investment. Targeting a large market is important in the long term, but it should not be the focus initially. You need to first engage your innovators and early adopters as they are drawn to novelty, new tech and being ahead of the curve. Therefore, crafting your messaging to highlight how your product is breaking new ground will appeal to them. Once they begin using your product, early revenue streams will follow, and they will provide valuable feedback to help you refine and improve your offering.

As you prepare to cross the chasm to reach the early majority with your refined product, it may be tempting to broaden your messaging to appeal to everyone. This is a big no-no because the personality traits of the early majority differ from the late majority. The early majority is more likely to buy from you before the mainstream if they are convinced that your product has been tested, refined and provides real value. Therefore, your messaging should include social proof and credibility from customers who have already adopted your product.

By growing your audience incrementally and targeting key segments in phases, you are better positioned to eventually capture your full addressable market, fully utilising your marketing budget and giving your investors more confidence to invest. 

Your Vision and Emotional Connection Are Key to Winning Over Customers

Founders are often driven by personal experiences as consumers. When creating your value proposition, do not just focus on the problem and solution. Instead, integrate your vision in a way that deeply resonates with the audience. Explaining why it matters from your point of view can create an emotional connection with your customers. Every day, we are bombarded with thousands of messages and ads, and we forget most of them. To make your value proposition stand out and stick, you need to tell a story that sparks strong emotions because people tend to remember ads that tug at their hearts. With attention being so scarce and brands are fighting for attention, we need to keep improving our storytelling to drive business results. 

When Should You Scale Your Marketing

Knowing when to scale marketing is important for startups to ensure sustainable growth without exhausting resources. Here are 3 key criteria:

1) Flywheel Effect

One indicator is when your flywheel is consistently lowering your customer acquisition cost. Examples of a flywheel include:

• Viral loops that grow your user base and habit loops that boost retention, such as in the case of Calendly, an online appointment scheduling software.

• Content that drives website traffic and builds top-of-funnel awareness, similar to HubSpot’s strategy of producing valuable sales and marketing content to help businesses grow.

• Building a community around the problem your product solves.

If your marketing efforts are increasingly efficient, it is a sign that scaling could further drive growth without increasing your acquisition costs.

2) Monetisation

Another criterion is when your customer lifetime value exceeds your customer acquisition cost. This ensures that the revenue generated from each customer supports marketing expansion and future investment.

3) Market Saturation 

Finally, saturating your early adopter audience is a good signal that it is time to shift focus towards broader segments such as the early majority. This means you have captured a significant share of innovators and now have the opportunity to expand your messaging to appeal to a larger audience. 

By meeting at least two of these criteria, you can scale marketing with greater confidence.

If you want to know more about building your startup marketing strategy, reach out to the team at Fractional.