Marketing your business: the first 100 days

Eventarc co-founder Scott Handsaker says businesses shouldn't throw money at marketing without first testing assumptions. Photo: Supplied

The first 100 days of a business's marketing program can make or break a fledgling enterprise. It's all too easy to bleed the business dry with expensive but ultimately fruitless marketing strategies, without generating enough revenue to get the business off the ground.

Scott Handsaker, co-founder of online event registration outfit Eventarc, says one of the most common traps for start-ups is making incorrect assumptions about sales conversion rates and earnings.

“When we started we had a bunch of assumptions about how much traffic Google AdWords would drive to our site and how many sales conversions we would get from visitor traffic," says Handsaker.

"But we got half the traffic we thought we would, our Google AdWords campaign was three times more expensive than we anticipated and our conversion rate was 20 per cent of what we expected. The lesson for us was not to throw money at the marketing campaign; it's about testing your assumptions.

“You really need to put systems in place to understand where your customers are coming from. It's worth investing time to track your marketing metrics from end to end. You also need to differentiate your statistics so you know how much business you get from your AdWords campaign and how much you get from other channels like email marketing," he says.

"Then at the end of your first 100 days you can make decision about where to spend your money based on the results of the first three months of your campaign."