Ever wondered what someone does when they leave Google? And why would you leave Google in the first place? Troy Westley answers both those questions and a whole lot more in this episode of the Small Business Big Marketing show. Troy’s the founder of CareMonkey, an award-winning app that helps schools and other organisations keep track of health and emergency information.
This episode is all about how to market a start-up. Listen in as CareMonkey’s Troy Westley shares the inside tips, tricks, and strategies he used to launch CareMonkey and win awards such as Best Startup Idea 2014. He talks about how to validate your idea before taking the plunge, how to get your business idea in front of the right people, and some surprising (free) marketing tactics you can start using today to grow your business.
In this session of Small Business Big Marketing, you’ll discover:
- The importance of validating your idea so you don’t waste money and (more importantly) time on a dud idea
- Understanding the life-cycle of a product, and why it matters
- How to harness the power of “early adopters” and use them as examples for the rest of the market
- Why you should niche down and not try to market to everybody
- What Troy has found to be the most costly marketing experiments
- How Troy allocates his start-up’s marketing budget (you’ll be suprised by the size of the budget!)
- A little-known creative marketing tool Troy’s using to gain free publicity for CareMonkey
- The unlikely place that Troy found his business’ co-founder
- How to decide on the equity split when taking on a partner
- The surprising email tricks Troy uses for connecting with influencers
- How to stop people from copying your idea (hint: the value isn’t in the idea itself)
- PLUS, my five marketing tips from the Melbourne Comedy Festival!
Episode Timeline
- 1.00 My 5 marketing take-aways from the Melbourne Comedy Festival
- 8.15 Introducing former Google Enterprise Sales Manager Troy Westley
- 14.15 How the idea for CareMonkey came about
- 17.00 The “jumping off” point for Troy’s new business – how did his family react?
- 18.45 How to validate your idea with the help of people you know
- 21.30 The importance of nailing one specific vertical before you target a wider market
- 25.30 How your messaging gets easier the narrower your target market
- 29.30 How Troy used lean startup methodology in creating CareMonkey
- 32.00 CareMonkey’s marketing budget and the most effective channels
- 36.00 Has Troy ever wondered if he’s doing the right thing?
- 38.30 How Troy decided on the equity split for him and his partner using an “equity pie”
- 42.00 Troy’s counter-intuitive email strategies for connecting with influencers
- 49.30 My top 5 take-aways from this episode
Resources and Links Mentioned in this Episode
- CareMonkey – electronic medical, emergency, and permission forms for schools
- Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers by Geoffrey A. Moore
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- MeetUp.com
- Slicing Pie equity calculator
- Melbourne Comedy Festival
- Netregistry answers your marketing questions for free
- The Small Business Big Marketing online community
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Over to you!
Let us know YOUR key takeaways from this episode by leaving a comment below. I personally read and respond to every comment!
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4 thoughts on “182 – How to Market a Start-Up with Ex-Google Manager, Troy Westley”
Really enjoyed this discussion. i did have a few thoughts about the BBQ validation though…
1. People don’t often do what they say they will do when it comes to buying habits. I remember seeing some research where they asked a group of people how much they would pay for a radio (I think it was). The people said they would pay x amount, and then at the end of the survey they were in fact offered the radio much cheaper than they said they would pay and they STILL didn’t buy it!
Lots of similar stories where marketers ask their email list “would you pay x to attend this event”, then organise an event based on overwhelming support, only to find that nobody actually follows through and opens their wallet!
So BBQ validation could have a similar problem.
2. Closely related to the first point, asking your own social group (presumably this is who you’re at a barby with) whether they would buy into your idea/product is not going to give accurate feedback because these people already know, like, and trust you (to some extent), simply because you’re in their social circle. You’re one of them.
Getting people on the internet to do the same is a whole other story!
Regardless, Troy’s idea is great and it looks like a really worthwhile product so it was/is bound to succeed. Just wanted to give my 2c on the idea of getting your own social circle to validate an idea 🙂
A very great idea. So helpful to the world. Well done! This guy is going to save lives & you can’t beat that!!!
Neal Portenza, not Portell.
Great points you’re making Damien. You wouldn’t want that to be the only method of validation. For me, it was one of the first steps to coming to the realisation that this idea had legs…getting our first paying customer though was the real validation. There’s a lot of great ideas and amazing software out there for free. Cheers, Troy