Text Request

• Lead marketing for Text Request, and work directly with company founders to bring a unified vision to sales, marketing, product, and customer success
• Build and manage marketing and partnership teams, coaching them and others to excel and move Text Request forward
• Actively growing Text Request's marketing flywheel (inbound marketing + demand generation)

Vice President of Marketing

• Recruited, vetted, hired, and managed marketing team, vendors, and contractors
• Led efforts that resulted in Text Request winning Best Places to Work, Technology Company of the Year, Technology Leader of the Year, and finalists for Spirit of Innovation and the global SaaS Awards
• Developed and directed all marketing initiatives, including SEO, PR, social media, content marketing, partnerships, email marketing, digital advertising, and other strategies
• Worked closely with sales, service, and product teams to create and implement cohesive strategies that were great for both company and customers
• Quoted by Forbes, Entrepreneur, The FCC, Harvard, and dozens of other outlets as an expert source
• Got Text Request consistently on p.1 of Google search results for key terms
• Navigated profitable, exponential growth during COVID-19 pandemic

Director of Marketing

• Built inbound sales and marketing funnels from the ground up
• Led marketing to $1M in annual recurring revenue and beyond
• Created and managed content marketing, SEO, email marketing, digital advertising, and social media marketing strategies
• Ran marketing operations and sales operations, including vetting and implementing company-wide software and other tools

Marketing Coordinator

• Started 7 weeks after Text Request launched, was effectively the 1st employee (hired in cohort with 3 others who left shortly after)
• Engaged cold prospects by phone call and email, leading to product demos and new sales
• Helped create Text Request's first sales process

Outbound Sales Representative

Entrepreneur Media

Contributing articles through the Entrepreneur Leadership Network to help other startup marketers and entrepreneurs grow and market their startups better. View my work at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/author/kenneth-burke

Contributing Writer

Kenneth Burke Media

Owner

Northwestern Mutual

Financial Representative

Vector Marketing

Identified potential customers and set up appointments to show and demonstrate CUTCO. Effectively read customers to anticipate potential needs and objections to provide the most benefit for them. Assist and lead beginning representatives as a member of Key Staff.

Sales Representative

Moccasin Bend Mental Health Institute

Interacted with and comforted cleared patients while learning how to read and respond accordingly to those suffering from various psychological abnormalities.

Activity Therapy Volunteer

I'm the VP of Marketing for Text Request, a business messaging platform. I've written over 1,200 articles on business growth for dozens of outlets, and I've helped all types of companies from pre-launch startups to billion-dollar businesses achieve their goals. I'm also a champion for Chattanooga, and am always open to a new book recommendation.

As a bootstrapped software company, we didn’t have the option to “spend money to make money,” but we didn’t let that stop us.

Here’s how we went from $0 to $1M without a marketing budget.

✅ 1. Dialing for dollars.

Cold calling is tough, but it’s an easy way to get feedback from a market. We struck out in a few industries, but then found a good fit for our SMB texting software in home services, and got enough sales to keep the ship afloat.

✅ 2. Emailing everyone.

We’d pick a home service category, like cleaning or HVAC, look up every company we could, and email them our elevator pitch with an ask to schedule a demo. 

Once we figured out a good process, Marketing scaled this while Sales handled calls and demos.

✅ 3. Blogging for life.

We built our content and SEO while the first 2 did the initial heavy lifting. Eventually, this created a strong inbound pipeline for us. Our blogs started as thinly veiled sales pitches, became research on mobile marketing, and then evolved into how-to guides. 

We earned a ton of backlinks and enough search traffic to bring in quality leads. And while all that was building, the posts were still helpful for sales follow-ups.

We tried lots of other things on our path to $1M, too. Some failed completely, some helped a little, but these 3 are what really got us there.

💡 You don't need a complicated go-to-market strategy to make progress. A good product, a clear message, and a way to start conversations are about all you need. At least in the early days.

#marketing #startups #entrepreneurship #gtm #b2bmarketing

Hey folks 👋, I'm Kenneth Burke. I share stories, data, and frameworks to help you become a better marketer. Follow me to level-up.

Kenneth Burke

VP of Marketing | 20 under 40 | Entrepreneur Contributor | Executive of the Year

Taplio

Kenneth Burke's Linkedin Analytics

Kenneth Burke

Kenneth Burke's Best Posts (last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Taplio

.css-1jgreyo{background-image:linear-gradient(284deg, rgba(39,43,72,1) 0%, rgba(33,47,183,1) 100%);color:transparent;-webkit-background-clip:text;background-clip:text;}Kenneth Burke's Linkedin Analytics

Kenneth Burke

Kenneth Burke's Best Posts .css-qqfgvy{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);}(last 30 days)

Want to drive more opportunities from LinkedIn?

Kenneth Burke's Linkedin Analytics

Kenneth Burke's Best Posts (last 30 days)