5 ways startups can succeed in 2023

After a much-needed break over the festive season, the new year brings re-energised optimism and motivation for the year ahead. (At least we hope!)

But, as we enter a period of economic downturn, Bloom is here to help UK startups and scale-ups with their marketing efforts - so they can succeed in 2023 and beyond.

That's why we've rounded up the top tips for getting ahead in these stormy times:

1. Re-align your team around your mission

Your company mission is an incredibly important navigational tool. According to investor / entrepreneur Orinola Gbadebo-Smith: a well-crafted and effectively-utilised mission statement is capable of driving billions of dollars in value.

If you've already defined your company's mission, then now is a good time to refresh everyone's memories and re-focus your team's mental attention on this all-important business foundation. A revisit exercise not only helps keep everyone aligned, but also motivates your staff - particularly necessary during turbulent times.

If you've not properly worked on defining, crystallising, aligning, and cementing your company mission, then don't underestimate the value of this sort of exercise. According to Forbes, mission-driven employees are 54% more likely to stay for at least five years, and 30% more likely to become high performers. Also, organisations high in trust are 2.5X more likely to achieve revenue growth.

Contact Bloom if you'd like an external, impartial party to take your startup through this impactful exercise.

2. Get your hustle on

We're not here to condone working to the bone, but these trying times will see founders getting "back out there," building their personal profiles, and driving sales teams to get back to good ole' fashioned outreach.

In an article by Joe Morrissey for Silicon Valley VC firm, Andreessen Horowitz, the seasoned General Partner cites the following top tips for combating a drop in sales:

Use data

Clarity is the first step for effective action. A solid way to define new sales targets is to use use data. From here you can reverse-engineer sales targets, along with the ratios or conversion points necessary along the funnel.

Build a pipeline-first culture

The human motivation required to encourage sales teams to "get out there" is equally important. In Joe's article, he shares various examples of how high-performing teams have created a fun and motivating culture for Business Development and Account Execs.

In one case, CROs run dedicated team prospecting days and competitions to motivate their teams. At Ambient.ai, every Thursday is "pipeline day" and reps who get the most connections spin a wheel for a prize.

Create a playbook

Developing a clear playbook is key to having a rinse & repeat system for success. Joe Morrissey outlines the following steps for an effective sales playbook:

Prioritise, research, define tools & KPIs, devise your outbound messaging and sequences, engage cross-functional stakeholders, qualify, and execute. (More here).

Integrate the pipeline process

Once the direction is set and playbook is created, the success or failure often rests on how well the Founder/CEO, Head of Sales, Chief Commercial Officer or - ideally - the Chief Revenue Officer in your team integrates pipeline generation into the weekly routine of frontline managers and reps.

These sort of sales tactics are vital to drive growth - just make sure you take care of yourself (and your teams!) along the way.

3. Get OBSESSED by your customer!

Customer-centricity, customer-led, the customer's always right... Whatever terminology resonates best with your team - the deep dive focus on your customer is key to business growth.

Ideally you have a detailed Ideal Client Profile mapped out that's backed up by data and regularly refreshed. Whether your insights are gleaned from analytics platforms, surveys / questionnaires, sales data, social media listening tools... Or getting out there and actually speaking (listening) to people!

Jeff Bezos is famous for talking about customer focus, a lot. He has often shared the importance of not only listening and passively reacting, but deeply understanding the customer and playing "Mystic Meg" in proactively offering them solutions before they even know it. One of his quotes neatly sums up this topic:

Eyes on the prize. Getty image of Michael Phelps about to win the Olympics. Notice how the runner-up is too busy rubber-necking!

4. Use the 80:20 budgeting rule

If you've been keeping an accurate record of various sales and marketing activities over the past year or so, then you should therefore also have visibility of the results achieved so far - and, more importantly: the cause of these results. Knowledge is power, as they say, so leverage these findings and double-down on what works.

But... It's important to balance this simple strategy with at least some tolerance for experimentation. Uncertainty still exists and just because something worked before is not a guarantee of repeated success. There is no single silver bullet, and marketing results have surprised even the most senior among us (human beings have a natural way of keeping us on our toes!) So keep an open mind and apportion say 10-20% of your marketing budget to some testing.

5. Don't overlook the power of brand

As the UK's favourite brand marketing agency for tech startups and scale-ups, we might be a bit biased here - but with good reason!

Most startups go through the same order of marketing - from owned media (i.e. blogging on your own website, creating content for your own social media channels, or running email campaigns to subscribers) to paid media (i.e. social ads, pay-per-click, display, retargeting...)

This makes perfect sense from a purely financial perspective (when you're bootstrapped just starting out of course you're going to start marketing with your owned channels, and as soon as you start making money or secure investment, the next place it makes sense to try is performance marketing). The problem is beyond this point things get a bit cloudier. Ad performance starts to plateau after a while and the same efforts as before don't seem to be garnering the same results.

Did you know that a strong brand can 3X your speed to profitability, allow you to charge more (therefore increasing margins), increase customer lifetime value by 33%, and encourage that all-important WOM (word-of-mouth*) marketing

Read more about the power of brand here.

In summary: as much as we hope all you startup founders and operators are kickstarting the year with renewed energy and optimism, economic forecasts denote we are in for a rocky ride in 2023. That's why it's vital to: rally your team & re-engage them around your company mission; get back to old fashioned sales; and implement a balanced marketing mix across various channels without overlooking your longer-term challenger brand-building.

We didn't say it would be easy, but heck - if it were we'd all be doing it, right? ;)

Bloom is here to support UK tech scale-ups take their business to the next level. From scrappy startup to sophisticated scale-up, our own big mission is to be the agency behind the country's next unicorn. Will your business be one of the next top names cited to have emerged from this recession? We hope so.

Bloom is an award-winning marketing agency specialised in brand performance, across strategy and execution, to help businesses achieve the next level in their growth journey.

With work featured in the likes of Forbes, The Independent, and Sifted, we are proud to have delivered fantastic, tangible results to our high-growth clients. Would you like to join them? Contact us today.