Our services

Startups solve problems. We'll solve your marketing.

Built for startups & scaleups 🚀

We couldn’t stand by and watch the startup marketing dilemma play out over and over, keeping innovative solutions waiting in the world’s wings. So we built a service just for startups and scaleups.

Consider us your first marketing hire, your experienced guide or your outsourced marketing team. Either way, we care deeply about the work we do to support you.

STEP 1

We always start with a
Marketing Road Map

Input ✍️

  • We assess your marketing so far.

  • Get to know your product.

  • Review your competitive landscape.

  • Identify your challenges and opportunities.

Output 🙌

  • Findings and insights from marketing experts with a fresh, objective perspective.

  • A clear Road Map of what’s next for your marketing –  must haves, should haves and nice to haves.

All of a sudden, marketing will make a whole lot more sense.
No more guessing, feeling stuck or throwing spaghetti at the wall.
Ready in 1 - 2 weeks.
STEP 2

Your Road Map will recommend
what’s next, which might include 👇

Marketing Foundations

We’ll only suggest what you need to get the fundamentals in place.

This might include:

  • Market Positioning

  • Brand Strategy + ID

  • Marketing Strategy + Sprint Plans

  • Marketing Operations  (reporting + tooling)




Priced in your Road Map
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Marketing Delivery

Tactical support to make your marketing happen.

We can help with:

  • Website copy & design

  • SEO and content marketing

  • Copywriting + design

  • Social media

  • Sales and pitch decks

  • Life-cycle marketing (email, SMS)

  • PR and media relations

  • Partner programs

  • + more!

Priced per project
STEP UP

Two options for when you need to step your marketing up

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Founder & First-Marketer Coaching

Bite-sized advisory support to keep you on track.

Includes:
Weekly coaching sessions (~45 mins)
Unlimited access to Stella Startups templates & resource recommendations

From $1,500 / 4 weeks (min. 12 weeks)

Marketer-for-Hire

An experienced marketer dedicated to you for at least 1 day/week. The most cost-effective option for serious growth.

Includes:
Strategic marketing expertise
Hands-on marketing delivery
Support that scales with you
Help with hiring in-house marketers

From $5,000 / 4 weeks (min. 12 weeks)

Want the details?

No problem. Dive into the nitty gritty on our services and how we work.

Audit Service

Summary

This service is essential to provide you with the best advice and support, zeroing in on the most impactful areas for your startup.

We’ll assess your marketing foundations, efforts, goals and opportunities within your competitive landscape to identify key focus areas and provide an initial marketing road map. (So you know you’re heading in the right direction without costly distractions.)

Who it’s for

Everyone. Because the best place to start is at the beginning 🙂 .

This work gets us up to speed with your product and market fast, so we can apply our strategic marketing experience to make clear and considered recommendations (rather than baking this work into hidden costs down the track).

What’s included

You’ll receive a stepped-out Audit report with a clear idea of the marketing road map ahead. Here’s how we’ll get there.

  1. We’ll run a workshop with you/your team to understand your goals, product, target customers and competitive landscape and unpack your marketing challenges.
  2. We’ll do our own deep dive into your marketing foundations and performance against your main competitors, including delving into channel performance data if you're already in market.
  3. We’ll present our Audit findings to you/your team, including a competitive landscape assessment and a scorecard on positioning, branding, CX/web performance, marketing operations and performance in the most common marketing channels in your category. You’ll also receive clear recommendations for priorities to move forward with.

Marketing will make a whole lot more sense to you, and we'll be ready to move ahead with the best way forward.

Timeframe

1 - 2 weeks.

Price

From $1,500 (ex GST).

The price may be higher than $1,500 if you are a little further along in your journey (to reflect the increased complexity/level of detail required in our review), but we will let you know upfront if this is the case.

Questions?

We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

Position Service

Summary

Many businesses (including many startups) waste time and resources trying to sell to audiences who don’t value - or don’t know why they should value - their product over others or even over the status quo.

That’s why positioning is so important. 

Sometimes it’s confused with making your product fit the market - no amount of positioning work can do that. Instead, positioning is about defining where your product sits in the market so you know who you’re targeting and why they should pick you. 

This sits at the heart of your marketing strategy, branding and messaging - steering everything towards success.

Who it’s for

In general, this service is for you if you’re not able to clearly articulate who you’re targeting and why they should pick you.

To help you effectively, we need to know you’ve done some customer research and/or there’s a proven market opportunity due to a successful competitor you’re challenging. 

Here are some signs that you need help with positioning:

  • You had significant positive interest in your product/service initially, but it’s not converting into sales
  • You’re struggling to increase site traffic and social media engagement
  • Marketing has plateaued and you don’t know where to focus your efforts

What’s included

We’ll work with you to land on a definitive position for your product within your competitive landscape. Here’s how we’ll get there.

  • We’ll run a workshop with you* to tease out your unique attributes and best-fit customers using a proven positioning framework.
  • We’ll synthesise this info with our positioning experience and market assessment to land on a clear position.
  • We’ll present this to you/your team and highlight key areas for validation via customer interviews.

* Brand positioning will affect every aspect of your business, so it’s best to involve any other key decision makers at this stage (e.g. product, sales and customer success team members or advisers).

Timeframe

2 weeks.

Price

$2,000 (ex GST).

We're here to talk when you're ready.

Tell Service

Summary

There are a lot of rocket emojis in the startup world. This service is like rocket fuel. 

It provides all the ingredients to “tell” people what you do in a way that compels them to listen. It also provides you with the foundations of a strong brand, because that’s what will drive your future profitability. 

If you need visual brand design (logo and brand guidelines), we can help with that too. Talk to us if this is the case.

Who it’s for

Startups that want to grow. Now there’s an oxymoron 😉. But in all seriousness, this service is a growth catalyst because it’s the bedrock on which to build your brand and all marketing activities. 

You’ll save a lot of time and money by getting really clear on your brand and customer messaging early on. Investors like it, too. And if you need brand design as well, now is a great time to do it because this work dovetails into your brand’s visual identity.

What’s included

You’ll receive two foundational pieces that you and your team will refer back to time and time again.

  • Foundational brand messaging: Brand essence, tone, strategic narrative and tagline
  • Customer messaging playbook: USP, value prop, key differentiators and key messages for your ideal customer profiles (ICP)*

* For 2 ICPs because that's all most startups should focus on from a time, money and overall effectiveness point of view. If you don’t know who your ICPs are, we can help you identify target groups via our Positioning service (see above).

We need to speak to your customers (or potential customers) to do this work, which means you get some valuable research along the way. Yay! The price below includes interviews with 2-3 customers. If you need us to speak to more customers, no problem. We'll discuss additional costs with you first. (And if you already have customer research, great! We'll use that too but we'll still need to do our own interviews to get to the heart of your foundational messaging.)

If you need brand design as well - including logo and brand guidelines - to set you up with an impactful visual identity, we can do that too.

Timeframe

4 weeks.

Price

$5,000 (ex GST).

Optional extra: Brand design (let's chat first).

Questions?

We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

GTM Service

Summary

Get everything you need to hit the ground running when you go to market, including key brand assets and a clear idea of the marketing channels to focus on.

Who it’s for

Startups who are ready to launch* but need support to land with impact.

*That means you have a clear idea of your brand positioning - who you’re targeting and why they should pick you.

What’s included

Everything you need to hit the market running, including:

  • Home/landing page copywriting refresh.
  • Refresh of LinkedIn profiles for founder/s and your startup. 
  • A LinkedIn workshop for your team to help you post with confidence (and impact), including content pillars to focus on.
  • A 10-15 slide sales deck to put your best foot forward in sales calls.
  • Launch announcement (social media post + media release writing where relevant).
  • One-page outline of marketing channels to focus on, why and a few ideas for ways to get started.

Timeframe

4 weeks.

Price

$10,000 (ex GST).

Questions?

We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

Sell Service

Summary

Marketing activity without a strategy is a recipe for endless ‘busy work’, not business-building work.

We’ll define an overarching marketing strategy and develop an initial 3-month sprint plan for you with clear actions aligned to objectives and key results.

Who it’s for

Startup founders/operators who don’t have a marketing team or need a more strategic and holistic plan to scaffold their marketing efforts. And definitely startups who are throwing sh*t and seeing what sticks 😉.

What’s included

We’ll set your marketing straight with:

  • A clear strategic approach to guide your marketing efforts for at least the next 12 months.
  • An initial 3-month sprint plan providing a roadmap to start your strategy off on the right foot.
  • Objective and key results (OKRs) in the sprint plan, aligning to your business goals to avoid siloed ‘busy work’.
  • Clear actions aligned to the plan’s OKRs.
  • A curated supplier list if relevant.
  • Recommended budgets for key projects as required.

Optional extras (priced additionally): 

  • Regular check-ins with us for the duration of the sprint plan to ask questions and help keep you on track.
  • Executional support for PR, content, communications, copywriting, design and more - scoped on a project-by project-basis.
  • Support hiring the right freelancers/agencies if you need it.
  • Upgrade to our fCMO service for more support if you need it.

Timeframe

2 weeks to develop the plan.

Price

$5,000 (ex GST) for plan development.

Optional extras:

  • Project check-ins with us for 3 months, from $1,200. 
  • Executional and/or hiring support (to be scoped following plan development).

Questions?

We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

fCMO Service

Summary

Scale your marketing support as you scale your startup with a fractional Chief Marketing Officer (fCMO) to guide you and your team, leading you strategically and overseeing execution. 

Our CMOs are experienced in building brands, growing startups and working with founding teams as they scale.

Who it’s for

Startups who have used our Sell service and require more marketing support as they scale or prepare to, but are not yet ready to hire an in-house senior marketer.

What’s included

You’ll have a dedicated fractional CMO – experienced in building brands and growing startups – without the commitment of an employment contract. 

Your fCMO will balance high-level strategic work with practical execution where it makes sense. Typically, this includes:

  • Strategic advice and oversight, including reviewing and updating sprint plans.
  • Overseeing the work of internal/external marketing support, including agencies.
  • Steering all marketing activities to strategic goals and measurable outcomes.
  • Monthly reporting on key marketing metrics.
  • Regular team meetings to keep plans and activities on track.
  • Advice on hiring future marketing resources when the time is right (when you outgrow our service!).

Timeframe

Minimum 3-month engagement.

Price

From $4,000/ month (ex GST).

Questions?

We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

How we work (remote, global and local!)

You won’t find us sitting in a CBD head office.

You will find us at co-working spaces (in Adelaide, Melbourne, the Sunshine Coast and NZ), working remotely from home, and beaming into our clients’ work spaces via Zoom and Google Meet.

You’ll find us on Trello boards, Slack channels, in Canva and on the tools in our clients’ CRMs and social media platforms. 

Most of our team lives in Australia and NZ, but as our network of startup-friendly marketing specialists grows, you might find us referring you to a digital media expert in Lithuania (for example). We believe good marketing help knows no borders!

And while no one meets as much in person these days, we’d always jump at the chance to meet up for a coffee if we’re in the same town, at the same time. 

Our pricing promise

We’re not here to hold you over a barrel by locking you into activities you don’t need or can’t afford right now. In fact, if we had a barrel, we’d sit around it with you and learn all about your startup.We know you need pricing certainty to budget so we’ve set prices as much as we can. Your marketing needs will change as you grow or there could be savings from repeating plans with only minor adjustments. It all depends where you’re at so if our pricing doesn’t fit with that, we’ll work together to set a fair price for everyone.

Questions? We're here.

All good things start with a conversation. So let’s have one! We’re here to talk (no obligations, we promise).

Our price promise ✨

We know you need transparency. So we’re upfront about our pricing, process and what we can do for you.

We’re also open to venture marketing – discounted services in exchange for a micro equity agreement (subject to criteria). Reach out to find out more.

Customer testimonials

Loved by founders and their teams. Don't just take it from us (we're biased)!

“Working with Stella Startups is like a deep sigh of relief. It’s that feeling of: We’re in the right hands. The team has such an incredibly rich understanding of what it takes for startups to manage marketing effectively. They are extremely professional, empathetic, responsive and skillful. I couldn't recommend them more highly.”

Josh Suntup

Founder, Caresquare

“Not only were we able to achieve a seamless and simple narrative for a technology so novel that it can almost seem sci-fi to the un-inducted, Stella Startups and Skale Studio were able to provide an operation watertight and laser-focused enough to be completed in the blink of an eye."

Ruby Jones

Head of Operations, Aquila

"Within two weeks of working with Gemma, we saw an uplift in customers. Within two months we had a marketing and content strategy that has up-skilled my team and set us up for long-term success. It's exactly what we needed as a growing business with limited resources; a balance between advice and execution."
Lindsey Dang. Founder & CEO of Lindsey's VCE Tutoring

Lindsey Dang

Founder, Lindsey's VCE Tutoring

“Stella Startups transformed our marketing by focusing on what we truly needed—positioning. They didn't get bogged down in fancy tactics, but focused on what really turned the sales dial. Gemma and Bridget are smart, hardworking, and endlessly energetic. It’s refreshing to work with such trustworthy and reasonable people. They’re the real deal. Highly recommended.”

Tom Maclachlan

Founder, ChopChop Film

“Founders think tactically and want to see traction fast. But we also need to have a plan and understand the ‘why’, not just the ‘what’. That’s why Stella suits startups. Together, we’ve built a brand I’m proud of and I’ve always felt like Bridget and the team have ‘got us’ - it’s a relief not to have to worry about the details.”
Remco Marcelis. Founder & Managing Partner of Standard Ledger

Remco Marcelis

Founder & CEO, Standard Ledger

Ready to make sense
of marketing?

It all starts with a chat, and we'd love to learn more about your startup.