According to the Eighth Annual State of Women-Owned Business Report by American Express only 1.7% of all female-founded businesses will break $1M in annual revenue. If we have the pleasure to meet in person then you’ve heard this statistic because I repeat it to nearly everyone I meet.
I am proud to officially announce that my company, SmithBrown Marketing, has broken the $1M ARR (annual run rate) mark in less than two years with an all-female team.
In 2016, when I doubled-down on being an entrepreneur I had no idea what a wild ride it would be. We saw a gap in the marketplace when it comes to helping business to business (B2B) companies with lead generation and social conversion. We’ve executed in our niche and it’s served both us and our clients well.
The average B2B martech (marketing technology) stack is 17 deep, but marketers aren’t technologists and few corporate marketers can master lead generation. One of my favorite sales gurus, Aaron Ross the author of Impossible To Inevitable, demonstrates the real difference between corporate and demand generation marketing. “Demandgen folks can figure out corporate marketing. Corporate marketing folks cannot figure out demandgen. Ever.” We agree. Our team understands measuring what’s important to clients – we use this in combination with a well-designed tech stack to deliver value.
SmithBrown is both lead generation and corporate marketing for our clients, with a hint of scrappiness. We’re at our best coming up with creative ways to fill and measure pipeline, like mastering and measuring social media conversion. We use a proven methodology to develop a cohesive tech and content strategy to drive qualified leads through an actively measured funnel to conversion.
The SmithBrown culture includes core values such as “Yes, and?” and we subscribe fully to Churchill’s famous quote, “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” We’ve found the key to successful B2B lead gen is to maximize resources and combine what you have with rigorous measurement. You can’t measure what you don’t track, and you can’t show value without measurement.
Being the CEO of an all-female company was not my intent. As time when on, I realized Atlanta is the mecca for all things martech and there is a talent pool of incredible marketers here. I’m thrilled that the team I’ve been able to crack the $1M glass ceiling with is all women. There aren’t enough women in leadership roles, entrepreneurial, sales or marketing – I intend to be a part of changing that.
We’re just getting started.
