Prosh Marketing: Making marketing leadership accessible

This inspiring story is of a rising consulting startup called Prosh Marketing, started by Roshni Wijayasinha, based out of Canada. Prosh Marketing wants to make marketing leadership accessible to companies of all sizes. Their goal is to empower other startups and small businesses to reach their maximum potential, no matter what their budget is. They want to share their marketing knowledge with other entrepreneurs, marketers, and agencies and impart strategies that have enabled them to help clients attain 9 figure investment rounds. Here is the story of Prosh Marketing in Roshni’s own words.

Introduce us to the idea of Prosh Marketing

We provide fractional marketing leadership for companies of all sizes. We noticed that a lot of smaller businesses and startups had Marketing staffing issues. Either the CEO or COO was tasked with running marketing, with little expertise or time, or the companies were trying to grow using interns or junior marketing staff that didn’t have much expertise. This struggle costs these companies a lot in terms of time, training budgets, potentially vital mistakes, and opportunity costs.

Having a full-time, senior marketer on board is often cost-prohibitive for these companies. That’s why we decided to come together and offer our services as Fractional CMOs and Fractional Marketing Directors to our clients, to help them access this level of experience part-time, and therefore at a fraction of the price.

It can be risky for a company, bringing on board such an expensive resource where the upside or ROI isn’t clearly defined and with small spending budgets. Finding a full-time marketing leader can take time, maybe costly if you use a recruiter, and may come with added strings like giving up some equity.

From helping to define messaging and positioning to designing go-to-market plans and customer acquisition campaigns, we bridge the gap from corporate strategy to marketing implementation while training and building internal resources so that companies can grow their own Marketing capabilities long term.

What’s your strategy story? What led you to start Prosh Marketing?

I started Prosh Marketing to genuinely help startups and small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy and impact such a large percentage of our population.

I’ve worked at many great companies throughout my career where I was able to learn best Marketing practices, and I wanted to share those practices with the smaller guys. Seeing many startups around me strive for Marketing excellence while only being able to afford interns made me think about how I could help them out part-time until they grew enough to bring on a full-time Marketer.

That was the genesis of Prosh Marketing, where I brought together other leaders in the market to help these companies in their spare time. This way, startups, and SMBs were able to employ talent that they wouldn’t have been able to access or afford before, and my peers were able to make an even greater impact with their corporate expertise. Fast forward to today, we have a network of consultants that help with Marketing leadership and a team of Marketing professionals to help our clients implement their strategies, lead junior Marketers, and generally get stuff done.

My parents are entrepreneurs, and I was able to see the impact and benefits the business brought to our family. This is also an important part of why we will continue to focus on the little guy to support more families.

What marketing, operation strategies are you adopting at Prosh Marketing?

We currently focus our marketing efforts on thought leadership and business development as a B2B company. Participating in conferences, panels, accelerator programs, and the startup / small business community allows us to share our knowledge and advice with our target customers and show value to them. When they are ready and open to some Marketing help, they think of us. This doesn’t cost us a lot more than time, but it is one of the biggest ways to showcase our expertise.

As our goal is to help startups & small businesses genuinely, and as such, we do our best for each of our clients – going above and beyond wherever possible. As we are a service business, this results in positive testimonials and referrals, which are the biggest drivers of new business.

From an operational perspective, we work remotely with many independent contractors who are leaders in their respective fields and making their living working full-time jobs. They are looking to create a greater impact and share their knowledge, which allows us and our customers to access really smart, highly experienced, and specialized talent at an affordable price.

Share a story when you have been customer-obsessed

We onboarded a small technology company that employed us for Fractional CMO services to help them with Marketing leadership, guide the Marketing strategy and implement it. They had not even started any Marketing activities, including getting any internal resources. Caring about their budget, we recommended that they get interns to help them get the work done affordably instead of pushing incremental services.

Knowing that they had minimal experience with the Marketing function, we assisted with writing the job descriptions, reached out to our connections to get potential applicants, and screened candidates. We put all our best efforts into helping them get started. We understood the CEO was extremely busy and therefore handled all of this process on our own, bringing him in only for the final interviews.

We integrated so well with the team that we worked like an internal member of their company. This also allowed us to better understand their needs and pain points so that we could understand their limitations, especially in hiring the right resource, and add extra value to assist.

Any strategy mistakes you have made and what did you learn?

When we first started our company, we offered any Marketing service that our customers would need or request. We soon learned that it was better for our clients and even more profitable to pass certain activities off to our partners and focus our efforts on what we do best – Marketing leadership. We also realized that we weren’t known for anything specific in trying to offer all services, and therefore we were spreading our positioning too thin.

Finally what advice do you have for your fellow entrepreneur readers?

You’re not alone – your network can be super valuable, so tap into them! Even with small budgets, you can get your message out by leveraging the power of one-to-many marketing. For example, you can mobilize referrals from existing customers, find advisors who can mentor you along the way, and build partnerships and co-marketing opportunities. Even as a small company, you can tap into an exponential amount of people if you reach out to your network.

Disclaimer: The information in the above story is provided by the startup and The Strategy Story takes no responsibility for the authenticity of the product and services offered by the startup. Reader’s discretion is advised.

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