Positioning your startup, delivering customer service excellence and more startup marketing topics

The MaRS Library (part of the MaRS Entrepreneur’s Toolkit) has launched another set of articles that discuss marketing best practices for startups. We’ve designed these articles to fit the particular needs of startups as they get going in their marketing efforts.

These articles look at:

• Product positioning and positioning your startup: Customer validation stage*
  Before you launch your product, you need to establish not only your product positioning but also how you are positioning your startup in your market. Find out how.
• Product positioning and positioning your startup: Customer creation stage*
  Once you reach the customer creation stage, it’s time to refine how you are positioning your startup and your product positioning. This article gets you started.
• Strategic planning: How product differentiation strategy depends on market type
  Product differentiation is the singling out of the one element of your product that creates its benefit and makes it unique, and which has relevance for your customer. To succeed with your product differentiation strategy, you need to understand the type of market in which you will compete.
• Customer service excellence: How startups can deliver more value for customers
  Customer service excellence is a key element of customer satisfaction. Learn how it can help you deliver more value for customers.
• Creating a mission statement for your startup: When to do it and what to know
  Creating a mission statement is an early task in a startup’s development. An effective mission statement informs and inspires the stakeholders that surround your startup. It should help them understand the value of your company and product.
• PR tactics for startups: What you need to know (and when) about public relations
  Public relations (PR) is a form of marketing that is accessible to startups. Public relations differs from other marketing methods in that it is earned, not paid, promotion and coverage. Learn more about what your startup needs to know.

*These stages are those of Steve Blank’s Customer Development Model.

Take a look and send us your feedback! More articles (and videos) on marketing can be found in the MaRS Library. And in the Collections section of the Entrepreneur’s Toolkit, we feature key library resources curated by topics such as founder’s challenges, accounting, intellectual property, startup finance, and market research.

Have another startup marketing topic you’d like us to explore? Let us know. I’m at nblase@marsdd.com.