From “Random Acts of Marketing” to Prioritized Efforts Tied to Business Goals
The Challenge
Like many startups, this company started out in “react mode.” Every time a colleague or customer asked for something, the marketing team would scramble to create it. From sales decks and one pagers to custom visuals and videos, the requests never stopped. The team was focused on fire drills over strategy, they were stretched thin, and no one could articulate the ROI of the company’s marketing investment.
The Strategy
This team needed leadership, and fast. The goal? Identify how marketing contributed to business goals, build the strategy, clarify priorities and create processes to streamline workflow and analytics. Sounds easy…right?
Here’s where I come into the story!
After reviewing the company’s quarterly business goals (aka “rocks” in the startup world) with the CEO, I built out 5 rocks for the marketing team that reflected the department’s contribution to revenue growth, product expansion, customer development and key initiatives.
Next came the fun part – translating those rocks into a quarterly marketing plan – including goals, strategy, tactics, channels, etc. While I had specific projects in mind for the quarter, I sought the input of the marketing team, so everyone felt valued and heard.
Over the next week, our plan was finalized and aligned with leadership, and the marketing team was clear on roles and responsibilities. I helped them integrate AI tools into their workflow and established a dashboard so we could track marketing performance and calculate ROI.
The Results
Everything started to click. The team was focused on the projects that mattered, and able to push back on the requests that didn’t. There was clarity on how marketing contributed to business goals, with a process in place to measure that impact. The marketing function that could finally scale with the business.
Elishaa Batdorf is a fractional CMO and marketing strategist who helps Series B startups scale by providing leadership, strategy and focus. With 20 years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies and fast-growing startups, she uses proven marketing strategies to accelerate business growth. Connect with her about marketing strategy and growth tactics on LinkedIn.
