9 steps to find focus at a fast-growing startup

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Happy Wednesday! Can you believe it’s a new quarter?!

We’ve done some deep dives the past few weeks — today’s newsletter is short and sweet (and just as value-packed as always!). Let’s dive in.

Getting back to basics

Have you even worked at an early stage startup if you haven’t found it impossible to stay focused on your actual job because there are too many balls in the air? (Learn which ones are glass and which ones are rubber, etc etc…)

We startup marketers know this feeling all too well. We can be running at so many different targets, and in such a silo, that we can forget the “why” behind the work we’re doing.

Finding focus as a marketer at an early startup can feel like a distant luxury when the to-do list just keeps growing. But marketing leaders need to take a step back and do this every so often, not only to be effective, but to avoid burning out.

There are 9 key questions marketers should ask themselves, their teams, and other team leads to identify the most important outcomes, how to achieve those outcomes, and ensure alignment across departments.

I recommend going through this exercise every six months, depending how fast you’re growing and the size of your team.

The questions

Question 1: What’s the 1-2 sentence elevator pitch for your business?

Make sure you can clearly pinpoint the problem you’re solving for your end user and what differentiates you in the market. Your elevator pitch probably doesn’t change a ton over time, but maybe you’ve launched or scaled new products, or honed in on who your key audience is over time.

If this high-level pitch gets tweaked over time, those changes should be trickling down into your marketing messaging.

Why this matters: If you can’t articulate your business in a compelling way in 2 sentences or less, how can you expect a customer to get it?

Question 2: What’s the current state of marketing at your org?

Specifically…

• What’s the purpose of marketing at your org? This is intentionally vague; try to define it in just one sentence.

• What does your team look like? Do you anticipate needing more headcount in the next 6 months? Is your current or future team made up of of full time employees, part time support like fractionals or agencies, or a mix?

• What are the biggest goals for marketing over the next 6 months? Did you accomplish your goals from the last 6 months?

• What are your marketing budget needs? This includes paid marketing spend, tools, freelancers, content creators, etc.

Why this matters: Think of this as your state of the union. This allows you to take stock of both current state and future state, identify gaps or inefficiencies, and determine resourcing needs.

Question 3: What is your org’s north star KPI?

This is a good time to check in on your data infrastructure and reporting processes to ensure you can seamlessly understand, and surface, progress to your KPIs.

Why this matters: Your north star KPI should guide each department’s KPIs. If not, you have misalignment in what your teams are running toward, progress will never be made, and focus will be lost.

Question 4: What are marketing’s KPIs, if different?

Why are these KPIs different (or not different) than your org’s north star KPI? Note: Unless you’re VERY early, each department should typically have its own KPIs that roll up into the north star KPI.

Again, this is a good time to check in on data infrastructure and how progress towards these KPIs is reported.

Why this matters: Having crystal clear KPIs helps your team understand what to focus on, and actually helps prevent analysis paralysis in a sea of potential metrics.

Question 5: What is your ideal customer profile (ICP)?

In other words, who is marketing speaking to? Make sure your messaging makes sense, and is compelling, through the eyes of your ICP.

Also think about how you arrived at the definition of your ICP — assumptions, data, both? — and how this definition has changed over time.

Why this matters: There are endless opportunities for cross-functional misalignment without a clear understanding of your ICP. Your product needs to be built for this audience, and marketed to them in a way that resonates.

Question 6: What processes are you using to model growth and forecast business performance?

Generally, marketing should have its own model that has more specific inputs than a business-level forecast would.

If you haven’t yet gotten to a point where you have modeling and forecasting in place:

• Do you have lighter-weight marketing planning in place? Does marketing build these plans? Finance / ops? Someone else?

• Do you have a good understanding of your conversion rates, and the drivers that impact conversion?

• Do you have a good understanding of customer LTV, and the drivers that impact LTV?

Why this matters: As you grow, being able to predict and understand performance is critical, especially for things like goal-setting, budgeting, resourcing, reporting to a board, etc.

Question 7: How often are you speaking to customers?

Surveys, reviews, and customer service logs will surface great data points, but I’m talking about actually getting on the phone and hearing directly from customers. Figure out what they care about the most.

Why this matters: You’ll uncover rich insights you’d never be able to find otherwise, and you’ll see patterns after just a few conversations. Your customers matter more than anything; use these insights in your marketing.

Question 8: What assumptions do you currently have about your business?

In other words, what must hold true in order for your business to achieve its goals? Have you validated or pressure tested any of these assumptions? How have these assumptions evolved over the last 6 months?

Why this matters: You’ll almost always prove some of your early assumptions wrong after your product goes to market. Be open to this, and allow marketing to explore this, so they can pivot quickly.

Question 9: What are your biggest bottlenecks right now?

Are there chokepoints in your funnel preventing you from progressing toward your KPIs? Are there other points of inefficiency in your marketing strategy?

Why this matters: Identifying bottlenecks quickly ensures you can focus on alleviating these problems, and avoid lighting money on fire.

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Copy and paste this right into Slack to get your team thinking…

Here’s the condensed list of 9 questions for easy copy pasting: