Summurai Go-to-market plan

Welcome to the Summurai Go-to-market plan.

For a while now, we've been struggling with finding our market fit and revealing what solution we bring to what existing problem of which target audience. For the first time, it seems like the movement of the market and fitting our focus and messaging all lead towards a very focused meeting point.

The following plan provides an overview of the insights, processes, and methods we will be using to introduce Summurai to the market.

Since we know you are busy, we created an audio version to make it easier for you to consume this, as well as practice what we preach. Ready to get started?

Let\'s start with defining what the Summurai Solution is all about.

Seth Godin, the godfather of modern marketing, made a bold statement back in 2015 and said that "content marketing is the only marketing left." For almost a decade the digital world has been producing content. Some of it for human beings and most of it for search engines, to support SEO efforts, and get traction, which is connected to remarketing methods and paid ads, that create awareness.

Over time, the more content we create, the harder it is to get traction. In addition to the endless amount of content out there, our audience just can't find the time and energy to read anything.

Over time, the B2B audience of professionals across all generations has moved to consume their knowledge on podcasts. Audio content fits perfectly to non-screen timing over the professional user journey and the leading podcast are the professional ones.

Content marketers are aware of audio, and have been thinking about creating a podcast, but podcast production is not easy and doesn't have a clear ROI.

It\'s time to bring content marketing to the audio era and open the door to help them move their content into the audio arena with branded audio playlists, outside of the podcast zone.

It's time to repurpose existing content and turn it into audio, it's time to add an audio layer to the blogs and allow visitors to listen on the go, it's time to add audio to customer journeys.

Seth Godin said that "Content marketing is the only marketing left". In 2022, it's time for me to say that "Audio content marketing is the only content marketing left".

During the period 2021-2025, the incremental market growth for content marketing is

expected to be around $417.85 billion, at close to 16% CAGR. By 2027, the global content marketing market size is expected to be $829.6 billion.

Let's get to know the Summurai target audience:

Following the focus above, each company that activates a website with blog and other text-based resources, such as reports, white-papers, case studies and eBooks - is a potential buyer of our services.

Our goal at that point it to find the lowest hanging fruit among these potential buyers - the ones that are the easiest to bring to the table, close deals with and show value.

Here are the key characteristics of them, as we can define at that point:

• Their positions may be defined as Marketing managers, content marketing managers, demand generation
• They work for Mid-size companies with 50 to 500 employees
• They have active content creation teams
• They spend money on creating blog posts actively
• They create, publish, share, and promote text-based content actively on social media and with paid ads
• They are Audio-aware. They listen to podcasts and maybe tried to run a Podcast or even already have an active one

In addition to marketing teams, Learning and Development departments, sales teams, operation teams and HR could all benefit from our solution and services. We will not turn against them and prevent them from buying, but at that point, we will not be focusing on bringing them to the table and making product updates to fit their exact needs and motivations.

How are we going to learn more about them?

Once we know who we are aiming for, I'd like to have the target audience profiles mapped and use UX research tools to get the highest level of understanding of what makes them tick. Our audience research will map their work environment and professional needs but will be focused on getting their inner motivations and goals. We want our messaging to allow our audience to know that our solution will provide them tools to make a real impact.

Learning about them will help us find where they spend their time, what content they consume and who are the influencers they find valuable and relate to. This will help create a list of Podcasts we want to collaborate with and get guest spots, the conferences and the content sources we want to work with on our OPC strategy (promoting Other-people's content).

We can learn about these using SpartToro.

How are we planning to find them and get their attention?

Since they create content and share it, searching on social media and on their blog to see that new things are published on an on-going basis - is easy. Once published, we can react to the published content with a comment (either on their blog or on their post on social media), we can contact the creator and we can create a live audio version for the blog post and showcase our solution. This strategy has been showing good signs although not performed consistently.

We can also track high performing content pieces using BuzzSumo, Feedly or Neil Patel's UberSuggest.

In addition, we can do similar things with tweets and posts published. This will be describers as part of our content strategy later in this document.

Let's explore the key pain points our audience may be holding:

• They spend time and money creating blog posts, but online blog doesn't perform as it used to be.
• They spend time and money publishing eBooks, white papers, reports, and case studies and managing resources on the website but see less results.
• They are aware of the fact that the valuable content they product isn't being consumed and doesn't really help move potential buyers down the funnel.
• Same thing with videos and conference talks. Most of it is consumed as audio rather than video (e.g. YouTube premium and online video courses such as Udemy).
• Same thing with newsletters.
• They may have tested the idea of adding an audio player to the blog but didn't see this affecting their engagement.
• They are audio-aware and had an idea to promote a podcast, but couldn't find the time to do so, couldn't deal with the complications or didn't continue consistently. They may also have a podcast out there, but it doesn't provide a clear ROI, and still – the rest of their content isn't turned into audio.

Following that, what is Summurai's unique selling proposition all about?

Summurai offers turning audio into voice, creating audio-first communication channels and adding audio to customer journeys.

The main benefits on the line:

• Audio production is low-cost, much easier to produce and easy to maintain and update when needed.
• Audio provides an easier way for busy people to consume the content on the go, with zero effort, and doesn't require the consumer to stop and invest 100% of its attention in the content.
• Audio playlists can be added to the customer journey in places we never marked as relevant, since we were focusing on screen-based interactions. Cases such as after leaving a meeting or a shop.
• Audio opens the door to talk about tone of voice and deliver the company's message in a much more friendly and natural way. It also provides a solution for people with language reading barriers.
• Audio provides a great way to repurpose and revive existing content that's already out there.
• Audio can be tracked to identify consumption behaviors and identify intent. Audio consumption triggers can be connected to events on CRM.
• Audio can be promoted using QR and attached to other triggers (including QR codes in ads, which is a new concept)
• Audio provides new ways to create content channels based on other people's content, such as playlists of curated podcast episodes.

Let's explore the business and competitive landscape.

It's worth to start with an overview of the Demand Generation Movement.

Over the last couple of years, the professional marketing arena has changed, and a new title has started to gain traction around marketing professionals. Demand generation has become a leading marketing role, putting digital marketing in the front and connecting between marketing and sales to drive results.

Over time, Demand generation leaders have been promoting an agenda that talks about moving marketing back to its origins, and focusing on creating awareness and long-term activities, instead of being measured for direct results.

This notion aims to move back from ideas such as creating gated content in order to get cold leads. Instead, it offers to promote the best non-gated content in the most effective version for customers to consume that, knowing that after people will receive valuable content, they will be much warmer and relevant to become buyers.

Another important element is that demand generation managers have access to budgets and are usually able to drive decisions and promote new tools. In addition, they are constantly looking for new ways to do their job.

These trends fit the Summurai strategy and becoming friends with Demand Generation professionals using the same philosophy totally makes sense.

What about competition?

We are consistently mapping the tools that show up on the market. Audio is exploding, podcast-related services are exploding, but audio content marketing is a blue ocean, with almost no relevant tools or services that aim to mix content marketing and audio, as strange as this may sound. There is a hugh opportunity to become market leaders and category owners.

Finally, let's talk about the Timing.

Among other factors, timing has 42% effect on Startup success.

We have to make sure our audience is ready for our message and value proposition.

Across our journey with audio, 5 years ago our audience wasn't aware of audio as a relevant content platform at all. These days our audience is audio-aware. Most of them consume their professional knowledge on the go with podcasts. However, they are still not aware of audio being a content channel outside of the podcast arena and they are still not aware of the ability to turn their content to audio and the need for an audio-first content management system.

While we need to be educating them, this looks like the optimal timing to get traction around audio content marketing, get early-adopters on board, gain success stories and as said before - become the category leader.