DNA of Unicorn Marketing Success
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This document analyzes the technology stacks of various "unicorn" companies. It finds that companies in similar stages of funding and industries tend to use similar marketing technologies. It also identifies technologies that frequently co-occur across companies, suggesting a relationship between those technologies. Finally, it discusses principles for building anti-fragile, virtuous systems through crash-only design, OODA loops, and focusing on shared company-employee values.
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DNA of Unicorn Marketing Success
- 1. Best of Breed: The DNA of Unicorns
- 2. Isaac Wyatt Director, Marketing Strategy & Ops New Relic @IsaacWyatt
- 5. Marketing Analytics Marketing Technology Marketing Alignment Marketing Strategy Marketing Enablement Tools Procedures People Marketing Capabilities Platform Marketing Channels Marketing Tactics Marketing Messaging Marketing Effectiveness Marketing Activities @IsaacWyatt
- 6. @IsaacWyatt
- 7. Most Frequent Technologies 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 Google Analytics Google Universal Analytics Google Apps Gmail DoubleClick Conversion Facebook Widget Google AdWords Conversion Nginx YouTube Facebook Web Custom Audiences AppNexus Gmail SPF Google Tag Manager Google Font API WordPress.org Amazon AWS New Relic Twitter Advertising LiveRamp @IsaacWyatt
- 8. # of Technologies by Stage @IsaacWyatt - 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 #Technologies Funding Stage
- 9. # of Marketing Techs by Stage @IsaacWyatt - 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 #Technologies Funding Stage
- 10. Most Frequent Marketing Techs amongst “Unicorns” @IsaacWyatt 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 #Companies
- 11. 1 Technographics @IsaacWyatt Comparing how similar or different the tech stacks of each company are. Companies with similar tech stacks appear closer to each other.
- 12. Technographics @IsaacWyatt Example: Media companies Buzzfeed and Vice have similar technology stacks, so appear close to each other.
- 13. Co-occurring Techs Vendor Tech Correlation % Brightcove Compete 70.5% IBM Websphere Endeca 70.5% Extole Gauges 70.5% RackSpace CDN DocuSign 57.4% Localytics SteelHouse 57.4% DemandBase Linkedin Display Ads ( Formerly Bizo) 47.7% New Relic Optimizely 46.8% Segment.io HeapAnalytics 46.5% @IsaacWyatt
- 16. @IsaacWyatt
- 19. Design with Crash-only recovery in mind @IsaacWyatt Copyright 2016 BioLite Inc.
- 20. @IsaacWyatt
- 21. Proactive Hacky AnalyticalConnected Empathetic Hire those who score highly in all categories in PHACE framework.... they may tend to be introverted, thoughtful, and quirky. @IsaacWyatt
- 22. Embrace the Hedgehog and the Fox @IsaacWyatt
- 25. @IsaacWyatt Right Tech Smart Process Enabled People
- 26. @IsaacWyatt
Editor's Notes
- New Relic is the first best place to understand your digital business. The New Relic Analytics Cloud delivers real time insight so that business owners can make critical decisions about their software, their customers, and ultimately their business. I want to share with you what I’ve learned by analyzing New Relic’s own successful journey, and looking closely at the technology used by the 150 or so “Unicorn” companies, the process by which I believe it should be used, and how companies who aspire to success hire, develop, and retain people – who are the real Unicorns.
- As the leader of marketing strategy and operations, my team is primarily responsible for these functions.
- Each function enhances one more primary element: Technology and Tools, Process and Procedures, and the People who use those.
- In turn, it is these three elements that define the “Marketing Capabilities Platform”. Marketing Capabilities – define how you can compete, where you can compete, and when you can compete. Let’s analyze each of those elements and examine how they play together to create a best of breed company.
- Focusing on the first element: technology Why? Because we can learn by looking at the technology stacks of the best companies, or similar companies. The technology stack defines a part of how your marketing messaging is transmitted and received, it defines part of your competitive advantage. To do so, I looked at the technology stacks of the Unicorn Companies. Methodology? Using Datanyze to look at Tech Crunch’s list of ~150ish Unicorn company and each of their technologies. What can we learn by looking at the technologies that the Unicorn companies play? One key part of an effective marketing capabilities platform is the technology. I wanted to understand what the unicorn companies were using most frequently, especially marketing technologies, what common stacks are, and understanding what technologies New Relic’s customers tend to use so we can create shared value.
- So I started by asking what the most common technologies Amongst the 150 or so Unicorn companies are just to get a lay of the land. I saw that the free and inexpensive core platform technologies to serve customer facing content, along with some optimization and adtech represented, but tools to serve content dominate the key pieces of technology.
- I also wanted to know how big the technology stacks were, at various stages of a company’s growth. Overall average # of techs is 31. Today’s Series E companies have the most techs at 42.6. What I found interesting was that there seems to be some consolidation of technologies in the more mature companies as they approach an exit.
- After looking at the overall tech stacks, I was curious about the marketing technologies specifically. I saw the same trend there. That is a lot of technology! There is a lot of sophistication within early company’s MarTech stacks, and they need someone playing the role of Marketing Technologist too!
- And since I was looking at marketing specific technology, I decided to take a peek at the most frequently occurring ones amongst the 150 Unicorn companies. Obviously this doesn’t represent the entire market place. Just a few young companies with big valuations.
- I did a cluster analysis to understand how similar/different the technology stacks of different companies are. Companies with similar tech stacks appear closer to one another. Companies with vastly different technology stacks appear further apart.
- I did a cluster analysis to understand how similar/different the technology stacks of different companies are. Companies with similar tech stacks appear closer to one another. Companies with vastly different technology stacks appear further apart. How is this useful? Well when I overlayed which of these companies were using New Relic, some interesting patterns emerged.
- For Example: new relic and optimizely tend to co-locate. Selected tools that the audience uses. Insight useful for understanding what customers care about.
- Technology alone doesn’t create Unicorn company however, as it is just one of the three elements necessary for a successful company like New Relic. Without good procedures and great people to guide them, those “Unicorns” risk becoming Unicorpses.
- The second element of a best of breed company is defining the process and procedures that defines how the business should work. Some process and procedures are inherently known, but lets formalize them in a crawl, walk, run format.
- Crawl: reinforcing feedback loops Virtuous cycle of taking action, looking at result, and using that to inform the next cycle. Example? Campaign execution But there are processes to follow in each stage of this loop that are prone to disruption. How do we avoid defining processes that break when the environment changes drastically? OODA Loop concept from Military Strategist and former fighter pilot John Boyd
- Walk: Anti-fragile – build processes that avoid disruption when unexpected input strains the process. What is anti-fragile? A system or process that instead of breaking under pressure or failing when new unexpected inputs occur, actually gains in strength. Example? Lead Scoring But even anti fragile processes will break at some point. Antifragile concept popularized by Nicholas Taleb
- Run: Crash-Only process definitions – because all process and procedures must eventually break. Crash only is when a process failure is imminent. How do you recover quickly and gracefully? Expect things to fail and build process to fail faster. Example? Leads out of SLA with your sales team should be automatically re-assigned or engaged via automation.
- People tie together process, and the tools, but people are not just an API. They interface with your techstack, but they aren’t just a mere “Meatstack”. Here is how we Hire, Develop, and Retain the best.
- Hire for the key traits of a marketer. PROACTIVE: controlling a situation by making things happen or by preparing for possible future problems HACKY: moving fast and breaking things, not settling for things that don’t work they way they should. Unafraid of the unknown, especially as it relates to technology. ANALYTICAL: characterized by analysis rather than inflection. AKA #datanerd CONNECTED: part of the Marketing and Sales Technology ‘scene’, online or otherwise. Asks to go to conferences, attend user groups and meetups, etc. Spends time with folks outside their department. EMPATHETIC: putting yourself in others’ shoes
- Develop their Help people nurture and grow both their Fox and Hedgehog tendencies: -- by encouraging work on projects that require consideration of both near term and long term priorities -- by working with their complement more closely, and developing empathy for their complement’s view of the world
- Retain – constantly explore how to increase the shared value created by increasing the overlap between the Employee’s interests and the Company’s interests. How? -- encourage them to bring their authentic, passionate self to work everyday and not to put on a face -- enable them to use knowledge about personal passion projects to add creativity to how they solve work problems -- build projects and work activities that include elements from your teams passion projects/topics
- Pull the three elements of the marketing capabilities platform that help create a highly competitive and successful company.
- The Marketing Capabilities necessary to compete are defined by not only by Technology, but by the Process that guides it, and the People who use it. Use the technology that creates and enhances marketing tactics and channels, and that compliments your technology stack. Define effective procedures that guide how tools are to be used and are resistant to failure Hire the right people to execute your marketing strategy, develop and enable them, and maximize shared value to retain them. A company isn’t a unicorn because of its valuation, it is a unicorn because of it’s people. You are the Unicorns that make a company great. Use Technology To create new marketing capabilities To drive efficiency in process Define Process & Procedures That are self-reinforcing Add clarity to ambiguity Enable People Hire for PHACE Embrace both Fox and Hedgehog People are not an API!