đPricing as a growth lever; 10x approach to content marketing; How to scale customer segments...
Two weeks into the year is a bit early to identify any real 2021 SaaS trends, but that doesnât mean we canât take out our crystal ball and at least try. Onetool CEO Gordian Braun thinks the increasing number of SaaS tools will create chaos for end-users â more options and new, super niche verticals could result in overlapping features for products in different categories, making buying decisions more difficult. No-code tools (like Notion and Airtable) and workflow automation tools should also be on the rise as both are âsimplifiersâ that address the issue of having too many tools to handle. Letâs see how his predictions shake out...
đ« A well thought out pricing strategy can end up being your company's biggest growth lever â Price Intelligently reports it has 4-8x the impact of the acquisition on your bottom line. Most companies start with a simple feature-based tiered model because itâs easy to implement and the most common approach. Itâs helpful when trying to figure out how customers interact with your product, but as you get a better sense of where your value really lies, you should re-evaluate your strategy to make sure there arenât more effective ways to price. For example, if youâre selling to more enterprise customers, pricing by different products in your business (with an aim to cross-sell into others in the future) may help embed yourself more deeply.
đ°Taking your customer LTV over customer acquisition cost is how many B2B SaaS companies measure ad efficiency. Itâs a helpful metric for those with massive ad spends because a small tweak inefficiency can equal big profits. But for early-stage startups who arenât spending a ton on paid ads, it can lead you down a rabbit hole. A better way for those companies to evaluate marketing channels is the payback period. You donât need to worry about getting the exact payback period to a tee (it can be difficult given you are predicting revenue over time); you are just looking to see which channels are generally the most profitable.
đ„ Revenue growth can pick up quickly, and if you arenât prepared with a plan to scale your team, that growth can halt just as fast as it started. Tomasz Tunguz makes a case for planning at least six-months out when it comes to hiring. Using a hypothetical dev department, he shows how important it is to evenly distribute workload between department heads, managers, and employees. You should also plan how different job functions will evolve with your company. But the real key to successfully scaling your team is knowing the type of people you want to hire during this stage. Software is a unique industry, people who are hungry to learn and adaptable to the quick (and sometimes seismic shifts) we face will do best..
đ§ââïž Last year, Headspace generated over 400,00 organic site visitors each month, and it wasnât just because everyone seriously needed a way to chill out. They did an incredible job with their content marketing strategy, which Grizzle recently took some time to decode. Their home page shows exactly what they do best â focus on the customer. Rather than mentioning what they do, it breaks down their content silos to meet their personas' needs, for example, specifically targeting visitors who want to sleep better or be less anxious. Itâs also clear they subscribe to the 10x approach, diving deep into the science behind their meditation methods and creating highly educational content not geared towards selling.Â
đ§ââïž The SaaS Revolution podcast recently had LB Harvey, CRO at Front, on to discuss how to bring a company upmarket. One point she made which is worth repeating is that when you move to a larger customer segment in the B2B world, you are not going to win over customers because you are cool or have cutting-edge UX/technology. Midsize and enterprise clients truly only care about how your solution will help transform their business, so aligning your customer, sales, and marketing teams to develop in-depth use cases is much more important when making that move upmarket.
