A horizontal platform that does everything can struggle with messaging. To solve this, "productize" the platform by identifying top use cases and creating dedicated bills of materials (decks, demos, content) to architect targeted demand generation campaigns for each.
Setting an audacious, almost arbitrary goal like $1B ARR acts as a catalyst for innovation. It signals that incremental improvements are insufficient and requires the entire organization to develop new strategies and standards to reach the next level of growth.
Instead of measuring a new marketing leader's success by overall company growth, hold them accountable for the "incremental value" they add. At ClickUp, this meant a specific $100M pipeline target on top of the company's existing trajectory, isolating their direct impact.
A counterintuitive marketing strategy is to focus on owning the customer's problem rather than your product's features. Clearly articulating the problem builds trust and credibility, leading prospects to assume your solution is the right one without a feature-deep dive.
AI models, trained on historical data, are incapable of inventing a novel future for your customers—a core task of strategic marketing. Winning marketers use AI to automate tactical execution, thereby freeing up more time and mental capacity for uniquely human strategic thinking.
To define a new, more emotional category, start by deeply understanding the core problem you solve. ClickUp did this by surveying its 800 customer-facing employees and interviewing its best customers about the specific problems solved for both practitioners and executives.
To increase deal size and escape the limitations of per-user pricing, embed AI into specific, productized use cases. This allows you to create new value-based pricing levers, such as AI credit consumption or custom AI agents, boosting average deal size.
Beyond A/B testing conversion rates, a powerful qualitative test for new messaging is observing if prospects adopt your language. When a customer starts describing their problems using the new framework you introduced (e.g., "revenue leak"), you know it's resonating deeply.