A vital link: how to locate a startup company

Arielle Jackson spent nearly nine years at Google and is in charge of marketing for Gmail, Docs, calendar, voice, and other products. Then she switched to square. Under her leadership, square stand, a new hardware product, went to the market. After joining the android standby screen application cover, she continued to work on the development of marketing and communication plans. She made full use of all she had learned, and built cover into a personalized and valuable product. Today, she serves as a consultant for many startups to help them solve marketing problems.

As she said,Marketing requires a high degree of strategic consideration. Many people do not agree with this.For the founders, all work can be traced and specific frameworks and steps are provided for their reference, it helps them clearly explain what their company or product is doing, why they are important, and why consumers should pay for them.

Jackson shared her experience here, telling entrepreneurs how to position products and how to develop company assets that suit their characteristics (including names that resonate ), as well as eye-catching new product releases (whether new companies or new products ).

(1) company Positioning

The core of positioning is a statement. It is to use one or two sentences to clearly define the problems solved by your product and why your solution is convincing. Positioning Statement has a significant impact on the following: recruitment, product development, and brand value promotion.All of this begins with positioning.

"Users must be taken into account when considering product positioning," Jackson said. "This should take into account your potential users, evaluate product strengths and weaknesses, and fully consider your competitors. There are already so many products on the market that people are very busy. You must be familiar with yourself ."

"You cannot satisfy everyone, but you can try to satisfy the needs of some people ."

So what should the Positioning Statement look like? Jackson recommends you to see positioning. This is a basic marketing guide and many good suggestions are mentioned. In particular, Jackson learned from her supervisor, Christopher Escher, as an assistant to Google's product marketing manager:

For (target customer)

To(Target customer)

Who(Statement of need or opportunity ),

Those(Potential user statement,

(Product Name) * is a * (product category)

(Product name)Yes(Product category)

That(Statement of key benefit ).

Yes(Statement of core competitiveness ).

Unlike(Competing alternative)

Unlike(Alternative competitors)

(Product Name) (statement of primary differentiation ).

(Product Name) (statement of major differences ).

By applying this framework, you can explain your products or services as clearly as possible. Of course, some preparations are required. The following questions help you get a specific Positioning Statement:

• How does your product/service work different from others?

• Why do you choose this method?

• What is the maximum scope of your potential customers? You can first define "Android users" or "people without cars", then try to describe them more specifically, and finally describe your typical users.

• What difficulties do these customers encounter in product experience? Give a specific description as clearly as possible. What kind of sentiment do these customers have?

• How do other enterprises solve similar problems? Do not just list your competitors, but also compare your strengths and weaknesses.

• Avoid confusing words. If we use a word to describe the positioning statement, it should be "human (what people can understand )".

With the answers to the above questions, various companies can write their own positioning statements. Amazon's early Positioning Statement is a good sample:

ForInternet users

ThoseThose who like books,

AmazonIsRetailers

YesMore than 1.1 million books are provided instantly.

UnlikeTraditional book retailers,

Amazon has the advantage of being convenient, inexpensive, and diverse.

For example outside the tech field, Harley-David son (the world's famous motorcycle brand) also publicly shared their Positioning Statement:

The only thing that can make heavy-duty and loud roarOf

Motorcycle Manufacturer

MainForUS Region

Male men (and their worships)

In this age of lack of personal freedom

TheyWant to relive the cowboy dream in the West

As you can see, the format can be flexible, as long as you grasp the key content. We do not want you to use this field word by word in the market or in advertisements. Our goal is to inspire people inside the company to make them consistent with your point of view, in this way, they will be more willing to help customers and meet their needs.

Some people confuse tagline with positioning statements. In fact, they have different purposes: they are external, but their meanings are consistent with those of positioning statements. Harley has a publicity term: "American by birth. Rebel by choice. (born in the United States, choose rebellion )". The same meaning is packaged in a more concise and refined language.

"In general, the first person to enter the market will have a certain advantage, because it will make people have a memory point. If you can achieve the first and the best one at the same time, it would be great, but it would be too difficult. So if not, it doesn't matter. Positioning statements can help you send the right information to the right people at the right time, "Jackson said.

This is especially useful if your product is saturated in the market or a dominant competitor has appeared. A powerful Positioning Statement can help you find a space suitable for your own survival: it is a perfect product with more additional value, a larger discount, or a type of customer. Like NyQuil, you have successfully positioned yourself as a cough syrup that allows a cold patient to take at night.

"From the very beginning, you have been clearly positioned to get twice the result with half the effort ."

Jackson pointed out that the company's positioning is even more important than the company's name. The company name and the information you finally spread, including the website, brand, and even product features, can all be derived from positioning.

The most important thing is that good positioning can provide great help during the communication and fundraising, so we should finalize the issue as soon as possible. As Jackson said, "I think people will have a clear impression of everything in your company if you mention positioning statements in your fundraising speech ."

When talking about products and positioning, which one should give priority to? Jackson's answer is that these two parts should be parallel.

"You can't make a good position before you know what products you are doing, but I think the positioning will penetrate into the product, and vice versa ."

From the very beginning, cover's founding team wanted to replace Android's traditional screen lock and be able to use apps that android has, but iOS or other platforms do not. That's all.

"At that time, we only identified some basic functions, but we knew nothing about what the entire application would look like. However, once the positioning is clearly defined, what functions need to be set up will help us win the Target customers-Android users who have installed countless apps will become very clear. At the same time, it also affects the construction of the website, so that it can be changed ."

Many companies often skip one step when drafting their positions: evaluate their competitors carefully.This is incorrect. As Jackson said, "it is important to find your position in a cloud environment like competitors. Generally, a good analogy can help you better describe your products/services. When the first car appeared, it was advertised as a horse-less carriage. in a reliable way, it explained something that was hard for people to understand at the time ."

"Through comparison, people can understand what is new and different from what they have seen before ."

However, some specific languages can only target specific audiences. For example, "like Uber for X (uber in the X field)" may only be understood by people in the tech field. Therefore, when you make an overall positioning statement for your company or product, you may need to adjust it when trying to develop a new customer base.

"You Can Make A Positioning Statement for hippies in San Francisco and adopt another method for other customers, but you always want to have a general positioning statement that is 10 thousand usable ." Let your company/product find a breakthrough in the market and it should not be changed.

With the above framework and difficulties in drafting positioning statements, your product may be faulty. Especially when you cannot identify your target market, or it is difficult to explain how your tasks are different from other people, you should go back and continue to make preparations. "If your product can catch the customer's eye and meet people's needs, a proper positioning statement will naturally flow out. If you have ears, it is a warning for you ."

(2) Company Name

One of the challenges faced by young startups is to select a good name, which should reflect the quality of products/services, attract customers, successfully register domain names, and gain media recognition. This is like an impossible task. Jackson has seen many companies break their heads when naming them. Her own system can break this myth.

There are three routes to choose from:

• Descriptive: clearly represents your business. For example, whole foods, Toys "R" Us and PayPal.

• Suggestive: uses a metaphor to draw your business or product out of suggestion or association. For example, Amazon refers to a huge river (with extremely rich products), mint, and coin Mills.

• Hypothetical: there is no direct connection with the company's products. Such as Adobe and apple.

"If you want to know the differences, see the well-known web browsers. Internet Explorer directly describes what it is. Safari has the meaning of hunting. It is a hint, which means exploring this idea. Then Firefox, which has nothing to do with the Internet ."

A novel name may take some risks, but it also has some advantages: unforgettable, and it is easier to register through trademark domain names and other types. However, you must be willing to take on more work to sell and promote products and services. "You must be prepared to resonate with each other through a lot of explanations and marketing work to create an association between your name and your business. Using other methods, descriptive or suggestive names, you can share part of the positioning work ."

According to Jackson, when you decide which naming scheme to adopt, you should ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the name of the company/product of the relevant company or competitor?You will want to distinguish it from them. For example, if your company is paying, you will want to avoid the word "pay", because too many companies use this word in their names, this makes it hard for customers to remember you clearly.

• What brand value do you want to convey?It may be a simple, secure word.

• Do you want to have a domain name exactly the same as the name, or can you use a verb and a noun as many companies do?For example, squareup.com of square, trycaviar.com of caviar, and meetearnest.com of earnest.

These principles can help you, but sitting down and brainstorming, naming is still a task of tossing people. In this case, Jackson suggested that the creators return to their Positioning Statement.

"First, prepare three buckets with three labels: 'descriptive ', 'suggestive', and 'novelty. Open your mind. You may fall in love with a name you find by chance ."

Second, split the Positioning Statement You wrote into nouns and verbs. Create a complete synonym list for each word with an independent meaning. "You can query thesaurus.com. In this way, you have a large list. Then you can try different combinations ." Jackson has the following suggestions:

Realistic words:New Use of old words (such as Apple, gain, square)

Compound Words:Combine the two words (Salesforce, Facebook)

Converged words:A part of a word is combined with a part of another word (Pinterest, Microsoft)

Suffixes:Add a suffix (blogger, contently) such as er or ly to the end of some words)

Truncation:Part of a word (Cisco is taken from San Francisco)

Other languages:Use other languages to express what you want (Reebok, asana)

"You will want to brainstorm. Most of the time, entrepreneurs are alone in doing this, or they can only discuss it with their co-founders. This is a good starting point, but you will definitely want to bring together your employees, family members, and friends to come up with an idea. Come up with your options and see how different people will respond ."

In this brainstorm, you should consider the following in sequence (based on actual and creative reasons ):

1. Trademark and domain name availability

2. Uniqueness

3. Can it reflect the key information to be conveyed?

4. Nice to listen to or easy to pronounce (more important than you think)

5. Appearance)

6. Length (two-syllable words may be better, because they are not too long, but more distinctive than monosyllabic words)

These sounds simple, but they are actually the key to success. "Do people tend not to think about it. Is it easy to spell it? Is it easy to access ?" She pointed out that moving loot in the second-hand furniture market is a good example. This name sounds a bit difficult. In fact, these two words are easy to pronounce and be remembered.

Finally, sometimes people tend to look at a name, even if it is not ideal. To prevent this situation, Jackson suggested selecting an exaggerated name as the transition. You know it will not be used in the end.

(3) brand asset integration

To create a comprehensive brand, we need logos, webpages, videos, and so on.Creative brief)Start.

In a limited time and space, it can provide all the information you need to help define the company's overall image, or a special feature/product.

"The creative briefing will document content that guides the creative work. You can use it to develop your assets and help your company go to the market. Some people don't think it is necessary to write it down, as long as they have a meeting with creative organizations or internal innovation teams. However, in my experience, writing it down is really useful. It not only helps people who work with you for this purpose, but also helps you further internalize What You Want To Express ."

Entrepreneurs generally have a low budget and may need to contract all their creative jobs. In this case, the creative briefing is more useful. With it, it is equivalent to finding a good creative agency.

In a sense, the "Briefing" is standardized.: Define target customers: the people you want to impress and the power (logo, website, promotional materials, videos, and so on) You need to achieve this goal ). But as Jackson said, you don't want your expression to be too straightforward, and you want to leave a space of fun and inspiration.

"The idea briefing should be like this-Brief !"

"The creative briefing should have only one or two pages, and I have heard some agencies make it clear that they will not accept more than one page of documents. The product background, what you want to do, your time and budget, and the competitive environment should be conveyed as directly as possible ."

A comprehensive creative briefing should contain the following content:

• Background: The name of your company or product, a brief description of what it can do and what value it can create, and a simple startup plan.

• Audience: Your target audience consists of two parts: the characteristics of your target object and a portrait of a typical customer.

• Positioning: Positioning Statement without modification.

• Competition statistics: A list of five to ten competing companies, marked as the most important competitor. You can simply add a sentence to describe how they overlap with your business.

• Information: Key Points about products/companies that you want your customers to learn most about. If you have already figured out a publicity term, you can also include it.

• Current perception: If your product has been put on the market, what do people think about it? Be as objective as possible, including whether you want to change this view.

• Brand attributes: List the adjectives that you feel can accurately describe your company's personality and make it a list.

• Inspiration: List any brand, logo, promotion word, website or advertisement you like. Quickly explain the reasons you like and what you want to incorporate into your creative work (such as clean fonts and abstract patterns ). This helps provide early directions.

• Deliverables: You only want one logo? Or is it a complete brand image that includes fonts, colors, and brand guidelines? A website? A video? Determine what you want to complete the process as soon as possible.

• Delivery Date: Determine the exact deadline for the text and the final delivery, so that everything can be mastered. After communication, ensure that the operator agrees to the schedule.

• Budget: It is particularly important, especially for external collaboration, whether it is contractors, agency companies or creative companies. Stick to your budget.

• Signature: Find out who is responsible for reviewing and approving various deliverables. One person is responsible for this.

"Many times, the creative briefing does not include competitor information, because the customers think that the Agency will do the investigation, but if you can provide the relevant information, it can save the time and money they spent doing this. You also want to see the first draft as soon as possible ."

Clearly defining the audience of your products and typical customers can also help speed up the pace. "Your target audience is a broad concept. They are the target audience of your products or services. If Zipcar is used as an example, it is 'people without cars living in the City '. This is still a broad concept ."

Further subdivision of large ethnic groups has many advantages.

"Describe your perfect user details. If you do everything right, you should be sure to win the coupons for them ."

"When talking about user experience, people often mention" personas (character roles ). For example, you said, "Sally, she is 31 years old and lives in San Francisco. She cares about the environment. She used to have a Prius, but the maintenance cost was too high, so she donated it. Now she will rent a car on Zipcar to get out of town on weekends. 'In this way, people who see your creative briefing will clearly know what this person is and what drives them to make their choices ."

This does not mean that the company or product will only suck people like Sally, but it does have an advantage and will attract more people like Sally. Jackson said, "you can start to ask yourself these questions: So, is this our audience? How do we introduce ourselves to them? How can they remember us? How can we attract them ?"

(4) Preparations for launch

Both launch and publicity activities require critical information to explain the above-mentioned questions. To get pure and concise news and help you express your point of view more loudly and clearly, you can refer to the following two acronyms:

SOCO (single overriding communications objective, the most important communication goal): Whether it is to improve brand recognition or simply make a promotional video, you will want to clearly spread the most important information. This information is only one, so keep this in mind.

SOCA (single overriding communications avoidance, top priority avoidance objective): Opposite to SOCO, this is what you want to avoid most during the communication process. You absolutely don't want users or reporters to know, whether it's information, weakness, problems, or debt. Every person who represents your company to introduce products should keep your SOCA in mind.

One example of SOCO is Dropbox, which made a commitment in the Early Days: "it just works ". It expresses the brand's hopes: concise, secure, and reassuring.

A good example of SOCA is that you are no different from other cloud security solutions. Jackson recalled that during cover, the problem would be serious if the services they provided would impede or interfere Android users with using apps on their mobile phones. Therefore, the company's external information focuses on making it easier for users to use.

Your other key information should be centered around your SOCO. For example, in an interview with a reporter, No matter what questions they ask, your answers should be linked to the goals or ideas you want people to remember.

Jackson suggested compiling all the information into a file, including questions and answers that may be asked. At Google, each product has its own comms DOC (communication document). Any internal team member can click here to learn how to talk about the product, who is it and why it is useful or important.

"Whatever you launch, you need to brainstorm and collect as many questions as possible from people you know and trust. Put them in the file together with the answers you have conceived. Then, if you encounter a problem that you have not prepared, add it to the file, even after the start of the company, continue to do so. It should be an ever-updated and increasingly rich document ."

The purpose of doing so is not to remember everything before the interview, but to make a simple learning guide. You should always review it, so that you do not have to prepare in advance every time, you can also hit the key points. You must be able to flexibly switch the topic to what you are good.

"At last, your brand, your product, and the way you introduce it should make you feel comfortable and natural. To do this, you must first clarify your position. Everything comes from this. If you are right, you have reason to believe that you will listen and respond positively to you ."

A vital link: how to locate a startup company