Hi friends - When you receive this, I’ll be basking in the sun in Puerto Vallarta. Life is good. ☀️ 

Alright, so for the foreseeable future, we’re talking about marketing. Because too many startups do not start marketing soon enough! And their life would be so much easier if they did.

So far, we have covered -

• Some marketing fundamentals 

• Phase I: Building an audience you can activate

Now, before I jump into Phase II…I need to take a moment to remind you that organic marketing takes time.

You need to commit to being consistent for at least 4-6 months before you should expect any meaningful results. And then you need to keep going.

I know…I’m the most impatient human, too. But I promise you, it will all be worth it. 🙏 

Marketing Priorities by Stage

Phase II: Some revenue

Alright, so as we discussed, when you are super early, and you have no brand recognition, no clients, no revenue…building an audience that you can activate later is the way to go. And you can do this through thought leadership.

Once you have some clients, some users, and some revenue…it’s time to level up.

Show and tell

Your first customers are honestly kind of insane. They stepped out onto the proverbial plank and took a major risk on you.

They agreed to pay or partner with your baby ‘SaaS company’ - which is probably really a services company with a user interface. 👀 

Kudos to you for convincing them to take the plunge. 🏊️ 

However, most prospects are not going to be such big risk takers…not so crazy.

They are going to look for evidence - evidence that someone else who looks like them worked with you and kind of (or really) liked it first.

Hopefully, after you’ve got a handful of those crazy first adopters, and you treated them like the VIPs they are, they love you.

Now it’s time to leverage their brand and voice to land your next cohort. And you do that through 1) Customer Reviews and 2) Case Studies.

Customer Reviews

According to Gartner, Customer Reviews are the #1 type of content B2B buyers reference in their decision-making process.

And of the five things listed below, it’s the ‘lowest effort’ thing you can do (relatively speaking).

I love the lowest effort + highest impact prioritization method for startups because I know you’ve got little money and little time.

And here’s what makes it even better…Gartner also reports that -

• 66% of software buyers say reviews significantly impact their purchase decision, and

• 85% say they trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation

AND…reviews support you across the entire funnel. Yep - they help with top-of-funnel discovery + middle/bottom-of-funnel conversions.

Prettyyyy compelling. So how do you do it?

Check out these resources -

If you like to read:

The Full Funnel Impact of Customer Reviews

If you like to listen/watch:

And next week, we’ll cover Case Studies! See ya there.

Want to learn more about how I help startups increase their revenue by 150-590%? 👀 

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With love and gratitude,