How to Be Great at Marketing

The Startup Help Desk

In this episode we answer questions about marketing! Marketing is one of the most challenging things to do well, but essential to success for your startup. We are here to help! In this episode we answer questions including:

• How do we scale faster after our first few customers?
• Are we doing something wrong or do ads not work?
• When is the right time for me to hire our first marketing person?

This episode we're joined by guest panelist Kat Mañalac of Y Combinator, an expert in marketing! Kat is Managing Outreach Officer at Y Combinator where she participates in funding and supporting hundreds of startups every year. Kat has been at YC since 2013 and has seen over 3,500 companies go through the program. Previously, Kat was Chief of Staff to Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit and investor.
All of these questions were submitted by listeners just like you. You can submit questions for us to answer on our website TheStartHelpdesk.com or on X/Twitter @thestartuphd - we'd love to hear from you!
Reminder: this is not legal advice or investment advice.
Q1: How do we scale faster after our first few customers?
Warm intros and referrals are always in season.
Founders should lead sales themselves in the early days. Avoid the urge to outsource sales too early. Sales is a numbers game: you need a large volume of qualified leads at the top of the funnel. To get there, continuously test and perfect your sales email.
Spend 75% of your time optimizing existing channels that work and 25% testing new channels. Most channels eventually tap out, except for referrals. Be ready to try everything from cold email, to conferences to content and everything in between.
Write a playbook of what is working to make it repeatable - that way you can hire people when you are ready.
Q2: Are we doing something wrong or do ads not work?
Ads can be effective:
(i) When you are in the discovery phase for an idea and are trying to test demand.
(ii) And when you know precisely who your target customer is, where to find them, how to message to them, and your target customer is already spending time on a platform where you can advertise.
However, ads are not a cure-all for fast growth. Ads are not a fit for every company, they are expensive (especially for early stage startups), and the channels are noisy and competitive.
Early on, find 10 people who really love you. The way to do that is likely not through ads. It might be through your network, channels like LinkedIn, or other communities where your target customers spend their time. Solve their problem and continuously improve the customer experience.
When you are ready to consider ads, run small, iterative tests to see if ads are an engine of growth before scaling your spend.
Q3: When is the right time for me to hire our first marketing person?
Marketing should be seen as your foundation, not just a lead generator for sales. As soon as you’ve identified your Ideal Customer Profile and have a handful of customers, you are ready to start your search for your first marketing person. Consider starting with product marketing so that they can help shape your message.
That being said, you do not need a full time marketing person for launch. Founders should create the early marketing and messaging for the startup. Ultimately, the timing varies per startup. For example, a SaaS startup likely wants to achieve a repeatable sales process before adding a marketing person.
Are there multiple marketing challenges the founders can’t handle anymore? What exactly will this person work on? Your answers to these questions