Miscellaneous

The Rubicon Agency In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Strategic content

Writers block: The great AI content conundrum

According to the Content Marketing Institute, 61% of technology marketers say creating the right content for their audience is challenging.

This is hardly surprising given the sprawl of decision makers, budget holders and influencer groups over the years. In yesteryear things were much simpler, the balance of power sat in the IT tower. Decisions on technology purchases were sat firmly with the CTO or CIO so producing content that pushed their buttons was fairly straight forward.

Fast-forward to the present, the technology space is awash with products, services, solutions and architectures that are designed specifically for certain lines of business. In May of this year CMSwire reported that the MarTech space alone had swelled to over 14,100 solutions [hyperlink], so it’s no surprise that tech marketers are finding it difficult to create differentiated, relevant and valuable content that their prospects want to engage with, given the competition for eyeballs.

Is AI the answer to our content prayers?

With the explosion of AI into every tech application known to man, it’s no wonder that marketing has embraced generative AI like a returning relative from an overseas trip. Let’s face it, AI has been pitched to remove manual, repetitive and human centric tasks- content creation is no exception to this. The Content Marketing Institute continue in their benchmarking report that 79% of technology marketers use generative AI for content tasks and 48% use AI to write full first drafts. But this begs the question, is AI the golden goose we have all been searching for?

Well, if used correctly it can certainly remove a lot of the grunt work out of the process which is a huge plus given that 66% of tech marketers are faced with a lack of resources. However, in order to remain in control, marketing departments must adopt some form of guiderails around the use of AI in content production. These include but are not limited to:

Ethical use of AI: Organisations should be transparent about AI-generated content in order to avoid bias and not to mislead audiences.
Quality control: Human involvement should be applied to all AI generated content to ensure that brand tone of voice and quality standards are adhered to.
Content authenticity: Ensure content feels like it’s been created by a human, making sure it’s authentic and adds value to the audience.
Content validation: Check to make sure that references, statistics and sources are relevant, up to date and correct.
Data privacy, security and compliance: Make sure that all content complies with copyright law, data protection and compliance regulations.

Content should be human-centric.

No doubt about it, AI has aided content creation and has certainly streamlined the process, although to be truly authentic, marketers still need to apply the human touch. Consumers often challenge and question the information they are presented with, so structuring arguments that support these and applying empathy, elevation and context to these points can promote authenticity.

People buy people, so if your content comes across as synthetic your audience may not only switch off but, on a deeper level, possibly question your products or even worse, your brand.

At The Rubicon Agency we craft human-centric strategic content that informs, educates and inspires. With over 25 years of B2B marketing agency experience working within the tech sector, we know what it takes to cut through the competition.

Want to boost your budget?

The Rubicon Agency Budget Booster is designed to optimise funds – making your available $/£/€ go 15% further than it would have done previously.

Think of it as 15% extra – free of charge.

The Rubicon Agency In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Sales enablement

Sales enablement: 10 pitfalls that can derail your sales efforts

We all know that securing a new account is very much a team effort. Extended sales cycles, big-ticket purchases and complex buying groups require a consolidated effort from both marketing and sales functions.

Get it right, and the payoff can be huge; get it wrong, and those marketing dollars spent on generating leads could be wasted.

Below we look at the top 10 sales enablement pitfalls that can derail even the best customer acquisition efforts.

1. Misalignment issues

It may seem obvious but it’s amazing how many times sales and marketing functions aren’t aligned. To be on the same page, sales teams need to be continuing the narrative that the prospect has originally enticed and engaged with. Going off-piste can dilute your proposition or leave the prospect scratching their heads about what they are actually buying. Whether you have functional (i.e RevOps or Growth marketing) or operational alignment (i.e. interlocked sales and marketing ABX) is irrelevant – the shared language, vision, metrics are key.

2. Unarmed and underprepared

The saying goes ‘it takes a village to raise a child’; well, in a similar vein you can’t close a sale without sufficient assets across multi-touchpoints. When an MQL lands with the sales team, they need to continue to nurture the prospect until they are ready to engage in intent-led activities such as demo content. If the sales enablement content is missing or significantly lacking, your place on their short-list could be in jeopardy.

3. The customer is always right

Listen to your customers and feed that back into the sales process. Customers are often a source of enlightenment that can highlight specific silver bullets that encouraged them to buy from you. These may differ from the USPs identified by the product marketing team and could, if used correctly, make your proposition a whole lot stickier.

4. Mind the gap

Sales teams are at the coalface when it comes to feedback from prospects. If a recurring issue or challenge crops up, then it would be foolhardy to ignore. This could be not having enough social proof that your product does what it says it can do, or collateral that demonstrates the business value to the C-suite. Whatever the gap, this content chasm needs to be filled or your prospect could disappear into the abyss.

5. Computer says ‘no’

Tech is great when it’s used correctly. However in the case of ‘having all the gear and no idea’, there is no point having it at all. If the tech stack is operating in silos or not being used at all then prospects can be under served, neglected or just left to go cold. Integration of systems and a single source of truth is critical to making sure prospects are given what they want, when they want it. Without this you are back to good old-fashioned guesswork and blind luck.

6. Slow, slow, quick quick slow.

Moving interested parties through the funnel is nothing new, but customers hold all the cards and call all the shots when it comes to sales acceleration. With the constant pressure of quarterly sales targets to hit, it can be tempting to move prospects through to the end game as quickly as possible. Moving a ‘lead’ straight to a demo after they have only consumed a single piece of content could come across as desperate. But by the same token, not moving prospects onto to more sales qualification content when they want can also demonstrate lack of empathy. Pacing a lead is a balancing act and one that should be informed by clear metrics and digital body language.

7. Too many tools

Counter to point 5, the digitally enlightened sales team may embrace the benefits of sales applications, but give them too many and the law of diminishing returns will start to kick in.

8. Poor training and onboarding

Knowing your customers and aligning their needs with your products is a basic necessity for sales. Inadequate training and campaign alignment can leave sales teams underprepared and less effective at communicating your point of difference or objection handling. Gaps in product knowledge or inconsistencies in sales messages can leave your credibility exposed.

9. Low ball content

As mentioned in point 4, content is key. You may have a plethora of assets to send to your prospective customer to help encourage them to buy, but what if the content is the wrong pitch? Sure ‘speeds and feeds’ material have its place, but is it likely to pique the interest of business leaders – probably not. Sales teams need a raft of assets that appeal, inspire and convince decision makers from both technical and business camps.

10. Don’t stand still

Heraclitus said, “the only constant in life is change”. How true he was, this philosophy rings true within the sales engine as well. Just because something is resonating today doesn’t mean that it will continue to do so in 12, 18 or 24 month’s time. Change is inevitable and your sales enablement needs to adopt this mindset as well. Trends change, buying habits flex and priorities pivot, failing to recognise this will make your pitch seem outdated and irrelevant.

For a holistic view of your sales enablement assets and approach, speak to The Rubicon Agency. With over 25 years of B2B marketing experience working within the tech sector, we know what it takes to inspire sales teams and cut through the competition.

Want to boost your budget?

The Rubicon Agency Budget Booster is designed to optimise funds – making your available $/£/€ go 15% further than it would have done previously.

Think of it as 15% extra – free of charge.

The Rubicon Agency In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry, Product marketing

The importance of the product marketing enigma machine

Cracked by the boffins at Bletchley Park and synonymous with films like The Imitation Game and U-571, the Enigma machine was at the bleeding edge of cipher technology in the mid 20th century. Unlocking the true meaning of its coded messages had a monumental impact on the outcome of WW2.

With a slightly tangential pivot, the same premise could be applied to deciphering the sometimes-cryptic messages unveiled by product marketing teams. Tasked with communicating a product, solution or service to the market, product marketing can sometimes default to showcasing the technical features and functionality.

Now, there is a time and a place for this information – comparing competitors’ offerings can require a forensic peek under the covers. However, being able to convey the benefits to a non-technical audience or apply relevance to certain lines of business is a skill that requires a degree in translations.

Demonstrating the art of possible

As we are all well aware, buying centres and tech budget holders have become more diverse than they were 20 years ago. Lines of business including HR, finance, marketing and sales now have dedicated budgets to purchase x-tech products and services.

Assuming these buyers aren’t tech savvy, or particularly excited by the number of functions your product offers. So, how do you effectively communicate the value and the difference of your brand over a competitors?

The answer is empathy. Put the product in context. How is it going to make their lives better? How is it going to benefit the business? What possible use cases can your product be applied to? These are some of the messages that will cut through the noise of traditional speeds and feeds information.

The growing influence of Product Marketing Managers

In a recent article, McKinsey reported that PMMs could be the secret weapon in turning products from ‘meh’ to ‘must-have’. They stated the following:

Market understanding: PMMs bring essential insights to the table which in turn help tailor products to meet customer needs and preferences.
Orchestration: They coordinate efforts across teams to ensure a seamless transition from development to market launch.
Risk mitigation: By understanding market dynamics they’re able to reduce the risk and guesswork associated with new product launches.
Revenue growth: Companies with robust PMM functions see significantly higher revenue growth, with top performers having a 25-30% higher ratio of PMMs to product managers.

Used effectively, product marketing managers can bridge the gap between development and customer speak, they can pivot the stories above to resonate with their audience and act as ‘chief code breaker’, to take the technical intricacies of the product and decipher it into real business benefits.

At The Rubicon Agency we have a track-record of working with product luminaries and ‘simplifiers of propositions. Together, we craft product marketing content that bridges the gap between tech speak and storytelling. With over 25 years of experience working within the B2B tech sector we know what it takes to articulate a new product, service, platform or architecture.

Want to boost your budget?

The Rubicon Agency Budget Booster is designed to optimise funds – making your available $/£/€ go 15% further than it would have done previously.

Think of it as 15% extra – free of charge.

The Rubicon Agency In Insights, Miscellaneous, Our industry

Are FinTech’s losing touch? Fintech marketing trends

Traditional banks have long been seen as the lumbering dinosaurs of the finance world, unable to react dynamically. Many Millennials and Gen Z were searching for market disruptors that offered secure financial services but delivered on their terms and in a digital first manner.

This groundswell saw the birth of the neobank, a digitally native offering with no bricks and mortar branches, specialising in a concentrated set of products and services. Great you may think. Problem solved. These disruptors have filled a gap in the market and are now serving their customers in a more efficient and digital way than the traditional banks ever could. Wrong! If you are going to disrupt the market then you need to stay in lockstep with the demands of your customers (new and old) through effective Fintech marketing strategies. It could be argued that whilst FinTech’s provided a refreshing pivot away from high street banks, they are now facing the same challenges.

Know your market

Being different was, at first, enough of a USP to attract previously disgruntled customers. However, as more and more FinTech’s entered the market, supercharged with supportive conditions like digitalisation and abundant funding, each needed to carve out their own niche. However, many had misaligned their offering with the needs and wants of their potential customers. Overlay direct and indirect competitors and the piece of the pie that seemed sizeable at first can quickly turn to a pile of crumbs.

Poor user experience

The very premise of a neobank or FinTech is built on the customers digital experience. Deliver a poor UX and the selling point that many customers bought into has eroded and with it their loyalty.

If the digital experience is slow, unreliable, cumbersome or irrelevant then customer will churn.

Evolve or fail

In a continuously changing landscape, FinTech’s need to stay ahead of consumer trends and customer wants in order to stay relevant. For example, Revolut started life focusing on the travel market. Their offer was aimed at customers who wanted to make digital transactions abroad without being stung with commissions or unfavourable exchange rates. Over the years, they have evolved their proposition, adding new services such as crypto trading to keep pace with their users’ news.

Navigating regulations

New rules and compliance obligations like Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) can become a burden for agile neobanks. These regulations require large amounts of resource and can impact business models depending on technology and risk profiling. Those that don’t cope with these checks and balances can be impacted by delivering a sub-standard service to their customers.

Safety in numbers

Filling the gaps in products or services through partnerships is one of the ways FinTechs can expand their offer to its customer base without diluting their core business. Partnerships enable users to customise their accounts with a la cart services that are most relevant.

It’s safe to say that the FinTech buyer is more disconcerting than a few years ago. Where slick propositions and digital-first experiences provided a breath of fresh air to a largely siloed and outdated industry, these same gems have lost their luster over time. Expectations have exponentially increased. Service requirements have become more complex and personalised.

Standing out from the crowd in a highly commoditised market is difficult, so to cut through the noise you need a marketing agency that can elevate you above the competition.

The Rubicon Agency has significant experience in the FinTech space – whether the original disruptors or the re-incarnators.

Check out our experience in FinTech.

Want to boost your budget?

The Rubicon Agency Budget Booster is designed to optimise funds – making your available $/£/€ go 15% further than it would have done previously.

Think of it as 15% extra – free of charge.

Lewis Miller In Miscellaneous, Our industry

25 years of innovation and success with AT&T

Supporting AT&T for 25 years

We’ve come a long way since launching the AT&T MPLS capability in EMEA 25 years ago. At that time – due to the millennium bug – the IT function was mid-planning for tech meltdown and business was thinking about social Armageddon.

Way back in 1999 (yes, the previous century), AT&T was looking for a B2B tech marketing agency to run a pan-European programme to improve market education on improved traffic management in the enterprise WAN. And after a comprehensive pitch process, we answered the call.

Little did we know back then that our relationship would endure for another couple of decades.

Transformational technologies and opportunities

“Winning AT&T added a marquee brand to our client list. Any tech agency would be proud to support the world’s largest telco brand”, said Andrew Miller, co-founder, The Rubicon Agency. “After a successful MPLS programme that created a good pipeline of opportunity, we were introduced to a number of functions and teams that allowed us to deepen our partnership. These operations were receptive to an agency dedicated to B2B tech.”

Since then, the agency has had the pleasure of supporting many portfolios across the organisation – geographically and technologically. These include IoT, unified communication & collaboration, mobility, networking, consulting and contact centre. And go-to-market teams such as Education, Retail, APAC, EMEA and Global.

The Rubicon Agency: a great B2B marketing combination

Maintaining a relationship with a powerhouse like AT&T over such a significant time is no mean feat. “With an absolute focus on tech marketing, we’ve got a great track record of delivering results for AT&T – with moments of magic and mojo across many campaigns”, said Andrew Miller. “Whether simplifying propositions or creating new notions and leadership conversations, we look to make our marketing impact deliver a multiple of what AT&T invests with us at the outset”.

With over 400 projects under our belt, you’d maybe think that things are winding down. But far from it. Our B2B marketing journey continues – with new assignments for AT&T Labs, AT&T Connected Wearables and AT&T Cloud Voice. Things remain busy.

Here’s to the next 25 years!

Explore our latest projects for AT&T

Demonstrating the business case for wearables

AT&T
Anticipating customer needs to provide outstanding CX

AT&T & Five9
Bringing omnichannel to life

AT&T
Embedding collaboration across the enterprise

AT&T
Creating relevance in key vertical markets

AT&T
Driving market development in IoT

AT&T

The Rubicon Agency’s 25-year relationship with Cisco

The Rubicon Agency: helping Cisco build the Internet for a quarter of a century

There seems to be a poetic symmetry to Cisco’s claims of accelerating internet uptake 25 years ago – and their current campaign claiming that 80% of traffic runs through their infrastructure. Not only were we supporting them back then, but we continue to do so even now.

In 1999 Cisco, the worldwide leader in internet networking solutions, were on the hunt for a B2B tech marketing agency to support their telco service provider business. Specifically, the co-marketing programme – Rainmaker – was a key investment in driving managed network services business into Cisco Powered Network providers. They just needed a dedicated tech agency to help lead the charge.

After a competitive pitch process, we ultimately secured the prestigious gig.

“I remember the agency selection and campaign development process very well – like it was yesterday. We pitched against 8 other B2B tech or telco marketing agencies to secure the programme. I also remember the lightening bolt of energy generated by adding their logo to our client list.”, said Andrew Miller, co-founder, The Rubicon Agency.

Providing support across Europe and beyond

The following 24 months were taken-up with supporting key European services providers on market development programmes in their respective countries – including Telecom Italia, KPN, DT, Telekom Austria, Swisscom, Belgacom and FT, to name a few.

Since then, we’ve managed B2B marketing programmes across Cisco including Cisco Enterprise Networking, Cisco Capital, Cisco IoT, Cisco Webex, Cisco Partner Development organisation, Cisco Office of Innovation, Cisco Service Provider, Cisco Office of I&D, and many more. And over the last 18 months we’ve produced projects co-funded by Radware and Cisco for Cisco SECURE.

“We knew the initial project had a wide campaign window – but I’m not sure we expected to still have the relationship over 25 years later.” Andrew Miller further commented. “But we’re as proud to be creating mind share and wallet share for the tech giant now, as we were back in the 20th century.”

Cisco + The Rubicon Agency: an enduring relationship

Undoubtedly, Cisco has a bold commitment to marketing – and this philosophy provides a good fit with our agency’s expertise in B2B tech marketing, creating high levels of attraction through in break-through strategy and creative.

Our relationship continues to this day with new projects across several channel, technology and sub-brand functions.

Explore our latest projects for Cisco

Increasing awareness in DDoS protection

Cisco & Radware
Accelerating adoption of a game-changing channel programme

Cisco
Encouraging new behaviours to ‘Be the Change’

Cisco
Communicating a new model in social impact

Cisco
Helping develop sales mastery for teams and partners

Cisco
Sharing sales best practices with partners

Cisco

Series-C CMOs who hit their growth goals all know this

If your tech start-up is prepping for its series-C funding round, your Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) has a challenge ahead.

They need to rapidly professionalise the company’s marketing, branding and communications, bringing them up to corporate standards.

They need to show that they have achieved the goals set at the last funding round. And that they have the expertise, the series-C marketing strategy, the technology and skills to achieve the results any series-C investors will demand.

From scrappy tech start-up to corporate professionalism

At this stage in the start-up journey, the challenge isn’t simply about what the potential customer can see — though that is still important. It’s also about the technology, frameworks and strategies behind the scenes.

What does the CMO have to do to get the company ready for series C funding?

Demonstrate a communications strategy that addresses each user segment at every point in the customer lifecycle in a way that maximises returns.
Adopt marketing automation as part of the fully technology-enabled strategy for demand-generation and the maximization of customer lifetime value (CLV).
Have a credible demand-generation strategy for taking the business into new segments, new geographies and other new audiences.
Develop mature account-based marketing strategies and practices, to ensure and demonstrate maximum revenue growth from your install base.
Own a powerful thought leadership platform that creates sustainable conversations and clear market differentiation and leadership.

To get your start-up through its series-C funding round, brand identity, corporate messaging guidelines, communications strategy must all be comprehensive, flexible and contain all the elements required to enable these and other innovations.

For instance, if you’re building a personalised digital journey, driven by CRM-based marketing automation, your start-up’s brand identity and marketing architecture must contain all the elements required to support that effort. The system must be able to pull these automatically from your libraries to create the asset it needs, at an industrial scale.

This requires a combination of marketing, revenue, technical and operational knowledge and practical expertise. For many start-ups, it’s huge leap in combining greater marketing structure, with far more detail in strategy, larger amounts of data and a much greater and broad ranging use of technology.

We call this stage-by-stage approach the start-up marketing investment maturity path. It runs from pre-seed to series-D. At each stage, the challenges associated with convincing investors, securing funding and hitting growth targets are unique.

To find out more about the marketing investment maturity path, check out our infographic.

When technology is a false friend

In one sense, there is a lot of reassurance at this stage in the start-up journey. CRM platforms, marketing automation, digital-experience — these are all known quantities. You can buy into off-the-shelf technologies and follow ready-made plans.

That’s all good. But it’s not a substitute for having the necessary architecture underpinning your branding, marketing, corporate messaging and communications.

The best martech in the world will not help you if:

Your messaging is inconsistent across touchpoints in the lifecycle.
Your communications aren’t tailored to your audience segments.
Your visual branding is a bad fit for your value proposition and brand personality.

Without the right approach to start-up branding, marketing and communications, you can find yourself with a technologically flawless technical implementation of automated, data-driven marketing at scale and still fail to hit your growth or investment targets.

Investors want to see conversion metrics, not tech metrics

In this scenario, the technology-related metrics will look great. But your conversion metrics won’t, because while your comms might arrive in the right inboxes, your messages won’t land with your audience.

This won’t help you grow your user base or your revenue. It will not help you meet either your series-B goals or convince investors that you can credibly achieve any goals they set as a condition of series-C funding.

The answer is to make sure your CMO has access to a marketing, branding and comms team that has experience taking start-ups through their series-C funding round. You could choose to build this team internally. But this involves time and cost overheads that many start-ups will find prohibitive.

The answer is to find an external partner with start-up marketing expertise, right away. A good tech marketing agency will work with you to identify exactly the tools/tactics you do and — and don’t — need for your series-C funding round. It will help you develop exactly the mix of branding, marketing and communications your company needs to achieve its current goals and to give it a platform fit for future growth and evolution.

The Rubicon Agency has three decades of business and consumer tech marketing experience working with both start-ups and some of the world’s leading established technology brands.

This blog is part of The CMO Investment Challenge series, including The pre-seed to C journey, Seed-A, Series A-B and Series B-C.

Get proposal

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry, Web + UX development

This secret gives the best series-B CMOs the edge

When a start-up makes the leap from series A to B funding, it places a lot of pressure on the company’s marketing capabilities.

At this stage in the start-up journey, investors expect more structure and more obvious professionalism in marketing. You can no longer build your marketing effort solely or mainly around your founders and their vision.

The time for scrappy, ad-hoc communications is over. Now, you need structure, not just in brand identity, but in your messaging guidelines, your product marketing, your demand generation, your relationship with your channel and other partners — and more.

We call this the series-B marketing great leap forward. Here’s what it looks like:

Brand marketing: you need a structured brand identity and tone of voice. It doesn’t have to be a 50-page guide to every element of branding, but it needs to cover the basics – and it needs a control system to prevent deviation but allow evolution.
Revenue marketing: your product should now be defined as something separate from your company; your target segments and your marketing plan should be clearly defined and your demand engine somewhat proven and reliable.
Marketing communications: you should have comms planned for multiple personas across each key point on the customer journey – and across multiple channels.

Often, by this stage in their lifecycle, the start-up’s Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) has at least a small, dedicated team to work with.

In one sense, this is a blessing. The CMO has help to hand. But it can also be a curse. Having previously done the marketing themselves, the founders hand over to the CMO, dust off their hands and think ‘job done’.

This completely underestimates the marketing challenge facing the CMO as they take the start-up from its series A to its series B funding round.

The series-B marketing great leap forward

The series-B funding round is a key stage on the start-up marketing investment maturity path, running from pre-seed to series-D. At each stage, the challenges associated with convincing investors, securing funding and hitting growth targets are unique.

The series-B CMO has a huge job to do. They must create a branding, marketing and communications vehicle that’s almost as comprehensive, data-driven, accountable and effective as anything a corporate would produce.

Among other things, that means:

Taking the disparate, ad-hoc branding elements the start-up has created, making them consistent and filling in any gaps to build a comprehensive brand identity.
Building data-based audience segmentation and then creating marketing campaigns, with measurable success metrics, for each segment.
Marketing the marketing model to potential investors, clearly demonstrating how it will enable the start-up to achieve growth and revenue goals.

You can’t just hand over some blog posts, email templates, the keys to your website and then tell the CMO, “best of luck”. That’s how you set your CMO up to fail.

What do we mean by fail? Not showing enough revenue growth. Not having the time or headspace to develop a proper market understanding. And not having the tools they need to scale fast enough. And these are all among the top-five reasons why CMOs get fired¹.

To find out more about the marketing investment maturity path, check out our infographic.

Give your CMO what they need to master the series-B transition

To avoid this outcome and the damage it can do to your company as it heads into its series-B funding round, you need to give the CMO the tools, technologies, and team they need.

For most start-ups, it’s unlikely that it will be economical, or speedy enough, to do this in-house. Building the right team, with the right mix of skills, and putting together the best mix of marketing tools, will take too long and cost too much.

The answer is to partner with an outside specialist. A b2b or b2c tech marketing agency that specialises in branding, marketing and communications for start-ups can give your CMO instant access to everything they need to win new customers, grow revenue, and convince investors.

The right agency will work with you to identify exactly the marketing tools you do and — and don’t — need for your series-B funding round. It will help you develop exactly the mix of branding, marketing and communications your company needs to achieve its current goals and to give it a platform fit for future growth and evolution.

The Rubicon Agency has three decades of business and consumer tech marketing experience working with both start-ups and some of the world’s leading established technology brands.

This blog is part of The CMO Investment Challenge series, including The pre-seed to C journey, Seed-A, Series A-B and Series B-C.

Get proposal

1. https://www.carilu.com/p/the-top-5-reasons-cmos-get-fired

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry, Web + UX development

This is the path to series-A marketing and growth success

Are you the chief marketing officer (CMO) — formal or de facto — of a tech start-up going from seed to series A? If you are, then you need to switch your marketing up a gear and get more structured.

You have a serious marketing challenge on your hands. Typically, at this seed-to-series-A stage, start-ups face two common marketing pitfalls:

The first is simple: they don’t know how to market, so they just don’t do marketing and hope things will simply work out. They won’t.
The second usually happens when you meet the wrong marketing agency. Rather than light touch, flexible marketing, the start-up is oversold an approach that’s too structured, too cumbersome and too expensive for its seed-to-series-A needs.

Ok, if you’re not doing marketing at all, that’s fairly obvious. In which case, contact some specialist who can help today (hint: scroll down to the bottom of this article).

But what about the second? Isn’t it good to go all in, for a belt-and-braces approach? In short: no. At best, investing right now in fully structured corporate branding and marketing is an expensive waste. At worst, marketing that isn’t optimised for start-ups can weigh your company down, hold it back, and make it harder for you to hit your targets.

How can you recognise if you’re about to fall into this trap — and step back from the brink?

Is your start-up doing too much marketing, too young?

The marketing challenge for seed-to-series-A startups is doing the right things, and enough, to convince clients and investors, while also leaving your company room to evolve.

For instance, let’s consider brand identity. For an established company, brand identity should consist of a highly structured visual brand identity; product positioning (based on price, benefit, customer persona etc.); audience segmentation — and more.

But does an early-stage tech start-up need all this? No. At this stage, in almost every case, the company is still turning its idea and its technology into products and services. It’s still finding its audience and its market. And because of this, its identity is still evolving.

If you spend a lot of money defining a brand identity too formally at this stage, you can absolutely end up with something that looks great, but…

Most of the people you work with won’t know how to use it.
Your company will outgrow the new brand identity quickly.
You’ll waste a lot of money on something you can’t use for long.

The same principle applies not just to brand identity, but to other elements of marketing: tone of voice, messaging guidelines, product marketing, sales enablement, thought leadership —and so on.

For all these things, the needs of an early-stage tech start-up are very different to those of a more mature company.

To find out more about the marketing investment maturity path, and the challenges associated with convincing investors, securing funding and hitting growth targets at each stage, check out our infographic.

How to avoid series-A marketing hell

So how do you avoid spending too much money on branding, marketing and communications that tie your company down, rather than helping it soar?

The key is to ask yourself, is this — whether it’s brand identity, product positioning, partner marketing or something else — whatever you’re creating, right for your start-up at its current stage of maturity? And will it still be right in six months’ time?

If the answer to the first question is ‘yes’ but the answer to the second is “no” or “not sure”, then you need to take real care crafting that element of your start-up marketing and communications.

Identify those elements of branding, marketing and communications your start-up needs right now, to achieve its growth marketing, revenue and investment goals.

Taking this lightweight, targeted approach to series-A marketing will:

Give you the marketing tools and credibility you need to win over your series A investors.
Equip you with the positioning, sales enablement, demand/marketing ops and other growth-marketing tools you need to win early adopters and hit revenue goals.
Still leave you the room to grow and evolve, without forcing you to go back to the marketing drawing board.

An agency with the right technology market expertise will work with you to identify exactly the marketing tools you do — and don’t — need for your stage in the start-up journey. It will help you develop exactly the mix of branding, marketing and communications your company needs to achieve its current goals and to give it a platform fit for future growth and evolution.

The Rubicon Agency has three decades of b2b tech marketing experience working with both start-ups and some of the world’s leading established technology brands.

This blog is part of The CMO Investment Challenge series, including The pre-seed to C journey, Seed-A, Series A-B and Series B-C.

Get proposal

How to wow VCs with the right start-up marketing strategy

Today, just four people work at the average start-up1. Two of them are the founders2. And on average, they all work 60 hours or more a week3.

Little wonder that these small, incredibly dedicated teams who are already overworked with the task of turning an idea into a business, don’t have time for marketing.

But understandable as it might be, neglecting marketing is a problem for start-ups. It’s a barrier to growth and it makes them look unserious in the eyes of potential investors.

Why is marketing such a challenge for so many start-ups?

Start-ups are typically working with a new concept or technology. They need to find ways to turn it into a product or service and secure sufficient funding.

Most of the people involved are experts in the thing they’re creating, not in marketing or branding. They’re working with a limited budget. They don’t know how to create the right marketing framework for a start-up at their stage. And so on.

Very early on, right from the pre-seed stage, this creates significant challenges for the average start-up:

Of all the different groups who might be interested in your product or service, how do you choose the right ones to target first?
How do you take the technology or product you’ve created, and package it — or its outputs — up as a product your audience will want?
Where does your product fit into the market in relation to competitors, either direct or indirect?
What’s the best way to communicate the benefits of your offering to your audience — and prompt them into acting on your message?
How do you identify, build relationships and work with channel and commercial partners to find the most effective route to market?

These are marketing problems: finding your audience, creating and positioning your product in the market, defining your brand identity, voice and message, then developing an effective start-up demand and/or partner-marketing strategy.

If you can’t answer these marketing questions, and use your answer as the springboard to action, then your start-up will struggle to either grow or to attract investors.

There is no alternative to marketing that doesn’t end in failure

When you’re in the thick of making a start-up work, it’s easy to view things such as marketing as a secondary concern or, even worse, a distraction.

But that’s a mistake. In fact, it’s one of the classic start-up pitfalls. No matter how great your idea is, you won’t attract investors unless you can prove there’s a market for what you want to sell. And you won’t create a market without doing marketing.

As a start-up, there are three ways you can approach marketing:

Develop the in-house abilities and resources you need to get marketing right for your company’s place on the start-up journey.
Work with an external partner who has the skills, technology and experience of start-up marketing you need to hit your revenue and investment goals.
Ignore marketing because it’s one more hassle — then watch your company fail.

For many start-ups, option 1 is simply too time consuming and expensive. Option 3 clearly isn’t an option at all. That leaves option 2 – or a blend of 1 & 2.

Working with a marketing agency is the quickest, most cost-efficient way to access the skills you need to achieve your growth marketing and investment goals. But there’s a catch.

Marketing for start-ups is not like marketing for other types of companies. If your agency doesn’t have the right experience, there’s a big risk it might make expensive mistakes.

Understanding the marketing investment maturity path

Every stage of the start-up journey requires a different kind of marketing. And at each stage, the challenges associated with convincing investors, securing funding and hitting growth targets are unique. We call this the marketing investment maturity path.

In the pre-seed stage, start-ups need a foundational approach that sets basic parameters for things such as branding, marketing and communications.

But it needs to be flexible and still fairly loose. It should help you convince investors, without placing too many constraints on you.

Invest too much too early in a highly developed branding, marketing and communications strategy and you risk straitjacketing yourself, making it harder for your brand, messaging and tools to evolve with you. This wastes a lot of money and works against your success.

So, what are the stages of the marketing investment maturity path and what does good marketing look like for each stage:

Pre-seed: the brand identity remains unstructured, marketing is needs-driven and messaging is built around the founders’ vision.
Seed: messaging and comms are still owned by the founders but evolving to be more formalised and demand tactics are minimum viable product.
Series A: starts to include more mature features, such as structured product marketing, sales enablement and a strategy for revenue generation.
Series B: by this point, the company starts to require more formal structures and guidelines to direct its efforts and ensure consistency.
Series C: marketing, branding and comms become much more professional, driven by personas, personalisation, partner marketing and other value-adding techniques.
Series D: by this point, your marketing should be nearly indistinguishable from that of a corporate: systematised, automated and technology enabled.

To find out more about the marketing investment maturity path, check out our infographic.

The right agency with b2b and b2c tech marketing expertise will work with you to solve the start-up marketing challenge and understand where you are on the marketing investment maturity path. It will help you develop exactly the mix of branding, marketing and communications your company needs to achieve its current goals and to give it a platform fit for future growth and evolution.

The Rubicon Agency has three decades of business and consumer tech marketing experience working with both start-ups and some of the world’s leading established technology brands.

This blog is part of The CMO Investment Challenge series, including The pre-seed to C journey, Seed-A, Series A-B and Series B-C.

Get proposal

1. https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/second-quarter-2020/many-people-does-it-take-start-company
2. https://medium.com/the-launch-path/as-a-predictor-of-startup-success-whats-better-solo-founders-or-founding-teams-20f4518dbfc3
3. https://forbes.ge/en/from-a-startup-founder-why-you-probably-shouldn-t-start-a-startup

Meme of the week #50 – Budget evaporation

Of all the 50 memes produced so far, this is likely to be the one that’s affected everyone.

As tech marketers, we’ve all embarked on projects and tasks that have been green-lighted by management and leadership – only to be broadsided later with budget re-assignment or withdrawal.

The rapidly changing conditions of the last couple of years have only increased these events. But the emotional investment in the project can sometimes be a bitter pill to swallow.

Check out the meme, ‘Budget evaporation’. Have you been affected by the vacuum?

The challenges represented by ‘Budget evaporation’ relate to:

Campaign managers who have mobilised initiatives with internal and external stakeholder teams
Marketers leading pioneering projects that suffer from a loss of appetite for brave corporate marketing in a downturn
Creative leaders who have developed innovative approaches and strategies to change mindsets and behaviours, to have the effort mothballed

This post is 1:50 from #WhenTheAgency, a witty collection of observations through the eyes of the tech marketing agency. All memes are available to drag and drop into presentations or social posts. Visitors are encouraged to share and create knowing smiles amongst your colleagues and peers.

The full library of memes for #WhenTheAgency is available here. Enjoy!

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry, Web + UX development

Meme of the week #49 – Customer blind spots

In tech marketing we need to ensure the service, product or solution we’re pushing addresses the needs of the market. It’s sales and marketing 101.

But how well do marketers know their customers – and how many could recite the top 5 challenges that customers are currently facing? Furthermore, how many can articulate the relevance of their play to any of these challenges?

Check out the meme, ‘Customer blind spots’. How well do you know your customers?

The challenges represented by ‘Customer blind spots’ relate to:

Heads of Marketing who recognise the value of their team having true customer empathy
Campaign managers looking to create relevance between the solution being marketed and challenges and issues faced by the market
Sales leads requiring assets that build understanding and rapport from the get-go of customer conversations

The full library of memes for #WhenTheAgency is available here. Enjoy!

Meme of the week #48 – Un-distilling

In the realm of creating content, we’d all agree that ‘less is more’. At least in principle.

But efforts to distil are often followed with efforts to expand – especially in product marketing.

Here there’s an instinctive desire to cover everything that a technology is, does, achieves, costs and impacts. And inevitably this ends up being quite a body of content – not all of which is required by the customer.

Check out the meme, ‘Un-distilling’. Have you reduced content, only to have it expanded?

The challenges represented by ‘Un-distilling’ relate to:

Head of Sales looking to arm their sales teams with short, punchy customer content
Product or solution marketing managers needing to balance brevity and comprehensiveness in their product collateral
Campaign managers trying to get the most concise articulation of the product engineered into the campaign flow and assets

The full library of memes for #WhenTheAgency is available here. Enjoy!