Startup Marketing Essentials

Gary Rhoads, PhD Michael Swenson, PhD David Whitlark, PhD

Startups have to fight their way into the market without a familiar brand, a big advertising budget, or large-scale product development, and many start with a whimper and fade fast. This resource helps new businesses and small business owners battle those long odds. Built from ten years of observing and interviewing more than 100 entrepreneurs and launching five ventures, it replaces textbook answers with a simple, actionable framework of five categories of best practices: a bottom-up mindset, leveraging your competitive angle, leveraging leverage, thinking and acting big, and launching tactics. Students learn from field-tested entrepreneurs how to turn a good competitive angle into a great one and market a startup with little or no money, improving their chances of success.