From FMCG to Startup: Letterly CMO's Journey to Revolutionize Text Creation
by ILFAT Khayrullin
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What you'll discover
when watching ILFAT's story
- Developing a deep understanding of your target audience through direct conversations and continuous feedback is crucial for product success.
- A successful go-to-market strategy combines customer insights, rapid product development, and effective digital marketing channels.
- Balancing retention of existing customers with acquisition of new ones requires consistently delivering value and transparent communication.
- Content creation should be balanced with effective distribution strategies for maximum impact.
- AI can be a powerful tool in marketing and product development, but human oversight and input remain essential.
- Tracking key metrics daily, especially for digital products, allows for quick identification of trends and issues.
- Fostering a collaborative, friendship-based team environment can lead to higher productivity and better ideas than traditional hierarchical structures.
Meet ILFAT Khayrullin - CMO @ Letterly
ILFAT Khayrullin is the Chief Marketing Officer and co-founder of Letterly, a mobile app that uses AI to convert speech into well-written text. His journey into marketing began smoothly, starting with an interest in business during school and leading to marketing studies at university.
ILFAT’s background includes experience in big FMCG companies and a bank that launched a startup. This diverse experience has shaped his collaborative leadership style.
At Letterly, ILFAT focuses on understanding user needs through continuous feedback and interviews. He oversees the app’s go-to-market strategy, emphasizing digital marketing tools and channels like Facebook and Instagram.
ILFAT is passionate about analytics and metrics, tracking key performance indicators daily. He advocates for the balanced use of AI in marketing, recognizing its potential while acknowledging the ongoing need for human input.
Check out ILFAT Khayrullin's thoughts on customer-centric strategy
When asked how he approaches developing a successful go-to-market strategy, ILFAT shares:
"Our go-to-market foundation was built by talking to users and drawing conclusions from those conversations. It's not a large-scale quantitative study, but a solid customer development exercise with real users."
He also shares how he approaches metrics in marketing:
"As a marketer, I focus mainly on conversion rates at every stage, acquisition costs, customer acquisition costs, retention rates, and lifetime value. These metrics are so important that we track them daily."
And his advice on handling competitors:
"Competitors appear every day. I recommend all early-stage tech startups to find and test them daily in real life. Analyze them, because often, an unknown player will come up with something cool first."
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