Help with your positioning + martech tools and growth reads

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🍝 Question: Are you throwing spaghetti and seeing what sticks, when it comes to marketing? 🍝

Don't worry, we're not here to judge.

We're here to help! Because we see this scattergun marketing approach costing founders money, opportunities and sleep all the time. But it doesn't have to if you get clear on your market positioning, which is this issue's focus (if you're thinking, "WTF is positioning", that's totally fine – we've got you covered).

Below, you'll also find a hearty side of martech and a sprinkle of news from our corners of the startup ecosystem to round out your marketing meal this month. Delicious.

Let's dig in! 👇️

The most important marketing question 90% of early stage founders miss 🤔

No doubt, you have lots of questions about marketing. From "How do I 'do' marketing" to "How much should I spend on paid ads each month" and "WTF is a funnel", we hear them from founders all the time.

But there's one super important question almost all early stage founders miss.

✨ How do you develop strong positioning, and in turn, compelling messaging? ✨ Because these are the foundations of all successful marketing efforts. This issue, we've got you covered.

Good fuel for your growth engine 🚀

• ​Should you be doing founder marketing? The answer, according to Tom Orbach, is unequivocal (and very compelling!). He even gives you a cheat sheet and a flow chart in case you're in any doubt about your decision to invest time in this no-budget marketing strategy. 💫
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• ​How I Built Dis – The Resilience Project Story. We're big fans of The Imperfects podcast and this episode – where one of the hosts shares his personal story as founder of The Resilience Project – is inspirational, relatable and sometimes LOL funny, when you least expect it. Founder to founder, it's a tonic.

Growth tech reviews 🛠️

AI and martech are evolving FAST. We've been reviewing one tool each month, and now you can get up to speed fast because they're all in one spot.

So far, we've reviewed these tools:

• ​Coefficient – A tool that scrapes data from various sources (e.g. Google Analytics, your CRM, ads platforms and many more) into Google Sheets and Excel.
• ​Heatseeker – An AI-powered market research tool.
• ​Inkform – A custom writing automation tool.
• ​Beautiful.ai – Generative AI presentation software.
• ​Relume – The ultimate toolkit for designing and building Webflow sites.
• ​Copy.ai – A generative AI (LLM) tool that helps you write content.​

They're all on our site for easy skimming and deep diving of your own, if a tool takes your fancy. All these reviews are not sponsored – they're our honest experiences and opinions.

Is there a tool you'd like us to try out? Please let us know (just hit reply to this newsletter)!

This newsletter is from the team at Stella Startups 👋

ICYMI, we’re Stella Startups – a marketing partner for AU and NZ startups from seed stage to scale up.

We bring you marketing strategy, brand expertise and hands-on execution, all with a commitment to innovation so you can make an impact bigger than your budget. Head to our website to find out more and if you’d like help, book some time to chat (we don’t bite!).

See you next time,
Gemma & Bridget

📸 Until then, here are a few highlights from the last month, including Gemma making her foray into podcasts with the launch of The Startup Retro on DayOne.fm. Tune in wherever you get your pods!

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