Episode overview

Ali and Stephanie King joined Steve Grace on Give It A Nudge in this Spark Festival edition to share the most common startup marketing mistakes they have seen founders make. The conversation is practical and direct: which channels to prioritise with limited budget, whether to launch in Australia first or go global, who to hire first on the marketing team, when to bring in an agency, and where to find the best marketing resources to keep learning. The sisters bring an outsider-in perspective shaped by working with some of the world’s biggest brands and some of Australia’s most interesting early-stage companies.

Strategy before tactics, always

The most common mistake Ali and Stephanie see is founders jumping to tactics before establishing strategy. They will launch ads, post on social, and engage influencers without having a clear answer to the fundamental questions: who is this for, why should they care, and what do we want them to do. Ask Marketing’s strategy-first model puts those answers in place before any spend happens, which is uncomfortable for founders who want to move fast but essential for making the spend work.

Australia first or global from day one?

Whether to launch in Australia or go global immediately is one of the most common questions Ask Marketing gets from startup founders. Their answer depends on the product and the founder’s resources. For most early-stage founders, launching in Australia first provides a contained environment to test, learn, and build a proof of concept before international competition and international ad costs make things significantly more complex and expensive.

The first marketing hire

Founders often hire a marketing generalist when they should hire a specialist, or hire someone to execute when they should hire someone to set strategy first. Ali and Stephanie recommend being clear on what stage of the marketing journey the business is at before making any hire. In the very early stage, a strategist who can build the foundation is more valuable than someone who can run campaigns without a foundation to run them on.

When to engage an agency

Agencies are most valuable when the strategy is already set and the brief is clear. Founders who engage agencies without a clear strategy tend to get what they pay for: execution without alignment. Ask Marketing advises founders to have at least a working hypothesis of their channels and audience before bringing in external execution support, so the agency can amplify something that already has direction rather than create direction from scratch.