The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy

7B2C Marketing Excellence Scaling up with minimal expense and maximum customer retention

With Kelly Ford

Key pitfalls to avoid for scale-up builders:

• Pursuing growth vanity metrics.

  When driven by competition or a lack of insight, some scale-ups fall into the trap of pursuing vanity metrics that look fantastic to the public but do not create true business results (e.g., non-active sign-ups, downloads, social media followers, page views). A true North Star metric is essential here, as it facilitates revenue generation, reflects customer value and is easily trackable (e.g., numbers of items listed for a marketplace or number of monthly active users for a FinTech) (see Practice 48).

• Pouring water into a leaky bucket.

  Some startups will fire up the marketing machine before they can reach a full product-market fit. If the monthly retention rate is not small enough to reach a net revenue retention of at least 100%, investing heavily in paid marketing should only be considered in special circumstances (see Practice 48).

• Adding the second layer of marketing management too late.

  When driven by the desire to be lean, marketing leaders may hire a second layer too late. More than 10 direct reports to a CMO marks the latest point for the recruitment of additional managers for organic marketing, paid marketing, brand and/or PR becomes an urgent priority (see Practice 50).

• Trying to ...