Marketing tips for Newcastle startups

Newcastle continues to prove itself as a fantastic destination for startups with great companies like Liftango, Social Pinpoint and Newie Ventures getting their start here. But a good startup rarely takes off without some investment in advertising and marketing.

Adam Lance has been in the marketing business for nearly three decades. He worked in the creative departments of large multinationals for years. He’s worked for a variety of companies and campaigns including Coca Cola, Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and Electrolux. He’s won over 100 national and international awards and for the last 15 years he’s been a creative director, meaning he’s been responsible for the concepts behind the advertising.
 
In 2012, he began his journey at The Village of Useful agency in Newcastle. The Village of Useful started in advertising, marketing and technology and then moved to innovation. In the last year Lance has returned the business to his roots in advertising, marketing and branding.
 
Lance has a few tips from his time in the industry.

Create intrigue in your branding
 
On a local level, The Village of Useful get asked a lot of branding questions around logo, business name and design.  
 
Lance’s approach is unique, he looks for every opportunity to start a conversation with the customer.  
 
“Can there be more meaning in a name? Can you create a name or a logo or design work that provokes a question from a potential customer? If a customer comes up and asks ‘why is there a flaming unicorn on your logo?’ That question is an opportunity to sell. That is an opportunity you should always take,” he says.

Know who your customer really is
 
When he works with businesses, he always asks the same question: who’s your customer and what problem do they need to solve. Once they determine this, they can tell the story in a variety of creative ways.
 
He mentions a case study he did with a national paint company.
“It was an interesting case because at their old stores, if you asked the owner who their customer was they’d say it’s a woman and she wants to talk about colour,” Lance says. 
 
The owners were right; they were seeing a woman in her mid-30s in their store talking about the different colour options for the lounge room.  But by working with the customer segmentation study, The Village of Useful found out she was not actually the typical customer and the customer was actually often her partner. 
 
“He initiated the conversation. She came to the store saying we want yellow, but her partner was the one who wanted to be talked to,” Lance says. “That vastly changes the marketing strategy. We moved it away from women’s programming to the guy’s demographic.” 
 
 Good research has profound effects
 
Adam says the good news is it doesn’t matter if you are a one-person business or Coca-Cola, your marketing strategy starts the same. You still ask the same questions:
- Who are we talking to?
- What do they currently think and feel?
- What do and what do we want them to think feel and do?

“That’s pretty much it. The rest is filling in those gaps,” he says. 
 
Then the next question inevitably is “What’s the budget?” and then how to make the most amount of noise for the least amount of money – you have to channel a plan to reach the customers.

“We start with lowest hanging fruit. Who is looking for our product or service right now, and then head up the tree,” Lance says. “Simple, right?”
Alexandra Morris
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