B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks

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 possib...

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,...

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 c...

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 step...

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 custome...

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 Gro...

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 &am...

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...

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 org...

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) Saa...

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 exci...

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 grea...

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 lik...

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...

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...

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 s...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 episo...

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.