1. Is your management team steering your company blind? Is your management team making decisions based on data from the marketplace on a regular basis? Good marketing allows management teams to ask almost any question they want from the marketplace and get an immediate answer. Do your potential customers want a whitepaper? 68% say yes. Are your customers happy with that web page? 48% say yes. If you are not making decisions every day based on this kind of data you have a marketing opportunity!
  2. What is startup marketing? Startup marketing is sales without the sales person. As with sales, good marketing is 2-way communication. For example using surveys you can find out the right price for a product in a day. Marketing can move large numbers of people along the sales process in an automated fashion handing the right people to sales at the right time using sophisticated lead scoring or closing sales in an automated fashion.
  3. What are some signs you need startup marketing help? - Your management team is steering blind. You do not have the ability to spend more on marketing and close more deals as a result. Your sales team wasting their valuable time on labor-intensive activities like cold calls. Your marketing is not yet automated. These are all challenges that good startup marketing can help you solve.
  4. Why focus on marketing when you are cutting costs? Your marketing should be helping you close business. Good marketing decision-making can help you decide which marketing to cut - and when not to cut. Good marketing methodology and automation can get you more output for your marketing spend. Good marketing can give your team better decision-making capability to help you navigate this environment better.
  5. What does great business-to-business marketing look like? Your marketing activities are paced so that enough campaigns are executed. Constant rounds of surveys are sent out and based on the answers - you learn. This learning steers your business. Marketing campaigns are executed in priority based on cost efficiency of the channel. Campaigns are oriented to what potential customers are looking for - not what the company intuitively wants to say. Response is your mechanism for finding out which you are doing. Campaigns are not one-off but are automated sequences of events. Great companies find the sequences that work. Your database is segmented so you are not saying the same thing to each person. You are bold and are not afraid to try unconventional ideas. You capture more data across different activities - and store history instead of starting fresh each campaign. This allows for the use sophisticated lead scoring. This is combined with integration to the CRM (customer relationship management software). And not only is the content engaging (from a potential customer point of view) but it is varied on an ongoing basis. Startup companies that operate at this level will win more business than other companies and even large companies often don't operate at this level of sophistication.

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.