20: Why Sales and Marketing Should Be In Harmony for Early Stage Startups — Michael Young, CEO at Photon Commerce

TIMESTAMPS

00:52 – Introduction of how he entered the start-up world

02:35 – How Photon Commerce Started

04:05 – Where is Language Monetizable?

10:38 – Difference between marketing and sales

12:09 – How do you find your market?

18:15 – Success in finding the right people/customers

19:37 – How do you know when to adapt your messaging based on the feedback you are getting

GUEST BACKGROUND

Michael Young is the founder & CEO of Photon Commerce. Photon accelerates customer acquisition for fintech leaders using instant payments and invoicing through AI and is supported by a venture firm funded by Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. After dropping out of a Stanford PhD, Michael led advanced R&D programs funded by the Department of Defense, created hundreds of jobs, raised $50M across his venture-backed startups, and took them to acquisitions.

MORE FROM PHOTON COMMERCE

Photon Commerce’s financial AI platform empowers fintech leaders to instantly process B2B payments, invoices, statements, and receipts. Photon's intelligent platform understands and harmonizes data, down to even line-item purchase analytics and prediction. Learn more at photoncommerce.com

Reach out to Michael at linkedin.com/in/michaelyoungphoton

MAIN INSIGHT

Sales and marketing should blend together, especially for an early-stage startup, so you can learn more about your customer and find a product-market-fit fast.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

1. Marketing is all about communicating the problem you are solving to the world
2. Marketing is a job of story-telling amazing stories to your team, your investors, your customers, and the world
3. Experiment and try different things to see what will work for your company
4. Content should be optimized for SEO and engagement, and repost
5. Look for a direct marketing strategy
6. Distributing content and getting more traffic is as important as producing content
7. Treat every single market conversation as unique
8. Test your messages
   1. Create different landing pages
   2. Utilize email marketing
9. Visual thumbnail and title are two of the most important components of your content
10. Engagement is as important as creating content
11. A/B test your content

PRACTICAL STEPS

1. Find the biggest problem that is worth solving
2. Identify your WHY for solving this problem
3. Share your why to your team and customer to inspire and motivate them

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

1. Understand what tools you should use
2. Test your websites and landing pages
3. Use Hotjar to see heatmaps on your website and the behaviors of your users
4. Encourage your marketing team to be analytical and technical
5. Don’t hesitate to share some of your content directly and add a personal touch to it
6. Timing on presenting the content is also important