Saas Breakthrough

Meet Nina Butler, Director of Demand Generation at Alyce - a Boston-based start-up that delivers one-to-one business connections through its personal gifting platform. Nina leads the strategy and execution of full-funnel marketing programs to drive initial and continued demand for the product.In this episode, you'll hear about the evolution of a new marketing category at Alyce and personalization in a competitive B2B SaaS industry. Then you'll learn how Alyce is flipping email strategy on its head to take personalization to another level, shifting away from MQLs to a marketing-qualified approach that thinks about an account holistically. And finally, you'll hear about launching thought-leadership events to define a new category. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:40 Enabling Enterprise Sellers & Marketers To Create Personal Bonds By Way Of One-To-One Gifting- 04:05 Considering The Person Behind The Marketable Persona- 05:50 Trying To Fundamentally Change How People Develop Relationships & Experiences For Their Audience

Meet Jim Coleman, Co-Founder of xFusion, which provides technical customer support for fast-growing SaaS businesses. Prior to xFusion, Jim was a SaaS operations manager at FE International. He oversaw operations and high-level growth initiatives across a portfolio of SaaS holdings.In this episode, you'll hear about the journey to create a technical support agency for SaaS and understand the right moment for SDR hires. You'll learn about choosing an agency versus building an internal team and the approach of paying to level-up and accelerate your knowledge. And finally, the lessons you need to know to be attractive as a business seller in today's market. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:50 Solving a Big Pain Point For Saas In Customer Support- 06:15 Applying Principles Learned In The SaaS Space To The Agency Model- 08:25 Working With An SDR Agency While Building An Internal SDR Team- 11:55 The Vital Role Of Integration Into The Team- 13:40 Choosing The Moment To Start Hiring an SDR Team- 15:20 Agency VS Internal Sales Team: I

Meet Nick Dimitriou, Head of Growth at Moosend - a highly competitive Email Marketing and Marketing Automation platform. Nick has experience with running different teams, both for organic and paid acquisition.In this episode, you'll hear about standing out with a marketing automation platform in a red-competitive ocean, building the industry-specific marketing pages you need to rank well, SEO secrets for crushing the SERPs, and lessons from a scaling affiliate platform. And finally, you'll learn the skills and frameworks you need to drive the correct affiliate traffic. Enjoy!Notes:  - 02:50 Offering Email And Marketing Advanced Automation Features    - 04:45 Joining As The First Hire Of The Growth Team     - 05:30 Using Customers Feedback To Build Out The Platform To Better Serve The ICP       - 08:15 Adding Industry-Specific Landing Pages To The Website    - 10:15 Creating Listicle Articles For SEO       - 14:55 Outpacing Hardcore Affiliate Marketeers Doing SEO    - 16:40 Growing The Affiliate Program    - 2

Meet Tarah Darge, a digital marketing native and Head of Marketing at timetoreply. She has a passion for start-ups and loves helping brands grow.In this episode, you'll hear how timetoreply was built from a sales conversion win, how to build a pipeline using sequenced messaging, the foundational metrics you can use for experiment baselines, and expanding on the traditional one-to-one demos with themed webinars. And finally, buying lessons from paid social ads. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:00 Giving The Ability To Measure And Report On Business Email Reply Times- 05:30 Research: Replies Timeframe Benchmark For Prime Close Rate- 06:55 Finding Product-Market Fit By Using Own Support Channel- 09:25 Coming In After Funding To Build Out The Marketing Plan And Team- 11:10 A Different Approach To Lead Gen Using LinkedIn- 13:45 Crafting The Initial Outreach Emails- 15:55 Real-Time Learning And Culling Campaigns Ruthlessly Following Benchmarks- 18:10 Webinars: Going Past The Usual One-On-One Demos- 19:40 Deciding To Do More Themed

Meet Farzad Rashidi, the Director of Marketing at Visme, where he helped the company gain over 7 million users and pass 1.5 million monthly from organic traffic. He's also the co-founder of Respona, the all-in-one digital PR and link building software that combines personalization with productivity.In this episode, you'll hear how Farzad became the first marketing hire in a growing freemium product, how they had to evolve their ICP based on unit economics, and the massive results they've seen from a recent pricing experiment. And finally, you'll learn about smart differentiation on SEO and keyword intent. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:40 An Easy-To-Use Platform To Create Good Looking Pieces Of Content- 04:00 Changing The Focus To Be More On The B2B Side Of Things- 05:25 First Marketing Hire In a Freemium Business With Thousands Of Customers- 08:10 The Blessing And Curse Of Having a Wide Range Of Customers- 10:35 A High Volume Acquisition Channel That Doesn't Cost an Arm And a Leg - 11:40 Creating Landing Pages Optimized F

Meet Crystel Rynne, Head of Product Marketing at HRLocker - a people management solution that enables organizations to manage people, whether they are on-site or working remotely. Crystel is a creative marketing leader and business strategist with experience leading several teams at HRLocker.In this episode, you'll hear about the 14-year journey of HRLocker and its transition to a SaaS company. You'll learn how the pandemic has caused HRLocker to shift their thoughts on their ICP, when and how to rethink brand messaging, and how to launch a research report to become a thought leader. And finally, you'll learn what is the first thing you have to do when you're doing a PR campaign, and how to use storytelling. Another fantastic episode, enjoy!Notes:- 02:40 Automating HR Processes For Businesses- 04:45 Transitioning To a Saas Company To Solve Their Pain Point- 05:50 Being The Bridge Between The Marketing Team And The Product Team- 07:30 Survey: Figuring Out The ICP's Needs And Challenges During The Pandemic- 11:

In this episode, you'll hear about the key lessons that Jen learned while driving the marketing for 3 billion dollar SaaS brands: how to create competitive positioning (critical more than ever in this busy SaaS landscape), how to build customer-centric brands and the benefits of following that marketing strategy, and finally, how to think about brand building and when to truly focus and invest in it. Another episode with a wise and knowledgeable guest, enjoy!Notes:- 03:20 Turning The Whole Concept Of Enterprise Software On Its Head- 05:05 Focusing On The Deepest Pain To Find Product-Market Fit- 07:35 Scaling By Squeezing Into The Broader Company And Other Pain Points- 09:45 The Critical Role Of Competitive Positioning- 13:00 Don't Change Your Positioning: Repeat It, Repeat It, Repeat It- 14:10 Use Feedback To Hone In The Positioning- 15:55 Don't Put The Entire Big Vision Into The Positioning or Tagline- 17:20 Test The Positioning: Look For People To Start Nodding Their Head- 18:10 Get Feedback As Fast As Poss

Meet Saksham Sharda, Creative Director at Outgrow - a platform that lets marketers build and launch interactive calculators and viral quizzes that help engage website visitors and generate more leads.In this episode, you'll hear about creating Outgrow out of an app company experiment, the interactive content tools they use and how to actively use them yourself in 2020, why and how to do multiple soft marketing launches on Product Hunt, and the creative marketing mindset you need to have.And finally, you'll hear about silver and bronze bullets and what that even means for marketers. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:10 From Idea To Development: A No-Code Tool To Make Calculators And Quizzes- 04:20 Expand The Ability Of What You Can Do A Thousand Fold- 06:45 The Only Way To Get The Expertise Across To The Modern Audience - 09:00 An Interactive Content Tool: The Idea Generator - 13:00 Becoming One Of The Finalists In Product Hunt's Coronavirus Hackathon- 18:05 Having Zero Dependence On The Product Team To Build Ideas- 20:10 Be I

Meet Olga Andrienko, Head of Global Marketing at SEMrush, an all-in-one marketing platform for marketers. She speaks at major marketing conferences and is the Head Judge at Content and Social Media Awards across the USA and Europe.In this episode, you'll hear about SEMrush's journey from a challenger brand to the market leader in a red ocean market. You'll learn about their expansion through product first focus, how the SEMrush team pulled off a 24-hour summit that generated 56,000 new leads on the first event, and how to break through event fatigue in 2020.And finally, you'll hear about the opportunities and challenges Olga sees ahead for marketers. Another incredible episode, enjoy!Notes- 03:00 A Powerhouse All-In-One Marketing Platform For Marketers- 04:35 The Evolution From Internal Service To Market Leader- 09:10 A Product First Company Focused On Client Wishes- 10:20 Global Marketing Day: A 24-Hour Long Online Conference- 15:35 Getting The First Big Speakers Lined Up- 17:35 Keeping Attendees Engaged In

Meet Christian Yates, VP of Marketing at Platform.sh, the end-to-end web platform for agile teams. With a 20+ year career in software, he's built products and teams for media companies, worked for rocket scientists at NASA, and developed SaaS and open-source software businesses in engineering and product leadership roles.In this episode, you'll hear about the marketing message challenges and wins for a wide-market product, the rise of data-driven technology for marketers, how to organize marketing goals in a product type fashion, and the agile marketing methodology that Chris loves.And finally, we look forward to 2021 and talk about the marketing challenges that lie ahead. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:30 Taking Away Invisible Work To Allow Teams To Refocus On Creating Value- 06:20 Storytelling and The Right Messaging For Different Segments- 08:30 Focusing On Larger Scale Enterprise Customers- 09:30 Customers Tend To Be Sticky Across The Board- 12:00 Looking At Tech Tools From Different and Complementary Levels- 14:10 Inv

Meet Nick Harley, VP of Growth at Raygun, a B2B SaaS company that offers a range of application monitoring products, used by thousands of software teams globally. With 10+ years of experience selling to technical audiences, Nick has a passion for growing businesses, focusing on early-stage, high-growth B2B tech during his career to date. He is involved in the Wellington startup community, helping cultivate the next generation of business leaders.In this episode, you'll hear why and when to expand the ICP for your SaaS business, four types of events and when to execute each in your marketing pipeline, and the importance of attribution even with its challenges. You'll also hear about this year's social media changes in the B2B landscape and how that affects brands.And finally, what we can all learn as marketers as people's perception of value change in 2020. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:00 Application Monitoring Software that Provides Greater Speed and Accuracy- 04:30 A Product So Successful That It Gets Rolled Out As a Co

Meet Edward Ford, the Marketing Director at Supermetrics, a marketing analytics SaaS product used by over half a million marketers. Edward is also the host of The Growth Hub Podcast.In this episode, you'll hear the lessons learned from watching their ARR double from 10 million to 20 million ARR in 12 months. You'll also hear about how they had to shift products from self-serve to enterprise and what that meant for their sales team, their very successful Webinar experiment, and a powerful LinkedIn strategy that has been critical for the growth of their team.And finally, the big lessons Edward learned that all SaaS marketers could learn from. You're going to absolutely love this episode!Notes- 02:50 The Google Tshirt That Started It All- 04:50 Getting Any Data Needed From Most Popular Marketing Platforms- 06:05 The Evolution Of Product-Market Fit So Far- 08:35 Growing From 10 Million To 20 Million In ARR In 12 Months- 09:45 Building Out a World-Class Sales Team- 12:50 A Product Built On Destinations And Sources

Meet Aaron Cort, the Director of Marketing at ClickUp, the only work platform that replaces all productivity software in an organization with one single application for tasks, docs, chat, goals, and team management.In this episode, you'll hear how Aaron has had to build the ClickUp team as the director of marketing. You'll learn how to be data-driven for defining messaging in a wide-approach product, and the advertising channels that are working for ClickUp, including billboards!And finally, you'll hear all about product-led growth for marketers in a fast-moving startup. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:55 Replacing All Productivity Software In a Company With One App- 04:20 The Delicate Dance You Get To Play Running a Marketing Team- 06:00 Using Data-Driven Decisions To Better Verticalize- 07:30 Pandemic: Catalyst To a Strong Organic and Product-Led Growth Engine- 09:10 Attribution and Paid Marketing As a Tool For Acquisition- 10:15 Driving Higher Brand Awareness- 11:00 Setting Up an Attribution System- 11:55 Leveraging Revi

Meet Sarah Whipp, the CMO and Head of Go-to-Market Strategy at Callsign, an identity fraud, authorization, and authentication company, solving the challenges that organizations face in getting their users on to and interacting with their digital platforms. Sarah's career includes roles as VP of EMEA marketing, for companies such as Fujitsu, McAfee, Symantec, and Standard & Poor's. In this episode, you'll hear about navigating brand building for tough security solutions at Callsign. You'll learn how to make sure your brand alignment is built for growth, how market research became its own demand gen campaign for Sarah, her key takeaways from building an investor deck, and how to think differently about case studies.And finally, you'll hear about the big challenge ahead for all businesses in 2020 and beyond. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:00 Making Digital Identification Simple And Secure For Everybody/Everything- 04:15 Being Able To Create Something From Scratch In Marketing- 05:00 Building a Team With People W/ Experien

Meet Daniel Glickman, an internationally recognized marketing leader, speaker, podcaster, and author. He is the former CMO of Wave.video, an innovative video solution for creators and small businesses. In this episode, you'll hear about the lessons learned as the former CMO at Wave.video, how SaaS marketers need to be using video today, and how videos fit perfectly in your sales funnel. You'll also learn about repurposing content and creating moats to protect your startup in 2020 and beyond. And finally, the biggest mistake you can make while focusing on growth. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:00 The Role Of Video In The Current Marketing Landscape- 06:10 It Just Needs To Be A Video- 07:40 Do's And Don'ts Of Video Marketing- 09:15 Repurposing Is A Big Piece Of It- 10:10 What Got Them There Is Not What They're Doing Now- 12:45 The Reason To Do Videos- 16:25 The Purpose Of Repurposing- 18:15 Questions Podcast Owners Should Be Asking- 23:00 Building Moats To Prevent Others From Easily Copying Your SaaS- 27:15 Building a Brand

Meet Urska Blagojevic, Marketing Director at Whisbi, a conversational sales platform that combines powerful conversational tools, which replicate the effectiveness of a face-to-face sales process online. Urska is an experienced B2B Marketing Director with a focus on Sales Enablement, Demand Generation, and Product Go-to-Market strategy.In this episode, you'll hear about the 12-years journey of Whisbi from services to pure SaaS. You'll learn how to capture large enterprise companies, and the account-based marketing strategies that they've used to bring in these enterprise companies. You'll also learn about the conversational website messaging they built and the results of implementing a real-time demo as the first touch.And finally, where Urska thinks the industry is ultimately headed with this brand new revolutionized technology in 2020 and beyond. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:55 The Journey To Become a Pure SaaS Company- 05:00 Increasing Digital Sales By Replicating The In-Store Experience Online- 06:30 Joining The Comp

Meet Jeroen Corthout, co-founder and CEO of Salesflare, an intelligent CRM built for SMBs selling B2B, mostly popular with agencies and SaaS companies and top-rated on review platforms for its ease of use and automation features.In this episode, you'll hear about the process that Salesflare used to find product-market fit and settle into SaaS and agencies. You'll learn about the early-stage ideas they used to drive leads, how they're competing in a red ocean, their experimentation habits, and the onboarding experiments that have been successful so far.And finally, you'll hear about the excitement they have for the future of sales in CRMs in SaaS and the role of AI. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:30 Building a CRM That Helps Follow-Up With Customers- 05:50 Evolution Of Product-Market Fit Over The Years- 09:25 Driving Early-Stage Leads To Demo Calls- 11:00 How Businesses Are Looking At Investing In a CRM In 2020- 13:00 Marketing In a Space Full Of Competitors With Big Pockets- 16:00 Building And Measuring Brand Recognition-

Meet Foti Panagiotakopoulos, who has an extensive background in Growth Marketing having tripled EuroVPS’s MRR from €30k to €100k in a couple of years, and having founded GrowthMentor, a curated community where founders and marketers can book 1:1 calls with vetted growth marketing and startup mentors for on-demand advice.In this episode, you'll hear about Foti's journey from a finance degree to marketing VPS services, and the lessons learned from implementing early personalization for pre-qualifying sales at EuroVPs. Then you'll learn what "ethical growth hacking" is and some of the growth hacks Foti is using to grow GrowthMentor.And finally, you'll hear where growth and marketing are headed in 2020 and how to cash in on it this year. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:55 VPS Hosting With High-touch And Custom Tailored Solutions- 07:05 Using Personalization To Serve a Very Highly Diverse Group of Customers- 08:50 Removing The Shopping Cart Process And Adding A Lead Form- 10:55 Lots Of Tools For Personalization Are Overkill For

Meet Kevin Ho, VP of Marketing at Wishpond an all-in-one marketing platform with a team of experts to help companies generate more sales online.In this episode, you'll hear about the growth trajectory of Wishpond product through the years since starting in 2009 and the transition from self-serve SaaS to demo sales only.You'll learn what sales alignment means for Kevin, the marketing channels that are working in the COVID landscape (including virtual summits), and how they've adapted their website and marketing to better serve leads and customers across time zones.And finally, you'll hear what the type of marketing initiatives they're focusing on for the rest of 2020. Enjoy!Notes:- 02:30 A Marketing Platform And Services Combined- 03:30 Perspective Gained While Growing From Support To VP Of Marketing- 04:20 Evolving The ICPs As The Service Offering Evolved Organically- 06:10 Moving From Listing Prices To A Calendar Pushing People To A Call- 08:40 Main Metric: Number Of Demos Held With Account Executives- 09:55

Meet Sean Ammirati, partner at Birchmere Ventures, where they invest in seed-stage SaaS and marketplace startups. Sean co-founded mSpoke the first acquisition of LinkedIn, and Peak Strategy which was acquired by Morgan Stanley. Sean also teaches entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business.In this episode, you'll hear about Sean's exits and his journey to becoming a professor and partner at a venture fund. You'll learn the importance of understanding the lean methodology for SaaS companies today, the four growth catalysts that winning SaaS companies use to scale up once they find product-market fit and how to create sustained long term growth.And finally, Sean's prediction for the SaaS marketplace in 2020. It was really valuable to hear this unique voice and perspective. Enjoy!Notes:- 03:00 Giving The First Institutional Check To Companies- 06:25 The Way Venture Funds Work- 08:50 Funds Have Different Investment Theses- 11:20 Different Funds Think About Adding Partners Differently