Startup marketing audit: 50 ideas for B2B startups looking to grow to 50 customers
Growing from 10 to 50 customers isn’t the time to slow down. Everything you’ve done for the previous months won’t have scaled.
You’ve likely rinsed your networks, and dabbled a bit with a sales cold outreach whilst screaming “it doesn’t work!”. You may have even chucked your toys out of the pram when someone offered you something in exchange for brand awareness.
Let’s face it, despite the penny dropping with a few customers, you don’t know what’s working and why. All you do know is, you don’t want to recreate the chaos that was getting those first customers. Ammirite?
I’ve put together a list of ideas to help you audit your startup’s marketing and growth, and to start to build the foundations to achieve your next 10/20+ customers. Whilst I am using the heading of audit, the idea is to share with you ideas I’ve seen success with personally and not to conduct a full audit.
This list comprises ideas that I’ve put into practice myself. They’re a combination or indeed result of making a few mistakes whilst building repeatable marketing. And, they’re designed for the b2b organisation with an eye on growth or at the very least, the need to build in repeatable processes to free them from the messy part.
Use these to refine your customer segment or consider revitalising an existing marketing and sales strategy.
Good luck. And let the odds be in your favour.
50 Startup Marketing Audit Ideas
Let’s start with the quick fix ideas
Your Website
Make sure your homepage lists outcomes and not features. You can link to a features or pricing plan matrix on another page, but this page is all for showing your potential customers what they can achieve with your offering.
Mix up your call-to-action buttons. These are the buttons that are likely to have something like Buy Now on them. B2B call-to-actions are used to drive a behaviour aligned to the stage of the buying process someone’s at. If all they are “request a demo” it’s time to rethink. Audit your call-to-action buttons to identify gaps in content you need to create. Learn how to write them and why it’s bad to just have one type of call to action.
Check your enabled value - the thing that only you can offer - slaps people right in the eyeballs. If you operate in a busy market, ask yourself what’s the thing that makes you stand out from your competitors. And is it clear on your website?
Survey incoming visitors to understand what level of “awareness” they have. Are they there to buy or to learn more about your offering? Use this to understand if what you’re putting out there is actually doing what you want it to do.
Cull those horrible words. Drop every mention of “we”, and delete every inclusion of the following words: game-changing, innovative, we’re the the {uber of}, and maximise. No-one talks like this.
Bin those awful free photos of business people with power suits or 80s shoulder pads. Unless these are your customers(!) of course. Replace them with people who look like your customers in the context of using your solution. For example, if someone uses your membership platform in a busy office… include this. Or, if they use your CRM solution with kids, include a kid. The context will help readers “get” what you do more quickly. Try these alternatives to iStock.
Use testimonials to help describe your value proposition. Ensure testimonials include how you helped a client overcome a challenge or achieve something awesome. Testimonials that just say you’re great mean absolutely nothing.
Conduct a basic website audit to understand how to create a site structure that’s reflective of your customers’s sales cycle. You can create a website map that’s aligned to your sales process. Promise.
How many broken links and pages are there? Fix ‘em! (And use something like Ahrefs)
Look at those massive images on your site and reduce the size of them. Oh, and rename them from “screenshot xxx”. You’ll help your load time AND accessibility - both required for the Gods of Google - in one quick move.
Look for any missing meta descriptions or page titles. Meta descriptions should be up to 160 characters, page titles up to 60. Get the important words nearer the front because on mobile, it starts to cut these characters.
What keywords your main pages are ranking for? Do you want to be ranking for these or is it working against what you are trying to put out there.
What pages are indexed by Google/search engine? There may be pages that you don’t want to be publicly accessible or are test pages that really shouldn’t be able to see. Category templates are a common example here.
Does your site work on a range of browsers? One client I worked with didn’t realise that their product page wasn’t available to me… using Chrome.
Content audit - aligning it to your sales process
Now we’re going a little bit medium-term as this is the part that takes a bit of time.
15. List the content you have by your customers’ buying process to work out where to focus your efforts. Examples of content include whitepapers, blogs, news, product pages. Resources are tight, right? Here are some ideas on how to be strategic when creating content.
16. If you’re lacking in content that talks to prospects’ struggles/pain points, create a whitepaper or ebook around ways to solve them. Make sure that the content is valuable enough to ask a qualifying question in the form. Or learn how to use your product as a marketing engine.
17. If you’re lacking in content that helps prospects to decide, include user stories about how they can now do {the thing you say they can}. All we are looking for is around 200 words max. Not a full case study.
18. Add an additional call to action linked to a video of your platform. Use Loom to create a 2-minute video, and ensure your face to present. Don’t worry, it doesn’t need to be super slick.
19. Ask yourself: do you need to create another blog? If these are key to how your customers research and buy a product like yours. OR, if your product/ problem you are solving is highly complex - keep going. If not, rethink the effort you’re putting into them.
20. Add a newsletter (because paid for acquisition can be expensive). If there’s a way to organically grow your audience, add a newsletter. But make sure to publish regularly and don’t sell anything. Align it to those top-of-the-funnel struggles!
Best Fit Customer Audit
How do you know what to write about? What’ll get your prospects doing a cute little bum wiggle? You need the next stage. Again, medium-term but SUPER important stuff.
21. Quick-fire: do your prospects group what you do with the right competitors? If not, consider the channels you’re using and the stories you’re telling on your website. Oh, and the value you deliver. One way to unlock why people buy is to run customer interviews and apply the findings.
22. Schedule ten 30-minute interviews with your best-fit customers today. No, seriously. How people derive value from products changes over time. Talk to em, re-fresh your pitch and use this info to identify new growth opportunities.
23. Collect voice of customer language and use it with your sales pitch deck to tell a story. These are examples in their language of what they were struggling before you and/or what they can now achieve because of your product/service. Here’s how to up your customer interview game.
24. Record what other services customers use in conjunction with yours as part of their workflow. This could end up potential co-marketing opportunities. And then the name of the founder / head of marketing of this product for you to connect with.
25. Create a CX map around your customers’ desired outcomes. This will allow you to see if your product experience is aligned to helping them to achieve this.
26. Use an audience discovery tool to learn more about ways to get in front of these key customers just as they are struggling.
Branding Audit
How you show up will determine a LOT of things. Read on, friend.
27. The brand you have will determine the channels you use, the model you operate and even the pricing model you offer. In this context, and, against who you think you are competing against, does your brand make sense? Does it stand out for the right reasons or does it get lost?
28. Show your prospects the left hand is talking to the right hand. Ensure the logo and elements (e.g. the boxes, lines, whatever makes up your identity) is standard across your social media, email signatures, newsletters, white papers. And learn why your marketer is not being a pain in the ass when they INSIST you use the right font.
29. Make sure you have the original files available in JPEG, PNG, and AI/Illustrator etc. Then also make sure you’ve got them available in black and white, with no background, in different tones. This is an obvious one, but you’d be surprised. There’s nothing worse than someone lifting the wrong version of your brand and seeing it in a program or at an awards ceremony and it looks out of place.
30. Don’t just settle. At this point of your startup’s development, you can afford to tweak and revisit your branding if it doesn’t make sense when talking to people about your proposition. It may be painful to let go, but whilst you’re still relatively early in the market, it’s okay to iterate it.
Customer Acquisition Audit
‘Cos marketing is actually about driving profitable returns. And not pretty pictures or fluffy stuff, right?
31. Re-evaluate your sales and marketing approach. Is your product super complex or in need of hands-on support? You need a direct element. Is your product simple and fairly cheap, your sales cycle is likely to be short and will determine precisely what tools you use.
32. Map out a visual presentation of your business model. Here’s an example of a SaaS customer sign up workflow. As you can see, I like to use the frameworks created by the team behind Lean Analytics. Where is drop off happening and why?
33. Ditch your North Star metric if it’s about revenue or accounts created. My interpretation of this metric is it’s when my best-fit customers achieve the end result anticipated. Amplitude defines it as the relationship between the customer problems that the team is trying to solve and the revenue that the business aims to generate by doing so. For example, Spotify defines this as time spent listening (to then warrant the paid subscription)… not their revenue.
34. Explore a new pricing model and then tweak your pricing. I did this with a team recently who explored a reverse trial and played with both annual and monthly subscriptions. Here’s how to approach pricing your startup’s product.
35. Map out how your business could support an alternative business model. Examples include freemium, hybrid, usage-based etc. Your market or product maturity may not be right for it now… however, it’s always a great exercise to consider what this could look like. If anything it opens up the next market you’re looking to approach.
Channel Marketing Audit
36. It’s all about context. When looking at the channel’s performance, look at it through the right lens. By that I mean consider the stage your business is at, and what the channel is “meant” to do. Your stage will also determine your marketing channel of choice.
37. Re-evaluate how many of your target audience you can get in front of using this channel. Is it targeted enough?
38. Re-evaluate the context someone consumes your channel. For example, do you want your adverts running on platforms with less complementary brands?
39. Stop harassing your marketer expecting leads from organic LinkedIn activity. Especially if it is from a company page. Consider its ability to drive impressions or sign ups to your website.
40. Podcasts. Consider the impact of linking to your website, and driving subscriber growth. And, when considering pitching to one ask them what level of content works (e.g. theory, application etc), and how they distribute their content.
41. Consider grouping the channels you’ve used into a lane. I’ve spoken about the growth lanes marketing channels sit within using the works of Lenny Rachitsky. Seriously, once you do this you’ll see how your customers are likely to research and buy… and what your next option should be.
42. Stop saying “it doesn’t” work. If you’re serious about growth and marketing experimentation, document what didn’t work specifically OR be more aggressive in your focus.
Metrics Audit
43. Free trial to paid conversion rate - benchmark your performance by a cohort of customer groups.
44. Free trial to paid conversion rate - benchmark your performance by marketing channel.
45. Retention rate. At this stage of your development and growth, this is the number you want to keep an eye on. But consider it in the context someone uses you. Your product type determines what “good” looks like. The stats for Xero (accounting) for example will be different for LinkedIn Learning (adhoc learning).
46. Audience growth. Before we get to chucking money at paid advertising, consider how to grow the eyes on your product. These are subscribers, leads, visitors etc.
Product Onboarding Audit
Because marketing should NEVER be in charge of just leads.
47. Collect information on who your sign ups are and what they’ve come to do. And no, putting in too many forms here won’t put people off. You need data.
48. Based on what someone has answered, get the product to navigate them to the appropriate feature to help them to realise the “value”.
49. Don’t think good engagement is people just logging on day 2 or day 4… or whatever arbitrary random number you pluck out of thin air. Consider your engagement metrics around milestones or activities achieved. For example “sends campaign and exports report” or “answers 3 questions and comes back and completes the form to do x”.
50. Get marketing and product BOTH involved in creating the onboarding flow. It’ll make your campaign and activation rates stronger.
Summary
And there we have it. Fifty super actionable ideas that may hopefully have given you some inspiration to change your marketing, sales and growth approach.
Got any to add? Or want a marketing consultant to audit your product or service offering based on this approach? You know where I am :)
