Guy Kawasaki’s quick lesson for marketing a startup

I recently watched a video of Guy Kawasaki’s speech on The Art of the Start. Kawasaki, Apple’s former Chief Evangelist, claims that all you need to know to successfully market your startup is to focus on one thing – “being high and to the right.” Although the video is a few years old, the message is still valid. 

In his quick MBA in marketing lesson, Kawasaki showed a simple slide with two axes. On the X axis is the idea of providing great value to your customers. The Y axis represents the ability to provide a unique product or service. I’ve provided a screenshot of the slide to illustrate his point. Companies want to obviously be in the highest, most right-hand quadrant marked as X on the slide.

Kawasaki gave an example of Fandango, the US-based online movie ticket buying website. He said that Fandago has achieved the “holy grail of marketing.” When the video was shot, they were the only website in California that provided the ability for customers to purchase their movie tickets online and print them out at home in order to avoid theatre line-ups. Therefore, Fandango is a service that is unique and provides great value to the customer – the ideal place where a startup technology business should aim to be.

I’ve provided a link to the Google video of the entire speech below. Kawasaki will be speaking at the Art of Marketing Conference in Toronto on March 7th. He recently wrote a new book entitled Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions which is scheduled to be released in March. Kawasaki will be sharing some of the highlights from his book in his presentation.

The event planners have provided a discount code for the Art of Marketing Conference which saves attendees $50 per ticket or $100 per ticket in groups of 3 or more. The promo code is TV23 and you can also use this link.

I am looking forward to Kawasaki’s speech in addition to listening to many other great presenters who are scheduled to appear at the event.