Are you pre-revenue and trying to figure out how to get your first customers? After advising dozens of early-stage startups at UC Berkeley’s Skydeck incubator, I find myself repeating the same advice on go-to-market (GTM) strategy (that is, the process of getting your first product “out there” and getting your first customer and first sales). […]
Are you building a website for your startup? As a marketing advisor to startups at UC Berkeley’s Skydeck incubator, I see founders fall into a lot of common traps. Here are some more common mistakes to watch out for: Mistake 1: Focusing mostly on website looks It’s tempting for founders to spend a lot of […]
The best retirement calculators are often free, and they don’t come from your financial institution!
I’ve been a marketing advisor to early-stage startups at UC Berkeley’s Skydeck incubator for a few months now, and I wanted to share some common mistakes that I’ve seen repeatedly that hurt these young startups’ marketing efforts — and sometimes even make it hard for me to help them. Recognize these pitfalls and apply the […]
This is an open letter about a proposed construction project at 1752 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley, California. I am concerned about this project for a number of reasons: Underground storage tanks. This is a high-risk site, and it appears no organization has properly analyzed the soil or groundwater since 1994. As we know, this site […]
If you’ve been hired to take over a digital marketing project, your first order of business should be to understand and analyze what came before. Here’s how to conduct a comprehensive digital marketing audit.
It’s almost January 6th, and with Donald Trump still constantly teasing that he will run for president in 2024, I feel like it’s a great time to make some predictions about what a future presidency of his would be like. Traditionally I don’t write much about politics in my blog. In fact, I’d rather keep […]
Marketing attribution is about asking, out of the many marketing channels you are using and paying for, which marketing channels actually work? Which ones don’t? And are you paying the right amount for the ones that do work? Measuring marketing attribution is one of the biggest challenges for high-scalability performance marketing, and I don’t believe […]
Building a brand is hard. It’s not just about redoing your logo. It’s about answering, “what really makes our company special?” And you have to answer that question in a way that (1) is meaningful to your customers, (2) positions you uniquely in the marketplace, and (3) doesn’t overpromise and underdeliver.
If you do B2B marketing for startups, or you’re devising a go-to-market strategy for a new line of business in a B2B company, it can be a little overwhelming. You have dozens of channel options, but which ones do you absolutely, positively need to set up, and in what order?
When I was VP of Marketing at Newfi Lending, we decided we needed a new, proper marketing automation system. The selection process was such an educational experience that I thought it would be worth documenting what we learned, and most importantly, how we chose the right solution for ourselves.
Marketing VPs and even CMOs often get left out of board meetings. If you are invited to present your marketing strategy to an experienced and inquisitive board of directors, take it as more than an opportunity for your big close-up: rather, this is your chance to show how your marketing contributes to overall company strategy and […]
Somebody recently asked me, what is the future of paid search marketing? At first, I thought, the simple (and stupid) answer to this question is: The future of search marketing is whatever Google says it is.
If you do digital marketing in Spanish or many other languages, you quickly realize it’s hard to find good translations for English terms that you use every day.
Recently somebody asked me, is search engine optimization dead? I asked them, what does that even mean? SEO is only dead when people stop using search engines, and I don’t think that’s happening any time soon. So what do people really mean when they say SEO is dead? I took a look at the “literature” […]