Who has a fantastic vision and wants to bring it to market? Who knows others with great visions? Who knows good visions that have failed? Those were the first of many questions Alex Syga asked VCM members in his Growth Marketing workshop. Despite the nice weather, many came to the DigiHub to learn about how marketing can support a startup’s growth. After all, what’s the difference between a professional musician and a good musician? Not the skill, but the visibility—achieved through marketing.
The most important question
First, we tackled the fundamental question: Why do people buy? In addition to the classic fulfillment of basic needs or impulse purchases, the desire for belonging, problem‑solving, and even fear (think insurance) play a role. It boils down to “away from pain, toward fun,” because 80 % would buy out of pain. Therefore, companies should always ask: What is my customers’ pain point? To answer that, you need to know your customers even better than they know themselves. For example, you can question every business decision with “Will my customer avatar love this?”
Golden Rules
One of the golden rules is: It’s always about the customer. Internalizing this helps startups, even in spontaneous short pitches, always explain the problem they’re solving. Anyone who has talked with a few founders will notice that they often try to explain in a few sentences what they do, but rarely what customer problem they actually want to solve. The second golden rule is: Know your market—what is your real market? According to Alex, there are only three core markets—Wealth (making or not losing money), Relationships, and Health. Much like primary colors, all markets can be mixed from combinations of these three. From his perspective, entrepreneurship is simple when you keep it simple, because “Complexity kills.” And you should always give 100 %, since that’s easier than giving 80 %. Some participants didn’t want to believe Alex until he asked us to stand up and sit down only 80 % of the way—not that easy.
KPIs
A favorite topic in every company—and especially in startups—is measuring and tracking numbers. When constantly validating hypotheses, there are countless metrics. But startups should focus on a single, relevant metric, the individual “North Star,” as Alex calls it, which all actions are aligned to: growth. You need to know exactly which metrics impact growth so you can boost it. The North Star may change over the course of a startup’s development. The question should always remain: What is my North Star in the current stage, and how does my venture currently affect it?
Pirate Funnel
For growth you need customers who go through the sales funnel before they buy a product. Alex presented a simplified version called the Pirate Funnel—because how do pirates do it? AAARRR! This sequence stands for Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, and Referral. The A’s focus on marketing, the R’s on the product. According to Alex, there are only two ways to create awareness: you either show up out of the blue, or people are looking for you. You can either buy ads or work your way in with various strategies. One approach is to look at the so‑called target‑audience owners: which podcasts, influencers, businesses, or trade shows does my audience care about? You can collect those and gradually persuade them to cooperate or do interviews. Over time you get into the audience’s line of sight, and the trust they have in the partners transfers to your own brand. Acquisition is about offering real value so the customer stays engaged, and Activation is about motivating the actual purchase. The former can be done with special offers that provide a free benefit, while Activation can use limited offers, such as “you have only three minutes to complete the purchase.” Retention can be influenced, among other things, by email marketing. You can tweak every screw in the Pirate Funnel, but you should first identify and open the bottlenecks. Creating a lot of awareness with the right marketing campaigns is great—but it doesn’t help if most people drop out of the funnel at a certain point.
People insight
Because Alex ran an interactive workshop rather than a monologue, several interesting learnings and analogies popped up during the Q&A. It’s crucial, for example, to know the language of your customers. According to Tobias Beck’s framework, there are four personality types: whales (What do other people gain from my existence?), sharks (What do I gain from other people?), dolphins (Where’s the next party?) and the ever‑questioning owls. Knowing the type of the person you’re talking to is extremely helpful, because whether you’re B2B or B2C, it’s always business to people—decisions are made by humans. Another useful analogy is bait in fishing. Not every bait works for every fish, and likewise not every customer is attracted by the same message. Alex’s tip: just throw out different baits and see what works. If it doesn’t, try to figure out whether you have the right bait but the wrong target audience, or the right audience but the wrong bait. That leads to an essential skill: how well do you listen to your customers? And people love stories, so wrap your product in a narrative. Hook -> Story -> Offer
Vibrant mix
But to find the right bait, I have to test it. That does cost some money, but small amounts over short periods are often enough to get a rough first impression. Top premise: define ideas, test them, validate, and then either iterate or discard (true to the build, measure, learn motto). To narrow the options you can also look at comparable competitors and see what they’re doing. Alex’s next question was: what matters more—container or content? Opinions among participants varied. Somehow both are important. Since everyone offers the same thing, it starts with the container (the framework), and the content has to follow. Having a good product isn’t enough; it’s just the minimum. You need to create an Aha effect to stand out. Customers don’t buy based on quality (content) because they often can’t judge that; they first buy based on the container/framework.
Alex's final Growth Marketing hack is simply to approach the target audience and ask: Hey, you're my target audience, can we chat? Because anyone who asks for help often gets it willingly. But how do I find a touchpoint with my target audience? Either through the previously described target‑group owners or other creative ways (if you're looking for 50‑year‑olds, go to an over‑50 party…). Entrepreneurship isn’t wishful thinking; it’s about turning a situation into something.
We thank Alex Syga for the insightful and at the same time entertaining workshop!
