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Module

Marketing99

We could have called it Marketing101. But of course we chose to call it 99 😀

Below is how we approach marketing at Story99, when working with our clients:

  1. Goal - you first need to know what goals you want to achieve through marketing

  2. Prep - you then need to do some prep (a lot of prep actually) before you can act

  3. Execute - do the thing that you need to do post-prep

Organic Growth Execution Playbook | Story99

  1. Learn - learn from the results → improve your overall strategy

This page covers 1) what it means to setup marketing goals and 2) how to prep before execution.

1. Marketing Goals

  • Help sell today (~5% of prospects)

    • Make it easier for customers to make decisions and buy

  • Make it easier to sell tomorrow

    • Create Awareness (with credibility, clarity & memorability) - for future sales

    • Nurture relationships - for future sales

Why efforts towards selling later matters: ~95% of potential buyers (prospects) are not ready to buy today but can do so tomorrow. Marketing focused on that group can help with 1. better pipeline (than without marketing), 2. shorter sales cycle and 3. overall more sales when the time to close comes.

The Concert Analogy in Marketing | Story99

Expand - Marketing goal could also be to expand any of the following:

  • The ICP

  • Revenue per customer: by typically helping existing users / customers use more of the product (so that they pay more or buy more) or by selling them other products

    • 0 → $ (very often for product led growth)

    • $ → $$

  • Geography

  • Platform / Channels where we sell (or market)

Marketing to stakeholders beyond customers / users / buyers

2. Marketing Prep

Before execution, multiple layers of clarity are needed.

2A. Who to market to?

  • ICP (company level)? // ICP means Ideal Customer Profile

  • Persona (financial buyer / user / technical evaluator / internal-champion / influencer)?

  • What stage is the prospect / customer at?

    • not aware + doesn’t need our solution (could they still convince others to use our product / buy from us?)

    • not aware but will need our (or similar) solution upon awareness

    • problem aware but confused / researching (will take time to sell)

    • solution aware - knows exactly what they want but not sure which solution meets their requirement (can be sold quickly if solution meets expectation)

    • product aware - knows about our product but not sure it is what they want

    • most aware - knows about our product, are convinced it makes sense for them, but haven’t bought yet (need to be given an irresitible deal + a sense of urgency + make it easy for them to buy - i.e. “reduce friction”)

    • existing customer / user

  • Customer’s core emotional desire that we meet?

    Consumer Needs

Get notified whenever we add or update a storytelling, marketing or brand framework relevant to B2B, tech and deeptech entities.

2B. What to market (content / message)?

The obvious one: value our product / service / offering / partnership can bring to our customers / users / partners / collaborators / stakeholders (or jobs that it can help them get done) Functional value / RoI Emotional / Social value

But beyond just the value, there are so many other things we might need to market - depending on who we are marketing to, where and when.

  • Proof of value / outcome certainty

  • Pitch / approach that enables others (including our customers / users) to talk about us / market us

  • Product details - how it works / how to use etc

    • Overall product

    • Specific features

  • Business model details (could be relevant for partners / investors)

  • Buying details (process / price / policies etc) // serving the feasibility needs of the users

  • Derivatives (aligned with what users may want to consume / engage with)

  • The people behind the product / company (our values, POV, brand civics) // ex: Heineken / blog with many brands mentioned

  • Our achievements - helps build trust

  • Knowledge - gets consumed by knowledge-seekers at a greater rate than other forms of communication + helps build trust + brand recall and associations

  • Stories / lives / POVs of our customers / users / partners / collaborators / stakeholders

Desirability (fuel) vs. Feasibility (friction / nitty-grities)

  • Desirability focus (add fuel for customer to want my product) marketing / message focuses on things like:

    • What is the benefit of this product to me?

      • functional

      • emotional

      • social

    • What is the job that this lets me get done (compared to earlier where either I could not do it or was doing it in a sub-optimal way)?

    • What is the pain it alleviates? how critical is that pain to my customer?

  • Feasibility focus marketing / message focuses on things like

    • how clear is the offer?

    • can the prospects sample the product / service?

    • how clear is the price?

    • how easy is it to buy?

Some derivative examples

  • Movies / shows led brand-building (also see ‘where do we market’)

    • Barbie

    • Lego movie

    • Coke studio

    • Ted Lasso (brand building for football league)

    • The Hire - BMW series by Guy Ritchie

    • Gay Chorus Deep South (2019) - Airbnb

Examples of lead magnets

Also see sources of content

2C. Where to Market (Marketing Channels)?

Digital channels

  • A digital publication / newsletter (online or PDF) that has has audience

    • ads (that look like ads)

    • sponsored articles

    • native (smartly integrated) ads

  • Content Platform

  • Co-marketing

    Another product’s website / digital product / other websites / apps / products / games that my target persona from my ICP may be visiting / logging into / using? (co-marketing)

  • Our own product / website /app (for existing users - to upsell to them)

    • push notifications

    • UI/IX embedding

    • ads inside the product

  • A digital community that we own / have access to// some good community led growth case studies here

  • App-store

    • UAC (Universal app campaign)

    • AOS (app-store optimization)

    • App push-notification

    • Offers / contests

  • Audio podcast

    [https://riverside.fm/blog/podcast-ads](https://riverside.fm/blog/podcast-ads)

  • Google

    • Search - organic (does my SEO bring in visitors?)

    • Ads (SEM aka Search Engine Marketing)

  • AI answers

  • An influencer’s channel (on any platform)

  • Social Media

    • Meta (Facebook/Insta)

      • Feed / Reels / Stories / live-stream - organic - on our page (”owned”)

      • Communities?

      • Channels of influencers?

      • Paid ads

    • Linkedin

Do’s & Don’ts of Linkedin Marketing

  • Company page (”owned”)

  • People page (founders / employees)

  • Channels of influencers?

  • DMs (outbound)

  • Paid ads

  • X (Twitter)

    • Company feed (”owned”)

    • People feed

    • Channels of influencers?

    • Paid ads

    • DM (outbound)

  • Forums (Quora / Reddit)

    • Organic

    • Paid

  • Youtube - long-form / shorts

  • Digital outbound channels (email / whatsapp / sms)

    Source of list?

    • bought from market

    • acquired over time via lead-magnets

    • from physical meetings over time

    • Knowledge resource

      • Email - understanding Google postmaster (link)

  • TV / Radio

    • marketing embedded in the show

    • paid ads before / during / after shows

  • Marketplace - where my buyers / customers may be there

    • Amazon, Swiggy, Blinkit etc

Physical channels

  • Events (buy a booth, set up a standee, get on the panel or just show up wearing a tshirt that has your logo)

  • Physical spaces (could be paid or collab) - often falls under OOH marketing (ATL / BTL)

    • Airports (or inside aircraft)

    • Billboards in cities

    • Small street hoardings

    • On a physical product

    • Inside another shop

    • On moving vehicles

    • Collab with another brand / product - example (diamond + martini)

  • Newspaper and physical publications

  • Our own product (if we have a physical product)

    • Can always create a physical product just so that we can print our logo on it (standard things are caps, tshrits, hoodies, water bottles and mugs; creative things include gifting spoons).

B2B Gifting

Phygital channels

2D. Have positioning & product clarity

Positioning99

  • Is the company brand-name same as the product name?

    • Multiple products?

    • Do products have their own unique names and identity?

    • Is there a service angle to the offering as well?

    • How do we plan to defend our position?

    • Can we become unchallenged leader (if not already)?

  • What is the brand / product / offering category?

    • What is the positioning within the said category?

    • How distinct is our positioning - how does it help us be preferred choice for the right personas in our ICP?

  • Who is the brand / product / service / offer for?

    • ICP (company attributes)

    • Persona (role attributes - of the person to who we are pitching)

  • Answer the below, separately for 1. each ICP, 2. each persona and 3. each product-brand / service-offering / any other offering-package / bundle

    • What is the value-prop (functional / emotional / social)?

    • What is our USP / our right to win?

    • Features / attributes (what our product / service / offering does) → how it benefits the customer (ICP level and persona level) → what is the ultimate value that benefit brings (+can the value be quantified)?

  • What are alternate ways for the user to get the job done, if they don’t use our product / service / offering?

  • If the product can be sold without marketing, what does the process look like?

2E. Have brand clarity

  • Why do we do what we do?

  • What is our vision (for the future)?

  • What is our mission? (the thing that we are doing to fructify the vision)

  • What is our working culture?

  • What kind of relationship do our customers have with our brand?

  • What is our brand’s external customer-facing archetype / personality?

  • What is our brand’s internal archetype / personality? (should not be fundamentally different from customer-facing archetype)

  • What is the brand promise?

  • What excites us every Monday?

  • What are some of the things that we stand for (brand civics)? (for inspiration, check out this Budweiser campaign in Latin America)

  • What is our brand currency (how do our customers see themselves, and the rest of the world sees them, when they interact with our brand)?

  • What would we like to be known for?

  • What are our brand messaging pillars?

  • Tagline(s) / slogans

  • Brand tone

  • Branding guidelines and assets

  • Brand architecture (corporate brand -> product brands)

2F. Know the ecosystem basics

  • Who are our competitors?

  • Who are our business-partners (suppliers / vendors / advocates / funders etc.)?

  • Red ocean vs. blue ocean - where are we operating?

  • What are some of the useful things we need to know about the sector that we operate in (growth prospects / nuances / trends etc.)?

2G. What content / comms formats to use?

Note: customers / others to whom we are marketing, are OK consuming varied formats (depends on where they are consuming and when). Some formats work better on some platforms / settings / channels, while not so much on others.

  • Website

  • Deck

  • Videos: explainers, how-to’s, recording of a physical talk / conversation (like podcasts), ads, testimonials, docu-stories, screen-recording based videos, analysis, commentary, opinion, review, commercial movie (example), short-film (eg1, eg2) etc.

  • Audio (typically podcasts)

  • Text - case studies (PDF or online), social media posts, newsletters, whitepapers

  • Infographic (standalone works for platforms like Linkedin, could also be part of other material like blogs and whitepapers)

  • Photo+text - ads, thought leadership, SEO articles, case-studies

  • Talk / conversation - live / recorded

  • Branded stall (in events), Banners / backdrops

  • Leaflets / brochure / standees

  • Branding visible on physical products

  • Contest - example / disloyalty program

  • AR experience - example

Growth beyond marketing

  • The obvious one - direct manual sales to leads / qualified leads / selling more to existing customers

  • Affiliate / business-partnership / system integrator led sales (or marketing) - https://www.getreditus.com/

Retaining an Affiliate Without Increasing Commission

  • Product-led growth (free/cheap → paid/higher-package) - directly influenced by the way the product is inherently designed

  • WOM (Word of mouth) - by existing customers

  • Incentive based referral - by existing customers

Get notified whenever we add or update a storytelling, marketing or brand framework relevant to B2B, tech and deeptech entities.