Saas Breakthrough

Meet Anna Kocsis, Head of Marketing at 10to8, an appointment scheduling software that aims to rid the world of wasted time. Anna loves experimenting and finding new tactics that really work. In this episode, you'll hear about the data-driven approach that has helped 10to8 find their job-to-be-done use cases that really shape their different personas and how these use cases drive their approach to feature design and marketing. You'll learn about the data needed to help create smart Google campaigns and the optimization flows that Anna uses to always improve those campaigns. And finally, you'll hear about the KPIs that matter most in conversion marketing and get to look inside different campaigns. Enjoy! Show Notes: 03:15 A Feature Rich And Powerful Appointment Scheduling Software 04:45 Joining The Team And Playing Around Every Area Of Digital Marketing 06:35 Defining Use Cases And Product Market Fit 09:00 A Data-Driven Company With A Data-Driven Brand Name 10:00 The Specialized Tech Stack Needed To Aggregate

Hello, 2020! Welcome to a special episode of the SaaS Breakthrough podcast.  As we start a new year, and decade, we felt it was a good time to collect the top marketing insights we received from our amazing guests, so you can make sure to use their wisdom in your SaaS Marketing in 2020. In this episode, you'll hear the Top 20 SaaS Marketing Insights for 2020 by 20 incredible SaaS marketers that we’ve been lucky enough to host on the podcast throughout 2019. Enjoy! Thank you so much for listening, subscribing, commenting, and for being a part of this amazing journey last year! We have more amazing guests aligned for 2020!

Meet Rachel Yen, a Customer Events & Experience Specialist at HubSpot. Rachel has been growing HubSpot's Customer Delight program since 2016 and loves to preach customization over automation. In this episode, you'll hear about the start of HubSpot's Customer Delight program, how it got off the ground and how HubSpot is humanizing customer success with an amazing gift-giving initiative. You'll also learn how to balance personalization with gifts, the goal set for gift-giving and how to maximize your return on these initiatives. And finally, you'll hear where Rachel thinks business is heading in 2020 and beyond. It was so great to have HubSpot back on. Enjoy! Notes: 03:00 Integrating Marketing, Sales And Service Software 04:50 Getting The Foot On The Door Of A Company With The Right Values And Perks 07:15 Taking Over The Customer Delight Program 09:30 Selling An Initiative To Leadership Based On The Company Culture 11:00 Breaking With The Materialistic Side Of End-Of-Year Gift-Giving 12:50 Identifying Oppo

Meet Mikko Luhtava, the Head of Marketing at Vainu, a real-time company data provider for salespeople and marketers. Mikko has been working in tech marketing and sales for 7+ years, in both Europe and the U.S. In this episode, you'll hear how a change in their target ICP created data points for a company rebrand and then we discuss the lessons learned in rebranding a scaling SaaS company. You'll hear about the changes happening in both inbound and outbound marketing using data and the sales flow that Vainu uses to identify the right prospects at the right time. Finally, you'll learn the best way for U.S. companies to scale into the European market. Enjoy! Notes: 03:00 Helping Companies Have Personalized Conversations That Ultimately Close More Business 05:25 Joining The Sales Team On The Way To Building A Marketing Team 06:45 Using The Data To Be Better Sales Persons 07:45 Changing ICP As People Now Sell A Bit Differently 09:40 A Full Rebrand To Look And Feel The Part As Well 11:15 Starting The Rebranding P

Meet Antoine Goret, the head of sales & marketing at Crisp. Before heading to Crisp, he was the head of growth of a startup accelerator, working with startups backed by VCs. In this episode, you'll hear how an open-source solution became the foundation for Crisp chat. You'll learn about the power of free and how it drives massive traffic for them, the free to paid in-product model that they're using. You'll also find out about the core growth strategies to maximize your search intent and how they're using the marketplace search terms to help customers find them as an alternative product in a competitive marketplace. This episode runs a little bit longer than normal, but Antoine brought a lot of great knowledge and insight into this episode. Enjoy! Notes: 03:00 Helping SMBs Support Their Customers And Leads 04:25 The Appeal Of An Intense Competition Market 05:11 First Thing: Building The Personas By Doing Interviews 09:05 Fine Tuning The Key ICP 13:10 Growth And The Free Plan 16:00 Leveraging A Free Plan

Meet Michael Brown the CEO and founder of nDash, a content creation platform backed by the world's top writers. In this episode, you'll hear how nDash evolved from Mike's freelancing business to a thriving SaaS company. You'll learn about the priority process of marketing to users and consumers at the same time, even when bootstrapped, the referral strategies that attracted great writers to the nDash writing team and the marketing language required to attract the right agencies and businesses. And finally, you'll learn what's next for nDash looking into 2020. Enjoy! Notes: 02:45 Helping Agencies And Companies Scale The Written Content Creation Process 03:45 Pivoting From Agency To SaaS 04:30 Leveraging Early Business' Data To Find The Right Direction To Launch The SaaS 05:45 Knowing The Use Case You're Going After 08:15 Marketing To Writers By Creating a Platform That Empowers Them More Than Elsewhere 11:15 Creating Education Content To Help Users As They Signed Up 13:20 Adding a Referral System As Part of T

Meet Pinja a Content Marketing Strategist at Advance B2B, where she helps B2B SaaS companies crush their growth goals with customer-obsessed content and brand marketing. In this episode, you'll hear how exactly Advanced B2B has become a leading agency for SaaS content marketing. You'll learn the exact positioning and messaging system that Pinja uses to find killer content, what you need to think about when coming up with your content strategy and why focusing on frameworks can actually hurt your marketing efforts. And finally, you'll learn what Pinja is seeing working well in content marketing moving into 2020. Enjoy! Notes: 03:05 Helping SaaS Companies Get Measurable Results From Marketing 03:50 Having The Right Kind Of Customers Is The Best Way To Prevent Churn 04:35 Starting By Really Defining What The Specific ICP Looks Like 06:35 If You Gate Some Less Than Great Content, You're Not Gonna Get Any Sales From That 07:35 Joining As The Second Member Of The International Team 09:20 The Positioning Problem Wi

Meet Marcus Svensson the Head of Growth at Albacross, a software that makes B2B lead generation easier. Marcus has a background in mathematics and previously founded Marketplace Startup. In this episode, you'll hear about Albacross’s journey to create the best free lead generation tool ever and the marketing pivot that took them from a free tool into a paid tool. You'll learn the marketing lessons from a freemium model and then from a paid model, and the transition that was necessary to get there. And finally, you'll learn Albacross’s secrets to maximizing your results with lead generation. Enjoy! Notes: 02:50 Focusing On Making B2B Lead Generation Easier 06:05 The Story Behind Joining The Company 08:20 The Evolution Of The ICP 11:20 Swapping From Free To A Paid Model 13:10 Doing Facebook Advertising 16:55 The Importance Of Setting Up Processes For Growth 18:35 Making The Decision To Focus On Content Marketing 19:55 Content Promotion Strategies 21:45 Link Building Tactics 22:20 The Lead Estimator Tool 24:00

Meet Aazar Ali Shad, the VP of Growth at UserPilot, a company that helps you deliver the perfect product experience. Aazar has more than 6 years of SaaS experience and is currently helping 600+ SaaS companies improve user onboarding and increase product adoption. In this episode, you'll hear about Aazar's journey and how he stepped into the role of head of growth at UserPilot. You'll learn about the power of leading with value in marketing and the results Aazar got from the marketing initiatives he did early on. You'll find out about the three strategies any startup can use for initial experimentation, and what they did when they bought a booth event that helped them maximize ROI. And finally, you'll hear about the future of SaaS and what every marketer needs to know. This is a slightly longer episode but with lots of tips for you to implement. Enjoy! Show Notes: 03:00 Helping Deliver The Perfect Product Experience 05:10 Joining In To Help With Growth 06:50 A Strategic Approach To Cold Emailing 10:10 Pickin

Meet Cori Pearce, the Director of Marketing at ChurnZero, a real-time Customer Success Platform that helps SaaS and subscription businesses fight customer churn. In this episode, you'll hear how finding a gap in the customer journey allowed two founders to build ChurnZero. You'll hear about building the foundation of a marketing team and what Cori had to do when she first joined the company. You'll learn about having creative marketing ideas that explode brand awareness in a competitive and busy marketplace and how to leverage thought leadership to create brand awareness and direct ROI. And finally, you'll hear the lessons learned from running the ChurnZero "R.Y.G." offline roadshow. Enjoy! Notes: 03:00 Helping Subscription Businesses Fight Churn 05:30 Coming On Board As The First Full Time Marketing Hire 07:20 The Churn Monster Campaign 09:44 Knowing When To Double Down On A Campaign 11:50 How To Find Your Breakthrough Creative Strategy 13:30 How Customer Success Is Becoming An Important Role In S

Meet Kristen Bryant who works in Partnerships & Production at Wistia - the leader in Brand Affinity Marketing for small and medium-sized businesses. In her role, Kristen leads Wistia’s partnership efforts and supports the creation, execution, and promotion of their long-form video series. In this episode, you'll find out about the new focus on brand affinity at Wistia and the evolution to get there. You'll hear the big lessons that their team learned from the docu-series One Ten One Hundred that has them going all-in on video content. You'll learn how they created and built the Brandwagon show, the metrics they're using to track its growth and all the steps to create a show specifically for building brand affinity at a B2B SaaS company. And finally, you'll hear about where video content is headed in the future. This is an incredible episode and you're absolutely going to love it! Notes: 03:35 Helping Businesses Turn Video Viewers Into Brand Advocates 05:20 Joining To Help Launching A New Product 08:10 W

Meet Liam Martin who runs Time Doctor and Staff.com - one of the most popular time tracking and productivity software platforms in use by top brands today. Liam is also a co-organizer of the world's largest remote work conference "Running Remote". In this episode, you'll hear how a graduate program started Liam's journey into SaaS. You'll learn about the pros and cons of bootstrapping versus funding and what you need to know for B2B marketing. You'll also hear about the future of SaaS, what's about to happen in the marketplace according to Liam and how you need to be building a moat in marketing to protect your business. And finally, you'll learn about the SEO system that is creating huge acquisition momentum for Time Doctor. Enjoy! Notes: 03:05 A Tool That Measures And Helps You Get Better At Working 04:30 From Bad Professor Reviews To Starting An Online Tutoring Company 06:00 Creating Time Doctor To Solve Their Own Problem 07:30 Avatars And The Referral Engine 10:30 Pricing And Getting Valuable

Meet Adam Ruhland the Director of Marketing at Hubstaff Tasks, an Agile project management tool made by the creators of Hubstaff. Adam is focused on data-driven decision making, and sticking with what works when it comes to digital marketing. In this episode, you'll hear about the #1 driver for growth at Hubstaff and why that's been Adam's sole focus. You'll learn how to effectively stay focused on a marketing initiative and double down the right way, which is about quality versus quantity on SEO, what's better and how to implement it properly. You'll also learn how to optimize content and why you need to update it consistently. And finally, you’ll hear the lessons learned from Hubstaff’s marketing department when they experimented with new thought leadership content. Enjoy! Notes: 03:35 From Time Tracking Tool To Work Management Platform 05:40 Market And Product Evolution 07:05 The Key To Awesome Growth: SEO And Content Marketing 08:30 A Multipronged Approach To SEO 10:15 Leveraging SEO Specialists 11:50 Ba

Meet Micah Rowland, COO of Fountain, a hiring automation software for the New Service economy. Micah builds people, teams, and processes that have taken multiple companies from 50 to 250 people and $5 million to $30 million in revenue. In this episode, you'll find out how Micah got involved with the Fountain team and where they are headed in the SaaS marketplace. You'll learn about Micah's journey in SaaS, when you should feel comfortable to go from MVP to growth mode and the specific KPIs that are most important to understand for the real health of your company. You'll also find out about the warning signs that you can't ignore in your business and how pricing in the SaaS model will be evolving. This is an episode full of specific examples and information on the different parts of the SaaS growth process, enjoy! Notes 03:00 Helping To Drive Excellence In The Hiring Cycle 05:20 The Most Important Thing To Get Started In A Leadership Role In SaaS 10:20 The Highly Iterative Process Of Going From Idea To MVP 1

Meet Nicole Smith, the CMO of UserIQ, a customer success platform helping businesses align around user needs. Prior she led the marketing efforts at Dodge Communications (now MERGE Atlanta). In this episode, you’ll hear about Nicole’s journey joining UserIQ as their first full-time marketer. You’ll learn about the process they had to go through to find product-market fit in the early stages of their SaaS and the valuable lessons learned. You’ll find out how to build a focused long and short term marketing plan for lead gen and demand gen, and Google advertising secrets you can use to generate quality leads. And finally, you’ll hear how events both in-person and live webinars can be a great marketing experiment to generate quality leads. This is an episode with lots of amazing examples to back up points and very detail-oriented, enjoy! Notes: 03:40 Intelligence Engagement Tools And Health Scoring All In One Place 06:20 Joining As The First Full Time Marketer 07:10 The Journey To Figure Out Product Market Fit

Meet Sarah Ann Cantu, the marketing director at Qualaroo, a lightweight user research tool built to empower UX and product designers. Sarah Ann Cantu has held various marketing roles in the B2B SaaS venture equity fund, Scaleworks, since 2017. In this episode, you'll hear from Sarah what life is like after a venture-based acquisition for Qualaroo. You'll learn what it takes to pivot your product-market fit while you have a live active product, the lessons learned from the customer interview process during that pivot and the Qualaroo’s content marketing guide and how they are succeeding with content in 2019. Finally, you'll learn what Sarah recommends to see great ROI with LinkedIn Ads. There are lots of recommendations, tips and golden nuggets hidden in this episode so definitely take notes, enjoy! 03:10 The Go-to Lightweight User Research Solution For UX Designers 06:00 Joining The Team To Help Figure Out The Next Iteration 10:30 Leveraging Personal Networks And UX-Focused meet-ups For Target Audience Resea

Meet Harmony Anderson, the Director of Demand Generation at Outreach.io, the market-leading sales engagement platform. As a revenue-focused marketer, Harmony has diverse experience building integrated sales and marketing programs using the latest and greatest technology and data. In this episode, you'll hear about what it was like for Harmony to join unicorn Outreach.io. You'll learn about the process of refining a demand gen process in a growing company, breaking down data and multi-channel attribution the right way, the ABM campaigns that are crushing it right now for Outreach and the tools required for a quality outbound campaign. You're going to love this episode with a great guest who gives so much quality content! Notes: 03:00 An Unicorn Making Sales Engagement and Management Seamless 05:55 Joining To Help Scale Efficiently 07:55 Product-Market Fit: Be Constantly Communicating Your Sales 11:00 Operational Efficiency: Training and Hiring People With Experience 12:45 Combining Marketing And Sales In Outb

Meet Keith Messick, the CMO at Dialpad, a business communications company. Previously, he served as the CMO at Lucidworks and also held senior leadership roles at Topsy (acquired by Apple), Get Satisfaction, and SuccessFactors. In this episode, you'll hear where Keith believes video and voice communication is headed in the modern B2B world and for modern companies. You'll learn how to win in a crowded marketplace with creativity and savvy, raising funds for marketing and its importance in today's age. Then you'll find out about the lessons learned by Keith during his tenure at Dialpad and how he works to avoid making big mistakes. And finally, you'll hear how SaaS marketing is changing and where it is headed in 2019. Keith is very knowledgeable and has a wealth of experience, and it really comes to show in this episode, enjoy! Notes: 02:55 The Big Opportunity and Challenge for Enterprise Communications In The Cloud 06:15 The Disappearance Of The Desk Phone 08:30 How To Stand Out In a Crowded Marketplace 11:2

Meet Rajiv Nathan, the founder of Startup Hypeman. Rajiv helps SaaS startups not suck at how they pitch and tell their story so they stand out to customers and investors, and stand apart from competitors. His work has been featured in Inc, Forbes, Huffington Post, and more, and he's partnered with accelerators across the U.S. In this episode, you'll hear the story of how Startup Hypeman came to be. You'll learn the Superhero Strategy to craft the perfect message for your SaaS Company, the "Que PASA" formula that you need to know to create perfect pitches, outbound campaigns, and demos. And you'll also learn how to organize a 10 out of 10 elevator pitch and finally, the X to Y Paradox and how that helps explode your outbound email results. Rajiv has a unique quality to him, a great storytelling mechanism and his messaging is a lot of fun. You're going to have a ton of fun listening to this episode! Notes 03:30 Build Out Your Pitch, Message, Story to Stand Out 06:00 Finding the Way Towards SaaS 09:3

Meet Theresa O'Neil, the CMO for Showpad, the world's leading sales enablement platform. As the CMO of Showpad’s global marketing team, Theresa is responsible for increasing awareness, generating leads, and supporting all channels to grow revenue. In this episode, you'll hear about the stellar year of growth that Showpad had, growing from 30 to 150 employees and the lessons learned from their global expansion. You'll learn about the key experiments that have helped them drive growth over the past twelve months. And what they have learned from new market opportunities; including the lessons, the mistakes, everything. And finally, you'll hear where the sales enablement industry is headed in 2019 and beyond. Enjoy! Notes 03:10 The Sales Enablement Space Has Exploded Worldwide 04:10 Building Out the International Side of the Business 05:20 Cracking the Code of Prioritization 06:20 The Importance of Aligning With Sales on Priorities 07:00 Mixing Digital and Events by Region 08:20 The Transform Conference 09:40 Co