How I learnt to use Digital Marketing

My first experience of digital Marketing working at a start-up was in Fintech, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, in 2009. We had a free stock trading dashboard, that over 400,000, mainly small private investors used to trade. Later on, we brought out a tool that allowed you to scrape data off the web, analyse and publish it, that the Wall Street Journal called 'Twitter for numbers'.

During the last 9 years,  I've mainly worked in the Business to business field. Therefore I have tended to gravitate towards managing email marketing, events, contact lists and business intelligence. However, over the last 5 years, I've been increasingly delving into digital marketing. 

Back in 2013, I took a course on HTML5 & CSS3, which enabled me to design web pages. These programming languages have also been useful when I've designed email templates for Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics (the two main CRM systems I've worked with). 

A few years later, I began to experiment with paid search. I took a course in Google analytics, SEM and Paid Search in 2015. Typically I've worked with an SEO expert, but over the last few years, I've also run quite a few paid search campaigns on my own. I feel confident doing so, but at the same time, I always feel like I can learn more, which I endeavour to do.

becoming adept at digital marketing is a journey, not a destination So if you're looking to get into this, I suggest just getting started as soon as possible, as I did. 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step' says the old Chinese proverb. So far I've found nothing to be overwhelmingly challenging. It's simply a case of application and learning.

Currently, I'm taking a Diploma in Digital Marketing at the Digital Marketing Institute. This is more costly and in-depth than the previous digital marketing courses I have taken. However, so far, I'm pretty happy with my progress.

This course has been great both to refresh basic concepts and learn new ideas. Some of it goes over old ground - like how to run campaigns in Twitter, Linkedin or email. Other parts are definitely teaching me new skills; for example in content marketing, strategy, metrics and Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation or running campaigns in Facebook and Instagram.

I also like that I get to take a formal exam at the end of it at a Pearson test centre (the same place I took the GMAT). These tests are a great way to 'check' my knowledge.

GDPR - LSE Lawyers round table discussion on Privacy and Data Protection

On the 25th of May 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force. This regulation changes how big digital players are processing data; It forces all organizations to get their registered information on individuals in check.

With the challenges of implementing such regulation in organizations in mind, the Lawyers’ Alumni Group hosted a round-table Q& A discussion of the newly introduced law and its impact.

Led by Steven Taylor (LLM 2012), a specialist in privacy law and data protection, the session brought together a small group of select alumni who have an interest and experience in the practical application of the new regulation.

Below, Steve Taylor, who heads the legal team at a major US Private Equity group.

Anita Bapat, who gained a first in Law at the LSE in 2005, also made notable contributions. Anita is the Head of Privacy at Deloitte.

Since I've purchased annual subscriptions with several large data/Business intelligence companies like ZoomInfo/ Discoverorg over the years, I wanted to see what the Law said about this relationship. Specifically, I wanted to understand whether, if there is some issue, it is the data company, my company, or both who are liable.

It's significant since the EEC has the right under GDPR to fine a company up to 4% of annual revenue or 20 Million Euros.  There is a two-tier system of administrative fines, the first being up to 10 million Euros or 2% of annual global turnover.

Steve said that the responsibility lies with the data company (the data processor), not your company (the data controller). However, he said that you must also check your contract to ensure that the data company does not have special exclusion clauses that would pass that responsibility to you.

Steve told me earlier that he'd met and talked to Elizabeth Denham, the ICO commissioner overseeing GDPR in the UK. Elizabeth said that 'rather like doing your homework at school, as long as you are seen to be trying your best to comply, the ICO will not generally expect perfection'.

We had a long discussion on this subject, and the conclusion was that barely a single company that does extensive marketing could be considered 100% compliant right now.

Confusingly (like many aspects of this legislation) Elizabeth Denham has also, however, put her position across somewhat more strongly: “If your organization can’t demonstrate that good data protection is a cornerstone of your business practices, you’re leaving your organization open to enforcement action that can damage both public reputation and bank balance.”

There are two ways to establish if you can use a person's data; Consent and Legitimate Interest. The first is self-explanatory; 'Consent' means that your contact has expressly asked you to contact them. Typically this is facilitated with an 'opt-in' (or 'double opt-in) button on your email, advertisement, article, or social media post. 

The second is trickier to define. 'Legitimate interest' is often a basis to contact business customers. Many companies are happy to go this route. Other companies steer away from it and insist on only contacting prospects that have 'opted in' to receive communications.

The GDPR protection levels are lowered for business customers since they are typically seen as less vulnerable than business-to-consumer contacts (especially in certain highly sensitive categories like financial services).

For the ICO definition of legitimate interest, click here.  Most agree that it means that you have a good reason to hold and use that person's data.

To fall within 'legitimate interest,' you must be able to apply three rules to your data use:

• Purpose test – is there a legitimate interest behind the processing?

• Necessity test – is the processing necessary for that purpose?

• Balancing test – is the legitimate interest overridden by the individual’s interests, rights, or freedoms?

Steve also reassured us that if you are a start-up, you might be fined 4% of annual revenue, which could actually be a reasonably small amount, rather than 25 Million Euros; Most startups wouldn't recover from a twenty-five million euro fine, after all.

We had an outstanding discussion on Brexit and how that will impact this European legislation. Here, Anita really came into her own, She knew all the details. 

I thought that data companies could lobby and have this legislation removed in the UK. Although EU legislation was enacted into UK law after we left the EU, the UK now has full legal sovereignty. Thus the UK can choose to abandon GDPR if parliament votes for that.

But Anita told us that GDPR had already been enacted into UK Law on May 24th, one day before the European GDPR date. The Data Protection Act 2018 is thus both an extension of the 1998 UK Data Protection Act and implementing the same regulations as European GDPR.

Our conversations were too detailed and wide-ranging to include all of them in this blog post... However, some points that Steve made, to remember;

Article 27
Requires a company to have a representative in Europe

Article 37
Requires the company to have a Data Protection Officer. This person must have an understanding of the Law and GDPR and also must be an expert on handling data.

Article 33.2
This covers breach notifications. As soon as you are aware of a data breach, no matter how insignificant, you must notify the ICO within 72 hours.

My main takeaway from this discussion was how uncertain, even highly trained legal privacy experts are, regarding how these laws will actually be applied. 

Steven said that if ICO digs deep enough, it will be able to uncover breaches of the GDPR rules anywhere, even at tech giants like Facebook or Google.

Does that give the ICO the right to do so just to generate more revenue via fines? How will the ICO determine the extent of their dig and who they dig for breaches with?

For example, 281 billion emails are sent every day. How can the EEC monitor all of these? Will they concentrate on large companies? Or flagrant breaches of the legislation? Steve said that the latter is the most likely.

Thanks to Sharon Park, LLM graduate in Information Technology Law at the LSE, and Technology, Resilience and Cyber Associate at The Financial Conduct Authority, for editing this post for me to ensure Legal accuracy. 

My conclusion: If a room full of lawyers and experts on GDPR is still unclear of all the implications of this legislation, then yes, GDPR can be a minefield for us Marketers. But it doesn't have to be.

I aim to continuously revise and update my position on this and keep in touch with legal experts every step of the way. As more case law is created around GDPR, then we will have more clarity as to how to follow GDPR to stay within the legal requirements in Europe.

Update 18th June 2021: As I had already suspected back in 2018, GDPR is now vulnerable in Post-Brexit Britain. The current government has been talking about dismantling it and replacing it with a UK common law system of privacy.

The ethics of data privacy is another question, which is covered well in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff. 

Our highlights from Salesforce at the 'Trailblazers' Conference

Bella at Salesforce

I've worked with many Marketing Email Marketing and CRM tools, from Microsoft Dynamics and Click Dimensions to Hubspot, Eloqua, and MailChimp, to Marketo. I've been most impressed with Salesforce, and Pardot, particularly in the quality of their support. Salesforce and Pardot are truly built to work together as a combined sales enablement (Salesforce) and Marketing/CRM/Email tool (Pardot).

Ronan Twohig, Account executive, Salesforce, Emer Merriman, Marketing Specialist, Salesforce and Isabella Hernandez, Marketing Executive, Buzzmove

My colleague and I, Bella Hernandez, met up with our team at Pardot in the SMB arena at the excel center in the Docklands. It was great to see Ronan Twohig again and meet Emer Merriman.

Straight away we were deep into a conversation about how I could make some adjustments to better integrate Salesforce with Pardot. Then right away, I was like 'hey Emer, I want to get a better insight into our Marketing ROI. How can I best accomplish that?'

B-2-B Marketing analytics - What we may be missing

Emer asked me about our product suite, and it turned out that we are missing one component that can achieve this, the B-2-B analytics suite. We fixed up a demo next week, so I can best understand this and then, hopefully, remedy the situation.

But also We're going to talk through a couple of those questions I had about the best practices in Salesforce/Pardot integration.

Ronan then asked me 'hey, Rudy, how is that rolling out and implementing Pardot coming along, the one you mentioned a couple of months ago when we were at the Shard?'

Bella asking the Salesforce trailblazer scout for directions 

I was happy to report to Emer and Ronan my first 2 months' progress; I wrote my marketing plan, pitched it, and had it was agreed by my CMO, in the first week. By the following week, I had implemented Pardot for all our campaigns.

Emer said 'wow, two weeks, that's amazing!'  But it's no big deal - Pardot is easy to use, and there's plenty of content and people to guide you if you get stuck.

In fact, it's worked so well that I've even begun using it for more extensive B-2-C lists, of over 80,000 contacts, that's despite B-2-C not being in my job description. But in the start-up world, you do what you can to help.

Why do I love these Salesforce headphones so very much? 

1. Is it the cute logo? 2. is it that they light up with a warm glow? 

Yes, all our contact data is now inside of Salesforce, we are fully integrated, and we are running a range of campaigns from LinkedIn inmail, to events, to Email. Not only that, but the data quality is far better and more actionable by the sales team than it was previously.

I have also set up lead scoring and marketing automation, including nurture campaigns; we can roll this out for all other parts of our business too.

Ronan Twohig kindly suggested that I come and present what I've accomplished in Pardot at a Salesforce conference coming up, which sounded cool. Small businesses actually generate over 1/3 of Salesforce's total revenue.

The keynote was terrifically entertaining and informative; the CMO, Simon Mulcahy, is a natural presenter and he brought on some real powerhouses of digital and b-2-b marketing, from Ulster Bank (part of RBS) and Adidas, to run some live demos. The marketing feats they had accomplished using Salesforce were quite mind-blowing.

Simon Mulcahy, CMO, of Salesforce, hitting it out of the park with his keynote.

I was particularly taken with Simon's concept of 'trailblazers' - how it's people like 'us' - intrepid pioneers, innovators, game-changers, who are doggedly trying to improve the organizations we work for; we are the ones who are driving growth in our companies. That was a powerful message.

Which CRM provider dominates now?

There are a plethora of platforms right now. Which will dominate five years from now, in 2023 and beyond?

Along the way, I ran into a few old colleagues and friends. Bella and I had a good chat with Pedro Jose, a rockstar Sales engineer at Vlocity, a Salesforce company. I worked with him at Sigma. Pedro was pivotal in signing our biggest deal last year with Telstra, for $15 Million.

Pedro Jose, Director of Solutions Consulting at Salesforce.

He worked like a maniac on Telstra, flying back and forth from his home in Portugal to Sydney, Australia, many times. He was 'all over it'! That deal was also important from a marketing perspective; since it was our first big account in the APAC region.

I'm glad to report that Pedro was thrilled at Vlocity, performing exceptionally well and being treated even better by Salesforce.

We rounded off the day with Bella rocking the floor of over 5000 salesforce event attendees with her killer tunes, breaks and massive bass.

What I got out of the event

1. I learned valuable information that will make me a more productive marketer and will enable me to carry out more effective marketing at my company.

2. I connected with those who can help me in my journey; not least of all some of the salesforce team. This was sadly lacking when I ran global demand generation at my last company (with another CRM provider).

Financial Management for start-ups

Most founders of start-ups want to end up in one of two places; Becoming a public company (by having it’s IPO) or being acquired by another company. Each of these scenarios has played out at 2 of the last three companies at which I’ve worked. If, as an entrepreneur, you want to reach either of these goals, someone in your organisation must have a good grasp of finance.

It's been about ten years since I completed my MBA. But all the lessons remain fresh in my memory. I majored in Finance, so I was fortunate to have studied with a lot of, primarily US (my business school was in the USA.), finance professionals from organisations like Blackrock, State Street, Fidelity and Bain Capital. I was even more fortunate to have completed an internship at a New York Investment Bank, Bryant Park Capital. 

During my internship and studies, I learnt a lot about - valuing companies, presenting financial data to investors, powerpoint (doh! I'm an MBA, of course!). Most importantly, I started to understand the special language that Finance professionals use; Market Cap, Fifo/Lifo, beta, default risk premium, arbitrage, hedging and so on..

Back at business school, I hit it off with one of my professors, Don Margotta, who is an expert on corporate governance and shareholder activism. I want to share a few of the ideas here, that ignited my passion for Finance.

Here are some of the books, that did the same; Liar's Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, and Black Swan (where Nassim Taleb proceeded to pull apart all the concepts I'd devoted hundreds of hours learning in my Statistics classes).

First off, Time value of Money. This one is crucial. A pound today is worth more than a pound you get tomorrow, which is worth more than a pound you make the next day and so on, like this. The interest rate drives this value.

If I said all Finance calculations stem from this one idea, I wouldn't be far wrong. For example, you could get a good read on the value of a company by using this method to calculate the present value of all it's future cash flows.

Or if you thought the company had legs, you could use the perpetuity equation here:

PV of a Perpetuity = PMT/I

PMT = $1,000,000

Interest rate = 2.5%

Company Value = $40 Million

When they start negotiations, a lot of Investment Bankers will use earnings multiples to value a company; these vary for industries and countries, one may be x 4, some may be x 20. You will use the EBITDA figure for a company - Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, which is a standard measure of a company's operating performance. Here's a good example of one such valuation, using two parameters - High & Low:

At Bryant Park Capital, I began using Capital IQ, to find comparable public company data to estimate a Private Company's value. I also used Bloomberg, when I was at MFS Investments, for the same.

I hope I've given you some ideas about valuing your start-up.

I have concentrated on the Financial value in this article. However, it's important to remember that sometimes a large company will buy a startup because it has strategic value rather than financial.

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Enterprise level marketing for your start-up, with Salesforce's Pardot

Tommie O'Brien (pictured below, right) at Salesforce, kicked off the presentation at the Shangri La Hotel on the 34th floor of the Shard (pictured below, left, view from the Shard). I was deeply impressed by the demo, which illustrated a relatively high level of sophistication for Small businesses.

For example, when setting up workflows, they demonstrated a real-time and highly effective way to re-engage prospects that hadn't signed up for an email offer; by sending them targeted ads across Facebook, LinkedIn and AdWords.

Marketing Automation lies at the heart of most Start-up demand-generation programs. During my career, I have run Marketing Campaigns using various tools, from Salesforce, Marketo, Hubspot, Dynamics, and more. Last year I had to learn to use Microsoft Dynamics with Clickdimensions whilst running global campaigns for a company of around 500 employees, Headquartered in Toronto, Canada.

Currently, I'm switching from using Microsoft Dynamics to Salesforce. I've never learned to run campaigns in Pardot, so I thought that this session would be particularly helpful. After just 3 weeks, I can tell the level of support on Pardot is streets ahead of Microsoft Dynamics.

I had to learn to use Dynamics by reading manuals and watching videos online. Particularly challenging was trying to coordinate fixing several severe bugs in the system with our IT team based in Canada.

The Salesforce team initiated some helpful discussions around lead generation forms - often, these forms ask for too much information. I know I have been guilty of this. According to Salesforce, 3-5 questions maximum is the standard and really first name and email are enough. The part of the talk devoted to the automation workflow was fascinating and got me thinking about how I run campaigns.

And they had some great insights on Lead scoring; they talked about the usual ones, like Job title and company revenue. But there were some surprises. This slide shows that they can track your prospect's sentiments about your company and products across social media like this:

That can give your sales and marketing team an edge over your competition. Pardot can also allow you to create buyer personas within Salesforce so that you can use these to gauge your ideal prospect for even more accurate lead scoring. But what really blew me away was the analytics on the dashboard and Pardot's ability to measure marketing campaigns' effectiveness in a way that will appeal to CFOs and CEOs.

You can demonstrate return on investment for entire programs and dig in at the granular level to show what specific leads generated what specific revenue. As a metric-driven marketer with an MBA in Finance, I aim to accomplish this.

Tommie told some great anecdotes with his classic Irish wit; I couldn't help thinking Tommie would go down a storm in my old hometown, Boston, which is pretty much run by Irish Americans. And, of course, they love anyone from the old country, particularly if he or she has a lot of drive and a good sense of humour.

One of Tommie's best stories was about him setting up a new internet provider in his new home. The provider was terrible, and he was forced to contact them multiple times whilst suffering from flu and working from home.

He received prospecting advertisements and emails from the company, which only exacerbated his annoyance with their poor service. Imagine how much money this company is throwing out the window!

At the end of the talk, Rory O'Neill, Data and Systems Manager at the Drum came to talk about his experience using Pardot. I know the Drum very well. When I was at Visual IQ (now part of Nielsen), we exhibited at several events.

I learned in the presentation that Rory is responsible for sending 35 Million emails a year. My last email contact list was 30,000 strong (B-2-B) and the largest I've worked with was 400,000 (B-2-C).

I asked him a question at the end, seeking his advice as to what first steps he would take if he was in my shoes, rolling out Pardot at my company. He recommended that the most important was that I consult with the sales team and get them on board with our plan. He also offered to give me some advice on that if I got in touch with him. I will definitely take Rory up on his generous suggestion.

For more information on how to set up Marketing automation for your B-2-B business, sign up for my free guide here

Moonshot thinking to unleash innovation

Before you say, yeah, right, but moonshot thinking is a waste of time, take a look at this slide below.

While moonshot thinking only gets 10% of the Company's budget, it is responsible for generating 70% of the revenue in the long run.

Yes, Moonshot projects are, by their very nature, hard to quantify, but Dr. Pablo Rodriguez demonstrates that these projects are nevertheless crucial to an organization's growth. 

It's worth trying to solve those crucial but seemingly impossible problems, especially ones that may only come to a head 5 or 10 years from now. You could transform your Company or even yourself!

We played a great exercise where we were asked to count the number of red balls on this slide in 10 seconds. Quite a few got the correct answer - 10. However, when Dr. Pablo Rodriguez asked us to tell us how many green balls there were, no one answered right. There were fewer of them and they were larger.  

This demonstrates the danger of over-focus. By being so intent on solving one problem, you may completely miss solving a much greater, more significant, and simple solution. Many scientific discoveries were made 'by accident', so counting the green balls, when the exercise measured the red.

            

A good example is when Sir Alexander Flemming invented Penicillin, the first antibiotic. He made this discovery when testing bacteria. However, if He hadn't been experimenting, he would not have made this 'mistake' that changed the world and the face of medicine.

One of my marketing professors at Northeastern University has demonstrated this issue with a paper looking at how over-reliance on marketing dashboards can hinder creativity and innovation within this function.

The problems Alpha has solved, whether for improving performance at Telefonica, radically changing health habits across the globe, or bringing power to underdeveloped regions, all required phenomenal, high-performing, cross-functional teams. 

I asked Pablo how he selected his teams; his answer surprised me. I thought he would say that He chose the most talented individuals. But He said that He picked those who had the greatest passion for solving problems. 

If you think you might be that person, Alpha is hiring right now. They are owned by Telefonica but, despite having Telefonica's CEO José María Álvarez-Pallete López, on their board, they are fully independent of it.

Pablo has worked as an entrepreneur, at various start-ups in Silicon Valley, and in Academia. He showed the curve of an idea, where Academia often can do best in advancing innovation at the very early stages. In a later stage, it could be a start-up. Dr Rodriguez's projects sit in the middle of that, between Academia and start-ups. 

He makes a great point that in the 20th Century, the government primarily initiated innovation; The creation of the internet, the human genome project, and yes, of course, NASA pioneering the first men to the moon were all government-backed missions. 

But now, far more innovation is driven by corporations. This can come in many forms; Alpha, an innovative organization owned by Telefonica; or a Start-up like Cloudlock, founded by one of my classmates in the MBA Programme at Northeastern University Business School, and bought last year by Cisco for $293 Million 

This was a brilliant lecture, as good as the one I attended on Venture Capital. I thoroughly commend Professor Milan Vojnovic and Dr Pablo Rodriguez.

If you are still sceptical about Moonshot thinking after reading this, I want to leave you with a great quote about it from one of the founders and CEO of Google:

Go to my website.

Should Telcos be getting a bigger bite of the digital economy ‘Pie’?

The big issue in the Telecommunications industry right now is declining margins. The past several years have been tough for telcos. Their revenue and cash flows have dropped by an average of 6 percent a year since 2010.

These firms can address this issue, by improving the speed of delivery of new products, reducing order fall out and simplifying and improving their customer experience.
When redesigning their value proposition, go-to-market, and interaction model, operators find it increasingly difficult to differentiate between traditional drivers of customer choice. Instead, they have turned to customer experience as the key influencer. For example, Vodafone Germany has transformed their business to enable their path to digital transformation:
“It is the first time we have raised Vodafone’s organic EBITDA [earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization] guidance in recent history,” said Vittorio Colao, chief executive. Polo Tang, an analyst at UBS, said the company’s performance in the second quarter was ahead of expectations in almost every geography but notably in Germany and Spain.
Success lies in reimagining the end-to-end customer journey to create signature customer moments. Companies can accelerate the delivery of a new customer experience by implementing a seamless Omni channel experience, digitizing core business processes, deploying artificial-intelligence platforms to simplify customer interaction, and creating a more agile organization.
What can companies do to alleviate the squeeze on margins and create more value?
Major advances in data analytics, artificial intelligence, network equipment, and other technologies have rewritten the industry’s winning formula. With the newest software and hardware, along with digital-age management practices, mobile operators can achieve breakthrough cost savings and capital intensity while maintaining or even increasing their scale.
Many mobile operators have essential processes that are more complex and labor-intensive, and therefore costlier than they have to be. The Management consultants Mckinsey estimate that just 20 to 30 processes generate 45 percent of the average operator’s operating costs.
There are a lot of Telecommunications providers can do to improve businesses margins operationally. This can also be part of an even bigger over-arching strategy for CSPs to boost their bottom line. For example, increasingly, slow but stable growth Telcos (at Business School we called such businesses 'Cash Cows') are acquiring high growth and high margin content companies to increase their profits.

The Adobe Global Marketing Conference

Having fun at the Adobe Marketing Conference, with the AMEX digital Marketing Team

Watching Vampire Weekend play at the Adobe event 

Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas - me at the Money Show

In the last 10 years, I've gained vast amounts of experience attending and setting up a large variety of Conferences in multiple business sectors and diverse locations; I've got good at assessing which are effective and which aren't; using both hard metrics and softer skills - the art and science of conferences. In the past, I've had to justify the budget to my Managers or CEOs so I've had to nail this. However, I'm a bit of a geek and enjoy doing these calculations. Therefore I will do them for my own benefit regardless.

At the Financial Traders Conference at the Money Show at Caesars Palace Las Vegas, I got to stay in the same hotel that 'The Hangover' was filmed in, which was great. I also played Poker, which I learned in the US and Craps. We got plenty of good leads but it was also the kind of crazy testosterone fuelled event that you'd expect from a bunch of financial traders; think 'Wolf of Wall Street'.

The Economics forum in Washington DC was fascinating; Paul Volcker, the ex-Federal Reserve Chairman spoke. I liked the city a lot, although I do like JFK's quip that 'DC is a city with northern charm and southern efficiency'. We were marketing a new Business intelligence tool called Datazoa, to business Economists at Government agencies, Research organization’s and Universities amongst others; our efforts secured new clients from Universities, Banks, and State Treasuries.

I've been to numerous shows in New York City, including Trading Software and most recently the Digital Analytics Association. I was also in Chicago for the Internet retailers conference. I would have liked to explore the city but on that occasion, I was so busy I pretty much never got out of the area my hotel and the event was in.

My all-time Favorite Conference would have to have been the Adobe Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah: We Set up 11 meetings in 4 days, all with C level decision makers at Fortune 500 Companies; Several of which were turned to new logos by our sales team. I went to see Vampire Weekend play live and had to top it off had my best day's skiing in 8 or 9 years, in Park City with a guy from London who now lives in Toronto.

I also made some great contacts on the ski day that I wasn't expecting; for example, heads of business divisions at Bell Canada, American Express, Verizon Wireless and the Gartner Group. 

Photo was taken by a colleague I was skiing with at Park City, Utah - the final (4th) day of the Adobe Marketing Conference

Creating Sales Growth at your VC backed tech start-up

I have now been part of the Marketing teams of several start-ups that have proliferated and achieved phenomenal success, including:

Visual IQ, a Marketing Attribution Software provider (founded in 2006), was acquired by Nielsen last year for $2 Billion. 

Zscaler (founded in 2008), a cybersecurity software company, just had its IPO. Zscaler is currently valued at $50 Billion on the NASDAQ.

I have learned from being part of these successful teams and from previous experiences in the start-up ecosystem.

Hot Software businesses like Fintech and Cyber Security need marketers with smarts, training, experience and drive who can take a business to 'the next level'; whether that means faster growth, more sustainability or more significant revenue, or higher profits. 

Angel investors, VC funds and private equity investors demand individuals skilled in conducting market research, and strategy and who understand all marketing areas, including lead generation.

Here's my 7-point plan to create a promising start-up Marketing Strategy and then execute it:

1. Ensure that you are on the same page as the person who has created your marketing strategy or, even better, create that Strategy yourself. So many problems occur when CMOs and CEOs or Investors do not agree on this. See 'Why CMOs never last.' 

2. Data; explore this and find out what is going on. Don't just rely on the facts you see. Talk with people and establish whether the data you see on paper matches what you are hearing. 

I have dealt with either no data or data that doesn't match reality. Don't devote hours and resources to creating complex models using lousy information. 

Even a fledgling Start-up will inevitably have had many failures already, and you can use this information to avoid making mistakes and model successful behavior. “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” —Michael Porter (See Porter's 5 Forces)

3. Targets - start thinking about what you are trying to accomplish. 

• Is the problem that you have a weak brand? 
• Is it that no one outside your core user group really understands your products? 

• Do your competitors have an iron-grip in certain Regions or markets? 
• Is it that you have weak growth? 
• Are you sinking resources into the same old Marketing investments getting diminishing returns? 
• Are you accurately measuring your Marketing investments? 

Establish what that core problem is and then drive solutions to that.

4. Create a plan around that. For example:

a. If the problem is that your sales team is not converting your good leads, then bring in added Business Intelligence. A remarkable tool for this is Discoverorg , which has a team of researchers calling companies and finding information that will enable you to identify opportunities quicker and more effectively.

Additionally, if you are not lead scoring already, I suggest you start doing this. This works because your sales team will immediately get alerted automatically when a lead reaches a specific 'threshold' score. 

So let's say that score is 100, then a lead from a company with $1 Billion revenue that has requested we contact them, is 'BANT' qualified and is the right target company and job title, that would automatically become a 'hot lead' at 100 points in your CRM system. 

A lead from a company on our target list would immediately be a 10. A Lead from a company that could be a target would be a 5. When that lead downloaded 3 critical reports in the last week, it became a 30, and so on. 

If the problem is that you need more leads to start with, then lots of high-quality gated content will generate more contacts for your database. 

Google Display and search ads are effective for inbound leads. LinkedIn lead generation campaigns are good value as you can get more highly targeted. Ensure you target your prospect audience (maybe with the 'matching' tool).

Inmail campaigns work very differently from sponsored content on LinkedIn. So, figure out what combinations work best for your business.

I would also work with the Marketing team to create compelling content, from videos to infographics, from case studies to white papers.

Below: Forrester 'Wave report' on Marketing attribution with my company 'Visual IQ' in the top right-hand quadrant.

In the past, we've created great content with Gartner or Forrester or, failing that, some other well-known research firm, like IDC. These are high-value pieces of content that your prospects will 'trade' their contact details with you to gain.

One idea that we have done very successfully in the past is an 'Industry report' based on surveys we send out. Usually, I use SurveyMonkey, which I was familiar with at Business School in 2006. 

CMO survey-backed report we ran every year at Visual IQ

Check out this Survey-based report on the State of in-video game advertising in 2022, that I created with Content strategist Damien Seaman. It's the first report of its kind created (check Gartner, Forrester, or IDC). It's based on survey responses from hundreds of thought leaders in Advertising, Ad Agencies, and Video Game companies.

Everyone is interested in what their colleagues are thinking about and sending these surveys out can also be an excellent way to reconnect with customers and prospects.

 'The Money Show', Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, where I ran an event for our Financial trading software tool.

Another highly effective area of Marketing I've managed over the last eleven years has been events. 

I have had some great successes in this regard, from the Money Show at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas, to the Adobe Marketing Conference in Salt Lake City, to the biggest Cyber Security event in Europe, Infosec, in London, UK. 

Not all companies employ rigorous financial analysis of the results here, so I have created an edge in this way. I write more on this subject here. 

We've had events that have generated thousands of leads, and business meetings that have created millions of pounds/dollars in sales.

Content from blogs can be effective. Ensure you optimize the content with important keywords to draw search traffic to your blog. Post on social media and wait for your blog's referral and search traffic to come to your site.

You need plenty of exciting content for this 'awareness' part of your content; think more about great ideas than flawless execution.

Also, your prospects value authenticity and originality. Keep blogs authentic and exciting. People know when they're simply being manipulated to buy something.

I have put together Ebooks, webcasts, industry reports, case studies, and infographics, all of which can be good sources of leads.

5. Ensure that everyone is on board with it. If the management team is not, then discuss it, and get to the bottom of the problem. 

Once you have agreed on the plan, then execute it relentlessly.

6. Analyze your results regularly, at least once every month, and pivot if they are insufficient. If it's not working, be honest and try something new.

The beauty of digital marketing is that you can A/B test continually to optimize all your metrics.

A typical A/B test 

Look at Key financial metrics, like ROMI - Return on Marketing Investment (NPV, IRR, Payback period, Customer Lifetime Value, Cost per Click, and Transaction conversion rate).

Monte Carlo simulation for a new product launch*

*Mark Jeffery Data-driven marketing Using Oracle's Crystal Ball' predictive analytics software with a random number generator, showing many possible variations of profit/loss for a marketing investment.

7. Finally, and most importantly, encourage criticism and make your entire company a safe place to share information and mistakes.  You must make mistakes to take critical, calculated risks. But without listening to, and acknowledging criticism, you can't learn from your mistakes either. Go to my website. or learn more about B2B SaaS sales & marketing here