Marketing can make or break a business. When people ask me what the most important thing I would do to help a firm scale significantly is, I always say focus on marketing. Long ago, I realized that the best product does not necessarily win. It is frequently a “good enough” product mixed with outstanding marketing based on unique customer insights. As a venture capitalist, I have seen this play out numerous times. Many businesses become trapped in “feature and utility” marketing, which means they miss the chance to build long-lasting brands. When you raise communications to higher-level demands that solve a pain issue for the end-user and please them on an emotional level, that is what happens.
I am interested in assisting businesses in discovering new channels or reinventing established ones in a way that makes a difference. Finding a fresh approach to use traditional channels like television, direct mail, and radio to raise brand awareness may be a major competitive advantage and catapult a firm to exponential growth. I am not implying that it will be simple. With each new channel, the job of a marketer becomes more difficult. The following are some of the most recent and problematic trend lines:
It is noisier than it has ever been. According to Salesforce’s seventh annual State of Marketing research, which surveyed over 8,200 worldwide marketers, marketers estimate a 40 percent growth for sources they use in the coming year. Purses are getting tighter. Marketing budgets as a percentage of firm revenue declined to 6.4 percent in 2021 from 11 percent in 2016, according to Gartner. “This is the lowest proportion dedicated to marketing in the history of Gartner’s Annual CMO Spend Survey,” the business claims.
Overfishing has occurred in the ponds. Only 17 percent of worldwide ad spend went to the top five ad sellers a decade ago (Google; Viacom and CBS; News Corp. and Fox; Comcast and Disney). Today’s ad networks are substantially more congested, with the top five networks accounting for 46% of worldwide ad spending (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Alibaba, and ByteDance). With the efficiency of marketing budgets under pressure, it is more critical than ever to listen to customers, keep interested, and be open to bold ideas that have the potential to breakthrough. I have conducted dozens of conversations with top marketers over the last year to find out what is actually working for them and what wild concept they attempted that looked silly at the time.
“Developers are really good at sniffing out marketing jargon and BS. They want to find out the solution to a problem and then move on. How can you get them to the correct paperwork as soon as possible? How can you keep them informed about things that are available now, rather than those that will be available in two years? Your mission is to assist them in obtaining the code as rapidly as possible.
Give them direct access to other developers in the community who share their viewpoints and can assist them in real-time in solving some of their challenges.” “We had an early hunch at Curology that by not charging anything for a product trial, it would be too simple for individuals to receive it without any kind of mental commitment.” We started experimenting with charging people $4.95 for shipping. Although [that price] remained a modest barrier for most people, we discovered that it had a significant impact on our consumers’ perceptions of value and mental commitment.
