The hardest time in the arc of a startup is marketing when you’re fresh out of the gate.  The sales people need a brand to leverage against in pitches and yet the brand is still being built.

In short – nobody trusts you or cares.

You have no customers. No word of mouth referrals. Maybe no press – aside from a lame press release announcing the launch.

Much like your parents told you, the company you keep speaks volumes about your character.  Use this to your advantage and brainstorm about who your company would like to hang out with.  Do you have a service that extends an established platform?  Some nifty way to save a customer time by blending two products together?  (You should already know this from doing a good points of differentiation exercise)

Here’s how you approach your partner’s marketing team:

1. Research.  Google around and find the players. Check out their LinkedIn profiles. Follow them on Twitter – in short, understand what their interests are and listen for a bit.  Look for ways to bump into them at a conference or two.
2. Whiteboard. Picture and diagram out areas of crossover.  Try and come up with two really strong opportunities.  Keep it to two though – too many “We could this together AND” can come across as desperate.  Use Guy Kawasaki‘s “So What?” test where you pretend you have a little elf on your shoulder whispering “So what?” in your ear.
3. Approach. From your research target your ideal company. Typically, a CMO or Director is going to be pretty busy. Look for support staff that might have more time to hear your pitch and get them to slide you in front of the head honcho. Bonus – get a dialogue going and listen to how you can make that employee look like a rock star internally. Webinars? White paper? Presentation at the industry conference? If you do this correctly with results, you’ve got a fan on the inside and your collaborative good work will get noticed by the big players.

In startups I’ve done I’ve been constantly amazed at how a simple trade show booth conversation can yield opportunities for partnering.  Get a card. Make a note and begin building the relationship.   Whether it was Intel, Research in Motion – almost all were open to brainstorming ways to integrate our technology into their product mix.

We were fortunate to team up with Google and having these projects on our website and in our pitches made it immensely easier to establish credibility and eliminate the fear of a new vendor.