Today we take on a common misleading tactic that startups use thinking it sounds impressive. That is the lie that you built your business with no marketing.

The most common reason for this lie is simple, it smacks of inexperience in the startup world. It also means that you don’t understand what marketing is and how to do it. That’s a bad thing to put out there. On today’s episode we tell you why this tactic doesn’t work and what you should be doing to make a great pitch.

Topics we discussed today:

The “no marketing lie”

Resources Mentioned:

The Startup Chat  045: Founder Self Awareness – The Weight of Your Words

The Startup Chat  065: How to Become More Self-Aware

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Hiten Shah:  Absolutely. Hi, this is Hiten Shah.

Steli Efti:  And this is Steli Efti.

Hiten Shah:  And today on the Startup Chat, we’re going to talk about how many founder startups even after they’ve raised a whole bunch of money still claim that they do know marketing and they’ve gotten all their customers doing no marketing. So, Steli, how do we feel about this?

Steli Efti:  We feel that that’s a huge pile of bullshit, right?

Hiten Shah:  Nice. Yeah.

Steli Efti:  That’s really what it is. And I was just at a startup conference where, you know, every single fucking startup that was pitching at the slight retraction, whatever the hell the numbers were, one way or another, they were basically saying, “And we accomplished all these numbers with no marketing,” which just drove me crazy because it’s just bullshit. What do you mean no marketing? Right?

Hiten Shah:  I just—I just typed in marketing. Can I like just—

Steli Efti: Yes.

Hiten Shah:  Can I just like go there and just be like “All right, what is marketing here?”

Steli Efti:  Yes, please, let’s do that.

Hiten Shah:  I’m going to define this thing. It’s going to take probably 10 seconds. The management process through which goods and services move from concept to the customer. It includes a coordination of 4 elements called the 4 P’s of marketing—product, price, place, promotional strategy. And what’s beautiful is—when they say product, they literally have written identification, selection and development of a product. Then it’s determination of its price, then it’s selection of a distribution channel that reach the customer’s place and then it’s development and implementation of a promotional strategy. And I’m going to end that one with an example.

For example, new Apple products are developed to include improved applications and systems, are set at different prices depending on how much capability the customer desires and are sold in places where other Apple products are sold. So they included all the, you know, product, price, place, promotional strategy all in there in that one paragraph all about Apple’s marketing. So, if you are doing anything in a company, you’re probably doing marketing.