Yes, 2020 was a lot, to say the least, and judging by the start of 2021, we’re not out of the woods yet. What’s a marketer to do?
Our 2021 marketing toolkit contains a plethora of resources to help you bring order to chaos by focusing on marketing fundamentals that hold true in any circumstance: robust planning, thoughtful building, and perfecting the art & science of creating an effective channel mix.
Marketing in times of uncertainty: going back to the fundamentals
Turbulent times call for focusing on marketing basics, the underlying principles that always work, like understanding your target audience and creating valuable content for it. Check out our guides to conducting effective market research for B2B startups, creating compelling B2B case studies, and running product launch campaigns that don’t suck (a common malaise).
For early-stage B2B startups, building your marketing database is a key activity, and unfortunately one that’s easy to mess up. Our guide to adding the first 5000 leads to your marketing database covers this important topic. Go even deeper by watching our webinar on how one early-stage founder successfully built his email marketing database, and then created a content marketing machine on top of it. This founder, El-ad David Amir, also shared his hands-on, DIY marketing experience in this post — and explained how other founders can replicate it.
Building an effective marketing channel mix
We’re still firm believers in content marketing as the primary channel for enterprise B2B (as opposed to paid advertising). Fear not, you don’t need to be Shakespeare to create content that works — in fact, boring content anyone can create often out-performs the creative stuff. However, a word of caution about content: we don’t believe you can outsource it. Here’s what you can do instead.
Webinars are fantastic, as well, and crafting a good story for your webinar presentation is essential to getting your audience to actually pay attention.
Email marketing is our primary channel for content distribution and audience engagement. If you’re early-stage and setting up your email infrastructure, be sure to read through our short guide for boosting your email deliverability. And speaking of email, we believe we found the most effective format for B2B email newsletters, and we shared it here.
Growth and recruiting
For some startups, COVID meant acceleration of their growth. If you’re in the fortunate position of growing your team, our 3-part hiring series contains invaluable advice for making your first marketing hire, deciding whether to hire marketing or sales first, and understanding the trade-offs between hiring an in-house marketing employee vs. working with a marketing agency.
If you’re rapidly scaling in 2021, congrats! Check out how Namogoo hired and onboarded 26 employees across three countries during the pandemic (spoiler alert: talent brand was a key factor).
The bottom line
As Winston Churchill said, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” Our 2021 marketing toolkit aims to help you get the most out of an unpredictable year, by doubling down on marketing essentials and bolstering your infrastructure across the board.
