Over the past 10 years of my career in marketing and growth, I’ve noticed a trend that may be very familiar to all CMOs and heads of marketing: you join a new company, and almost instantly, the first investment you make is into some kind of new tool, technology or marketing strategy that will help “bring your brand into the modern age”. Although there is definitely, without a question, a place for new technology and innovation in the marketing space, a lot of CMOs and Heads of Marketing overlook one of the most important resources available to them: the existing assets of their brand.

Below, I will outline 5 of the most useful existing resources for any company and how to leverage them to expedite growth. The examples I will provide are based on what I have observed in my professional career (running a growth agency, CMO at a telecom startup , Head of Growth at Shapeways (the world’s largest consumer 3D printing platform), and Head of Growth at Sketchfab (the world’s largest 3D/VR Platform)), as well as great examples from today’s leading brands.

Your Employees

Aside from their designated roles, your employees are one of the most valuable assets for your marketing and growth departments. Your company invests time hiring the best and the brightest individuals – isn’t it logical that not only are they the best choice for the role, but that their personal and professional networks are comprised of like-minded individuals? Some of the best ways to take advantage of the reach of your employees are: Recruiting – It’s a well known fact that recruiting plays an important role in the success of any company. You’ve already vetted your employees for culture fit, so it would make sense that people in their personal and professional network would share similar traits. Incentivizing your existing employees to refer their friends or acquaintances to fill open roles could easily lead to a better recruitment pipeline as well as more qualified applicants. Social Sharing & “Upvotes” – Hopefully, your employees are your biggest fans. Any time you launch a new product, produce some great content, or have some company information to share, your employees should be on the front lines helping distribute this information to their personal and professional networks. I’ve personally seen large companies launch content and products on sites like Reddit and Producthunt and get virtually no engagement. Had they considered the power of their employee network, I guarantee their submissions would have easily ended up in top slots across the internet. Email Signatures – One piece of web real-estate that I have seen overlooked time and time again are employee email signatures. Using this space to include the latest news about your company, your new product offering, or any piece of content that has been recently produced could be an invaluable way to generate views and attention. The beauty of email is that everyone uses it – so it has tremendous reach. Imagine your C-Suite, Biz Dev, and Sales teams all sending hundreds of emails with your focus content in the footer.



Your Customers

Your customers can be another amazing source of inspiration and marketing / growth learnings. Successful companies like AirBnB, Slack, and Facebook use their customer stories for both: internal product research as well as customer marketing. This strategy allows their potential customers to see the successes of their current customers and serves as amazing social proof to convert prospects into customers.

Internal Data

Big data has been a buzzword that has made its rounds throughout the entire marketing industry. Although a lot of the talk around big data is relatively meaningless, using data effectively can be one of the most empowering assets that any company can leverage for growth. Recently at Sketchfab, we launched our first VR Industry Trends report. Using internal data combined with data from a survey sent to our community, in 2 days, we were able to generate over 10,000 page views, 1000 leads for our Biz Dev Team, hundred of social shares, as well as hundreds of news articles and blog posts covering the content. Another company that has leveraged their internal data for content marketing and growth is Pornhub. Although their product may not appeal to everyone, the data and insights that they publish have served as both: informative as well as entertaining content that is safe for work and great to share.

On-Site SEO

Every company should always focus on making their websites, and especially their mobile apps search friendly. Before beginning any sort of link building or content marketing campaigns, CMOs and heads of marketing should always make sure that their sites and apps are optimized for proper indexation, user-friendliness, and built properly from a tech stack perspective. This will ensure the compounding effects of any external marketing on the content or SEO front. This is ESPECIALLY important to companies with a lot of content such as User Generated content platforms and large marketplaces. In my role as Head of Growth at Sketchfab (the world’s largest 3D/VR platform), I immediately drew attention to some of the on-site issues we had in terms of SEO and correcting these issues lead to a non-trivial increase in organic search traffic, which continues to pay dividends over time.

Referral Program

I’m not going to spend a lot of time talking about the merits of having a referral program. Some of the biggest companies in the world have grown into the giants they are today solely due to their referral program. Some great referral program examples include: Dropbox, AirBnB, and Uber. Even established companies like Chase Bank execute referral campaigns to capitalize on their existing audiences. If you’re still a referral non-believer, I will leave you with one thought: “The best place to find new customers is within the personal and professional networks of your existing customers”. This holds true for almost EVERY industry vertical you can think of and will most likely work for yours. I have compiled a list of great referral program software that you can implement without having to build a referral engine from scratch.

Every single business can leverage at LEAST one, if not all, of the aforementioned strategies above to kickstart growth. I would love to hear your thoughts, questions, comments, and ideas about this post, as well as success stories you’ve had implementing any of these strategies. Let’s connect on Linkedin or ping me on Twitter and let’s talk shop!