How we built an inbound marketing engine for the enterprise at Atomicwork
My 2024-in-review of Atomicwork's marketing strategy and execution
Last week, I asked my team to put together a few notes on what they had done all year. Everyone did, and so did I. And the first realisation that struck all of us, which we discussed immediately, was just how much we had done. It has been a ridiculous year at Atomicwork and not just in marketing. We have literally forgotten some of the mountain-moving we have done because we have moved on to other mountains.
On a personal note, I can safely say that I have never worked this hard. And that also means that it has been a satisfying year, a year I will definitely look back on with some pride. I’ll tell you why.
At the end of last year, which was a good one in terms of creative marketing and for laying the base of what would come, we were not out of the water. Far from it, in fact. We had understood what we were building, who we were building it for, and what our value proposition is. But now it was time for actual marketing, we needed more conversations, more top of the funnel.
Going enterprise
The caveat was that this is an enterprise ICP we were going after: CIOs. Would inbound work for them? We didn’t know. This was also why we were not betting on inbound completely. We also started a small digital marketing motion, and on pure outbound. The outbound motion was the one everyone said we should do, as did my experience: When you are going after high ACVs, inbound usually doesn’t cut it, according to conventional SaaS wisdom.
But we had a different idea. I had a hunch, and my CEO agreed with me on this: High quality content targeted at CIOs could work, because as an ICP, they haven’t actually been given new and interesting stuff that can hold their attention, and actually be useful for them. Marketing towards them has usually been staid and at times boring. Cutting through the clutter would give us some visibility was my theory.
So we began. And we actually started in December 2023. With the collateral that first kicked off Atomicwork’s marketing towards the IT persona: the State of AI in IT for 2024. It was a survey of IT leaders and professionals on their attitude towards AI in IT. The idea behind creating it was pretty simple: We had to make something that was genuinely and immediately useful for IT leaders. But whatever we created had to be high quality.
The focus on quality
So we made sure that starting from messaging to packaging, everything we did for our ICP was elevated, at least higher in quality than they expected (though our ambitions were much higher). But tempered by time and budget constraints, we kept producing good thing after good thing, and created a bit of a media bubble around us. If you were an ICP and connected to us on social in some way, even a degree or two away, you couldn’t miss us and our content.
It paid off, the report kicked off interest in Atomicwork, and we used that momentum to elevate our blog, podcast, whitepapers, and webinars. And this is where the fact that we had already set up our marketing MVP helped. We knew what we were creating, we knew the kinds of content we had to create, and we knew who it was for, so now it was just a matter of doing it. Which we did, and at scale.
The numbers
Though I cannot put up all our numbers, I’ll give you a snapshot.
By the end of this year, we had written almost a 100 blogs, put up 100 new website pages, about 50 videos, almost 700 social media posts. On the brand and thought leadership side, we published 5 press releases, 12 podcasts, 15 webinars, and pulled together at least 3 events where we showed off Atomicwork.
On the community side, there were other events that our leadership put together in the US as well, which were very important for our momentum, but I’ll go into detail on those some other time.
All of the above does not include the staggering amount of product marketing that went into the website, the collateral, the number of decks we made, the copy, the launches, demo videos, guides, battle-cards. Product marketing is not easily quantified, but the work was so important, varied, and critical, that it took centre-stage without trying. And there was also digital marketing and marketing operations: the tooling and systems that go into starting up and running an engine going this fast.
As I started thinking about this round-up, I thought I should add screenshots, but there are so many of them that it makes no sense to do so. You can go and look up the website, I guess. :)
The results, and why all this worked
Please note that all of this started after we had our positioning clear, our ICP clear. If as a startup you are targeting multiple ICPs, you may still win, but God help your marketing team. You are setting them up for failure if you target multiple ICPs. One of the reasons we were able to do well is because we knew who our single ICP is.
What did all of this add up to in the end? I can’t tell you exactly, but by the end of the year, inbound had contributed at least 40% of the pipeline generated in 2024.
Did I know we would be at this point by the end of the year? No, but I knew that there we did the right things for the ICP, the results would come. And they did.
If I had to get down what worked for us in brief, it would be these:
1. We got our value proposition clear. We knew what our product would do better than other products, and we had an articulation.
2. We knew our ICP to the T. We understood how they thought, what their aims were, and we tried to help them with whatever we made.
3. We had our tactics clear very early, so we just had to execute. Repetition is underrated.
4. We didn’t overthink and start measuring and optimising in the middle of the year. We kept going. We let our marketing compound.
5. We made sure we had both quality and quantity. I have said this before: You have no choice. If you want to do marketing now, you have to do a lot of things AND also do them well.
As we closed off the year, we have again released the State of AI in IT Report for 2025, and like everything else, we have elevated that too. This time, the report is in collaboration with Peoplecert, the organisation behind ITIL, plus ITSM.Tools, who we had worked with last year as well.
Like I said before, if you have to start the next year well, you have to have the building blocks in place right now.
And as always, you have to get the basics right.
One other point: Is the above all we did, and does marketing take credit for everything? No, of course not. There are strategic decisions and tactics in there that I obviously can’t write about, and it’s a combination of all that that made it a good year. Plus marketing is nothing without sales. Yet, the above is illustrative enough to give folks a good read on approaching startup marketing in the current context.
Finally, there are a bunch of openings up at Atomicwork, which you can see here. Please do refer your friends. And for the marketing team, I’m hiring a field marketer, one of our focus areas for next year. The details are here, so please apply, and tell your friends too!
I want to thank the whole team at Atomicwork, especially product and engineering, who really stepped up this year to get us to where we are. And I wanted to appreciate my team who gave it their all, and trusted me and our leadership, to give so much of their time and effort. It is their work that I’ve showcased in this essay. They’ll hate me for saying this, but: We have a heavy year of marketing waiting for us in January, team, we are barely .5% done! :)
All that work did take a toll, of course. I have been irregular on the newsletter and my writing, which I hope to change next year. Fingers crossed! Plus, this isn’t the last edition of 2024. I have another one coming just before the year ends.
If you have enjoyed the essays this year, or have learnt something, or even if you just want to say hi, please do. I’m at sairamkrishnan@outlook.com. And please do share the newsletter with your colleagues and bosses. That’s how I know it’s coming along well!
And if you are new here, do subscribe. In 2025, The CMO Journal enters its 5th year!