Why did I decide to found a marketing studio
By: Matej Lupták
Tags: Startup, Consulting, Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Agency

Please welcome the maykin!

When I started my marketing career almost 9 years ago, I jumped onto what was (at that time) the coolest bandwagon. Social media marketing was the buzzword, drawing in nearly all of my university classmates. As marketing became trendy, various companies made it easy for “digital natives” to monetize their lifestyles.

However, this had very little impact on actual sales and everyone was too busy reporting on engagement and metrics that did not help businesses in any way.

Me in 2017 giving a lecture on marketing data visualization, still having some hair and a sweater of a questionable color

However, my own career path turned in a different direction. Having ventured into better paid performance marketing, I dug in and spent five years learning the broader spectrum of the marketing ecosystem. I worked with a conglomerate of agencies with shared clientele — observing the full scope of their advertising and contributing to ATL campaigns.

Considering myself to be a generalist rather than a specialist, even managing performance marketing campaigns with large budgets began to feel somewhat limiting regarding the knowledge and experience I hoped to gain.

I immersed into an intense self-learning: exploring marketing theory and strategy became my obsession. Great books, research whitepapers, podcasts and webinars occupied a large chunk of my free time, but it proved to be a worthwhile investment.

Though I was still handed requests to focus budgets on performance marketing and bottom-of-the-funnel actions, I was able to bring my newfound knowledge to the table. Questioning these stale tactics during board and team meetings eventually led to a significant adjustment in our approach.

Recklessly enjoying a cup of coffee in 2019, probably reading about ways to overcome impostor syndrome (and marketing)

I took a risk, but it paid off. During my time as a CMO at HoppyGo — a young, Czech, peer-to-peer carsharing start-up owned by ŠKODA AUTO — we developed the largest share of search in our category (in 2020). Thanks to the fantastic quality of work put in by my team, our customer base experienced a 70%+ increase of growth in one year. We redirected a large our investments to top-of-the-funnel reach and saw a record-breaking summer. All thanks to implementing strategic marketing methods.

“We developed the largest share of search in our category (in 2020). Thanks to the fantastic quality of work put in by my team, our customer base experienced a 70%+ increase of growth in one year. ”

As I acquired considerable experience in the (mostly) start-up/scale-up/SMBs environment in Europe, one insight — the insight — became exceedingly clear. The majority of marketing managers still crave growth hacking and quick results, primarily delivered by mid- and bottom-of-the-funnel campaigns on Facebook or Google.

However, they share the blame with VC investors who routinely push for quick user growth and subsequent high valuations of a company.

Caught in disbelief while experiencing a lame customer touchpoint (a laminated QR code instead of a menu), 2020

However, this all can change. Stakeholders must comprehend the risks behind the short-termism that is driving their marketing. What are these risks? You may dry up the performance marketing budget and turn off your campaigns — sales will plummet. A new competitor might enter your market and start to overbid you in auctions — sales will plummet. An existing competitor may start implementing long-term brand communications — sales will start to slowly decrease over years as the competitor bites into your market share.

If you look at sales within one year, then sure — ROI generated only by performance marketing will likely be higher than if you had focused on both long-term branding and short-term performance marketing. Now, try to broaden the scope — look at the business results within a five-year range. Since long-term branding comms take a longer time to manifest in sales, concentrating on them solely will encourage you to dismiss and abandon your brand awareness experiments for “not working”. However, if you were to pay attention to both short- and long-term communication from the beginning, sales could be much larger in the given five-year time frame.

A stronger brand equals better sales. And that is one of the key elements in a truly successful marketing approach.

To understand our customers, we need to start walking in their shoes

My vision is to see good, innovative businesses grow sustainably and make it in the long-term. The failure rate of startups is at a disastrous 90%; 20% of startups fail in the first year alone. Twenty-two percent of the responsibility for that failure is attributed to “marketing problems.” I am still low-key shocked when I hear entrepreneurs, founders, managers, or marketers with 10+ years of experience say something like, “I don’t give a shit about brand awareness, we need conversions” (and numbers prove this attitude to be widespread).

“Twenty-two percent of the responsibility for that failure is attributed to “marketing problems.””

Now, after recently leaving the CMO role, I tasked myself with founding the maykin, with a single goal in mind — to help good businesses learn how to survive in both the near and far future. In order to thrive, innovative companies need to look back at the accumulated knowledge from decades of marketing research and utilize it within the modern marketing environment.

It is not going to be an easy task, but I believe it will be well worth the effort.