Why Startups Need Strategic Marketing from Day One

"I wish we'd had you three years ago."

A founder that I worked with for a couple of years said these words to me, and at first I didn't think much about them.

But, it's true that young companies need marketing WAY sooner than they typically get it.

And even then, it's generally a collection of activities vs any defined strategy.

Or worse, they hire a strategy person who hasn't executed a tactic in so long the entire MarTech stack leaves them in a cold sweat.

Clearly, I have an opinion on why neither of these approaches is ideal.

The heart of what I'd tell you if you were my client is this:
- Know beyond the shadow of a doubt who your buyer is.

(If you nail this you are already ahead of so many).

- Create a content-driven, inbound motion that's designed to bubble up the people who care about the problem you solve AND are willing to spend money on it.

- Make every interaction with you from your website to your sellers to your customer success team radically customer-focused.

(This doesn't mean saying you're customer obsessed and then doing things like hiding your pricing. When you're customer obsessed, you make it as easy as possible for the customer to say yes.)

- Put the pricing on the website. Just do it. It's absolutely table-stakes for B2B tech these days.

That's it. That's your startup marketing strategy in a nutshell. And while I know I've oversimplified some pretty complex stuff, the point is that you don't have to go it alone. If you're ready to rev up your revenue engine, let's chat.

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Angela Shori 🪐 is the founder and Strategic GTM Advisor of SHYFT Insights, helping startups and scale-ups land their positioning, build effective marketing functions, and win faster.