Episode description

I invited Kathleen Booth, SVP Marketing at Tradeswell, to the show and we had a blast talking about how to do marketing the way it SHOULD be done - with a customer/audience-first approach focused on community, great content, and building a brand that people love, whether they buy from you or not. 

Prior to Tradeswell, Kathleen served as CMO at clean.io (Series A). She's also the host of The Inbound Success Podcast and Board-level advisor to several tech startups.

Tradeswell was founded in 2019, is based out of Baltimore (MD), and has 38 people. They've raised Series A ($18.8M). Tradeswell is the real-time operating system for e-commerce. Like "mission control" for growing e-commerce businesses. Tradeswell is creating a new category called “real-time operating system”.

Here's what we hit on:

How buyers used to buy and how buyers are buying today (HINT: they go to peers, communities, Slack, LinkedIn, etc.) and how "meh" marketing still follows the old approach;

To truly succeed you need to win the hearts and minds of the buyer and the people they’re talking to;

How we organize our budget (HINT: it's not the usual 10% of revenue is spent on marketing);

What marketing channels are working well (HINT: podcasts, community, niche newsletter ads);

What marketing content are you leaning into this year (HINT: your content should shine a spotlight on your audience PLUS we have data that nobody else has access to);

How are you building out resources this year;

What are your top marketing challenges (HINT: saying no can be hard AND we're creating a category and that's a challenge for sure but there are things we are looking for in the short-term);

How we're aligning really well with sales (HINT: don't pit marketing against sales, it's about the channel and not the team);

What are the last 1-2 really good, creative marketing ideas you’ve come up with (HINT: niche Substack newsletter sponsorship, check out the link below to learn more);

Some goals you want to accomplish (personal, professional) in 2022.

You can reach Kathleen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenslatterybooth/

Find out more about Tradeswell: https://www.tradeswell.com/

Check out Swapstack for niche newsletter advertising: https://swapstack.co/

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You can find Anna on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/annafurmanov or visit this website: www.furmanovmarketing.com and you can also subscribe to Anna's monthly newsletter by going here: https://share.hsforms.com/1cP1V40x7RGes5gHk1XNgNw47lba

Thanks for listening!