You did it! You landed the dream job at the company you’ve been wooing (and that’s been surely wooing you). Now comes the arduous, exciting, sometimes overwhelming task of getting up to speed in your new role. There’s a lot to accomplish. You’ve got to get familiar with the product, you’ve got to organize your approach for marketing, you want to drive results quickly, and - of course - you want to impress your team. (More accurately - get them to see you right away for the bad ass marking pro that you are so that you can all roll up your sleeves and tackle the exciting work of growth together.)
Here are 5 steps you can take to accomplish all of that and more, swiftly.
Give the product a trial run and (this is key) record your experience. This step feeds two birds with one stone. (One sack of seeds? I’m trying to make the idiom nicer.) By taking the product for a spin as an actual user, you’ll be forced to familiarize yourself with the user experience and you’ll start to develop empathy for what real users are likely experiencing in their first runs. This is going to help you immensely as you get started on your marketing plans. And - by writing down the thoughts, feelings, points of excitement and moments of friction you experience along the way - you can pass a meaningful report back to your product team. First-run feedback is hard to come by. This is a valuable gift you’re giving them - unprovoked! Immediately you’re a powerful ally.
Learn everything you can about the customer journey. And the best place to start is with sales. Listen in on their calls, ask to see deal reports, review pitch recordings. If you can pinpoint them, tag alongside top sellers to overhear them do their thing. You’ll pick up on key hesitations among prospects, you’ll witness good objection handling, and you’ll likely hone in on messaging and language that’s resonating. All marketing successes depend on your ability to meet your customers and prospects where they are, and this is step one of gathering the knowledge you’ll need to accomplish that.
Start asking questions about KPIs - and I mean the high-level ones. Key performance indicators are the currency of conversation if you want to get grounded in how the business is doing, how effective marketing efforts are likely to be, and where there will be immediate areas of opportunity. And you’ll sound smart when you talk about them, too. When I think about business-level metrics that matter most, these are some that come to mind: - Customer acquisition cost - Activation rate (sometimes called onboarding success rate) - Churn rate - Average time to churn - Average lifetime value (LTV) With information in these areas, you’ll start to develop perspectives about where money is likely best spent, where areas of opportunity might be for new marketing campaigns, and where some low-hanging fruit might let you get some quick wins right away. (Need some help figuring out what the implications of these metrics may be? Review this blog for some advice.)
Map the marketing funnel. This is where you’ll dig into some marketing-specific metrics. Start to get a grasp on the programs that are already in place, what their reach is like, and what touches may be missing. For any kind of tech product or service offering, I’m looking at nurture programs, sales conversion programs, trial support programs, and onboarding. Engagement, growth, and churn prevention / winback come next after that. Be sure to plug in, too, to any triggered comms or product engagement milestones as errors there can cause customers a deal breaking level of grief. Whatever program you’re analyzing, you’re starting to develop a POV around efficacy, making note of any friction as an area ripe with opportunity.
Inventory what support you have and (critically) what support you’ll still need. Good marketing campaigns are built with support - someone to write the copy, someone to craft the designs, someone to execute in the relevant channels, and someone to interpret the data around your results. You might need social specialists, email experts, or someone who knows their way around the press. No matter the mix, there will be you as the ringleader building the strategy, coordinating with stakeholders in product and sales teams, and iterating the plan based on learning. We know your position is solid and accounted for - take a look around the company to see who else you’ll have on the team. And any support areas you find to be missing? Develop a plan for resourcing the expertise that you need.
Once you’ve taken action on all 5 of these steps, you can feel confident getting started with your marketing plan. Revisit these basics any time you get stuck and remember it’s all about adaptation based on learning.
Could you use some support for strategy or execution as you get ramped up in your new role? Let us know. We’ve got full-stack capabilities with a group of senior-level marketers who can create instant bandwidth and execution capability any time on demand.
