A Startup’s Guide to Building Awareness

By David Ronald 

Building awareness is essential.  

It’s one of the most important steps a startup can take to achieve sustainable growth. 

It may sound obvious, but time and again, I’ve seen startups overlook this fundamental part of their go-to-market strategy.  

You can have an innovative product, a talented team, and a compelling value proposition, but none of that matters if your target customers don't know who you are, what you do, or why they should care.  

This challenge becomes especially important as startups move beyond founder-led sales and begin scaling their go-to-market efforts. Prospective customers need to understand your company before they will seriously consider your product.  

Building awareness helps create that understanding, establish credibility, and make future marketing and sales activities more effective.   

In this blog I examine seven ways technology startups can build awareness and get noticed by the audiences that matter most.

1. Define Who You Are and Why You Matter

Before investing in marketing campaigns, make sure you can clearly articulate what your company does, whom it serves, and why it is different.  

Many startups describe their products using technical terminology, feature lists, or broad claims about innovation. Too often, however, these descriptions often fail to communicate the business value customers actually care about.

Instead, develop a clear positioning statement that answers three questions:

• Who is your ideal customer?
• What important problem do you solve?
• Why is your solution better or different from the alternatives?

For example, rather than describing a product as an AI-powered workflow automation platform, explain how it helps enterprise teams eliminate repetitive work and accelerate customer response times.  

A clear, consistent message makes it easier for customers, partners, analysts, and investors to understand your business and explain it to others.

2. Establish a Strong Digital Presence

Your website is often the first place prospective customers go to learn about your company.  

It should quickly communicate what you do, who benefits from your solution, and what makes your approach compelling. Focus on making your an educational resource that helps visitors understand the problems you solve and the outcomes you deliver. 

A strong startup website should include:

• A clear homepage message focused on customer value.
• Dedicated pages for key products, use cases, and industries.
• Customer testimonials, case studies, or other evidence of results.
• Educational content that addresses common customer challenges.
• Clear next steps, such as requesting a demo or exploring a relevant resource.

Your website should also be optimized for search engines so prospective customers can discover your company when researching problems that your product addresses.  

As AI-powered search tools become more prominent, publish useful, well-structured content that clearly explains your expertise, products, and use cases. The goal is to make your company easier to discover and understand across multiple channels.

3. Share Expertise Through Thought Leadership

One of the most effective ways for a startup to build credibility is to demonstrate expertise before asking customers to buy anything.  

Founders, executives, and subject-matter experts can publish articles, share insights on LinkedIn, participate in podcasts, and contribute to industry discussions. 

The key, in my experience, is to focus on the challenges your target customers face rather than constantly promoting your product.  

For example, a startup selling cybersecurity software might publish practical advice about reducing security risks. A company developing financial technology might explain how finance teams can improve forecasting accuracy.  

This approach demonstrates that your company understands its customers' problems and has valuable perspectives to share.  

Consistency matters more than volume. Publishing one useful article every week and distributing it effectively can be more valuable than producing large amounts of generic content that nobody reads.

4. Make Social Media a Priority

LinkedIn is a great way to reach business decision makers, industry influencers, and potential partners. 

Startups, however, should avoid relying exclusively on their corporate pages. People are often more interested in insights from other people than in promotional messages from brands. 

Encourage founders, executives, and employees to share perspectives, discuss industry developments, and participate in conversations relevant to their audiences. 

A practical approach is to develop a regular cadence of content covering customer challenges, lessons learned, industry trends, product innovations, and customer successes. 

Employees can also help expand reach by sharing company content with their own perspectives rather than simply reposting it. 

The objective is to make the company recognizable and memorable to the people most likely to benefit from its solutions.

5. Build Relationships Through Events and Communities

Industry conferences, webinars, roundtables, and networking events can help startups connect directly with potential customers and partners.

But successful event marketing starts long before the event itself.  

If your company lacks awareness, simply announcing a webinar may not generate the registrations you want. People are more likely to attend when they already recognize the company, trust its expertise, or have a compelling reason to participate. 

Build awareness by contributing to industry communities, collaborating with complementary businesses, speaking at relevant events, and sharing useful content before promoting your own activities.  

When hosting an event, focus on a specific audience and a meaningful business challenge. Invite speakers who bring credibility, encourage executives and salespeople to personally invite relevant contacts, and follow up with attendees and registrants afterward. 

Remember that events are not just opportunities to generate leads. They are also opportunities to build relationships and establish your company as a valuable participant in its industry.

6. Use Public Relations and Strategic Partnerships

Startups don't need a massive public relations budget to earn attention. 

Begin by identifying publications, newsletters, podcasts, and industry analysts that influence your target market. Develop compelling stories about customer outcomes, original research, product innovations, or important industry changes. 

Journalists and industry commentators are generally more interested in a meaningful story than in a company's latest promotional announcement. Focus on why the development matters to the audience.

Strategic partnerships can also expand your reach. Collaborating with complementary technology providers, consultants, industry associations, or established businesses can introduce your company to audiences you would struggle to reach independently.  

Look for partners that serve similar customers without directly competing with you. Joint webinars, co-authored content, customer events, and integration announcements can create mutual value while increasing visibility.

7. Improve Over Time

Awareness can feel difficult to measure, particularly for early-stage startups. 

Several indicators, however, can help you understand whether your efforts are working. Track metrics such as branded search volume, relevant website traffic, direct visits, social engagement among target audiences, media mentions, event registrations, and inbound inquiries. 

Pay attention to the quality of engagement, not just the quantity. For example, reaching 10,000 people who are unlikely to buy your product is less valuable than reaching 50 decision makers in your target market. 

Also ask customers how they first heard about your company. Their answers can reveal which channels and activities are generating meaningful awareness. 

And use these insights to refine your messaging, invest in effective channels, and discontinue activities that consistently fail to reach the right audience.

Conclusion

Building awareness isn't a one-time campaign. It's an ongoing effort to help the right people understand who you are, what you do, and why your company matters. 

For startups, the most effective approach combines clear positioning, useful content, a strong digital presence, executive visibility, industry relationships, and consistent measurement. 

Before asking potential customers to choose your product, give them a reason to know your company. That is where sustainable growth begins.  

Thanks for reading. 

Are you interested in exploring how to build awareness of your startup? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.

Your Marketing Generates Leads, But Does It Help Close Deals?

By David Ronald  

We marketers love to report our on successes. 

Website traffic is up; campaign engagement is strong; lead generation exceeded expectations. In summary, marketing-qualified leads are pouring into the sales pipeline. 

But there’s one question every CEO needs to be asking:  

Is marketing helping us win more business? 

Generating leads is important, but it’s only one part of the customer acquisition process. 

If those leads don’t turn into opportunities, and those opportunities don’t become customers, marketing may be creating activity without delivering business value. 

For technology companies looking to scale, the opportunity is to move beyond measuring marketing by how many people it attracts and start measuring how effectively it helps convert prospects into customers.  

In this blog post I explore five ways marketing can do more to close deals.

1. Stop Measuring Marketing Success by Lead Volume Alone

Lead generation is an essential marketing function, but not all leads are created equal. 

A campaign might generate hundreds of leads yet produce very few qualified opportunities. Another campaign might generate a smaller number of leads but result in several high-value customers.  

So, which campaign is more successful? The answer should be obvious, but companies often focus on lead volume because it’s easy to measure. 

Instead, marketing should evaluate performance across the entire funnel, from initial engagement through closed business.  

Consider tracking these metrics:

• Lead-to-opportunity conversion: What percentage of leads become legitimate sales opportunities?
• Opportunity-to-customer conversion: How often does the company win deals once an opportunity enters the pipeline?
• Pipeline generated: How much potential revenue can be attributed to marketing programs?
• Marketing-influenced revenue: How does marketing contribute to deals throughout the buying process?
• Sales cycle length: Are marketing activities helping prospects make decisions faster?

No single metric tells the whole story. 

Together, however, these measurements help reveal whether marketing is attracting the right buyers and helping move them toward a purchase. 

The goal isn’t to abandon lead generation. It’s to connect lead generation to the outcomes the business actually cares about.

2. Find Out Why Deals Stall or Are Lost

Marketing teams often focus on the beginning of the buying journey. They develop campaigns, publish content, optimize landing pages, and encourage prospects to request demonstrations.  

But what happens after a prospect enters the sales pipeline? 

Do buyers understand the product’s value? Are they concerned about implementation complexity? Are competitors telling a more compelling story? Is the prospect struggling to build internal consensus or justify the investment? 

These are questions marketing should help answer. 

Start by working with sales to review recent wins, losses, and stalled opportunities. Look for patterns in the reasons prospects give for not moving forward. 

For example, if prospects consistently say they don’t understand how your product differs from alternatives, the problem may be positioning and messaging. If they recognize the value but struggle to justify the cost, marketing may need stronger business-case materials, customer evidence, or ROI tools.  

If deals repeatedly stall because buyers cannot get internal approval, content designed to help champions communicate the business value to other stakeholders could make a difference. Every stalled deal contains information marketing can use to improve future results. 

The key is to turn that information into action rather than treating lost deals as a sales problem alone.

3. Give Sales the Content It Needs to Win

Marketing teams produce a tremendous amount of content: blog posts, ebooks, webinars, social media updates, product announcements, and thought leadership. 

These assets can build awareness and attract potential customers. But do they help a salesperson answer a difficult question, overcome an objection, or persuade a buying committee? 

That’s a different challenge. 

Sales teams need materials that address the specific concerns buyers raise during the decision-making process.  

Examples include:

• Competitive comparisons that explain meaningful differences between your product and alternatives.
• Customer success stories that demonstrate how organizations like the prospect achieved measurable results.
• ROI calculators and business cases that help buyers justify the investment.
• Technical and implementation guides that address concerns about deployment, integration, and risk.
• Executive presentations that connect the product to strategic business priorities.

The best approach is to involve sales in content planning. Ask salespeople which objections they hear most frequently, what information prospects request, and what materials would make their conversations more effective.  

Then prioritize content based on its potential to influence buying decisions. 

It’s also important to measure whether salespeople actually use the content and whether it helps advance opportunities. Downloads and page views are useful indicators, but they don’t establish that a piece of content is helping close deals.

4. Help Buyers Understand Why They Should Choose You

In crowded technology markets, products can sound remarkably similar. Competitors may all promise greater efficiency, better visibility, lower costs, or improved productivity. 

When every vendor makes similar claims, buyers have difficulty distinguishing between them. 

That creates a problem for sales. Representatives must work harder to explain why their company is different, and prospects may default to familiar vendors, lower prices, or the option that seems least risky. 

Marketing can address this by developing a clear, differentiated value proposition. 

Start with three questions:

• Who benefits most from our product? Identify the customers whose needs and priorities align most closely with what you offer.
• What business problem do we solve particularly well? Focus on the outcomes customers care about rather than a long list of product features.
• Why should customers choose us over the alternatives? Identify differences that matter to buyers and can be supported by evidence.

Customer interviews are especially valuable here. Your internal assumptions about why people buy may not match the reasons customers actually choose you. 

Use those insights to refine website messaging, sales presentations, product demonstrations, and competitive positioning. 

When buyers quickly understand what makes your company different and why that difference matters, sales conversations can focus more on solving their problems and less on explaining what your product does.

5. Make Marketing and Sales Accountable for Shared Outcomes

Even a strong marketing strategy can underperform when marketing and sales operate independently. 

Marketing may celebrate the number of leads delivered, while sales complains about lead quality. Sales may struggle to close opportunities without explaining what buyers need. Both teams can hit their individual activity targets while the business misses its revenue goals. 

The solution starts with shared accountability. 

Marketing and sales should agree on what constitutes a qualified lead, when an opportunity is ready for sales engagement, and how leads should be followed up. They should also establish a regular process for reviewing pipeline performance, conversion rates, stalled deals, and customer feedback. 

A practical starting point is a monthly revenue-focused meeting where both teams examine three questions:

• What’s working? Which campaigns, messages, content assets, and channels are contributing to qualified opportunities and closed business?
• What’s not working? Where are prospects dropping out, and what patterns emerge in lost or delayed deals?
• What should we change? Which specific improvements will have the greatest potential to increase conversion and revenue?

These meetings should lead to decisions and action items, not just another reporting exercise. 

Marketing can then adjust campaigns, messaging, and content based on what sales learns from buyers. Sales can improve its follow-up and use marketing insights to make conversations more relevant. 

Over time, the two functions become more effective because they're working toward the same business outcomes.

Conclusion

Generating leads is not the finish line. It’s the beginning of a process that turns potential customers into paying customers. 

Marketing creates the greatest business value when it helps the right buyers recognize a problem, understand the available solutions, see why your company is the right choice, and build confidence in their decision.  

That requires more than effective campaigns. It requires an understanding of the sales process, close collaboration with sales, compelling differentiation, useful buyer-focused content, and metrics that connect marketing activity to business results. 

If you're a CEO or marketing leader, start with a simple exercise: review your last ten closed-won deals and ten lost or stalled opportunities with your sales team.  

Look for patterns. Identify where marketing could have helped. Then choose one or two improvements to test over the next 30 days.  

You may discover that the biggest opportunity isn't generating more leads. It's doing a better job of converting the interest you've already created into revenue.

The most effective marketing teams don't just fill the pipeline. They help the business turn that pipeline into customers. 

Thanks for reading. 

Are you interested in exploring how to ensure your market campaigns are contributing to review? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.

Why the Traditional Marketing Funnel Is Breaking Down

By David Ronald 

For years marketers have operated with a relatively familiar model.  

A prospect discovers your company, visits your website, downloads something, becomes a lead, enters a nurturing campaign and eventually talks to sales.  

It was never quite that simple, of course, but the model gave marketers a useful framework for thinking about how buyers moved from awareness to consideration to purchase.  

That model is becoming increasingly difficult to recognize.  

Today’s buyers are doing more research on their own, using more sources and interacting with companies later in the process. Increasingly, AI is sitting between the buyer and the information they are looking for.  

The result is a fundamental change in how people discover, evaluate and select B2B vendors. 

In this blog post I explain why the funnel is becoming harder to see and what you can do to address this. 

Your Website Is No Longer the Front Door

The traditional buyer journey assumed that your website was one of the primary places where prospects learned about your company.  

In my opinion that assumption is increasingly outdated.

A potential customer might hear about your company in a LinkedIn post, ask ChatGPT which companies solve a particular problem, read reviews on G2, ask colleagues in Slack for recommendations, watch a product demonstration on YouTube or search for customer opinions on Reddit.

They may do all of this before ever visiting your website.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating this behavior because it can synthesize information from multiple sources and present a buyer with an initial answer, or even a shortlist of vendors, without requiring the buyer to visit dozens of websites.

The result is a fundamental change in the role of the website.

A strong website is still crucial, of course, but it is increasingly becoming a validation destination rather than the starting point of discovery. By the time someone arrives, they may already know who you are, what you do and who your competitors are.  

The question is whether your website gives them enough evidence to keep you on the list. 

The Shortlist Is Being Created Earlier

This may be the biggest change of all.

Historically, marketing often focused on generating a broad pool of potential buyers and then helping sales narrow that pool down.

AI can reverse that process by helping buyers create their own shortlist before they ever identify themselves to a vendor. 

A buyer can ask, "What are the best platforms for solving this problem?" The answer might contain five companies. They can then ask, "Which of these is best for a 500-person company?" and the list gets smaller. They might follow that with, "How does Company A compare with Company B?" At this point, the buyer is already evaluating specific vendors, even though none of those vendors may know the buyer exists. 

G2's 2026 research found that AI chatbots had become the leading source influencing which software vendors make buyer shortlists, ahead of software review sites, market research firms and vendor websites. 

This is a profound shift because marketing is no longer simply trying to create awareness and capture demand but needing to influence the conversation that happens before demand becomes visible. 

Introducing the Dark Funnel

There has always been a part of the B2B buying process that marketers couldn't see.

Buyers talk to colleagues, forward emails, mention vendors in meetings and ask friends for recommendations. Private Slack groups, direct messages, online communities, podcasts and peer networks can all influence a buying decision without producing a trackable marketing interaction.

This "dark" activity has always existed, but the amount of buyer research happening outside traditional marketing channels is growing.

AI adds another layer. A buyer can conduct extensive research inside an AI assistant without generating a website visit, clicking an ad or filling out a form.

From the marketer's perspective, nothing happened but, from the buyer's perspective, a lot happened. They may have developed an opinion about your company, compared you with competitors and decided whether you belong on the shortlist, all without creating a single identifiable marketing signal.

This creates an uncomfortable measurement problem. A marketing team may look at declining organic traffic and conclude that its content strategy isn't working. At the same time, the company's brand may be appearing repeatedly in AI-generated recommendations and influencing buyers who eventually arrive through direct traffic.  

The activity is real but the attribution simply isn't. 

Stop Measuring Only What You Can Track

This doesn't mean marketers should abandon traditional metrics.

Website traffic, leads, conversion rates and pipeline remain important, and companies still need ways to determine whether marketing investments are producing business results. But those metrics no longer tell the entire story, particularly when much of the buyer journey happens before a prospect becomes identifiable.  

In my opinion, marketing teams need to start asking different questions, such as: 

• Are we appearing when buyers ask AI about our category?
• What does AI say about us compared with our competitors?
• Are customers and industry experts talking about us in places we don't control?
• Are our most important claims supported by credible third-party sources?
• Are prospects arriving at our website already knowing what they want?
• And how often are we being included in buyer shortlists?

These are harder questions to answer than "How many people downloaded our whitepaper?"

They are also increasingly important.  

Marketing measurement needs to expand beyond activities that can be neatly attributed to a campaign and start considering whether the company is influencing the broader market in which buying decisions are being made. 

Content Has a New Job

This shift also changes what good content looks like.

For years, marketers created content primarily to attract traffic, generate leads and support SEO. And, sure, those goals still matter, but content now has another job: helping buyers understand why your company matters.

This requires more than publishing generic articles filled with keywords. Companies need content that clearly explains what problem they solve, who they solve it for, how their approach differs, where they are particularly strong and where they may not be the best fit. 

They also need credible customer evidence, useful comparisons, clear explanations of their category and specific proof that supports their claims.

The goal isn't simply to produce more content but to create content that provides enough useful information for a buyer to understand the company and accurately represent it.

In other words, content needs to be useful even when the buyer never becomes a lead.

And that's an important mindset change.  

The objective isn't always to get someone to click, fill out a form or download something. Sometimes the objective is to make sure that when someone asks, "Who should I consider?", your company has a credible answer. 

Marketing Has to Become More Distributed

The old model placed much of marketing's responsibility on a relatively small number of controlled channels: the website, email, advertising and perhaps events.

The new buyer journey requires a broader approach because buyers are forming opinions across a much larger ecosystem. Your brand needs to show up across the places where customers actually learn, compare and validate companies.

That includes search and AI platforms, obviously, but it also includes industry publications, review sites, communities, social networks, podcasts, analyst reports, customer stories and third-party conversations.

This makes third-party credibility more important, not less. You can tell buyers that you're innovative, but a customer saying it is more powerful. You can say you're the market leader, but independent analysts, customers and industry experts can provide evidence. You can publish a comparison page explaining why you're better than the competition, but buyers will still look elsewhere for validation.  

The winning brands will increasingly be those that are easy to understand, easy to validate and easy to recommend. Marketing therefore has to think beyond what the company says about itself and focus on the broader body of information that buyers encounter while researching the category. 

Conclusion

So, what does all of this mean for marketers?

Well, it means the job is getting bigger.

Marketing can no longer think exclusively about generating demand that can be captured and measured. It has to influence demand that may remain invisible, make the company discoverable in AI-driven research, establish credibility in third-party conversations and make the company compelling when buyers finally arrive at the website.

This also means marketing has to work more closely with sales, product, customer success and even customers themselves.

The story being told across the market needs to be consistent, understandable and credible, whether that story comes from your website, a salesperson, a customer review, an industry publication, a LinkedIn post or an AI-generated answer.

Okay, so the traditional funnel isn't dead... 

But the assumption that marketers can see buyers moving through it is. 

The modern B2B buyer may spend days, or even weeks, researching your company without ever raising their hand. By the time that buyer contacts sales, much of the decision may already have been made.

The question for marketers was once, "How do we get buyers into our funnel?" Now it's, "How do we influence buyers before they ever enter it?"

And that is the new B2B buyer journey.

Thanks for reading my blog post.

Are you interested in discussing how to reinvent your marketing funnel? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.

The New Playbook for Marketing Campaigns

By David Ronald  

Marketing has changed dramatically in recent years.  

The traditional campaign model was built around broadcasting a message to the largest audience possible. 

Brands invested heavily in television, radio, print, and digital advertising, hoping that repetition and reach would drive awareness and ultimately influence purchasing decisions.  

While those tactics still have their place, the most effective marketing campaigns today operate differently. 

Modern audiences are overwhelmed with content. 

They are exposed to thousands of messages every day across social media feeds, streaming platforms, websites, podcasts, email inboxes, and mobile apps. In this environment, simply increasing media spend is no longer enough to guarantee attention.  

The campaigns generating the biggest impact today seem to share a different set of characteristics. They are designed around how people discover, consume, trust, and share information in a digital-first world. 

Based on what I’ve observed in my career to date, the most successful modern campaigns consistently incorporate five key elements. In this blog post I examine each of them in turn.

1. Algorithm and Community Strategy

The best marketers understand that every platform operates according to its own rules. 

Success on TikTok looks very different from success on LinkedIn. What performs well on YouTube may fail completely on Instagram. The content, format, timing, and engagement patterns that drive visibility vary significantly across channels.  

Modern marketers recognize that distribution is no longer just about publishing content. It is about understanding how algorithms surface content and how communities amplify it.  

Short-form video platforms reward engagement velocity. Professional networks reward expertise and conversation. Niche forums and private communities reward authenticity and participation.  

The most effective campaigns are built with these dynamics in mind from the beginning.  

Rather than creating content and hoping people discover it, marketers design campaigns that align with platform behaviors. They understand where audiences gather, what conversations are already happening, and how content can naturally become part of those discussions. 

In many cases, this approach generates significantly greater reach than paid advertising alone.  

When content aligns with both platform mechanics and community interests, it can spread organically through network effects that no media budget can easily replicate. 

2. Influencer and Creator Ecosystems

Trust has become one of the most valuable assets in marketing.  

Consumers have grown increasingly skeptical of traditional advertising. They are more likely to trust recommendations from people they follow and respect than messages coming directly from brands.  

This shift has elevated creators, influencers, industry experts, and niche thought leaders into critical components of modern marketing strategies.  

The most successful campaigns, however, are not simply paying influencers to promote products.  

They are building relationships with creators who already have credibility within specific communities.  

The difference is important.  

Audiences can quickly identify promotional content that feels forced or transactional. On the other hand, when a trusted creator genuinely incorporates a product, idea, or solution into their existing content, the message feels natural and believable.  

The strongest marketing programs today view creators as strategic partners rather than distribution channels.  

These partnerships help brands access established audiences while benefiting from the trust and authenticity that creators have spent years building. 

As a result, creator ecosystems are becoming one of the most powerful mechanisms for accelerating awareness, credibility, and customer engagement. 

3. Language Engineering

One of the biggest mistakes marketers continue to make is assuming that a single message can work everywhere.  

In reality, every platform has its own language, culture, and expectations.  

A message that performs exceptionally well on LinkedIn may feel overly formal on TikTok. A highly polished corporate video may underperform compared to a casual smartphone recording. A long-form thought leadership article may resonate with executives while failing to capture attention on Instagram. 

Modern marketing requires what could be called language engineering – the ability to adapt messaging to fit the context of each channel without losing the core story. 

The best brands are no longer creating one campaign and distributing it everywhere.

Instead, they develop a central narrative and then translate that narrative into multiple platform-specific expressions.  

On LinkedIn, the story may focus on business outcomes and strategic insights. On TikTok, the same story may become an entertaining short-form video. On podcasts, it may evolve into a deeper conversation. On YouTube, it may become a detailed educational resource. 

The underlying message remains consistent, but the delivery adapts to the audience and environment.

Brands that master this skill often outperform competitors because their content feels native rather than repurposed. 

Audiences reward content that fits naturally within the platform experience.

4. AI-Powered Micro-Targeting

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how marketers identify, understand, and engage audiences.  

Historically, targeting relied on broad demographic categories such as age, location, income level, or job title.  

Today's tools allow marketers to move far beyond those traditional approaches.  

AI can analyze engagement patterns, content preferences, browsing behaviors, purchase signals, and audience interactions at a much deeper level.  

This enables a more precise form of micro-targeting.  

Instead of delivering one message to a large audience, marketers can tailor creative assets, messaging, offers, and timing for specific audience segments.  

The result is greater relevance.  

And relevance is often the deciding factor between engagement and indifference.  

For example, two individuals may share similar demographic characteristics but respond to completely different messages based on their interests, behaviors, or stage in the buying journey.  

AI helps marketers identify these distinctions and personalize experiences accordingly.  

Perhaps more importantly, it enables campaigns to evolve in real time.  

As engagement signals emerge, messaging can be refined, audiences can be adjusted, and creative can be optimized continuously. 

This creates a feedback loop that improves campaign performance over time rather than relying solely on pre-launch assumptions. 

5. Multi-Channel Content Distribution

Great content rarely succeeds because it appears once.  

It succeeds because people encounter it repeatedly across multiple touchpoints.  

Modern marketers understand that content is no longer a one-time asset. It is a source material that can be transformed, repackaged, and redistributed across channels.

• A podcast interview can generate social clips, blog articles, newsletters, quote graphics, video snippets, and discussion topics.
• A webinar can become a series of short videos, educational posts, and downloadable resources.
• A customer interview can fuel case studies, testimonials, social content, and sales enablement materials.

This approach significantly increases the return on content investments while creating multiple opportunities for audiences to engage.  

Equally important, modern distribution strategies combine polished and unpolished content.  

Highly produced videos still have value, but audiences increasingly respond to content that feels authentic and human.  

Behind-the-scenes moments, livestreams, founder updates, employee perspectives, and unscripted conversations often generate stronger engagement than heavily edited brand content.  

People connect with people.  

The most effective brands recognize this reality and balance professionalism with authenticity.

The Common Ingredient

Looking across these trends, a common theme emerges.  

Modern marketing is becoming less about broadcasting and more about building momentum.  

Traditional campaigns often relied on interruption. Brands pushed messages outward and hoped audiences would pay attention.  

Today's campaigns work differently.  

They gain traction by aligning with audience interests, platform behaviors, community dynamics, and trusted voices.

• They spread because they are relevant.
• They earn engagement because they feel authentic.
• They scale because networks amplify them.

The goal is no longer simply to reach people. The goal is to create conditions where people choose to engage, share, discuss, and participate.  

That is where network effects begin to emerge.  

And when network effects take hold, marketing becomes far more powerful than advertising alone.

Conclusion

The brands winning today are not necessarily the ones spending the most money. 

They are the ones creating the most momentum.  

In an increasingly crowded digital landscape, that may be the single most important competitive advantage a marketer can build.  

Thanks for reading.  

Are you interested in discussing how to modernize your marketing campaigns? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.

How to Create a Category and Shape a Market

By David Ronald  

Most companies think they’re competing in a market.  

The best companies realize they’re competing to define it...  

And that distinction is everything. 

If you enter an established category, the rules are already written. Buyers have expectations, analysts have frameworks, and competitors have carved out positions. 

You’re playing a game that someone else designed, where differentiation is incremental and price pressure is inevitable. 

But, when you create a category, you shift the conversation entirely. You redefine the problem, not just offering a better solution. And in doing so, you give yourself permission to lead. 

In this blog post I explore how to create a new category and share a market.

The Difference Between Positioning and Category Creation

Positioning is about standing out within a category.  

Category creation is about redefining the category itself.  

Most marketing teams are comfortable with positioning – they refine messaging, sharpen value propositions, and highlight differentiation. It’s necessary work, but inherently reactive - you’re responding to an existing frame.  

Category creation, on the other hand, is proactive.  

It asks a more fundamental question: Are we solving a problem that the market fully understands – or are we seeing something others don’t yet see clearly?  

If it’s the former, positioning will suffice. If it’s the latter, you have an opportunity, and a responsibility, to shape the narrative.

The Mechanics of Category Creation

Category creation is a coordinated effort across product, marketing, sales, and leadership. 

At its core, it involves these three interlocking moves:

1. Reframe the Problem

Every category is built on a shared understanding of a problem. To create a new category, you need to challenge that understanding, which often means surfacing a hidden cost, risk, or opportunity that the market has overlooked.

For example:

• Moving from “file storage” to “content collaboration”.
• From “customer support” to “customer experience”.
• From “data tools” to “data platforms”.

The shift is conceptual, not just semantic. It expands the scope of what buyers should care about.

2. Introduce a New Lens

Once you’ve reframed the problem, you need to give the market a new way to evaluate solutions. This is where frameworks come in. And, in my experience, great category creators simplify complexity into clear, memorable constructs:

• Maturity models.
• Capability maps.
• New metrics or KPIs.

These tools do two things:

1. They educate the market
2. They position your approach as the logical answer

If buyers start using your language to describe their challenges, you’re shaping how they think.

3. Anchor Your Solution as the Standard

The final step is to connect your product to the new category in a way that feels inevitable. This is where many companies stumble because they either:

• Stay too abstract and fail to tie the category to their offering, or
• Get too product-centric and lose the broader narrative

The goal is balance – your product should feel like the natural embodiment of the category you’ve defined, and not just one option among many.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Category creation is powerful, but it’s also easy to get wrong. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

1. Overcomplicating the Message – if your category requires a 20-slide deck to explain, it won’t stick. Simplicity wins.
2. Ignoring the Customer’s Starting Point – buyers don’t wake up thinking in your new category. You need to meet them where they are and guide them step by step.
3. Declaring a Category Without Earning It – you can’t just name a category and expect the market to follow. It requires sustained effort, credibility, and proof.
4. Misalignment Across the Organization – if marketing is pushing a category narrative but sales is selling features, the strategy falls apart. Alignment is critical.

A Practical Way to Think About It

If “category creation” feels too abstract, I recommend simplifying it. It’s about answering three questions better than anyone else:

1. What’s the real problem?
2. Why does it matter now?
3. What’s the right way to solve it?

If you can answer those questions clearly, and consistently, you’re already shaping the market.

Conclusion

Most companies wait for the market to tell them who they are, but category creators do the opposite. They define the problem, name the solution, and invite the market to see things their way.  

It’s not the easier path. It requires conviction, patience, and alignment across the business. But, if you get it right, you’re no longer competing for attention within a crowded space… 

Because you’re building the space itself.  

Thanks for reading. 

Are you interested in discussing how to create a category and shape a market? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email address is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you.

AI Tools that Unlock Customer and Market Insights

By David Ronald  

Understanding your customers and market is essential.  

Yet, traditional research methods like surveys, focus groups, and manual data analysis often fall short, especially as data volumes grow exponentially.  

This is where AI-powered tools come into play, enabling organizations to uncover insights faster, more accurately, and with deeper context.  

In this blog post I examine AI tools that can be used to surface customer and market insights. 

AI for Customer Behavior Analysis

One key area where AI shines is customer behavior analysis.  

Platforms like Gong and Grain leverage natural language processing to analyze customer conversations across calls, emails, and chat interactions.  

By detecting recurring themes, sentiment shifts, and emerging pain points, these tools surface insights that would take human analysts weeks to uncover.  

Sales teams, for example, can quickly identify patterns in objections or frequently requested features, allowing product and marketing teams to respond with more targeted messaging or roadmap adjustments.

Quantitative Data Analysis with AI

Another powerful application of AI is in quantitative data analysis.  

Business intelligence platforms like Looker, PowerBI, and Tableau increasingly integrate AI features that automatically detect trends, anomalies, and correlations in datasets.  

AI, for instance, can highlight an unexpected drop in engagement for a particular customer segment or reveal a new purchasing pattern among a previously overlooked demographic. 

These insights can guide decisions ranging from marketing campaigns to product enhancements, ensuring that strategies are grounded in real, data-driven evidence. 

AI for Market Intelligence and Competitive Analysis

Market intelligence and competitive analysis also benefit from AI.  

Tools like Crayon, Klue, and Kompyte automate the collection and summarization of competitor activity, tracking product launches, pricing changes, and messaging shifts across websites, social media, and news sources.  

AI algorithms can distill this information into digestible insights, enabling businesses to spot market trends early, benchmark performance, and adapt positioning in near real-time.  

Similarly, AI-driven social listening platforms like Brandwatch, Sprinklr, and Talkwalker analyze vast amounts of online conversations, identifying emerging trends, sentiment shifts, and unmet customer needs. 

This allows brands to proactively adjust strategies or innovate in ways that resonate with their audience.

Generative AI for Insight Synthesis

In addition, generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can synthesize complex datasets and research into actionable narratives.

For example, after feeding AI a mix of survey results, sales notes, and social listening reports, it can summarize key insights, suggest strategic recommendations, or even draft go-to-market messaging.

This accelerates decision-making while maintaining clarity and precision. 

Conclusion

The real power of AI lies not just in data collection, but in turning data into actionable insights.

By combining natural language processing, predictive analytics, and automation, organizations can move from reactive decision-making to proactive strategy.

Teams can identify new opportunities, understand customer pain points more deeply, and respond to market shifts faster than ever before. 

Thanks for reading.

Are you interested in testing AI tools that can be used to surface customer and market insights? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email address is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you. 

6 Common Mistakes That Companies Make Scaling from $10M to $50M

By David Ronald

Growing a company from $10 million to $50 million in annual revenue is an exciting milestone, but it’s also a phase fraught with risk.

At this stage, the product has found market traction, but scaling too quickly or misaligning priorities can undermine growth.

Many companies stumble not because the idea is flawed, but because the operational and strategic challenges of this stage introduce new pitfalls.  

Here’s a look at the most common product mistakes and how to avoid them. 

1. Scaling Too Quickly Without Process

A common mistake is attempting to accelerate feature development or product launches without a repeatable, scalable process.

Early-stage companies often rely on ad-hoc decision-making and rapid iteration, but once you’re pushing toward $50M, this approach can create chaos. 

Without structured prioritization and a clear roadmap, resources are spread thin, teams become reactive rather than strategic, and the product can lose focus.

Establishing processes for feature evaluation, cross-functional collaboration, and release management is critical. 

2. Neglecting the Core Product Experience

It’s tempting to chase new customer segments or expand the product’s scope to capture additional revenue. 

However, neglecting the core user experience, reliability, or performance can have disastrous consequences. 

If existing customers encounter issues or perceive declining value, churn can spike just as growth efforts intensify. 

Companies must maintain rigorous quality standards and ensure the core product remains strong even while pursuing new opportunities. 

3. Overgeneralizing for Multiple Segments

At this stage, companies sometimes try to be everything to everyone.  

Catering to too many customer types simultaneously dilutes the product’s value proposition and confuses messaging. 

Prioritizing the segments that drive the highest growth and retention is essential. 

Clear market segmentation allows for targeted product development, marketing, and sales strategies that reinforce the company’s competitive position. 

4. Ignoring Go-to-Market Alignment

Product decisions made in isolation from sales, marketing, and customer success can lead to features that fail to resonate with buyers.

At the $10M–$50M stage, alignment across teams becomes more critical because missteps have magnified consequences.  

Integrating feedback loops between product and GTM teams ensures that development efforts address real customer pain points and contribute to revenue growth. 

5. Underinvesting in Scalability

Technical debt, support processes, and operational infrastructure that worked at $10M may crumble under the demands of a larger user base. 

Performance issues, outages, or support bottlenecks erode trust and slow adoption. 

Planning for scale, both technically and operationally, is essential to sustain growth. 

6. Poor Metrics and Feedback Loops

Finally, relying on intuition rather than systematic data can lead to misprioritized features and missed opportunities. 

Tracking adoption, retention, and usage patterns allows companies to make evidence-based decisions, quickly course-correct, and double down on initiatives that drive measurable growth. 

Final Thoughts

In summary, the path from $10M to $50M revenue is about more than product innovation – it’s about discipline, alignment, and foresight. 

By avoiding these common pitfalls and focusing on scalable processes, customer experience, and data-driven decisions, companies can turn early traction into sustainable growth and set the stage for their next phase of expansion. 

Thanks for reading.

Are you interested in proactively addressing common mistakes when scaling your business? If so, feel free to get in touch. My email address is david@alphabetworks.com – I look forward to hearing from you. 

What is the 1% Rule in Marketing?

By Sharon Lee  

In marketing, there’s a persistent temptation to chase the big moment – the viral campaign, the major rebrand, the breakthrough idea that changes everything overnight.  

While those moments can be impactful, they’re rare and often unpredictable. 

The more reliable path to sustained growth lies in something far less glamorous: incremental improvement. 

This is where the 1% Rule comes in.

The Origin of the 1% Rule

So, just what is the 1% Rule?  

Popularized by James Clear in his 2018 book Atomic Habits, the concept is straightforward: if you get just 1% better each day, those small gains compound into significant progress over time.  

While Clear framed this idea in the context of personal habits, its application to marketing is both natural and powerful.

Why Incremental Gains Matter in Marketing

At its core, marketing is a system of interconnected levers – conversion rates, engagement metrics, retention, acquisition efficiency, and more.  

Each lever can be optimized:

• A slightly stronger subject line might lift email open rates.
• A clearer call-to-action can improve click-through rates.
• A refined onboarding experience may increase activation.  

Individually, these improvements seem marginal but, together, they can dramatically reshape performance. 

The math is compelling because improving by 1% doesn’t just add up, but compounds. 

And, over time, these small gains multiply, creating a widening gap between teams that embrace continuous optimization and those that rely solely on sporadic big bets.

The Organizational Challenge

Many organizations struggle to adopt this mindset because the 1% Rule runs counter to how marketing teams are typically structured and rewarded. 

Big campaigns are visible. They earn recognition, budget, and executive attention. Incremental improvements, on the other hand, often happen quietly, across dashboards, experiments, and iterative tweaks.

They may lack the drama of a product launch or rebrand, but invisibility doesn’t diminish impact.

In fact, the most effective marketing organizations build their success on a foundation of continuous, iterative improvement.

They don’t wait for quarterly planning cycles to make changes but are constantly testing, learning, and refining. 

Cultural Advantage of Continuous Improvement

Adopting the 1% Rule doesn’t just improve metrics—it transforms team culture.

When the goal is to improve by one percent, the barrier to action becomes much lower. Teams are more willing to experiment because the perceived risk is minimal. Failure becomes a source of insight rather than a setback.

This creates momentum – one of the most underrated forces in marketing. 

When teams see consistent, incremental gains, it reinforces confidence in the process. Progress becomes visible, repeatable, and motivating.  

Over time, this mindset compounds just like the metrics themselves. 

Balancing Big Bets with Small Wins

Embracing the 1% Rule doesn’t mean abandoning bold thinking.

Breakthrough campaigns and strategic pivots still play an important role. They should, however, be complemented, not replaced, by a disciplined focus on daily optimization.  

The most successful marketing teams strike this balance – they think big when it comes to vision and strategy, but they execute through small, continuous improvements. 

Putting the 1% Rule into Practice

In practical terms, applying the 1% Rule in marketing can take many forms: 

• Systematically A/B testing landing pages.
• Refining audience segmentation and targeting.
• Optimizing ad spend allocation.
• Improving content relevance based on performance data.
• Iterating on messaging and positioning.

None of these actions are revolutionary on their own. But over time, they compound into a meaningful competitive advantage. 

Final Thoughts

In a field as dynamic and data-driven as marketing, the edge rarely comes from a single moment of brilliance.

More often, it comes from the quiet, consistent pursuit of getting better…

Just 1% at a time. 

Thanks for reading my blog post.

How are you applying the 1% rule in your marketing? Feel free to get in touch with me at shamikodesign@gmail.com if this is a topic you’d like to explore further.