19 min
Founder Advice _ B2B Marketing 101 - Kasey Jones, CEO A Better Jones _ Ampliz B2B Binge Ampliz Podcast
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- Marketing
Here are some of my sort of rules for founder's, mainly for early-stage marketing teams.
1. You need to be obsessed with your buyer. So that means learning everything you possibly can about them, knowing what matters to them. The biggest thing is actually to stop making assumptions. At times when you are a founder, you're solving a problem that you had. You assume that you know everything there is to know about your buyer, and it turns out you don't. Your buyers can be very different from you, and your ideal buyers are going to change as you grow. So make sure that you make research part of everything you do. Make sure you're not only talking to your buyers but also talking to the people who wind up not buying from you as well. It is the key, and I like to refer to this as relationship building at scale. So genuinely make build relationships with your ideal customers.
2. You need to care about marketing often. You might if you're a founder. You might be a technical founder, and you might care a lot more about the product. You just don't think about marketing and sales. You hire someone else to do it. But culture is a top-down thing, and if you don't show your team from the beginning that you give a damn about marketing. That you're doing the work to learn what's going on and What you need, you are going to fall short through a whole thing. So you want to cultivate that marketing talent. If you have a marketing team of one hire a coach, they need help they need. They need assistance to hire a marketing coach that can support them.
3. Don't compete for dominance when it comes to content. Don't do the same thing that everybody else is doing like fingers crossed that you're going to rise above it. Instead, find a niche of content that no one is covering. So look at what all of your competitors are doing, see what you both have in common. Then find the angle or the approach to content that no one else is covering. Dominate that, it's the thing that will set you apart, and it'll make your content journey a whole lot easier and a whole lot more successful. Find your niche and own it.
4. When it comes to marketing, especially early, you need to think 10x, not 10%. It can be hard for you perfectionists out there, so stop freaking out about every little typo. People don't care about it. Think about the big picture. Think about the things that are going to move the needle. Do big projects that have real potential. Don't worry about the small stuff because it's not going to get you to where you need to go. Focus on big things that have the potential to make a difference to your ledger that is your pipeline.
5. Find your gang on the playground. What I mean is to find your strategic partners. Look at your industry and find the companies that are maybe solving a complementary problem to the one you are addressing. Perhaps you both can work together to kind of offer something that solves an even bigger problem together. Pull your resources if there is another startup that is going to team up with you so that you can maximize your assets and your reach. Invest in building Co-marketing and strategic partnership relationships.
6. Invest in your brand: With your brand, you can build a corporate brand far faster. Your brand can have a far greater reach than your company brand in the early days. People want to buy from people that they trust. If they see a founder who's the content they love, admire, and trust, they are a lot more likely to buy your product. Look at companies like DRIFT and GONG, and they have leadership teams that have been out there. They have built these powerful personal brands, and as a result, their growth has just been an absolute rocket ship.
Here are some of my sort of rules for founder's, mainly for early-stage marketing teams.
1. You need to be obsessed with your buyer. So that means learning everything you possibly can about them, knowing what matters to them. The biggest thing is actually to stop making assumptions. At times when you are a founder, you're solving a problem that you had. You assume that you know everything there is to know about your buyer, and it turns out you don't. Your buyers can be very different from you, and your ideal buyers are going to change as you grow. So make sure that you make research part of everything you do. Make sure you're not only talking to your buyers but also talking to the people who wind up not buying from you as well. It is the key, and I like to refer to this as relationship building at scale. So genuinely make build relationships with your ideal customers.
2. You need to care about marketing often. You might if you're a founder. You might be a technical founder, and you might care a lot more about the product. You just don't think about marketing and sales. You hire someone else to do it. But culture is a top-down thing, and if you don't show your team from the beginning that you give a damn about marketing. That you're doing the work to learn what's going on and What you need, you are going to fall short through a whole thing. So you want to cultivate that marketing talent. If you have a marketing team of one hire a coach, they need help they need. They need assistance to hire a marketing coach that can support them.
3. Don't compete for dominance when it comes to content. Don't do the same thing that everybody else is doing like fingers crossed that you're going to rise above it. Instead, find a niche of content that no one is covering. So look at what all of your competitors are doing, see what you both have in common. Then find the angle or the approach to content that no one else is covering. Dominate that, it's the thing that will set you apart, and it'll make your content journey a whole lot easier and a whole lot more successful. Find your niche and own it.
4. When it comes to marketing, especially early, you need to think 10x, not 10%. It can be hard for you perfectionists out there, so stop freaking out about every little typo. People don't care about it. Think about the big picture. Think about the things that are going to move the needle. Do big projects that have real potential. Don't worry about the small stuff because it's not going to get you to where you need to go. Focus on big things that have the potential to make a difference to your ledger that is your pipeline.
5. Find your gang on the playground. What I mean is to find your strategic partners. Look at your industry and find the companies that are maybe solving a complementary problem to the one you are addressing. Perhaps you both can work together to kind of offer something that solves an even bigger problem together. Pull your resources if there is another startup that is going to team up with you so that you can maximize your assets and your reach. Invest in building Co-marketing and strategic partnership relationships.
6. Invest in your brand: With your brand, you can build a corporate brand far faster. Your brand can have a far greater reach than your company brand in the early days. People want to buy from people that they trust. If they see a founder who's the content they love, admire, and trust, they are a lot more likely to buy your product. Look at companies like DRIFT and GONG, and they have leadership teams that have been out there. They have built these powerful personal brands, and as a result, their growth has just been an absolute rocket ship.
19 min