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​Marketing Teams as Hedge Funds​

I think of marketing teams as hedge funds. Marketing teams develop a portfolio of different strategies to acquire leads.

Some days, content marketing works. A post challenging like this one hits HackerNews or a journalist covers the company.

Other days when content strategies struggle, a witty paid ad campaign entices some clicks & form fills. On some rainy Tuesday, the weekly webinar attracts an unusually promising audience.

Like an investment portfolio, any individual strategy may thrive one day & suffer the next. But as the effort broadens, leads compound at a steadier & steadier rate.

When I first started to write this blog, I was thrilled with 100 page views. One day, a post hit the front page of Hacker News.

Page views surged to more than 15k, then the readership settled into a higher baseline. I saw this effect a few times for tomtunguz.com & then I saw the phenomenon replicated within startups.

It’s easy to deride the latest buzzword or trend. Big Data, DevOps, microservices, AI, data contracts. But buzzwords imbue curiosity, stripping the verdigris from a jaded buyer base.

What are LLMs? How do they differ from classic machine learning? How can I use them?

As these waves form, buyers seek insight & vendors have an opportunity to build trust & develop a brand educating the market.

By developing a portfolio of strategies, marketing teams can leap from one surge to the next, all the while establishing greater lead generation volumes.

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