More than ever, both startups and scale-ups need to stay agile, find product-market fit, and build credibility fast. The era of hypergrowth is coming to an end and, according to Sequoia, the focus is shifting to long-term profitability. In short, the ‘move fast and break things’ mentality is no longer being rewarded by investors. In light of this market shift, emerging tech companies are looking to maximize annual recurring revenue in the safest way possible, all while lowering burn rates and OpEx.
At FMXA, we work with some of the world’s largest and most innovative tech brands. Through our experience with both established market leaders and companies in their earliest stages, we saw the demand for agility and profitability unfolding in real time. And while startups and scale-ups know how important marketing is, many don’t realize the diversity of skills needed to market their product efficiently and effectively. The traditional model involves hiring complete in-house marketing teams, who often defer tasks to agencies anyway, accumulating huge costs. Businesses that want to remain agile need a more cost-efficient and flexible solution to support their marketing functions.
Recognizing this shift, we knew we needed to expand FMXA’s capabilities to support startups and scale-ups, hence our recent acquisition of The Favorite Co. in New York City and the launch of our brand new offering, [BASE].
[BASE] unites the capabilities of both FMXA and The Favorite Co., helping innovative Seed to Series X companies drive growth, save money, and reduce risk.
[BASE] is an extension of your marketing team. It’s the cost-efficient and agile way that we support you on your journey from finding Product-Market Fit to Scaling, building a powerful base for you to grow from.
We help to:
Our GTM, positioning and messaging work defines your brand story and its unique narrative, demonstrating your product’s value to your customers.
We create a brand that your customers and investors can trust. After establishing brand credibility and personality, your business can launch with cohesive product UX across your website, marketing, and sales content.
Having the right foundation for data and analytics is crucial to scaling. We support a range of CRM and Marketing platforms including Salesforce, Marketo, Pardot, and Google Analytics, and we’re a HubSpot Certified Partner. We support you in platform comparison, selection, and implementation, also offering solutions for integrations, lead scoring and routing, training, and sales.
We support sustainable customer acquisition and retention by launching your product to the right audience and conducting relevant and targeted ongoing campaigns, aligned to your business objectives.
[BASE] is an extension of your marketing department, providing a cross-functional team of technology strategists, copywriters, designers, and digital experts, as well as fractional CMO services. With [BASE] you can avoid expensive hiring processes and focus on what matters: your tech.
We work closely with both private equity and venture capital firms. [BASE] facilitates your introduction to this wider investment community, as well as Deloitte’s Innovation Labs.
In addition, we support seed companies with specialist packages that are provided on a cash/equity/split basis, including funding round support. This allows businesses at the beginning of their funding journey to avoid wasting valuable revenue and business time on hurried marketing. With FMXA as an extension of the founding team, seed companies can focus on what matters: their tech.
[BASE] also supports investors by providing post M&A GTM and positioning, internationalization, brand pivoting, marketing capability audits, and more. Without the burden of marketing and brand development, investors can focus on ensuring agility and profit, with FMXA driving sustained growth and keeping burn rates lower.
For more information about [BASE] and its benefits for startups, scale-ups, seed companies, and investors get in touch with our team.
Investment in global healthtech is booming, with over $50 billion pumped into startups in 2021 alone. The demand for technologies like telemedicine, at-home testing, smart watches, and other personal healthtech during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major driver of funding and awareness, bringing new and innovative products to the market.
Some of the most exciting innovations in healthtech include real-time monitors like the FreeStyle Libre 2, which enables those with diabetes to have minute-by-minute data on their blood glucose levels via their phone, accessible VR surgical education tools like @HomeVR, and smart ‘e-skin’ apparel like Xenoma.
Whether it’s motivating healthy behaviors, boosting productivity, or supporting serious conditions, healthtech marketing should always prioritize keeping the public informed and supported. For technology like the FreeStyle Libre 2 and other cutting-edge medical devices, marketing campaigns have to be sensitive to people’s fears and uncertainties. On top of all this, as healthtech brands continue to grow, the need to differentiate and convey unique brand messages grows too.
To help get the right message out to the right people in a way that cuts through industry noise, healthtech providers have to build trust in their tech, using empathy to meaningfully connect their product to its users.
Take a look at three of our favorite healthtech campaigns that have broken boundaries, sparked new conversations, and demonstrated empathy.
Elvie, a London-based healthtech startup, created an innovative device that makes Kegel exercises and pelvic floor training easy. The Elvie trainer connects to an intuitive mobile app that allows users to track their progress in improving their pelvic floor strength.
A recent campaign saw the brand breaking the stigma around female urinary incontinence, an issue that affects 84% of women in the UK and over 60% of women in the US, by installing a billboard that “pees” on passersby. The 20-foot billboard is rigged so that water falls down onto pedestrians below, with the tagline “Leaks happen … but they don’t have to”.
As well as being timely (the campaign itself is an homage to a recently-banned viral TikTok), the imagery is striking, and Elvie’s decision to use outdoor advertising rather than digital-only adds to the statement. The campaign's effort to break the stigma around female urinary incontinence, and call out social media platforms for censoring similar content, establishes Elvie as an open and accepting brand, unafraid to open up taboo conversations that empower women to prioritize their health.
A leader in wearable healthtech, Fitbit produces devices that monitor physical fitness, sleep, heart rate, and more, helping the wearer stay motivated. Fitbit decided to center this 2021 campaign around “shifting the patterns” of daily life to healthier ones as the world emerged from lockdown.
With an overall message of “self-care” and listening to one’s own body, the campaign consisted of various ads that focused on different individuals’ positive self-care patterns. By focusing on an overall health-related message, and representing a variety of different people’s daily stories, Fitbit establishes better emotional connections with their different target audiences.
“Layla” was created by The Public Good Projects (PGP) to address unintended pregnancy among Black and Hispanic teenagers in Syracuse, New York. Teenagers can type in any questions about sex and pregnancy and get an immediate reply from Layla via a website chatbot, which uses AI and natural language processing.
Built in collaboration with local women to ensure that the chatbot ‘speaks’ realistically and that the target audience is represented across Layla’s branding, the “Layla’s Got You” campaign demonstrates the potential of combining digital technology with human-centered design. Using AI to establish trust and familiarity, Layla builds emotional connections and empowers young people to access the healthcare they need.
The common thread among these campaigns is their emphasis on connectivity and empathy. Successful campaigns, no matter the industry, need to appeal to their target audience’s wants, needs, and emotions. For healthtech brands, it’s vital to strike a balance between the technical (important medical information) and the emotional (the mental or physical pains each individual is feeling).
At FMXA, we know how delicate this balance is. By combining our experience in brand development and content creation with our in-depth tech industry knowledge, our campaigns emotionally connect, creatively stand out, and technically resonate, meeting both your technical and emotive requirements.
We’d love to help you devise a unique campaign to market your tech. See more of our campaign experience here and get in touch with the team for more information.
From artificial intelligence and biotech to smart homes, IoT, and the metaverse, technology is one of the fastest-growing and fastest-evolving industries, cementing itself as part of everything we do and experience.
This rapid growth is encouraging innovation, fuelling unique ideas and bringing new players to the market. But with competition intensifying, the need for tech vendors to differentiate, engage, and build trust with their customers is becoming more important than ever.
All too often tech organizations aren’t empathizing with their customers, either opting to take a product-focused approach, or heavily diluting all-important technical messaging. And with concerns around the impact of technology such as privacy and automation increasing, organizations need to better convey not just who they are, but how they benefit and work in partnership with people.
“Throughout my years in the cybersecurity industry, I noticed a lack of emotion in the way solutions were marketed and sold. A lot of vendors choose to emphasize the features and benefits of their technology, using very technical language and ultimately battling with long sales cycles and complex buying journeys. All customers want is to be understood and spoken to like a human being, so it was obvious to me that this human touch was missing from tech marketing.”
- Alisha Dattani, CEO at FMXA
At FMXA, we want to change the way tech companies talk to their customers. We do this by taking a customer-first approach, considering their emotions, needs, and behavior whether they are the CIO of a Fortune 500 company or a teenager downloading their first banking app. We then ensure that we appeal to these emotions and form a powerful connection with every customer.
And as technology marketing is all we do, we can demonstrate empathy with customers without diluting any of your technical messaging. We know the industry inside-out and share a passion for technology, which enables us to effectively define who your customers are, how to speak to them, and what their challenges are. Our experience also allows us to come up with innovative and unconventional ideas, making our brands, campaigns, and content stand apart from the rest of the industry.
“By focusing on building emotional connections, we enable tech companies to demonstrate empathy toward the personal challenges of their customers. Not only does this make clear the specific problems you’re solving, but it also allows you to personalize your brand to specific decision-makers, fostering stronger brand loyalty that turns customers into advocates.”
- Yamit Dattani, CSO
We carry this ethos through our three distinct service areas: Brand, Content, and Campaigns. Our brands are built to convey your purpose and unique story in a way that best reaches your customer, ensuring you stand for more than just your product. We strive to create content that enhances the trust your customers have in you, fueling creative and new conversations. And our campaigns effectively cut through the noise, speaking directly to the emotions of the customer.
Our human-first approach earned us the first-ever The Drum B2B For Good award in 2021, awarded for our “66 Days Back” campaign with Malwarebytes. The “66 Days Back” campaign recognized the challenges of stress within cybersecurity and aimed to open up the conversation around the mental toll that malware has on cyber professionals. Our messaging confronted topics that traditional cybersecurity providers shy away from, emphasizing the importance of mental health in cyber and highlighting the people behind the technology.
By building your brand, content, and campaigns to emotionally resonate, you stand for something more than your technology, stand apart from your competitors, and your customers understand and trust in the value you bring. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be working in the industry right now, so we can’t wait to see, and be a part of, the new and inspiring ways that tech will impact people worldwide.
Get in touch for a chat about your marketing plans and how we can help.