Less than a year later, we’re back to complaining about AI slop, with some folks building workflows that help you erase AI slop from your writing. Even organisations, including the prominent ones like Clay, have some kind of policy about AI slop/using AI for content writing. What changed?

In the last few weeks, I’ve seen several conversations about AI writing:

1. The first is a tweet from Alex Cohen (I think he’s quite popular on Twitter). He shared an image from their all-hands, and the heading was, “We don’t ship slop here,”. The subheading was essentially a reminder that as a company, they need to get better at not shipping purely AI-generated content without some level of human taste and filtering. He also said that he has started calling out this behaviour publicly in Slack because he’s tired of consuming work slop.

2. Next was a post from Peter Yang, who I think was a former senior product manager at Roblox. He said that he’s tired of reading so much AI slop that he created a skills file to help you identify AI slop.

3. Shortly after, I saw a post from Simon Heaton in Buffer. He shared an internal guideline on how they use AI for content writing.

4. And just yesterday, I saw a post from Varun, Clay’s co-founder. It’s about a guideline they created on how to use AI for content writing.

I’ve looked at all these posts and agree with them. They provide guidance for anyone who wants to use AI for writing without losing that distinctiveness that makes writing refreshing to read. What I’d add is, first, we need to address the cause of AI slop.

80% of AI slop is a result of people not controlling the input.

If you give AI a vague prompt like, “Write me a report about X,” or “Give me a strategy for Y,” or even a kind of detailed prompt where you didn’t add the input, expect to receive something below average.

To prove my point, I ran this quick experiment while writing this. The first is a simple prompt:

Then there’s a longer prompt, more detailed, where I still didn’t control the input:

P.s. I used the voice feature, so forgive any typos.

And then, of course, the control group is this newsletter, which I write with help from AI. You’d see that it is remarkably better and more engaging. So if controlling the input is not better, longer, more detailed prompts, what exactly is it?

It is simply you supplying the raw material AI works with. Whatever it does, it works within the bounds of this raw material you supply, which usually is your unique experience, your point of view, your synthesis of a situation. You don’t leave it to AI to forage and decide what it works with. You control that100% from the start.

Then there’s the second part, which is judgment and taste. I don’t think you can outsource that to AI, and I’m not even 100% sure that your skills file can adequately replace this. Saying a skills file can replace judgment and taste is like saying synthetic personas can replace and beat talking to your customers, the actual humans that will buy what you sell.

Don’t get me wrong. AI is good for writing. I use ChatGPT for my writing, and it’s incredibly good, especially when it knows your writing style. Still, you need that judgement to know when something small that would otherwise fly under the radar is off.

The thing about judgement and taste is, it’s developed through repeated practice. Over time, it becomes intuitive, where you recognise that something may be well-written but will not resonate.

You're not consciously applying a rule per se but rather drawing on pattern recognition, which makes it easier to know what you should emphasise, what sounds clichéd and so on.

It goes beyond rules, like " don't use “it is not x, it’s Y”, “Here’s what nobody tells you ', 'The future isn’t coming. It’s already here”, and the rest. It is helpful no doubt, but it is more than that.

It’s the choices you make about what feels right. Your ability to see what feels generic, what needs to be more specific, a point that’s buried, something that needs to be written differently, the arrangement of an idea or whether something even needs to be in the writing.

You honed it over years of reading, writing, editing and having a preference long before AI came into the picture.

One piece of advice I’d give to anyone who wants to develop this craft is, unfortunately, you have to read. It doesn’t have to be marketing-related or anything serious. Read articles, books on whatever catches your fancy. Read fiction. That’s how you get that uncanny sense that your LLM is not communicating in the best possible way.

I’ve previously written on this topic in detail. If you want to revisit it, here it is.

Finally, there’s something I’ve been thinking about that I want to add here. It’s somewhat unrelated, but I think it’s becoming more important now: independent thinking.

Everyone has an opinion on what AI should and shouldn’t do. Some people believe content writers shouldn’t exist anymore. Worse, these may not be random people but respected leaders in your field. So the fact that advice or a hot take comes from an industry leader doesn’t mean it’s right for you.

You need to be able to carefully synthesise different information, have an opinion you believe in and stand by and execute in line with your opinion regardless of what anyone says. All you need is one reason why you believe what you do.

Her original point was about scaling startups: when new teammates join, don’t clutch your responsibilities out of fear they’ll take your job. Hand over the Legos and go build a bigger tower.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about it in a whole new context: Giving away your Legos to AI.

I know how that sounds. We mostly view AI as something coming to take our jobs, and I understand that fear. It looks foolish to hand your job over to the very thing threatening your livelihood. If you spend 5 hours a week on a task and AI does it in 1, will your employer see any reason to keep you? So the instinct is to not use it. Don’t make yourself look easily dispensable.

But I want you to think about this in a new way: what if AI isn’t just the rival coming for your job? How about you view it as this new teammate you deliberately hand pieces of your job to, so you can free yourself up to build something bigger.

Let me explain.

I write a weekly newsletter at work that’s heavily product marketing focused. I took a slightly unorthodox approach to it: There’s no content calendar. Instead, every week I comb through the relevant subreddits, find posts from target customers describing the exact problem we solve, screenshot them, and that becomes the week’s topic.

At first, I sourced these posts manually, which involved hours of scrolling. Later on, I used ChatGPT and Perplexity to find these posts. It still wasn’t perfect. Eventually, I built a Zapier agent to help, but it didn’t work 100% of the time.

Some months ago, I built the whole thing in Claude Code, and it’s been fantastic. It finds the posts, ranks them based on the criteria I gave it, and passes them to me for review ( I want to stay in the loop). Each post Claude passes to me for review has a code. So when I choose a post, I drop the code into Claude, then it writes the newsletter, video script and comic script out of it.

This has saved me hours of work. If we’re applying the fear logic, then this should have made me less valuable, right? But the opposite happened.

Once the newsletter ran itself, ideas began to pour in. I suddenly had the time to build an interactive sales enablement tool for my team that replaces the usual static sales deck.

Prospects get a unique link to an interactive webpage. They can ask questions inline while our team can see if they clicked the link, which sections held their attention, and where follow-up is needed. It gives buyers a better experience and gives sales useful signals they would never get from a PDF.

I’m now building out a marketing intelligence tool that’d act like a competitive intel analyst, moving beyond surfacing signals to interpreting them and making recommendations. Things I hadn’t even thought about became possible, simply because I had enough mental space to notice problems I couldn’t see before.

So the way I see it now, giving away your Legos to AI does two things at once:

➡️ You build the critical skill set to thrive in this current job market. Whether we like it or not, AI fluency is becoming a professional skill, the same way using docs/spreadsheets, search engines, and the internet eventually became.

Learning how to think with AI and design workflows around it isn’t optional anymore.

➡️ It widens your horizon. Every task you hand over opens up room for something new you hadn’t thought to build.

Every time I’ve automated part of my work, I’ve ended up doing more meaningful work because I had enough mental space to notice problems I couldn’t see before.

In closing, think about other repetitive workflows that you can redesign. The more you automate them, the bigger your field vision becomes.

This is a bit of a paradox. AI won’t reduce the amount of meaningful work available to you. Instead, it will increase the number of meaningful problems you are capable of solving.

You don’t create value by repeating the same tasks forever. You create value by solving increasingly difficult problems.

If you identify a repetitive task AI can take off your plate, don’t hide it so you continue to look busy. Hand it over so you can grow into responsibilities that don't even exist yet and move up the value chain.

P.S. Over the last few months, I’ve been using AI extensively in my work. I’ve built a new website with Claude Design and Claude Code, built internal tools, experimented with Codex, and redesigned parts of my workflow with AI.

One thing I’ve realised is that a lot of the anxiety around AI comes from trying to do everything at once. Every week there’s a new model, a new tool, or a new workflow, and it’s easy to feel like you’re constantly falling behind.

That’s why I’m working on a free course.

It’s for marketers who want to stop feeling left behind and learn practical, repeatable ways to use AI in their work without trying every new tool or workflow that appears on their timeline.

If that sounds useful, fill out the form here. I’ll send you an email as soon as the course is ready.

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She wrote that revenue addiction is killing companies. Before, they could get away with this. But now, with rapid AI growth happening, this is fatal. To quote her, “If revenue is your North Star, your company is destined to die”.

The revenue addiction she’s describing is the type where companies are fixated on hitting made-up targets at all costs. Every key initiative gets judged by its immediate revenue impact, and revenue becomes the lens through which every employee is evaluated.

She’s not saying you shouldn’t prioritise revenue. It’s dumb not to. What she’s describing is one where you goal everyone on revenue acceleration, prioritise very short-term, very measurable initiatives over long-term initiatives.

She proposed an alternative: Revenue as an output, not an objective. To buttress her point, she used Lovable as an example. They swapped their North Star metric this year to daily active apps. Not MRR or paid users. But daily active apps, which is essentially how often people come back, how often people build. The logic is that if people are building and getting value from the product, revenue will follow. Revenue, then, is the output of the system, not what you optimise for.

The question then is: how can you make “optimise for value” less strategy-y and more actionable? It’s simple. You have to deliberately and repeatedly show people what’s possible with your product. You make the value visible, concrete and specific enough that your customers can see different ways to embed it into their workflow.

Learn how to do this from other software companies doing this well.

How to Deliver Immense Value to Customers and Unlock Revenue Growth

Start an Educational Series

Elena argues that revenue is the output of value. Since this is true, the question every growth/marketing team should be obsessing over is how to deliver outsized value to users continuously.

A lot of times, this isn’t even a product problem. If you’ve built something that solves a real verifiable customer problem, the problem tilts more towards visibility. Customers don’t know what you’ve built and how it can be a game-changer.

So it’s up to you to continuously and specifically make this obvious to users. I like to say that you have to paint vivid pictures in the minds of your customers of the different ways they can use your product. One way to start doing this is to deeply understand their workflow and then embed your product into this workflow. But this is a topic for another day.

Back to what I was saying, one way to make your product value obvious to users is through education.

Here are three examples of this done well.

1. In 2020, I worked for a startup that built customer service chatbots. We were sales-led and sold mostly to mid-sized companies. One of the ways we sold our product was by comparing it to competitors’. We were different in two ways. One was that most of those products were just live chat software [that lived mainly on your website] like tawk.to, and I think Live chat.

So our core differentiator that we led with was that you get an AI-powered chatbot that answers minor, frequently asked questions, so your support staff only focus on high-touch requests that humans are best equipped to solve.

But I noticed that many of our customers didn’t utilise the agents or even explore other product features. Some of the accounts I managed [yeah, I also doubled as an account manager] would reach out to ask for things the product already does. This made me realize that we had a visibility problem. Users didn’t know the full breadth of the platform. So I kicked off an education series via email.

Each email spotlighted a feature, showed users what they could do with it, and explained the value it unlocks for them.

2. If you’ve followed Zapier this year, you’d notice that they’re leaning heavily into enterprise AI transformation, and they’re backing it up with a series of educational webinars. Yes, we know that at the end of this, the idea is to show you what’s possible with Zapier so you can build with it. What they got right is that they’re leading with clear use cases that’d pique your curiosity and make you want to learn more.

Early this year, their first webinar series was focused on Ops. There were webinars about building an availability agent to help with scheduling, and another on a Gmail agent to help with organization. The webinar series showed that they understood their customers’ workflow/ day to day, and showed you how their product can ease the burden.

P.S. I don’t know if this still holds, but when I was starting out, there was this belief that customers don’t want to hear about your product. So offer value, yap about anything and everything, but don’t mention your product because it’s salesy and customers don’t want to be sold to. This is not entirely true. People want to hear about your product but “in context” - that is, in relation to what they’re trying to get done.

To clarify, you have to move away from “me me thinking” which is often visible when you’re only talking about this cool thing you’ve built. The way to get people interested is to lead with their problems. Show them that you understand their workflows and the bottleneck. Then bring in your product as the guide that unblocks them or fixes the bottleneck.

Some years back, when I was leading marketing at a tiny fintech, I rolled out this program where we offered free consultations to lenders. We had a subject matter expert talk to them, and I joined the call. We weren’t pitching our product at all. The subject matter expert was well-versed in the domain, so he talked through these problems with the lenders and floated some ideas. We were super clear that this wasn’t a sales call. But during the conversation, where necessary, we’d talk about how our product could solve a particular problem they mentioned and asked if they’d want to see a quick demo.

About 1 in three of those free consultations eventually led to a sales call. This is proof that when you mention your product in the context of the customers’ struggles, what they’re trying to achieve or their current interest [as in Zapier’s case], they’d more often than not, listen.

3. Another example is Storylane. They do this thing called the Finer Demos Club. It’s not an AMA with their team. Instead, they bring in someone like you - someone who owns interactive demos in their organisation and has used them to drive really cool results. This person is not talking about the product in a vacuum. What they do is talk about the results they’ve unlocked with interactive demos. I look forward to these sessions. It feels like a masterclass by your peer who has the same job and goals as you. Hearing them share what they’ve accomplished with Storylane is inspirational and gives me ideas for new ways to use Storylane to support my goals.

What I love about Storylane’s finer demo club is that each series gives the product this credibility. It’s not anyone from Storylanes ‘ team that’s saying hey, our product can do xyz. Instead, it’s a peer that’s showing you the results they achieved using Storylane.

Whenever I talk about showing customers what’s possible with your product, I remember an ad for a food processor I saw a few years ago. I wasn’t in the market for a food processor or anything. I’m not even a cooking enthusiast. But this ad showed different tedious meal preps that this appliance handled in minutes. Instantly, I knew I was going to purchase it.

When you do product education right, in some cases, you’d move people who aren’t in-market to get interested in the problem you solve, setting them on a path to purchase.

I’ve shared the example of Zapier, Storylane and my time at the Chatbot startup. They all did one thing: make the product value so clear that the customer moves towards it on their own.

If revenue follows value, then most growth problems aren’t product problems. They’re more or less visibility problems. Your customer already has the thing that would change the way they work. Problem is, they just don’t know it’s in there, or they can’t picture themselves using it. So no amount of goaling your team on revenue acceleration fixes that. You fix it by showing people, again and again, what’s possible.

So, open your product right now and ask, "Does my customer know they can do this and achieve this outcome in my product?" If the answer is no, that's your next campaign- making the value you already built impossible to miss.

She said that content strategists would evolve to become content engineers. And instead of doing what content strategists have typically done, which is plan and manage the delivery of content that meets business goals, they will now “produce systems that produce pieces at scale—AI-powered, data-driven, and adaptable.”

Ryan Law of Ahrefs responded with a piece of his own, where he argued that content engineering is the wrong skill set for the future of marketing. He wrote that we’re already drowning in AI slop — you know, those generic, scaled-up content that you can smell a mile off, doesn’t contain any new information and is not worth reading.

In his view, the content engineer role would only make this worse as you’re pushing your team toward automation and consistency at the expense of creativity and experimentation, which drive results. He adds that given a choice between a great writer with no AI knowledge and a middling writer fluent in automation tools, he’d take the great writer every time.

So which is it? Should content writers become content engineers or double down on craft?

I use AI in my writing and have built AI agents to help me write blogposts at work. Based on this, I don’t believe that content strategists/writers should move from writing to managing systems. To explain why, I’ll walk you through what happened when I tried to do that, and share a conversation I had with two content marketers on how they use AI.

How I Use AI to Create Content at Scale

The first time I used something close to a content system for writing was last year. I was working on a content upgrade task and needed a quick way to execute the process I created for this task, and also write the articles. This led me to experiment with Zapier agents. I built a four-agent workflow. Here’s the workflow:

I have a library that contains some Agents I’ve built. You can check it out here.

1. The first agent was a content research specialist. When I add a topic to a spreadsheet, it analyses it to uncover the search intent, the stage of the buyer journey, and identifies semantic keywords as well as long-tail keywords. It will also perform an audit of the top 10 URLs ranking for that topic. When it completes these actions, it will add its findings to another column in the spreadsheet and trigger the next agent.

2. The second looks at the information Agent 1 pushed to the column and acts on it. It will find insights from subject matter experts on the topic. Afterwards, it pastes the research into a designated column in the spreadsheet and types “GO”, which is a trigger that tells Agent 3 to kick into action.

3. The job of Agent 3 is to read the two research outputs so far and act like a content strategist. It will synthesise the content of the two columns and then create a content outline. It will write an SEO-optimised title based, write an introduction using Barbara Minto’s Pyramid (Situation, Complication, Question, Answer), write H2/H3 subheadings and identify 2-3 unique differentiation angles from competitor gaps. It will paste this in a designated column and then update a different column with “GO”, which triggers Agent 4 into action

4. This agent accesses all the output from the previous agents and uses ChatGPT to write a comprehensive article. When done, it pushed the output to a Notion doc, updated the spreadsheet with "COMPLETE," and sent me an email notifying me.

I’d love to say that this was a massive timesavings but unfortunately, it wasn’t. Here’s a screenshot of the article it wrote.

The problem with the article was:

1. The advice is too vague to be useful: When it says things like “match solutions to your team’s specific context” or “focus on outcomes over activity,” it’s what everyone already knows. It just makes the statement and moves on. It doesn;’t expand on it or provide any new information that’d be beneficial to the reader.

2. Bad Sentence Structure: Good writing uses varied sentence structures, connectives, transition words and is written in a narrative format that makes it interesting and engaging. This was so surface-level and excessively mechanical.

3. The expert quotes don’t really teach anything: You remember that part of the instructions I gave the agent was to add quotes from subject matter experts. Unfortunately, it didn’t execute it well. It just threw in the quotes. They were not used in context or to support or oppose a point of view.

What's interesting is that at the same time I built this agent, I had other agents running for different tasks, and they performed well.

1. One scanned LinkedIn to find potential speakers for a video series I was launching.

2. Another read through of demo call transcripts to extract marketing and product insights.

3. One searched Reddit to find posts that could inspire our weekly newsletter topics. I wanted to make sure what I wrote reflected the pain points of our target customers.

4. Another was a competitive intelligence agent

5. The other agent finds relevant Reddit posts, writes a response, and if there’s an opportunity to promote any of our videos, searches our YouTube for a relevant video to add to the response and forwards it to my email for review.

These agents performed their tasks well, occasional hiccups aside. This is proof that AI can be incredibly effective. The problem is that in writing — specifically long-form writing — it wasn’t as good. The other agents were retrieving, synthesising, and organising information that already existed. The writing agent was being asked to generate something original. And it couldn’t do that well without a human providing the raw material.

For a long time, I didn’t want to admit this publicly. I was worried I’d come across as anti-AI, or like I didn’t know how to use it properly, especially since writing is the number one AI use case for marketers. But then I noticed the irony: if AI were genuinely great at writing, nobody would be complaining about AI slop on LinkedIn.

How to use AI to generate Quality Content

Before I figured this out, what I did when the Agent wrote those unimpressive articles was to paste the article into ChatGPT section by section, as though each part were a standalone piece. It produced more decent responses, but it was exhausting and time-consuming, defeating the purpose of using AI in the first place.

The strange thing is, I'd been doing something completely different for my LinkedIn posts the whole time. I'd dictate my thoughts and ask AI refine. This worked well. The reason was obvious in hindsight; I was giving it my thoughts, POV, adding nuance and so on. I just never made that connection for blog posts.

I accidentally discovered the right approach.

I’m leading a video series at work, and as part of our content distribution, we repurpose each video into a blog post. I uploaded one of the transcripts to ChatGPT and asked it to repurpose it into an article. The output was wildly different from anything my content writing agent had ever produced.

That’s when I understood what was different: I had controlled the input. I didn’t let AI go and find something to write about. I handed it the raw material, a conversation with a subject matter expert, and asked it to work with that.

Here’s the workflow I used to repurpose the video transcript into a blogpost:

1. First, I put it in ChatGPT and wrote a simple prompt where I asked it to edit and then optimise for AEO.

2. I read it and realised something is off. I guess this is where taste comes in. So I moved it to Claude and wrote a very simple prompt: HERE is an article I repurposed from our podcast/video series transcript. I feel like the article has no structure or something. It doesn’t have a flow. Can you tell me what the issues are and how you’d fix them?

3. It pointed out the errors, told me how it would fix it, and I asked it to fix it. The result was 10x better.

It still wasn’t perfect on the first try. It read more like a cleaned-up transcript than a proper article, so I moved it to Claude and wrote a simple prompt: “Here is an article I repurposed from a podcast transcript. I feel like it has no structure or flow. Can you tell me what the issues are and how you’d fix them?”

Something happened this weekend that buttresses my point on why it’s critical for humans to control the input, to determine the raw material AI works with.

When I got home, I knew I wanted to write about it. I wanted to discuss the commodification of the female body, how capitalism frames women’s bodies in ways that normalise harm, about objectification, the illusion of choice in contexts like this, and modesty culture. I didn’t have an outline or anything, just a feeling and a strong sense of what I wanted to address.

So I opened ChatGPT and used voice input. I talked through everything — what I saw, my opinion, the arguments I wanted to explore, and the order the article should follow. AI wrote the entire piece, and it came out really well. All I did was edit and refine.

Now imagine if instead I had a content engineering system set up for this, the kind Jasper’s CMO describes, where I drop in a topic, and a pipeline of agents searches the web, pulls from existing articles, identifies patterns, synthesises information, and generates an on-brand output.

Sure, the article might be accurate. But it would have had none of what made my version worth reading: no nuance, experience, judgement and POV.

That’s what you lose when you hand the input to AI. You lose the specific experience, the particular angle, the judgment about what actually matters. And that loss, multiplied across thousands of pieces produced by systems like this, optimised for scale, is exactly what AI slop is.

How Other Content Writers Use AI

After reflecting on my own experience, I asked two content marketers how they use AI in their writing.

Daniel, Content Marketer

Daniel treats AI as a research synthesiser. He does the research himself, gathering information from multiple sources like competitor articles, reviews, Reddit, and YouTube videos. Afterwards, he drops them into ChatGPT, asking it to identify and extract common themes and patterns.

Instead of using AI to write the entire article, he types in the prompt section by section, fact-checks each output, and rewrites it in his own voice. He removes AI’s awkward phrasing, adds transition words, and converts passive voice to active. When he’s done, he pastes the entire draft back into ChatGPT for editing.

This takes six to eight hours for a 2,000-3,000-word article. It’s not faster than writing manually, but strategic. AI saves him time on identifying patterns (extracting pros and cons from reviews takes seconds instead of an hour), but verification takes time. He fact-checks everything because he works in immigration law, so accuracy is important. His philosophy is, let AI handle the synthesis and analysis, but keep humans in charge of quality and judgment.

Isaac, LinkedIn Content Writer & Ghost Writer for busy execs

Isaac leans towards automation and workflow design. He holds weekly calls with his clients (founders and executives), and during these conversations, he asks questions that he has engineered to generate LinkedIn hooks, unique angles that become the foundation for posts.

He captures these insights, puts them into ChatGPT with a custom system prompt that includes each person’s tone, voice, and post structure. Then he asks the AI to generate five possible hooks. Once he selects a hook, he instructs ChatGPT to expand it into a full post (1,000-1,500 characters) matching that person’s style.

AI is able to execute this well because he’s built personalised brand guidelines for each person— their storytelling style, their data points they use, even the algorithm-friendly elements like numbers and trending topics. All these are included in his initial prompt, so AI stays on-brand from the first draft.

What he’s doing right now is building an infrastructure around his process. Instead of manually running this process each time, Isaac is creating an AI agent (using Zapier and a meeting recorder) that automatically triggers when he finishes a client call. The agent pulls the recording transcript, generates hooks and handles the entire post creation. His goal is to reduce one hour per post to 30 minutes or less by automating the repetitive parts while keeping quality high. For him, it’s not about AI writing content. He wants it to execute a content creation system he’s designed.

One thing that’s consistent across all three approaches is that we’ve realised that AI is not that fantastic at end-to-end content writing. So we bring the experience, nuance, point of view and direction. AI synthesises it and works with it, and at the end, we review, edit and refine.

Instead of content engineering, where we hand off the entire process to AI and focus on setting up systems that produce content at scale, I believe a better question is, how do we get AI to develop the nuance, judgement and spiky POV that is unique to us so that it interprets tasks they way you would, and that interpretation shapes how it gathers information, what it prioritises, and how it produces the output.

That's where the bottleneck is.

That’s what I’m trying to figure out.

A quick favour 🙏

I’m working on something I think you’ll find helpful — a playbook to help marketers choose roles that actually align with their personality, career goals and the kind of work they want to do.

But first, I need your input to make it worth reading.

Can you take 2 mins to fill this anonymous survey? Your experience — whether you’ve landed a dream role or taken a job that was a total misfit — is exactly what will make this worth reading.

Fill the survey here

If you know someone else who’d have something to say about this, please pass it on 🙏

1

Start with a Strong POV

As a marketer, events are one of the tools in our toolkit to reach and engage our audience. But most people plan events—virtual and physical—the same way everyone else does. I hate to say this because it can easily be misconstrued as trying so hard to be different that you veer off track. But you cannot deliver a unique experience if you do what everyone else does, especially if the people you’re trying to reach are not excited with the status quo. There's always a gap or dissatisfaction that you can exploit to deliver an outsized experience.

For me, it was that most events were large and, due to their size, impersonal. This made it very difficult for people like me (introverts 😊) to mingle and meet new people. And when we're not able to meet and mingle with people, then the objective of the event isn't met.

In the screenshot below, I wrote down the story and idea behind the type of event I'd like to host.

Validate This Idea

After I seriously started considering hosting a physical event, I needed to validate the idea. As a marketer who writes a marketing newsletter, runs a marketing community, and hosts events for marketers, I am my own target audience. But I wanted external validation: how many people feel as strongly about this problem as I do?

The perfect opportunity came through our post-event survey after our last virtual event. I asked attendees what their ideal physical event would look like and how much they'd pay for it. The answers pointed to the same thing: people wanted events where it's easy to strike up conversations and connect with other people.

Look for Ways to Bring Your Vision to Life

Now I had a good starting point, a POV on how events should be run so that those who rarely get any satisfaction from typical events would thoroughly enjoy this one. The next question was: how do I bring this vision to life? I turned to ChatGPT for this.

I pasted my vision for the event into ChatGPT and asked it to give me ideas. What should I add? What would bring this vision to life? The results were incredible.

Before I continue, I want to say something quickly about AI: I use AI a lot in both my professional and personal life. It is incredible. But I believe that those who get the best results from it will have something I’d call a differentiated point of view. You need to provide a lot of contextual information to get great output. That context comes from your learning, experiences, and unique observations. You can’t outsource that to AI.

That's exactly what happened here. I didn’t just ask ChatGPT to give me event ideas. I shared the vision, pain points I want to solve for and the outcomes I want. Based on that, it gave me five core themes to focus on:

• Make it simple for people to meet and talk

• Build a warm, welcoming atmosphere

• Give people value and insights they can implement

• Create an experience people will talk about

• Keeping the relationships going after the event ends

I used these themes to plan across three areas: Event Planning, Event Content, and Post-Event Activities. Let me start with the communications that built excitement before the event.

Pre-Event Comms: Building Anticipation

When people show up for an event - whether free or paid, they are investing their time. So they should get a high ROI for that. Now, this event was paid. I was determined to give people value for their money and a reason to look forward to it. My goal was to build excitement and give people a compelling reason to show up.

A couple of days after people bought their tickets, I emailed them, sharing what they should expect from the hangout. It was detailed without being overly informative. I walked them through what would happen when they arrived, touched on the seating arrangement, and the activities I had planned.

This worked. I received replies with people sharing their excitement and telling me how much they were looking forward to the event.

Afterwards, I sent them another email asking them to fill out a form to tell me more about themselves, and I explained why. I’d use their information to plan the seating so they could sit with people who shared similar interests, making it easy to start conversations.

This was the start of giving them a taste of what the event would be like and what they should expect. I followed up a couple of times, and in the end, I got about a 97% response rate.

Event Setting: Making Connection Super Easy

Here, I had a mission: remove every barrier that typically prevents people from striking up conversations and meeting new people at events.

Based on ChatGPT's first recommendation—Make it simple for people to meet and talk—I sent out questionnaires ahead of the event, asking people what they'd like to discuss, what they're looking for in a marketing friend, and more.

I planned to use the responses to plan a seating arrangement where people with similar interests sat together. I created separate landing pages from Canva for each seating group. The landing pages had the names of everyone in that group, what they’d like to talk about and conversation starters. I placed QR codes on each table so people could scan and see their group members and discussion topics.

But here's what happened and what it taught me about event planning.

People came in alone or in pairs, arriving at different times. If I had rigidly stuck to my seating arrangement, some people would have been sitting alone at tables waiting for their group members, who might arrive an hour later, leaving them sitting alone and uncomfortable.

So I pivoted. When people arrived, I directed them to seats where conversations were already happening. This approach worked far better than my original plan.

The lesson? Plan thoroughly, but stay flexible.

What Worked:

Circular Seating: The venue had a tiny stage, but we ignored it. Instead, we arranged chairs in circular groups, making it easy for everyone to contribute to conversations.

Skipping the Wristbands: I had prepared wristbands for people to signal they were open to conversations. But when I arrived at the venue, I realised this was unnecessary. Everyone came specifically to make marketing friends. However, this gave me an idea for larger events: wristbands could be incredibly useful at big conferences where it's harder to tell who's open to networking versus who just wants to listen to talks.

Event Content: When the Agenda Goes Out the Window (And That's Perfect)

Now that people were excited and knew what to expect, here's what happened on the day.

The pre-event comms worked: people arrived excited and ready to connect. Since they came at different times, I had to adapt my seating plans on the fly, but this worked out all right.

I had an agenda, though. The first item was intros, but I wanted to do something different. Instead of the usual "tell us your name and your role," I added: "Tell us something in marketing that annoys the crap out of you."

This was so hilarious and—you can't believe it—took up the entire 2 hours even though we had just about twenty-something people in attendance. What folks shared was funny, insightful, and it led to conversations.

For example, someone would share something they found annoying, and someone else would jump in with how they navigated that exact problem. The intros naturally led to micro-conversations at different points. I occasionally had to step in to steer us back to the round of intros.

We didn't get to the other items on the agenda, but I didn’t see it as a problem at all. The intros themselves sparked conversations across different marketing topics. That was exactly what I wanted to achieve, that feel of an informal hangout with friends where you can talk about anything and leave satisfied and happy.

Post-Event: Turning One Great Experience Into Ongoing Momentum

Immediately after the event, I sent a thank-you email to those who showed up. I thanked them for coming, shared what I loved most about the event, and outlined what was coming next: our virtual event on GTM engineering. I included a Notion doc with articles, videos and other resources I’ve found helpful in the past couple of months.

I asked them to rate the event, and also invited them to join our community.

For those who didn't attend, I still emailed them a quick summary of the event. I included the same next steps: the virtual GTM engineering event, the resource doc, and an invite to join the community.

Some days after, I emailed everyone, both those who attended and those who did not, the photos and videos from the event. I mentioned that if they shared on LinkedIn, they should tag me. And they did.

What I Learned and What I Will Do Differently Next Time

Stay Flexible: The biggest lesson? Be willing to pivot. I didn't use the seating arrangement or wristbands as planned, and that was perfectly fine. Sometimes the best moments happen when you adapt to what's happening rather than sticking to your original plan.

Time Management: I booked the space for three hours, but we had to wait for people to arrive, so we didn't start exactly on time. For future events, I'll emphasise punctuality and start 10-15 minutes after the scheduled time.

I'll also book an additional hour next time. This gives more time for photos and allows people to stay back and chat with the new friends they've made. Some of the best networking happens in those informal moments after the "official" event ends.

So there you have it, a step-by-step process of how I planned a small marketing event that earned a 4.7-star rating and had people asking for more time. To pull this off, you need to reframe your thinking; You’re not hosting an event. You’re delivering an experience. You want to give attendees an experience they'll love, talk about and attend again and again.

Last year, 2024, started with mixed feelings. I was excited about the future because there were some things I wanted to do. But at the same time, I was grappling with a decision: Should I leave my job?

The pay was great, but I was unhappy. Most times, before I joined a call, I did breathing exercises to calm my nerves and get my racing heart under control. Eventually, I let it go without another offer lined up and with an almost non-existent nest egg.

I’ve made risky career moves before. But this was the riskiest. I was afraid of running out of money, of being unable to make my rent, of being unable to meet my financial obligations. If a family member has a medical emergency, how am I going to be able to pay for that? (interestingly, this happened to me. However, it happened a month after I got back on my feet. So crisis averted 🙂)

This whole experience taught me an interesting lesson about fear. And that’s what I’d like to share in this newsletter.

Fear keeps us trapped and makes it impossible to think beyond the present. It makes it hard to remember that the future is always brighter. And by failing to realise this, we remain in situations that don’t serve us and never get to experience the joy that’s on the other side.

The first time I actively started thinking about fear was after a discussion with my sister. We talked about leaving my job without an offer, plus other decisions I made during that period. She said, “You are so brave. I wish I could be like you”.

I told her I wasn’t brave. More than a year later, I still stand by that. I am not that brave. But here’s what helped me make bold decisions even when I am afraid: Have some philosophy about your life, career and endeavours.

You’d be surprised to find that many people float through life without some kind of philosophy that guides what they do. When you don’t have this belief system that guides your actions and influences your decisions, you’re kind of “moorless”-unanchored, adrift. Anything goes.

The thing is, your belief system doesn’t have to be fancy or complicated. It’s simply a principle that guides how you act or what you believe. In my career and life, my philosophy is to never endure unhappy situations that don’t serve me and steal my joy.

It’s to NEVER ever believe that I don’t have options. Never. Each time I stepped out and acted in line with this belief, it always worked out in the end. Sure, there’s that period of difficulty and hardship (I’ll write about it in a subsequent section). But if I stay the course, it always works out.

Beyond this overarching philosophy about my life, I create some kind of compass for other situations. For instance, when I start a new role, I ask myself what I want to get out of that role. By clarifying this from the outset, it is easier to measure my progress and helps me make decisions that support my career goals, no matter how difficult.

On the personal side, I suddenly had to raise my brother after my mum passed. As a childfree woman, I am clueless about this. But I developed an ethos around raising a child. The last few months have been messy and difficult, and I’ve gotten it wrong so many times. But having this principle in place makes it easy for me to retrace my steps and try to do better.

What Happens When You Step Out in Fear?

A few years ago, I made a decision that everyone saw as risky. However, I felt strongly about it and went ahead. But before I leapt, I told myself that no matter what happens, I’d never allow myself to regret my decision. This is my rule about decisions: never look back. Don’t cry over split milk.

I think one of the mistakes we make when we make decisions is that we think immediately, the stars will align in our favour. That the universe will instantly reward you for being brave (without first putting you through the wringer).

It’s most likely never going to be the case. For instance, when you leave a job without another offer, recruiters will not flood your LinkedIn DM with offers. It will most likely be radio silence followed by a deluge of rejection emails.

It’s going to be days and nights spent refining and editing your resume, updating your cover letter and portfolio, asking strangers on Reddit to review your resume, and asking people you’ve never met on communities if they’d interview you. It is trying to nail the STAR interview method and rehearsing times without a number in front of the mirror.

This is the valley. And this valley is filled with so much uncertainty that it’s always easier to stay in the unhappy familiar situation than to venture into the unknown.

Graham Weaver calls it the valley of discomfort, which he illustrated with the diagram below

He said your life is going to get worse first before it gets better. So you have to ask yourself if you’re willing to endure this worse so you can eventually get the better.

For me, the valley lasted for about four months. There were days I was upbeat, and there were days I felt the weight of my decision. But one thing I never did was to regret. I had promised myself that I’d never do that. I knew that my decision aligned with my values. I just had to suffer a little while. Though I believed it would work out, I didn’t know how or when. And that uncertainty occasionally made me freak out.

The irony is, some of the best things in your life can come from this season. I built resilience and developed a clearer sense of my values and non-negotiables. Most importantly, I now carry the confidence that I can survive the worst-case scenario, which, paradoxically, makes me more willing to take calculated risks others might avoid.

This is the paradox of the valley. What feels like hardship in the moment becomes your greatest asset on the other side. The discomfort doesn't just precede growth; it creates it. And while I can't promise that your valley won't be deep or long, I can assure you that if you keep moving forward, the landscape eventually changes, and you emerge not just back where you started, but fundamentally transformed.

How to Get Unstuck and Move on Afraid

At the beginning of the article, I wrote that we’d most likely never be able to conquer fear. Instead, the goal should be to move on despite the fear. This is important because fear immobilizes you.

One method I use is what I call “getting the fear out of my head onto paper”. A lot of the time, you are ruminating on your fears and going round in circles. That isn't helpful because you are not addressing the fear head-on. You need to sift through it and address it.

Sifting through this fear and coming up with mitigation strategies gives you a shot of boldness that you need to take the first step. To clarify, writing about not letting fear hold you back is not the same as making brash decisions. In fact, this process of writing down your fears and how to address them is a way to apply logic to fear. This logic weakens the fear, even if it never goes away completely. You just need to take it down a notch.

When I needed to make a decision some time ago, I drew this flowchart . It was my way of getting the fear out of my head onto paper when I was at a career crossroads some time ago. I followed it up with this template. The goal is to write exhaustively. Clarify the fear and come up with how you’d manage what’s making you afraid.

The result? I didn’t eliminate the fear completely. I don’t think that’s the point. But I understood it. I named it. And because I could see it clearly, I wasn’t stuck anymore. I was still afraid, but I was moving.

So if you’re sitting on a decision and fear is holding you back, try this. Get it out of your head and onto paper. Write it down. List the worst-case scenarios. Think through how you’d respond. The courage you need is on the other side of clarity.

Conclusion

Moving forward despite fear isn't about eliminating fear. It's about changing your relationship with it. It's about recognising that fear will always be present when you're growing, changing, and pursuing what matters to you.

I still get afraid. I feel uneasy, even hesitant when I think about the next big step in my career or life. But now I know that this feeling isn't my enemy. It's a sign that I'm pushing my boundaries and trying to get better.

The question isn't whether you can become fearless. The question is: can you build a life where fear no longer makes decisions for you?

If there's one thing I want you to take away from this article, it's this: The path to what you want is rarely a straight line. It involves valleys, plateaus, and sometimes steep inclines. But staying where you are because you're afraid is perhaps the biggest risk of all, the risk of never discovering what could have been.

So take that first small step. Get your fears out of your head and onto paper. Find your philosophy. And remember that it's okay to move forward, afraid. In fact, it’s the bravest thing you might ever do.

How to use the templates:

For the Google Doc, simply click on “File” and then “Make a copy”.

For the flowchart, If you're not signed in to your Google account, you’d see the sign-in button on the top right-hand side. Sign in

After signing in, in the middle, you’d see a button, “open with draw.io.”

Authorize, sign in with your Google Drive and access the form. It’s read only. To make your copy, click on File, make a copy, and there you go.

Since then, I’ve gotten 58 new subscribers…who haven’t read anything new from me. So I think it’s best to quickly re-introduce the newsletter before we get into the business of the day.

I started the newsletter for marketers in early-stage startups because I spent 4years+ of my career working in early-stage startups. I know how incredibly hard it can be, especially for early-career marketers.

You don’t get the mentorship and support your peers in late-stage startups get. You have to figure out a lot of things on your own and half the time, may not be sure of what you’re doing. This causes you to doubt yourself.

I started this newsletter to share all I’ve learned and what I wish I had known when I got my first job in an early-stage startup. I hope that anyone who reads it feels less alone and sees it as a supportive marketing community.

Speaking of community, please join our Slack community. We ask questions, share interesting topics and have other perks exclusive to members. Join us here.

Now to the purpose of the newsletter..

Why I’ve been away

From June till now, I’ve spent my time preparing for an upcoming exam. Studying for this exam, teaching an 8-week product marketing class and taking other courses(CXL product marketing certification & Crayon’s Competitive Intelligence course) was a bit too much. So I couldn’t write as often as I wanted.

When I found balance and prepared to start writing again, I suffered a personal tragedy. I need some time off to clear my head and acquaint myself with this new reality.

So I’m taking the entire August (and possibly, the first two weeks in September)off. When I come back, I’ll publish two articles I’ve been working on:

• How to price your SaaS product (The basics)

• How I applied the principles of messaging and positioning to build The early-stage marketer community

But before I go, I have two more things to share: a free template that contains competitive analysis, persona, messaging and a website project I did for an early-stage startup. The other is the top 3 best-performing newsletters of all time. Please bookmark the newsletters so you can read them at your own time.

Your Free Gift🎁

Sometime in June, I did a project for an early-stage startup. I believed that they needed to create compelling use cases for their product. This was lacking on their website. The screenshot below is the basis of this hypothesis.

P.S. I expanded on this point and included an example in another post.

However, I can’t create these use cases out of thin air. To do it, I needed to identify the personas, the alternatives they’re considering, and the messaging that will resonate and then use all these to build out the website which contains the use cases.

Though this project is for a B2C startup, the same principle can be applied to B2B startups. In fact, I’ve worked mostly in B2B startups. I just applied foundational marketing principles to this.

You can get the templates here. Each section is in a Notion document. Remember to click on the embedded file to access the templates on Figjam.

Top 3 Performing Newsletters of All Time

This newsletter is a little over a year old. So far, I’ve written 22 posts. Here are the top 3 performing newsletters and why I like them.

1. April Round-Off: What a tiny sneaker brand can teach You about differentiation + 2 other tips

   Why I love this: As someone who works in SaaS, I thought that all my marketing inspiration would come from other software companies. So imagine my surprise when I came across this sneaker brand and how they effectively market and position their product. If you work in a very competitive industry, you might learn a lesson or two from this brand.

2. How to Build an Interesting Portfolio that Gets You the Job

   Why I love this: I wrote this from a recruiter’s point of view. I was trying to fill a role and looked at multiple portfolios. I realized that most marketers are not telling a story in their portfolios. They simply add logos of brands they’ve worked with and that’s it. Read this to learn how to build a portfolio that stands out.

3. How to choose your next marketing role

   Why I like it: I love this newsletter because it’s based on my beliefs and experience. In fact, this is what I wrote in a section “I haven’t always stuck to this rule but I’ve learned serious lessons. So if you’d like to read the lessons from someone who hasn’t always practised what they preach, please scroll on”.

Thank you for reading.

I’ll see you in September. If you haven’t joined the community, you can do so here.

You can also send me an email or connect with me on LinkedIn.

I’ve written tons of interesting posts. Please check them out.

If you’ve read this newsletter and this one, you’ll know that I started my career in an early-stage startup. I’ve been the founding marketer and in another startup, led a marketing team two years into my career. What nobody talks about (at least sufficiently) is how difficult these things are, especially when you get into them without prior marketing or leadership experience.

While I’ve learned a lot in these roles, I struggled a lot too. That is why I started this newsletter; to write about lessons I’ve learned and what I wish I knew before I started. That’s also why I started the community so that early-career marketers in early-stage startups can have honest conversations about what they’re struggling with and get help from their peers.

That’s also why I am doing a lot of other things like creating a template library filled with resources to help you succeed as a first-time marketer or marketing lead in an early-stage startup, writing a newsletter strictly for community members that contains resources on their learning goal, creating the first community course which is just a curation of resources on marketing analytics which members are interested in learning.

It is also why I am hosting the event below.

Here’s some information about the event:

This is not your typical virtual event where a speaker talks for 45 minutes followed by a 15-minute Q&A session. If you look at the flyer, you'll notice that my name or photo isn't there 😂

That's because we have no designated speakers 🤗 We are all speakers. I wanted it to be more like a casual ☕ coffee chat - highly informal, where anyone can chime in, share their perspectives, and ask questions. I didn't want it to be a one-way communication where you have the moderator, the guest and a bunch of (passive❓) listeners.

So come prepared to share your thoughts and ask questions. Your participation is what will make this event truly engaging and valuable.

It wouldn't be a memorable event without you. Please register here.

Learn Product-Led content from Intro

I asked Claude.ai what product-led content is and it told me this:

Product-led content is a content marketing strategy that focuses on creating educational and informative content directly related to a company's product or service. The primary goal of this approach is to attract potential customers who are actively researching or looking for solutions that the company's product provides.

I also asked ChatGPT and Gemini and they gave impressive answers too. Here’s the prompt I used: explain to me what product-led content is. You can use this prompt to “delve” 😂 deeper into the topic.

It’s important to note that not all content marketing is product-led content. For example, competitive intelligence software Klue has a website called thecompetenetwork.com which provides insightful content for product marketing managers (their target audience), but it's not product-led content.

An example of product-led content is how Ahrefs writes content on their blog. Another is the case study Visme wrote many years back on how they used Ahrefs to rank quickly on Google. After reading that case study, I became a diehard Ahrefs fan.

Okay. Back to the topic at hand.

Intro is a mentorship platform where you book video sessions with the world’s top founders and get advice.

Intro is a mentorship platform where you book sessions with the world’s top founders and get advice.

Well, not exactly.

I’m just coming from their website and realized that this is not entirely true. You can book sessions with founders, interior decors, astrologers, nutritionists, etc. But I assumed that it was only for founders because they combined product-led content with content-channel fit (I hope there’s a word like that 😬) on LinkedIn.

Here’s what I mean.

On LinkedIn (where most founders and corporate folks hang out with the aim of advancing their careers), they post short speeches from the world’s most successful founders - Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Bezos and so on. This type of content directly fits into the needs of their target (and the purpose of LinkedIn) which is to get business advice from other successful founders.

This content type (videos of successful tech founders giving business advice) directly supports the product value (Book the most in-demand experts & get advice over a video call).

No matter the type of content you’re creating, you should add this type of content to your stack.

I talked a bit product-led content and gave an example of a startup doing it right. You can read about it here.

P.S. Their Instagram content strategy is different from that of LinkedIn. While on LinkedIn, they share video clips of successful founders speaking on different topics (that’s usually of interest to founders), on Instagram, they share photos of experts that are available for booking. What’s the lesson? you can tailor your product-led content to fit the channel.

The way you’ve been doing feature updates is outdated. Try Substack’s method 😍

I genuinely love Substack. I can’t go into all the reasons why else this newsletter will be longer than it already is. But one thing I like is how they do feature updates.

Other tech companies:

Substack:

Can you see the difference between Clickup’s feature release email and Substack’s? While Clickup just tells you straight on what the new feature is about, most of Substack’s updates show you how other publications are using this feature. By embedding social proof into their release emails, it makes you want to try the feature.

This email is why I redesigned my homepage (AKA why I used this feature).

This month on LinkedIn

This post comes with an image that shows you different kinds of competitors and how to position against each type. You can check out the image and other LinkedIn screenshots on competitive intelligence, messaging and others in the swipe file.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed reading this, please like it, share it with your marketing friends, or drop a comment.

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Recalling this made me decide to write this newsletter: How should you choose your next marketing role?

p.s. I haven’t always stuck to this rule but I’ve learned serious lessons. So if you’d like to read the lessons from someone who hasn’t always practised what they preach, please scroll on.

p.p.s. I’ll talk about choice - which is quite important if you’re in a tough job market or live in a country with high unemployment rate.

Choice

I saw this clip from a commencement address Jerry Seinfeld gave. He encouraged people not to stick to a job they hate. In fact, he told them to disappear during lunch break😂

There’s been so many debates about choosing a job you love or choosing a job that pays the bills, even if it’s a terrible one. This newsletter isn’t about that. However, I “grudgingly” admit that it is a privilege to have the flexibility to choose a job that gives you joy.

But I say this with a lot of care (hence the emphasis on “grudgingly”) because if we aren’t careful, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that everything that happens to us is fate and there’s nothing we can do to change it - including choosing the type of jobs we want.

If you are hard-pressed to take any job or stay in a current one because you don’t have an egg nest and you have responsibilities, you may feel as though you don’t have a choice. I am not here to tell you that you do. What I’d like to do instead, is to give you a framework to use and evaluate the jobs you take - if you ever decide that it’s within your power to choose a job that at the minimum, won’t make you miserable.

My Career Story

I had nothing to do with my first job offer. By this I mean, I was fresh out of university and have been job hunting for some time. Then suddenly, someone reached out to me on LinkedIn, a platform I wasn’t very active on, and the rest is history.

When I left my job after 2years+ because I was burnt out and severely unhappy, I told myself that I’d never join any startup where I was the first marketer/one that had no marketing leadership. But it’d interest you to know that, after three months of job hunting, all the offers I got were from startups where I was either the first marketing hire, had no marketing leadership or I was the marketing lead. I chose the one with the leadership tag because I loved the product most and I wanted to have some fintech experience.

I am sharing this story because I went against my cardinal rule: Don’t take a role where there’s no marketing leadership or you’re the first or only hire.

The interesting thing is, I made this mistake shortly again after I left the fintech role. I took up another role where I was the only marketing hire.

Reflecting on my experience, I’ve decided to divide this newsletter into three parts:

1. What do you want in your next role?

2. Does the company know what they are looking for in their next hire?

3. Is the startup solving a serious problem?

Let’s begin

What do you want in your next role?

This is very important because, if you really need a job, you tend to think that what you want is a paycheck. After you get in, you’ll realize that a paycheck alone won’t make you happy no matter how large it is.

If you’re in a tight corner where your most important priority is a paycheck, I’d still encourage you to make a list of 3-5 things that are most important to you. These 3-5 things are non-negotiable.

These things could be anything. An example is:

• Work in a startup with a strong marketing leadership

• Work in an environment with a strong mentorship and feedback culture

• Joining a startup with a transparent culture.

Why is this step important?

• If you make a list of what you want, subconsciously, you’d appraise jobs based on this.

• Even if you take a job that doesn’t match any or everything on your list, you’re acutely aware of the tradeoffs and can develop a mitigation plan.

• Who knows, you might actually get what’s on your wishlist. But not having one reduces this chance to zero.

Does the company know what they are looking for in their next hire?

Most early-stage startups are trying to save money. And because they’re trying to save money, they hire a generalist to do everything that 3 people should do. This is understandable.

But the thing is, an early-stage startup should have an idea of the serious most pressing problem they want their generalist to tackle. This tells them the skills to prioritize considering that no marketer is exceptionally good in all the areas of marketing. This should be obvious in the JD. This will let you know the most important skills and if you’re the right fit.

One thing I’ve learned is that if the startup is not clear on its priority right now and the type of marketer that will help them achieve it, you and the startup will pay dearly for it. To prevent this, scrutinize every JD. It’s the easiest way to know if the startup knows what they want.

To make this clearer, I’ll give you an example. If an early-stage startup wants to hire its first marketer, it won’t be a niche specialist like an email marketing professional or any marketing professional with a narrow specialization.

Sure, they need a generalist what kind of generalist do they need? Considering that you have 24 hours in a day, you can’t run a full-blown marketing function alone. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can.

Back to the example. Ideally, this startup’s priority should be market and customer research. Their focus should be on talking to customers, learning about their problems, the solutions that exist, the shortcomings and so on. They need all these to do the foundational work of positioning, messaging, value prop and GTM. So the first skill they should prioritize in their hire is someone with a strong product marketing background because this is the most important skill they need right now.

After this, they should decide the top 3-5 complementary skills this person should have. If it’s a B2B sales-led startup that wants a marketer to create sales enablement materials, they might prioritize content writing skills. If it’s a B2C consumer app, they may lean towards someone who has done some experiments/campaigns.

If I am to present this as an equation, it’ll be:

our ideal marketer = strong product marketing background + content marketing background

our ideal marketer = strong product marketing background + growth marketing background

🚩🚩 product marketing + content marketing+brand marketing+PR+performance marketing+CRO+event marketing+partnership+etc.

Following the principles that I mentioned here about being a T-shaped marketer, you should have foundational knowledge of as many marketing functions as possible. The problem is when a startup insists that they need all these immediately and expect you to be a guru at them all.

If a JD looks like the job description for an entire marketing department, you may want to step back and reconsider.

P.s. Some thought about being a marketing generalist.

I shared a funny viral LinkedIn video about marketing generalists. I also shared the video here Someone in our community asked if it’s wrong to be a generalist. 

It’s not wrong to be a generalist. In fact, it is always helpful to know a bit about several things but don’t get caught up in being a generalist that you don’t have deep expertise in one area. It’s like being a jack of all trades and master of none.

Is the startup solving a serious problem?

Startups are hard. But you know what makes it harder? selling a product that nobody wants because it doesn’t solve any serious problem. Working in a startup that doesn’t solve a serious problem is like trying to sell ice to Eskimos. It’s a frustrating experience and you’d have little chance of succeeding.

I hate to be the one to say it but sometimes, genius ideas don’t solve any problem people are interested in solving. Remember that a startup is first a business and not a mobile or web app. Let me put it this way: you are not selling a web or mobile app to people. You’re selling a solution to their problem. It just happens that this solution is in the form of a web/mobile app.

So, join a startup that is solving a real problem. Bonus points if it’s a problem you love and are interested in solving.

For me, a big part of my decision process for joining a startup is the problem they are solving. I know the problem is a solid one if I constantly think about it and see the problems it can solve in my environment (even if I am just learning of that type of problem this minute).

Conclusion

Coincidentally, when I was writing this newsletter, I came across this article on choosing your next job. I’d recommend you read it.

A few other things you will be interested in:

1. I’m building a community for early-career marketers (0-3 years of work experience). It’s a safe place to share your struggles with people who can relate, meet new people in the industry and get the peer mentorship you need to succeed in your job. If this sounds like something that’d be valuable to you, please join.

2. I’m working on a template library for early-career marketers. It’ll contain templates for what to do when you get a new job, how to plan a GTM strategy, how to do pricing research and so on. I’ll roll out the first group this May. If you’d like to know when it’s live, please fill this form.

3. Share this newsletter with your friends and get a reward🤩 Here’s what you’d get when you share with 3,5 and 10 people.

😂A funny video about wearing many marketing hats (+ my thoughts on being generalist vs. specialist)

🧾 A free buyer persona template

🆕LinkedIn is a gold mine. I’ve learned so much by following the right people. This month, I included a post from LinkedIn I found interesting.  If you’d like to see previous screenshots, check out the link to the swipe file🎉 It’s at the end of the newsletter.

Let’s Go!

Memo 1: What a Tiny Sneaker Brand Can Teach You about differentiation

Some weeks ago, I was reading an innocuous newsletter a new mom wrote about the items that were helpful during her pregnancy. (I say “ innocuous” because when I read the newsletter, I was curious to learn about items that make pregnancy less stressful. I never expected to pick any marketing lesson from it). She mentioned a sneaker brand Kizik.

In her own words, “My feet grew a half size in the third trimester since I was so.so.so.swollen 🐡…These offered extra cushion and support, plus no need to bend over my big belly to tie laces.

I went to their website and I was impressed.

Their value proposition is crystal clear - both in the images and the copy- and I don't need anyone to tell me why I should choose them over, say, Nike. In fact, they aren’t even trying to compete with Nike. They’re solving a different problem from Nike.

This is impressive because Nike is the market leader with a 38.6% market share. For context, in 2022, Nike’s worldwide footwear sales were $29.1b. This is followed by Adidas’ $13.1b, which is less than 50% of Nike’s sales.

If this were in the startup world, most founders would want to copy Nike. They will design footwears that closely resemble Nike’s and even copy their brand message “Just do it”.

Kizik went the other way. They identified a niche or a tiny need - hands-free sneakers - and doubled down on it. This value prop is everywhere on their website - including in the title tag and meta description. Talk of consistency!

So what’s the lesson in this? S.T.O.P. trying to be like big brands. Instead, innovate around them. Find out a need they are not meeting and solve ruthlessly for it to the extent that your target customers know you as the best person who solves that need.

Next, communicate it in the clearest possible way. No fancy words. Imagine if Kizik said - Title Tag: Kizik: The Ultimate Footwear Innovation for Enhanced Feet Freedom

Meta Description: Kizik: Step into innovation with shoes designed for effortless wearing. Say goodbye to laces and hello to hassle-free style. Embrace a new perspective on simplicity and style with a unique approach to shoe design that transforms your daily routine

Okay, to write the statement above, I had to get a little help from Chat GPT but you get my drift.

Memo 2: A funny video about wearing too many marketing hats (+ my thoughts on being generalist vs. specialist)

This video went viral on LinkedIn. When I shared it with the community (if you’d like to join, please fill out this form), we had a good laugh. When we sobered up, we had an insightful conversation about generalist vs specialist.

I’ve worked in early-stage startups my entire career. That means that I have worn too many hats too. In one of my jobs, In addition to being a marketing generalist (I think the only thing I haven’t done in marketing is ABM), I was a project manager, account manager, did occasional product work, did product demos/took sales calls and even did some QA testing.

I am not complaining about any of this but I wish someone told me to develop deep expertise in one area of marketing (I’ve remedied this. I’m going deep as a product marketing specialist). If you don’t intentionally go deep in one area, you’d likely be a jack of all trades and master of none. The solution is to be a T-shaped marketer.

To help you decide on the area to focus on as well as other skills to learn, I’ll include an article about being a T-shaped marketer at the end of this article. Please check it out.

Memo 3: Free Buyer Persona Template

I’ve done some work in the past where I created a customer interview template as well as a spreadsheet to help you distil insights from the interview (You get this template when you refer up to 3 people to subscribe to the newsletter). 

Refer a friend

Now, I’ve taken it a step further with a simple Buyer persona template. It is succinct and contains critical information everyone should know about your personas/ICPs.

I created it when I wrote this newsletter where I described how I love the research ScreenZen - the app I use to regulate screen time -put into their product development and marketing.

Get the template here.

A little humour from LinkedIn🤣

It’s no secret that I love LinkedIn. If you follow the right people, you’ll learn a lot and have the occasional laugh.

This month, I want to share something that had me laughing hard. I hope you find it funny too.

View the full post on LinkedIn as well as the hilarious comments. If you’d like to see other gems I’ve been collecting from LinkedIn, check out my LinkedIn swipe file.

Resources mentioned in the newsletter

How to be a T-shaped marketer

Kizik’s website (the sneaker brand I mentioned earlier)

The viral video on LinkedIn

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful month🥂

Onyi.

To explain why I love this app, I’ll tell you about:

1. Myself, the different ways I’ve tried to limit screen time, and why it’s been unsuccessful

2. What the product got right that made me believe that they nailed customer research and competitive intel.

About Myself

(think of this as a customer interview 🙂)

As long as I can remember, I’ve always tried to limit screen time. One of the hacks I use and still use is to put my phone away while I’m working. This means that my phone is in another room while I am working but close enough that I can hear it ring.

The problem is that once it’s 5 pm, I grab my phone to check all that I’ve missed. And what happens is that by the time I flit through Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and WhatsApp Business, I’ve spent so much time online that I have little time left for my after-work plans which are usually to read books/newsletters, create free resources for my community or do some research for my newsletter.

Other ways I’ve tried to solve this problem: I use the screen time feature on my iPhone. One thing I did was to set up focus time. That way, these distracting apps aren't on my home screen. Then I also set up a time limit on these apps. Now this is laughable because each time the time elapses, I click on the button that asks me to stay on for an extra 15 minutes. Somedays, I simply turn off the timing 😂

Last week, I realized that this method is simply not working. If I can easily extend the time I spend on those apps, then it defeats the purpose of imposing the restriction in the first place. So I began to search. I did some Googling and also went to Reddit. Reddit was super helpful. I had trouble choosing from all the recommendations but I settled for ScreenZen because:

1. When you want to open an app, it doesn’t open it instantly. Instead, it makes you wait for some time (a time you have set) before it grants you access. (Can you see how different it is from the iPhone screen time feature?)

2. It has a feature called Pause message which is a message they show you before opening the app. The message can either be other things you can do instead of scrolling through the app or a custom message you write to yourself. This is the route I choose. (my custom message is: Onyi, is this necessary? Does this not distract you from what you ought to do this evening?)

3. It limits the number of opens in a day and also lets me set a time limit for each open. I set mine to 4 opens per day and a limit of 5 minutes for each open. This brings the total time I spend on each app daily to 20 minutes.

4. The clincher is that I don’t see these apps on my screen 🤯. For this to work, you set a schedule when it should hide these apps completely. Mine is from 9 am - 5 pm. During this time, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp are not on my home screen. And after 5 pm, the restrictions I set in c above kick in.

Writing this now reminded me that you can’t do effective messaging without being specific. Blanket statements like increase your productivity or reduce the time you spend on social media will only work if you back them up with features. You can lead with benefits but the product features are the only thing that makes me believe your claim.

What’s even more interesting is that most times when people who’ve been using alternatives (and trust me, all your target customers are using an alternative) start searching for a new product, it’s usually a feature-specific shortcoming that prompts the search.

For example in my case, I was looking for a tool that would make it difficult for me to give myself an extra 15 minutes on Instagram (which was a shortcoming of my current tool). That’s what prompted the search and not a broad search for “reduce time spent on social media”.

How they showed this on their website

While writing this, I checked out ScreenZen’s website and it was impressive. As I mentioned earlier, most product search begins because target customers hit a constraint with their current tool. ScreenZen capitalized on this insight when writing their website copy, especially the hero section.

The market for apps that limit screen time is competitive. You’re competing with native apps on iPhone and Android as well as others like RescueTime and Freedom. The free versions of these apps are very solid. If you operate in this market, you have to literally differentiate or die.

The first impressive thing ScreenZen did is that they did not lead with broad messaging - something like “limit the time you spend on social media”. Instead, they figured out their UVP, what their users love most about their product, and built their messaging around it.

This UVP is “pause before opening a distracting app.”

They didn’t just stop there. The rest of the website supported this core value proposition. This is evident in the featured testimonials. What everyone is talking about is how this pause feature reduced the time they spent doomscrolling.

Finally, they introduced other equally amazing product features.

Did you notice that they did not try to talk about all these product features at the onset? They led with the one customers loved the most and later on, shone the spotlight on the others.

This reminded me of the wedge theory in product marketing (well, I’m the one who coined the name wedge theory 😊). But basically, April Dunford who is a B2B positioning expert advises that when you have multiple products and are confused about how to position them, lead with a wedge. (listen to the podcast here).

This wedge is the most important product you’d like your target customers to buy. When they’ve converted, you can then tell them about the other amazing products you have. She gave an example with Salesforce. They have multiple products but they lead with their CRM after which they introduce you to other products in their suite.

ScreenZen applied this principle on their website.

In conclusion:

Good marketing starts with understanding your customers (which you almost can’t do if you don’t talk to them and ask them the right questions*), understanding the current ways they’re solving their problems and the shortcomings of this method, building a product that is better than the alternative and communicating effectively, how this product is better than the alternatives.

I can't help but add that Copywriting is not just showing up and stringing a couple of words together. If you ever want to hire a copywriter, hire one who understands the customers, the competitive landscape, your product, positioning, and messaging. Without this, they can never write good copy that will support your acquisition goals.

*I created a customer interview bundle. It contains a template for conducting customer interviews as well as another template for extracting insights from these interviews. I created this using insights from Adele Revella’s best-selling book on Buyer Persona. Join our community to get this resource.

If you enjoy reading my newsletter, it would mean the world to me if you invited friends to subscribe and read with us. If you refer friends, you will receive benefits free resources, and a virtual chat with me.

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• A short story of how I started the newsletter

• 3 important Lessons I’ve learned.

• The growth lever

Why I started the newsletter

When I try to describe my career, I usually say it’s non-conventional. I was the first marketing hire [without any previous job experience] in an early-stage startup. Typically, first marketing hires are usually experienced people who’ve been there and done it. But this wasn’t my case.

What even made my situation more peculiar is that I didn’t have a manager in the true sense of the word. Sure there was someone who oversaw the entire business unit [for a short time]but what I needed at that time was the close coaching anyone starting their career needed.

So I had to figure out a lot of stuff on my own and did so many things for the first time. But honestly, it was incredibly hard. In fact, if I have to talk about my career [which at some point, included leading a team of 3 in a fintech], I’d say it’s doing many hard stuff for the first time with little or no help. 

Nevertheless, I’ve learned so much. For instance, one of my biggest learnings is to spend time developing a strategy you’d use and join a community of people in the same growth stage as you. That way, you’d learn faster, build confidence, and deliver business results.

So I promised myself that someday, I’d start a newsletter to share all I’ve learned so that early-career marketers in the same situation I was in 4+ years ago won’t feel confused, unsupported, and unhappy.

Here are the lessons I’ve learned since I started this newsletter in June 2023.

3 important Lessons I’ve learned

Lesson 1: Sometimes you’d be ready and other times you’d never be ready. Unfortunately, there’s no manual [to the best of my knowledge] that tells you projects you should take on when you’re 100% ready and others you should dive into even when you’re unsure.

In the previous section, I wrote about how I told myself that I’d start a newsletter for early career marketers someday. Someday. Ha! 😀 I didn’t have a specific date for someday but for me, it was when I had a work-life balance and stopped working 12hrs+ a day. (Fun fact: I didn’t achieve this for a very very long time. I’m not even sure I’ve achieved this because I’m writing this newsletter by 1 am].

So what I am saying to you is that sometimes, you’d never be truly ready. Writing this, I remembered what I read in Pres. Obama’s memoir. He said that when people started encouraging him to run for president, he didn’t feel ready. He shared this with an older democratic senator who told him “Barack, sometimes you choose time, and sometimes time chooses you." 

This resonated with me and it’s exactly how this newsletter started. While I was waiting for the perfect someday to start the newsletter, time chose me on a Monday morning. My week started on a horrible note and I found myself impulsively opening a separate Google Profile, and doing what I’ve put off for someday. I created a Medium account and wrote my first article. I moved to Substack shortly after. 

So next time time chooses you, don’t hesitate to say yes.

Lesson 2: Focus on Originality

Originality  - at least in this context does not mean writing/saying what has never been said before. Instead, it is focusing on what you truly care about and not what you think you should care about.

Let’s say you want to start a newsletter and you do competitive analysis to find out what other marketers are writing about.

Person 1: ABC

Person 2: EFG

Person 3: HIGK

After your analysis, you discovered that person 3 has the biggest followership so you decide to write on HIGK. Just as this wouldn’t work in marketing, it wouldn’t work for you. Instead of trying to be like someone else, find out what you care about, a problem you’re interested in, or a topic you can talk about non-stop and write on it. Write on it even if nobody else is talking about it. The world will catch up soonest.

At the risk of sounding lyrical, find what makes your soul sing and stick to it.

Lesson 3: Find out your growth levers

To be honest, I didn’t do this from the onset. I discovered it by accident. My newsletter grew when Lade Folabi, creator of Marketing for Geeks in an interview, mentioned my newsletter as one of the newsletters she loves. She also recommended it on her Substack. Suddenly, I went viral (haha! Just kidding but you get my drift).

Now, I am experimenting with other growth levers and I’ll tell you how it goes.

This brings me back to my previous point: Be original. You’d find people your content resonates with.

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Share the newsletter with your friends and get a reward🎁

If you’ve enjoyed reading The Early-Stage Marketer, we’ve set up a referral system that makes it possible to share the newsletter with your friends and get rewarded for it.

When you share it with 3 people, you get my buyer persona template. I created it using the insights from Adele Revella’s Buyer Persona book. It is what I used when I did some freelance work for some early-stage startups.

When you share it with 5 people, you get my entire Notion Swipe file for free. If you read our monthly newsletter, Memos, you’ll notice that I share insightful screenshots of product launches, messaging, copywriting, and even LinkedIn Posts from smart marketers. I’d give you the Notion file where you’ll gain access to all these screenshots.

When you share with 10 people, you’ll get a 30-minute Zoom chat with me. You can discuss anything of your choice. I’d never pretend to have all the answers. Instead, I’ll tell you what I genuinely think and share resources that I’ve found helpful.

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Until next time,

Onyi

If you found it in the promotions tab, simply hit reply and send me “hi”. This will signal to Google to send the newsletter to your inbox [and not promotions]next time.

Thank you so much!

So to the topic of the day: How to write an interesting portfolio.

Some weeks back, I was trying to fill the role of a social media manager. As part of the application, candidates were required to submit their portfolios. Looking through the portfolios, I realized that most people [or at least the portfolios I’ve seen in the times I’ve attempted recruiting ] were doing their portfolios wrong.

They simply add the logos of the brands they’ve worked with and for some, the extra mile is to slap screenshots of their work [social posts, email copy, articles, etc] into the portfolio, and viola! Portfolio is done.

This is wrong for one reason: it doesn’t provide context. When I look at your portfolio, I want to understand:

• What was the state of the brand/business before you met it?

• Is there anything interesting that was happening in that sector when you joined?

• What approach did you take?

• What did you do? [this is where you can now add screenshots of your post.]

Unless you’re Sam Altman or some celebrity marketer, adding the logos of brands you’ve worked with won’t just do.

The Purpose of a Portfolio

The goal of your marketing portfolio [can’t speak for other disciplines 😂] is to tell a story that you couldn’t fit into your resume. For instance, if you listed on your resume that you increased retention from 5% to 20% MoM, your portfolio is a place to get into a little detail about that. 

For instance, you could talk briefly about the strategy you used to increase retention. This helps the hiring manager see the depth of your expertise.

P.S. I am not advocating for wordy portfolios. What I am saying is, figure out how to provide more context without being too wordy. In the next section, I’ll show you how I attempted to do that in my portfolio.

The Evolution of My Marketing Portfolio.

First of all, a disclaimer. My marketing portfolio is not perfect. A more experienced marketer may probably be convinced that I am doing it all wrong. What’s most important, however, is that I believe that after a handful of iterations, this is the best approach to building my portfolio…for now.

Portfolio 1: Made in 2022

This is the first portfolio I created. I made it with Google Sites.

I provided a professional summary [that might be a bit too long, depending on the opinion of who’s reading] and included images/videos of my work with a short commentary on what I did.

What’s missing:

• I didn't share the results from the activities I mentioned.

Portfolio 2: Made sometime in 2023

In 2023, I decided that Google Sites wasn't flexible enough and decided to try a new website builder Vzy. 

There isn't much difference between this portfolio and the first. Or maybe there is. I changed the header photo and included the results in the summary. Another thing I did differently was to add links to my Substack newsletter and my medium profile.

I also added the link to an artifact I submitted to Reforge.

Portfolio 3: Made in 2024

I built my third portfolio on Carrd. I wasn’t satisfied with the look of my second portfolio and I hit a roadblock with Vzy. The template I used wasn’t flexible and they had limited themes to choose from. So I moved to Carrd [for no particular reason except that I recalled that I’d heard of them as a landing page builder. I don’t know anyone who’s used it or read reviews. I simply decided to try it].

What I did differently this time around was provide more context into what I did.

In one role, I shared a bit of what was happening in the market. This makes it easy to understand the value of my work. In another, I briefly mentioned the startup’s target customers.

What’s in this new portfolio:

• I quantified my achievements

• I added all the other stuff I do by the side like the early-stage marketer community and the swipe files I am building

• I shortened the hero section [quite a feat! 😀]

What I think isn’t so right:

• Depending on who’s reading, it may be slightly long. [I tried my best to shorten it though]

• I didn’t have a photo in the hero section [I was keen on selecting the most flexible template I could find. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with a place for a photo]

• It is monochromic. This feedback is from my sister. When I tried adding more colours, it looked like kindergarten coloring homework so I had to revert to all white.

That’s it from me! What other advice would you give a marketer who wants to build an interesting portfolio that showcases their skills and puts them in a position to get their dream job?

 ✍️ Short story about a mistake that scared me off search ads 😂

📣 A list of AI tools that will help you do marketing better in 2024

🧾 A perfect example of cleverness + clarity

Let’s Go!

🆕LinkedIn is a gold mine. I’ve learned so much by following the right people. This month, I included 2 posts from LinkedIn I found interesting + a short commentary on the screenshots.  If you’d like to see previous screenshots, check out the swipe file🎉 I added at the end of the newsletter.

Memo 1: Short story about a mistake that scared me off search ads 😂

I follow this guy on LinkedIn - Chris Walker - and I’d recommend you follow him too if you sell enterprise B2B SaaS. He’s opinionated (which I sort of like), has contrarian views (which are true in my opinion. I practiced what he preached and they worked), and understandably has gotten on the bad side of some marketers.

He posted this funny video to show how much of a waste search ads are and I howled with laughter because I could relate. This reminded me of what happened when I set up search ads when I was about 18 months + into my marketing career.

Background Information: so Google had released Google Business Messages as part of its efforts to join the messaging wars. This was around the time that Meta opened up Instagram API just like they did for Facebook, allowing businesses to build chatbots on their platform.

I won’t bore you with details about the features of Google’s Business Messaging. But shortly after, there was an additional feature in beta and we were invited to try it. You know the usual search ads lead people to a landing page. But with this feature, instead of a landing page, you are directed to a conversation with the chatbot.

We decided to try it out before we told our users about it. So off I went to set up the Google Search Ads.

We had a budget and I put it in there. Every day, Google would give me recommendations on what to do to make the ads better. And I thought “Google knows best!” so I naively accepted all the suggestions😂

Here’s what happened: all the money in the card ran out and I didn’t get any tangible result. To make matters worse, I had to prepare a PowerPoint and do a presentation to the founder and another senior exec, explaining what happened to their money. After that experience, I avoid ads like a plague.

And tbh, I think Google Ads is such a massive waste of money with little ROI. But again, I may be biased. 

What’s the biggest marketing mistake you’ve ever made? You could tell me in the comments or DM me on Substack.

Memo 2: A list of AI tools that will help you do marketing better in Q2

Many months ago, a marketer I admire, Emily Kramer of MKT1 asked her followers on LinkedIn to share AI tools that make their work simpler. The post had over 100 comments. I went through them all and compiled them in Airtable. I also added why each marketer loves the tool. 

If you’re looking for AI tools to support content writing, SEO, video production, and other marketing tasks, please check it out. I’m sure you’d find something helpful.

P.S. Feel free to share it with other marketers you know.

Memo 3: A perfect example of cleverness + clarity

If you’ve followed me for some time, you’d know that I am an advocate of clarity over cleverness. This is because I’ve seen instances where marketers tried to be clever [or funny. Or witty] but ended up confusing their customers [like this product I wrote about confused me]. So my default advice is to play it safe. Prioritize clarity over cleverness.

But last week, I saw a rare example of cleverness and clarity that was well-executed and I thought to share it with you. So next time you want to be clever but at the same time clear, use this as your North Star. Did your cleverness amplify the message, making it easier to understand in 30 seconds or less?

P.S. You can find other examples in this Notion Swipe file

Now to my favorite part of the newsletter

This Month on LinkedIn

Screenshots of LinkedIn Posts that made me laugh or think.

I laughed hard at this. This is because I’ve seen so many poorly edited AI posts - revolutionize, elevate your look, tapestry woven into, and flavorful meals. Please, folks, edit your AI content.

I agree with this. I started to write why and realized it’ll end up being too long for a commentary so I decided to spin this off as a newsletter. So my advice is, to pick 1-3 segments understand their challenges, and focus on solving their problems well. 

P.S. If you’d like to check out other LinkedIn screenshots, you can do so here.

Thanks for reading!

If you enjoyed reading this, please like it, share it with your marketing friends, or drop a comment.

While writing this, I closed my eyes for a minute and did a bit of time travel. I imagined that I became wildly successful as Sam Altman and a journalist asked me if there was anything I’d change in my story. I said none and added a tech broish speech about how everything led me to this path.

But the truth is, if possible, there are a handful of things I’d change. And that’s the goal of the newsletter. To tell you as quickly as possible my experience as the first marketing hire without prior experience - well except for my Hubspot’s content marketing courses - and what I’d have done differently.

Let’s begin.

First what does it feel like being responsible for a startup’s marketing when you’ve never done it before?

1. Self-doubt, Self-doubt X2, and More Self-doubt

Maybe it’s a woman thing [research shows women are more likely to have self-doubt than men] or maybe it’s a me thing but you’re going to spend a large chunk of your time believing that you don’t know what you’re doing. You come to that point where you realize painfully, that your courses - though helpful - don’t compare in any way to doing the actual work

This is why I advise people I mentor to do a real project. Are you learning content writing? Set up a blog or newsletter and try to grow it. Are you learning social media management? Set up a social media account focused on any niche of your choice and try to grow it. Though nothing can compare with doing “real work”, having your project will cushion the effect of jumping from theory to practice. 

I remember the first time I presented my content strategy to the team, I went home convinced that it was absolute rubbish. I was depressed for days before I finally summoned the courage to ask the founder what he thought of it. Turns out that he didn't think that it was that bad.

I don’t know but I think the self-doubt is normal [hopefully, or so far it doesn't get as extreme as mine]. You’re doing something for the first time and there is nobody to show you the ropes. Worse, there is no one to tell you how you’re doing. Trying to juggle these two large balls - doing something for the first time without guidance and having no one to tell you how you’re doing + how to improve - is enough to make anyone overwhelmed.

2. You’ll be submerged in the trough of sorrow

I think it’s Paul Graham of YC that popularized this term the trough of sorrow. He used it to describe a startup founder’s journey from pre-PMF to PMF. I wish Paul Graham knew that the trough of sorrow is not only for founders. You as an early career professional in an early-stage startup will have an unfair share of it.

The interesting thing about this stage is, you may be doing the right thing but you just don’t know. For instance, how long does it take to see results from SEO? Is the growth too slow or is it normal? What should you measure to show progress? Am I even measuring the right thing? Does [insert founder’s name] value me? OMG, everybody is adding value except me! On and on you go until the sorrow becomes part and parcel of your existence.

What I’d Change About This

I’ve written an article titled Should you take the role of first marketing hire in a startup? I’d suggest you read it. There, I did my best to paint an honest picture of what your life would be like if you took the role of a first marketing hire in a startup [without prior experience].

I am not exactly going to say that if things ever changed, I’d choose a traditional career or maybe work in another startup with marketing leadership. That wasn’t my reality and it may not be yours too. But what I’d have done better is to handle effectively the hand I’ve been dealt. Here’s how to do that:

1. Read up on what to do when you are responsible for marketing in an early-stage startup. This is critical. For instance, if you knew content writing, you’d jump into content writing once you joined the team. You probably won't do in-depth/broad audience research, figure out your marketing engines, and fuel [yep. Borrowed this word from the MKT1 newsletter.] Simply put, you won't do the foundational work every marketing team needs to do to succeed. And it's not your fault. You just don't know. So your first line of action is to go learn what you should know. I’d recommend the entire MKT1 newsletter for this.

2. Don’t do so much at once. You’d be tempted to after all, how else will you prove your value? They may want you to do a whole lot at once - after all, everyone thinks everything in marketing is simple and can be done in a blink. But if you do too much at once, you won'tdo a very good job [that you’d be proud of] and you won't have time to double down and get tangible results. SO define 2-3 areas of focus and stick to it.

P.S. It won’t be easy to do this and I honestly wish I could tell you how but I’m still struggling with this 🙂

2. Don’t do it alone. This is the most important advice and should have come first. Don’t isolate yourself. Don’t think your courses and articles will save you. Find an active community of early career marketers and join. Ask questions. Ask for help. I know for a fact that my life would have been easier if I had done this from the start. Instead, I did it 3 years later. You’d be amazed at how much people are willing to help. I’ve been a recipient of such help. Strangers from the communities I am active on have had 2hours long calls with me on weekends to help me figure stuff out. They’ve responded to my questions with helpful suggestions that changed my work. So, yes, join a community.

If you’re looking for a community for early-career marketers like you, you’re in the right place.

When I started this newsletter, my goal was simple: share everything I’ve learned working in early-stage startups. My hope was and still is to give early-career marketers a resource that will make their jobs easier and make them happier.

Late last year, I read Deb Liu’s newsletter, Perspectives. She wrote about the importance of having your personal board of directors. After reading that, I had the idea to build this community as an extension of the newsletter. My goal is simple: bring early career marketers in early-stage startups together so they can meet other marketers and help each other succeed at their jobs through peer mentorship.

There are tons of marketing communities out there. I know because I am part of some. But this is different because

1. It is built specifically for early-career marketers in early-stage startups who need help to achieve their marketing goals.

2. It is a community run by a marketer - me - who has been and is still in your shoes. I am not going to outsource it to a community manager who will post Monday motivation and TGIF stuff. While they are enjoyable, I know that’s not your priority right now.

3. I am intentional about peer mentorship because I’ve been a recipient and I know it works. We have a channel where you can drop your request, like a journo request and someone or people can set up a meeting and help you with what you're struggling with.

4. I am intentional about growth. Every month, we’ll have a fireside chat where we will discuss a marketing topic in depth - it could be SEO, growth, or messaging. You leave with new knowledge you need to succeed at your job.

5. I’m determined to make it easy for you to make friends in the industry. The fireside chats and the 1:1 requests are opportunities to meet people. But I’ll take it a step further with physical hangouts every quarter so you can meet your friends in Slack in real life.

To achieve all these, I am intentionally keeping the group small. Once we hit 100, I’ll stop accepting membership and focus on making our small community tight knight. Become a member here.

If you know any marketer who will benefit from this community, please share this newsletter with them.

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Warning ⚠️If you follow this advice, chances are that at the end, you’ll have zero marketing agencies left on your list. But I guess it’s better than pouring thousands of money down the drain.

First things first, the type of agencies you shouldn’t choose

1. Agencies who work with non-tech brands. For instance, if a marketing agency’s clients are banks, big FMCG brands, or large telecom companies, you have no business with them.

   Why? They’ll think that FMCG marketing - or simply put, that people buy [expensive B2B] software the same way they buy detergent from a supermarket aisle. Another reason why you shouldn’t choose them is they will most likely focus on brand marketing. I love brand marketing and every startup should start thinking of their brand from day 1. But unless the specific reason you are looking for a marketing agency is for brand marketing, you don’t want an agency whose primary concern is your font size.

   Still on brand marketing, there are some basics like a clear ICP, positioning, and messaging that should be in place before you begin brand marketing. If these aren’t in place and validated, then you don’t need brand marketing yet.

2. The easiest way to know if an agency is a good fit for you is their budget. I believe that you have to pay good money for the best service but an agency that gives you the same bill they’d give a Series Z startup doesn’t just understand your situation. You are early stage, you’re not profitable yet so a marketing agency needs to understand your unique situation and find a way to get you the best results without breaking the bank.

Now that we’ve gotten this out of the way, here’s a simple way to choose the best marketing agency for your startup/get the best value from your marketing agency:

1. There should be a clear goal that all parties understand. The agency is responsible for this goal. For instance, the first meeting with your agency should start with something like “we want to get 1000 customers in 90 days. What do we need to make it happen?”.

2. That way, everyone is clear that the deliverable is 1000 customers. This is so important because most agencies don’t want to commit to a number. They believe their job is to give you leads. Well, they are somewhat correct. In enterprise B2B, marketing’s job is to bring pipeline to sales, and then sales closes the deal. But the problem with agreeing on leads is that the agency may bring you the lowest quality leads they find on the internet. These leads don’t convert to customers but that doesn’t concern the marketing agency. They dance to the bank to get the 5% of the bloated budget they created for you.

   If you must settle for leads, define exactly the type of customers who qualify as leads and the percentage you should close.

3. If you don’t have clear ICPs, messaging, positioning, differentiation and value prop, these should be the first thing an agency picks up. If you don’t have a defined persona and messaging, then what exactly will be the content of their marketing campaigns? You should be skeptical of any agency that doesn’t ask about this, asks you to build one, or builds one for you.

4. Don’t just accept or more accurately, hire an agency to create a strategy document or PowerPoint. It’ll gather dust in your Google Drive. You’d never use it. Instead, they should transform the strategy doc into something tangible eg. a website that converts. [emphasis on converts].

I have a feeling that this article will have a sequel. But until then, what advice will you give to an early-career marketer looking for a marketing agency for their startup?

Are you an early career marketer in an early-stage startup searching for a marketing community where you can discuss tactical marketing stuff like this? If yes, you'd love my community. It's solely focused on early-career marketers in early-stage startups who want to meet and learn from other marketers in early-stage startups so that they can deliver business results and grow their careers.

The community will launch on Feb. 13th. Please join here.

I’d also like to thank everyone who subscribed in the last couple of days! I’m excited to have you here and hope we can learn from each other

Alrighty! Let's get into the topic of the day - Product marketing examples to inspire you in 2024.

Here are the criteria I used in selecting the product marketing examples I featured in this newsletter:

1. Market research: How well do they know what’s happening in the market and what their customers struggle with?

2. Messaging: How well did they communicate their offering, tying it clearly to who they built for, and the problem it solves for this customer segment?

3. Launch announcement: A launch announcement is more than the generic “we’re excited to launch xo xo xo.” A launch announcement should immediately capture three essential things: who the product is for, the problem it solves, and what the target customers achieve/can now do [which they hitherto couldn’t do/achieve] after using the product. This is important because sometimes, a launch is a new way to acquire customers. Making your launch announcements clear and succinct can support that goal.

So in no particular order, here are the three best product marketing examples to inspire you in 2024:

1. Bankly

2. Healthtracka

3. Crayon

Bankly

One of the interesting things that happened in the Nigerian fintech space was that many fintechs got a microfinance bank license. So when Bankly bought a microfinance bank, I wondered what their offering would be and how they would differentiate themselves in a crowded market. When they unveiled their offering, boy! Was I impressed!

The Bankly app has the typical features a banking and savings app has: bill payments, individual savings, and group savings. But the focus of the go-to-market plan was their group savings feature - which is essentially a way to digitize esusu/ajo, a group savings/contribution scheme where group memebrs take turns collecting the entire monthly contributions.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. Popular savings apps like Piggyvest and Cowrywise have the group savings feature but that’s not the primary way users use the app.

I did research on H1 2023 and part of the question was asking respondents how they use savings apps. Most of them use Piggyvest and they use it primarily to save towards a goal. None of the respondents in my survey used it for group savings.

Over 50% of the respondents have used a savings and investment product. Where it gets interesting is what they use it for. All respondents use it for personal savings and investments. No one mentioned saving with friends or the group savings feature.

What respondents use savings apps for

To dig deeper, I went through Piggyvest’s Instagram post where they ask followers what they use their app for. Most of the answers were about personal savings and saving toward a goal.

Granted, like all products, users use other features which include the public and private savings challenge but judging from responses from users, most of them use Piggyvest for personal savings and/or to save toward a goal.

So it was interesting to see that the cornerstone of the launch of  Bankly’s mobile banking app was to emphasize the need to digitize Ajo savings which is popular amongst Nigerians. So far, no popular savings app has clearly and intentionally promoted that as a core value proposition.

The next thing Bankly did well was messaging. They partnered with influencer Kiekie to make a launch video. The storytelling was great but what was even greater was how they emphasized and communicated the pain the app solves - a pain point everyone who has ever joined a group savings schemed can relate to.

Here are the other videos they made to promote this product:

Say goodbye to Family Group Drama with Bankly Group Savings

Introducing Bankly Microfinance Bank!

Summary: two things Bankly did extraordinarily well were:

1. Differentiation. They didn’t lead with free bill payments or the regular savings. which is already oversaturated with zero room for differentiation. They focused on group savings popularly known as ajo

2. Messaging. The messaging was spot on. It highlighted the downsides of the current way target customers handledgroup savings and exposed the inherent risks - the collector absconding with the money. Finally, they showed how Bankly solves that. This messaging remained consistent across launch assets.

HealthTracka

Healthtracka is a health tech company that provides home test kits. I loved the launch of their lemon and peach kits, which is at-home testing for UTIs and STIs. Going through Healthtracka’s LinkedIn page, their launch announcements, are sort of dry. It doesn’t pique my curiosity or tell me what the product does. It redirects me to some blog posts to learn more.

When I see this, my thinking is, I am already on LinkedIn, why don’t you just share the news here? Why are you directing me elsewhere when you can as well tell me what your product is about on this platform that I am currently on?

But what Healthtracka got right in the launch of the Lemon and Peach kits is the customer research. The product shows that they understand their customers and the market - which is, first, the need for regular testing and second, users’ discomfort with going to the hospital for UTIs/STDs tests.

Watch the launch video here

So for Healthtracka, one thing they did well is:

Market/customer research: There’s a need to get regular testing for STDs and UTI but many Nigerians don’t. Granted, there’s some discomfort around sexual testing all around the globe, but this is worse in Nigeria due to its conservative nature. They highlighted this problem in their launch video and also showed how their product solves this problem.

p.s. I first learned of this launch when I came across the post the company’s executive made about it. It was more detailed and conveyed the problem the product solves better than what the company posted on its LinkedIn page. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the post even though I searched tirelessly for it.

Crayon

Crayon is an American startup that builds competitive intelligence software. I added them to this list because I love their launch announcement.

Most launch announcements are generic. They usually begin with “We are excited to announce the launch of xyz.” Though there’s a better way to start a launch announcement, there’s nothing wrong with this opening.

The problem is that most launch announcement don’t provide sufficient background into the problem the product/feature solves, why it’s important to solve this problem/the consequences of leaving this problem unsolved, and benefits of solving this problem.

Crayon’s launch announcement did all this well.

Here’s what they did right:

• The announcement started with what the feature does - makes it easy for PMMs and CI leaders to help their sales team win.

• Next, they broke down how exactly this feature does that. To do this, they started with the problem: there's never been an EASY way for PMMs & CI leaders to get actionable win-loss insights in front of their sellers 

• But to get to this point, they first provided context: Buyer surveys & interviews often produce insights that can help your sellers win future deals. For example, a buyer may tell you that they chose your solution over Competitor X because yours has a better editing workflow ✍ You NEED to share that intel with your sellers -- it will help them win! But that's easier said than done 😕

• Finally, they shared how this feature solves this problem: With this integration, insights from Clozd's win-loss surveys & interviews will AUTOMATICALLY flow into Crayon, where you can analyze them alongside all the intel we've captured from your competitors' digital footprints 🔍

• And added bullet points for more clarity.

What I love most about this launch announcement is the customer research and messaging. It shows that they truly understand the constraints their target customers face and they did a great job sharing how their product fixes these constraints.

Next is the Big Announcement!

Join a Community of Early Career Marketers in EarlyStage StartUps!

I've worked in B2B/B2C early-stage marketing for 4 years now. It's been challenging. There are days when I find myself saying "𝘖𝘯𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘺𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶" and others where I feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew. But I've also learned. A lot.

When I started this newsletter, I wanted to give early career marketers [o-3 YOE] some kind of resource to help them excel in their jobs, because I know how tough it is (and sadly, no one ever talks about that).

This year, I'm taking it a step further with the launch of an exclusive community for early-stage marketers (0-3 YOE) in early-stage startups. The goal is to connect you with peers facing or who have faced similar challenges so you can learn from each other and grow together.

For example, you might be a first-time manager struggling to manage a team. Someone who's currently doing that can provide helpful tips. Or you want to set up a paid campaign and have no idea about budget, a performance marketer or a generalist who's recently done that may come to your rescue. And if you need to make new friends with people in the industry, you can attend the quarterly meetups.

There are a lot of marketing communities but in most of them, you'd find all sorts of marketers: people who are not yet marketers but are hoping to be, marketers with 6,7 years of experience, freelance marketers, or even marketers in large tech startups. This can make it difficult to find help tailored to your specific needs

I'm launching the community on February 13th. So join if you want to connect with early career marketers in early-stage startups, attend fireside chats on specific marketing topics - like copywriting, messaging, and positioning and make new friends in the industry.

Become a member.❤️

In this month’s edition:

 ✍️Learn copywriting from a tiny, unknown skincare brand

📣The feedback from your “toxic” manager might help your career

🧾 Website copywriting: Use images to make your product’s value clearer

🆕LinkedIn is a gold mine. I’ve learned so much by following the right people. This month, I included an interesting post from LinkedIn.  If you’d like to see previous screenshots, check out the link to the swipe file🎉 It’s at the end of the newsletter.

Memo 1: Learn copywriting from a tiny, unknown skincare brand

One of the things I love to say is that to write good copy, you have to understand the customer, market, and product. Buying a skincare product showed me how true this is.

Some days ago, I went to the mall to buy groceries. I wandered to the skincare aisle and decided to buy facial cleanser. There were just 3 brands in that section and I haven’t used any before. So I spent some time reading the product description on the tubes and then googled reviews.

One skincare brand caught my attention. On the product, they wrote:

Ordinary cleansers will only remove dirt, excess oil, and makeup to help clear your skin of pimples, blackheads, and whiteheads. But an extraordinary cleanser like xx does so much more! 

Its Advanced Tripower Technology3 safely attacks the three stages of melanin production to achieve your whitest white skin. Plus, our BioProtectant Formula 8 has a unique combination of ingredients that strengthens the skin barrier to help protect your skin' against the damaging pollutants we're exposed to every day! 

That's complete cleansing for extra protected, radiantly white skin in as fast as 7 days! From now on, there's no need to worry about dark and lifeless skin again.

Let's analyze what they did right:

1. No.1 shows that they understand differentiation. This helped them sound convincing. When you show customers that you understand the limitations of other products, you get their attention. This gives you the chance to show/explain how your product is different.

2. They didn’t just state that their their product is different and leave it at that. In No.2, they explained what makes it different, how it works, and the results this differentiation gets you.

3. The end with repeating the result this differentiation gets you. What’s interesting is, in the last sentence, they reiterate the problem the product solves.

So over to you? What do you think about this copy?

Memo 2: The feedback from your “toxic” manager might help your career

One of the reasons I like working in startups is the intentional way they build their culture. But one thing I’ve noticed is, sometimes, the desire to build a non-toxic culture erodes accountability. My favorite article that talks about ensuring that a non-toxic culture is also a highly performing one is this HBR article: The Hard Truth About Innovative Cultures.[link is at the end of the newsletter]

Sometimes, I think that the outcome of the “non-toxic” startup culture is that we have people who can’t take feedback or take it too personal. They spend time dissecting the manner the feedback was delivered and ignore that the feedback would have made them better at their jobs and helped the team/business achieve its goals.

I’m not saying managers should not learn how to deliver feedback constructively. What I am saying is that, now, “constructive” is too subjective and open to numerous interpretation. A manager who’s frustrated that you’ve made the same mistake countless times even though, they clearly explained the task, expectations, and outcomes won’t give you feedback in a cherry manner. That’s the unfortunate truth. When this happens, people are quick to brand the manager “toxic” instead of taking responsibility and looking for ways to improve.

If you want to improve your skills and get ahead in your career, you need to ask yourself what constitutes toxic behavior. Do you classify brutal candor as toxic? Do you categorize the occasional exasperation as toxic? 

In addition to this, you’d need to learn how to put aside your feelings, receive feedback, work on it and get better at your job.

Memo 3: Website copywriting: Use images to make your product’s value clearer

Ignition is a platform that helps GTM teams unify their workflow.

Their POV is that the GTM process is fragmented and their product solves this issue. What I love most about their website is how they used an image to illustrate how broken the GTM process it. They supported this image with copy that explains what this fragmentation costs you.

So an image that communicates product value + supporting copy = 🔥

View the swipe file here.

This month on LinkedIn

If you’re building a community around your product, you’ll find this post interesting. It comes with a podcast clip where a founder shared the strategy they used to build a thriving community.

Get the link to the LinkedIn post from the Swipe file.

Thank you for reading November’s edition of Memos. I’m incredibly grateful that you read this far.  I’d love to keep the conversation going. Is there something you agree or disagree with? Do you have a perspective you’d like to share? Please drop it in the comments and I’ll respond promptly.

P.S. I just started this newsletter and would love to reach more marketers in early-stage startups. Would you be kind enough to:

• Share this post with your friends [or on social media]

• Like it [just click the love emoji] so it can reach more people on Substack.

Footnotes

1. The Link to the HBR article on innovative cultures.

 ✍️How I use generative AI - Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bard- to write articles 

🏆How to value your work

🧾 A comprehensive list of AI tools for marketers

🆕LinkedIn is a gold mine. I’ve learned so much by following the right people. This month, I included a post from LinkedIn I found interesting.  If you’d like to see previous screenshots, check out the link to the swipe file🎉. It’s at the end of the newsletter.

Let’s dive in.

p.s. Today’s newsletter is slightly longer than usual because I shared a bit about my work. If it is clipped, please click “view entire message” to read it.

Memo 1: How I use generative AI - Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Bard- to write articles 

When I was in my third year at the university, I took a course in advertising. One of the topics was product adoption. I can't recall exactly, but the lecturer listed how people adopt products, moving from early adopters to laggards - laggards being the last people to try out any product.

After the class, my friends began to call me a laggard. It was so hilarious and accurate. I was the last to try something new and can be indifferent about the current rave.

When ChatGPT made its “internationally acclaimed debut 😄”, I watched closely, followed the debates on both sides and only used it in the rare occurrence of extreme writer’s block - which was few and far between. Eventually, I sided with those who weren’t ChatGPT’s fanboys and girls. My reason was no one can create original content like a human.[This newsletter is a testament to that. I don’t use ChatGPT to write it].

Some months ago, I started a new role in a highly specialized industry that I knew nothing about. To meet my deliverables, I finally yielded and ran to ChatGPT and its cousins. Here’s how I use them:

First, the strength of each tool:

ChatGPT: I like ChatGPT because its responses are longer. This gives me more context and makes my writing somewhat longer.

Bard: This is the master of conciseness. When ChatGPT rambles, I feed its response to Bard to make it concise.

Copilot: The reference geek. It never tells me anything it cannot back up. Considering ChatGPT and Bard, don’t add references unless asked, I type in the same prompt into Copilot so it provides references for me. These references are part of its response.

Integrating it into my workflow:

1. Usually, I type in my prompt into ChatGPT, Bard, and Copilot. I add instructions [eg. this article is for a non-medical audience, eg. someone who has cancer and would like to learn more about their diagnosis] and then I ask it to first generate an SEO-optimized outline.

2. I move the outline to Google Docs, add outlines from Bard and Copilot, and edit them. I might add or remove some items. I add this revised outline back to each of the platforms. I ask them to use this outline to write an SEO-optimized article. I remind it again who the article is for, and the goals and tell it to add examples where necessary.

   [If I am satisfied with the outline from each of the platforms, I skip this step and simply ask them to create an article using the outline]

3. I copy responses from all the platforms into Google Docs and review them.

4. During the review process, I select specific parts from these responses to form a paragraph. For instance, If I want to define cervical cancer, I’d combine definitions from Bard, Copilot, and ChatGPT to create a definition that works best for me. Then I’d turn to Copilot for reference.

5. Sometimes, a response may not meet my expectations. Let’s say a section in the outline is titled "Causes of Cervical Cancer," and ChatGPT’s response was not informative enough, I go back and type in “causes of cervical cancer” as a new prompt with all relevant information. That is,  I repeat step one above. I ask ChatGPT and Bard to add their sources since it doesn’t do that by default like Copilot.

6. Then I do independent research. I quickly read up on the topics and copy and paste some URLs into Bard. I asked it to read through those articles and tell me what it’s about. If necessary, I add this new information to my article and of course reference it. 

After this, I edit my work and share it for review. Do you use generative AI tools? How do you use them and how does it make your work better?

Memo 2: How to value your work

Where I work, I’m the only marketing hire [for now] and I report to the founders. Some weeks ago, one of them asked me to give them a daily update on what I worked on. I was concerned. I felt they weren’t seeing the value of my work, hence the request. I remembered that something similar had happened in my previous roles.

When I thought about it some more, I realized that I don’t know how to talk about my work and why it matters. I work really hard and sometimes work for 12-14 hours a day [this isn't healthy. I’m putting measures in place to stop it]. So when people ask me questions that make me feel as though, they aren’t seeing the value of what I do, I feel bad.

This time, however, I put my emotions aside and probed further. I remembered a book I read, Women Don’t Ask by Linda Babcock. She said women find it hard to value their work and because of this, they don’t talk about their work the same way a man would. She listed the consequences of this, one of which is slower career progression.

I self-diagnosed and realized that despite the long hours and dedication, at the deepest part of my being, there was this uncertainty about the value of my work. This uncertainty held me back from talking about it with confidence or even talking about it at all. It stopped me from asking for help and communicating effectively. 

If you can’t talk about your work with confidence, how can anyone else see its value?

Here’s what I did:

1. I always remind myself that every task I do in this organization matters, no matter how small. It takes some time to get used to but I keep repeating it to myself. 

   Also, for every work I do, I define what I’m tracking. I struggle with this but I've found that dedicating time on Thursdays to think about these metrics helps. I review my goals every week to keep them fresh in my mind. This way, I'm always looking for new and better ways to achieve them.

2. I played to my strengths. I write better than I talk. So every day, I’d write a detailed [not verbose] explanation of what I did each day. I didn't expect it but providing this update was so freeing.

   Moving from obscurity to talking about my daily tasks helped me to see that my work indeed matters. So I’d recommend that you provide daily or weekly updates to your managers on what you’re working on -especially if they don’t ask. If you don’t have someone to share this progress with, it’s really easy to slip into a mindset of feeling your work isn't valuable.

3. I switched my verbs. I didn't know that something as simple as replacing “Here’s what I did today” with “Here’s what I achieved today” could have such a powerful effect. “Achieve” makes me feel like a champion, while “did” can refer to anything, even mindless play.

I can't end this session without referring to Amy Cuddly’s Ted talk on how Your body language may shape who you are. I got emotional at the end of the video where Amy talked about her struggles with self-confidence. It resonated deeply. 

I care about my work, value it, and give it my all. There’s no job I haven't gone the extra mile for. So it’s frustrating and sad when I’m stuck in this rut of “Do I know what I am, doing? I am way over my head, is this valuable, omg, they dont value me”.  If you’ve ever had intense self-doubt about your work, when you’re reasonably confident in other areas of your life, please watch this video.

Memo 3:  A comprehensive list of AI tools for marketers

I respect Emily Kramer and would advise you to subscribe to her newsletter. So when she made a post asking marketers to share their favorite AI tool, I paid attention. The comment section was filled with many suggestions.

Why I like that post is that 98% of responses were from people who use the tools and are not affiliated with the company. They shared why they love the tool and how they use it. As someone who is gradually becoming an AI fangirl, I collated all responses into this Airtable database.

So check it out. You’d see tools for virtually everything you do in marketing - social media, content writing, video production, product marketing, and SEO. If your favourite tool isn't on the list, tell me in the comment or send me an email [onyinyechinwankwo3@gmail.com] and I’ll add it.

This month on LinkedIn:

I’ve already told you how much I love LinkedIn so no need for repetition 😀. Here’s a LinkedIn post I loved. The good news is, I’ll write a newsletter about it this month [was supposed to do so in October but didn't get around to it]

You can view the previous editions of this month on LinkedIn here.

Wheww!! What a long long newsletter. I am glad you read to the end. If you enjoyed it, please share it on your social media handles. This will help me reach more early-career marketers in early-stage startups. If sharing this post is too much of a stress, I’d appreciate it if you could click on ♥️to like it.

Till next week

Onyinye.