EPISODE SUMMARY
In this episode of SaaS-Story in the Making, host Matt Wolach sits with Founder and CEO of Klint Marketing, Taylor Ryan. Being a founder six times over, Taylor shares his experiences, learnings, and tips on why marketing is important for startup companies’ growth. He shows us that startups can maximize their potential by employing the right actions and improving certain aspects of the operation.
PODCAST-AT-A-GLANCE
Podcast: SaaS-Story in the Making
Episode: Episode No. 192, “Why Marketing is Key to Every Startup’s Growth”
Host: Matt Wolach, a B2B SaaS sales coach, Entrepreneur, and Investor
Guest: Taylor Ryan, Founder, and CEO of Klint Marketing
TOP TIPS FROM THIS EPISODE
Make Smart Moves Early
Startups always have a great chance of success ahead of them when they start working smart. Ryan shared several ways to do this that can put your startup in the right place.
At the early stage, get to work and show traction. It puts you in the space to keep going. Ryan emphasized that he has “never seen a company disintegrate because they have revenue.” With this, startups need to focus on a channel that works for them and can scale.
Companies need to maintain traction at the right place. And to do this, focusing on one effective channel supports the traction. And once that’s proved, you can experiment further to get better results. This way, it puts you in a safer space to grow.
Marketing and sales work hand in hand. When you start with scalable actions along the sales process, it delivers better results. Ryan says that startups have a lot of “unknown unknowns,” especially in using the right tools for your company. It can range from not knowing the existing tools for finding leads or prospect conversion rate. What can be automated should be automated, and you have to overcome those unknowns to work efficiently.
Utilize your Resources
Growth doesn’t come easy. While it requires using your resources well, it also includes letting go of old marketing practices.
Being in the digital age means making most of the modern resources. One of yesterday’s strategies that may not work as much today is cold calling. Ryan shared how this practice is ‘yester-year’s leftover,’ saying, “If you look at the amount of time that you end up spending doing that, and the resources that go into it, you could probably do a lot better.”
Another is that startups consider their tech stacks later than they should have. It’s almost like thinking that it’s easier to fix something later on than doing it right in the beginning. Ryan said that not setting it up right early is just ‘burning time.’
The point is, companies are surrounded by smarter tools to make work easier. Rather than sticking into traditional practices (which may work at times), the right automation tools pave the way to a bigger possibility of goal achievement.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Marketing Touches Everything
Every department is interrelated in an organization. What makes marketing and sales processes unique is its growth encourages the improvement of everything else. Once it generates lots of leads, other departments need to step up and handle what can come through.
Ryan describes marketing as a ‘bunch of interconnected nodes.’ Being able to encompass the entire organization is both an opportunity and a challenge. Today, prospects can convert without interaction with salespeople. And marketing does most of the job as it drives practical value in the company.
Great marketing and sales lead to greatness everywhere.
Free Value Sharing to Charging
Sharing knowledge is important to build credibility and creates opportunities for great relationships in the future. You can never go wrong with giving it all. But should you give this for free?
Giving value is a way for your prospects to trust you. It’s not just about informing them but teaching them how to do things right. And it goes a long way to strengthen your relationship. Ryan admitted that at one point, he did this for free. And it helped his brand grow eventually. There’s nothing wrong with that. It can give you opportunities in the future to build connections with your prospects with a higher chance of client conversion.
But there comes the point that you should draw the line and eventually start charging. Because in the industry, there are a lot of experts who charge a lot to speak to a group. This proves that pivoting from free value sharing to charging is definitely possible and not just a marketing expense.
TOP QUOTES
Taylor Ryan
[10:50] “Marketing, it’s all about systems. There’s no island within marketing where it doesn’t touch anything else within the organization, or just within the marketing spectrum.”
[11:58] “Nowadays, you can have clients that convert with zero-touch– no human interaction whatsoever. And marketing is taking up a much larger portion of the organization in terms of practical value, functionality, and the way that they’re able to kind of speed things up. I look at marketing as kind of the Swiss Army knife of most organizations.”
Matt Wolach
[06:10] “If you want to find yourself in a situation where you’re desired, and people know you and want you, share value. Help people and get them to a point where they can understand what to do. And then, they’re going to trust you so much and want much more from you.”
[03:45] “I think getting that traction as quickly as possible is huge, not only for your own growth– any revenue you bring in as fuel for your company to grow. But also if you do seek investment, you’ve got to be able to have some traction to get the best terms for yourself.”
LEARN MORE
To learn more about Taylor Ryan and Klint Marketing, visit https://klintmarketing.com/.
For Growth Secrets, visit https://growthsecrets.thinkific.com/.
You can also find Taylor Ryan on LinkedIn at: https://dk.linkedin.com/in/taylorryan.
For more about how host Matt Wolach helps software companies achieve maximum growth, visit https://mattwolach.com/.
