I was at an event recently where one of the sponsors took about 5 minutes to address the room, talk about his firm, what they offered, and how to reach them. 

The crowd politely clapped, as everyone usually does with sponsors, but I seriously doubt a single person from that event will reach out – not because he did anything wrong, but rather because there was no value in what he said. Having been in the event organizers’ position of relying on sponsor dollars to make the numbers work, I was bummed for all of them.  And it got me thinking about the notion of value. At Techstars, we had a word for this, it was called #GiveFirst, but in my mind, it’s not just about giving, it’s about adding value first. 

In the early days of Techstars, we didn’t yet have a lot to brag about. I could show a few logos, sure, but like any embryonic company, you’re trying to figure out anything you can say to gain credibility, to gain attention.  I remember trying to recruit companies for Techstars and David Cohen giving me the sage advice to teach people something, rather than just waving a banner.

Oh, the wisdom in that guidance. Rather than just posting about applications opening (which I did with little effect), rather than just asking every person I knew to refer companies (which I did, with little effect), rather than taking out ads (which I didn’t do because I hate ads and we didn’t have the budget), I just started hosting free talks. It was always about something startup-related, and often I didn’t even lead them, rather I got someone else a lot smarter than me to do it. I just promoted it. For instance, Jason Mendelson on “20 ways to f*ck up your company”, or Paul Berberian on the hilarious Zenie bottle story, or Matt Blumberg on how to be a CEO. It was usually an hour long, and I always ended it with “and Techstars applications are open until X – if you have any questions, I’m here and would love to talk to you about it”. The key was the talks were GOOD. They were educational, from people who knew what they were talking about.  And when event attendees saw this small show of value, they could imagine what a whole accelerator program might be like. I often spent sixty minutes or more after the talk answering questions for people interested in the program. And so the flywheel of marketing began to turn. That piece of guidance was a huge driver of the early success of Techstars.

Fast forward a bunch of years, and the same thing happened with Digital Ocean. They were in their infancy, were a cloud hosting provider up against complex behemoths like Amazon, but had some very lofty growth goals. Digital Ocean was proud of how few clicks it took to set up a web server on their hosting platform relative to Amazon which could take hours to figure out. Taking a page out of “add value first” – they followed some sage advice from Jason Seats; rather than buying ad space, they created a bunch of how-to articles including a lesson in how to set up an Amazon web server without errors, literally helping people be successful on their competitor’s platform.  However at the very end of the post, they said “…and if you don’t want to do this work, check out Digital Ocean”. What I loved about this approach was their main focus wasn’t promoting Digital Ocean (although they hoped that they would get customers out of it). Their main focus was making someone else’s life easier.  They eventually IPO’ed, the roots of adding value embedded deep within the fast-growing company.

Companies spend billions of dollars a year trying to get our attention, such as all the ads we are subject to, or that sponsor who paid good money for brand recognition and 5 minutes on a stage. We are so overrun with this noise, that we tune it out – and the response of the marketing departments is to spend MORE money, say it louder, say it more often, creating more noise and making us filter it out even more. It’s a vicious cycle of absence of substance. 

If you want to get someone’s attention, try adding value first. The trick is that value is in the eye of the buyer, not the seller, so you really need to think about what your audience values. Taking out advertisements to tell me how awesome your CRM is doesn’t add value to me, even if I need a CRM, because every CRM is doing the same thing, so it’s just more noise. But taking out an ad to market a free class or video on how your CRM syncs bidirectionally and seamlessly with no code to that spreadsheet my intern uses, and then giving me a month free trial for taking the class? Love it.

Consider setting up a challenge in your company for your marketing team – ‘You aren’t allowed to market. You are only allowed to teach – even if it’s teaching about how to use a competitor’s product’.  How about co-writing a blog post with an investor about some challenge your business is facing, and letting that investor publish it on their website? The ideas are endless, you just need to think creatively.

Adding value takes thinking outside the box, I dare say it’s applicable in everything you do, and when you get it right, people will trust you more. Your customer base will be more tightly vetted, leading to happier customers with longer LTV. Your investor will be more likely to fight for you and bridge your next round when things aren’t going as planned (and let’s be honest, they RARELY go as planned). 

Challenge yourself to find a way to add value in every interaction. You’ll end up with a tidal wave of support that lifts you higher and propels you farther than you could ever imagine.