Marketing your startup online or new online business is as confusing as it is interesting. This is why it helps to have insights from experts to better understand how to go about marketing your business.

We spoke with Dana DiTomaso, President and Partner at Kick Point about how businesses that are just starting out can approach marketing and get their fundamentals right from the very beginning.

Kickpoint is a Canada based marketing agency that helps businesses create a market for their product and get their core competencies out in the world in the right way.

Not only do they understand your objectives, but they also do a thorough study of your business and all its components to ensure all the fundamentals are in place.

1. What tips could you give early startups for their marketing activities?

Don’t chase reach over solid targeting. It’s obviously much better to advertise to 100 people who all need your product versus 1,000 people who aren’t interested.

Be choosy on where you spend your marketing dollars. On top of this, take the time to interview customers and non-customers and take their feedback seriously.

You don’t want to become everything to everyone, but this type of feedback can be invaluable in growing your business — if that’s what you want to do. Don’t feel like you have to grow if you want to stay small, there’s nothing wrong with that.

2. Most marketers understand the importance of engaging and actively participating in communities, but how do you get started with that?

Ask your customers where they hang out and start listening in those communities.

Don’t engage until you have a solid feel on the etiquette of the community and only contribute when you have something to say that isn’t self-promotional.

Community engagement isn’t a “right away” tactic, it’s an “overtime” tactic.

3. What are some of your favorite growth hacks?

I’m actually not a fan of growth hacks at all. I prefer long-term success over growth-hacking incentives or the so-called “easy wins”.

There isn’t a magic cheat code to get around the hard work of actually doing marketing. The other major issue with growth hacking is that it focuses on outputs instead of outcomes.

For example, you’ll see “how to increase your email list by 600% in one day”. What percentage of those new subscribers became long-term, invested customers?

Those are the metrics you should be focusing on.

4. What advice would you give to people trying to build their own business today?

Get the fundamentals down before you chase the new shiny toys.

Sometimes we’ll have leads approach us who ask about things like voice search or getting answer boxes on Google while their website has fundamental technical and conversion problems.

Don’t mow the lawn when your house is on fire.

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