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Turn your confusing business jargon
into simple positioning and messaging
your buyers will understand.

Most positioning and messaging is driven by assumptions. FMC is a customer insights and strategy firm that helps Seed startups translate their product speak into clear positioning and messaging that specific people care about.

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Who's this for

Does your website read like a textbook?

Is it stuffed with product features and business jargon? Do you over-explain what your product can do but not what problem it solves?

Does your team disagree on what your positioning and messaging should be?

Do you feel like you are your customer and make up your own positioning and messaging?

Are you interviewing customers but not sure how to structure the conversation?

Do you have a bunch of customer call recordings and notes, but no positioning game plan?

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Working with Anna over the past several months has been a game changer! We are an edtech startup that was looking for marketing leadership to help us better understand our customer, overhaul our website and sales materials, and develop language to talk about ourselves in terms that were resonant and relevant. [Anna was] a real partner as I navigated questions about resources, positioning and growth.

Saima Siddiqui - Co-Founder & CEO at gradGREENHOUSE

First-time founders think product wins. Second-time founders know that’s BS.

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Most early stage startups face the same problem: BUYER APATHY.

People who need your product don’t understand what it is or why it matters, so they end up not caring.

Why?

We stuff our websites with business jargon and random sections to sound like we know what we're doing (but as a visitor, it's really hard to follow).

We assume we know our customers and how to talk to them about our differentiating value (we don't).

We end up over-explaining what the product can do (company-focused) instead of what problem it solves (buyer-focused).

Early stage founders need to focus on sales, so most of their customer interactions come from sales calls.

They end up talking to customers about the product and not understanding them beyond that.

They assume that they have nothing else to learn, accept surface-level answers as truth, and end up overlooking the insights they need to speak in ways that buyers will understand.

Big mistake.

The most successful startups are obsessed with their customers.

We are dismissing our customers, yet customers are the key to unlocking the next round of growth at our company.

Customers bought our product when nobody else would, and it's our job to know exactly what motivated them to buy and to stay.

Unfortunately, the majority of this work gets ignored or outsourced to ChatGPT.

And while AI is a great intern, founders who don’t document and analyze voice of customer (VoC) research never learn how to properly chart the course for their next stage of growth.

A superficial understanding of your customers causes buyer apathy, team frustration, and slow growth.

FMC solves these problems by conducting and analyzing customer conversations to create positioning and messaging your buyers will understand and care about.

There are three reasons most startups fail:

Apathetic Buyers

What do you do again?
Why should I care?

Frustrated Sales Team

Sales is all over the place. Will we hit our targets this quarter?

Slow Growth

Inbound and outbound efforts are dragging. Before you know it, you've run out of money.

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[Anna] helped us put together positioning, a new website, and content strategy. I especially appreciated the work she did up front to get to know us, our product, and our customers. Strong recommend for any startup, but especially for teams building complex, technical products.

Christina Pawlikowski - Co-Founder and CEO at Copybara

What happens when you obsess over customers

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Deeper engagement with customers and prospects

Go beyond surface-level sales conversations to truly understand customer goals, challenges, emotions, and needs.

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Differentiated positioning

Uncover the unique value that only you can provide that matches to your target buyer’s needs.

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Consistent, memorable messaging

Align with your team on focused messaging that repeats anywhere your customers see you.

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Increased inbound to demos

Just because someone fits the type of person that you sell to doesn't mean they have the pain. Get the people with the pain to come running (with open arms) to you.

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Better sales conversations

Positioning and messaging are not "just a marketing thing.” Create one continuous conversation across your entire team.

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Increased word of mouth

When you talk to your customers with intention and turn insights into a messaging and positioning strategy that hits, they’ll want to tell other people like them.

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Closed deals

Effectively communicating how your product addresses the specific needs and pain points of your potential customers builds trust and persuades them to choose your solution over competitors.

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I highly recommend Anna. During her work at Propel, she conducted valuable voice-of-the-customer research, created a comprehensive marketing foundation deck, worked on the new version of our website in collaboration with our designer, and provided strategic guidance for our go-to-market strategy.

Nico Acosta - Co-Founder and CEO at Propel

The Customer Insights Roadmap

Phase 1: Marketing Foundation and GTM Plan

In this phase I’ll conduct voice of customer (VoC) research, pull out key insights to create the Marketing Foundation deck and weave new positioning and messaging into your website. We'll also finalize your GTM strategy including channels, content, and goals and prepare for launch.

Phase 2: Guided Execution

As your advisor, I will guide you through the execution of the GTM Plan, whether that’s with an outside team or internal team. We'll use the new positioning and messaging to establish dominance in the market and continue to execute, review results, and iterate over 6-12 months.

Phase 3: Growth Analysis

In this phase we’ll figure out what’s working well and improvement areas. We will conduct another round of VoC research interviews with new customers and ideal prospects to check if people are continuing to invest in what you’re building or if the positioning and messaging is off and needs some work.

Phase 4: Stack Growth

You’ve scratched the surface with your initial GTM Plan. In this phase it’s time to stack growth on top of what’s working already and experiment further with additional marketing channel(s) and content, potentially with updated positioning and messaging.

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What's included

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Weekly calls

Every week we’ll get together to review important milestones, results, and feedback from the team.

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Voice of customer best practices

You’ll be working with someone that has conducted and analyzed hundreds of VoC calls.

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Website revamp

We’ll use the insights from voice of customer (VoC) research to update your website positioning and messaging. I’ll help you create your Brand Design Guide which will help the designer take direction on colors, visuals and brand personality for your website.

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Ongoing growth advising

From the moment we kick-off, I will be your partner in crime and embedded into your team. Some of my past clients continue to keep me in Slack (just in case).

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Startups that obsess over their customers

What startup leaders think

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Saima Siddiqui

Co-Founder & CEO at gradGREENHOUSE

Working with Anna over the past several months has been a game changer! We are an edtech startup that was looking for marketing leadership to help us better understand our customer, overhaul our website and sales materials, and develop language to talk about ourselves in terms that were resonant and relevant.

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Kat Busch

Co-Founder & CEO at Swantide

[Anna] really is the full package. She conducted voice of the customer research, helped us build out our marketing foundation, created our positioning and messaging, did SEO keyword research, and incorporated all of that to design our website with a creative brand. We decided to continue working with Anna to develop our marketing strategy and content.

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Nico Acosta

Co-Founder & CEO at Propel

I highly recommend Anna. During her work at Propel, she conducted valuable voice-of-the-customer research, created a comprehensive marketing foundation deck, worked on the new version of our website in collaboration with our designer, and provided strategic guidance for our go-to-market strategy.

Screen Shot 2023-07-24 at 11.32.45 AM.png

Christina Pawlikowski

Co-Founder & CEO at Copybara

We loved working with Anna. I especially appreciated the work she did up front to get to know us, our product, and our customers. Strong recommend for any startup, but especially for teams building complex, technical products.

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Natalie Marcotullio

Head of Growth & Ops at Navattic

We've been working with Anna for the past 1.5 years and she has been a fantastic advisor. Highly recommend her to any startup looking to up their marketing game.

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Tim Sussman

SVP at IdeaScale

Anna was an absolute pleasure to work with. She helped us...[build] out a marketing foundation deck, new gov-focused landing page, case studies, a GTM Strategy and a 1-page marketing plan with goals. I highly recommend Anna.

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Adam Fridman

Founder at ProHabits

We brought Anna onto the team to help lead our marketing efforts, including voice of the customer research, persona development, sales materials development, and messaging strategy. Anna was easy to work with and consistently over-delivered on the value she provided our team.

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Tammy Kwan

Founder & CEO at Cognitive ToyBox

I wholeheartedly recommend Anna as an accomplished marketing consultant who can deliver results. Anna guided us through our website redesign. Throughout the process, we were consistently impressed by her commitment to a user-centric marketing approach, with each step being deeply rooted in voice of customer research.

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Juwon Lee

CEO at StoryBox English

[Anna's] ability to uncover areas of improvement that I had not realized, despite my industry experience, stood out remarkably. I wholeheartedly recommend Anna to any early stage founders in the edtech industry.

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Peter Light

Founder & CEO at Lumen Energy

Anna has been a pleasure to work with. She helped our team with marketing strategy guidance, spanning audits of all our communications, and upgrading our online presence.

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Christopher Tarantino

Founder at Epicenter Innovation

You can tell [Anna] cares about her work and creating results for her clients, while still meeting them where they are. We found the biggest value in having Anna coach and assist with onboarding our newer marketing personnel & would definitely recommend her mentorship and keen strategic eye.

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Nic Ehalt

Co-Founder at CanWe

Working with Anna has been great for jumpstarting our marketing efforts. Just a few of the marketing aspects she's been able to help us with include our marketing foundations, GTM strategy, pitch deck, consistent messaging between our social channels, and helping secure podcast spots and ads.

Hi, I’m Anna 👋

I'm like a detective.

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My B2C experience has strongly shaped the way I approach B2B marketing today.

At Del Monte Foods, I was on the Consumer Insights and Strategy team where I focused on new product innovation based on understanding our target buyers.

At Blistex, I ran focus groups and worked on new lip care innovation based on deep consumer research as the foundation.

At Groupon, I worked closely with the Consumer Insights team to understand different buyer segments and why certain people were superfans (while others were not) to better tailor our marketing efforts.

In B2C I learned that great marketing, product innovation, and sales require deep customer understanding at the core.

I saw that better insights and understanding our customers literally translated into more sales.

And then I joined a couple of B2B startups to head up their marketing efforts…

It was super different.

There was no customer insights team.

There were no documented customer insights.

“Insights" were assumptions and opinions and not clearly understood across the org.

There was data, sure, like sales territories to hit, number of cold calls we needed to make, cold emails to send, etc. but deep data around our target buyer, who they were, goals, challenges, aspirations, why they bought, why us versus something else?

Nada.

I felt that gaping hole, like "something's really missing here guys” and knew that I had to be the consumer insights team + head of marketing all rolled into one.

Today, that's exactly how I approach all my client projects.

I’m like a detective.

I dig, dig, dig and specialize in talking to your customers with intention, find the common thread, translate business jargon into simple language and turn customer insights into a messaging and positioning strategy that your buyers understand and act on.

I created the Customer Insights Roadmap because it’s the most effective way to go beyond a superficial understanding of your customers, apply those deep learnings to all parts of your business, and attract customers by genuinely resonating with their needs, emotions and preferences.

The benefit of talking to your customers with intention is you no longer have to guess what to say.

You’ll be able to engage and create interest among your target buyers, increase word of mouth (WOM), and increase both inbound (marketing) and outbound (sales) performance.

There is no marketing and sales without customer insights.

Frequently asked questions

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