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SPARKNOTES FROM THE POD

5 WAYS TO MARKET WHEN YOU HAVE MULTIPLE COMPETING CUSTOMER NEEDS

Bettina Garibaldi spent 20 years on the agency side. Worked with some of the most disciplined brands in the world.

Then she took a job as CMO of a newly formed organization. A startup structure. But operating at scale. With massive pressure. Coordinating across multiple regions, agencies, government partners, civic leaders.

And she had to reach customers who wanted completely different things. A nine-year-old. A Brazilian tourist. A New York executive. An immigrant family. All with competing priorities and values.

Sounds like any marketer trying to scale without unlimited budget or resources.

Her approach: Segment ruthlessly. Prepare invisibly. Focus on participation, not reach. Move fast with structure.

Listen to the full episode here where Bettina breaks down how to manage multiple customer segments with one team, why preparation beats agility, and why you should focus on who participates instead of who you reach.

1️⃣. You Can't Message Everyone The Same Way.

Bettina's Take: "At the onset of my role, as soon as I started was to put together pretty comprehensive audience segmentation analysis together, messaging architecture document to help kind of guide the team and how we're reaching each of these different audiences."

You have 1 message. You're trying to reach everyone. So you water it down until it means nothing.

A kid in the Bronx doesn't care about what you care about. A corporate executive doesn't either. A tourist has completely different needs than a local resident.

Bettina's solution: Create a segmentation document that your team actually references.

Not a fancy PowerPoint that sits in a folder. An actual working document.

"Segment A (local residents) cares about X. Our message is Y. We reach them via Z."

Share it with everyone. Use it to evaluate creative. Use it to plan channels. Use it to brief agencies or partners.

This prevents the team from spinning wheels and creating work that doesn't match the audience it's supposed to reach.

Takeaway: Create a 1-page segmentation guide:

Segment name.
What they actually care about.
What problem you solve for them.
Key message.
Channel.
Tone.

Share it with your entire team (marketing, product, sales, customer success, whoever).

Before any campaign, ask: "Which segment is this for?" Make the team reference the document. This prevents wasted creative and keeps everyone aligned.

2️⃣. Bring Structure To Your Chaos.

Bettina's Take: "Having worked on such large brands, it taught me a lot about applying that structure, applying that rigor, applying quite frankly, that speed, that speed of just getting things done and being incredibly resourceful."

You're caught between 2 worlds. You need process (so things don't fall apart). But you need speed (so you don't get left behind).

Bettina brought both. Rigorous planning from the agency world. But startup speed and resourcefulness.

That meant: Pre-planning certain things (segmentation, messaging, timelines). But shipping fast on execution.

You don't need to plan everything. Just the things that matter.

Takeaway: Identify 3 things that, if they're wrong, tank everything else.

Plan those deeply. (For most teams: audience understanding, core positioning, measurement strategy.)

Everything else? Ship fast, test, iterate. This gives you the structure to avoid disasters.

But the speed to move quickly. You'll be faster than process-heavy teams. And more intentional than pure speed teams.

3️⃣. Understand Your Operational Constraints. They Change How You Market.

Bettina's Take: "Now being able to see it on the back end, right? Behind the curtain of just how intrinsic and complex every little detail is and how everything is so interconnected."

Your product team says something takes 2 weeks. It actually takes 2 months because of dependencies you don't see.

Your sales team says they can close in 30 days. They need 90 because of approval processes that exist behind the scenes.

When you understand the actual constraints, you market better.

You stop promising things that can't be delivered. You manage expectations. You find realistic timelines.

You also spot customer problems that matter.

Takeaway: Spend a morning with your product, ops, or delivery teams.

Ask: "What's actually hard about what we do?"

What takes longer than expected?
What depends on other teams?
What could break?

Take notes.

This operational knowledge informs every campaign. You'll know what messages resonate.

What problems customers actually face. What timelines are realistic. Your marketing will be more believable and more honest.

4️⃣. Invisible Preparation Is Your Competitive Advantage.

Bettina's Take: "The best campaigns are built on invisible preparation. I've 100% witnessed that with my own 2 eyes of everything that is going on behind the scenes that people might not see. Agility is earned through preparation. The stronger that foundation is in preparation, then the stronger that output."

Everyone sees the poster. The campaign launch. The event.

No one sees the months of planning. The coordination. The dozens of approval gates. The problems solved before they became public problems.

But that's where the magic happens.

A campaign that looks like it came together in a week? It took 6 months of invisible work.

A fan experience that feels smooth? 100's of people worked behind the scenes to make it that way.

Agility isn't innate. It's earned. Through preparation.

The better prepared you are, the more agile you can be when things change.

Takeaway: Invest heavily in preparation that no one will see.

Create detailed project plans. Run scenario planning.
Do a pre-mortem: "What could go wrong?"
Build contingencies.
Brief your teams thoroughly.
Do dry runs.

This preparation looks like overhead.

But it's what enables you to move fast when it matters. When things change or break, the team that prepared thoroughly handles it smoothly.

Track this: How much time do you spend on visible work vs invisible work?

Most teams skew 80% visible, 20% invisible. Try flipping it for one project. The output will be noticeably better.

5️⃣. Participation Is The New Reach

Bettina's Take: "For me, participation is the new reach. Whether that's participating, doing something digitally, participating physically by going somewhere. It's no longer just about reaching people. It's are they opting to be a part of something that you've built?"

Reach is a vanity metric.

"We reached 10 million people" is meaningless if none of them opted to participate.

Participation is what matters. People actively choosing to be part of what you've built.

That could be: Showing up to an event. Signing up for a program. Engaging with a digital experience. Volunteering. Recommending to a friend.

It's measurable. It's meaningful. It shows actual interest, not just eyeballs.

Bettina's job isn't to maximize reach. It's to get people to CHOOSE to participate in the experience.

That changes everything about how you market.

Takeaway: Start reporting on participation metrics.
How many people signed up?
Showed up?
Engaged?
Shared with a friend?
Volunteered?
Came back a second time?

These are the numbers that matter.

Design your marketing around increasing participation, not reach.

For every campaign, ask: "How are we getting people to opt in and actively participate?"

That's the goal. Not just seeing your message. Choosing to be part of it.

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IN A MEME

Behind great Marketing is a lot of unsexy work

Drop me your Chipotle order. I'm in the mood for change.

Your friend,
Daniel