Too many companies fail because they overextend themselves beyond their core business. This is why so many companies raise money, expand (e.g. hiring spree) and then contract (e.g. layoffs).

Here's how to expand instead:
1) Define your core business, competitive advantage and differentiators.
2) Strengthen your core business and maximize returns here
3) Expand to one adjacency away (new products, new business, new supply chain steps, new geographies etc.). Ensure the adjacency you bet on leverages your core business strengths and advantages
4) Reset and redefine your new business in light of the adjacency.
5) Repeat

Avoid jumping 2 steps away with the delusion of trying to conquer the world. If you're jumping 2 steps away, you're likely entering an adjacency that is 1-step away or the core business for someone else, which is a recipe for disaster.

From the book: Profit from the Core by Chris Zook (a must-read for all business leaders)

One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to start writing random blog posts before the core pillars of the marketing engine have been put into place.

When you have a limited marketing budget, starting with people who are ready to buy today is the best way to generate quick wins.

Then, work backwards through to people who are trying to solve a problem and need nurturing by providing them with the right resources needed to help them make their decision.

Only then should you finally arrive at people who have never heard of you and are not in a buying window.

This process takes time and patience. Over time, however, you end up building an engine that compounds upon itself and lets you go after cold audiences in a much more convincing way.

Build marketing assets that pay dividends in perpetuity. One-off programs require repeated effort to sustain and just don't scale.

That's how you keep your marketing spend, CAC and team small and your contribution to revenue big.

The benefit of long-form video is that it can be repurposed into more forms of content than any other type of content. This is how you go from producing 2 pieces of content per week to producing 20 pieces of content per day.

It also helps your brand to have a human being in front of the camera talking to your audience.

If you don't have the skills in house to do this, start investing in it as your next key hires inside your content marketing organizations.

Make more long-form video.

Here's how to scale content to infinite distribution:

1) Create an anchor piece of content
2) Tailor it by persona, vertical, industry etc. that you want to target
3) Create audiences based on the same personas, verticals and industries
4) Run paid social campaigns to those audiences on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn.

Paid social gives you something Google Ads never can: unlimited distribution with customized content for the long tail because it's not based on how many people are searching for something.

Even better: the creative is a barrier to entry because it takes investment to create so many variations that most companies just aren't willing to invest.

You can actually have hundreds of pieces of the same content being run to different audiences at the same time based on other factors such as geography and language.

Paid social is not just for retargeting and lookalike audiences and it is one of the most overlooked opportunities inside most B2B companies.

The scale is there, you...

Too often, Content Marketing teams are reactive (responding to requests from the organization) or one-dimensional (e.g. only focused on SEO). Meanwhile, resources are limited.

Content plays a role across the customer journey and needs to be produced for multiple scenarios.

Requests come from all kinds of sources (salespeople, exec team, campaigns etc.) and there is no way to prioritize.

Content leaders need to act like Product Managers and run a content roadmap process.

Prioritize the highest ROI items for the business against the limited resources available to product content.

Don't just produce random content.

Do you have a content roadmap?

Your sales response time is critical to the effectiveness of your marketing programs.

Your prospect, in many instances, has booked a demo with AND your competitors at the same time (especially if they did research online).

The person who contacts the prospect the fastest has a huge opportunity to set the right frame for the sales conversation.

Not only that but you get a chance to speak to the person when they are actually trying to resolve their pain.

Each hour / day lowers your odds of closing the deal.

If you take a week, you're likely putting that lead into the "No response" category.

Bad follow-up can be the reason why a good growth channel is overlooked.

Act accordingly.

Content is so heavily under-utilized to equip sales to have better conversations:

1) You educate the prospect (never a bad thing)

2) You showcase that you understand their pain

3) You build trust and credibility

Most importantly, you earn the right to contact that person again and they look forward to hearing from you because you provided them with value.

You are always selling transformation and who your prospects and customers will become if they buy from you.

Marketing and sales becomes a whole lot easier when you know your product can move people further away from their pains and closer to their aspirations.

Build a culture where people fall in love and are obsessed with helping your ideal customer navigate this journey and you will build a winning company.