The Startup Marketing Playbook

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Welcome to The Startup Marketing Playbook

You're the entire marketing department. Your budget wouldn't cover a single campaign at a larger company. Everyone expects you to drive enterprise-level growth with startup resources. Sound familiar?

This playbook provides the frameworks, templates, and strategies you need to build marketing that actually drives business results, not just campaigns that look good.

For marketing leaders building from scratch in the Start-Up and Scale-Up world.

What you'll learn:

• How to assess your situation and build stakeholder alignment

• Customer research that drives real strategy decisions

• Messaging and positioning that converts prospects to customers

• Channel strategies that scale efficiently across content, email, paid ads, and social

• Team building from your first hire through organisational scale

• Measurement systems that prove marketing's business impact

About the Author

Dom O’Brien is a marketing leader who has spent his career helping startups and scale-ups punch above their weight. Over the past 15+ years, Dom has built and led lean marketing teams that deliver outsized results, balancing big-picture strategy with roll-up-your-sleeves execution.

Dom’s work has spanned industries and continents, partnering with brands including MATE Internet and Mobile, espresso displays, Watch This Space, engin, Microsoft, Intel, Telstra, BMW, Porsche, SAP, Macquarie Bank and many more. Whether launching entirely new products, repositioning mature brands, or driving measurable growth in competitive markets, his focus has always been the same: connect marketing to business outcomes and prove its impact.

In fast-moving environments, Dom has navigated the challenge every startup marketer knows, being expected to think like a CMO and act like a team of interns. Through those experiences, he’s developed the playbooks, frameworks, and systems that allow marketing teams to scale without losing their edge.

When he’s not advising founders or leading teams, Dom shares insights on marketing strategy, leadership, and AI in marketing on LinkedIn and The Hoodie Marketer, helping the next generation of marketers succeed in the most demanding roles of their careers.

Startup Marketing Resources Hub

Discover essential tools and templates to elevate your startup marketing strategies and drive success.

The Playbook

Everything you need to know to build, launch, and grow a world-class marketing engine from the ground up.

Templates & Worksheets

Explore our toolkit of templates and worksheets designed to help you nail startup marketing, faster.

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Customer Reviews

See what readers are saying about The Startup Marketing Playbook.

Exactly what I have been looking for since being thrown in the deep end as head of marketing at an ecommerce brand. Covers all aspects in a really defined way that makes it actionable. I've tackled 5 chapters already in the first 6 months and we are kicking goals.

Nick S,

New York, USA

As a Growth Manager at a Series B SaaS company, this playbook is exactly what I needed when I got promoted from coordinator to leading our entire growth function. The frameworks actually work in the real world of limited budgets and shifting priorities. This isn't theoretical fluff, it's the playbook I actually use to run marketing at a $12M ARR company.

Jane Anderson

London, UK

★★★★★

★★★★★