David McIninch

David McIninch (@DavidMcIninch) has almost 20 years of marketing experience with large companies and startups. He is currently the VP of Marketing at Jobber, a company that enables smaller mobile businesses to invoice, schedule and manage their teams end to end. 

David and I talk about his experience in marketing at a large company like ADP. We get into some of the key differences between marketing for a larger company and marketing for a startup. One of those differences is the amount of responsibility. In a large firm, there is always a filled calendar with daily tasks set. At a startup, calendars have to be filled with tasks that directly impact the company's bottom line on a day to day basis. 

What are some of the marketing pitfalls for new businesses? Not thinking about it early enough. David mentions that as soon as you expect people to pay money for your product you need to start thinking about your value proposition and positioning. David gives great tips on content marketing for startups and why a pitch deck can't be used as a value prop. We cover a lot in this podcast including:

• David's story of getting into marketing [3:43]
• Challenges of marketing for different segments at large companies [7:42]
• The difficulty in transitioning from a big firm to a smaller firm [10:15]
• How the 'large company machine' usually works [15:53]
• David's work at Jobber [19:33]
• The main pitfalls of startups and smaller companies in marketing [20:34]
• Why you should throw out your pitch deck [21:15]
• How to set your adwords and advertising budget [23:08]
• Why it is important to get to know your customers early on [28:33]
• How to get honest feedback about price from your customers [30:01]
• Positioning and value propositions for startups [33:52]
• How to avoid price pegging [37:11]
• How to know if your price is too low [38:55]
• Measuring ROI on content and SEO marketing [41:49]
• David's recommended tools for marketing [48:02]
• Why you should keep an experimentation log [49:42] 
• The importance of urgency in relation to driving business forward [56:54]
• How to know if you have hired the wrong person [1:00:21]

Tools and books mentioned:

• Google Analytics
• Amplitude
• Autopilot
• Mixpanel
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• Thank You For Being Late by Thomas Friedman

Acronyms used:

• Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Small-to-Medium Business (SMB)
• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
• Cost-per-Lead (CPL)
• Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
• Daily Active Users (DAU)
• Monthly Active Users (MAU)

David McIninch has almost 20 years of marketing and leadership experience including spending the better part of the last decade in marketing, sales and leadership roles at ADP both in Canada and as the VP of Marketing for ADP's Global Enterprise Solutions division. David was the Chief Revenue Officer at Acquisio and was Vice President, Employee Support Solutions at Morneau Shepell. He is currently the VP of Marketing at Jobber.