Startup Strategy

Choose something that speaks to you but don't lose sleep over the perfect name, it does not exist. What is a Nike, Anthropic or a Google anyway.

Most importantly, don't let not having the “perfect” name stop you from getting started. Choose something you like and then start building out your offers, you can always change the name before you are done.

Too many people can't even get out the blocks because they obsess over a “perfect” name. I typically give myself 48 hours max to come up with a name to proceed with.

This is largely dependent on your business name, goes without saying.

I typically think of the domain name before choosing the business name because I am a sucker for a “dot com” name that has never been thought of before. But again, this is not mission critical, there are plenty of websites that end in all types of extensions that have been successful. Set a timeframe to decide then move forward with whatever you have. You can always change it before going live, it's only $10.

I use ChatGPT or Grok to get logo ideas quickly.

You can ask either to create a sheet with 9 logos to compare, and then keep prompting until you find the one you like.

This is important because the logo is going to go everywhere, from your website to social media channels and stationery, so make sure it is versatile. Look at the most popular brand logos, they are more often than not very simple.

Don't get carried away with crazy designs that cannot work in color or black and white, and across multiple surfaces, for example.

This is a critically important step that most first timers skip.

Your product or service offer is going to go everywhere and is what differentiates you from your competition. Spending time crafting winning offers and headlines is what moves the needle the most in digital marketing. Good books to read are $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi and anything by David Ogilvy.

You don't need to build your website vision in the early stages. Your only goal is to get market data as quickly as possible. Start by building a one page website which showcases your offer, experience, trust signals and contact info.

And think about this. If you go to a marketing agency, they are not going to send any traffic to your website. Every agency will build one page that is designed to convert traffic to leads, and then market that. With this in mind, build this page first. 98% of your traffic will not go past this page, there is no need to waste your money on a big fancy website. Build a high converting one page offer and use your money to purchase traffic to your site instead. This will also give you the data you need to later build out your website when ready.

Build a multi-step form instead of one big form when capturing leads. Multi-step forms work better and everything comes down to converting interest to new leads. This is done best with a quiz funnel or lead funnel. A good example is Lemonade.com

You need a place to capture and store all your client information. If you are building with an AI platform like Lovable or Claude etc, ask it to build a “best practices CRM” and it will put it together in minutes for you. From here you can connect to 3rd party systems like MailChimp for your email automations or deliver leads to Slack, Clickup, Google Sheets, Email etc.

The fastest way to build trust and an email list is by giving away a high value content offer, or lead magnet. This will be used in your social media marketing especially, and will be the top of funnel entry for your email re-marketing efforts. (list building)

This document you are reading is a lead magnet, for example.

Creating a YouTube video is important as it solves many problems.

The first is it creates transparency and credibility on your landing page. People can watch a video to learn more about your service, and equally important, to learn more about who is behind the company. This increases conversion rates when done correctly.

Additional benefits are Google indexes YouTube videos in their search results, so you can start getting free traffic within 72 hours instead of waiting weeks or months from traditional SEO content efforts.

YouTube videos are also used in AI citations and live evergreen on YouTube for a very long time, compounding value and sending you “free” organic traffic.

Make sure you have analytics setup on your website so you know how many visitors are coming, what content they like, and where they are falling off. Most platforms like Lovable, which I use, have this baked in and it's easy to add Google Search Console in a few clicks.

Setting up Google Ads takes less than 60 minutes and this is going to give you real search data to analyse. It does not matter if you make no money from this initial test, in fact, treat it like you are paying for information.

This will allow you to select high intent keywords and then see real data numbers and other important search terms you may never have thought of.

Once you have this info you can start optimising your Google Ads, website and make landing pages for your best opportunities.

Research creators in your niche that have gone “viral” and analyse the strategies or formats they have used. Then don't overthink it, start making posts and see what gets traction.

Fully expect to get very little views and don't be disappointed at all, if only one post does well you are winning, and more importantly, you are only trying to get market data and insight for your next batch of posts. But be sure to research creators in your niche, or a similar niche for the best formats, keeping in mind the most important thing to focus on is the topic, then the hook to stop the scroll and engage the viewer in the first 3 seconds.

Use ManyChat or similar to build a social media leads funnel that is automated for you.

This allows viewers to comment “Guide” or whatever, and receive a link to your free lead magnet they can download. This is the best way to grow your email marketing list and provide value to your audience and ManyChat automates this process for you.

Go to the Facebook Ads library (facebook.com/ads/library) and search for long running ads in your niche. This will show you what's working for your competitors and you can draw inspiration on formats and messaging for your own ads.

Create your first set of 3 ads, run minimal spends like $5 a campaign per day, then analyse results and do more of what is working and less of what is not.

Once you have your top of funnel leads coming in from your ads and organic content, you can use an email program like MailChimp or similar to create automated email sequences. The idea is to continue to add value over the course of 5-7 emails so that you may build trust with your potential new client. This is fully automated and the number one way to generate value with email marketing.

Review your own client pain points and feedback as well as forums like Reddit or TrustPilot as you are in the business of providing solutions to pain points. This information more often than not becomes the source for your brand and marketing messaging, don't overlook it!

Review all your marketing efforts from your ad click rates to your website, lead funnel and email automation conversion rates and AB test to find your best conversion rates at each level. Only once you understand your data, and optimise for conversions are you ready to think about scaling ads.

Review your Google Ads performance from your beta testing and identify opportunities to scale further.

As with Google Ads, review your beta tests from your social media campaigns, optimise and increase ad spend on winners.

Building content with AI has become levels quicker but it does take knowledge to do right. You want to build a content engine that answers the most popular questions in your niche, which you can find in Google Search, in your Google Ads dashboard and on sites like AnswerThePublic.com

Do not use AI to write the content, as it will be seen as “commodity” content. In other words, if AI can write the content for your website, it does not need your website.

You want to review help forums, Facebook groups and similar then write your own content. Include stats, prices and unique perspectives for your highest chances of being cited by AI search.

I recommend using AI to do the research and heavy lifting, then you need to optimise the content yourself, as we are not trying to make the most content, but the highest value content.

To get cited and links from other websites you can build industry reports or tools like calculators, apps or anything that you can give away for free on your website that provides value. This results in people linking to these resources and creates citations.

AI Search also heavily cites content from YouTube, Reddit and LinkedIn.

Review your email marketing automations and optimise accordingly.

Review all your marketing systems from ad creative to landing pages, lead funnels and email automations for opportunities to improve.

Identify channels with the most opportunity, drop all losers as required. You do not need to be everywhere at first, there is more than enough traffic on any one channel.