5 drivers of marketing strategy for B2B startups
Here are the five lessons that can improve marketing strategy that I've learned while working in hyper-growth B2B SaaS startups and managing a marketing function
Growing a B2B SaaS startup can be exciting and challenging at the same time. While there's so much potential out there for B2B startups, there are some mistakes that should be avoided to keep them from reaching their full growth potential.
Here are the five lessons I learned while working in hyper-growth B2B SaaS startups and managing a marketing function.
Don’t look at demand gen marketing in isolation
Growing companies focus on demand generation, but building brand affinity can make your strategy even more effective. Some leaders think brand isn't as important in early stages, but that's not true.
In other words, marketing channels don't work in isolation - every touch of demand is a touch of brand, and every touch of brand is a touch of demand. The overall success of the marketing strategy and demand strategy will depend on the development of a holistic plan and the allocation of basic resources to brand activities.
Utilize both brand and demand optimization early on to build traction for growth.
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Overlooking the GTM motion while building your marketing strategy can be costly
Marketing in B2B can be different based on your GTM (go to market) strategy: self-service motion is totally different from a sales-led motion. This means to have relevant business impact, you need to align your marketing strategy, tactics, and team structure with your GTM strategy.
The following factors can define your GTM strategy:
You product plans/packages,
Average deal size, time to close, sales cycle, adoption, etc.,
How your audience will use your product.
By following your chosen GTM motion (sales-led, hybrid or product-led), marketing team will have different KPIs, lead scoring processes, chanells that impact business results, different types of content strategy and website CTAs.
Center marketing KPIs around right targets
Marketing planning and execution can be hampered when you don't identify the right goals. Setting clear marketing goals makes it easier to keep track of milestones, timelines, and objectives as well as achieve the desired business results.
Getting back to the GTM motion, KPIs differ for self-serve and sales-led motions and we should set them right.
In a product-led model, KPIs are normally centered around driving product-qualified leads, while in a sales-led model, they will be about handing qualified leads off to sales.
Product-led motion also means that besides firmographics and interactions with marketing assets, lead qualification and scoring will take into account product data.
As long as the KPIs reflect the GTM strategy, the marketing function will be able to provide more value to the business and keep the team motivated, which will boost productivity and creativity.
Create a consistent CTA plan for your website
Website is typically the most important tool in your lead generation process, so making sure you have the right CTAs across key pages is crucial for marketing strategy.
Based on the GTM focus - product-lead, hybrid or sales-led motions, your CTA mix should reflect the goals. For example, the sign up process for product-led motions should be extremely low friction with easy access to your free trial as a main CTA, while most selling will be done via product and onboarding process.
For sales-led motions though, booking a 1:1 meeting through “Request demo” or similar CTA is essential, but also you'll need smaller or "easier" conversion events sprinkled throughout your website - among them gated content such as events, ebooks, reports, etc.
If you’re using a hybrid model - make sure your leads have straightforward access to the most crucial CTAs of both types on your website.
Create different types of content based on your sales funnel
Product focused B2B SaaS startups can leverage the product itself as a content distribution channel, and the product becomes a "sales enablement" tool, once your users or companies are in self-serve mode.
Sales-led motions though don't have this luxury, so you'll have to rely more on email to share content. You'll also need more gated "lead magnet" content to accelerate your pipeline. And here comes a crucial topic of creating the right content strategy.
First and foremost, make sure you have a well-documented content strategy covering different content types with the sales funnel stages in mind.
Put quality over quantity and understand well what part of sales funnel your content will influence. E.g. an ebook is good content for top of funnel leads and technical whitepaper is good for leads that are closer to the button of the funnel.
Also, connecting KPIs to your content strategy can leverage it to the new level. Is it to drive traffic? Is it to drive sales? Is it to build brand authority? Make sure your content strategy is documented together with KPIs.