Revenue Growth Playbook - Top 100 Strategies. (Hire a Fractional CMO Like Me to Execute These).
Meet Cody Gutierrez, CMO turned Fractional CMO for Hire:
I help $1M-$100M businesses to scale-up profitably. In the corporate world, I earned 9 promotions in 10 years, quickly climbed to the C-Suite & scaled revenue 2X, 5X & 10X for 3 separate companies. In 2022, I walked away from my executive job (CMO) at a VC-backed startup to build my own portfolio of companies to grow & invest in. Learn about me here.
The growth strategies below come from my “Growth in a Box” Toolkit - a compact, powerful system to grow revenue (140+ pg. PDF):
This is the exact same 8-figure revenue playbook I’ve used personally to help scale: an eCommerce brand 10X in 3 years; a SaaS brand 5X in 1 year; & a Marketing agency 2X in 2 years. The toolkit unlocks how to use fundamental, universal principles to grow companies. What took me 10+ years of experience to create, you can receive that same value, in seconds.
Contact Information:
Email: CodyGutierrez2255@gmail.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cody-gutierrez/
Book a call: codygutierrez.com
Top 100 Marketing Principles to Grow Revenue: What CEOs Need to Know for Profitable Growth
1. Goals = Budgets + Priorities. Create your growth function.
2. Top 2 growth factors are Product/Market Fit & Org. Ownership.
3. Operate w/: goals, budgets, priorities, data, blueprint, positioning.
4. Build market gravity: system to automatically generate demand.
5. Allocate 10-35% of rev. to mktg.. Majority to demand creation.
6. Hold mktg. accountable to mktg.-sourced rev., all rev., & ROI.
7. Scale predictors: rev., GPM %, churn %, LTV, CVR, cash, capacity.
8. Rev. growth % + profit margin % > 40 = a healthy business.
9. Build marketing infrastructure & performance visibility upfront.
10. Improve price, product, place, promotion, people, process, proof.
11. Enterprise value or cash flow. Pick a priority, operate accordingly.
12. Use MVPs to test, validate, learn & improve product/market fit.
13. Good team, bad market or bad team, good mkt...Mkt. wins. (a16z)
14. Growth comes from 2 places: Products or Markets. New/Existing.
15. Chop rev. into many contributing metrics/factors. Optimize each.
16. Grow via more deals. bigger deals. more customers. better LTV.
17. Optimize full-funnel: acquire, activate, retain, referrals, revenue.
18. Mkt. dept.: brand (ind. rev.), creative (fuel), demand (direct rev.)
19. Build a lean tech stack first. Then grow into better platforms.
20. Ad growth levers = data, media, creative, destination, nurturing.
21. Exec. reporting = compare, time plots, breakdowns, filters, frcst.
22. Create a positioning statement. It’s your north-star messaging.
23. Scaling org. stages: Validate > Grow > Professionalize > Diversify.
24. Create a Business Model Canvas. Helps stakeholders to “get it”.
25. Mktg. Blueprint = key alignment info in 1-pg. so your team excels.
26. Brand Blueprint = 1-pg. litmus test reference to be “on brand”.
27. Use OKRs: growth-planning framework to set goals & align teams.
28. Start w/ high-intent audiences, get profitable there, then expand.
29. To grow revenue, ask questions about rev. Act on the answers.
30. Win-win deal: balance your price, my terms or my price, your terms
31. Create an offering at different price points (good/better/best).
32. Make your offer so good that people can’t say no (Hormozi).
33. Profit = Revenue - Expenses. P&L - it’s your operating scorecard.
34. Budget allocation should maximize return on invested capital.
35. Prioritize initiatives by value (improves the business’ condition).
36. Budget golden rule: scale what’s working, reduce what’s not.
37. Incentivize growth w/ % of rev. spending (vs. fixed-budgets).
38. Two guide-rails for scaling profitably: Channel ROI & MER.
39. Quality of Earnings: how rev. is split. Not all rev. is created equal.
40. Rev. Pie: easier to re-arrange slice %’s than make the pie bigger.
41. Incremental efforts (adds rev.) over non-inc. (re-distributes rev.)
42. Test a mktg. channel’s rev. lift: turn it off & measure the decline.
43. Operating kit to grow efficiently: read Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
44. Shipped is better than perfect. Build, ship, then measure, learn.
45. Test assumptions w/ real-world data, not opinions. Do it yourself.
46. “Sprints“: do big things by breaking it down to small steps first.
47. Start w/ a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) first, then improve.
48. Agile: 1 project finished 100% over 10 projects each 10% status.
49. Know all break-evens. E.g. 1/gross margin % = break-even ROI.
50. Mktg. plan: audience, message, channels, nurture system, LTV.
51. Incentivize performance. Align pay w/ company goals.
52. Mktg. & biz sophistication should match. Don’t be fancy too soon.
53. Resource-rank: capital>tech>FTEs>contractors>VAs>agencies.
54. Creating demand is more valuable than capturing or fulfilling it.
55. Expand/hire after you have enough demand/rev. vs. before.
56. If you’re growing quickly, you can ramp a bit ahead of demand.
57. High-growth mktg.: direct response w/ a splash of brand mktg.
58. Executing the strategy drives growth more than the strategy itself.
59. Growth comes from 80% dirt & details & 20% clouds & ideas.
60. Bake strategy into execution. Make it evident in end-deliverable.
61. Build mktg. initiatives in the final launch format to save re-work.
62. Own execution end-to-end & focus on the outcome, not tasks.
63. Do 1%, launch-critical things first, then come back for the 99%.
64. Target audience-traits for scale & purchase intent for efficiency.
65. Prioritize tests based on impact, confidence, ease (ICE) criteria.
66. Operate at 0 bandwidth. If you’re not #1 on Forbes, get to work.
67. Functional work product over comprehensive documentation.
68. Pricing is not sacred. It’s an optimization lever... change it/ test it.
69. Revenue growth comes from many improvements, not 1 big one.
70. Attribution is messy. Use as directional data, not absolute truth.
71. A/B tests work better with big changes, not small variations.
72. Do less forecasting. “All models are wrong, some are useful”.
73. Short sales cycle, measure rev. Long: include leading indicators.
74. Good decision-making combines data & intuition. Both matter.
75. Create content that converts (your sales pitch wrapped in bacon).
76. Product Mktg. = marketing a product. Don’t over-complicate it.
77. Run fundamentals: outreach, ads, ABM, referrals, test channels.
78. A “sticky” mktg. ecosystem owns & nurtures users into cash.
79. VC use of funds: 18m run-rate, 65% S&M, 65% of that to mktg.
80. Pay for top talent. Growth comes from A-players, not B-squad.
81. Stoicism: be logical. control yourself. accept events. grow daily.
82. Read Influence by Robert Cialdini. Use the 6 mktg. principles.
83. Hire the right People over the right Positions. You’ll scale faster.
84. Planning is overrated. Execute things you know you need. Now.
85. Price isn’t too high, your perceived value is low. Up your value.
86. Exec team steers growth. Get them to work both on & in the biz.
87. ABM works. Get a list of your ICPs & market to it omni-channel.
88. Hunt your rev.: brand seeds, demand-gen nets, sales dev. spears.
89. Data-driven decisions process raw data → insights → action.
90. Perception scales faster than your product. Improve both & win.
91. Listen to customers: act on the quality insights, not all of them.
92. Do the work. Grow revenue by investing in growth activities.
93. Early-stage growth, hire generalists. Later stage hire specialists.
94. First, concentrate into top mktg. channels. Later, diversify.
95. Mktg. Goals = 1. Grow Revenue. 2. Build Brand. 3. Be Profitable.
96. Mktg. compliance: do it upfront. You’ll be thankful later.
97. Hire self-managing resources. First mktg. hire = director-level.
98. Map the customer journey end-to-end. Optimize every moment.
99. Filter all mktg. activities w/ the lens “does this grow revenue?”
100. You are communicating to a human, regardless of B2B or B2C.
101. Manage teams: you pick what to accomplish, they show how.
102. Manage individuals wkly.: 1 mtg. + both send sprint summaries.
103. Sprint summary: What you did. What you need. Priorities to do.
104. “Always on” initiatives over one-time efforts/events. Use both.
105. “AAA”-rated mktg. dept. masters Ads, Analytics, Automation.
