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

This secret gives the best series-B CMOs the edge

Series-B blog

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.

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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

Series-A blog

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: 

  1. 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.
  2. 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
The Rubicon Agency
In Miscellaneous, Our industry, Web + UX development

Meme of the week #49 – Customer blind spots

Customer top challenges blog

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? 

Customers top challenges meme

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

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!

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