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Crossing into 2000 many small tech firms and dot com startups hit the wall, racing fast for an IPO or acquisition. This left doubt and trust issues with many tech buyers. It took time to shed the residue, but the ones that survived refocused their companies to grow, NOT flip.
Many of these small companies were left underserved with marketing due to budget constraints—something me and my colleagues saw firsthand during our corporate days. We also saw how mergers and acquisitions spawned many business units that required high volume marketing at a pace that could not be maintained.
Enter TME’s Remote Marketing Cubicle in 2003, a unique marketing management engagement model that offers an affordable employee-like alternative to growing internal resources. We are pleased to celebrate 15 years partnering with early and next stage tech firms who sell software and web apps, hardware and devices, and professional services.
TME was founded to provide an alternative to these 5 recurring problems we had faced:
1. Traditional agencies act like bees on honey, drive-up windows
We saw how small businesses would operate in survival mode due to budget and resource limitations. As a result, they turned marketing off-and-on “as needed”, thus taking a scattershot approach. A traditional agency is happy to indulge this need without learning the client’s business and sales process or commit to results.
At TME we believe success can only be achieved through strategic thinking, planning, and action—integrated marketing is a must. We created an affordable fixed fee engagement model that enables early and next stage businesses get what they really need—a dedicated, proactive day-to-day marketing manager that brings an experienced voice to the table to generate demand and support sales. This resource is then supported by a diverse team of creative processions that execute programs and deliver results. All of this is provided for less than the salary of one employee and without the overhead.
2. Small tech business leaders were burdened with developing content
We often saw how small businesses rely on a jack-of-all-trades approach with every resource wearing many hats. Many times presidents and CEOs would find themselves having to temporarily shift focus to create a marketing asset or sales tool when they really needed to be steering the ship. Instead, TME converts leaderships’ vision and goals into strategic plans and positioning. While leadership stays focused, we work opportunistically to create content, feed marketing channels, and generate demand with measurable marketing tactics.
3. Sales and marketing teams operated on separate islands
Time and again we saw how marketing was used for isolated immediate sales needs—create a brochure for one, specific meeting, setup an event, send out a press release, etc. At TME we preach sales and marketing alignment—the teams must work in concert to be effective. We also insist that content has a purpose and that purpose should be demand generation. We align with sales by clarifying where are roles start, overlap, and end. With an explicit sense of our respective and shared roles in the sales process, we can be more efficient and successful.
4. Subject matter experts were untapped goldmines of valuable insights
Understandably, SMEs most often spend their days head’s down working on the task at hand, dedicated to the smallest technical detail. Whether or not they realize it, in doing so, they are generating the exact nuggets that marketing needs to access to feed marketing channels with relevant, timely content. Without the right process in place becomes time-consuming or even impossible to unearth that value. We have created and refined a collaborative approach that enables us to extract SME gold without burdening their limited time.
5. Many big thinkers, not enough know-how to execute marketing
We saw too many meetings and no results because resources are haphazardly kicking the can down the hallway rather than taking proactive accountability for next steps. At TME we can translate business vision and mission into a concrete, strategic plan. We come to the office every day knowing exactly what we are working on and where we are headed. And because we bring an external perspective, we help clients get out of their own way with focused, measurable programs delivered by TME’s experienced marketing professionals.
If any of these barriers sound familiar, Talk to Us.