This is a guest blog from Sean Ellis who can be seen at Startonomics on October 2, 2008.

Marketing a VC-backed startup is one of the toughest marketing jobs you’ll ever face.

The challenge usually falls on a lone marketer taking a venture to market for the first time. Even seasoned marketing execs find themselves in unfamiliar territory. They don’t have a team of minions to execute all the components of a comprehensive marketing plan. It’s up to them to roll up their sleeves and execute a whittled down list of high impact initiatives. Unlike an established company, there is rarely any momentum to ride while they figure out which initiatives will prove “high impact.”

And if the job weren’t stressful enough, some arbitrary date will likely be set as the target for the millionth user. With all that fresh VC money, the marketer has little choice but to get aggressive about scaling growth.

What’s that burning smell?
Welcome to mistake number one: premature scaling.

The only marketing job tougher than bringing a well-funded startup to market is trying to do it with a bootstrapped startup. The common mantra at a bootstrapped venture is: “conserve as much cash as possible.” While this is wise while the initial product is being developed, even bootstrappers should get serious about scaling growth at some point. Yet the typical thinking remains: focus on creating a great product, get buzz and hopefully we’ll take off like wildfire. This is the second common startup marketing mistake: staying conservative for too long.

These somewhat opposite mistakes can be avoided by answering the same simple question: “How can we spend millions of dollars predictably building our user base with a positive return on investment?”

While the question is simple, arriving at the answer is an arduous, but essential task for any startup marketer. Every company must create its own unique checklist of initiatives and systems that will help uncover the critical information needed to scale with a predictable ROI. Of course a bootstrapped company will need to raise money to spend it, but with proven metrics it shouldn’t be difficult.

Generally the process starts with understanding how your product meets the needs of the right target customers. This is followed by a very iterative process of honing messaging, business models, and eliminating barriers to adoption. The end result should be a large enough average user lifetime value to enable scalable external customer acquisition drivers that generate a positive return on investment.

Developing and managing these external drivers will be the primary focus of my Startonomics presentation “Creating & Implementing a Web 2.0 Marketing Plan.” But you’ve now been warned - very little attention should be paid to developing these external drivers until the preceding “discovery process” has been completed. I highly recommend reading “Four Steps to the Epiphany” by Stephen Blank prior to the Startonomics conference. It’s less focused on specific startup metrics, but should help you determine the right fit between your product, target market and the problems you solve.

Heard enough yet? Join us at Startonomics