Devrims #Techtalk 039: Andrei Haret Shares How to Do Marketing in 2024

Andrei Haret’s passion for marketing stems from his belief that it is the foundation for building any successful product. This week, we have Andrei from MarketinGO.xyz, a digital marketing agency for tech businesses.

Andrei believes in Fractional Marketing where he creates teams of marketing experts that offer their services to multiple clients on a part-time or project-based basis. Fractional Marketing provides a sustainable framework for businesses with specific needs. It is a sustainable way of doing marketing and can be scaled depends on the demands of a project.

Andrei helps tech businesses validate their market fit by generating traction and analyzing the results.

He uses Agile methodologies and focuses on short-term planning and A/B testing.  This way, he is able to provide immersive results in a short amount of time. We hope you will love this interview.

Devrims: Hello Andrei, thank you for being here today. To start, could you tell us a bit about how you first became interested in marketing? What drew you to this field early in your career?

Andrei: Hey team, thanks for having me here today. Back in 2005, while pursuing my Computer Science and Economics degree, I noticed that I was excelling in Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Marketing classes. Although I was doing well in cybersecurity and programming, I found myself more drawn towards the marketing aspect of things. That’s when I decided to follow my passion and landed my first job in 2008, working in the field of SEO.

I believe that marketing is the foundation for building any successful product. It focuses on answering the most important questions first – why, who, what, how, and where. It combines technology, creativity, and human behavior to provide insights on what should be built, how it should be built, and how it should be distributed. This is what makes marketing so fascinating to me, and I am passionate about it.

Devrims: As the founder and CEO of MarketinGO, what unique value does your agency provide for tech businesses specifically? How do you help them validate their market fit?

Andrei: MarketinGO offers a range of marketing solutions that cater to different business needs, from short-term promotional campaigns to comprehensive market research and competitor analysis for long-term strategies.

Our standout service is providing Fractional Marketing Teams, which prove very useful for scaleups, enabling them to focus on product development and operations while outsourcing branding and lead generation to us.

Our services are also helpful for Enterprises that are planning to launch new products, requiring assistance with Positioning, Brand Awareness, and Lead generation, but their in-house marketing teams are preoccupied with ongoing projects. In such cases, they can hire us for help.

We assist companies in validating their market fit by generating Traction. If, after applying the best practices, we see traction, then there is a market fit… if not, more work needs to be done, such as trying a new buyer persona, market, positioning, value proposition, or even pivoting and building a different product.

Devrims: What marketing strategies and tactics have you found most effective for boosting sales and launching new products? How do you measure success?

Andrei: Our approach combines a mix of long-term strategic planning and quality-focused tactics. We measure success not just in immediate sales figures but in the sustainable growth and market presence of our clients.

Short-term, most effective solutions we found are: Pay-per-click advertising [on Google, Facebook, LinkedIn] and Cold Outreach [email and on LinkedIn].

And long-term, best marketing strategies are: Content Marketing combined with SEO, Community Building and Personal Branding, Networking, Email marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Devrims: You also co-founded Subscriptionforce.com. What challenges did you face in building an e-commerce solution from the ground up? How did your marketing experience help?

Andrei: When I co-founded Subscriptionforce.com, I faced several challenges in building an e-commerce solution from scratch.

My partner Marius and I decided to launch our solutions on WordPress and WooCommerce eco-system, and I had to learn everything about it.

The marketing approach in this eco-system is different from what I was used to until then. It’s more community-driven, with its own best practices and rules to follow.

However, my experience in strategic marketing came in handy in segmenting the market, identifying our strengths and opportunities, defining our differentiators, positioning ourselves versus our competitors, planning product-led marketing growth, and researching for our next, more scalable product.

Devrims: What do you find most rewarding about working with startups and tech companies? What advice do you have for founders in those spaces?

Andrei: Most rewarding imho is the fact that you get to be always on top of all tech trends. And if tech is something you enjoy, this is definitely an important perk.

I don’t feel entitled to give advice to founders at this moment. You can find plenty of good advice from wise people on podcasts and social media. Just take care of yourself and those close to you during this journey 😉

Devrims: How has your approach to marketing strategy changed over the years? What are some lean startup and customer discovery tactics you find invaluable today?

Andrei: Over the years, my marketing strategy has evolved as I transitioned from working as an employee for a large enterprise to working with SMBs. With smaller budgets, I had to shift from Brand Awareness strategies to Lead Generation strategies to shorten the path to sales while being efficient and practical.

I have also embraced agile methodologies and moved away from waterfall planning. While we create a vision for the next 12 months, we plan for just 2-3 months at a time. We execute and A/B test, scaling successful strategies and looking for alternatives if they don’t work. We always have a robust tracking and reporting system in place.

As for lean-startup and customer discovery tactics, I believe in starting small, launching fast, and talking to as many people as possible.

Start with a very narrow niche, narrow it again, and then sell to those who are interested. Once we achieve saturation, we move to adjacent markets.

To ensure success, it is essential to talk to the right buyer persona, ask non-biased and open-ended questions, and be prepared to pivot when needed.

Devrims: Let’s do a quick rapid-fire round.

Devrims: What does your day-to-day look like as a CMO and agency CEO? How do you manage your time across different roles and priorities?

Andrei: I work from 8:30 AM to 6 PM. I wear multiple hats since we are a boutique agency. I do:

• recruiting
• finance and legal supervision
• team management and project supervision
• client acquisitions
• and, help with execution when the team is overloaded

I plan quarterly our OKRs, then cascade those to weekly objectives, and each day I start by planning my to-do list [here is how it looks and how I do it], I also combine it with scheduling most important things in my calendar [check out my LinkedIn post on this].

Devrims: What marketing strategies and tactics have you found most effective for brands throughout your career? How do you measure marketing success?

Andrei: There is no one-fit solution for everyone. This is why marketing is challenging and to many, it feels like magic because they don’t understand when it works and when it doesn’t.

This is because marketing is hard to predict, the market and competition are constantly changing, and what worked last year may not work this year. What worked in one industry, doesn’t work in another.

Marketing success should be measured towards particular marketing and business goals. Each industry or business model has it’s own important North Start Metrics, e.g.:

• E-commerce: Average Order Value (AOV).
• Software as a Service (SaaS): Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
• B2B Services: Lead Conversion

Devrims: We’d love to have a candid picture of your workstation.

Devrims: Who would you like us to interview next?

Andrei: You can try my friend Ion Arventi. He is managing a WebFlow agency.

ALSO: Read our interview with Bridget Willard about Fractional Marketing.