Topic:   Marketing

Tips for setting up and managing your marketing stack in a new startup :: with Kelly Jo Horton and Sol Cates

In this episode of Ventures, we pull a clip from Episode 37 with Kelly Jo Horton (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjohorton/) and Sol Cates (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sol-cates-649736/) to discuss marketing operations in a growing startup. Early founder teams often leave the design, implementation, and maintenance of marketing stacks as an afterthought, which ends up costing the new company a massive amount of time and money. In this episode, Kelly Jo and Sol help us understand why bringing in an expert - or at least someone dedicated to learning from experts and driving the integrated flow of marketing data - is essential to any B2C or B2B company’s growth.

The dance of product and growth within a startup, from idea through acquisition into enterprise :: with Jenna Langer

In this episode of Ventures, my guest Jenna Langer (https://www.linkedin.com/in/langerjenna/) and I discuss the nuances of product and growth from the perspective of an early stage startup (Livefyre) all the way through acquisition by Adobe. We talk about Jenna’s entrepreneurial story, wearing many hats, team composition strategies, the skill stack of a product manager, professional life in an enterprise, and lessons for startup founders.

The profound cost of tech debt in marketing, six tweet threads better than a college degree, and helping WA state with vaccination efforts

In this newsletter I talk about this week's podcast, an amazing meta-tweet thread I found, and a new website with WA Department of Health that helps people find vaccine appointments.

Marketing operations, building a MarTech stack, and ensuring data visibility and security in a growing startup :: with Kelly Jo Horton and Sol Cates

In this episode of Ventures, my guests Kelly Jo Horton (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellyjohorton/), Sol Cates (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sol-cates-649736/) and I discuss marketing operations from a startup and enterprise perspective. We dive into Kelly Jo’s story entering the space, the need for a marketing operations expert as early as possible in a startup, how to avoid technical debt with your MarTech stack, why to setup a centralized command center, and how/why to retool a broken MarTech data infrastructure.

How to optimize your “coming soon” page to acquire customers virally

As you gear up for the public launch of your startup, successfully optimizing and leveraging your coming soon page can set you up for massive success. Unfortunately, most founders squander this opportunity by either skimping on the critical components of the process, or by overdoing them in a tone-deaf manner and annoying potential customers.

Data-driven startups: How to design and build smart funnels within your product

The dance between product and growth in a new startup is rarely elegant, especially when founders fail to bake smart funnels into their product.

How to conduct free and low-cost experiments to validate your new business idea

Entrepreneurs are always tempted to build their products secretly in a cave. This, however, is rarely the most effective way to succeed. According to common Lean wisdom, the better route is to get the idea in front of customers early and often, smartly collect feedback, and iterate rapidly toward product-market fit. But, as anyone who has ever tried it knows, this is easier said than done. How do you actually validate an idea? How do you best design experiments? Who do you ask to participate in them?

How to maximize learning from pre-launch customer surveys and interviews

Your job as a wild-eyed entrepreneur with the next big idea is to start validating your idea early and often, long before any code is written or designs are sketched up.

How to identify “ideal” early customers

So you have a solid idea, team, and market analysis under your belt, now it's time to accelerate the validation process. It's time to start selling. At this point you've made some noise with a set of friends that — let's be honest — are mostly there to support you. As long as you don't charge too much (or annoy them too much), they will likely be your customers. But, they are not the early customers that matter.

How to evaluate a market for your potential startup

So you have an idea, and you're in the process of convincing one or more people to co-found your company with you, now what? The next step is for you to do a much deeper evaluation of the market than you have probably done thus far in order to determine whether you should proceed.