[HN Gopher] How to Escape the Startup Trough of Sorrow
___________________________________________________________________
How to Escape the Startup Trough of Sorrow
Author : Vagantem
Score : 52 points
Date : 2023-09-16 15:35 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.briefmix.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.briefmix.com)
| Vagantem wrote:
| Author here - thank you all for reading. Happy to discuss any
| points in the article and answer any questions. Also, feel free
| to check out the other articles in the series!
| anon84873628 wrote:
| The article is well written and I like the concrete examples,
| but I feel it cut off early before really telling me anything
| interesting, particularly answering the question raised in the
| title. "Trough of Sorrow" is not even defined in the article
| besides a quick allusion to stalled growth, instead linking to
| a Forbes article which itself is apparently a rehashing of yet
| other blog posts. Maybe that is because the target audience is
| expected to know the concept already.
|
| Honestly it feels like you got me on the hook then withhold the
| promised info just to drive subscriptions. Which I guess proves
| some marketing skill! I didn't actually subscribe though, but I
| wasn't likely to be a good lead anyway.
| Vagantem wrote:
| Haha fair enough! I think you're right, I'll update the
| article with more of a definition of "Trough of Sorrow". This
| is my first blog project and I find it hard to know how much
| to include in one post vs. what to split out into several
| modules. It is not my intention to withhold info to drive
| subscriptions, I just haven't had time to write it all yet!
| Going with the launch fast, even though the product is not
| complete heh.
|
| For now, the below is what I've laid out as the plan for the
| blog. So hopefully it will all be covered when you can click
| through the blogs, one after another:
|
| 1.01 - Objectives, KPIs and the effectiveness framework - Map
| how your marketing efforts will add commercial value to your
| balance sheet by driving behavioural change.
|
| 1.02 - Branding fundamentals - A quick overview that explains
| the basics of branding and brand positioning.
|
| 1.03 - Target Audience - How firms like Bain & McKinsey help
| Fortune 500 companies create a segmentation and find their
| ideal target customer.
|
| 1.04 - Research & the 4 C's of marketing - How to conduct
| research to form the basis of your brand positioning.
|
| 1.05 - Consumer - Dig deeper into your segments and develop
| an audience persona.
|
| 1.06 - Competition - How to conduct a robust competitor audit
| to reveal whitespaces in the market.
|
| 1.07 - Culture - An introduction into trends research - how
| to put your finger on the pulse of culture and discover
| micro, medio and macro trends in society.
|
| 1.08 - Company - There are always insights to gain from
| looking into the history of a company. What can we learn
| about the founding days?
|
| 1.09 - Positioning Statement - How to craft a unique brand or
| product positioning statement to keep your marketing
| activities consistent and clear.
|
| 1.10 - Manifesto, Visual Identity & TOV - Express what and
| who your brand represents by creating a manifesto, visual
| identity and tone-of-voice.
|
| -
|
| Brand Definition 2.01 - Defining a Brand - Learn how to
| structure your positioning work, expand it, simplify it and
| make it "production-ready" to be used as the foundation for
| all your marketing and communication efforts.
|
| 2.02 - Brand Architecture - We'll define a system to organize
| your brand(s), product(s) and service(s) to help your
| audience access and relate to your portfolio.
|
| 2.03 - Brand Purpose - Define your brand's reason for being
| and what you stand for - allowing your brand to connect with
| consumers (and employees) on an emotional level.
|
| 2.04 - Values & Behaviours - Define a set of guiding
| principles to shape every aspect of your business and dictate
| your brand message and personality.
|
| 2.05 - Additional Brand Attributes - What other attributes
| and tools can we use to define our brand?
|
| 2.06 - RTBs & Proof Points - What are "Reasons-to-believe"
| and how do you choose which ones to prioritise?
|
| 2.07 - Brand Book & Visual Guidelines - How to create a
| document that sets distinct guidelines for maintaining brand
| identity across all aspects of your business.
|
| -
|
| Brand Campaign 3.01 - Introduction to advertising campaigns -
| How to create a strategy designed for a specific business
| objective (eg. to strengthen a brand, launch a product or
| steal market share).
|
| 3.02 - The Consumer Journey - Understand your customer's
| purchase journey and the experiences they go through when
| interacting with your brand, from awareness to purchase and
| loyalty.
|
| 3.03 - Comms architecture - How to plan your marketing
| tactics and deliver comms to consumers at the right moment in
| their buying cycle.
|
| 3.04 - The Creative Brief - Create succinct documents
| outlining the strategy for a creative project which can be
| provided to partners such as copywriters, designers, film
| producers and web developers.
|
| -
|
| Brand Media Strategy 4.01 - Introduction to Media Strategy -
| Why it's important to choose the right marketing channels for
| your business and how to find the perfect ones for you in a
| sea of options.
|
| 4.02 - Media Plan - Create a campaign media plan to deliver
| your ad message via the right channels and increase
| conversions in an effective manner, at low cost.
|
| 4.03 - Channel strategy - Strategies for specific channels
| and approaches to figure them out (eg. TV, Google Ads,
| Billboards, SEO, Social Media, Apps, Email, PR).
|
| 4.04 - KPIs & measurement - Learn how to define KPIs and
| create a measurement strategy to understand campaign
| performance and inform adjustments to current tactics.
|
| 4.05 - Branding 101 Conclusion - Summary of what we've done
| and where to go next.
| what-no-tests wrote:
| Looking forward to the continuation of this article!
| Vagantem wrote:
| Thank you! Working on the "Consumer" module as we speak
| jjensen wrote:
| I get a timeout message when I try to subscribe.
| Vagantem wrote:
| Hm, thanks for mentioning - will have a look. I added a
| subscription embed from mailchimp so need to look into why.
| Feel free to send an email to briefmix[at]gmail[dot]com and
| I'll add you manually!
| vonnik wrote:
| This article does not really apply to startups' trough of sorrow,
| at least not most of the startups trying to sell something new.
| It reads like it applies to consumer goods that are in crowded
| markets.
|
| Most startups' problem is they often don't have any customers at
| all, and don't know how to find them. Many of them started with a
| tech solution and went searching for a problem.
| Vagantem wrote:
| Yes and no - I think you're thinking of very early stage
| startups that are still looking for PMF (which indeed is also a
| big reason why many are in the Trough of Sorrow). But the
| Trough of Sorrow can come at many points during a company's
| lifetime, not only in the very beginning.
|
| In my experience, many companies that are still startups hit a
| growth stall later on, let's say 3 years after launch, maybe
| even 10 years after launch - at this point it can be very
| valuable to look at positioning.
| mellosouls wrote:
| (Very) OT: I would hazard a guess the striking phrase in the
| title originates (indirectly if not intentionally by the author)
| from "Slough of Despond" in _The Pilgrim 's Progress_ by John
| Bunyan.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_of_Despond
|
| https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/131
| Vagantem wrote:
| And to add on to this, here is where I got the image in the
| blog post :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=173261
| WJW wrote:
| Oh I thought it was referencing the SaaS "ramp of death" from
| https://baremetrics.com/blog/long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death.
| Shows how much interpretations can change based on what you've
| already heard of I guess. :)
| pedalpete wrote:
| Interesting read. I'd be curious to see examples of companies
| that change their positioning every 5 years, vs those that are
| able to nail a long-term position.
|
| Your example of "Enjoy the silence" sounds more like a tagline
| than a positioning statement.
|
| This is so easy to also get confused with Mission statements.
|
| I was thinking "Organizing the world's information" was Google's
| positioning statement, but that's their mission statement.
|
| Other articles get this confused as well [1]. From what I
| understand, the positioning statement should be more of a "for
| [customer] we [do the thing] so they can [be the person]"
|
| https://brandstruck.co/blog-post/positioning-three-valuable-...
| Vagantem wrote:
| Thanks for reading! And good idea - will see if I can add a few
| examples to the article. And you're right - it is very much
| like a tagline.
|
| I worked at agencies that preferred the catchy tagline approach
| even for strategy statements (arguing they work better as
| jumping off points for creatives) as well as places that had
| more of a strategy structure - yours is a really good and
| classic template. Another popular one is the "get-to-by"
| structure, credited to the BBDO agency.
|
| A lot of brands use mission/vision/brand
| idea/positioning/tagline statements interchangeably, for better
| or worse - there are no rules in strategy though so you kind of
| just have to go with what works best for your company.
| Alabamayeehaw wrote:
| [dead]
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-16 23:01 UTC)