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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.

View 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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

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.

View 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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

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!

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

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!

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #47 – Inbox blitz

Securing the prospects email address is the gateway to sustained, informed marketing.

Well, it should be. And despite the growth in social, it’s still the preferred channel for many marketers seeking cost-efficient communications and marketing.

But over-reliance on this one channel with blunt, excessive touches can damage attention and relevance – even if the prospect doesn’t opt-out.

Check out the meme, ‘Inbox blitz’. Have you got the bruises?

The challenges represented by ‘Inbox blitz’ relate to:

Customer marketing managers responsible for extracting as much value as possible from customer bases
Campaign managers charged with briefing the marketing agency on the new campaign
CRM managers charged with protecting one of the companies most valuable assets – the customer database

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #46 – Proposition fatigue

The advantages of using a particular product or solution often boil down to a trusty set of benefits. Agility. Flexibility. Scalability. Sustainability. Blah blah. We’ve all been there.

And at the purest level this may be true. But we need to make sure these well-trodden values feel real, current and authentic for the new proposition at hand – and not a recycling of the same old same old.

Check out the meme, ‘Proposition fatigue’. Have you seen experienced the heavy eyes?

The challenges represented by ‘Proposition fatigue’ relate to:

Creative and marketing agencies commissioned to develop campaigns from new briefs
Campaign managers charged with briefing the digital, marketing, PR and social agencies
Product and solution marketing managers required to extract ‘the juice’ that makes prospects pay attention

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #45 – When toys rule the roost

There’s no argument that the array of mar-tech tools has massively increased the creativity and control of the marketing function. And many take quite a slice of the budget, so need to be adopted wholeheartedly to prove their ROI.

But when planning a programme or campaign, the process should start (and be led) by the challenge, intent and objectives – not tools to support the achievement of the task.

Check out the meme, ‘When toys rule the roost’. Have you seen too much love for mar-tech, and not enough for the marketing?

The challenges represented by ‘When toys rule the roost’ relate to:

Integrated and ABM marketing managers with many opportunities to deploy the tech stack within their initiatives
Creative and marketing agencies commissioned to develop new campaigns
Marketers with pressure to report on levels of detail where the analysis effort could outweigh the possible extraction of value

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #44 – Fact flooding

Data and facts can provide great context for understanding opportunity, status and propensity. And for marketers and sellers, this is the fuel we need to do our jobs.

But an overdose by the insights team, or a lack of translation from ‘digits to directions’ can leave any sales and marketing pro feeling a little overcome and snow-blind.

Check out the meme, ‘Fact flooding’. Have you experienced the side-effects of data overload?

This post is 1:50 from #WhenTheAgency, a witty collection of observations through the eyes of the tech marketing agency.

The challenges represented by ‘Fact flooding!’ relate to:

Insights leads tasked with ensuring the marketing team has the latest data
Campaign performance and management pros charged with understanding, mapping, and optimising campaigns across the team
Digital marketers with all the analytics at their fingertips, but with decisions around who should see what, and how

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #43 – Audience AWOL

The efficiency and ease to mobilise a webinar these days is great.

The focus then moves to the promotion to get the audience into the event.

That’s where the problems can sometimes start, when corporate databases, contact networks and paid media efforts fail to drive the right attendance in the time allowed.

Check out the meme, ‘Audience AWOL’. Have you suffered from lack of attendance?

The challenges represented by ‘Audience AWOL!’ relate to:

Integrated marketing managers who have planned campaigns to use webinars for hero content
Event planners relying on colleagues and adjacent functions to follow-through on event marketing commitments
Sales leads who are relying on webinar attendees for their pipelines

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #42 – Quantity over quality

We’ve all gorged on content to the point of excess - whether it’s on YouTube, TED or a streaming service.

It’s easy to understand why marketers seek a similar level of consumption and engagement.

But creating swathes of low quality, gated, click-bait content to elicit high volumes of ‘leads’ doesn’t help anyone. Customer can feel swindled, and SDRs suffer from poor response rates when they reach out.

Check out the meme, ‘Quantity over quality’. Have you experienced the bloaty inefficiency?

The challenges represented by ‘Quantity over quality!’ relate to:

Campaign managers tasked with achieving unrealistic levels of investment return
Heads of sales seeking alignment between sales and marketing
Marketing and sales budget planners assigning ROI targets to demand programmes

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #41 – Insights inertia

You’ve spent ages (let alone $$$) crafting the campaign and assets to cut-through. Then, you’ve proven that success wasn’t a lucky break as you’ve got data to prove the audience is continuing to show an interest and engage with your content.

You think it’s time to plug-in sales. They think it’s time to clock-out.

Check out the meme, ‘Insights inertia’. Have you experienced the blank stare?

The challenges represented by ‘Insights inertia!’ relate to:

Integrated marketing managers who have shaped campaigns to drive demand and sustain interest
Campaign leads who interface with sales to progress opportunities from intrigue to qualified interest
Sales leads whose teams have limited recognition of marketing

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #40 – painful approval

If the tech business continues to grow and expand, it’ll get to a stage of maturity where it recognises the need for greater marketing control, governance and managed brand evolution.

This is certainly a sign of success, but one that can cause frustration for internal project leads and their associate agencies.

Navigating the approvals of legal, tone-of-voice and visual brand standards – against a backdrop of continually moving divisional or tech domain brand evolutions is difficult at the best of times,

Check out the meme, ‘Painful approval’. Have you struggled from the feelings of weariness and strangulation?

The challenges represented by ‘Painful approval!’ relate to:

Project leaders with non-standard campaign models, relationships of extra-ordinary funding sources
Product marketing managers who themselves are attempting to nudge the brand standards for the functional interests
Head of regional marketing teams who require a nuanced approach to brand standards and portfolio articulation.

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #39 – content shoehorn

Whether it’s a white paper, executive briefing or explainer video, there’s a limit to how much content the audience will consume.

In response, we’ve a collective desire to reduce the messages to the minimum of what’s required.

But sometimes the desire to keep the white paper to 4 pages, video to 2 mins or blog to X-hundred words just doesn’t work. Messages get over-clipped and new notions are strangled by restrictive word counts. If it doesn’t fit, don’t squeeze it in.

Check out the meme, ‘Content shoehorn’. Have you done the pushing to close the doors?

The challenges represented by ‘Content shoehorn!’ relate to:

Content marketers and their associate writers and agencies charged with production
Product marketers who may be under pressure to over-expand agendas and messages
Marketing leaders who recognise the value of balancing crisp, shorter-form content with realistic word counts to deliver the messages effectively.

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

The Rubicon Agency In Miscellaneous, Our industry

Meme of the week #38 – data deferral

When the campaign outreach is nearing set-up, trafficking and activation, this is often the time for the vendor to provide the agency with the customer data – either for direct marketing, look-a-like or contact augmentation.

Also, it’s often the case for the task to be deferred to multiple stakeholders – often taking longer to mobilise than the campaign itself.

Check out the meme, ‘Data deferral!’. Are you part of the cycle – or struggled to navigate it?

The challenges represented by ‘Data deferral!’ relate to:

Marketing and campaign managers integrating internal and agency resources and scope
Digital marketing professionals looking to ensure attributions at every point
Marketing heads who need to lean on out of team resources to curate account data.

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

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.

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

How to avoid series-A marketing hell

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.

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

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

Understanding the marketing investment maturity path

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.

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.

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.

Meme of the week #47 – Inbox blitz

Securing the prospects email address is the gateway to sustained, informed marketing.

Meme of the week #46 – Proposition fatigue

The advantages of using a particular product or solution often boil down to a trusty set of benefits. Agility. Flexibility. Scalability. Sustainability. Blah blah. We’ve all been there.

Meme of the week #45 – When toys rule the roost

There’s no argument that the array of mar-tech tools has massively increased the creativity and control of the marketing function. And many take quite a slice of the budget, so need to be adopted wholeheartedly to prove their ROI.

Meme of the week #44 – Fact flooding

Data and facts can provide great context for understanding opportunity, status and propensity. And for marketers and sellers, this is the fuel we need to do our jobs.

Meme of the week #43 – Audience AWOL

The efficiency and ease to mobilise a webinar these days is great.

Meme of the week #42 – Quantity over quality

We’ve all gorged on content to the point of excess - whether it’s on YouTube, TED or a streaming service.

Meme of the week #41 – Insights inertia

You’ve spent ages (let alone $$$) crafting the campaign and assets to cut-through. Then, you’ve proven that success wasn’t a lucky break as you’ve got data to prove the audience is continuing to show an interest and engage with your content.

Meme of the week #40 – painful approval

If the tech business continues to grow and expand, it’ll get to a stage of maturity where it recognises the need for greater marketing control, governance and managed brand evolution.

Meme of the week #39 – content shoehorn

Whether it’s a white paper, executive briefing or explainer video, there’s a limit to how much content the audience will consume.

Meme of the week #38 – data deferral

When the campaign outreach is nearing set-up, trafficking and activation, this is often the time for the vendor to provide the agency with the customer data – either for direct marketing, look-a-like or contact augmentation.

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