As the one responsible for marketing in a start-up/early stage company, one thing matters more than anything else – lead & demand generation.  The following post is about selling to businesses but much of it can be applied to consumer markets as well.

There are lots of components that factor into this including proper value proposition definition, the right target market, and a pressing or easily elevated pain to address.  That last piece is the difference between lead generation and demand generation.  It takes longer and more effort (read investment) to generate demand versus merely tapping demand that already exists in the marketplace.  Getting the combination of things right is more art than science.  That said, there is a science to a properly run program.

The word "lead" is often used and just as often misused to describe a possible sales opportunity.  Reference the essential GlennGarry Glen Ross clip for insight.  It is important to understand that there is a process (sometimes long) from initial lead to a qualified and pursuit worthy sales prospect.  Just because someone "raises their hand" and downloads a whitepaper, watches a webcast, or registers for some information does not mean (other than rare circumstances) that they are immediately ready to buy something from you.  On top of that, doing it right means having your CUSTOMERS tell your story not just you.  Most companies have a maze of approval steps to go through to let their employees participate or speak on your behalf, but the investment is worth the payoff.  Even better is the "word of mouth" nirvana that results when one of your happy customers points someone your way without any marketing prompting (just a great focus on making customers happy).  This self-referencing customer set within a specific industry or domain is an indication that you have reached an inflection point of value in the life of your company.

Also, it is important to have a proper nurturing process to keep those that have expressed interest in the marketing process either through direct sales touch from time to time, a "drip" marketing program like a newsletter, or even better, being top of mind with their peers who also are your customers.  How you package this stuff for consumption is really important – focus on how people consume content in other parts of their lives.  Here’s a post on that.

So, what do you get for all this effort?  Even a great, well run program will yield only a 2-3% conversion to actual sale so there is definitely a quantitative approach to this.  Take your revenue targets, sales cycle, and average deal size then do the back math to determine how many "inquiries" you need to create to get to that number.  Plus or minus it will give you an indication of the challenge ahead.

Two of my favorite bloggers, Brad Feld and Paul Kedrosky, collectively weighed in on this some time ago (circa 2005).  Their perspective is consistent with what your investors want to know about marketing in a young company – do people care about what you are selling and are they converting into actual sales prospects.

Marketing is a lot of things but most importantly in a young company, it is about acquiring new customers.  The lead pipeline is the pre-sales pipeline and needs as much scrutiny and focus as the actual sales pipe.