Andrew Lee Miller: Startups Fail Due to Lack of Prioritizing Marketing (& Hiring) Soon Enough

Marketing and hiring are far too often major failure points because they are started too late. The right time to start marketing is before you launch your product. Just as the right time to hire is before you feel the pain of needing the work to be done. It is never too soon to to proactively start your marketing or hiring process. The key to not failing is having the structure in place before you feel the pain!

Our guest today: Andrew Miller, CEO of GrowthExpertz 

Andrew is a Startup Marketer who's been traveling the world working with early-stage companies. After driving growth for 3 multimillion-dollar startup exits, including a 500startups project in San Francisco, he founded GrowthExpertz. 

Andrew's specialty lies in helping companies scale efficiently in the early-stages with both growth coaching and remote consultancy.  He’s written for INC magazine, StartupGrind, and StartupNation. Andrew is also a prolific #DigitalNomad who in the last decade has visited, lived, and worked from over 70 countries. 

Today we are discussing

The right time to start marketing efforts
How to kick off marketing for both product and people

When should a startup start marketing?

Start marketing right now
Pre launch, start building a strategy
Landing pages, call to action
Even still in stealth mode
Coming soon, gathering prelaunch beta email list

Why is this important?

Prioritize marketing too late
Show investors that you have traction
Do things that don't scale in the beginning
Marketing drives your launch
Launch with an email list 
Bootstrap marketing- drive organic traffic during the early stage of the business. Before launch

Rick’s Nuggets

Marketing directly leads into hiring

How do we implement marketing & when?

Online presence- marketing foundation
Create landing pages, website, 
Social media pages
Analytics

Start organic marketing 

Organic marketing channels
PR - start creating relationships with podcast, 
Create content with call to action
Build to 500 emails of beta testers & followers pre launch

Launch product 

Create press release, go live

Scale the marketing strategies that work

Go into launch with traffic
Be able to go into investors with relevant data

Rick’s Nuggets

With hiring:
Identify target hires
Have conversations, network
Gain buy in to win the hire            

Key Takeaways:

Prioritize foundational marketing early in the game 
Greenlight your organic marketing before the product launch
Know your kpi’s, analytics

Guest Contact:

GrowthExpertz - For Funded Startups
Andrewstartups.com or Instagram - For Bootstrapped Startups