You don't need to spend a lot of money on good marketing. You just need 2 things... 1) a compelling story 2) be consistent but here's why these 2 things are hard to nail: 1) a compelling story comes from: - understanding your customers on a deeper level that goes beyond your product and how they'll use it (but founders like to focus on product) - VoC analysis to pull out the common important threads from actual customer conversations (but VoC research is too time-consuming, aren't sales calls good enough??) - truth (vs. assumptions - assumptions are way easier amiright) - emotions (vs. logic - logic makes more sense and this is b2b where everyone's so logical no but srsly they totally are) - differentiated positioning (but we still can't figure out how we're actually different) - “Pull them in” (vs. “push them in” and it's way easier to push trust me I know bc I have kids) 2) being consistent is just...hard - if there's no source of truth for your positioning and messaging everyone's going to say different things and that's confusing - if there IS a source of truth for your positioning and messaging but not everyone agrees with it they're still going to say different things - sometimes we overlook / forget to be consistent so we show up differently in different places and that's confusing contrary to popular belief, you don't need to spend a lot of money on good marketing you just need: 1) a compelling story 2) be consistent need help nailing these? lemme know ✌️&❤️️ #marketing #startups #founders
Spot on. While many companies struggle with both, I've found the latter to be more common, more detrimental, and harder to change internal behavior over time.
Well said Anna Furmanov - and getting those deeper customer insights doesn't have to be a long drawn out process, especially if customer conversations are complimented with other sources of data.
It definitely helps to develop a core brand identity & mission from the beginning, so you have a starting point you can circle back to when trying to keep your messaging consistent. Otherwise, if you don't even know what your primary mission/goal is, the messaging easily gets muddled.
On the stuggle bus right now with figuring out that compelling #1 with a client. They have a lot of good stories to tell but a hard time picking one to focus on
Fractional Marketing Leader for Hospitality & Travel Tech | Product Marketing Leader with 20 Products (Re)Positioned | Former Amadeus Hospitality
1moFor years I had very little budget for marketing, but what I had were good writers and storytellers. We were incredibly successful because we understood the buyer's challenges and focused on inbound campaigns. It surprises me how few companies start here.