The two most used words around the globe when it comes to entrepreneurship nowadays are probably “ecosystem” and “start-up”. It is really thrilling to have an idea you want to turn into a profitable business. But how does an idea evolve from a thought to an action? Which are the right paths one can take to make a product known to a crowd thirsty for innovation and solutions? To these questions, the answers come from an office in Greece, whose people possess a global mindset in digital marketing. In the next few lines, I would like to share my experience as an intern in Starttech Ventures.
The Procedure
Starttech Ventures is a private investor and Venture Builder in Athens, focusing on international B2B software startups. In other words, the team helps software startups grow, enabling startups’ developers to focus on writing the actual code for their applications. After years of experience, Dimitris Tsingos (Founder and CEO at Starttech Ventures) has come to a conclusion, concerning the methodologies a start-up can use to succeed:
“Come up with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), find your early adopters, listen to their feedback and alter your product to meet their needs.”
Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Well in the beginning things are a bit more complicated…
In order for this procedure to be fully applicable, one must be able to measure results from day one. Now, here is the deal. Think of your business as a VAN. If your product is the cargo of the VAN, then the engine and the wheels are the marketing team that will make your product well known. And with marketing, you can measure the results of your efforts. But I’m not talking about the conventional marketing theories; I’m talking about digital marketing.
Digital Marketing
Since we are not in the mid-50’s, placing our hopes for advertising in Madison Avenue’s agencies, we can use every possible way to spread the word, online. During my 8-month internship at Starttech Ventures I immersed myself in those techniques.
Aristeidis Kypriotis (Head of Growth) and Panagiotis Sarantopoulos (Front-end Developer) were my two teachers along the way. Our tasks with Aristeidis included the ways of promoting a brand online, whereas with Panagiotis, we focused more on online content marketing.
Promoting a brand
As mentioned previously, the main advantage of digital marketing is your ability to measure your results. Google products are your best friends in this situation. First of all, you have to create online campaigns, using Google Ads. I can’t recount how many campaigns I created for the companies hosted in Starttech Ventures’ portfolio.
Always remember: Different types of campaigns for different results.
With your campaigns you can target:
- a broad or specific audience from a single search query
- different countries
- regions
- age groups
…and so on. Clearly, your options are much more versatile, as compared to “old school marketing”. With the right campaign, you can persuade people click-on and visit your website and, if your ad is relevant enough, perform the desired action. The result of this procedure is what we call “conversion rate”. But how can you actually see the results of your efforts?
After your “experiment” (aka the ad) has started “running”, you must have a way to monitor its progress, in terms of people’s behavior. So, it’s time to link your website to another great Google Tool, “Google Analytics”.
Google Analytics for Digital Marketing
This is the most important tool of today’s web analytics. Just link your website to this platform and you’ll be able to see the behavior of your entire audience. For example, you can:
- find out which search queries fired up your campaigns
- monitor the way a potential customer moves in your website
- see if a user leaves immediately after viewing just one of your web pages (this is what we call “Bounce Rate”)
- your overall Conversion Rate (not only from Google Ads)
…and so on.
This means that you can come to data-driven decisions. Hence you can modify your campaigns, improve your website’s content, target different audiences etc. Obviously with these tools, marketers can give precise proposals to the CEO concerning the expenses and the income the company has.
If you want to dig deeper into the world of web analytics, you should go more technical. This is where “Google Tag Manager” plays a significant role. Any marketer who takes his job seriously, should know how to use this tool ( 🙂 ). With Google Tag Manager, you can even find out if a user scrolled through your page or exactly where he put his mouse (!). I could spend more and more time analyzing what I’ve learned with Google Tag Management, but that is a different story.
Let’s move on to something more important. The content of your page.
The right Content for Digital Marketing
Let’s admit it; Nothing beats the satisfaction you get when, in a search query, your website appears in the first pages of Google Search Engine, despite the Ads you may have. I can assure you that Panagiotis Sarantopoulos strives for this achievement. Not only does he know how to write the appropriate content for every application, but also he optimizes the way content is written for your page to meet search engine standards. Knowing how to score high in Google’s Search algorithm is of paramount importance for a modern digital marketer. So after using the appropriate keywords for the desired search, we would modify the way we used the keywords on a page, towards optimization. Consequently, the page should fit the Google Search Engine Standards like a glove.
What will you experience at Starttech Ventures?
Now, after all I’ve said, you might have already formed an impression about what it’s like working at Starttech Ventures. Let me draw the picture, crystal clear.
You will find a well balanced team of experts working hard to help software-based startups grow and expand. I was fascinated by the fact that putting the principles of “The Lean Startup” (by Eric Ries) into practice, is the key to success. “Epignosis” and “Yodeck” are two of the most significant results of this implementation.
After completing my studies in Electrical Engineering, I was convinced that one of my next steps is to actually be a part of a team that knows how to make a startup make profit. With Dimitris’ guidance and Ioannis Beleginis’ (Head of the Venture Building team & Graphic Designer) planning, we were able to reach our goals, week after week. I was able to observe how a modern business grows, step-by-step, via digital marketing.
Last but not least, I will never forget our “General”, Evangelos Papanikolaou (Scrum Master) and his ability to persuade people meet their deadlines, Konstantina Ferentinou (Copywriter) and our wonderful collaboration, Nektarios Axiotis (Systems’ Administrator) who makes sure we have everything we need to work productively and the rest of the team (Iro, Glykeria and Katerina) who are the life-giving people of this organization.
Do I recommend this place for an internship?
Absolutely! Starttech Ventures is the best place for someone to see how modern startups reach for the sky, with proper guidance. Take a step forward and become a part of this team, for a while. There’s so much to learn!
