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Did you know you’re the CMO?

Founder-led sales. Founder as Head of Product. Founder as Chief Technology Officer.

Even with all the roles startup founders play, an important one gets less attention: Founder as CMO.

While B2B startup founders often find themselves defining the product roadmap and closing new accounts, they don’t always realize they’re the first marketing leader, too.

Why? Many technical founders have a background in product development but no formal marketing experience. They have to get hands-on with sales, and most initial customers come from their network and warm introductions. “We don’t need marketing yet,” they say.

Plus, many founders don’t quite know how to define marketing or why it’s important.

• Is it brand? (That feels too creative and squishy to prioritize).
• Is it advertising? (Not my sweet spot. I’ll hire an agency to test some digital ads.)
• Is it content? (I’m not a writer, so *pass*).

But without knowing it, founders often execute the foundational work of a product marketer, growth marketer, and content marketer all rolled into one CMO. They’re constantly defining (and refining) messaging to describe their company and product. They’re reaching out to prospective customers and generating leads. And they’re writing, speaking, or posting to build brand awareness. All of these activities, and many more, land founders directly in the role of the first CMO.

Here’s the truth: founders who embrace being CMO will help their companies grow faster. And after working with 100s of early-stage startup founders over the past few years, I see where smart founders focus their marketing energy.

Here’s a short list of challenges that B2B startups often face and ways founders can solve them with the right marketing strategy.

Founder as Product Marketer

Challenge:

Prospects don’t “get” why our product is the best for them

What gets in the way: Your startup doesn’t define its ideal customers, their needs and desires, and why your product is the best choice. Your messaging is unconvincing or confusing.

What great Founder CMOs do: Proactively define their go-to-market foundation (persona, positioning, personality) and create product messaging that attracts and converts prospects.

How to take action:

You’ve built an amazing product. Now you need to describe it in a way that hooks your ideal customers. You need messaging that shows how your product delivers the exact results this customer needs (and how it’s better than any other solution).

As a default, many founders describe the features and technical aspects of their products to lure in prospects. But the best founders learn to take the insights that guide their product roadmap (unmet customer needs, competitive differentiators, the benefits of their solution, and more) and create great product messaging. Once founders learn this process, they can quickly refresh messaging anytime their product or market shifts.

There are three stages to taking great messaging live:

1. Define your GTM foundation: ideal customer persona, positioning, personality
2. Create a powerful product messaging framework
3. Develop copy and refresh marketing touchpoints

To start, define the 3 Ps of your GTM foundation. Here they are:

Persona: First, define who exactly you are talking to and trying to influence. Capture their most acute pain points, top desired outcomes, biggest shifts that make them open to new solutions, and most intense objections. You need to address these elements in your messaging. This helps your ideal customer realize your product will solve their challenge and is valuable.

Positioning: Even if your ideal customer persona values what your product delivers, they still may not understand what makes it the better choice than other solutions. You need to define exactly what makes your product different and better than the alternatives. Then you can position your product as the best option for your persona. Does your product solve a problem for a specific customer segment better than any other solution? Does your product unlock benefits a customer can’t get anywhere else? Figure out what attributes make your product uniquely attractive, and highlight those in your messaging.

Personality: Finally, you need to define a brand personality and tone of voice your ideal customers find appealing. Is your brand voice more serious or casual? Do you want your brand to appear authoritative, approachable, or something else in your copy? Deciding on a personality and tone will ensure your copy and content are more consistent. It will further differentiate your product from competitors, too! A great brand personality makes an emotional connection with your persona and gives your brand an edge.

After completing these steps, you’ll have the inputs to create a powerful product messaging framework. This messaging will be the basis for what you say throughout many touchpoints, including your homepage, sales deck, social posts, email sequences, and more. Align on a framework first, then write the copy that customers will see in each channel.

Your product messaging framework includes these three elements:

• Unique Selling Proposition (USP): A USP is an elevator pitch that succinctly explains your product’s value to your ideal customers. Here’s a formula (replace the words in bold):

Your product is a what/category for who/ideal customer that delivers desirable outcome.

• Value propositions: Next, develop three statements that describe your product’s top benefits. These capture your most valuable differentiators. They’re the three most important and appealing messages that help your ideal customers choose your product over the others.
• Proof points: Now back up the claims that your product delivers impressive results. Identify features, customer quotes, media coverage, and data that validate your value propositions. You’ll weave these into your homepage and other content.

Founder CMO Example

Advex AI enables manufacturing and logistics companies to use computer vision to find defects on parts and pick items from conveyor belts and bins. How? Advex provides synthetic images that enable accurate vision in a fraction of the time it takes to capture real-world images,

To stand out, Advex’s CEO and Co-founder, Pedro Pachuca, realized their homepage needed to speak to their ideal prospect’s needs and desired outcomes. They needed to move beyond describing their product’s impressive technical features to explain and emphasize the ROI and benefits of using Advex. They developed value props that highlight how Advex’s synthetic images increase customer time to value, improve vision accuracy, and reduce downtime. Emphasizing their product’s differentiated benefits helped Advex generate more pipeline.

With this messaging framework, a founder can create copy or (ideally) work with a copywriter and designer to refresh their homepage, sales deck, and other important pieces of marketing collateral. Any time something significant changes about your product or the competitive landscape, a founder can repeat the process to refresh their messaging.

Founder as Demand Generation Marketer

Challenge: We need more quality leads for the sales team

What gets in the way: Startups often focus on filling the top-of-funnel to make more people aware of their product and generate leads. But without a compelling website and other “nurture” content that engages prospects, these potential leads bounce and never talk to sales.

What great Founder CMOs do: Develop an acquisition strategy for the full buyer journey to attract, nurture, and convert leads.

How to take action:

Many founders think that marketing’s most important role is generating leads. But too many startups focus on filling the top of the funnel before launching an experience that warms up those leads for sales. When this happens, top-of-funnel marketing efforts bring prospects into a leaky bucket. Potential customers can’t find enough information to feel convinced that your product is a good option for their needs. If the prospect does meet with sales, they go into the conversation “cold,” making it much harder for the team to close the sale.

As a startup’s de facto demand generation leader, founders need to develop a strategy for each stage of the buyer’s journey:

• Attract: how will you catch the attention of new prospects, make them aware of your product, and entice them to learn more? (this is top-of-funnel)
• Nurture: how will you help prospects understand that your solution is the best choice, get them engaged, and “qualify” them for a sales conversation? (this is middle-of-funnel)
• Convert: how will you enable sales and ensure prospects decide to buy? (this is bottom-of-funnel, including sales enablement)

Before testing ways to attract new prospects, I encourage founders to start in the middle. First, develop an effective nurture strategy. Here are great places to focus:

Update your website.

With new messaging, founders will be ready to make high-impact changes to their homepage. A homepage needs to speak directly to your primary buyer persona.

• The hero module starts with a strong headline and hook, highlighting a compelling result your solution generates or the problem it solves. Then it shares your USP and a clear call-to-action (CTA) to take the next step in your sales process.
• Then the homepage introduces your three value propositions that showcase your product’s differentiated benefits
• The rest of your homepage includes a range of proof points that validate how your product delivers exciting results
• Finally, conclude with a clear CTA so your prospect can take the next step, such as “request a demo”

Create compelling nurture content.

Strong messaging gives prospects an attractive overview of your product. But prospects need much more information before they agree to speak to sales and buy. That’s where nurture content comes in. You need to curate highly useful content and experiences that make it obvious why your solution is their best choice. These could be longer format articles, case studies, downloadable PDFs, short videos, webinars, or in-person events. Topics that work best include:

• Symptoms: Help prospects better understand the warning signs or hidden costs of not addressing their problem or continuing with a sub-par solution.

• Results: Show the transformation and impact customers have had after using your solution through testimonials, case studies, and data.

• Differentiators: Highlight your main differentiators and the criteria your persona should use to evaluate a solution (your product should spike in these areas!)

Without this content, your prospects will find it difficult to evaluate whether your product is right for them or worth the investment. It’s less likely they’ll agree to speak with sales.

Harness the power of earned media.

‍Another key tip to generate and nurture leads: land earned media. Earned media placements include press coverage, podcast guesting, speaker opportunities, contributing content to newsletters, and more.

When you tap earned media, you will reach other people and publications’ established audiences, which will help you build brand awareness and attract new prospects. Perhaps more importantly, each time you’re featured in media, it creates a content asset that builds credibility. When a host or media outlet features your startup, it’s an informal endorsement and becomes social proof. Articles, podcast episodes, and trusted media logos are incredible nurture assets.

While landing top-tier press coverage requires working with an agency or PR specialist, founders can pitch podcasts, blogs, and newsletters independently. Create a shortlist of media targets that reach your ideal customers and that they trust. Then send the host an idea for an episode or article, your bio, and any examples of past coverage. You’ll land opportunities, which often open more earned media doors, too!

Founder CMO Example

Co-founder of Conduit Tech, Shelby Breger, wanted to help HVAC professionals choose their LiDAR-powered sales and design platform over other solutions. She developed a set of content that highlighted Conduit’s differentiators, including how LIDAR improves load calculation accuracy and customer engagement in the sales process. Shelby then published this content on the startup’s blog, shared blurbs on LinkedIn and Facebook, and highlighted the most useful content on her homepage.

She also invested in other high-value nurture content. The team captured customer testimonials, including how one HVAC pro tripled their sales thanks to Conduit. Shelby led webinars to demonstrate how Conduit gets better results (and offered the recording on-demand to reach more prospective pros). Plus, Shelby guested on several podcasts, and co-hosted an online event with a well-trusted HVAC leader, to reach established audiences and develop lasting nurture assets. This focus has helped the team drive more inbound leads and speak to much warmer, qualified prospects.

Founder as Content Marketer

Challenge: We need to create more brand awareness and credibility

What gets in the way: Founders are well-positioned to cut through the noise and be the company spokesperson and champion. But they may shy away from the limelight or the burden of creating content.

What great Founder CMOs do: Focus on founder-led brand building and consistently publish useful content to grow an audience, brand awareness, and credibility.

How to take action

It’s clear that to fuel your marketing strategy, you’ll need great messaging and content. Founders can use these assets to build brand awareness when they actively publish, speak, and show up as thought leaders. As a founder, it’s never too early to become known for your expertise and the excellent solution you’ve launched.

As a start, choose one or two social media channels as your focus. Then publish content consistently (ideally 2-3x or more per week). Choose the platform based on where your ideal customer is most likely to find you and listen to you (this is often LinkedIn, but could be Facebook, Instagram, X, or another platform). Publishing a “rolling thunder” of content will help you build an audience and become a credible thought leader.

Don’t get overwhelmed by thinking you’ll need to create tons of content to fuel this strategy and build a presence. Instead, develop a critical few pieces each quarter. In parallel, repurpose content assets you’ve already created for the buyer journey.

Here are three types of content to post regularly:

1. Thought leadership content. Choose 2-3 topics related to your industry and solution where you feel excited to share expertise and a bold point of view. You can publish a mix of shorter posts and longer articles. Bonus: this founder thought leadership content is great to pitch to earned media outlets, too! Distribute widely to increase reach.
2. Nurture content. Share your engaging nurture content with your audience! Post takeaways and blurbs from these pieces on social media. Link to longer format content or videos. You could also choose a monthly theme to keep your topic focus fresh.
3. In real-life updates. As a founder, you’re attending events, leading sales conversations, hiring employees, meeting with investors, speaking at conferences, and more. Turn these experiences into posts. Share insights and takeaways as you go about your business.

Founder CMO Example

When Srikanth Nayaran launched Cache, he knew that most of his ideal customers would never have heard of a product like his before. Cache is an exchange fund that helps people diversify their assets when too much of their net worth is tied up in one or two stocks. This is a common challenge for employees of fast-growing public tech companies, who find their wealth trapped in illiquid stock positions. Exchange funds are a great solution, but before Cache, this investment vehicle was inaccessible and only open to the ultra-wealthy.

To build awareness, excitement, and trust, Cache’s co-founder and CEO focused on creating content and building visibility via LinkedIn. He consistently posted eye-opening, thoughtful articles and graphs on the power of exchange funds that caught the attention of stockholders and financial advisors. This increased inbound interest in Cache, helping the startup close its first exchange funds. When Cache announced an impressive seed fundraise in early 2024, Srikanth’s credibility opened doors to more press and podcast coverage.

Social media isn’t the only way to ramp up founder-led brand building. Securing earned media opportunities is another amazing brand-builder. Plus you can earn awards, test content collaborations, and use your network to build brand awareness and credibility.

The work you put into establishing your founder brand helps a startup gain traction. You’ll be able to establish and reach an ever-growing audience of ideal customers, employees, and investors. You’ll open doors for more and bigger earned media opportunities. Above all, you’ll set the tone for your brand and product, so prospects immediately get a positive impression of your startup.

Building a Marketing Team

Clearly, Founder CMOs can tap many levers that unlock growth. This article serves as a checklist for marketing strategies to prioritize.

But the job can get overwhelming quickly. Now that you understand these different roles within the CMO umbrella, you can more easily decide what skills you want to hire (and hand over that role). Consider which hats you still want to wear (product marketing vs. growth vs. content), and which ones are the biggest stretch for you.

Where do you need the most help?

• Hire a product marketing manager (PMM) if you need someone to develop messaging and positioning, lead feature and product launches, or drive sales enablement
• Hire a demand generation manager if you need someone to generate a pipeline and qualified leads for your sales team, owning your acquisition strategy
• Hire a content marketer if you need someone to develop content to fuel your earned media strategy, and partner with PMM and demand gen on their content roadmap

Here are some great resources from RevelOne on how to hire the right first marketer for your B2B SaaS startup or B2B enterprise startup.

Over time, you’ll build a team that masterfully leads each marketing function. But, as a first step, you can embrace your role as Founder CMO to increase sales, revenue, and brand awareness.

About the Author
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Allyson Letteri is a marketing executive, startup advisor, and author of “Standout Startup.” She helps early-stage tech startup leaders launch effective GTM strategies that drive user growth. She’s also built and led successful marketing teams at Handshake, Thumbtack, and Intuit.

About RevelOne
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RevelOne is a leading go-to-market advisory and recruiting firm. We help hundreds of VC/PE-backed companies each year leverage the right resources to achieve more profitable growth. We do 250+ retained searches a year in Marketing and Sales roles from C-level on down for some of the most recognized names in tech. In addition to our Search Practice, our Interim Expert Network includes 250+ vetted expert contractors – executive-level leaders and head-of/director-level functional experts – available for interim or fractional engagements. For help in any of these areas, contact us.

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