Is Your Business Dying Because Your Marketing Is On A Starvation Diet?

By Perry Rearick, Chief Editor, Follow Your Buyer

At the top of my list of books-to-read this Fall as you plan for business success in 2025 is “Stop Starvation Marketing” by Christine Slocumb. This is a must-read if you are a B2B solution provider in life sciences, technology, or any space characterized by long sales cycles, high-investment solutions, and complex business relationships. It will change how you think about and do marketing, and the results you achieve by following Chris’ advice will be astounding.

Here’s why I recommend this book.

It’s honest! There are no shortcuts or one-size-fits-all approaches to business success. Success in the complex B2B space demands diligence and intelligent marketing. Chris makes that clear from the outset as she describes a life sciences business that nearly died. After having initial success with the founder’s network and a quality product, their business was on a starvation marketing diet. They lacked brand awareness among organizations that didn’t already know them, the market they needed to grow. They got to work investing in their marketing for nearly as much as they spent on their labs. Within three years they had a compound annual growth of 20+%.

Great marketing is intentional, well-planned and adequately resourced!  “No more random acts of marketing.” I love that mantra! Chris emphasizes the need to have marketing strategies that support business goals. This includes carefully measuring results at least quarterly, not being afraid to stop doing things that aren’t working, doing more of the things that do, and ensuring that your tactics support your strategy. Again, forget about those knee-jerk ideas, “no more random acts of marketing!”

Chris offers great advice on building better marketing budgets. Yes, you read that right, building budgets not groveling to the CFO and accepting what they give you. Marketing is not a business expense, rather it is an investment in business growth. Chris offers several models for marketing budget development and ways to communicate your resource needs to CFOs and the rest of the executive team in the language they understand.

The book is loaded with actionable advice, case studies and graphic frameworks. This is not a theoretic approach to marketing, it is based on Chris’ 23 years of experience working in and with biotech, health tech, IT, and other B2B solution providers. Each chapter is a “move”, actions that can be taken by businesses to plan and execute marketing that will result in growth. And each move is accompanied by a real-world example how a company employed the “move” and the results achieved.   

It is enjoyable to read! I rarely describe books on business and marketing as page-turners, but this is a page-turner. It is concise, humorous at times, and there is a rhythm to the topics and real-world case studies that keep the reader wanting more.

Chris Slocumb is one of the finest marketing minds I know, do yourself and your business a favor, stop starving your marketing, I highly recommend her book!