How to Prioritize Marketing for your Start-up with Anna Furmanov

Sarah Noel Block: Hey, this is Sarah Noel Block, CEO and head marketing strategy for Tiny Marketing, and this is our weekly show where we give you actual advice that you can implement today. Get your questions ready, because we have Anna Furmanov, start it up marketer and podcast host for Modern Startup Marketing, and she's here to teach us all about prioritization. And by the way, when I was watching that intro go through, does anyone notice the talking... Like the floating head with the black background, that was a bad phase for me. [chuckle] Hey Anna.

Anna Furmanov: Hey, I didn't notice that, but I love your intro. It's such a feel-good intro with lots of people smiling, talking, it's great.

Sarah Noel Block: It's a good time show, we enjoy each other. But with this black background, I can't watch it and not think of myself as a floating head.

Anna Furmanov: Maybe that's one you wanna edit out. Who knows, or it's a good one to keep.

Sarah Noel Block: Well, it is funny, I'm just floating. Well, can you tell us all about yourself? Introduce yourself to the audience.

Anna Furmanov: Sure. So Anna Furmanov and I am the founder of Furmanov Marketing Consulting, also a podcast host for Modern Startup Marketing. My head is filled with two things, three things. Startups, marketing and my kids, for the most part. And so I work with startups, I come from the startup world, tech startups, and I used to head up marketing there, and then I switched over January 2020, now I'm helping consult startups, typically seed-funded series A, series B with their marketing, their marketing strategy, everything from what I will be talking about here prioritizing your marketing, marketing strategy, building that foundation, voice the customer research, to website, messaging, positioning, content, all of the above, so.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah.

Anna Furmanov: Glad to be here.

Sarah Noel Block: I'm happy to have you. I did not realize that when we first started talking, that was when you were at your very beginning stages and you have grown so much, and I didn't realize that I was seeing it from the very beginning. Your brain has just blown up over the past year.

Anna Furmanov: Yeah, that's right, when we were in our little group when the pandemic hit and we were kind of like, "What's happening right now? Let's just get to know each other because we can't really meet a lot of people in person." That's when I met you and learned about you, and learned about Chris, and just like a bunch of different people, and that was the beginning.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's when we were doing our Q&A sessions. It was a lot of fun.

Anna Furmanov: That's right, I enjoyed them.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. So okay, I'm completely ignorant to the VC-funded start-up world. Can you tell me how you got started in that? 

Anna Furmanov: Yeah, I was also completely ignorant at some point, so after business school, I went to work at a more well-known brand, Blistex, and spend some time doing more of brand management there and realize I'm looking for something else, there's gotta be another side to marketing where very nimble, very quick, kind of on your feet. More digitally focused, and so I left and went to work at my very first startup and had a great time. Was at a food technology start-up for two and a half years, and that was my first foray where I learned a lot about what the startup marketing world means, and it's very different from when I was a consultant at Accenture working with these large brands and suddenly you're at a company that's like 30, 40 people and you're a marketer and you're doing it all. Very different.

Sarah Noel Block: Oh man, I honestly didn't realize it was like that, but I understand what it's like to be that one marketer that's doing it all. That was how I got my beginning too, the one-person department.

Anna Furmanov: That's right. And you know how it is, it's like you basically have to... Especially in the earliest stage, plug yourself into everything. Operations, not just marketing, right? Customer success. And I thought that was a really cool part of learning the business. What'd you say? 

Sarah Noel Block: Recruiting was added on, customer success.

Anna Furmanov: Yes.

Sarah Noel Block: And you have to understand everything from copyrighting to graphic design to social, everything.

Anna Furmanov: That's right.

Sarah Noel Block: So what would you say the biggest difference is then between working with a startup and a traditional company? 

Anna Furmanov: I would say, that working at a startup, you just have to be open to trying new things, testing new things and figuring it out quickly. I can't put all companies that are not startups in the same boat, but if they're large enough, you kind of get put into your place and you focus on, let's say, the email channel and optimization there, right? And so that's fine if you wanna dig into the nitty-gritty and figure that out and go deep, but for me personally, I really enjoy high-level strategic conversations and kinda getting the lay of the land across a lot of different areas of a company, that's why I started my own company and have been loving it and enjoying it, as difficult as it is, kind of like figuring it all out yourself and talking to people and being the finance department, the marketing and sales and everything, operations. It's fun. I think if you're that sort of minded person, you're gonna really love that versus going deep into something and staying there for years.

Sarah Noel Block: So, what do you think the biggest challenge is that startups face that no one outside of that world understands? 

Anna Furmanov: There are lots of different challenges that startups face, I would say, hiring the right people early stage is a big one, especially when they're focused on a lot of different things like sales, revenue, proving out that there's product market fit, so bringing on the right kind of person for whatever department you're growing out, right? So typically, if the founder wants to bring on someone, if there's co-founders and they wanna bring someone on to help with the operations of the business, and that business operations person might be tackling some of the sales, and then they might wanna bring on a marketing person, that marketing person needs to be high-level strategic, but also do the tactical, especially in the beginning, so I think... And then you wanna do this quickly, so it's a challenge, I think, to bring on the right people, and then you bring on yours for a salesperson and it's hard to find. It might be a great person that sold stuff really well at the last company they were at, but maybe like for whatever reason, it's not the right fit for this particular startup, so I think hiring the right people early stage and moving quickly is tough.

Sarah Noel Block: That, I mean, that makes sense in the name startup, that there really are starting from scratch, from hiring to everything else, so when they're starting from scratch with marketing, what's the first thing that you implement or that you suggest they do? 

Anna Furmanov: Yeah, that's what the conversation was originally about, right? So typically, in the very beginning with marketing, what I like to do is come in and inspect, like, "What's going on here? How does your house look?" And it's the foundation, and it's very important to clean up the house. Make sure you have a strong foundation. The foundation is filled with things like, "What's your why, your mission? Are the employees on board with it, do they understand it? What is your product or service? Who are you for?" Really understanding that part of doing the customer research, creating bio personas, and then understanding how do you get that problem solved for the customer, what's the result that that customer is looking for? 'Cause really they're buying into not your product, but the result that you will deliver for them. So that's really important to remember. So that's all part of the foundation. Like I said, the why, what, who, how, results, benefits, the buyer, pricing competition, all that stuff, like having a really good grasp and only then do you move on to your... Like, okay, so now you have your channels, your own channels, your brand, your assets, now you're creating your beautiful spaces within your house, you've got a website, typically, you've got your social media company payers, you've got your podcast, your virtual events, your sales materials, all of this stuff that we want to... What'd you say? 

Sarah Noel Block: Email list.

Anna Furmanov: Email, like, yes, everything that you own, and you wanna make sure that you're creating these beautiful spaces, now that you have your foundation created, these beautiful spaces within your house before you share all of that, because a lot of people that... They think, "Okay, we're ready, we've got a product, we're ready to share it with the world," but they haven't actually cleaned up their house and created those beautiful spaces yet to have something to share. So then it's time for the awareness part. So that's number three, and awareness is what everyone gets excited about, letting people know, and the one saying that I always mention with awareness and channels and testing channels is the book traction is really, really good. It's not new, but it still stands the test of time. And talks about how to go about testing different channels in a very systematic way, and I like to put structure to my marketing efforts, so I love this book, and basically it talks about creating your list of top channels, there's lots of channels that you can test, there's lots of channels you could be in, and prioritizing those that you think will work best, so whether it's PR, social ads or email, or going after influencers or virtual events or podcasting, you need to make a list, you need to prioritize, and there's a way to rate what to go after first? And see if it works.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that's actually... Those on my list of questions I wanted to ask is, how do you figure out those channels that really work where your audience is loving? So you recommend the book traction? 

Anna Furmanov: I definitely recommend the book traction. I'm not the only one that recommends it. I've actually talked to other folks that come from the startup world, and it was actually recommended to me when I first started at my first startup. So it's great, it's very much like foundational thinking that I still keep in my back pocket, think about, and even wrote an article on which you can find in my featured section on LinkedIn, which is called 7 Steps To Systematically Test New Marketing Channels. And so that book comes up in there and there's the steps to follow. So if you don't wanna read the book, you can always read the article and it sums it up for you.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes, that I'm adding to cart. It's official, I have a few people on this show and have recommended that book to me and I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Anna Furmanov: That's what I'm saying. It's under the rug, or whatever you wanna call it. People don't really talk about things that are old, 'cause they're like, "What's the new book that's out there around marketing? Oh, I better get that." But there's a lot of tried and tested material that still works to this day. So no matter if you're going to start thinking about new channels like Clubhouse, or TikTok, it doesn't matter. There's still a systematic way to approach figuring out if that's the right channel to test. And also, before you even prioritize your list, you need to do some other research, like look at the competition. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to reinvent everything. Just understand like who are your competitors? And poke around a little bit and see, explore the startups that have more funding. What's working well for them? And then you don't have to start really from scratch. Honestly, startups don't really have to start from scratch. Very few of them are doing something that completely, completely... And I mean, some of them are doing something completely new, but somebody else has done a version of it, so you can check out, well, these people are going after the same customers, what channels are they on? Some more research before you start doing anything.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that's actually my favorite place to start when I'm building out strategies, is, well, competitors. Especially when I'm trying to figure out, what kind of content clusters is this audience interested in? What kind of social media channels do they actually hang out on? So I'll look at our competitors, who has the most followers on what station, or what channel, and which one is the most engaged? Focus there, because it's the same audience. Same with publications. If there is a media publication that has the same audience as you, then download their media kit, because it really... They have the funds to survey enough that it breaks down your customer profile for you.

Anna Furmanov: That's absolutely right. Yeah, yeah. So we're thinking the same way.

Sarah Noel Block: So you are known for your 1-page marketing strategy. Can you tell me more about that? 

Anna Furmanov: Yeah. This is also a very tried and tested approach. And I can't take credit for it. I'm a big reader. I love books. And there's another book that I'm going to recommend. It's called the 1-Page Marketing Plan. And if you don't wanna read it, I also have an article that summarizes it and gives a template out if you wanna feel this plan out. But essentially, the idea behind this 1-Page Marketing Plan, the book is by Allan Dib, is nobody really looks back at their plan, like pages and pages you write, you put so much thought and effort into it, and then you put it away in your drawer, or in your Google Drive, and you never look at it again. And that's a problem, because... Yeah, it's a problem because you actually wanna look back at it over and over. Like, "Okay, is this stuff that we're actually implementing, is it working? And what do we need to tweak?" And you want your CEO to look at it. You want your other teams to look at it, so everybody's on the same page. And so what this does, this plan is essentially just one page, and there's three parts to it. There's like, what do you do with the prospects? Who you're for, your target market, what's your message to them? How are you gonna reach them? And what's your objective, one or two objectives that you wanna hit? 

Anna Furmanov: And then it's the during phase, like, How are you gonna capture these leads? How are you gonna nurture them? Well, how are you going to convert them, and then what are your objectives for that middle stage, the during part? And then the after, which a lot of startups and just companies in general, we forget about the customer and increasing customer lifetime value like, "How do I deliver a world class experience for these customers? Because customers are gold. How do I increase customer lifetime value? How do I get referrals?" Because your customers, if they love you, if they're big fans, if they're ambassadors of your brand and your product, they're going to wanna tell their friends. They're going to wanna tell their colleagues. And so thinking about that and then having objectives tied to the after stage. And that's it.

Sarah Noel Block: I like that. I mean, it's simple, it's straight to the point of what you need. It actually goes really well with a system that another one of my guests, Bob Stanke, he talked about on here, the three-two-one system, so I'm gonna make sure to link that with this. I think that they would pair really well together.

Anna Furmanov: Cool. What is this three-two-one system? I'm intrigued.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes. Let me pull it up. Hold on. It is, basically, you start with one. You have one goal for the year. And then you break it down into two strategies that you're gonna implement to reach that goal, and then with each of those two strategies, three tactics that you're gonna try, three-two-one.

Anna Furmanov: Cool. Oh, I like that.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. It honestly, it's meant to be done in an agile manner, just like startups and tech, and it really was super effective. I'm gonna actually put it in the comments, the link to the blog on it, and it also has access to the video, so everyone can gain access to it. But I recommend reading that paired with this book. That's a great idea.

Anna Furmanov: Yeah, these are two books that are very much part of my early on toolkit of stuff that just works. And I don't like complicated things. I think a lot of times we over-complicate marketing. We're trying to find the latest thing out there, but we already have so much at our disposal. And just picking through that, figuring out what's the high quality stuff that's going to help us plan, test, and be more strategic and be more thoughtful with our marketing.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah. And it's really about being consistent and yourself, like authentic to your message the entire time. I feel like if you have that and you try and genuinely educate your audience, you're going to succeed. You will catch the attention of people, because you're trying to help them, and you're not trying to necessarily sell to them, but educate.

Anna Furmanov: That's right. The other thing I didn't mention with prioritizing your marketing is, after you're done with testing your channels, figuring out maybe one works, two channels work, and then going hard on them, and then still on the side testing some new ones out, you wanna go back and tweak your plan. Never be satisfied with your plan. It's the same thing as startups create their website, and they're like, "Oh my God, we're done. We created our website. Don't touch it." That's not how it's going to be, because if you're constantly talking to your customers and your prospects, and you're learning new things, and it's helping you shape and mold your product and service, you're going to wanna go back and tweak your plan. So it's not going to be perfect right out of the door. And so that's why I like the simplicity of this 1-page, or the 3-2-1 method. The simplicity really helps to have that mindset of, this is a evolution. This is not a static thing.

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And with your 1-page marketing plan, for my own clients, I recommend that we update it each year and make revisions based on what we've experienced throughout that year. And then with the 3-2-1 method, that's done quarterly. So it's a good marriage, those two tools.

Anna Furmanov: Agreed, yeah.

Sarah Noel Block: Is there anything else that you wanna tell our audience before we hop off? 

Anna Furmanov: Is there anything else? Oh man, that's a big question. [chuckle]

Sarah Noel Block: Or do you wanna talk about your podcast? 

Anna Furmanov: Yeah, the podcast, I'm having so much fun with it. And we were chatting a little bit before hopping on here, it is really, just me talking to startup founders and marketing leaders at startups about what they're working on. I've always wanted to do it, so this is kind of like a dream come true. And lo and behold, I ask them and they say yes, and they get on. And I've had really awesome guests talk through what's working really well within their startup, what's the challenges they're trying to overcome, learning more about the person, learning more about the teams within the startup. So really diving in and digging deep and learning more. So if you're as much into startups and marketing, and also modern marketing methods. There are companies that are just... There are startups that are just very kind of like exploring different ways and not being afraid to challenge status quo, And so I look for that when I bring on guests. Is these people, I just... I had the VP of Marketing from Patreon come on, and she blew me with...

Sarah Noel Block: That's huge.

Anna Furmanov: Yeah. Blew me away with all the creativity. I mean, they are a platform for creators, and they have so much content already, but then how do they actually use that content and also create that thought leadership, because that's a pretty high bar. There are four creators, and they're creating content. But she talked through it. It's fascinating. I hope people jump on, listen in, leave a review, give me some feedback. I'm enjoying the experience so much.

Sarah Noel Block: Yes, congratulations. It's grown so much.

Anna Furmanov: Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I didn't realize. And if you asked me back in January, when I started the business, am I gonna start a podcast? I didn't know, but it's one of those things, like, "I wanna explore this. Let's test it out." And it's actually pretty cool.

Sarah Noel Block: And the test showed, yes, continue to...

Anna Furmanov: That's right, yeah. Month over month listeners growing, that's what I look for, as well as the small data of people saying, "This is really cool."

Sarah Noel Block: Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you for coming on today.

Anna Furmanov: Thank you for having me, Sarah. It's so good to see you. It's been quite the journey. And I'm excited to hear about your business. And because you help small teams, small marketing teams power up their marketing. So I'm really glad to be connected to you. Thanks for doing this.

Sarah Noel Block: Awesome, thank you. I'll talk to you soon.

Anna Furmanov: Bye.

Sarah Noel Block: Bye. Thank you everyone for joining us today. As a reminder, I work with small B2Bs with no marketing department as a Virtual Marketing Director and run everything for them for a flat fee. If that sounds like the thing for you, you can go to sarahnoelblock.com/contact right there, and if you enjoyed this show, you'll wanna do a couple of things. Sign up for our newsletter, where you get first notice about our shows, jam-packed weekly newsletters, and more actionable tips, go to sarahnoelblock.com/newsletter, which is also in the description. Next week I'm off, but in April I'll be teaching you how to build out an entire quarter of a content calendar, all in less than an hour. I'm excited to have it. Bring your questions, and I'll see you then. Thank you.