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Marketing makes or breaks a company. When asked what I would do to massively help a company, the focus is on marketing. Period.
I learned a long time ago that the best product doesn’t always win. It’s often a product that is “good enough” paired with killer marketing based on unique customer insights. As a VC, I’ve seen this game over and over again. Many companies get stuck in feature and functionality marketing, which means they are missing out on the opportunity to create lasting brands. This is what happens when you elevate messaging to higher-level needs that resolve a pain point for the end user and excite them on an emotional level.
I am passionate about helping companies discover new channels or reinvent old ones to move the needle. Finding a new way to get established channels like TV, direct mail, and radio to get a brand better known can be a tremendous competitive advantage and propel a company to exponential growth.
I am not saying that it is easy. The job of a marketer gets more complicated with every new channel. On the latest challenging trend lines:
- It’s louder than ever. According to the seventh edition of Salesforce’s annual edition, marketers expect the number of data sources they use to grow by 40% year over year in the coming year Marketing status Report that they spoke to with over 8,200 global marketers.
- Wallets are getting tighter. According to Gartner, marketing budgets as a percentage of company revenue fell from 11% to 6.4% in 2021. The company reports that “this is the lowest percentage in the history of” assigned to marketing Gartner’s annual CMO Spend Survey.”
- The ponds are overfished. Ten years ago, only 17% of global ad spend went to the top five ad salespeople (Google; Viacom and CBS; News Corp. and Fox; Comcast and Disney). Nowadays, ad networks are much more crowded with 46% of global ad spend takes place in the top 5 networks (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba and ByteDance).
With this downward pressure on marketing money efficiency, it’s important to listen to customers, stay curious, and stay open to wild ideas that have the potential to catch on. Over the past year, I’ve had dozens of conversations with leading marketers asking them what actually works for them and what crazy ideas they were trying that seemed ridiculous at the time.
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Here are some highlights of what I have heard and what I now share with all of the CEOs and marketing directors in our portfolio companies:
For developers, marketers need to be problem solvers, not salespeople
“Developers sniff out any kind of marketing talk or BS very quickly. They look for the answer to a problem they have and then move on. How do you get them to the right documentation as quickly as possible? How can you keep them updated on the products that are live today rather than the ones that will go live in two years?
Your job is to help them get their hands on the code as quickly as possible. Get direct access to other developers in the community who can think the same way and help solve some of their problems in real time. ”- Sara Varni, Former CMO, Twilio.
Avoid free trials at all costs
“Initially at Curology, we hypothesized that if we didn’t charge anything for a product test, it would be too easy for people to get it without any mental commitment. We started experimenting with people paying the $ 4.95 shipping cost. [That price] was still a very low barrier for people, but we have learned that it has dramatically changed the perception of value and mental engagement in the eyes of our customers.
