Optimise your round A financement with your marketing strategy
Updated: Oct 31, 2022
You are a young start-up and you are seeking for financement. The common mistake is to think your technology is enough to convince VC and other fundings to finance your start-up. You can have the best idea, a strong and efficient technology, but if you don’t position your service on a valid market, that means that you didn’t create value. And no value… no funding! Create a concrete operational approach, define market needs and position pour technology as a valid service. Doing so will give a huge boost to your company and will cover the gap from the idea to a marketable and valuable service.
The operational approach
You are a start-up and you create technology.
OK… but so what?
You need to create your own approach to get outside of the lab.
There are 2 kinds of approaches
The outcome drive approach - based on results
You are addressing to a client and a specific need you targeted and that your technology is filling
The linkages drive approach - link to other technologies
You identified a technological gap in the client journey, and created a link to fulfill the gap
Why is it so important to identify your approach?
First… the more you are accurate with your approach, the better you know how to surround yourself with the appropriate people. Here meaning, the good funders and the good partners. Indeed, your bet is not only to find high financement. It’s to find people that understand your product and your market and will accompany you along your market integration. With the good message, you will be approached by the appropriate financial and managerial people with valuable knowledge that will help you to penetrate and expand your market.
The concrete approach
What will make the market value of your start-up is your capacity to innovate on the business and operation models. There’s a very big chance that is what drove your technological experimentation at the beginning. But how do you translate that into market value?
Understand your customer
What is your demographic profile customer? What are the needs, the context of his using your product or your service?
Your innovation needs to create value to your customer, in order for him to turn to your technology, to be ready to pay for your product-service.
The best way to do so, is to come with an identified needs-based market segmentation approach: a proper identification of your innovation allied with an impactful marketing identification. It’s the kick-off of your marketing strategy, that you need to plan in order to create the unique value of your innovation.
The better this step is identified, the better your product-service is understood.
The better it is understood the more accurately your start-up can be estimated by investors.
The better the estimation, the more you increase your chances to be funded.
The operational approach - go deeper
You just touched the importance and the interactivity between your innovation and its marketing correlation.
Still, you can go deeper and take the ownership of your customer, by investigating some additional parameters of your market expectations:
Functional: what your technology allows your customer to do
Economic: how your technology can be a significant economic boost for your client
Social: your technology has an impact on people
Emotional: people are connected to your technology
At the end, your innovation has an added value that is measurable
It can be from each of these, or from a specific one. But you need to identify the strengths of your innovation to better communicate on them, and let the market identify and understand your product… and rely on it.
Round A, round B, market fit… at the end, we understand the benefits of a good marketing strategy at each step of the business. But we often forget (or just didn’t know) how crucial it is when you kick off your business plan and start communicating on your innovation. It’s said that you only have one occasion for a first impression. Be sure not to waste it. Be sure to find the good marketing consultancy that will help you in better understanding your full potential.
You’ve got mail has more than 20 years of experience in supporting high tech companies and global brands. We’ll help you in identifying your values and make sure your financiers will appreciate the full potential of your innovation.
For more information on how to adapt and better consider your marketing strategy, contact us.
