Marketing for Startups Masterclass

10 Weeks

·

Cohort-based Course

Learn how to research, write and execute a customer-centred marketing plan that increases your chances of survival

Course overview

'The young reed dies so easily. Beginnings are times of such great peril.'

That's a quote from Frank Herbert's Dune.

 

It's an appropriate epigraph for our masterclass because most businesses die within their first few years.

 

Die is a better word than fail because it captures the finality and the feeling of absence for its grieving founders.


They die because they run out of money, their product is wrong for the market or they are outcompeted.


Our Marketing for Startups Masterclass will help you beat those odds by teaching you how to research, write and execute a marketing plan that puts the customer first in everything you do.


As part of a small cohort of students, you will learn basic marketing skills that will transform you into a marketer who understands why the world's best businesses treat marketing as the advocate for the customer.


We've created lectures and interactive tasks for you and sourced case studies, videos and podcasts.


We have designed this course for three different types of people:


Founders who want to keep their startups alive. The best founders have T-shaped skills, which means a deep knowledge of one thing (the vertical bar of the T) and a general knowledge of many things (the horizontal bar of the T). To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to understand the basic marketing. Without this knowledge, your startup is more likely to fail.


Founders-in-waiting, ready to take the plunge. The market for your product or service is a jungle. There are things in there that will bite you if they can. Let us protect you by teaching you essential marketing theories like ' jobs to be done' and 'pricing power'.


People working in marketing at startups who want to be more effective at their job. Chances are that nobody in the company, including you, is trained in basic marketing. After completing our masterclass, you'll become the most valuable member of the marketing team.


Who is this course for

01

Founders who want to keep their startups alive

02

Founders-in-waiting ready to take the plunge

03

People working in marketing at startups who want to be more effective at their job

What you’ll get out of this course

Learn how to use the MORTN scale to assess your market orientation as you start putting the customer first in everything you do.


Learn how to design questionnaires with attitudinal and behavioural questions so you can identify distinct customer segments in your market.


Learn how to use marketing professor Mark Ritson's Meaningful/Actionable Grid to segment your market into homogenous groups.


Learn how to create a target segment portrait by answering questions about customer demographics, attitudes and behaviour.


Learn how to write a positioning statement that articulates your product's unique point of difference and a reason to believe it.

Learn how to write specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) objectives to hold your marketing strategy accountable.

Learn how to figure out the job your product is doing for customers using Clay Christensen's Jobs to be Done framework

Learn how to use the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter to find the highest price customers will pay for your product

Learn how to find and frame your founder's story using universal plot structures to create a memorable narrative people can easily repeat.

Learn how to create the best distribution strategy for your startup by understanding and using your core competencies.

This course includes

10 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

33 in-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

10 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Sep 30—Oct 6

    Sep

    30

    What Does it Mean to be Market-Orientated?

    Mon 9/304:00 PM—5:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Start here: Welcome to Maven

    3 items

    Case study: Google Home

    4 items • Free preview

Week 2

Oct 7—Oct 13

    Oct

    7

    Market Research is The Light

    Mon 10/74:00 PM—5:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: Calm

    4 items • Free preview

Week 3

Oct 14—Oct 20

    Oct

    14

    Use Segmentation to Meet the Unique Needs of Your Customers

    Mon 10/144:00 PM—5:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: IKEA

    4 items • Free preview

Week 4

Oct 21—Oct 27

    Oct

    21

    Who Am I Going to Target?

    Mon 10/214:00 PM—5:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case Study: Jet Blue

    4 items • Free preview

Week 5

Oct 28—Nov 3

    Oct

    28

    And What is My Position?

    Mon 10/285:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: Airbnb

    4 items • Free preview

Week 6

Nov 4—Nov 10

    Nov

    4

    Objectives Are the Final Part of Strategy

    Mon 11/45:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: American Greetings

    4 items • Free preview

Week 7

Nov 11—Nov 17

    Nov

    11

    The first P is Product

    Mon 11/115:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: Fitbit

    4 items • Free preview

Week 8

Nov 18—Nov 24

    Nov

    18

    Price is a three-part discipline

    Mon 11/185:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: Mailchimp

    4 items • Free preview

Week 9

Nov 25—Dec 1

    Nov

    25

    Promotion is where all the glamour and the clamour is

    Mon 11/255:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: Aldi

    4 items • Free preview

Week 10

Dec 2

    Dec

    2

    Place is also known as Distribution

    Mon 12/25:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Case study: HP

    4 items • Free preview

What people are saying

        "One of the most educational and informative parts of our startup journey."
Matthew Addai

Matthew Addai

Co-Founder, Cashblack
        “A must for any entrepreneur serious about growing their startup."
Mali McCalla

Mali McCalla

Founder, Korda
        "Made for founders like me without a marketing background who need to understand and apply important marketing concepts"
Gameli Ladzepko

Gameli Ladzepko

Founder, Flossy

Meet your instructor

Dino Myers-Lamptey

Dino Myers-Lamptey

Dino founded The Barber Shop, a strategy-led creative company that aims to solve the biggest business problems through data, distribution and disruptive ideas.


The Barber Shop work with businesses that are driven by a purpose and which strive to enrich culture through the pleasure that they bring. Their clients include Sky, Triumph, Mayo Clinics and Parkinson’s UK.


Dino is also Co-Chair of CAN (Conscious Advertising Network), an NED for MGOMD and is also a board member of the UK Effies, Marketing Society and a Trustee for the Brixton Finishing School.


In 2023 Dino was recognised as a Top 10 Media Planner by Campaign, for the 6th year, an industry 40 over 40, a Marketing Society Fellow and was added to the Campaign A-list in 2024. Dino is also a founding member of MEFA (Media For All), and has recently founded Diverse Speakers.


Dino was one of the first investors in Lee Henshaw's company Into-it.

Lee Henshaw

Lee Henshaw

Lee brings his extensive experience from the entertainment, technology and media sectors to this masterclass.


In his twenty-five-year career as an entrepreneur, he has launched, grown, and sold two online marketing businesses. He recently launched his third, the music technology company Into-it.


With his first two companies, Way to Blue and Silence, he advised household-name entertainment brands on PR, creativity and media buying.


As the founder of Into-it, a browser extension that transforms banner ads into personalised music notifications, Lee remains at the forefront of innovative digital marketing.


Lee produced Look Up, the pop-up record and bookshop in Stoke Newington curated by Gilles Peterson, which explored the positive relationship between mental health and the arts. He is also the author of the novel Queer Fish in God's Waiting Room and an Oasis biography. As a journalist in the 90s, he wrote about music and technology for The Manchester Evening News, The Guardian, The Observer, and The Independent.

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Course schedule

3 hours per week

  • Mondays & Thursdays

    5:00pm - 6.30pm GMT

    Join us every Monday and Thursday at 5.00pm GMT for an hour and a half's study


  • August 29th, 2024

    5.00pm GMT

    That's our launch date

  • Weekly projects

    2 hours per week

    We recommend reading, watching or listening to the first lesson ahead of the class. The other two are optional.

Learning is better with cohorts

Learning is better with cohorts

Active hands-on learning

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Interactive and project-based

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and project teams

Learn with a cohort of peers

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

Frequently Asked Questions

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We look forward to meeting you

We look forward to meeting you