The secrets of high-performing impact marketing teams

One of the benefits of consulting is getting to see the inner works of many different organisations and teams. Over the past seven years, I’ve worked closely with founders and marketing teams in the impact space and I’ve noticed clear patterns in what makes marketing a reliable engine to create both brand-with-purpose equity and growth.

While I’ve spent time in large organizations, 80% of my recent experience has been with companies of fewer than 100 employees. My observations are especially relevant for startups and scale-ups, but they’re also useful for corporate teams looking to adopt the agility and creativity of smaller players.

So, what are the winning habits of super-efficient marketing teams in the impact tech space?

Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. A purposeful brand story, brought to life consistently

This one is unique to the triple-bottom-line business ecosystem. In the world of social and environmental impact, aligning your brand with your mission is essential. Overpromising on sustainability risks greenwashing, while a truly impactful venture with dull or outdated branding misses a chance to inspire and engage.

The key? Invest in:

• Crafting a brand personality and story that reflects your vision and the change you want to create.

• Bringing that story to life authentically and consistently across every channel.

2. Founders who embrace personal branding

Impact founders are often pioneers, driven by a mission to make the world better, not just to make money. Their stories - why they’re solving a problem, how they’re doing it, and the values that guide them - are powerful. Founders who share their vision and journey (both wins and fails) build trust and engagement early on with investors, customers, influencers and partners.

Not everyone is a natural storyteller, but that’s where internal marketers or external coaches can help. A little support can turn personal branding into a superpower for both the founder and the organization.

3. Founders who actually believe in marketing

The best-performing startups I have worked for have invested in marketing early, recognizing it as a growth driver, not a cost centre.

If you’re a CMO or CRO joining an impact tech startup, gauge the founders’ faith in marketing before signing up. While it’s your job to nurture that belief, you need a fertile ground to thrive.

4. A user-centric culture

Research shows that companies delivering superior customer and employee experiences outperform their peers. For early-stage impact startups, this is just as critical. Instilling empathy for users - through research, testing, feedback loops, and customer success programs - helps validate problems, solutions, and assess how your marketing is perceived.

Teams that act on factual customer insights - whether for product, positioning, or marketing - derisk their product and marketing choices and keep their clients longer.

5. The ability to execute fast

A marketing strategy is only as good as its execution. The most effective marketing teams I’ve worked with move from planning to action in weeks, not months. Here’s how they do it:

• Clear ownership and dedicated resources for content production.

• Project management tools (Asana, Monday, ClickUp) to track every task.

• Slack channels for rapid feedback and collaboration.

• On-brand templates for efficiency.

• A culture of promotion over production – more impact with less content.

In short, they’re resourceful, collaborative, and excellent at project management.

6. Quick and thorough leads follow-up

In the startup world, there are two “valleys of death”: the valley where start-ups running out of cash perish and the valley where forgotten leads go stale. Up to 30% of marketing-generated leads are not properly followed up - a huge loss of potential pipeline.

Top-performing marketing and sales teams avoid this by:

• CRM tools are well integrated with other tools and their data is kept up to date by Marketing and Sales

• Automating lead follow-up almost instantly through relevant processes.

• Setting SLAs of less than 24 hours for lead retrieval and follow-up.

• Using multi-channel, multi-touch follow-up, acknowledging that leads are more likely to engage and warm up to you after several touches across multiple touchpoints.

7. A “go big or go home” mindset

This one’s more controversial - it leans into the American approach to business and the scale of funding available there. But in impact tech, like in any other industry, there’s only so much you can do without resources. If you do have a humble marketing budget, focussing resources on fewer activities to do them really well also pays off.

Whether it’s ambitious campaigns, audacious creatives/thought leadership or bold impact visions, the teams that stand have a bias for action. They're willing to take calculated risks, fail and learn.

No great marketing team was built in a day. These habits don’t happen overnight, but they’re worth cultivating.

If you’re ready to implement any of these strategies, or if you’d like help tailoring them to your team, let’s talk!