Published in The Attention Architect, a newsletter on LinkedIn, May 17, 20 22

Starting a business is like trying to build a utopian colony in the middle of the jungle. With no roads, electricity, plumbing, or running water, you spend the first year or two just getting the fundamentals of your base camp set up while trying to survive the harsh realities of the wilderness.

When my business partner and I started our consulting firm in 1992, we had a mountain of issues to tackle every day. We'd work with staff and clients during the weekdays, do bookkeeping and accounting at night, and work on projects over the weekends.

However, our most vital-to-survival task was keeping a steady flow of customers coming to our business. But since we didn't have a marketing director, department, or budget, we had to find resourceful ways to attract new clients.

The conceptual system we devised comprised five marketing plates we needed to keep spinning at all times lest we run out of work. These five plates included:

Being Seen

Being Heard

Being Read

Being Referred

Being Different

#1. BEING SEEN

One big hurdle most startups face initially is that nobody knows who you are, nor do they care to add another aggressive consultant to their list. But if you're not top-of-mind with your potential customer base, they won't even consider you when new work opportunities come up.

For this reason, the first critical marketing step startups need to invest in is creating a distinct and memorable brand identity system. This public awareness campaign needs to puncture through the crowd of competitors and grab your potential customer's eyes and attention.

It took us three months of hard work, debate, and experimentation to complete our brand identity system. But once we settled in on our "first impression" strategy, we found tasteful and creative ways to get our brand name/image in front of the right people.

Since we were a startup, we didn't focus on brand depth as much as brand awareness. Our primary marketing objective for the first year was to make sure people knew our name and graphic signature.

Admittedly, we benefited from having backgrounds in design, branding, and consumer behavior. But for those startups who don't have these skills in-house, I recommend you invest in consultants that can help you create a credible-looking and eye-catching brand image, identity, and awareness campaign.

#2. BEING HEARD

Another problem new startups have is they are, well, "new." They typically have no portfolio of projects, case studies, past customer referrals, or testimonials, and for ethical reasons, my business partner and I refused to use any projects we had worked on at prior companies. Most potential customers aren't enthusiastic about taking a gamble on a new entity when the risk of hiring an established and proven company is much lower.

One way to overcome this dilemma of "who has more experience" weigh-in is to question the old way of doing business and become an advocate and spokesperson for why your industry needs to embrace change.

This strategy paints the established companies as outdated, out of touch, and behind the times, and it encourages potential customers to consider a fresh and innovative way of going to market.

For the first year of our business, my business partner and I spent a lot of our time writing and lecturing about what was wrong with the status quo approach and making provocative suggestions for improving things, which led to our third plate.

#3. BEING READ

Far too many startups spend their time trying to convince their potential customers they have relevant expertise in their industry. But like it not, your expertise isn't an "expertise" until the media says you are.

Getting the media to recognize the talents of a startup is challenging. But once the press anoints you as an expert in your field, you'll have a much easier time convincing new clients of the value you can offer them. 

So if you want to impress your customers with your knowledge, insights, and ideas, don't tell them — tell the media outlets they read.

But how do you get your new startup in the press? You write insightful letters to editors and reporters, make comments on social media, and find creative ways to get your great ideas and analysis in front of them.

These insights must be helpful, relevant, and compelling; they can't appear self-serving or arrogant. Humility goes a long way with the media. However, once a publication gets a whiff that you're trying to self-promote, they'll stop listening and block you out of their mind.

During the first five years of our company, I wrote an average of five custom letters a week to publishers, editors, and reporters of local, regional, and national media outlets. I made a point of scouring the trade publications and responding to relevant articles where I believed we could offer insights and a unique and helpful perspective.

My initial hit rate for getting a response was only about 3%, but that small percentage allowed me to build a snowball of "well-known-ness," which helped other editors and reporters later seek my partner and me for quotes.

After five years of weekly letter writing, I eventually got our firm's name mentioned over 600 times in one year in a wide range of industry publications. And this recognition as "experts" in our field helped us become sought-after thought leaders in our industries.

#4. BEING REFERRED

Many companies forget the aim of marketing is to make marketing unnecessary. But many businesses overlook this purpose and build elaborate marketing departments they have to fund, manage, and support. And this intense investment in marketing creates a "growth-at-all-costs" mindset that can lead to other problems.

Our company is almost 30 years old now, and we've never had a marketing department, marketing director, much less a professionally printed brochure, advertising program, or trade-show effort. I keep thinking we should get someone but have been too busy with projects to get around to it. 

What's our secret to this no-market/marketing approach: Getting referred!

To this day, 90% of our work comes in through referrals from other clients and business leaders. To make this plan work, we spend a lot of our time with the key decision-makers in the communities and industries we serve. We get to know these leaders personally and outside the context of a business relationship. This network has proven essential to our company getting referred to new clients.

Being referred by a respected business leader is far more effective than cold calling a potential client or sending out a clever marketing message in a bottle, hoping some customer will find it in a sea of competition.

#5. BEING DIFFERENT

Founders usually start their business because they have a novel way of solving customer problems and creating value. But as startups grow, they hire new staff who typically come from more established businesses, and without meaning it, this new staff can bring in old systems, processes, protocols, and viruses for how they did business at their prior companies. If startups aren't careful, they can end up looking just like their competitors, dulling any unique edge they have. 

My partner and I resolved not to do anything the same way other companies did for the first decade of our firm's growth. Whenever a new employee tried to push the "best practices" from their old job, we'd do just the opposite. Why? Because we didn't aspire to achieve "best practices" of the old guard businesses but "better differences" for the future ones. 

To hammer home the importance of not aping our competitors, we didn't have a Monday morning meeting for the first five years because every other company did it. Instead, we did a Friday afternoon drinks and snacks discussion.

We didn't have the standard management hierarchy, departments, or titles that most companies had. Instead, we came up with a new lexicon of terms, labels, and process descriptions.

We didn't have the typical corporate-looking logos or promotional materials. Our business cards, stationery, envelopes, invoices, and checks looked nothing like the competition. Whenever we handed someone our business card, they'd spend a good 2 minutes flipping it around, asking questions, and talking about it.

We didn't have the annual stress-inducing, fake-smile holiday Christmas party that every firm did. Instead, we created a fabulously distinctive February 14th Valentine's Day party for our staff and our clients to attend during a slow point in the year. We hired well-known Swing bands to host the party and came off looking like heroes for providing the spouses of our clients and staff such a fun, memorable night. It was like prom night for adults!

Our different way of doing business started with our internal operation, but you could see it reflected in our external image. There was a buzz in town about how "different" and "atypical" our business was, which we considered a victory.

Whenever potential clients and employment candidates got tired of the old way of doing business and wanted something different, they'd think of our firm.

KEEP 'EM SPINNING

We've grown a lot in the last three decades. We have multiple offices and diversified practice areas, but we still don't have a marketing director, department, brochure, or budget. 

And we hope to keep it that way.