Many businesses face the challenge of how to start off their marketing launch. 

Should you run quarter page ads in your local paper?  Should you pay one of those Search Engine Optimization firms to get you better Google rankings?  Should you sponsor your kid's little league team shirts?

The answer isn't about where to spend money, it's about what order to spend it in.

Presumably all of these placements will produce some visibility for your company.  But startups just don't need visibility, they need a financial return as quickly as possible.

What we need to do is filter down our list of options to determine where we spend our money first.  We're not Coca-Cola, we can't just spend everywhere at once!

Time to Action

The first filter is "Time to Action".  Time to Action is a measure of how quickly our advertising will result in an action.  Startups need to turn dollars into actions very quickly, so comparing how quickly your media will perform is critical.

For example, if you were marketing your Web site, you would likely put a banner ad ahead of a print ad.  Obviously it will take more time for someone to visit your site from a newspaper ad (where they have to go to their computer) than from a banner ad where they are one click away.

This can work in the exact opposite way.  If you were promoting a local restaurant, a well-placed billboard is far more likely to attract local foot traffic than a banner ad pointing to your Web site.

In either case, we'd lean toward what will return the fastest result.

Track-ability

While we want to produce quick results, we want a way to track those results as well.  If we don't know what's working, we don't know how to respond effectively.

Startups need to put a lot of emphasis on what they can and cannot track.  I tend to put a massive discount on the value anything that can't be well-tracked, which is why I do a lot of online marketing.

Since most of your initial marketing will be a test of itself, you need to put those items you can measure at the top of your list.  Even if they don't produce the best results, the fact that you can measure their efficacy will allow you to tune your message and adapt to your customers earlier.

Return on Investment

Surprisingly to many, this is the last filter I use.  Of course we want our marketing dollars to produce a healthy return on investment.  But if the return takes 2 years (Time to Action) and we have no idea where it came from (Track-ability) it doesn't really help us!

All marketing should be accountable and provide a measurable return on investment.

I've heard many counter examples of big companies that spend money on branding, with little or no way to track the immediate efficacy of their spend, that have had great marketing results.  Fantastic.  Now show me how often a startup company can spend like that and survive.  Don't let the results of big companies determine how small companies can market.

If you can't build a clear and obvious model for return on investment, walk away.  Don't get lured into thinking that just because it builds awareness that it's a good way to spend money.  You can build awareness until your blue in the face but unless the register's ringing, it just doesn't matter.

Fill 'er Up

Once you've laid our each of your strategies in sequence, the next step is to exhaust each one before you move to the next.  If banner ads are extremely effective, spend on every last banner ad before you move on to print ads. 

The idea is to find out what works best, move it to the top of the stack, and then exploit it until it can't go any further.

Some startups try everything at once.  While I'm a big proponent of always testing new ideas, I'm not a proponent of killing the golden goose to do it.  If you're lucky enough to find one tactic that works, by all means beat it to death.  Only after it can't be pimped any longer should you move heavily into the next idea. 

Testing yes, bleeding the mainline of new business, no.