Empower Your Business with B2b Saas Sales Model for Marketing

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- If your SaaS business is sales-led, then you need marketing. If your SaaS business is product-led, then you need 10X the amount of marketing. Here's one thing I've realized working with over 250 SaaS founders and even just working in this community, founders, and I made the same mistake when I was first starting out, don't quite know exactly what type of marketing moves the needle for SaaS businesses. Marketing is a broad body of knowledge and in order to actually drive growth, especially in the early stages of your SaaS business, you actually need to focus on three key areas of marketing. So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through the three marketing strategies that are the most impactful when working to drive growth for your SaaS business. And when you follow these three principles and focus on these three specific types of marketing, you will be able to accelerate your path to that next stage of growth for your SaaS business. Intro! (urgent, percussive music) What's up, everybody? Welcome to Unstoppable. I'm TK, and this channel I help SaaS founders like you grow your sass business faster with an unstoppable strategy. Now if you're new to this channel, welcome. I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon, that way you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode with the TK energy. Now, if you're already part of this community, if you're part of my SaaS go-to-market coaching programs, my people, welcome back. It's really awesome to see you over here. So having been in SaaS for the last 15 years, having taken my last SaaS company Tout App, which pioneered the sales engagement space to over a hundred thousand users, having sold it to Marketo, having worked on Marketo as SV VP of Strategy and Alliances as part of the executive team working in the forefront of B2B marketing at Marketo, here are the three principles that I know actually work to drive growth for your SaaS businesses. And when you follow these three very specific forms of marketing and ignore the rest you too will be able to accelerate your path to that next stage growth. So if you're excited to get into principle number one, go ahead and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm, it really likes it when you do that, and let's dig right into it. Now, lemme just orient you over here in terms of these three marketing strategies. They all align into this core funnel that exists. And anyone that's trying to tell you that a funnel is dead, is trying to sell you something, is probably a guru, doesn't actually own pipeline at a SaaS company so they're trying to teach you all this stuff. But in reality, the funnel is still very much alive. And the way it works is you have your ideal customers. They're a specific set of customers that follow a specific profile that are most likely to buy from you as you're going from your current revenue stage to that next stage of growth. And I've worked with companies anywhere from a few million in ARR all the way up to 500 million in ARR and they all use an ideal customer profile to get to that next stage of growth. So you have your ideal customers and they don't know about you yet, and in order to get them to buy from you and use your solution at some point they are going to have to become a lead, or a trial if you're product-led. And then they actually have to say, "You know what? These guys are for real." They would actually have to use your product, activate in the product if you're product-led, or become an opportunity in your sales process and talk to a sales rep. And having gone through that process through the twists and turns in the road, they will then convert to revenue. And then because we're SaaS businesses, it's recurring revenue, they'll actually convert to even more revenue, actually expand that booked business. And that's the whole point of a go-to-market strategy to actually pull this off. Now, if you are saying, "All right, TK, got it. Now I need marketing because not enough people know about us. We don't have enough pipeline, we don't have enough leads, therefore my salespeople are going hungry or my product-led experience is so beautiful but no one's converting because there's not enough people in it." This is when marketing comes in. There's three key types of marketing that actually move the needle. And I remember when I was first starting out, I hired the wrong type of marketers and focused on the wrong type of marketing and spent money in the wrong areas, and it didn't yield actual pipelines, it was useless. So the first form of marketing that is the most important for you to embrace as a SaaS company is demand generation. (marker brushing) Now, the second form, I'm gonna give you principle number two right here just so I can show you the difference between the two. The second form of marketing is lead generation. Now the reason I'm giving you both, which is kind of breaking my rule because I always give it one at a time is because these are phrases you probably have heard and you probably know about but I bet even for half the people you're interviewing if you were to ask them what is the difference or the agency owner or that fractional CMO who can't keep a normal CMO job so they're doing this fractional thing, if you were to ask 'em, "Hey, what's the difference between demand generation and lead generation?" Even if you asked yourself, you probably wouldn't really know the difference. And this is where the importance is between these two marketing strategies because they both matter, but they both require different ways of implementation. Let's talk about the first one. Demand generation is about making the market aware of a problem that exists and the fact that it has a solution. On the other hand, lead generation is going to your customers who already know the problem exists are already looking for a type of solution and you are trying to just engage them in the buying process and have them become a lead. There's a subtle difference here. And the reason you need both and you need to think about the two differently. One, because they are done differently, and two, as startups, we tend to be in spaces that are relatively new. And because of that, before you can start generating leads when you go up around and people and say, "Hey, I'm XYZ company and we do this," and they're like, "I don't know what you're talking about." You have to educate them on why this problem you're solving is important, and then comes the solution. And so this is why demand generation is more important for startups before lead generation comes in. So before you hire that agency that's gonna run a thousand ads or hire the two SDRs that's gonna send out a thousand emails, you first need to focus on demand generation, and the art of demand generation is to go to your ideal customers and educate them on the actual problem you are solving and the fact that a solution exists for it. On the other hand, if for example you are in a space that is well-defined, you are creating the billionth CRM on Planet Earth except now it has AI then you don't have to do as much demand generation because the demand for CRM is already built. There's already a billion companies that have built the demand for CRMs. So what you need to focus on then is lead generation. And with lead generation, you go into the market and you try to position yourself differently saying, "Hey, you're probably looking for a CRM. Here's why you should go with us." You see the difference here? One is about educating the market about the problem that exists, and that's important. And the second is actually once they've been educated on the problem getting them into your sales process as a lead or a trial. That's the difference, and that's principle one and principle number two. Now, a lot of times people don't even focus on these two, let alone understand the distinction of it. This is where I lost months if not years on products that never went anywhere because I didn't know this. And once I finally learned this, and the reason I learned it is because I actually read the original books by the founders of Marketo, the founders of Pardot, of the founders of Eloqua, and that helped me understand "Oh, this is what demand generation is," which is different from just straight-out lead generation versus just sending a bunch of random emails and running ads. Now that you know the difference, you're gonna be able to say, "Okay, I probably don't need brand." You don't need to spend money on doing brand marketing. Why? Because if you're doing brand and you're not clear on how you're educating the market what the problem is, you're not teaching about the market, the brand no one's gonna care about. Now, should you do brand marketing later on? Absolutely, you should do it when all these pieces are nailed, including the third piece which I'm gonna tell you about in a second. But before I keep going let me just pause here for a second. Are you starting to see the power in this? The power in this is to understand where you are in the space you're playing in. If you're solving a problem that people already know about, that ideal customers already know about and there is already a de facto solution for it but you have somehow a better mouse trap, then you wanna focus on lead generation. They're already in the market, they're already looking for this kind of thing. You need to find out what they're doing to look for this kind of thing, get in front of them and say, "Hey, you should give us a shot too." But, and this is the case where 9 times out of 10 companies that are building something uniquely new for their SaaS offering, before customers even know to look for it, you must first educate them about the problem. That is the art of demand generation. You're creating that need, you're educating them on the problem and then saying, "Hey, a solution exists." And then you are getting them into your lead generation process. That is the distinction. And once I got this, once I understood this everything changed for me on how I approach go-to-market for a SaaS business. And if you're starting to see the power in this, can I just get a "yes" and the comments below? That way I know you're with me. And also the YouTube algorithm loves it when you comment below. You can also ask questions, just it's just awesome. And also smash that like button, especially for that YouTube algorithm. Just loves it when you do that, and so do we. Also, if you're in this stage where you're operating a SaaS company, whether you're in your founder-led journey or you're already starting to think about hiring or you have some people that are not quite delivering and want help in really crafting together your go-to-market strategy so you can figure out your demand generation model and your lead generation model and how you're gonna position yourself, this is exactly why I run my SaaS go-to-market coaching program. I'll tell you more about it at the end of this episode. I'll link to it below. Don't go anywhere right now. But let's go into principle number three which really brings us together. It's the third marketing strategy that will help you drive growth for your SaaS business. Okay, so you have demand, you're educating the market. As you're educating the market, they're more aware of the problem and then they become a lead because you have your lead generation process and they're coming through this process. Whether you're product-led or sales-led, you still need to do these things so they discover your product or discover your salespeople and your solution, then they become opportunities or they're activating the product, and then they convert to revenue and then you renew them. That's the model, that's the SaaS business model. Now, there's a third one, third marketing strategy that gets overlooked but is turning into a secret weapon for so many SaaS companies, and that is referral automation. The power of referral automation is here's the thing, these ideal customers that you're educating about your problem and then turning into leads because of your lead generation and they're buying from you and they're happy customers and they're buying more from you, they already know more of your future customers. That's pretty cool. And you're doing all this stuff, as you should, because that's what gets the flywheel going. But your best customers already know more of your ideal customers. And so if you approach them and do a whole programmatic referral marketing process on them and say, "Hey, do you know other people that are in your role that would get value from our product? Can you introduce us?" And you do that in an automated way, in a programmatic way, and you have that scale, these three things become the growth engine for your business. And once these three things are working, you essentially get a flywheel going. And that's the cool part about this because the more leads that you get, the more they convert to opportunities or they activate in the product or talk to sales, the more they convert to revenue. The more they convert to revenue, the more you renew. The more you renew, the more you ask for referrals, the more leads that you get. And all of these things, whether it's demand, lead gen, or referral automation, all three of these things start to power this flywheel and starts to go faster and faster and faster to drive the revenue and the growth for your SaaS business. And this is regardless of whether you're product-led or sales-lead, you have to do marketing, otherwise people won't find your product or they won't find your salespeople. It's as simple as that. And when you do these three things, you are going to be able to accelerate the growth of your SaaS business. So to recap, the first great marketing strategy is demand generation, where you're educating the market in terms of the problem you're solving. Number two is lead generation where you're then saying, "Hey, if you are interested in a solution to this problem, you should talk to us," and you turn them into leads. And then as you convert them to customers, as you renew them, you get the flywheel going where you do programmatic referrals and referral automation. So more and more of your customers introduce you to more of your ideal customer profile. They do the demand generation for you, and they become leads and they convert, and the flywheel goes faster and faster and faster and faster. It goes so much faster, I'm gonna put this in green because that's how powerful this is. Now you know the three key types of marketing strategies that move the needle for your SaaS business. What you may not know is "Hey TK, how do I get demand generation going? How do I get lead generation going? How do I get referral automation going? How do I put these three pieces into play?" You may be in your founder-led journey where you're trying to figure these pieces out or you have junior marketers or a marketing leader that's not delivering. We work with companies of all stages and sizes and this is why I run my SaaS go-to market coaching program. Inside of this program, we help you develop your ideal customer profile, then we help develop your manifesto. Your manifesto really articulates the problem you're solving and the solution you're delivering and helps you turn it into a lead generation machine while you're doing the demand generation. And the way you do that is you run a consistent set of marketing activities called "the Broadway show" that consistently creates pipeline for you using these three marketing strategies. It's an incredible program. We've had so many success stories inside of that program. So if you wanna work together just go to tkkader.com/gtm, tkkader.com/gtm and you'll get all the details about how this program works. And if it looks like you wanna work together, just fill out little form, we'll get on a call, and we'll make sure that you're the right fit. The better the fit, the better the results. And there are tremendous results we've had through this program. This is my third year running it. We've worked with over 250 companies across my go-to-market programs. So just go to tkkader.com/gtm. Also, if you got values from this video, please smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm that just loves it when you do that and so do we. We put a lot of love into these videos. If you have a fellow founder or team member, if you are part of a Slack group or WhatsApp group of founders that will get value from this video, please share this video with them, it would just mean the world to us. Also, I drop an episode every single Sunday with actionable strategies and tactics from the trenches on how to grow your SaaS business faster. So be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon where you'll get notified every single time I drop an episode. And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy for their life and their business. When you are with us, yours, it's gonna be unstoppable. I'm TK and I'll see you the next episode or inside the SaaS go-to-market coaching program. Take care everybody. (exciting, uplifting music) All right, let's do the thing. (hand clapping) Whoo! Hopped up on my chai.