Ognjen Bošković’s Post

I'm launching a social content agency and I'll be documenting the whole journey in public. Here's the core agency offering: - Monthly subscription gets you epic 12 social posts - Text-based content, occasionally design, video later - Monthly strategy sessions with me - Thought-leadership and storytelling focused - Ideally for founders, executives and VPs personal profiles (LinkedIn and X) - Only top 1% copywriters (this month I tested 70 writers and only onboarded 2) - You spend only ONE hour a week on this I want this agency to be known for radical content quality standards above anything else. You know how CXL is famous for superb blog content quality? I'll make sure we earn a similar infamy in the realm of social content. And I'm not scared of making a few writers angry. The other thing I can promise is bringing subject matter expertize to the table. If you're in construction, we cannot help you (although I know a lot about building log cabins). But if you're a B2B SaaS (or an agency serving it), we'll tell your stories like no one else. Finally, performance. You don't come to us just so we can write about your CEO being 'thrilled to announce a new feature' or about '5 business lessons learned from raising my kids'. You come to us to spread your narrative with the target market, establish trust with your future buyers, demonstrate your expertize, document the journey and eventually, drive revenue. If we can't agree that all this (brand & content marketing) equals growth, then we probably won't be a great fit either. Now back to documenting the journey. Here are some of the things I'll be sharing: - Building systems & process - Hiring freelance writers, designers, video editors - Growing the full-time team (editors and content strategist) - Acquiring, onboarding & retaining clients I'm still not sure about sharing revenue numbers - when people do that, it often seems like cheap click-bait, or a humble brag. On the other hand, it makes you look more real, transparent. Proper skin in the game. We'll see. (I'm interested in what you think about this, and if there's other things you'd love to see me sharing, the comment section is yours) So I guess that's it for now. Obviously, I cannot end a post like this without a call to action. Which is - ping me and let's talk about how we can help you dominate social. And if you're interested in me documenting this journey for the benefit of y'all consuming it, tell me how I can make this as valuable to you as possible. Cheers.

You just gotta love all the new 'customer-led' playbooks. 'Hey, we'll show you how to grow, you just get the customers first, ok?'

Six months of consulting now, usually as the fractional head of brand & content. But I used to be on the other side of this relationship, the client side. And I hated how most consultants approach their gigs: 🌑 Too often, their engagement is low-effort & low-touch 🌒 Lack of ownership mentality, responsibility and initiative 🌓 Servicing too many clients and therefore being very limited on time & focus 🌔 Mostly focused on strategic work, almost never on execution That’s why when I became a consultant, I made it my top priority to be different, because the approach described above mostly produces little-to-no results and required additional work (and headaches) from the inhouse team, beating the very purpose of hiring an external expert. So, I made some commitments that turned into sort of a manifesto I add to my proposals: ☑ Ownership mentality, I make it my job to see projects through and own relevant areas of responsibility and KPIs ☑ Execution with clear deliverables, not just strategic/advisory work ☑ Acting as a part of the team, not an external party ☑ I don’t work with more than 3 clients in any given time period, giving me enough time and focus for each ☑ My goal is to deliver 80% of the value of a full time head of brand & content marketing hire, for roughly 50% of its cost and minus most of the meetings ☑ No contracts except the ones you want me to sign (like NDA), you can end the engagement on the very day it stops being valuable to you Much healthier version of consulting, at least for me and my clients.

Random rant to vent 6 years of marketing frustrations instead of seeing a therapist: ☑ The single main goal of marketing is to become the first brand the prospect recalls when they get into the buying mode ☑ Most efforts should go into marketing to prospects who are not in the buying mode (which is 95% of the market) ☑ Understanding the customer is the holy grail of marketing and it's also a journey that never ends ☑ It is your duty to educate both the customer and your own organization ☑ At least 20% of your time and effort should go into making big bets instead of just optimization ☑ Never fully trust the data and don't forget that the biggest achievements still happen when you trust your gut ☑ Marketing department should be the ultimate authority on customer intelligence within the organization (most often, it is not) ☑ The quality of work bar is generally VERY low, just look at the LinkedIn content in your feed ☑ Abundance of resources doesn't ensure success; it's almost always the small teams with limited resources that ship truly great stuff ☑ Most of B2B is obsessed with efficiency; the name of the game should be effectiveness ☑ A lot of go-to-market activities get 10x more attention and resources than they deserve and are horribly ineffective (lead generation, lifecycle marketing, retargeting, most of blog content, etc) ☑ Before you complain about your CEO who doesn't get marketing, look yourself in the mirror first - it's most likely you who doesn't get business ☑ It's hard to truly differentiate, try playing the game of distinction instead ☑ Putting 'creative' back in 'creative design' is one of the easiest ways to stand out That felt good. Now back to fixing B2B marketing.

Go-to-market is the last true competitive advantage. There's not much room left for debate around this, but here are a few facts just in case: ↘ Building a product has never been cheaper ($3,000 to launch a startup on average) ↘ Customer acquisition costs are the biggest item on P&L sheet (total sales & marketing spend) ↘ Most of us play in oversaturated spaces with little to no true product differentiation So how do you win? It comes down to this: ☑ Know your customer better than competitors ☑ Conquer segments one by one, start small & specific ☑ Stay close to the customer and keep reinforcing the feedback loop ☑ Build a strong, distinctive brand ☑ Move quickly & focus on effectiveness, not efficiency If you're an operator that's close to revenue and customers, you're seeing proof of this daily. Especially in 2023/2024 when VC money dried up and reality hit us in the face. And if you've been reaching similar conclusions but not sure where to start, Maja Voje and I are hosting a bootcamp in February that will help you do exactly that, and move from PMF and 'some growth' to HYPER growth mode. You can see the full curriculum here: https://lnkd.in/dC62QqJJ It's not gonna be one of those theoretical programs where you walk away with a ton of useless information you can't put into action, delivered by people who've done real work and driven real growth last time 5 years ago. Ping me or Maja if you have any question, happy to discuss more. If we figure the bootcamp ain't the right fit for you and we can't deliver immense value, we'll tell you so.

How B2B thinks marketing works: ☑ buyer out market (I'm not interested in buying stuff now) ☑ gets exposed to your marketing (hey this is awesome, I need this) ☑ moves to market, buys (google ad made me buy $150,000 software!) How marketing really works: ✅ buyer out market ✅ first marketing touch ✅ nothing happens ✅ second marketing touch ✅ might remember your brand ✅ dozens of marketing touches later ✅ remembers the brand ✅ nothing happens for 9 months ✅ moves to market after getting a new job ✅ remembers the brand from a narrow consideration set ✅ convinces CEO & CFO they need the tool ✅ due diligence research because CFO asks for 3 alternatives ✅ buys the brand they have the most affinity for anyway And then... Software attribution gives last touch credit to a Google Ad. Sales rep get paid a commission for talking to them after they've already decided they'll buy from you. Lovely. Anyway, this is still a simplified version of a B2B buyer journey. Reality is even more complex. Duh. But if you stick to these principles based on proper, evidence-based research, you'll be fine: ↘ Only 5% of your B2B buyers are in the buying mode (you can’t force the 95% to buy from you on your terms) ↘ 80% of B2B buyers have a day-one vendor in mind (expose out-of-market buyers to your brand) ↘ 90% of B2B buyers choose a vendor from that list (the goal is to enter this narrow consideration set) And make sure they don't wait a week for that demo session when they come to you, ready to buy. And let them talk to a subject matter expert, not a junior sales rep tasked with qualifying leads.