This post originally appeared in our Startup Growth Newsletter.
I firmly believe in the power of drumbeat marketing to organically build brand awareness. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to get a little aggressive and do some outbound marketing as well.
If you can provide free value to someone, I think it is fine to send a cold email. Our Fuel platform has a free tier, and market and competitive intelligence is hugely beneficial, so we have been making startups aware of this through an outbound email campaign.
In my email, I write, “From my experience helping scale Dyn to $100 million ARR, market and competitive intelligence is one of the most important tasks.”
Naturally, despite the value, not everyone wants these emails, and I have received a few polite “please remove me from your list” requests, which I have happily obliged. Recently, however, one person responded by saying that I was only the director of comms at Dyn, so I was misrepresenting my credentials.
While I appreciated the feedback, I took great umbrage with the point. I worked countless nights and weekends helping build Dyn. The company’s success wasn’t a job for me. It was a mission, an obsession, a vocation. I truly believe that the work I did there for four years helped accelerate the growth of the company.
As I responded to this person, sometimes the title doesn’t represent the impact.
That is an important thing to remember as you continue to grow your company. Not all leaders are in the C-suite. Appreciate and celebrate the stars that are having an impact on your business regardless of department or title.
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