This week, as part of our Facebook Poll series, we asked our Facebook community, “What aspect of your startup would you build up if you received major investment?”

Marketing was far and away the first choice. This makes sense, as often small budgets at a fledgling startup mean using social media and word-of-mouth to get a brand name out there. But scaling, or moving into a new market, which a startup would seek investment for, often involves spending on marketing and branding.

Technology second- no surprise here either. It's not just for tech startups, either. Growing startups can rely on free services such as Google's apps to share documents and cool platform Astrid to manage processes, but at a certain level, more advanced software and hardware investments will help companies scale.

Interestingly, staffing a capable team only got 4 votes, and building a product, image, and partners only received 2 votes; perhaps because by the time a startup is seeking investment, it already has these things sorted.

Or maybe startup founders in the Wamda community are confident in their products and just believe that if people know more about it, they would be successful. In a fragmented market like the Middle East and North Africa, it's especially true that even very innovative products and services won't be successful if the founders can’t get the word out and sell it. 

To push forward with your marketing campaign even before seeking investment, check out Serene Touma's recent article on PR 101, which offers some preliminary guidelines for attracting attention to your startup.