As a seasoned marketing professional, stepping into a 7-year-old startup that had neglected its branding and marketing infrastructure presented both a challenge and an opportunity. Despite the company’s innovative offerings, the lack of investment in branding processes and marketing essentials such as a website, documents, and social media pages had significantly stifled its growth. Here’s a firsthand account of how a CMO as a Service is transforming this startup.
Let's address the total cost of establishing a marketing system that includes a digital manager, a social manager, and a graphic designer under the CMO:
The costs associated with hiring a full-time CMO and establishing an internal marketing system can vary significantly based on several factors, including the startup's size, industry, geographic location, and the experience and personal requirements of the CMO.
For instance, in small Israeli startups, the annual salary for a CMO may range from around 28,000 shekels for a candidate with at least 5 years of experience to potentially reaching 40,000 shekels or more. In larger startups and certain industries, this figure could be even higher. It's worth noting that in addition to the base salary, a CMO in a startup may also be entitled to bonuses based on the company's performance or options to purchase shares in the company. These additional incentives can significantly impact the overall cost of hiring a CMO.
It's important for startups to carefully consider these factors and assess their specific needs and budget constraints when determining the total cost of establishing a marketing system.
It's worth noting that aside from the base salary, a CMO in a startup might also be entitled to performance-based bonuses or options to purchase shares in the company. Additionally, it's crucial to consider other expenses beyond salary, such as overhead costs. For example, if the CMO's monthly salary amounts to 28,000 shekels, the total monthly expenditure could rise to approximately 36,000 shekels when including overhead expenses, excluding considerations like a company vehicle.
The total cost of setting up a marketing system includes several main factors:
Salary and Advancement: A significant component of establishing a marketing system is the salary of the employees, including the CMO, digital manager, social manager, campaign manager, and attached graphic designer. Salaries will vary based on experience, skills, geographic location, startup size, and marketing budget.
Additional Payments: It's essential to consider additional payments such as bonuses and performance-based incentives for the marketing team's performance. These payments are often tied to achieving specific marketing objectives and goals.
Payment to External Suppliers: Establishing an in-house marketing system doesn't guarantee that the startup won't need to engage external suppliers such as professional video editors, creative/digital agencies with unique capabilities, or implementers of various marketing automations. It's crucial to recognize that even with an internal system, there may still be a need for these external services.
Advertising and Marketing Budget: It's important to consider that as the startup grows, so will its advertising and marketing budget. This budget will likely be allocated to various objectives, including social media management, sponsored advertising on social networks and search engines, additional digital advertising tools, participation in conferences and events, online marketing tools, CRM software, data analysis tools, and project management software. These elements are expected to be integral parts of the overall budget. The cost of establishing a marketing system can indeed escalate to millions of shekels per year, contingent upon the size and requirements of the startup. However, this expenditure can be mitigated by constructing a lean system centered around CMO as a service and carefully selecting sub-suppliers. This approach allows for a more efficient allocation of resources, enabling startups to achieve their marketing goals while managing costs effectively.
Understanding the Business
The startup offers automated, permanent systems in sports complexes for live streaming games. It targets mid-tier and lower-tier sports clubs in the European market, with a focus on Italy, France, and Spain. These countries were chosen as key destinations due to their market size and the company's full access to these markets.
Discovering the Problems
When I joined the startup, it quickly became evident that the CEO, despite his passion for the product, had long neglected the importance of a robust marketing foundation. Over the years, he concentrated on developing a stable product and avoided handling marketing on a daily basis, which led to the neglect of essential branding and marketing infrastructure. This resulted in a limited brand presence and a significant gap compared to competitors in the market. Throughout the company's seven-year existence, no marketing efforts were executed at an adequate level, leaving a backlog of unmet needs.
Understanding the CEO’s Challenges
The CEO had managed marketing responsibilities out of necessity rather than expertise. His focus on other critical areas of the business left marketing in the shadows. The few marketing projects he initiated were well-intentioned but lacked professional execution and coherence, failing to capture the target audience’s attention or drive significant engagement. The startup was in dire need of a structured and professional marketing approach.
The first day I sat down with the CEO, he set me ambitious goals for selling systems on a monthly basis. When I asked why he thought they hadn't been able to do that so far, he explained that they felt the salespeople were putting in a lot of effort to sell the systems, which indicated that the leads they met were usually cold. This revelation highlighted that it took nearly seven years for the CEO to realize that they needed a senior marketing function to assist in brand-building processes.
Implementing the CMO-as-a-Service Solution
Recognizing the critical need for professional marketing leadership, the decision was made to implement a CMOaaS model. This approach allowed the startup to leverage expert marketing strategies without the financial burden of a full-time executive salary. As the appointed CMO, my mission was to overhaul the marketing strategy, establish a solid branding process, and build the necessary marketing infrastructure.
Crafting a Strategic Vision
Changes in start-up companies occur frequently, with goals potentially shifting overnight. Consequently, writing a marketing plan for the next two years immediately after the CMO as a service begins may be ineffective.
This is particularly true for companies that have never launched an online marketing campaign and whose growth has relied solely on word of mouth and organic methods.
Therefore, initial resources should be directed toward improving and modernizing the existing system. This includes refining branding processes, creating marketing assets, and launching campaigns. Additionally, it involves taking tactical measures to experiment with and run campaigns in new marketing channels.
The initial focus should be on creating compelling messages that resonate with the identified target audiences. Following this, projects should be characterized and defined according to their importance, with prioritization and management in a dedicated system. This includes writing a site description that incorporates my needs and the updated messages, examining the existing pricing model, and identifying and holding discussions with potential sub-suppliers in the fields of advertising and social media
In light of the uncertainty surrounding the success of an annual marketing plan, it is necessary to perform tests, evaluate performance, and derive insights to lay a solid strategic foundation. Before establishing a final marketing strategy for the coming year, a thorough analysis of competitor activity and a retrospective review of the company's past marketing efforts are essential.
This process involves compiling a detailed report that outlines shortcomings and benchmarks against industry competitors. Identifying your target audience as well as potential new segments is critical.
The findings from this research should drive actionable insights, facilitate business model improvements, update pricing, and empower sales teams with increased agility to improve deal closing.
Building a solid foundation for the marketing infrastructure
With the strategic vision in place, the next step was to build the marketing infrastructure from the ground up. This included:
Website Development:
Implementing the construction of an innovative and advanced website in five languages, complete with technical characterization and a full visual simulation.
360 Camera Product Modeling:
Developed detailed 360-degree camera models for diverse applications, including documentation, marketing assets, video content, sales promotion, and more.
Pre-launch User Interface Video Design and Advertising Content:
One of the main challenges was creating a large number of visual videos presenting the product while maintaining the budget. To achieve this, I recruited two outsourced video editors, one of whom was a junior editor from a developing country, allowing us to save costs. Designed, created, and produced over 40 user interface videos.
The main challenge was planning and producing videos for an interface still in the preliminary sketch stage and not yet active. Additionally, separate content had to be produced for four different sports, adding to the complexity. The VP of Marketing spearheaded the initiative, leveraging marketing strategies to drive significant product changes and improvements. Additionally, promotional videos and commercials were produced to support various marketing campaigns.
Multilingual Customer Testimonials Project:
The purpose of this project was to provide authentic video reviews from the company's customers, offering potential clients a glimpse into the service framework and the system's capabilities. It involved planning, execution, editing, and the addition of graphics to a series of customer testimonials translated into five languages.
The planning phase involved preparing a variety of preliminary questions designed to guide the client's responses within a specific framework.
Development of Marketing Materials and Professional Technical Documents
The project involved two main aspects:
1. Marketing Materials Development: Creating materials tailored to sales needs that align with and reinforce the brand's messaging. This included crafting compelling content and visuals that resonate with the target audience while maintaining brand consistency.
2. Professional Technical Document Preparation: Formulating and preparing comprehensive technical documents to address the product requirements and the necessary conditions for its implementation in sports facilities. These technical documents provided detailed insights into the product's specifications, installation procedures, and compatibility with various sports facilities. Additionally, a comprehensive marketing document was developed to showcase the product's features, benefits, and competitive advantages in the market.
Enhancing Social Media Presence:
Over the years, the company has focused its marketing efforts primarily on maintaining a presence on social channels through organic weekly postings. However, these posts lacked diversity and investment, failing to generate substantial added value. In response, there was a decision to bolster these efforts by hiring a creative social media manager dedicated to producing high-quality content consistently.
A considerable portion of the marketing budget is earmarked to establish and maintain active social media profiles. This investment aims to facilitate direct communication with the target audience, fostering brand awareness and growth.
Enhancing the Customer Experience
Creating a commercial website that provides customers with a glimpse of the exceptional user experience offered by the product. This begins with the modern physical design of the product and extends to its effortless operation, facilitated by intuitive interfaces within the application. This ensures a seamless user journey from start to finish.
There's a prevailing sentiment that the average customer hesitates to share their details with a salesperson for a "personalized" quote without prior knowledge of the company's average prices. In response, the objective was to transition from an advertising platform to a commercial one by introducing a pricing model that offers a competitive entry price for customers.
This pricing model's flexibility extends to options for renting or permanently purchasing equipment, enabling customers to receive tailored price offers based on their specific needs. Although the systems won't be fully sold through the website and will still require conversation with a salesperson, this approach is expected to boost conversion rates. Allowing customers to leave their details and instantly download a structured quote streamlines the process for club decision-makers, resulting in increased efficiency.
Building an Impressive Image on Social Networks
My plan for the company's existing infrastructure across various channels is to create a lean but efficient system. This will be based on local social media managers with advanced editing and design skills, who will work closely with the clubs to produce high-quality content.
Building an organizational plan to collect quality content from the most impressive sports complexes where the company's systems are located will further enhance this strategy. Creating dramatic, original content that is divided into chapters will establish a connection between the followers and the content and the brand, fostering anticipation and vigilance for the continuation of the plot.
The goal is not only to capture spectacular goals or impressive baskets but also to uncover and share the fascinating stories behind the teams, the players, and the presence of the cameras in the complexes, allowing these stories to be revealed and shared with a wider audience.
Paid Advertising
Identifying the target audience proved straightforward: senior decision-makers in both basketball and soccer clubs within the French market, with consideration given to individuals capable of facilitating and promoting procurement deals. Despite GDPR regulations posing challenges in direct targeting, solutions were devised by segmenting audiences across various potential channels.
The emphasis then transitioned to crafting compelling creative content, including viral warm-up videos, to captivate our audience. While the visually dynamic nature of the sports industry presented its challenges, we ensured that the outcome of this effort would be rewarding, showcasing our exceptional product.
Instilling a Culture of Continuous Improvement
A key aspect of my role was to instill a culture of continuous improvement within the marketing team. I introduced new marketing technologies and tools, streamlined processes, and fostered an environment where innovative ideas could flourish. This not only improved efficiency but also ensured that our marketing efforts remained cutting-edge and effective.
Setback Due to Economic Changes
By 2023, our marketing moves were almost fully completed. However, the global economic landscape shifted dramatically as interest rates rose, leading investors to tighten their funding. As a result, the company had to halt the marketing processes just before their completion. This abrupt stop meant that the rebranding launch and the necessary product adjustments to align with the new marketing vision could not be fully realized.
Reflections on the Journey
Reflecting on this journey, the transformation had been significant up until the financial constraints hit. The startup now boasts a robust marketing strategy and a solid branding foundation that drives engagement and supports its growth objectives. The CEO, having acknowledged the limitations of his past efforts, is fully supportive and engaged in this new marketing direction.
Looking Ahead
Despite the setback, the future remains promising. With a clear marketing vision and the groundwork laid, the startup is well-positioned to resume its growth trajectory once the financial situation stabilizes. The brand’s visibility had increased, customer engagement was at an all-time high, and there is a strong foundation for future expansion.
Conclusion
Stepping in as a CMO for this 7-year-old startup has been a rewarding experience. By addressing the branding and marketing infrastructure deficiencies and implementing a strategic, data-driven approach, we set the company on a path to success. While economic challenges halted our progress temporarily, the importance of professional marketing leadership in transforming potential into performance remains clear. As we move forward, the startup is poised to achieve its long-term goals and thrive in a competitive market once the financial climate improves.
Startups or small businesses that cannot afford a full-time CMO can hire a Fractional CMO. An outsourced CMO brings essential strategic expertise and flexibility, helping businesses efficiently navigate complex marketing landscapes.
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