Clark Barron’s Post

CEO, Ronin | Founder, Demand Gen Therapy | Marketer

2mo

When I say "Marketing Strategy", what comes to mind? And—Why is it that strategists get no love? Example 1—A content calendar is not a strategy Sure, it’s nice to know what you’re posting and when, but that’s just logistics. The real meat—the substance, the strategy, and the 𝙬𝙝𝙮 behind your content—that’s what matters. A content calendar without a solid strategy is like a ship without a compass. You’re moving, but you have no idea where you’re going. Getting the picture? Ok, let's ride. None of these are strategies either: • Posting consistently • Following trends • Using Analytics tools • Having a mission statement • Running ads • Creating content • "Doing" ABM (Don't at me) • "Inbound-Led-Outbound (Say somethin'. I dare you.) Oooooh, some of those get dangerously close, don't they? That's the problem. A lot of these can masquerade as strategies, but once you get down to it, it's all tactical. When you really get into the weeds about actual strategy, you get into some really nebulous concepts. 𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲—Here's where a lot of the inspiration for Ronin's GTM strategy came from • Rival brands from the 60's • Sun Tzu's The Art of War • World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Raid Boss fights • Fleetwood Mac Want to hear more of the breakdown? Watch the vid! I shed light on Ronin | The Cybersecurity GTM Experts's GTM strategy. #B2BMarketing #cybersecurity #CISO #CMO #DeployRonin

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Transcript

OK. So when I say marketing strategy, what comes to mind? And why is it that marketing strategists don't seem to get any love anymore? OK, so here's my theory. Is it that marketers don't know what a strategy is? Let's talk about that. I run into this all the time when I talked to clients and prospects. There's a lot of random acts of marketing. We're all familiar with that term. Now, when it comes to strategy versus tactics, there's a huge difference. And it's tricky because a lot of tactics might seem like strategies, but that could not be further from the case. For example, a content calendar is not a strategy in the same way that in cybersecurity we prevent breaches is not a value proposition. So for example. Content calendars. Yeah, sure, it's nice to know what you're posting and when, but that's just logistics. The real substance, the real meat of it, the the actual strategy, the why behind your content. That's what actually matters. You know, we all have that one friend that we think, man, I love him, but the engines running, but no one's behind the wheel. That's basically a content calendar without a strategy. And of course, like I said, This is why we run into random acts of marketing all the time. Having talked to tons of prospects and clients and hearing all these different stories about strategy and tactics, I've heard it all. And while we're at it, let's just dump everything out there because there are so many things that we think are strategies that are just absolutely not. For example, posting consistently, following trends, using analytics tools, having a mission statement, running ads, creating content we want to. Do ABM inbound, lead outbound What? Say something, I dare you. Ohh. And some of those get just dangerously close to being a strategy, don't they? But when you dive into it, you'll see the real problem is that when you peel back all those layers and get down to the meat and bones of it, it's all tactical. Because when you get into the weeds when it comes to real strategy, you get into a lot of really nebulous concepts that can only be articulated by actual words that human beings speak. And not acronyms or buzz phrases. For example, here's where a lot of the inspiration for Ronan's GTM strategy actually came from. Rival brands in the 60s, Sunzu's Art of War, Wrath of the Lich King raid, boss fights from World of Warcraft and Fleetwood Mac. Now let's talk about what an actual strategy looks like and how you want to develop it. First of all, you've got to start with a goal, obviously. Now let's talk about what an actual strategy looks like. OK, first of all, we've got to have a goal right now. From there, we want to reverse engineer it and we get. To the how we're going to do it and the why we're going to do it. Now to illustrate some of how this works, I'm just going to give away Ronan's complete GTM strategy right now. And maybe when I share some of these parts of Ronan's go to market strategy, you'll remember some of my personal content or romance content and go, oh, hey, that's one of those things he said he was going to do in the pieces all come together and you'll start to see some some patterns take shape. It's kind of like Ocean's 11 where they tell you exactly how the heist is going to be pulled off while it's happening. Real time or maybe the usual suspects where you're like, ohh, well, that that was Kaiser Soze and by the way, that movie came out in 19 years ago, so I sorry. OK, so in the GTM strategy, here's what's gonna be top of mind goals. Number one goal cyber security vendor, CEO, founder, marketing leader hires Ronan to do dope yet and solve all their marketing problem. Now from there there are some sub goals or underlying things that we need to keep top of mind at all times. One, we want to focus on radical differentiation from every other agency out there that's targeting. The cyber security industry. Two, we want to win the hearts of the buyers. Ah, that might not sound familiar. You might think that we would want to win the hearts of the marketing leaders in cybersecurity, but that's where strategy comes in. Everybody's got their own and we do something completely different. Now, why exactly would we want to win the hearts of cybersecurity buyers and not cybersecurity marketing leaders? Excellent question because to the average person, that sounds completely insane. Here's the idea if you're unfamiliar with the industry. There is a very historically and uniquely strained relationship between cyber security vendors and cybersecurity buyers. And while a lot of people and organizations have done a lot of fantastic work to try to bridge the gap between those two groups of people over the years, it can still be pretty contentious. And so one of the first things that we wanted to do at Ronan is when the hearts of the buyers to let them know we understand their perspective. Now, why would we want to create a strategic alliance? With cybersecurity buyers, well, obviously the people that will be hiring Ronan are wanting to get in touch with those buyers. So obviously one of the main value propositions that we want to put front and center is that we're endorsed by a ton of Csos. That way it automatically communicates to cyber security marketing leaders that would be hiring Ronan with the kind of work that we produce, with the kinds of strategies and tactics that we deploy, that way they know that the types of things that we do for our clients are going to resonate with their target buyers. And that's the crazy part about it. We've done very little marketing towards who you would think are actual buyers would be. Instead, we've been forming alliances with cybersecurity buyers, Cisos and practitioners instead of marketing directly towards cybersecurity marketing leaders. And that has proven to do very well for us. And just to show how wild we get with it, we're actually testing right now different pages with testimonials from clients versus endorsements from Csos. So from there, the things that we actually execute on or combination of the following. Strategic content alliances, reverse targeting, beef marketing, which if you've never heard of, it's super fun and wildly, wildly affective. Empathy based messaging, Industry influence, and as bad as I hate it and as much as I hate this term, thought leadership content.

Email copywriter for cybersecurity businesses | Former CISO | Retired veteran and Army Ranger | Aficionado of dad stuff, grunge rock, and barefoot ultra-marathoning

2mo

I still run ICC to try and get that stupid Invincible mount. Still nothing. Maybe I'm missing the Fleetwood Mac ingredient. My strategy is threefold and comes with a gratuitous amount of research and testing. I always tell clients what separates marketing or copywriting from strategy is you can commoditize one.

Andrew Choe 💪👀

Your brand is destined for more, Make it Mighty.

2mo

One of my favorite lessons of late on strategy is: Strategy is what you say NO to, or rather “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do” (Michael Porter). Clark Barron what do you think? How does it apply to what you are saying here about strategy and GTM? I like that you brought in Sun Tzu. Eastern Philosophy is a lot of fun for marketing... the whole notion of yin yang, balance, and leveraging asymmetry in "war" is all too entirely applicable to business, but also easier said than done imo.

Kristin Demoranville

Kristin Demoranville

Founder & CEO AnzenSage | Co-Founder and CEO AnzenOT | Podcast Host: Bites & Bytes Podcast | Expert in Food Resilience & OT/ICS Cybersecurity | Cybersecurity Risk Management | Speaker & Media Contributor

2mo

😂😂 World of Warcraft WotLK raid boss fights, I completely see this and now I have several of those bosses one liners in my head!! “BONE STORM” ⛈️

Ryan Paul Gibson

Ryan Paul Gibson

I help B2B businesses run customer interviews that don't suck / Founder @ content lift 🎈

2mo

ugh. my TLDR after two decades in B2B: Too many businesses (especially tech) think marketing = arts, crafts and content. Instead of approaching marketing as a capital investment, to build awareness in a target market.

CEO, Storybook Marketing | MarTech contributor

2mo

Bravo 👏 somewhere along the line strategy came to mean 'series of activities' because we value productivity over planning in tech. The compass analogy is spot on. It's setting a direction and a destination.

Gabriella Burst

Gabriella Burst

Marketing Manager | Post-Sales Account Manager | Marketing SaaS | Customer Success Leader | Multi-tasking Mom👩👧👦 & Dog Mom🐾

2mo

Coming in strong with the punches this morning, huh? LOL

Francisco Rivera

Francisco Rivera

Bookkeeping for Marketing Agencies | Empowering agency owners around their finances | Co-Founder at Kleer Books

2mo

The space is so saturated that words start losing its meaning

Executive Producer @ 963 Film Group | Creating Compelling Visual Stories | Underwater DP

2mo

Very insightful, I love this because I have WAY to many conversations with brands that start with “well we have (insert social media here) going but we’re not getting anything from it”

Founder and CEO | Executive Leader | Business Administration Automation

2mo

I 100% agree with you on the marketing perspective! Clark Barron

Winston A. Henderson

Winston A. Henderson

Leverage your expertise to generate more sales opportunities as a Business Owner by positioning as the go-to expert for what you offer ➡️ Reach out to me to learn how

2mo

Marketing strategy = The macro of HOW we are going to achieve the goals we set Tactics = The action steps we will take to achieve the HOW Example... Marketing Strategy - Leverage LinkedIn to build our brand authority through content. Creating a funnel to move in-market buyers off-platform into our sales process. Align with Sales to convert buyers to customers Tactics - Create educational content around our expertise. Post 3 times per week to our feed. For every 9th post highlight a problem buyers have and how our solution solves it, include CTA leading to book a call landing page, etc. etc. etc.

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Pete Hugh

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Report this post
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Pete Hugh

De-innovating cybersecurity marketing
1mo
Report this post
Here's a weird little observation for you. Most of my smaller cybersecurity customers are VERY interested in how their marketing dollars transform into (hopefully more) revenue dollars. But as CS companies grow, and their marketing budgets and teams swell... something weird happens. Instead of focusing on "dollars in, dollars out" they start building their marketing programs around weird and arcane acronyms, ideas, and pipe dreams. You know the stuff. MQLs. Pipeline. Engagement. Content production and consumption. CTRs. Signup rates. Fucking BRAND AWARENESS. Before you start screaming incoherently about whatever your pet metric is, answer this: When we the last time you walked into a shop and bought something with brand awareness? Or MQLs? Or any other figment-of-your-imagination metric, output, or results obfuscation mechanism? I have some idea why the above transformation from "results" to "bullshit" happens. It seems largely to be a desperate attempt by marketers to make the rest of the business think they're doing something useful. But wouldn't a better approach be to ACTUALLY do something useful? (No, "brand building" doesn't count. I refer you to my last post.) If you'd like some help building a content program that generates qualified leads, nurtures them through to the sale, and even helps your sales team CLOSE those sales... AND which give you measurable ROI... Email me: pete [at] petehugh [dot] com #cybersecurity #contentstrategy
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Pete Hugh

De-innovating cybersecurity marketing
9mo
Report this post
Here's a weird little observation for you. Most of my smaller cybersecurity customers are VERY interested in how their marketing dollars transform into (hopefully more) revenue dollars. But as CS companies grow, and their marketing budgets and teams swell... something weird happens. Instead of focusing on "dollars in, dollars out" they start building their marketing programs around weird and arcane acronyms, ideas, and pipe dreams. You know the stuff. MQLs. Pipeline. Engagement. Content production and consumption. CTRs. Signup rates. Fucking BRAND AWARENESS. Before you start screaming incoherently about whatever your pet metric is, answer this: When we the last time you walked into a shop and bought something with brand awareness? Or MQLs? Or any other figment-of-your-imagination metric, output, or results obfuscation mechanism? I have some idea why the above transformation from "results" to "bullshit" happens. It seems largely to be a desperate attempt by marketers to make the rest of the business think they're doing something useful. But wouldn't a better approach be to ACTUALLY do something useful? (No, "brand building" doesn't count. I refer you to my last post.) If you'd like some help building a content program that generates qualified leads, nurtures them through to the sale, and even helps your sales team CLOSE those sales... AND which give you measurable ROI... Email me: pete [at] petehugh [dot] com #cybersecurity #contentstrategy
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Clark Barron

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