Pitfall 1: Forgetting to Take Time for Strategy and Planning
Often, high-growth startups have extremely high goals that need to be met within a short period. The pressure to achieve these goals quickly can make it feel like you do not have time to craft marketing tactics and strategies. While short-term goals are important, it is crucial to have a long-term success strategy before jumping in.
Pitfall 2: Aiming for Perfection
When striving to meet high-growth goals, sometimes there has to be flexibility. In an ideal world, everything produced through marketing should be perfect, but that would take far more time than it is worth. It is important to hire a team of professionals that have experience and are trusted to push great work through. Checking in with the team regularly is a great way to ensure that the big picture is being accomplished without stepping in the way of every day-to-day task.
Pitfall 3: Not Setting the Right Expectations
It is important to be clear with the entire company how the marketing supports the business. Setting the right expectations at the beginning of a project helps the whole business understand exactly how marketing supports long-term and short-term goals. In a high-growth environment, it is important to set the expectation that good enough, in the short term, has to be good enough. Worrying over every flyer, article, and press release is not worth the time spent.
Pitfall 4: Skipping the Low Hanging Fruit
High-growth startups need to work towards creative and innovative marketing strategies without straying too far from traditional approaches. An example of a traditional marketing approach that cannot be ignored is SEO and email marketing.
Pitfall 5: Trying to Tackle too Much at Once
Many startups can get caught up in believing they can do it themselves. Creating and operating a business takes more time, effort, and focus than many believe. Often, a team trying to manage all aspects of your business without help will not come up with a quality and successful end result. It is important to take time, in the beginning, to lay out a plan and strategy with managers to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Read more about High-Growth Startups at forbes.com