TechCrunch Experts returns with forecasts for 2022, insights into product-driven growth, and strategies for early-stage startups hoping to expand internationally.
Jonathan Metrick, Chief Growth Officer at Sagard & Portage Ventures, and Simon Lejeune, Head of User Acquisition at Wealthsimple, shared three trends they believe will shape marketing in 2022. Looking at topics like data protection, growth hacking, and influencer marketing, they’ve written about the shifts they can expect in the coming year.
Kerry Cunningham, Senior Principal at 6sense, updated a model he and his former colleagues called the Intent Data Framework (IDF). Last year he revised it to include Buyer Signals Framework (BSF), but she revised it again to include product-driven growth.
Marjorie Radlo-Zandi, a seasoned entrepreneur, board member, mentor, and angel investor, shares strategies founders can use as they expand internationally. From studying your market to setting goals, it covers everything and provides several examples.
Software consulting
(TechCrunch) From Ph.D. to the boutique software developer: An interview with Andrew Drach from Solwey: Anna Heim interviewed Andrew Drach, a software development consultant who was highly recommended by respondents in a recent survey. Drach, who runs the Solwey Consulting and Callentis Consulting Group with his wife Monika, talked about how his academic background shapes his work and why he prefers a boutique model when serving his clients.
We have both had tense experiences working with large agencies and recruitment agencies and felt abandoned or not important enough to have the full attention of the manager or project owner. Plus, we’d both both seen firsthand how terrifying crippling waterfalls and broken agility can be in the progress of a project. So we set out to set up Solwey and Callentis as small design agencies. We work directly with our customers, and Monika and I take personal responsibility for every single result of our team.
If you are still doing Christmas shopping, browse through “Gift Guide: The Best Business Books for 2021, Recommended by VCs “ by Alex Wilhelm and Anna Heim. Alex and Anna dive into VCs highly recommended business books, share what’s on their personal reading lists, and offer other recommendations in a free edition of The exchange. Her list includes titles like “The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five-Time CRO” by John McMahon and “Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup” by John Carreyou. Find your non-business book list here, but you can find all of TechCrunch’s Gift Guides for 2021 here.
Back to the experts, we have a recommendation that we wanted to add to the software consulting category this week.
Advisor: Draft 1.
Recommended by: Allan Johnson, Zumio
Transcript: “We chose them because we needed help integrating hardware with software and physical design.”
Growth marketing
(TechCrunch +) Product Driven Growth and Signal Substitution Syndrome: Bringing It All Together: Delving into the importance of product-driven growth, Cunningham says traditional methods of determining potential buyer interest are notoriously unreliable. Rather than relying on a signal like a verbal statement of intent, “the best way to use it is to toss it into the algorithmic mixer with any other available signals to identify patterns that can help prioritize sales efforts.”
(TechCrunch +) 4 key strategies for successful international expansion: We’ll give you part of a key strategy behind the paywall: “To achieve international growth, you need to plan based on ROI estimates,” writes Radlo-Zandi. “Cut the markets for the first phase of global growth by determining which is the most profitable and extensive for your offering. Assess how easy or difficult it will be to enter a particular market and whether its size justifies the effort it takes to establish a solid presence. “
(TechCrunch +) 3 disruptive trends that will shape marketing in 2022: In making predictions for 2022, Metrick and Lejeune looked back on three trends that drove growth in 2021:
- Less data, more privacy, and the return of growth hacking.
- TikTok, influencers and the dominance of native creatives.
- The big resignation and the Gettysburg for growing talent.
“This year has made it clear that there will be no return to a predictable past,” they write. “2022 will reward marketers who look ahead with agility and are open to combining historical data with experimentation to break new ground.”
Marketer: FirePipers
Recommended by: Anonymous
Testimonial: “You helped us to create a very optimized website and generate a good amount of traffic.”
