Building With Buyers

Andy Raskin is the master of strategic narrative. Andy helps CEOs align their teams around a strategic narrative — to power success in sales, marketing, fundraising, product and recruiting. Clients include VC-backed companies funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Google Ventures, First Round Capital, and other top investors. He has also led strategic narrative training at Salesforce, Uber, Square, Yelp, VMware, Intel, General Assembly and more. Here's what we cover: Why Andy decided to invite his mom to co-create LinkedIn video clips; What does "strategic narrative" mean exactly, and how is it different from our traditional approach to "positioning"; What questions you should be asking customers to help craft your strategic narrative (HINT: they're not about your product); What's the difference between "creating a category" and "creating a movement"; Why is your startup’s “origin story” not the same as your “strategic narrative”; So you want to create your strategic narrative - where do you start? What are the most important steps? Not every business is there to "help you play a new game". For more established companies that want to re-invent themselves, what do they need to do? What led Andy to be master of strategic narratives; What are some strategic narrative pitfalls to avoid? You can reach Andy on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/andyraskin Find out more about Andy and his work: www.andyraskin.com  The Bigger Narrative podcast: https://andyraskin.com/podcast Why Great Pitches Come From Customers (referenced during the episode): https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-great-pitches-come-from-customers-andy-raskin This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Alright, folks. People that know me know that I'm a super, duper positive person. But sometimes? It's OK to vent a little! So, if you want to come join me (and Sergey) vent on some marketing topics, we'd love to have you. Take a little break, grab a cup of coffee. Sergey works on podcast and video production at Crowdlinker. He's also the host of the Media Camp podcast plus he's building out his Youtube channel (SRE Live). Here's what we're venting about in this short episode: People telling you to get on ALL the social media (pshhhhhhhh); People that are not marketers by trade telling you what to do; CEOs that don’t get marketing (they typically get sales…so what’s the difference?); Just because you like it or understand it, doesn’t mean your target buyer does; Having to work under someone that doesn’t get marketing. You can find Sergey on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergeyrosslive/  This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

I'm excited to bring Workvivo onto the show because...SO many reasons. They're doing some very cool things with their marketing with a very nimble team (5 people!), plus they've got the right marketing mindset, plus it's perfect timing because of all these trends coming together - the great resignation, the great awakening, remote work, workplace disconnect, etc. Their growth is through the roof. Gidi Pridor is CMO at Workvivo. He's also on the advisory board for Zowie (customer service seed funded startup). Prior to Workvivo he was VP of Marketing at TravelPerk and Perfecto Mobile. He's also angel investing in various early stage startups like Lance and Storydoc. Workvivo has raised Series A ($16.6M). Founded in 2017 and currently with 69 employees, Workvivo brings your people together, wherever they are. It’s your intranet, internal comms tool, employee app, all merged into one familiar social experience at the very heart of your digital workplace. With annual growth of over 200% YoY, 1M+ users across more than 90 countries, and customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to tech startups, Workvivo is on a mission to elevate everyone’s workplace experience. Here's what we discuss: There’s a very real need to connect at work...how is Workvivo perfectly positioned to help with that; How'd you get users across 90 countries; Why are stories so important, and especially for SaaS startups (HINT: telling your story is NOT about your tool, but rather about your belief system, how you think about your ecosystem, how that helps to build the space that you want to excel in); Marketing and content - what's working really well for Workvivo (HINT: we're bullish on thought leadership, we're building our own internal media company); Some good examples of paid social ads; The good ole' MadMen days, the art of marketing, and how it's so unfortunate that SaaS companies are missing the human aspect and power of using emotional connection in their marketing; What are some bad recommendations you're hearing in marketing (HINT: leading with SEO is not a good idea, also don't hire a "growth hacker"); Gidi generously shared a mistake he made while at TravelPerk and what he's learned from it; Who's on Workvivo's marketing team and how does Gidi lead them (HINT: team meetings are usually just 15 minutes because he hired extreme owners). You can reach Gidi on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/gpridor/ Find out more about Workvivo: www.workvivo.com/ This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Ann Handley is THE digital marketing and content expert. It's like meeting a rockstar. But better because she's a rockstar marketer! She's a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. Keynote speaker. Writer. She's the Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs.  In addition: - 428k followers on LinkedIn (woah) - author of the book Everybody Writes (I have that one) - the Total Annarchy newsletter goes out every couple weeks with a focus on writing, marketing, and living your best life AND Ann helped me land one of my first clients back in 2020! Listen in to hear how that happened. Here's what we cover: Voice - for companies and startups, how should they think about developing their voice for content creation? What are the big marketing/content trends you're seeing today that every startup needs to be on top of (HINT: don't skimp on your newsletter); Tell me more about MarketingProfs; Marketing and content - what’s working well for you right now? what channels? Events - the B2B Forum recently took place in October 2021. How are you planning to handle events this year and next (HINT: the biggest mistake is you take your in-person event and you shove into an online construct) You can reach Ann on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annhandley Find out more about MarketingProfs: www.marketingprofs.com This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Hi everyone! We're back with something a little different, fun and fast. Sorry about the sound on my side, it's totally my fault and we've since fixed it for future episodes, but I had a glitch connecting my microphone for a few episodes. Forgive me!! This is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Jess Goss on how to find your content "tilt" and differentiate from a sea of sameness. Jess joined me from Australia and it was midnight her time, so you KNOW this is gonna be good. Jess is Marketing Director at Tribal Habits (ed-tech). She’s a marketer, designer, and developer. We met on Tuesday’s Demand Gen Live with Chris Walker (so many cool people, you should check it out). Here's what we hit on: Different is important, but RELEVANCE is key - you need to fill a need; Some ideas on how to find your content tilt; Stop looking at what others are doing, and start with having a deep understanding of your customer so you know exactly what they'd find helpful. You can find Jess on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jess-goss  For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Marc Brown is the founder of Byta. Before Byta, Marc was the owner of Fore! an independent promotion company. Marc worked with bands like Spoon, Yoko Ono, and Wilco, trying to get them on radio and TV. Byta was founded in 2015 and has raised seed funding ($1.4M). Up until 2020, the company was totally bootstrapped, which in hindsight is crazy but that has also informed their marketing strategies which is awesome. Byta is a (SaaS) platform that's enabling people to send and receive digital audio in a clean, simple and secure way. Byta helps music artists, their teams and collaborators share new mixes, rough demos, streams and downloads quickly and securely.  We dived right into it and covered: Content marketing efforts - what’s working well for you right now? What’s the goal? (HINT: you do need creative ways to reach people, but you also need to make sure you know how you did it and create those repeatable systems); We discuss the microsite (where Byta can be the authority on music), their monthly online events, their weekly interview series, and SEO; What are the marketing challenges, what are you trying to figure out? (HINT: making decisions that help us stay on the right track); Remember what the goal is for you. We’re not just trying to have a good month. We’re trying to bring value to our target audience. Build something and give it to people who need it; What are the last 1-2 really good marketing ideas you/your team has come up with (HINT: a whitepaper around music sharing, nobody has done this, and a PhD music writer is writing it so you know it's gonna be good); What are some bad recommendations you hear a lot in your field; If you could ask one question to 100 of your peers, what question would you ask them? You can reach Marc on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/viznomics Find out more about Byta: https://byta.com/ Check out the microsite: https://byta.com/howwelisten/ This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

Dan is VP of Marketing at Privy.  He’s a startup marketing leader with 8+ years of experience helping SaaS startups grow. Before Privy, Dan led product marketing at Drift, and demand generation at Onshape. He also created TheProductLaunchMasterclass.com, a course that 200+ people have taken to learn how to turn product launches into their marketing team's secret weapon. Privy has raised Series A ($4.3M). Privy is the leader in e-commerce marketing. Providing the tools, education, and support that small e-commerce brands need to grow their online stores and build thriving businesses. Used by over 500,000 stores in 180 countries, helping to generate $5B in sales. Here's what we covered: Marketing...what’s working well for you at Privy right now? What channels? (HINT: TikTok is part of it, and Dan explains how this came to be organically); Marketing...what are the challenges (HINT: hiring); What are the last really good marketing ideas you/your team has come up with (HINT: they launched this thing so quick they didn't even measure the ROI, they were just trying to bring value to their target audience); You became VP of Marketing by age 30. What was most important to do, to get there; If you could ask one question to 100 of your peers in marketing leadership, what question would you ask them? You can reach Dan on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/-danieljmurphy/ Find out more about Privy: www.privy.com Find out more about the product launch course: www.TheProductLaunchMasterclass.com This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

*Hey listeners, quick note that the audio on my side for this one is wonky - sorry about that! Technical snag but we figured it out.* Patrick Campbell is CEO at ProfitWell. Prior to ProfitWell, Patrick led Strategic Initiatives for Boston based Gemvara and was an Economist at Google and the US Intelligence community (very cool). ProfitWell was founded in 2012, has 83 people, and is based out of Boston, MA. And get this - it's completely bootstrapped. Wow. ProfitWell helps recurring revenue (SaaS + subscription + DTC) businesses with their monetization and retention strategies. All of the metrics you need to grow your subscription business. Here's what we hit on: What does marketing mean to you? (HINT: Patrick's a math guy and actually changed his mind about this over time); Big marketing/content trends that startups need to be aware of (HINT: here's where we talk about the difference between inbound marketing and inbound media and why the media strategy is more effective); What marketing were you doing in the early days to grow the company; What marketing channels are working well for you right now (HINT: we cover their content strategy, podcasts, videos, books, thought leadership etc.); How adding video + audio to their pillar blog posts increased audience engagement; How creating short books allows the ProfitWell team to make sure they have their talking points around the problem their target audience faces, plus helps evangelize the thought leadership inside and outside the team; How does ProfitWell create so many shows with just 83 people?? (HINT: one of the ways is they shoot 1 season in 1 day); We talk about events, specifically how can we do 100 dinners a year and not want to die (HINT: the team cracked the code right before COVID on how to do successful events and personalized dinners, and it involves thinking about what are the plays we’re doing to drive traffic to our booth and to our event); How did Patrick's experience as Economist at the US Department of Defense help in his future roles; Patrick wrapped a van with the ProfitWell logo and copy, and now he's going to drive it around the country to test if people are willing to meet up and also use this for content creation + awareness building. Super cool! You can reach Patrick on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/patrickccampbell Find out more about ProfitWell: www.profitwell.com This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!

And we're back with something a little different, fun and fast! This is a BONUS 10-min. episode with Kourtney Simons on making marketing content without having a solid strategy. I met Kourtney way back in 2006 at Accenture. Kourtney has worked on marketing at MSNBC, Disney, and Netflix. And now she's at MasterClass (Series F) helping them with brand marketing!! Here's what we hit on: Making content without a purpose or strategy - what's the risk; What does a good marketing/content strategy look like; What does a bad content strategy look like;  Examples of companies doing it right; We also talked about the term "playbook" to make sure we were on the same page on the definition. Link to the digital content strategy playbook I wrote and referenced in the episode: https://furmanovmarketing.com/playbooks/modern-digital-content-strategy-for-startups You can find Kourtney on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kourtney-simons-83456b4/ For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening! 

Blake Emal is CMO at Copy.ai. Prior to that, Blake was Senior Manager of Demand Gen at TalkDesk (a Series D SaaS startup that has raised almost $500M). Copy.ai was founded in 2020, has 18 employees, and is based out of … nowhere, bc it's a distributed team! Makes sense. Copy.ai is seed funded ($2.9M).  The tool helps you write better marketing copy, faster. Who doesn't love that? And it’s not just about writing marketing copy. It's a full-on creativity suite to help you start and grow a business. Here's what we hit on: What is marketing? (HINT: ideas that people collect about your brand); What are some of the biggest content trends that startups need to be on top of? (HINT: don’t worry so much about trends, or be aware of them and go against them proactively); Copy.ai has 13k followers on TikTok - why is a B2B company focusing on TikTok; How Blake thinks about personal brand, and why companies that are just starting out need to leverage personal brands; Top channels for Copy.ai 7 months into the game (HINT: Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook Group, and now TikTok which is proving to be a bigger opportunity versus Youtube); How long does it take to really see some traction (HINT: traction is directly proportional to how interesting the thing you’re sharing is); Blake has been "doing Twitter" (his personal Twitter) since 2013, and he's still got room to improve; How long should you test a channel before you know whether or not to continue (HINT: you have to show up every single day and give it your all, and this is more important than being different); When you’re building an audience, it takes years of heavy work; How do you differentiate when there are so many others in the same space; We talked about the creative use of UGC (user generated content) on the Copy.ai homepage (where users are explaining the product); Marketing and growth challenges - what are you still trying to figure out (HINT: focus focus focus!); How has a failure / mistake set you up for later success. You can reach Blake on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/uxblake On Twitter: @heyblake Find out more about Copy.ai: www.copy.ai This episode is exclusively sponsored by Manifest Commerce, helping merchants with earth friendly e-commerce fulfillment. You can check them out here: www.manifestcommerce.io For more content, subscribe to Modern Startup Marketing on Apple or Spotify (or wherever you like to listen). You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com Thanks for listening!