Can Marketing Reinvent a Company?

Jun 21

It’s dark days for the open web. Luminaries are proclaiming its imminent demise, and what remains seems to be heading toward a ‘premium’ model predicated on registered users and direct ad sales. Many companies who’ve made their bones in open web display are looking at the landscape and wondering, “How do we move into CTV or retail media, the growing digital ad sectors?”

Is this a marketing task? Yes and no.

Marketing comes after sales when launching a new product

Moving into a new market or launching a new product is similar to launching a company’s initial product. The big difference is that, unlike the founder who has to drum up interest in the initial product despite little to no existing trust in the company, the salesperson trying to facilitate adoption of a new product for an existing company has the benefit of that trust.

So, the first step to launching a new product or moving into an adjacent market is to capitalize on the trust the company has nurtured with its existing customer champions. If you want to move from display to CTV, you should be talking to your customers from the outset about how you can add value to their CTV advertising activities. Bake that into the product. And then, ideally, launch with a few key customers as initial champions.

Marketing is not the part of an organization best positioned to win those initial customers. Sales is (the founder in the early days of a company, salespeople who have the most ardent customers’ ears in later days). Then, once sales has produced a few initial customers through direct contact and existing relationships, marketing can shine a light on them, develop messaging based on what they love about the new product, weave a story that connects the past, present, and future, and evangelize the rest of the market.

I picture this as a sort of horseshoe. You start with direct conversations with the customer (the left side of the horseshoe), go off and build the product (the bottom), and then get it off the ground through a combination of customer adoption (driven by sales) and customer-driven marketing.

How marketing can help evangelize a product or new direction

Once you’ve laid the foundation for marketing by winning over a few initial customer champions, marketing can help evangelize a product in the following ways.

1. Marketing can tell a story to redefine the company. Let’s say you’re moving from display to CTV. Part of marketing’s job is to redefine the company by finding the through line between its past and future. For example, let’s say your strength has always been unique inventory / few programmatic hops, and that applies to both display and CTV. The story should help everyone in the market (customers and those who influence them) understand that continuity, thereby justifying the move into a new (growing) market.

2. Marketing can drive attention. Attention decides who wins and loses. You need to be top of mind for your customers and prospects, especially if you want them to add you to a part of their business where you haven’t historically played a role. Being present daily on direct communications channels, in the press, and at events is a good way to make customers wonder, “Should we be using them for CTV?”

3. Marketing can move sales conversations along. Take note of the many objections you’ll face from customers when you try to get them to use you for something new. Your sales team should be equipped with content that proactively answers every question — and the product team should be working with the customer-facing teams to iron out any kinks that arise.

4. Marketing can help customers get the most out of the product. New products come with new challenges. Often customers say that they’ll start using a new product and may even technically adopt it, but then they don’t do much with it. Show them the way with marketing content that underscores the benefits and illuminates how to unlock them.

5. Marketing can showcase the new product’s champions, thereby evangelizing their peers. How do you win brands, agencies, or publishers over to a new product? FOMO. You show them that their peers are achieving high performance with the product. This means putting customers on stage, spotlighting them in case studies and in social content, and making them the heroes of press coverage (which, by the way, the press is far more likely to produce if customers are onboard).