The words “amateur” and “idiotic” are probably more relevant than the word “newbie” but lets keep the title of this article start-up friendly… Sort of…
Technology startups fail more often than any other businesses despite the fact that their founders have higher IQs on paper.
I believe it’s because of absence of business knowledge and bad marketing is big part of that.
If you don’t want to fail like almost everyone in the industry and get at least some chance of prospering, you should avoid these 3 common marketing mistakes:
Pitching customers the same way you pitch investors
I see it over and over. Startups pitch investors all the time which is ok, but they don’t pitch customers which is not ok, and when they try to pitch customers they use the same (or almost the same) message as for the investors and they fail. Who would imagine that your potential customers care about different things than your potential investors?
Testing your product with friends and/or other startup people
Yes, it’s great that you have a big community of enthusiastic people who support each other but unless your product really targets other startups you should never rely on them for feedback and product validation. Yes it’s easier to gain some initial user base and you can fool some VCs into investing in you but odds are that they will lead you to a wrong direction.
Thinking that your product will sell by itself because it’s awesome
If you are one of those “product people” who is thinking that all that matters is how great your product is, think again. Your product has to be really good, in some cases great but in order to succeed you must know how to promote it. There are probably millions of really awesome products that we don’t know about. Because some founders do not believe in promotion.
P.S. If anyone actually uses my advice I want a %. And if you still don’t succeed, it’s not my fault. You know how it is… If you win it’s because of me, if you lose it’s because of you.