Monthly Archives: May 2022

05.24.2022

Launching Growth Marketing Strategy Coaching at Embarc Collective

Our community of over 120 technology startups continues to make exciting progress on their businesses every day. Founders and their teams crossing through the gates of early product/market-fit need to quickly shift their focus to growth strategies that build repeatable revenue, hit upcoming KPIs, and position their business for scale.

That’s why we’re excited to welcome Tyana Daley, Growth Marketing Strategist, to the Embarc Collective coaching team—here to deliver customized, consistent, and high-quality strategic guidance to our members.

Read on to learn more about Tyana's unique background and perspective on startup building.

 

What fostered your passion for growth marketing?

My passion for growth marketing started during my first internship as a link builder. I had the chance to drive the SEO efforts of the company and learn a lot about effective marketing on the internet. I worked with talented search engine optimization experts who helped me connect the dots on really understanding your customer, creating content they want, and how to leverage data to make your content even better. This role got me excited to learn more about content marketing, growth hacking, and general digital marketing.

 

What guidance would you offer the startup marketer that needs to know a little of everything and execute with limited resources?

My first piece of advice, prioritize your goals. It sounds cliche saying it and also something that I believe most startup marketers practice. However, the more you work on prioritizing your tasks, especially when multiple objectives need to be completed by the same deadline, you become better at recognizing what matters.

Prioritizing your efforts can become even more challenging with limited support while learning new skills to complete marketing tasks. When it becomes difficult to determine which tasks to do first, you can rely on goal frameworks to guide you to your objectives. Two popular goal-setting frameworks worth considering are Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).

These goal-setting frameworks help startup marketers set ambitious goals and define manageable tasks to achieve them. Using these frameworks will also help startup marketers adopt a methodology that enables them to focus on the identified goals and challenge new ideas or fly-in tasks to determine if they align with existing objectives.

Another tip is to schedule time to learn new skills. When planning a project, be sure to account for the time it would take to develop a skill or research information that supports executing a marketing task. If startup marketers are in a situation where time is a significant factor in achieving an objective, you should hire talent. Otherwise, if startup marketers have limited resources and budgets, they should plan out the learning time required to complete marketing tasks. This detail in your planning will help marketers set more realistic deadlines for their projects and give you the time you need to execute tasks with quality.

 

What area of a startup's growth marketing strategy is oftentimes overlooked?

A couple of areas that startup marketers try to skip or rush through are brand messaging and customer engagement. In the early stages, startup marketers and c-level executives are hyper-focused on executing tasks that yield the highest ROI with limited resources. However, if marketers are unclear about their brand messaging, key differentiators, target audiences, and the channels these audiences frequent, marketing efforts can become costly and unsuccessful. Defining your brand messaging is foundational in building successful marketing strategies.

Customer engagement is also crucial in helping marketers develop successful marketing efforts. Through surveys, focus groups, or interviews, marketers can learn a lot about their customer's needs. Listening to customers can help marketers test and validate messaging and determine what channels best reach their customers. These insights are invaluable to startup marketers, especially in the early days. Talking to their first customers or potential customers early and often provides some of the best data a marketer can leverage to build out campaigns and strategies.

 

What’s one trend you’re excited about in your industry?

I think in the next five years, we are going to see a shift in companies focusing on building out their owned and earned media channels instead of spending those same resources and budget on advertising. The updates in privacy regulations are making it so brands have to focus on content and marketing tactics that benefit the consumer versus winning through repetition or spamming.

As a creative, I love the idea of content coming to the front of the main stage again. I believe startups will need to spend more time thinking about developing content that will build their credibility and trust with customers. The best way to do this is to provide customers with a value from the very first interaction. I think this transition to focus on owned and earned media channels will make marketing more consumer-centric and focus more on helping customers find great solutions through meaningful content.

 

Embarc Collective's new growth marketing strategy coaching is available to our member companies. Consider applying for membership to Embarc Collective here.

05.10.2022

Recap: 2022 Growth Marketing Summit

Photo Credit: XoXo by Cortni

With the support of TriNet and Brex, we recently hosted a Growth Marketing Summit for the Embarc Collective membership. As so many of the members of Embarc Collective grow and build out leadership teams, we wanted to create space for those individuals to learn about different approaches to take with their growth marketing strategies. We flew in several amazing experts from national, high-growth startups to share their playbooks for how they have achieved exponential growth.

For those not in attendance, here are some of the takeaways from our presenters:

Anil Yasyerli, Advisor and former Chief Marketing Officer at PadSplit (Series B)

  • On leading a marketing team: “Focus on getting to the right outcomes, not on being right in the moment.” Knowing that we are always learning as we build startups, staying stubborn about the execution often can hurt your company. Instead, come to the table without ego and be open to the solution that delivers the desired results.
  • On generalist v. specialists on your marketing team: At the beginning, you may hire generalists. “But as you figure out which levers and channels work, you need to bring in people with deep expertise.”
  • On hiring: Especially in this job market, hire fast. “The moment you start feeling the pain, you are probably 2-3 months late.”

Nate Gilmore, Chief Marketing Officer at PandaDoc

  • On understanding your value proposition: Leverage a combination of Jobs Theory and Customer Interviews (shoutout to the Mom Test, an Embarc Collective favorite)
  • On PandaDoc’s framework for growth: “1) Discovery 2) Repeatability 3) Predictability 4) Scalability”
  • On communicating throughout the organization: For it to sink in, you have to repeat the message over and over again. PandaDoc starts every team meeting with the mission, vision, and goals.

Panel on Aligning Your Marketing and Sales Strategy with Aurelia Solomon, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Drift, Lance Weatherby, Head of Marketing at Safely; Partner at Weatherby Ventures, and Maria Juan, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Peerfit

  • On sales hires: The first hire for a founder-led sales team should not be a Head of Sales or VP of Sales, but a trailblazing salesperson – someone who can execute on the founder’s sales approach.
  • On channels for growth marketing: In the beginning, you may focus on social media, content creation, and overall lead generation (quantity). But over time, you will shift to a demand generation strategy (quality).
  • On sales and marketing tools: There was agreement that a CRM is a foundational tool. “We believe that if it is not in the CRM, it didn’t happen!” – this is a great incentive to have the sales team log their activity in the CRM.

Harriet Johnston, Head of Content and Partner Marketing at Brex

  • On partner marketing: It can be divided into three parts:
    1. Product Partnerships, which reduce leakage in your funnel
    2. Rewards Partnerships, which add credibility and allow you to add value at no cost
    3. Channel Partnerships, which help grow your reach
  • On the keys to getting started with channel partnerships:
    1. Prioritization
    2. Dream Big
    3. 1 + 1 = 3, Always
    4. Be Able to Track Success

Holly Beilin, Head of Public Relations at Flock Safety

  • On why you leverage PR for your startup: 1) Build your reputation 2) Enhance your reputation 3) Protect your reputation
  • On ways to staff your PR needs: 1) DIY 2) In-house PR resources 3) a PR agency
  • On different tools to leverage within PR: 1) Media Relations, 2) Social Media (think beyond the big 4!) 3) Thought Leadership

Tanya Stanfield, Growth Strategy Lead & CEO at True Believer Brands

  • On the keys to being a strong marketing leader: 1) Pay attention to the big picture 2) Be proactive and curious 3) Set aside time for relationships
  • On key resources for marketing leaders: 12 Powers of a Marketing Leader and Radical Candor

Thanks to all who attended our Growth Marketing Summit. Interested in participating in learning opportunities to support your startup’s growth? Apply for membership to Embarc Collective and join our community of 125+ startups all building bold, thriving, scalable companies.