| In this week's newsletter: How Building A SaaS Marketing Engine Takes 5 Years |
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Weekly Briefing No. 181
by Edwin Abl |
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Hey — It's Ed. Welcome to my weekly briefing.
Quick Reminder: You are receiving this email because you subscribed to my weekly newsletter. It's not a link dump of "hey, here's what I'm listening to and reading." It's 7+ articles, with summaries, notes, views, and commentary, spanning topics on leadership, B2B SaaS marketing, SaaS GTM, sales, well-being, or other interesting finds from around the web. Occasionally, I send long-form articles on leadership, marketing, and personal growth.
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==> In this week's briefing:
- A personal one: The launch of my new website
- What is a Minimum Viable Audience
- How Building A SaaS Marketing Engine Takes 5 Years
Thank you for subscribing 🙏.
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IDEAS FROM ME 📈
1. My new website just soft launched (here you have a sneak peek). The idea being my blog and newsletter are more accessible resources to consume, search and read.
Next month I'll be launching two brand new courses called Pathway-to-CMO and second as now 'untitled'. I'll be offering those courses for free to my newsletter subscribers :)
🟢 New Website
🟢 New Blog
🟢 New Resources
🟢 New Products
🟢 New ABM Playbook
🟢 New Coaching Packages
2. Under three months until the close of 2022. How focused have you been? You still have time; I read this at least once a week.
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman on focus:
"The question I always ask is, I say, look, let's do an exercise here. If you could do only one thing for the rest of this year, let's say it's mid-year. What would it be and why if you could only do one thing? Talk me through the what and the why. Most people never ask that question, but it's crucial because you know how to amass your resources behind one thing. The impact will be far more significant than when you're amassing the resources behind five things or ten things. I've been in numerous meetings with other CEOs and board meetings, and they put their priorities up, and there's like 15 of them.
3. Anti-goals, a concept developed by Andrew Wilkinson, are about what you don't want to happen. Or the person you don't want to be a year from now. Think about what you don't want to be instead of envisioning positive outcomes for yourself when you may someday achieve those hard-to-attain goals.
The concept is grounded in inversion—a foundational mental model that says that complex problems are often easier solved backwards vs forwards.
Inversion was made famous by one quote: "All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." - Charlie Munger.
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SAAS GTM 📈
4. I wish I had come across a Minimum Viable Audience concept years ago. When it comes to marketing, most SaaS companies think *broad*, a significant error. Yes, wide might be the end goal, just like your product. However, when gaining traction similar to products focused on MVP, GTM should think the same and build an MVA.
Here is what is meant by the Minimum Viable Audience concept.
5. How to start building a less complex marketing machine.
6. [SWIPE FILE] Understanding measures of success: SaaS Metrics & Benchmarks Resource Guide. This guide is a high-level overview of the most common SaaS metrics, compiled from years of tips, best practices, first-hand knowledge, and data.
Check it out.
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🤔 How Building A SaaS Marketing Engine Takes 5 Years (Not What Most CEOs/VCs Think)
There are literally zero ways to build a marketing machine in three-month schemes. Similar to those offering get-rich-quick strategies.
If someone is selling you that and you're buying?
You're the fool.
Or perhaps your assumptions are invalid because it's hard to understand how the process works.
See, building a SaaS marketing machine is a long game.
Here's a more realistic path:
Year 1: Foundations, value proposition, team formation, production and audience building. The assembly of your engine is a work in progress—fewer channels.
Year 2: Operational efficiencies (i.e. using data, managing metrics and growth). The engine has inputs and outputs. You can measure more and add channels to the marketing mix.
Year 3: More robust, complex machine in operation + brand leverage driving inbound.
Year 4: Always-on-marketing includes experimental campaigns, quarterly thematic campaigns, periodic core events (e. g., Weekly Demo), core content, always-On digital and website.
Year 5: Scaling a much larger team and removing yourself from the day-to-day.
Do some people go faster? Yep.
Do some people do it in a much different order? Definitely.
Have a few built the machine much faster? I've seen it. But often, they have had substantial funding rounds to accelerate the process.
But those are what we call "outliers".
Don't expect to be one.
Don't compare yourself to the Marketing engine of the established vendor who you forget have been doing it for years.
Instead, build for the long game and be pleasantly surprised if it goes faster.
I hope this helps set some realistic expectations.
Are you patient enough to play?
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PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION
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CAN WE WORK TOGETHER?
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This newsletter is my passion project. I hope it helps you gain deeper insight and equips you to learn at the pace needed to keep up. Many readers have asked about how we can work together. In case you’re interested, I do three things.
(1) DUE DILIGENCE FOR INVESTORS & CEOs: A bespoke framework and capability model ‘DEMAND KARMA’ that delivers DD services to investors, VC firms and CEOs.
(2) ADVISORY: Retained advisory at funded scale-ups. A simple monthly fee. Helping CEOs build a scalable marketing machine.
(3) MENTORING: Designed for people looking to get to the next level — Director, VP and new CxO. My sweet spot is helping to mentor developing VPs / "Head of" / aspiring leaders to step into the CxO role.
If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit.
Click here to schedule a call. |
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Copyright © 2020 Edwin Abl, All rights reserved.
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