How Leaders Maximize Marketing Resources in Challenging Times
Bain & Company research found that “coming out of the last recession, the strongest companies went on offense early, while many of their peers focused on survival and waited for the cycle to clear.” This offense included maintaining marketing while competitors cut back, and focusing on improving the customer experience.
Even as marketing resources get cut, our clients have found a way to maximize those resources to stand out among competitors, and ride and rise through the tough times.
Marketing leaders who recognize that they can stretch their marketing dollars further if they nail their positioning come to us for help. They believe in our data-driven approach to make sure their positioning is highly targeted to their audience.
How Positioning Drives Efficiencies
Positioning is tightly tied to the company’s strategy. It describes how a brand is different from its competitors and where, or how, it sits in customers' minds. When done right, it aligns the entire company around a single strategy and message. It gets everyone climbing up the same path—a direct path to your audiences in the words and emotions they are feeling. It drives marketing, sales, product and the customer experience. And positioning projects typically cost less than 4 percent of a $5 million marketing budget.
Here’s how ZOOM clients optimize their marketing spend:
FloQast hired ZOOM in early 2020 right before the pandemic hit the U.S. They remained committed to the positioning project in order to galvanize the team and prepare for growth. Two years later, in February 2022, FloQast announced a 97% year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the quarter, as well as 153% year-over-year growth.
FloQast CMO at the time, Wynn White, put into perspective the advantage of a data-driven approach to positioning: “We have a lot of confidence that the messaging developed resonates with our key audience, Now we will put the full weight behind the arrow for marketing and sales.”
We’ve positioned Snowflake three times, from startup to a near $45 billion market cap. CMO Denise Persson’s secrets to success include positioning for the battle for the customers' minds. Positioning is where marketing begins: “If your positioning is not very clear, it’s going to cost you more to get across the messages you want the market to hear.”
To Denise, getting employees, partners, and customers to describe you the same way is key to scaling. The more consistent you are, the more impactful your marketing will be. Recently she shared this sage advice: “Make sure your messages reflect your positioning (which needs to be crisp and differentiated) and then get them out in the marketplace. If you don’t, you are wasting money. I guess I would say you can’t afford to not have your positioning nailed, especially during these difficult times.”
When Scandit came to us for positioning in 2021, they were looking for a big idea to define and broaden their category to prepare for major growth and a funding round. Analysts positioned Scandit in the “computer vision” category, but leadership wanted to break free and define their own hill. Together, we came up with and tested Smart Data Capture. The promise: Give superpowers to your workers, customers, and business with unmatched speed, accuracy and intelligence. We also discovered that their customer experience was a key to their differentiation.
By boldly defining the new category, Scandit sales engagements have moved beyond transactional “point product” discussions. They report that the sales team has shifted to deeper, more strategic customer conversations resulting in bigger deals that solve complex business problems and foster business transformation.
Aerospike faced two challenges: breaking through the noise among competitors who outspend them; and developing tested positioning that reflected their advanced product portfolio.
Bill Odell, Aerospike’s CMO, describes the positioning results: “The entire team is aligned on a differentiated story. Since repositioning, the company has reported its best year ever. And in a highly competitive market, this included a landmark sale that displaced a long-time embedded competitor.” Four months post-positioning, Aerospike had its best quarter in history and 100% increase in booking growth year-over-year.
How Can We Help You Survive and Thrive?
As Silicon Valley’s first and longest-lasting positioning agency, we’ve survived three recessions. We were busy during the pandemic, with smart companies seizing the opportunity to improve their value, spend wisely on aligned marketing, and be ready to sell when things turned around. Across the board, our clients not only reported success during tough times but were poised for rapid growth as the economy re-opened. We’d be happy to share case studies with you.
ZOOM’s data-driven positioning has generated over $125 billion in market cap. Let us know if you want to learn more about our data-driven process. We’ll happily explain our methodology and share examples of how clients have driven strategy and growth.