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However there are a few ideas that change the usual perception of marketing, that can contribute to turning your startup into a unicorn. Hence there is always the great opportunity of learning from the best, from the ones that have been there before and succeeded.

Asaph Sculman is currently the Chief Marketing Officer of FIREBOLT, a big data analytics startup that aims to revolutionize the way businesses use data and he presented a few good marketing practices that they applied for FIREBOLT that brought the best results. One key thing in his approach was proposing activities that did not require a financial effort.

So here is how to market a baby unicorn on a budget:

1. Choose your people wisely!

The first step in any marketing strategy is to have the right person to create and deliver it. As an early stage startup the recommendation would be to get someone that knows a little bit of everything, a „Jane of all trades” as Asaph pointed out with a good understanding of all the main marketing processes. And your Jane needs to be both CREATIVE and ANALYTICAL. Data is really important, while thinking outside the box is too. The more senior you can get, the better, while you need someone that is ready for the hands-on work and also for working by themselves.

How soon do you need to make your first marketing hire? As soon as the product is getting ready to launch! Even better if one of the co-founders can fill in the role as he is much more involved in the startup creation and close to its essence.

If you choose complementary strategy to work together with agencies on specific projects or needs, they have more experience with a larger portfolio of clients and a pool of experts in different marketing areas. There are two important tips that Asaph recommends: make sure you are not the smallest and negligible client the agency has and make sure the person you work with inside the agency is familiar with your product/service and your team, create common working spaces.

2. The impact of webinars

We have all been to at least one webinar held by a fellow company or startup, whether it’s about gaining knowledge, understanding the product, networking purposes or sheer curiosity.

The impact Asaph talks about is a visible increase in the number of participants from webinar to webinar and even more, an increase in meetings set. Webinars are also useful for user generated content, meaning participants tend to share their thoughts and learnings on their social media.

Tips for before:

• Add the question “What questions would you like us to cover?” in the registration form;
• Offer a PRIVATE WEBINAR option for the hot leads that registered;
• Recommend the webinar to the cold leads;
• Dedicate a webpage to the webinar and exit intent pop-ups for registration;
• Do email marketing and ads.

Tips for during:

• Stream Live on social media platforms to engage more people;
• Use poll questions for understanding the audience;
• Make it short and simple (30 min session) so that people do not lose interest;
• Have someone that is responding live to the questions;
• Always have a Q&A at the end.

Tips for after:

• Send all the participants a link with the recording of the webinar;
• In the same email, you can ask them to subscribe to your newsletter;
• Follow up with the participants that were more active in order to set meetings.

Asaph also recommends a different type of webinars → “LIVE PRODUCT DEMO”: talk about your product, what makes it unique, show how it works and answer all questions.

3. Thought leadership on LinkedIn

You might have noticed but in case you did not, Asaph confirms that personal posts on LinkedIn have a way better engagement that company page posts.

Thought leadership means that employees share on their personal profiles posts on different topics related to the company: observations of the market, experiences in the company and personal stories, entertaining posts. Important note: these posts should not explicitly promote the company!

How does this help? This strategy generates organic traffic and followers on the company’s page, private messages and even a constant stream of partnerships and candidates.

How to manage thought leadership on LinkedIn? Set regular meetings with the people involved. A good strategy might even be for the marketing team/manager to prepare the content beforehand and for employees only to share it.

4. What about a Podcast?

One way of starting your own Podcast would be to first participate in other podcasts to get a grip of how things should work. You can either offer to be a guest speaker or to actually financially support an existing podcast in your niche, some of them might be looking for new guests, topics or sponsors.

There is a general perception that hosting podcasts is hard, but actually they might be easier to make than expected, plus it’s worth the effort since the blog content market is already saturated, while podcasts as many as they might be are still a new trend and a more engaging one.

Inviting certain guests to your podcast can develop strong relationships especially if they are prospects for your business. The content created through these can be highly diverse and interesting to listen to, people might even share it and you can also use it many ways like social media posts.

5. The crazy corner

Ellen Sussman, an american journalist and author once said “Perhaps you’re not crazy, but you’re very creative.” and we definitely agree. Any marketing strategy needs some drops of crazy. Creativity will be the one that ultimately will make your business stand out.

Asaph tried a few “crazy” marketing activities that, in FIREBOLT’s case, brought crazy results: thousands of viewers, amazing feedback, social media and website visits; all these while bringing joy and fun into the team.

Their proposal?

• A Spotify playlist dedicated to their customers, that they could listen to while waiting for specific queries;
• Brand Videos: entertaining videos that are not specifically about the product (ex. The Big Data Dilemma)
• Games: creating a game that tells the story of your brand, it can be cheaper than some might think, it’s about finding the right background story and the right person to deliver it, it can even be a freelancer.

TAKEAWAYS

It’s safe to say that FIREBOLT had some great marketing strategies, cheap and creative, that implemented and adapted in the right way sound like they could bring great results to any business.

“If you never copy best practices, you’ll have to repeat all the mistakes yourself. If you only copy best practices, you’ll always be one step behind the leaders.” – Asaph Schulman, CMO FIREBOLT

*Asaph Sculman presented the above strategies during an event powered by Angular Ventures. You can check out the entire recording of the event here: How to Market a Baby Unicorn

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What is media for equity?

This alternative business model is dedicated to startups or scale-ups that do not have a considerably high marketing budget and basically „companies trade equities to media companies in exchange for advertising space”. The media companies end up owning equities but instead of money they offer advertising, the goal being reaching the widest possible audience.

The equation is simple: media space = company shares.

(image source Media for Equity: An untapped investment model for broadcasters and startups in Central Eastern Europe, Grai Ventures)

Media for Equity investment funds can aim for shares from 5% to 15% in exchange for a certain period of media plan implementation and usually they come as venture arms of big media corporations.

The evolution of media for equity

As revolutionary as the concept might seem, paying with shares for media exposure actually originated a long time ago, in the early 2000 there were already a few investment funds that were using media to help startups grow. Firebox was one of the first startups that used the media for equity strategy right from the start and today earns millions of pounds per year.

As the trend grew nowadays there are a big variety of media funds and TV stations with corporate funds and the media sold spread from TV space to radio and outdoor advertising. A good contemporary example could be ABOUT YOU, one of the fastest growing fashion-tech startups in Europe, valued at more than 1 billion dollars, launched in 2014, started using media for equity in 2016 which brought them national exposure and pushed them to expand internationally.

The collaboration for media for equity

In order for media for equity to work it needs the active collaboration of multiple stakeholders: the startups, the venture, the media companies and media agencies.

Vinay Solanki (head of Channel 4 Ventures), Marta Zuska (head of BD at NextTECHnow), Dennis Ahrling (principal at German Media Pool) and Chris Sheldrick (co-founder & CEO at what3words) sat down together at a panel to discuss the model of media for equity, telling the story of their own experiences in this field, organised by Grai

The first concern that was raised is that oftentimes companies do not invest enough in awareness marketing out of the fear of being too expensive or hard to track, there being a certain „it may not work” culture. 

That is where media for equity steps in, since the startups do not need to invest money they don’t have or money they can potentially lose and the investors are also more interested in the highest exposure possible so that the startups can actually succeed.

There are two types of media for equity investors:

• Independent funds: they form a partnership with media companies and agencies; German Media Pool as an example
• Corporate funds: they are run by a corporation and their legal framework is easier, they are managed by the media company; Channel 4 Ventures, Ad4Ventures by Mediaset Espana, Seven Ventures etc.

There are more ways in which a media for equity company can operate: some of them do not get involved in the creative and strategic part of the campaign, startups rather work with media agencies, but they do offer feedback along the way. While others are involved in building the media campaign from the beginning.

Why use media for equity?

• The variety of startups they can work with is extremely broad, it could work for mainly anything in B2C;
• Media mix, using several channels at the same time to reach the audience – startups could choose from media partners depending on their need, from TV to billboards or radio.
• Expert media planning and adjustable advertising – the plans can be changed over time, till they achieve the goals;
• High quality media.

Why not?

• It is not a model for every kind of startups, it is more suitable for the B2C type of businesses;
• When a startup receives money for equity there is a higher flexibility in how to use them while in this case they only have media capital. 
• The model is not fully adopted in many countries.

Main takeaways

“Media for equity can be very effective: you get access or buy media, just like any other buyer, but instead of paying with cash you pay with shares and we dig around to see if that is fair and create the risk profile. We are a lot like a VC fund, we are looking for making equity returns. But we are creative, flexible but also pragmatic. Our main job and differentiator is to really find companies that can benefit from this model.” – Vinay Solanki, head of Channel 4 Ventures.

Chris Sheldrick on the other hand is one that benefited directly from the media for equity model, what3words gaining a high national exposure, they wanted to be present in the mind of every single consumer and they managed to. He says that a company gets a lot of credibility when using this type of advertising. “It’s definitely been a great experience for us”.

*The event was powered by Grai Ventures, a digital media and venture building company, that conducted a European study on the matter of media for equity.

**The full whitepaper is now available to download here. 

The concepts covered in this event were: fundraising, challenges associated with it, the main types of players, the different stages of fundraising and process associated, as well as the high-level perspective over valuation of tech intangible assets.

MAIN QUESTIONS AND LEARNING POINTS:

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Why learn about fundraising?

Fundraising, in business and like in many other things in life, is essential, being “the stepping stone to having the resources for the next development stage of the startup”.

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How does fundraising work for tech startups?

For tech startups the game has different rules. A tech startup has it’s value in intangible assets and they can not apply the traditional evaluation methods. Hence analyzing the assets of a tech startup is a tricky part.

Usually startups have some stages of valuation for each funding round. The experience of the team counts a lot, the market growth, the depth of the technological product count a lot. Investors also look at valuations in similar startups in the same industry.

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Who are the main investors and why choose one against the other?

1. INDIVIDUALS (friends and family or angel investors who usually invest their personal savings

• They are the accessible and can be the fastest deal you can get
• The investment budget is lower (usually investing at pre-seed stage)

2. PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS for pre-seed and seed stages like crowdfunding platforms, accelerators, venture capital firms or investment boutiques (usually tickets start at €100K)

• Investments are larger and can be scaled; they are resourceful and able to offer support; the ownership of the company is maintained.

• They are less accessible, being hunted by many startups.

3. PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS for later stages (Series A, B, C, D) like venture capital firms (minimum ticket €1M) or private equity firms.

• The investments are significantly bigger with aim to ensure growth exponentially
• The stakes are a lot higher and so the return of investment grows.

4. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS like local or state grants, incubators, usually for pre-seed and seed.

• Startups maintain the decision process, the money is usually used for research purpose or some specific directions agreed with the financier
• Usually there is high competition on this type of grants

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How does the start-up financing cycle look like?

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What are the milestones and responsibilities in early investment stages?

1. Set goals for fundraising: establish your financial figures and identify potential investors.
2. Market the business: create a presentation deck, schedule presentations for investors.
3. Pitch your business and evaluate investment offers.
4. Manage the due diligence process and the documentation
5. Seal the deal: final agreement on legal terms, close the transaction.

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What about  women in tech?

Statistics say that overall, there are huge gaps in funding between women-lead startups and men-led startups. For example only 2% of the money goes to female startup founders and only 6% of the venture capital firms have women in their executive boards (Eurostat, 2018).
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Words to live by, from Andreea Saia:

• Fundraising: it’s a question of money and support.
• Dare to dream and act on it, there is a whole ecosystem ready to support you.
• Become an angel investor! Let’s offer to Female Tech founders the help we would like to receive.

“Today, in my opinion, investors and founders are not ready to outline the huge value that tech has and there are a lot of things to do here. Also there are a lot of things to do in the financing part in Romania.”