As a SaaS investor, how do you predict how fast a company will grow?

You need to know if you're looking at a rocket – or a tugboat – in terms of potential speed and growth. What are its chances to expand fast in the market? Can it really take hold and nail a niche?

In Episode 61 of the B2B Marketing Snacks podcast, we talk through all the factors to look for in a company that show it is primed for exponential marketing growth.

This is relevant for: 
• Investors doing due diligence on software company targets
• Leadership, employees or job applicants looking at their own company

Learn how to spot the hidden potential a company has from a marketing perspective. With this framework, you will know if you should invest your priceless time, effort and capital into a company. Or, if you should search somewhere else.

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS rely on a balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key marketing asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• Keep Your Friends Close, Your Investors Closer
• How to Create a B2B SaaS Pitch Deck that Wins Over Investors
• Eat your own dog food: strength-testing your SaaS product
• Finders fees for raising capital: How much should you pay your funding raisers?
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

As a SaaS founder, hiring the right marketing leader for your startup is one of your most important yet tricky tasks. The wrong choice means lost time, revenue and resources when you need speed, scale and skill.

How much experience is enough? Will they fit your culture? Are they going to get the growth results your investors demand, quickly enough? 

In this episode of B2B Marketing Snacks, our experts cover all the factors to consider before you go about hiring a B2B SaaS CMO, including:

• Best qualities to look for in CMO candidates
• Levels of candidate experience that work best for early-stage SaaS
• Budgeting for the right marketing team
• Hiring in-house vs agency vs fractional
• How to assure correct culture fit
• How to set expectations with a new leader
• The impact of equity in hiring
• How to maximize a new CMO's impact on your growth

With this expert perspective, you'll find the right marketing leaders for the right seats that can really move your company forward fast.

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• Hiring great marketers in today’s outsourced labor market
• 10 CMO Interview Questions: Hiring A Chief Marketing Officer (CMO)
• BSMS 13: What to look for in your CMO (or marketing leader)
• How to Hire a Top Growth Hacker: Job Description + Screening Tips
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

A simple 4-step approach to get your goals back on track:

1. Define the problem. Write it down—be specific. Make sure everyone agrees on the problem. This step is incomplete until everyone interprets the problem in the same way.
2. Uncover the ~real~ root cause. People often jump too quickly to conclusions and favor obvious explanations for symptoms. Most problems are nuanced with many contributing factors. Try to unpack all of the potential causes.
3. Document all possible solutions. Once you’ve uncovered the root cause, go from theory to execution. List out all of the things you can do to move the needle.
4. Build the plan and execute. Prioritize your to-do list and get after it. 

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Links shared in this episode:

• T2D3 CMO Masterclass: t2d3.pro/masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics: kalungi.com/podcast

Jason Fried (37Signals) recently published an open challenge to the software subscription model—their stance is that customers should once again be able to buy and own software products. To pay for them once and own the source code.

We discuss both models' pros and cons and speculate why Jason and the 37Signals teams introduced this strategy and manifesto. Here are some of our key takeaways:

• In the last few years, many software companies were able to get away with neglecting the second “s” in SaaS (service). But given the state of the tech industry, that’s now sometimes a determinant factor in whether or not someone continues using a product. We talk more about this in episode 44.
• Whether you sell software in a subscription model or through one-time version purchases or pay-per-update, there will almost always be a need for product innovation and support—to help customers succeed with the product and to maintain compatibility with hardware and browser changes. That can be paid for in service subscription fees (hence, the term, SaaS), or in other ways: for example, you could buy and own a software product, but the tradeoff is that you may need to coordinate and pay for server space, technical expertise to maintain it, and you’re stuck with a single version. The software world has trended toward the first model the last 10 years, but now people are starting to challenge this concept. For many products that aren’t consistently improving (or, in some cases, becoming bloated or harder to use)—customers often wonder, “What am I paying a continuous subscription for?” 
• Supporting a pay-once model is an interesting positioning and differentiation play—and could be one of the underlying components of 37Signals’ strategy. For customers who’ve ever felt burned by the traditional SaaS model, a product that supports a pay-once philosophy could help you stand out from the competition.

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Links shared in this episode:

• 37Signals manifesto: once.com
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass: t2d3.pro/masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics: kalungi.com/podcast

Google has always guarded its search ranking factors. But thanks to the recent antitrust suit between the DOJ and Google, we now get a glimpse into the inner workings of their ranking systems through previously confidential internal documents. 

Here’s what we’ve confirmed about the process so far:
Whenever new content is published and indexed on the internet, Google’s goal is to (as fast as possible) understand how relevant it is for searchers using its engine.

Google uses three main factors of a document (or article) to do this:

- Body - What a document says about itself (i.e., what do the URL, meta title, meta description, and body text signal about the content—will this be relevant for any existing search terms?)
- Anchor - What the web says about the document (i.e., which other websites link to the document, do they also have authority in the same domain, what words are used in the hyperlink?)
 - User interactions - How readers respond to a document (i.e., clicks on the website, time spent on the result, clicks beyond the result page, subsequent searches, etc.) 

User interactions are the most critical ranking factor. If users show they're satisfied with the content delivered by a particular search query, Google further strengthens the relationship between the two. Here are some of the ways a user can signal satisfaction with the delivered content:

- The user stays on the page
- The user clicks through to other pages from the result content
- The user doesn’t leave the page and returns to Google to continue their search (Google sees this kind of behavior—a bounce—as an indicator that they didn't get what they came for).

The first few days after your content is indexed are critical. Google will ‘test’ your content with select audiences and search queries it thinks could match. It will continue to serve the content if user response signals are good. If user response is poor, it will deprioritize it or experiment with its delivery in alternate search queries. 

Content that summarizes information won’t cut it anymore. There are tools for that now. Content that will win will take information and add specificity, insights, and real-world examples that can only be gained from experience.

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Links shared in this episode:

• Eric Hoffer - philosopher and master of original thought
• Search Engine Land article - 7 must-see Google Search ranking documents in antitrust trial exhibits
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass: t2d3.pro/masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics: kalungi.com/podcast

Our best practices for presenting your marketing plan to the board of directors as companies are in the thick of 2024 planning.

General guidelines:

First, there are general guidelines you should always keep in mind when presenting your plan to the board:

• Come prepared - Don’t present plans that aren’t pressure tested. If you ask for money, be ready to answer questions about the specifics—results, how you’ll get there, data behind your hypotheses. 

• Lead with the red - You’re not expected to be perfect at your job, but you do need to show that you’re the perfect person for your job. There will always be things that don’t go according to plan—you need to differentiate between what's relevant and irrelevant. Leading with things that can be done better can give you credibility. Don’t hide things that aren't working right now.

• Come with solutions - Prioritize and propose solutions for the things that didn’t go well. There are many ways to add revenue to the bottom line without creating new leads or MQLs. Think about other levers you can pull to impact revenue—here are 50+ examples to consider.

• Adopt a GTM mindset - Approach these conversations with the perspective that you are a go-to-market leader, not just a marketing leader. Everything in your company is intertwined. Ensure you're aligned with (and supporting) your other GTM leaders—Sales, Product, Success, etc.—in their efforts. Don’t present a marketing plan; present a holistic go-to-market approach and demonstrate how marketing’s role fits into it.

Presenting your plan to the board.

Your goal at the board meeting is to get alignment between the board and the CEO on three core metrics:

1. Overall growth target - Your company’s reasonable growth aspiration. Consider what’s happening in the overall market and category you play in. This number gives you a foundation to forecast what you need to generate from your funnel.

2. Net-revenue retention (NRR) - What will your revenue look like after expansions, upsells, churn, and contractions? For context, 2–3% churn is best-in-class. Aim for NRR above 100%.

3. Profitability - What's the balance between growth and the cost of that growth? For every dollar that you spend, what will get returned?

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Links shared in this episode:

• The Ansoff Matrix exercise for aligning your team around your growth priorities
• 50+ growth lever examples for your go-to-market plan 
• Jason Lemkin’s C10/C60/C90 framework
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Suggest a topic for our podcast

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About B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks (BSMS) is a podcast produced by Kalungi that simplifies complex marketing topics in small bites. Hosted by Mike Northfield, Kalungi’s Chief Evangelist, and Stijn Hendrikse, Kalungi’s co-founder.

Kalungi is a marketing agency that works with early-stage software startups. Kalungi is an instant-on marketing department that builds and deploys go-to markets for early-stage B2B SaaS companies using T2D3 methodologies. Clients get access to a strategic marketing leader that can be held accountable to results and is supported by a team of tactical marketing specialists.

Strong product marketing is crucial for early-stage software companies. But it’s also the most significant gap for many.

Whether it’s your first marketing hire or someone from your founding team, someone on your team should be able to connect their deep understanding of your product (features, capabilities, value delivery) with an overarching go-to-market plan.

Some of the core product marketing capabilities your team needs are:

• Positioning: Understand your market and the competition. Create a point of view & product narrative. What makes you unique, different, or better than the alternatives?
• Packaging & Pricing: Make difficult decisions about product packages and pricing that maximize revenue per user and support your go-to-market motion (product-led growth, marketing-led growth, or sales-led growth).
• Messaging: Clarify your point of view with compelling communication that acknowledges your best-fit customers, who they are, how they buy, and where they are in the buying process. Turn features and functionalities into capabilities, outcomes, and benefits. 
• Promotion: Enable your sales force, create content that creates and captures demand, and decide which channels to invest in.

Links shared in this episode: t2d3.pro/masterclass

Submit and vote on questions for us to answer: https://www.kalungi.com/podcast 

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B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks (BSMS) is a podcast produced by Kalungi that simplifies complex marketing topics in small bites. BSMS is hosted by Mike Northfield, Kalungi’s Chief Evangelist, and Stijn Hendrikse, a co-founder of Kalungi.

Kalungi is a marketing agency that works with early-stage software startups. Kalungi is an instant marketing department that builds and deploys complete go-to-markets using T2D3 methodologies. Full-service clients get access to a strategic marketing leader (Associate CMO) and a team of tactical marketing specialists that can be held accountable to results.

The content playbook that worked in the 2010s doesn’t work anymore. Things like keyword search volume, word count, and post date/time don’t have the same impact they used to. Instead of working backward from keyword to content, good content marketing does the reverse—start with a question you think you can answer better than someone else. 

Don’t worry about the keywords for now.

There are two steps to nailing good content in 2023:

1. Understand the problem. Who are you talking to? What are the questions they’re asking? Articulate the problem in terms your audience will connect with.
2. Look at existing content on the topic and ask yourself: “Can I add real value to these results?” Be critical: will your point of view make a meaningful contribution? If you can solve a problem better than others—you can probably say something about it.

Google is overflowing with content by folks who chose a keyword to rank for, then wrote content that tries to rank for it without expertise on the topic. As a result, so much B2B content is generic, basic, and long-winded. 

Strong content strategy starts with a common problem or question and expert-level content. SEO considerations should only come after you’ve created content worth being consumed. 

Here are four criteria that should be fulfilled before you create new content:

• There is a collection of people who share a problem
• You understand and can articulate that problem
• You can expertly solve their problem (or answer their question) better than others
• People can find your answer

Some things will make your content perform better (proper markup, strong UX, good core web vitals, backlinks, interlinking, etc.), but if you don’t start with a foundation of valuable material—it won’t get you far. 

Links shared in this episode:

• Free content marketing hub from Kalungi: https://www.kalungi.com/content-playbook 
• Executive SaaS marketing frameworks by Stijn and Mike: https://www.t2d3.pro/ 
• Instant marketing team for early-stage software startups: https://www.kalungi.com/services/full-service-b2b-saas-marketing-team  

Submit and vote on questions for us to answer: https://www.kalungi.com/podcast 

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B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks (BSMS) is a podcast that simplifies complex marketing topics in small bites, produced by Kalungi. Hosted by Mike Northfield, Kalungi’s Chief Evangelist, and Stijn Hendrikse, Kalungi’s co-founder.

Kalungi is a marketing agency that works with early-stage software startups. Kalungi acts as an instant marketing department that will build and deploy a company's complete go-to-market using T2D3 methodologies. Full-service clients get access to a strategic marketing leader and a team of tactical marketing specialists who can be held accountable for results.

The true definition of product-market fit is highly contested online. But one thing is clear from our experience: most founders think they’ve hit PMF far before they truly have. 

What does product-market fit (PMF) actually mean; and how should your go-to-market techniques change once you get to PMF? 

Product-market fit means finding a defensible beachhead of customers (a cluster of similar customers) who pay, stay, and refer others like them. 

In this episode, Stijn shares a simple list of 10 milestones we use to measure a company's journeys toward product-market fit. As with everything we share, it’s just a model for reference—not gospel.

Resources:

• See how we assemble and launch complete marketing functions at Kalungi.com
• Self-paced education, certification, templates & guides for your go-to-market at t2d3.pro
• Schedule a free GTM audit & diagnosis with one of our Associate CMOs

Suggest and vote on podcast topics at kalungi.com/podcast

2022 and 2023 brought new pressure to the software industry that many mature industries have felt for a long time. Here’s our take on what happened and where we go from here.

What happened?

• 2010–2021 were the years of plenty, with an extra push in the back from COVID
• Since growth capital was so cheap, it was easy to get away with mediocre performance 
• The bar of performance was not high enough
• Growth was seen as a metric of success, not profit 

Where do we go?

• Add discipline to how you run, just do the basics really well
• Deliver at a higher standard of execution
• When you apply success metrics and business expectations of other industries to many companies in the software industry, software performance is poor
• People got more excited about growth than things like CAC, and getting the most out of the customers and funnel they already had
• Do your research. Find out where your competitors are lacking quality and invest your efforts in that. 

Want to know more about Kalungi or have a chat with our team about your company? Go to kalungi.com and book a free 30-minute meeting.

Want to learn about the T2D3 method? Get the book and certification at t2d3.pro

Tell us what you think or suggest a topic for the next episode here!

Today we talk about what to do when your company is falling behind. What are the first things you should focus on? How do you prioritize your problems? 

It’s easy to get caught in the weeds and forget that SaaS companies are relatively simple. Before anything else, take a step back and look at the three core levers for ARR growth:

Monetize (expansion)

Upsell and monetize your existing audience & customers

• Grow number of units per account (i.e., expand user penetration).
• Increase ARPU (price optimization & cross-sells).
• Drive advocacy: Turn referrals into new opportunities.

Retain (reduce churn)

Make sure your existing customers stay with you

• Renew customer commitments (minimize churn).
• Minimize down-sells by existing customers.
• Increase features usage and/or usage frequency by existing users.

Win (acquisition)

Get new customers in the door

• Increase win rate (conversion rate from Opp to Win)
• Increase average sales price/deal size (ACV)
• Grow opportunity volume. Make the funnel bigger

Each of the three levers has a specific set of core metrics that you can use to assess their health. Some examples:

Expansion: Users per account, number of users that upgrade, average revenue per unit, cross sells, pricing and packaging

Retention: Number of down-sells, feature usage/frequency, NPS/CSAT scores

Acquisition: Average sales price/deal size (ACV), opportunity volume, conversion rate from opp to win

We also share more frameworks for problem-solving and identifying issues within your business. All that and more in this episode. 

Thanks for listening. 

P.S.
This topic is also covered in the T2D3 Masterclass lecture 13, “Inspect what you expect”. 

Today we talk about our marketing audit. It’s a 15 category scorecard where we dig into the details of and assess our clients' full marketing and sales functions. 

Typically our clients score about 32 points out of 75.

Today we’re diving into all the categories, and discussing what clients usually get right, and what they usually get wrong.  

From the first 8 audits we’ve analyzed, we’ve picked up some trends. Here’s a quick look: 

Best things: 

1. PMF 

2. Content marketing 

3. Brand and website

Worst things: 

1. ABM

2. Marketing tech (martech) 

3. Paid media campaigns (including search) 

We’ll post a more detailed deep dive on the trends on the T2D3.pro blog. 

As a SaaS founder, the pressure to move too fast can be relentless. It can be tempting to cut corners and try and gamble on your scale through quick wins and growth hacks. 

More often than not, these initiatives become distractions that end up wasting time, money, and resources only to deliver subpar results. 

In this episode of B2B Marketing Snacks, we detail the right foundation for a B2B software company – for both the quick wins and the long term scaling goals. Growth is much more likely to be smooth, consistent, and ROI positive, when you start off right.

It is essential to do some good up front research, audit what's working, what's not, and why, and make some early, tough decisions about prioritization and focus. Then, you can align the right resources and go to market with confidence!  

Listen in as we help you with effective strategies for: 

• Building a great go to market plan
• Convincing the rest of your leadership team to buy in
• Scaling your company to the next level

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  
  
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  
  

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• B2B SaaS Go-to-Market Strategy Essential Resources | Kalungi, Inc.
  
  
• Checklist for New Market Entry Go-to-Market Strategy
  
  
• [eBook] How to create a go-to-market strategy for B2B SaaS companies
  
  
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
  
  
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
  
  
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

To make decisions about where and how you deploy and focus your teams, you need to answer the question: “where does our pipeline & revenue come from?” Leadership ultimately has to decide who owns what part of revenue contribution, especially when you’re ramping up in the early stages. 

We identify that there are three main buckets where revenue can originate from: 

• Relationships from sales organization (sales generated leads)
• Outbound (prospecting and lead generation)
• Inbound 

While marketing is usually a prime suspect in conversations when it comes to driving revenue, we posit the ideal mix is about ⅓ from each category — but those numbers can change depending on your market’s maturity and go-to-market strategy. 

Today we talk about all of this, including how to benchmark contributions, how to get started with attribution, tracking funnel stages, and common pitfalls as you’re starting to think about this (such as lacking data, or placing too much emphasis on one department). 

We also discuss our new offering, the T2D3 Masterclass. Designed for CMOs and marketing leaders (and anyone willing to learn), it’s a program that gives you everything you need to build, execute, and manage a complete go-to-market for your B2B SaaS company.

Today’s topic comes from a user question on the T2D3 office hours voting app.

“What should you look for in a new marketing leader? When should you bring marketing resources in house as you scale and at what level of seniority? […] When do you bring on the strategic marketing resource who helps you develop a true go to market?” 

It’s hard to bring on a marketing leader for an early stage (MVP) SaaS company. 

In the beginning, when getting to MVP, you need to answer critical strategic questions: What is your positioning? Who is your product for, and what is your product for? And more. 

These are questions your founder should ideally address. If you need to pull in outside help though, you must find someone who’s done it before; someone who understands the go-to-market options you have, and is strategic in thinking. 

Over time, as your growth stage changes, your marketing leader will change too. Once you’ve moved past MVP and are looking to get to PMF, the marketing leader you need is much more tactical. Then, once you’re looking for T2D3 growth, your leader should be strategic again. 

Today, we discuss all this, and go deep on how to hire the right people for your stage, including what interview questions to ask them, what they should know, and what they should do. 

If you like this topic, check out a similar episode, episode 13. 

PMF checklist

When and why should you or shouldn’t you partner with other companies? 

We tackle the 3 biggest factors you should look to when making a decision about whether to partner or not, and some of the potential risks and pitfalls. 

It’s very important to partner for the right reasons and at the right time—don’t start too early. 

In today’s episode, Stijn discusses situational awareness as it relates to your go-to-market strategy. In other words, understanding your business’ stage in the T2D3 journey, as well as your market maturity, and how it affects your budget, pricing, and a number of other important factors in your GTM. 

Inside we provide examples, tactical advice, and stijn’s philosophy behind the framework. 

Today we’re addressing a question from a member of our community about demand generation, and which channels to tackle first in your go-to-market. 

Our answer is simple: start with inbound. 

In our explanation, we discuss how to best approach inbound, why there is a need for it early on, as well as different channels and when and how they work best. 

During our time we also share with you our exciting new initiative. The content from today’s episode was taken directly from our new podcast, “Office Hours.” It’s an exclusive members only podcast hosted on T2D3.pro, where we answer community members' top voted questions in long form. Office Hours is also video recorded, which allows us to share graphics and content with you directly. It’s almost like having a fractional CMO in your pocket. You can learn more about it here. 

Especially when ramping up, software companies have a ‘need for speed’ and it is oftentimes best to contract with outside talent. 

Today, in addition to a special product announcement, Mike and Stijn discuss best practices for when and how to best outsource some or all of your marketing function. 

Do you go for a piecemeal solution, with multiple agencies for specific problems? 

This can be a great choice, especially when you only have one or two jobs to be done. But, we’ve seen many startups suffer from agency fatigue, and struggle to onboard and manage a quickly growing team of agencies.

Do you instead outsource your entire marketing function? This can be great for accountability to large growth targets, and ease of use, but if you’re not sure what direction your business is going in, and haven’t reached PMF,  it can be a waste of precious time and money. 

Inside, Mike and Stijn discuss the philosophy of hiring an agency or outsourced marketing team, and how to approach it. 

Some of the questions they address are: How do you hire someone to do a job you don’t fully understand? How do you hold them accountable, and reach your growth targets in a cost and time effective way?

They also emphasize the importance of strategic patience and tactical impatience—the idea that it’s essential to wait on strategic long term goals, but simultaneously focus on short term tactics. 

Today Mike and Stijn discuss early stage B2B content marketing efforts, specifically how to tackle SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 

They address how you can find your own priority keywords when you’re getting started, best practices, and Stijn shares a bit about how he built the inbound engine for T2D3, along with his typical strategy and approach. 

Inside you’ll find information about tools like Google Search Console, Semrush, and Ahrefs, and you’ll see what kind of data you should be looking at. 

If you’re unfamiliar with SEO entirely, or want a more full picture, check out episode 6 first, where Mike and Stijn discuss how you can create your first content marketing strategy and get your inbound engine up and running. 

Today we’re addressing a question from a community member around the idea of expanding your beachhead, and what it means for your go-to-market. We discuss how and when you should introduce new verticals and industries you service into your website and other assets. 

We discuss our philosophy, tracking technologies like Hotjar, Clarity, and Google Search Console, as well as the customer journey and how you should optimize your website with landing pages and overall structure. 

Some questions we answer are: 
How many verticals do I advertise on my website? How many should  I say I service? What signals should I be looking at and how should I rationalize adding new audiences I service onto my website, and when? 

Mike and Stijn talk about why saying “no” can help you find early success.

Every large company started small. And most started by doing one thing really well, then built more offerings or repositioned as they grew. 

While (understandably) founders don’t prefer restrictive positioning, we’re convinced there is a lot of power in building your initial customer base by providing a specialized service for a small & committed audience. 

Today we share some of the stories we use in workshops to illustrate this idea, including:

• A bar in New York
• A club in the Netherlands
• Amazon 

We’ve discussed finding your niche before a few times: In episode 14, we talked about how big (or small) your niche should be. In episode 15, we discussed how to position yourself within your niche. If you’re looking for a tactical rundown, check those out after you finish here. 

OKRs are hands down the best goal tracking system we’ve found for SaaS. 

In Episode 11, we discussed how to create them for your marketing team. Today, we’re going deeper, and talking about how to most effectively use, and manage them throughout your organization, from a leadership perspective. 

We provide our framework, address common mistakes, and provide insight and best practices into how to succeed using OKRs. 

Some of the questions we answer inside include: 

• Should OKRs ‘cascade’ down through your organization? 
• How do you manage your team's OKRs and check in on progress? 
• When should OKRs be action vs. results based, and how should they change over time? 

You have all the experience, connections and drive needed to crush your next top marketing role. Now, what is the best path to getting hired today as a chief marketing officer?

Like the famous fable of "the cobbler’s shoes" (in which the cobbler’s kids had no shoes because he was too busy working for others), too many potential CMOs spend too little time on their go to market strategy. They hope social media posts and thought leadership alone will attract clients over time. 

To get ahead, any potential CMO should treat themselves as seriously as any company would. This means developing a complete plan to identify the right niches and market efficiently to them. 

As an experienced or aspiring CMO or fractional CMO (fCMO), this podcast will teach you:
• How and why to pick the right niches to focus on
• How to build a story and packaging around your experience and interests
• How to create ICP and persona maps for your target companies
• How to identify key advantages and unique value propositions you can own
• How best to showcase and package your skills for potential clients
• How to prepare for interviews and how much research to bring with you

From strategy to execution to interviews, this podcast will give you all the tools you need to land the chief marketing officer job of your dreams.

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!  The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• How to Kick Off Your First Fractional CMO Meeting 
• Why are CMOs fired more than any other executive?
• Nailing your B2B SaaS ICP (and what most people get wrong)
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS
Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

Today we discuss Stijn’s new book, which he wrote alongside Mike, called T2D3. The book is a tactical and strategic playbook for how to go-to-market, and achieve T2D3 growth. That’s when you triple your growth two years in a row, and then double it two years after that. This is the growth path most “unicorn” companies follow. 

We go deep into why Stijn wrote the book, what you’ll find inside, and why it’s important.

Some of what's inside the book:

• Building a complete marketing function 
• Nailing your niche and defining your company identity 
• Understanding and deciding on your company's growth priorities, and expanding recurring revenue 
• Frameworks, graphics, and best practices, so you can both understand and execute
• Templates and a content ecosystem you can access through the website

Check it out at T2D3.pro for more information. 

Today we celebrate 30 episodes. We talk about founder made content, and how important it is to invest in content for your company early on (hint:very). We also give some tips on how you should approach making content, and talk about our own journey. Content creation is not as hard or time consuming as you might think, but it pays dividends. 

Giving special terms to customers, such as discounts or payment plans, is a tried and true method of acquiring new business, maintaining and bolstering relationships, and an important facet in achieving T2D3 growth. As a member of the executive team, you can usually do this whenever you like. But what flexibility should your sales, customer success, marketing, or other teams have to make decisions around discounts and concessions? When are they (or anyone else) empowered to change terms or conditions and to what extent? 

Today we’re talking about what we like to use to standardize this process: what we call the empowerment matrix – a single source of truth for all your team's special permissions. In the episode we cover a wide variety of topics relating to the matrix, including why it’s so important, when to create one, what it looks like, and even niche cases of special agreements like OEM deals, or the true up licensing model. 

Some key points: 

1. The matrix is an important instrument when it comes to growing customer acquisition, reducing churn, and increasing revenue per unit. 

2. Keep in mind that when giving something away, you must make sure you are getting something in return. With that being said, there is a lot to be gained with special deals, and a lot to gain from empowering team members to make them. 

Today we discuss SDRs and BDRs in detail. In addition to explaining what they are and what the difference is, we do a deep dive into topics like who is responsible for their management (sales or marketing?), what types of metrics they should be accountable for (emails sent, dials, ROI influenced?), and even whether or not you can or should outsource the roles (hint: we don’t think it’s a good idea). We also talk about how to best develop and manage your own team, BDR and SDR automation, and provide insight into why good sales talent is so hard to find.

Today Stijn introduces a topic he is passionate about: slides in internal marketing reviews. He posits that not only do you not need them, but also they waste valuable time and resources. Instead, your internal meetings should be data driven. Simple data promotes productive and necessary conversations, and too often the marketing function does not discuss the most essential data on a regular basis. Do you agree? More inside. 

Today we get into the nitty gritty of Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). In episode 16 we talked about how to verify your ICP, but didn’t address the basics. After viewer feedback, today we revisit the topic to answer important questions about ICP. We discuss what it is, why you need it, how to come up with it, what it should look like, and how to use it. 

Some specific conversations within the episode include how to use your existing CRM data to better outline your ICP, using segmentation models based on market and product maturity, and mistakes we often see marketers make with their ICPs. 

Continuation of episode 24. Today we continue the conversation from episode 24 on pricing and packaging. We begin with an examination of freemium vs. try-buy and their specific use cases. We address how to set a price and where to start. Lastly we discuss price increases for SaaS products.

Pricing and packaging is one of the most important aspects of a SaaS business. Without calculated prices and packages that align with your customers, you will lose out on ROI and sour against the competition. Not only do you need to provide the right value, but also you need to effectively monetize it. Value based pricing is key here - give the buyer attractive choices on your terms, instead of following market trends. 

Today we take a deep dive into the many factors that go into pricing and packaging, with discussions centered around ARPU, pricing units, value based pricing. We answer the fundamental question: How do you price and package your SaaS offering? 

Next episode will be part 2. 

In today’s episode, Mike and Stijn discuss product led growth and sales led growth through an illustrative metaphor of hunting vs. gathering. 

If huge, high monetary value accounts are elephants (high ARPU), then the executive or relationship driven sales teams are the expert hunters. If low value, but plentiful accounts are berries and low hanging fruit (low ARPU), then the teams that build content and the inbound apparatus are gatherers. 

What’s the right go-to-market? How these different strategies of growing your company work and why they work, grievances we often see, and more inside.

Link to transcript and hunting vs. gathering graphic: Transcript and Graphic 

Strong testimonials are your important piece of content. A testimonial from a happy customer means a lot more than a list of product features coming from your marketing team. Anything you can say, a customer can say better.

Today we give you an overview of why testimonials are so important, how you should use them, and tactical advice on how to gather them. We even include a 28-question tactical playbook on how to guide a customer testimonial conversation. 

2 simple ways of gathering testimonials we’ve found to be especially successful are: 

1. Turning problems into praise. If you receive questions about problems in your product or service, be diligent about helping solve their problems and using that feedback to improve the product. Build a relationship. Then, when the customer is HAPPY, it’s a perfect time to gently ask for a review.  
2. Proactively reach out to customers. Ask your customers if their experience with your product has been successful. If they answer yes, it’s a great time to ask them for a testimonial. If they answer no, it’s a great time to ask why and build a better relationship. 

Congratulations, you’re the new CMO for a B2B SaaS company! What do you do first?

Learn the ins and outs of “making moves” as a new marketing leader: how fast to move and how to tackle all the big and urgent issues you'll face early on. It’s vital to avoid pitfalls and maximize your impact in the short term while building for the medium and long term too.

Getting hired as marketing leader at a software company – whether fractional or full-time – means you are probably inheriting a strategy already in play… for better or for worse. It can be tempting to make big changes quickly, to capitalize on your momentum when you're new, but it can be dangerous if you don't take precautions and follow the right implementation steps.

As a brand new leader in the company, you will learn how to:

• Identify which strategy is the right strategy

• How to set initial OKRs

• Make changes that will be effective both in speed and execution 

• How to identify underperforming areas and focus on strengths

• How to delineate marketing problems from people problems, so the right issues get corrected 

• The most important marketing metrics to identify first

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  
  

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• How to Kick Off Your First Fractional CMO Meeting 
• Why are CMOs fired more than any other executive?
• How to monitor and measure the success of your SEO strategy
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

Today we dive into the subtleties of board meetings, and offer a framework for how you should leverage them as a marketing leader, founder, or CEO. 

We talk about what boards are for - how can they help you? What do the members want out of the meetings (and the company)? 

We also talk about how to interact with the board, and how to prepare for meetings. What should your presentation include? What questions should you be prepared to answer? What questions should you ask? 

One key takeaway is “don’t lead with your chin.” In other words, don’t offer up non-board level details or conversations to the board. Board conversations should be very selective, and oftentimes what is valuable to you may not be to the board. 

Some of the questions Stijn answers in this episode:

• How can boards help you as a marketer? 
• What should each stakeholder get from the meetings? 
• What three marketing slides should you bring to the meeting?
• Which questions do you always need to be prepared to answer?
• What should you ask from the board?

How much money should a B2B SaaS company be spending on marketing? 

The answer is “it depends”, but there are a few ways to get a solid calculation. 

Today, with our special guest Brian Graf, we discuss the four factors you should consider when trying to create your marketing budget: product maturity, market maturity, growth targets, and growth velocity. We also share the methodology behind our new and improved budget calculator for early-stage B2B SaaS companies. 

It’s easy to want to throw money at marketing to get results, but that’s not always the best plan. Sometimes it’s best to not spend any money at all and focus on your product or nailing your go-to-market strategy. 

To comprehensively understand what a company’s budget should be, we pull data from four major categories: Company Attributes such as current ARR (i.e. annual recurring revenue, average contract value and referenceable accounts), Growth Targets (i.e. how much and how fast do you want to grow?), Market Attributes (i.e. how aware is your market and how much competition do you have?), and Existing Foundation (what are you starting with?).

Today we get into the weeds of what working with marketing agencies should look like as a rapidly growing B2B SaaS company. We discuss the functions agencies should be performing for your business throughout its early growth stages. We address how to structure KPIs around both short and long term metrics so agencies are accountable for both quick wins and sustainable growth. We also give a ballpark marketing budget figure for software companies between $1-$10 million in ARR, and discuss why we started Kalungi, the niche it fits, and the types of problems it strives to solve.

Part 2 of Ep. 17. Customer (or Contact) Relationship Managers (CRM) are an invaluable resource but can quickly turn into a complex and costly mess if they’re not managed properly or set up to be used by all of your teams (Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, etc). Effective marketing leaders can be hard to find, and as your company and product evolve over time, the things you need from your marketing leader evolve too. Knowing where, when, and how to match skills with your company’s maturity stage can be complicated and daunting. These and other common marketing mistakes are addressed in today's episode.

In today's part 1 of 2 episode, we tackle 3 major marketing mistakes and bad practices that can often get you into trouble as a young B2B SaaS company. Shutting down initiatives too soon, not knowing when and where to ramp up marketing efforts, and dreaming of brand awareness as a fix-all, are all avoidable issues that can be remedied with some planning and strategic marketing know-how. Experimenting is always encouraged while growing and scaling, but knowing how to read your progress results and where to focus your energies afterwards is essential. Patience here is a virtue.

In today's longer-than-usual episode, we talk about how account-based marketing can help test your go-to-market hypotheses. In episodes 14 and 15, we talked about sizing our niche and positioning ourselves within it. Once that's done it's time to check if our positioning, messaging, ICP, and personas are correct by putting it all to the test.

Step 1 is making a list of companies that fit your ICP. This could be buying a third-party one or building your own. Step 2 is finding a list of contacts that fit your persona within that list of companies. Step 3 is knocking on their door. That means meeting them where they live (e.g. their email or LinkedIn) and engaging them with helpful content that resonates with them. In doing so, you also get a better idea of the size of your niche, narrowing down your SAM and SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market).

An important part of ABM is patience and persistence. Results can manifest in a few quarters or several months after your last message to a contact.

To further nail down your niche, think of your positioning. Can you proclaim a unique value proposition you're confident only you can deliver on? If not, it might be worth revisiting your SOM filters. In cases where your offering is similar to that of competitors, positioning on a couple of vectors you're better at can help you arrive at that unique value proposition. A guarantee based on speed and safety if you can't compete on price and completeness, for example. 

Going after the promise of a large market is a common mistake. By defining your Ideal Customer Profile, you can focus down from the Total Addressable Market to your Serviceable Addressable Market and finally to your Obtainable Addressable Market where you'll encounter a higher win-rate due to specialization. 

In this episode we talk about the niche concept, the TAM SAM SOM methodology with its filters and signals, and how it integrates with the ICP in B2B settings.

The best marketing leader marries both the art and science of marketing, the creative and the analytic. They also excel and demonstrate a proven track record in three distinct areas:

• Marketing leadership – the ability to generate buy-in and followership from peers, direct reports, and superiors.
• Marketing management – managing the marketing function and rhythm through the use of KPIs, OKRs, daily stand-ups, etc.
• Marketing ROI – at the end of the day, all the of the work and all of the skills above are important because they help drive ROI. Whether it's revenue, number of leads, a specific award or feature in a publication, strong leadership and management and leveraging of the art and science of marketing all serve that one purpose.

A key insight worth keeping in mind is that your company's marketing is only as good as your marketing team, so a strong marketing leader is one that will know how to form the best team by finding, attracting, developing, and retaining the right talent. With that core condition satisfied, proper ROI usually follows.

The answer is a good copywriter. But it doesn't stop there. There's five skill groups that need to be fulfilled.

1. It starts with the copywriter because they will take care of the most primordial aspect of marketing: addressing your audience's pain.
2. Then comes the growth hacker, the automation specialist.
3. Marketing and sales go hand-in-hand and that's where your product evangelist shines.
4. Number 3 is often confused with product marketing, which will be the fourth gap you'll try to fill. Potentially your first MBA hire, this person is all about the 5 Ps (and more).
5. Finally, the team leader. This one's last because oftentimes one of the previous four will organically grow into this position and you can find a new hire to fill their previous position.

The best B2B SaaS marketing teams are built, not bought. 

For any software marketing leader, CEO or founder, a crucial part of your job is to teach the new, young, relatively inexperienced people on your team.

Small software companies don’t have the big HR budgets that large companies have to hire A-level players. They have to rely on their ability to bring in less experienced, highly motivated people and teach them well according to proven playbooks. 

Offering support and training develops the exact valuable go-to-market skills you require. It also increases loyalty from your team members as you teach and invest in them.

As a senior marketing manager, your performance is not based just on how good you are doing. It's based on how good your team is doing. The more that you can scale yourself through your team, the more success you'll see!

Topics covered in this episode include:

• What traits to look for in new, less-experienced hires
• Situational leadership to maximize employee development
• Applying varied leadership styles to match the experience of employees
• Leveling up marketing abilities with templates
• Identifying best fit roles for young team members
• What it means to truly delegate and elevate tasks
• How fractionals can scale themselves effectively within small B2B SaaS organizations

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  
  

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• 3 traits of an effective marketing leader (Situational Leadership)
• Ultimate check-list to evaluate a B2B fractional CMO for SaaS
• BSMS 13: What to look for in your CMO (or marketing leader)
• 18 Questions To Boost The Impact Of Your Leadership Team Meetings
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts: 

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.

• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

OKRs help you stay on track with your larger company objectives while also keeping an eye on the day-to-day things and doing the right kind of projects that support the objectives. So it balances the short-term and the long-term. That means:

• The objective asks "why are you here? What's the reason you're doing marketing?"
• The key result is something that you can use to measure your progress against that objective during a quarter.
• Actions, or activities come below the key result. They answer "what are the things you're going to do to achieve that key result?

For example:

• Objective: Drive demand for your product and services.
• Key Result: 50 new marketing qualified leads that are handed to the sales team.
• Actions:
  • Execute ABM campaigns to two specific verticals with a clear ICP.
  • Optimize prospect lead nurture campaigns.
  • Improve channel attribution to drive optimization and accountability of the different owners of the different channels.

Brand awareness can be divided into the following categories:

• Brand recall: ensure that prospects you marketed to months prior will remember your brand once they encounter the challenge you solve
• Brand recognition: refers to the concept of demarcation, that’s where logos and jingles come in to identify your brand and also drive brand recall later on
• Brand dominance: achieved when you dominate the niche market you carved for yourself – it’s the highest level of brand awareness.
• Brand trust: is the most important for b2b SaaS because you need the least friction possible to drive buy-in and trust is a big part of that

Inbound assumes the audience is doing a lot of the work, but in the case of a new product category or a market where customers haven’t put a name on their problem or even realized that they have a need, outbound (e.g. Account-based marketing) becomes necessary to drive brand awareness.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) can be calculated a few different ways based on the goal. For financial forecasting and valuation purposes, CAC as a profitability number should be all-inclusive. On the other hand, for the purposes of strategic and tactical marketing management, CAC might not include salaries and instead focus on discretionary spend.

Knowing what your CAC number really means is important to help make better sense of other numbers like Months to Recover CAC (MRC) and Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV relies on your churn assumptions, which can often be overestimated if not careful. The resulting inflated projections can be detrimental to both your strategy and forecasting with investors.

You don’t need a sophisticated tech stack, you can start with a simple manual spreadsheet (like a bowler chart) then create automated dashboards as you scale:

• Start small – pick 10–15 of the most important metrics
• Tracking both leading and lagging indicators – the full ‘story’ is only told when they’re looked at together
• Input numbers on a weekly basis
• Use absolute numbers, try to avoid percentages
• Use raw numbers – limit the number of formulas to calculate things
• Define every metric – be accurate and precise in your language. Explain the source, the time of day that numbers are collected, etc. 

The exact metrics you track will depend on your organization’s goals. Generally, when you’re building your dashboard from scratch, you want to include a few leading and lagging indicator metrics that span the buyer’s journey from top to bottom. Here are some examples:

• Top of funnel metrics: number of website visitors or sessions, content or landing page with the most organic entrances, etc.
• Middle of funnel metrics: i.e. number of MQLs & SQLs, number of demo requests, source data for new opportunities
• Bottom of funnel metrics: i.e. influenced revenue by channel, customer acquisition cost (CAC) by channel, revenue by deal type (new business, up-sell), etc.