From .. Marketing 204 for Engineers: Generating Demand In my brutally honest opinion, talking about demand gen strategy is usually a waste of time. Most discussions about DG amount to “how do we get more leads?”. The only differences between them are about budget, ranging from “at the lowest cost possible” to “at any cost.” Most discussions of “marketing strategy” you have with CEOs and founders will not be about marketing and will not be about strategy. They will instead be about demand gen and tactics. If you’re running marketing, you will still need strategy. Without making that strategy explicit, you’ll find it incredibly hard to understand or explain how marketing actually delivers any outcomes. some Programming notes: this post is n in a series of indeterminate length on GTM topics mainly for startup people, mainly leadership, mainly coming from non-GTM backgrounds. There’s a list at the end. Marketing Exists in a Go To Market and Product Context All marketing exists within some go to market [GTM] and Product context. What are you selling? Who is going to use it? How will it make their lives better? Who are you selling to? What industry are you selling in to? How much do you need them to spend on you? How many deals do you need to close in a month, a quarter, a year? What is your (real and desired) sales motion? Who are your competitors? How does the market talk about what you do? What are you users and buyers expectations with regards to how products in your category are packaged and priced and delivered and consumed? Example! If you’re selling enterprise software into hospital groups that costs $250k a year at its cheapest and takes three months to pilot and get through HIPAA reviews with an additional three months to integrate and successfully onboard a customer with the help of sales engineering or professional services once they’ve signed a contract — you will have a marketing strategy (and tactics) compared to a freemium product for ISRs selling into unregulated industries with initial buy-in for a paid tier of $100 a year with a 14-day free trial and self-onboarding guided by docs and in-app tutorials that takes on average less than 30 days. very different Marketing Goals Derive From Business Goals Marketing, like every other functional area of a business, should have its own goals which clearly derive from and can be seen to contribute to business goals. For each of the major areas of marketing — corporate/brand/comms, product, demand gen/lead gen/performance/growth — there should be an overarching goal. Example! Business Goals might look something like this: Be the most used and cited source of home value data in the United States Generate revenue through ad placements sold to real estate agents and property owners For which Marketing Goals might derive like this: Brand: Develop the brand as homeowners with information that previously was only available to real estate agents, putting them on equal footing empowering Product: Position the product as source of home value estimates the most accurate Demand: Drive and prioritize growth* mass adoption *Note: The purpose of “Demand” in this case is building up the supply, or inventory, of eyeballs that will be sold to advertisers. Strategy Is How To Achieve Goals For each of your goals, there will be some strategy that defines you will achieve that goal. how Example! Continuing from above.. A Marketing Strategy for the above goals might look like: Create brand perception through content Establish product positioning through product copy and user stories Generate user growth through being , against home addresses, and prompting word-of-mouth via completely free and ungated optimizing for search social mechanisms Tactically, now, you have to figure out what your content strategy will be, what your editorial style will be, what keywords and kinds of searches you want to optimize for, what specific copy to put in the product, how to obtain and amplify user stories, what social mechanisms to test and use, etc. Advice Bundle Marketing Strategy with Messaging and Positioning into a single document of record, because these tend to serve as the source and guiding materials for everything else — from demand gen campaigns to product launches to funnel metrics. You can find a template to copy . here Basic Marketing Strategy & Messaging Template More Advice If the GTM or Product context changes, your Strategy will need to change. Proceeding with the same Marketing Strategy in a different business context, without revision, is a recipe for failure. Even More Advice If Tactics don’t work, change them. If your Tactics aren’t working, your Strategy is probably the problem. all Tactics Are Strategy Implemented For each of your strategies, aligned to each of your goals, there will be some array of tactics you deploy to actually execute that strategy. Example! Continuing from above.. The Marketing Tactics for the above strategies might be: Content: Produce based on house value data derived from real estate sources combined with proprietary data derived from search and usage trends of the product presented as branded content on monthly and quarterly cadences optimized for social distribution and search original primary and secondary research PR: Use content and in-house expertise (founders, economists) to pitch tech, economics, finance, and real estate oriented press on to press for commentary on stories regarding the housing market interesting/unique trends and make experts available PR: Build press relationships with outlets that have the and/or which are most picked up by other press outlets widest reach with tech-savvy consumers Messaging & Postioning: Develop product/feature naming and tag phrases and consistently apply throughout product experience, search optimization, social sharing copy and tags, and all content emphasizing empowerment and accuracy Customer Marketing: Invite users to itself while they’ve using the tool, via email after they’ve used the tool, etc., testing no incentives vs no-cost incentives (access to comparative data or early reports) vs paid incentives (gift cards) tell their stories in the product SEO: Ensure being in the and for any housing value or price or market research top 5 results for every address typed into a search bar WOM: for social sharing with pre-populated content as well as private sharing via emailed link with an in-product form Prompt Advice Every tactic has a half-life. Many have long tails. Always be looking for signals that you’ve hit the point of diminishing returns for a particular tactic and have in mind how that specific tactic needs to evolve or how it will be replaced. Next level tactitioning would be to think about a tactic is losing efficacy. why A tactic that has leveled off as one that’s on a downslope. is not the same A flatlined tactic may represent something that generates run-rate [but not growing] business. A tactic that’s on the downslope is not a tactic that’s useless. It may still generate for a long time to come. incremental lead volume Think about your tactics as a portfolio of investments. your portfolio in proportion to results. Rebalance Marketing Plans Put Strategy and Tactics To Work Actual marketing is generally organized around specific events or cadences. work In tech, especially at startups, the events that usually matter are: product launches, conferences (own or sponsored), and business announcements (funding rounds, acquisitions, partnerships, executive changes). Typically the cadences that matter are are driven by sales: monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Overlayed on events and cadences, marketing work historically has been organized into “campaigns”. Campaigns are a coordinated set of marketing activities designed to achieve a specific time bound goal. You can get down to the specifics of every week of a particular campaign — who’s responsible for producing what output or executing what specifics. Campaigns can last weeks, months, and quarters. Never more than a year. Example! Continuing from above.. Product Launch — 3 months: Starting 2 months before launch and ending 1 month after launch, coordinate messaging, positioning, comms, PR Thought Leadership Campaign — 6 months: Starting at Product Launch, execute brand strategy with content and PR tactics in a coordinated effort starting Q2 to achieve a press-recognized position as leading source of information, analysis, and public commentary on the housing market Housing Market Analysts Conference — 2 months: Starting 1 month before conference target analyst news and press outlets with expert commentary and market analysis, place speaker at conference, create analyst facing data offer requiring citation on any use of data but otherwise unencumbered use, promote offering during conference, promote offer post-conference using acquired attendee list Marketing Calendar Template [Fork at will!] ( ) Basic Marketing Calendar Template Advice Organizing marketing work into campaigns may be overkill for your team, if you’re an early stage . If you find yourself spending more time organizing and coordinating than delivering, then remove process. startup More Advice Whether you use spreadsheets, project management software, Calendar, wikis, or any particular tool to coordinate and communicate work does not matter. Whether everyone on your team uses the same tool and whether everyone on other teams can understand what you’re doing by looking at those tools does matter. Google Posts in this series (and templates) Marketing 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction Marketing 102 for Engineers: Roughing Out a Funnel Marketing 201 for Engineers: Messaging & Positioning Marketing 202 for Engineers: Launching Marketing 203 for Engineers: Sales Enablement Marketing 204 for Engineers: Generating Demand Marketing 301 for Engineers: Strategy & Planning Marketing 302 for Engineers: Hiring Marketers Marketing 303 for Engineers: Pricing Frame Marketing 401 for Engineers: Stages of GTM Sales 101 for Engineers: A Functional Introduction PR 101 for Engineers Analyst Relations 101 for Engineers Basic Messaging Template [Google Doc] Basic Funnel Metrics Template [Google Sheet] Basic Launch Timeline Template [Google Doc] Basic Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Detailed Battlecard Template [Google Doc] Basic Marketing Calendar Template [Google Sheet] Basic Marketing Ladders Template [Google Sheet] Reading List and Resources Bob Tinker’s GTM Fit and Talk Slides Startup Marketing Playbook Aha! Marketing Strategy Templates Shot the Curl Marketing Templates Ogilvy on Advertising
