Marketing advantages

You simply can’t win as a startup without marketing advantages.

• When you know what to look for, you’ll spot marketing advantages regularly, especially in high-growth late stage and public companies. 
• To get ahead, you need to figure out where you have a head start and lean in.
• Identifying your marketing advantages helps you pick the right levers, priorities, & tactics.

NOTE: Marketing advantages are an MKT1 framework, but the concept is similar to phrases you may have heard like "distribution advantages" or "unfair advantages."

How to build a strategy around marketing advantages

• First you need to recognize your marketing advantage(s), then you need to throw fuel on these fires. 
• And if your startup doesn’t have marketing advantages, you need to adjust your product, your business strategy, or your go-to-market approach.
• The most successful startups typically have more than one marketing advantage they actively leverage.
• If you have the same marketing advantages as a competitor, it’s not really an advantage.

We've identified 9 marketing advantages in 3 categories

• We break marketing advantages into 3 categories, based on what’s driving the advantage (your product, your ecosystem, and/or your marketing DNA also known as your brand/story)
• Analyzing your other 2 strategy drivers (GTM motion & product marketing research) should help here.
• Some advantages are way stronger than others.
• Some advantages often come in pairs.

We've identified 9 common marketing advantages as you can see in the diagram below.

Product-driven marketing advantages:

1. Network Effects & product virality
2. Free plan or trial
3. Wedge in to larger market (specifically: The product makes it easy to go from one segment to additional segments)

Ecosystem-driven marketing advantages:

1. Integrations/co-marketing
2. Channel partnerships & sales
3. Forcing function: Trends, regulations, timelines

Marketing/brand/story-driven marketing advantages:

1. Audience actively seeks community or educational content
2. Founder story and/or founder/market fit
3. Ability to create or own a category

Once you know your advantages, accelerate them with the strategies in orange below.

For more on the 3 strategy drivers, read this article.

Select marketing tactics based on your marketing advantages

Product-led growth advantages: 

If you have these advantages, it typically makes sense to get as many people into the product as possible and then drive expansion/upsell from there, as each new user helps you get more new users.

• Test organic and paid inbound channels and double down on what’s working. 
• But keep marketing to users throughout their lifecycle to drive engagement, upgrades, and virality—make them your champions. 
• Use owned channels like email, help content, onboarding, and your product to do this.

Market/ecosystem advantages: 

If you have these advantages, you should use people/companies in your ecosystem as a "marketing channel".

• Leverage partners, whether that be customers, companies with integrations, agencies or consultants, or other ecosystem players.
• Use them to help you create content and distribute your “fuel” through their channels.

For more on identifying your ecosystem, read this article.

Brand/story advantages: 

If you have these advantages, you have the ability to differentiate through your marketing content itself. Double down on content!

• Create content that ladders up to your overall story and distribute, distribute, distribute—especially through your own community if you have one.
• Use your founder’s channels to share your “fuel.”

For more on defining your story, read this article.