Building With Buyers: Startup Marketing and Growth Fueled By Customers

Katie Mitchell is one of the smartest brand and content marketers I know. She was the Sr. Director of Marketing (Product Marketing, Content Marketing, and Brand/Communications) at Sprig for 2+ years and in 2023 she's taking some time off before she jumps back into things. I met Katie back in 2020 on Chris Walker's Demand Gen Live (DGL) Tuesday night virtual events. Sprig is a Series B startup based out of San Francisco that has raised $88M in funding total. Here's what we cover: What does creativity mean; How the team approached creative marketing at Sprig; How to figure out what marketing experiments to run; How much time to spend on marketing experiments; Being creative means you're able to reposition something so it feels different (e.g. I never do a webinar); What startups are being creative with their marketing; What's comin' up next for Katie. You can find Katie on LinkedIn For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising, I'm like your fractional head of marketing (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 5% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

One of the big reasons why I love working with startups is because they're so nimble and fast! Having a small team is a huge benefit to moving quickly. I asked MJ Smith (VP of Marketing at CoLab) to join me on the show again. She’s been VP of Marketing 3X. Prior, MJ was VP of Growth at Refine Labs and prior to that she was VP of Marketing at Firetrace. Please also check out Episode 9 “MJ Peters, VP of Marketing at Firetrace, challenges industrial companies to innovate their marketing.” It was one of my very first episodes but still has some super relevant content in there. CoLab was founded in 2017 and has 84 people. They've raised a total of $19.6M in funding (Series A). Engineers need better tools for working together, so they use CoLab to engage in meaningful, productive design conversations to catch preventable mistakes and get to market faster. Here's what we cover in this episode: What does “creative” mean (HINT: finding the best solution to a problem); Creativity is tied to feelings, so how do you get people to feel something with your marketing (HINT: break it down into logical steps); MJ talks to me about some cool creative approaches and pushing marketing boundaries at CoLab (as well as the results); MJ shares some startups we should be watching this year based on a few trends like TikTok and humor, offers, and data storytelling; MJ asks me her burning question. You can find MJ on LinkedIn. You can learn more about CoLab. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 5% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

Join Andy Raskin, a master of strategic narrative who helps CEOs navigate their storytelling, as he dives into the essence of creativity in startups. He discusses how a compelling narrative can boost innovation and sets the stage for effective brainstorming sessions by separating idea generation from evaluation. Andy shares personal anecdotes and highlights the importance of authenticity and teamwork in fostering a creative environment. Tune in for insights on harnessing storytelling for marketing success!

A bit of a different flavor for this episode, I wanted to share answers to the top 15 questions I get in a kind of rapid-fire model. I asked Nick Bennett to join me for this episode, Nick is the Sr. Director of ELG & Evangelism at Airmeet (Series B startup). He’s also host of the podcast "The Anonymous Marketer." Prior, Nick was the Director of Evangelism and Customer Marketing at Alyce (Series B startup). I’ve known Nick for a while, he's always sharing useful content on LinkedIn, he's always trying to be super helpful, and thinking about startup trends and how they’re shaping the future of marketing and customer marketing.  Here are the Top 15 Questions we cover: 1. I get this question all the time: We’ve been so focused on growing our sales team. Is it OK to delay marketing? 2. We have multiple target buyers and influencers that would champion our product. Who should we focus on with our marketing efforts? 3. Our growth has plateaued. What are some fresh ideas for where we can focus our marketing efforts? 4. What’s a week in the life of a solopreneur like you? 5. How’d you launch a successful podcast? 6. I’m a startup. What should be the profile of my first marketing hire? 7. What are my options for hiring my first marketing hire in 2023? 8. Where do most people go wrong when they develop their marketing strategy? 9. Why are my social media posts not engaging my target audience? 10. What’s the most important thing to focus on when it comes to content marketing? 11. What are some important questions to ask my customers in VoC research that I might be forgetting? 12. What do startups typically get wrong with their website? 13. What do startups typically get wrong with their marketing plans? 14. What is something that startups don’t leverage as much as they should? 15. How do I know if I have a really good Marketing Strategy planned for 2023? Here's the article I mention how to organize your early stage SaaS marketing org in question 6. Find Nick here www.tacknetwork.com or here www.tackgtm.com For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising, I'm like your fractional head of marketing (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 5% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

Emily Kramer, Co-Founder at MKT1, shares insights on hiring first head of marketing, importance of creativity in marketing beyond design, differences in marketing roles at different startup stages, balancing creativity and results, and unique approach to article structure and newsletters with diagrams.

A twist on the typical episode!  This is something I did two years back with Episode 23 (Reverse Podcast Episode with my then 7-year-old daughter where we talked about marketing) and so I decided to do it again but have a different flavor. I brought on my 9-year-old daughter to ask her some questions around creativity...and I answer those same questions. It's so fun to compare how we answer. The result is sometimes hilarious and always super cute. In this episode we cover: What does being creative mean to you; How do you know that something is creative; What are some things you do that help you be more creative; When have you been the most creative; Anything else that we each want to share. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 10% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

Natalie Marcotullio is Head of Growth and Ops at Navattic. I’ve been working with Natalie and the Navattic team for 4+ months now as a Marketing Advisor so I personally have seen some of the creative work they’re putting out, and especially as an early stage B2B startup! Prior, Natalie held various roles including Marketing Director and Chief of Staff at Map My Customers (a Series A SaaS). Navattic was founded in 2020 and is based out of NYC. They've raised $5.4M funding (Seed). Navattic helps you instantly create interactive product demos. Customers include Mixpanel, Google Cloud, DropBox and more. Here's what we cover in this episode: What does “creative” mean; What are some cool, creative approaches and experiments at Navattic; How do you balance creativity with results (HINT: look at down-funnel conversions, you should be getting faster, easier deal cycles); How are startups doing on the “creative meter'' (HINT: a lot of marketers can’t be creative because they’re doing too much); Why marketing inputs are just as important as outputs; When has Natalie personally been the most creative; Natalie asks me her burning question. You can find Natalie on LinkedIn. You can learn more about Navattic. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 10% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

I’ve been having some very insightful conversations on the podcast about creativity, pushing boundaries, marketing experiments and innovation 
and I’ve had some time to think about the stuff we covered so far and just wanted to share these 5 points with you guys:   1. Creativity comes in two forms:    - for the sake of creativity (in art, writing, music, etc.) and   - in business   2. Creative means: trying new things, sharing new ideas, connecting seemingly unrelated concepts to share new ideas. It's gotta be NEW TO ME and hopefully to you as well.    - Creative doesn’t necessarily mean “stunt” or “wild and crazy”  - Something that’s creative evokes emotion (like awe) which makes it more likely to be shared   3. More successful startups are more creative, and less successful startups are less creative.   A creative/innovative/experimental startup celebrates creativity at its core and creativity is part of its DNA.   4. An over-reliance on measurement has made startups less creative, because it doesn’t allow for the full freedom needed to have creative ideas  I’ve heard about examples of startups that do creative/experimental things without the need to measure impact (on sales) only to find that the creative thing actually did impact growth, but not in a linear way that we’re used to measuring (e.g. during COVID those startups that brought value to their customers and prospects in unique ways)  In business, the goal is always revenue, but we need to revisit how we’re going to get there.  I’m curious what kinds of things we (at our companies) can learn from creatives like writers and artists and will be exploring that more on the show. 5. During an economic downturn, it’s even more important to be creative because we are more resource and people constrained. So we need to get creative with how we approach growth.   Great marketers thrive on creativity and innovation and experimentation. Mediocre marketers just follow the rules someone else made. Great marketers are curious and constantly questioning the rules.   
So, more to come. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 10% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

What is up everyone? Sharing out another amazing episode with ya'll. I asked Jenn Deering Davis to join me on the show. Jenn is Co-Founder and Head of Marketing at Gradient Works. I actually first listened to Jenn talk to Cassidy Shield on the Stacking Growth podcast (always got my eye out for innovative early stage startups!) and I really wanted to bring her on because she has a lot of experience with category design which is a creative process in and of itself. Prior to Gradient Works, Jenn co-founded Union Metrics, a social media analytics startup, that was acquired in 2018 by TrendKite and then TrendKite was acquired by Cision (a global media intelligence company). Gradient Works was founded in 2020 and has 20 people. They've raised Seed funding ($2M total). Quick description: Right rep, right account, right time. Dynamic sales book management software to help sales manage their territories. Here's what we hit on during the episode: What does creative mean to you; Cool creative approaches and experiments at Gradient Works; How they built their audience before they had a product and now they get 20K inbound website visitors; How the team builds creativity into how they work; What's Jenn's advice on how to turn technical concepts into stories that help people understand each other; Why they decided to design a new category at their early stage startup (HINT: it's never too soon); Pitfalls to avoid when creating your startup's new category; How to know that the category design process is working; Why now is the best time for startups to get more creative; Which startups should we be watching in 2023; When has Jenn personally been the most creative; Jenn asks Anna her burning question. You can find Jenn on LinkedIn. You can learn more about Gradient Works. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 10% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov

I asked Christopher Lochhead to come back on the show (3rd time!) because I'm a really big fan and I know my listeners are as well. This time we talked about creativity, plus got a little personal!  (please note there's some swearing so listen to this one without the kiddos) Christopher makes content (podcasts, books, newsletters) for entrepreneurs and marketers with a different mind. He's got a newsletter called "Category Pirates" and podcasts (Follow Your Different, Lochhead On Marketing) and books ("Play Bigger" is on category design, "Niche Down" is about how become legendary by being different and "Snow Leopard" is on why legendary writers create a category.) After this one also check out Episode 44 where we talk about “Why 98% Of Startups (And Marketers) Waste Their Time”, how companies that lead with category design are valued at 5x more, what makes a legendary entrepreneur, and how to explain Category Design to a 7-year old. This is still one of my most popular episodes. And also check out Episode 108 where we talk about  "Why Most Business Content Is 100% Content Free And How Non-Obvious Ideas Can Help." In THIS episode we cover: What does “creative” mean to you (HINT: category design is actually very creative); Why creativity requires thinking about thinking; We talk about guns (yep); When have you felt the most creative; Christopher's process for getting creative + achieving flow; Podcasting is special because it's the only medium today for real, unedited human conversation; Balancing creativity with results (HINT: creative in business that doesn't drive revenue is not creative, but sometimes not making the money is the answer when you approach creative marketing projects). You can find Christopher on LinkedIn. You can learn more about Category Pirates. For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and don't forget to leave a review! And whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 1. Startup marketing strategy, execution and advising, I'm like your fractional head of marketing (25+ happy clients and mentees) >> www.furmanovmarketing.com 2. Sign up to get my monthly newsletter where I’m sharing playbooks and insights and cracking some jokes that will make you smile guaranteed >> https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba 3. Sponsor my Top 10% podcast and get startup founders, marketers and VCs hearing about your brand >> https://anchor.fm/anna-furmanov You can also find me hanging out on LinkedIn every single week: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov