Generated by All in One SEO Pro v4.9.7.2, this is an llms-full.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # DemandMaven: Strategic growth partner for SaaS & Software Companies We help SaaS teams and growth leaders reach their goals using insights ## Posts ### [How to validate product ideas without wasting money on ads](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-validate-product-ideas-without-wasting-money-on-ads/) **Published:** June 12, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Here’s something most founders don’t want to hear about validating product ideas. Running ads to test your idea doesn’t actually validate your idea. I know. It’s the playbook everyone recommends. “Build a landing page, run some Facebook ads, see if people sign up.” Sounds logical. Spend a little money upfront to test demand before building the whole product. But here’s what actually happens. You get traffic to the landing page (because that part is easy), but the conversion rates are incredibly low. You end up with a list of random people who might be vaguely interested, but you still don’t know if you have a good idea. All you’ve proven is that you can execute that channel reasonably well. And look, if you have the budget, resources, skills, and team to execute a paid channel flawlessly, this *could* work for you. But most founders don’t. Most founders are working with limited runway and haven’t built expertise in paid acquisition yet. So they waste money on ads that don’t actually tell them what they need to know. There are too many variables in the “run ads to test your idea” approach. You need the right copy, right creative, right targeting, right funnel, right messaging. Even if you get clicks, you’re still not sure if the idea is good or if you just need to optimize the funnel. Google and Meta can’t optimize your campaigns until you have volume and paying customers anyway. This playbook used to work. But now it’s too expensive and too competitive. The bar is much higher. So what actually works for validating product ideas? Let me walk through the approaches I’ve seen work again and again. ## The 60-70% Rule When Building a Product Before we get into specific tactics, you need to understand this foundational principle. It’s better to be 60-70% confident based on real data than 100% confident based on no data. Technical founders especially struggle with this. They want 90-100% certainty before building anything. But great CEOs operate with 70% information and make decisions anyway. Spending too much time fact-finding doesn’t pay off. You need to execute with good-enough data and learn as you go. The validation approaches below will get you to that 60-70% confidence threshold. That’s enough to start building. That’s enough to commit. ## Talk to Real Humans to Validate your Ideas This is the foundation. You have to talk to people. But not just any conversations. Most founders ask terrible questions that don’t actually validate anything. Don’t ask leading questions like “I’m building this, do you want it?” or “Would you pay for this?” People will tell you yes because they’re polite or they like you or they think it sounds interesting. That’s not validation. Instead, ask about their current process. Ask about their challenges. Observe the problems they’re dealing with right now. I recommend reading [The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/dp/1492180742). It’s a one-hour read (hot pink book, you can’t miss it), and it completely changes how you approach customer conversations. The core idea is you should be able to ask your mom about your business idea and get useful information, because you’re not asking about your idea at all. You’re asking about her life, her problems, her current solutions. You’re learning to listen for real opportunity versus waste of time. And if you can’t reach your exact target buyer yet, talk to proxies. Talk to an expert in the industry. Talk to someone in an adjacent role. You can still learn a ton about the problem space and whether there’s real opportunity there. ## Build in Public This one is slower than ads, but it’s more sustainable and attracts higher quality interest. Start talking publicly about the problem you want to solve before you build anything. Write about it. Share your thinking. Explain why you think this problem matters. Building in public attracts three groups: buyers (people who have this problem), connectors (people who know others with this problem), and feedback (people who can help you refine your thinking). The pace is different from paid ads. You’re not going to see a spike of traffic overnight. But the people who show up are genuinely interested, and they’ll stick around. They’ll tell you if you’re on the right track or if you’re missing something critical. ## Deliver the Service Manually First This is one of my favorite validation approaches because it proves demand without requiring you to build software. I worked with a client named Rachel who was building [Motivo](https://motivohealth.com/), a marketplace connecting therapists with clinical supervisors. Before she built any platform, she manually matched people. She found therapists who needed supervision. She found supervisors who had capacity. She made the introductions and facilitated the relationships. She had hundreds of buyers before she ever got funding or built the platform. This approach validates that people actually have the problem, that they’re willing to pay to solve it, and that your proposed solution makes sense. Once you have proof of demand, you can raise money or commit to building the software. But you’re not betting your runway on an untested idea. ## Quiet Launch Not every founder wants to build in public or run a big flashy launch. Some people prefer a calm, measured approach. Rand Fishkin’s [Alert Mouse](https://alertmouse.com/) is a great example of this. He built it for himself first (low risk, because he needed it anyway). Then he soft launched it to his network and email list. He started with beta pricing, figuring out monetization later. This isn’t for everyone. But if you’re the kind of person who wants to move deliberately and build something sustainable without the pressure of a big launch, this can work. The key is you’re still validating. You’re watching how people use it. You’re learning what resonates. You’re gathering feedback from real users in low-pressure environments. ## Prototyping and Design Sprints This approach comes from [Shape Up by Basecamp](https://basecamp.com/shapeup), and it’s incredibly useful when you’re trying to decide *how* to build something. Create 2-3 different versions or approaches as prototypes. These don’t have to be functional. You can do this in Figma. You’re just creating enough fidelity to put in front of prospects and get live feedback. The questions you’re asking are not “Do you think this is valuable?” You’re asking “What do you think this does?” You’re watching where they get confused. You’re seeing which version resonates most. This validates your direction before you commit to a full build. You’re learning which approach makes the most sense to your target users. ## Why the “Run Ads to Test Your Idea” Myth Persists I want to come back to this because I know some of you are still thinking, “But I’ve heard so many people say to run ads.” The reason this myth persists is it *sounds* logical. Test demand with a small budget before building. Seems smart. But in practice, there are too many variables. Did the campaign fail because the idea is bad? Or because your targeting was off? Or because your landing page copy didn’t connect? Or because your creative wasn’t compelling enough? Or because the funnel was wrong? You can’t isolate whether the *idea* is good when there are 47 other execution variables in the mix. The approaches above let you isolate the idea itself. Talk to people, and you learn if they have the problem. Deliver the service manually, and you learn if they’ll pay to solve it. Build prototypes, and you learn if your proposed solution makes sense to them. These methods get you to 60-70% confidence based on real data. That’s what you need to move forward. ## What This Looks Like in Practice Let’s say you’re thinking about building a tool for SaaS founders to track their customer research insights. The “run ads” approach: Build a landing page, run some Facebook ads to SaaS founders, see how many people sign up for early access. Spend $2,000-$5,000, get a list of emails, still not sure if the idea is good. The validation approach: Start talking to SaaS founders about how they currently track customer research. Ask what tools they use. Ask where they get stuck. Ask what’s frustrating. Do 6-12 of these conversations (The Mom Test style). Maybe tweet about the problem and see who responds. Maybe deliver a manual version of the service (help a few founders organize their research notes in a spreadsheet and charge them for it). After 6-12 conversations and maybe 2-3 manual clients, you’ll have real data. You’ll know if this problem is painful enough that people will pay to solve it. You’ll know what features matter most. You’ll know how they think about the problem and what language resonates. That’s 60-70% confidence. That’s enough to start building. ## Operating with Imperfect Information The hardest part of this for technical founders is accepting that you’ll never have perfect information. You’re going to make bets with incomplete data. That’s part of being a founder. You can’t fact-find your way to certainty. But you can gather *real* data from *real* conversations with *real* prospects. You can test demand by delivering the service manually. You can validate direction by putting prototypes in front of people. Those validation methods get you to 60-70% confidence, which is enough. Then you execute, you learn as you go, and you adjust based on what you discover. The founders who spend months trying to get to 100% confidence before building anything are usually the ones who never ship. They’re stuck in analysis mode. The founders who operate at 60-70% confidence and make decisions anyway? They ship. They learn. They iterate. And they’re the ones who build sustainable businesses. **Categories:** GTM, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [What Every Early-Stage Startup Must Know About Marketing](https://demandmaven.io/early-stage-startup-marketing/) **Published:** March 8, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** It wasn’t the first time I’ve been asked the question. And I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time, either. *“I’m an early-stage startup with no full-time marketing resources. What should I be doing first?”* My mind immediately burst into a million different directions. *What was he selling?* *To whom?* *What problem was he trying to solve?* *Why? What draws him to this problem and his solution?* *What’s his ACV? MRR? Does he have a sales team? What round of funding is he on?* And I completely understood why he was asking it. Founders of early-stage SaaS startups have an interesting challenge: **build a great product, grow fast with virtually nothing,** and somehow stay *sane*. After reflecting on my own experiences, here’s exactly what I wish I could have said: ## Master the Engineering Process and Build a Great Product Honestly — all of the time spent on marketing right now could just be spent on building a faster, better, stronger engineering process and ultimately, a better product. **High-quality, valuable products are the ones that stick.** It’s not really *“Build it and they will come”*, but more like *“Build it really well and they will stay — for a long time.”* I’ll talk in a later post about minimum viable product (MVP) and the role it plays here, but ultimately, customers that don’t churn means more MRR and month-month growth. If anything, *that’s* your marketing strategy. **Build great products and ship new releases regularly.** If you can hack your product and engineering team to push quality new releases (and therefore, features) every one to two weeks, you’re already an outlier. ![Related image](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAg1AAAAJDU0OTMxMTViLTBhZDctNDAzNC04MzllLWFiYWI4YWZkNzY1ZQ.jpg) ## Don’t Spend a Dime on Marketing Before You Master This Simple Thing The last thing you need to be doing is spending anything on marketing until you have this one simple concept nailed: your **Ideal Customer Profile** aka ICP. The **Ideal Customer Profile** essentially states exactly what it implies: who is your ideal customer? What do they look like? Where do you draw the line in the sand for those who fit the ICP and those who don’t? ICP can potentially look at attributes like: – Number of Employees – Revenue – Funding Rounds – Size of XYZ Department – Technology Stack – Industry / Vertical – Geographic Region / Location But ultimately, it completely depends on your most profitable customers. How do you define your ideal customer profile? Pop open your CRM or the Excel spreadsheet where you keep your customers and see if you notice any specific similarities (or dissimilarities). **Be ruthless throughout this process.** It’s the best advice anyone’s ever given me in regards to building out an ICP. If they’re not paying you money now, there’s a good chance they won’t be your most profitable customer (yet). Eventually, you’ll revisit your ICP when you start to experience churn and you’ll decide if the churn warrants a change to your ICP. That means putting your science and data cap on and eliminating the chaff and the distractions. So be *ruthless*. ## Focus Your Message and Your USP Just about every founder oozes with ambition when asked about their target market. *“Well right now, we’re just selling B2C, but eventually our product could be used for XYZ industry!”* *“We don’t have any customers in the exact size company we want, but in the future, we want to sell to enterprise!”* . **Founders must be careful not to spread their message too thin across too many ICPs and personas at once.** You have neither the time nor the resources to be everything to everyone — so focus that ICP and your messaging to repeat the customers you’ve got. Always keep the future in mind and take steps to get there, but keep the people who signed the SLA or swiped their credit card closest to you. **Remember: the future cannot pay your bills today.** It can only serve as a reminder of the glory to come. A focused message, through research and testing, will help founders also focus their marketing efforts before they ever even put forth a penny. That means campaigns that will yield the results they want. [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/goal-setting.png)](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/goal-setting.png)from Ali Mese ## Know Your Channels Some of the most common questions for panels at SaaS conferences are almost always related to marketing channels: - [Which marketing channel should I prioritize first](https://demandmaven.io/services/marketing-strategy-call/) for my startup? - What campaigns should I be running? - How did XYZ company achieve growth through marketing? - What’s a Saas startup marketing playbook look like? The answer is… *Drumroll..* It depends! **The most common channels found in these SaaS startup marketing playbooks and demand generation strategies will almost always highlight the following:** 1. SEM / Paid search 2. Retargeting 3. Display ads / PPC 4. Inbound marketing and content creation efforts 5. SEO 6. Paid social media 7. Email / Nurturing 8. Outbound plays (usually with Sales 1. Can include a mix of phone, video, email, and social 9. Partnerships / Co-marketing 10. Conferences and events 11. Influencer marketing 12. Social media 13. Direct mail 14. Communities like Quora, StackExchange, Inbound, etc. 15. On-site chat (think Drift, Intercom, etc.) 16. Review sites like Capterra, G2 Crowd, etc. 17. Slack 18. Content distribution networks (like Taboola and Storyful) The secret to all of these channels? **Not a single one of them matters if your ICP isn’t present in them.** If you sell to game developers, you need to go figure out where they hang out, what they read, where they go for information, and who they listen to or trust. These will eventually become channels you’ll need to harness — because it doesn’t make sense to spend energy and resources on a channel where your target market doesn’t reside. ## Double-Down When It Works There’s a ton of channels to try, but there’s a few important things to remember: - If it doesn’t have my ICP, then it’s not for me - Start with just one channel, master it, and build an audience around it - When you’re ready, add the next channel, and the next, and so on If you keep your ears close to your customer, you’ll identify the channels to prioritize, and when it works, double-down on it until it starts choking. When it stops working, [re-visit your campaign and channel strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/marketing-audit-strategy/). Chances are your messaging has gone stale and you need to refresh what you’re putting out there. If that still doesn’t work, pause it for a while and focus on your other channels. [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/shutterstock_335452730-1.jpg)](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/shutterstock_335452730-1.jpg) ## Don’t Forget That You’re Selling To People It’s really easy as a marketer to just say “go after channels!”, “go after your ICP!” — but the truth is that it does go deeper than that. Don’t make the mistake of forgetting that those channels and campaigns are still made of up people. It’s the biggest mistake you can make. Never forget. It doesn’t have to be perfect when you first start, but it does have to mold into something that will still drive demand for your product while also building trust and relationships.![Succeed you must Fail you will - Succeed you must Fail you will Sad yoda](https://s2.quickmeme.com/img/7c/7cc656d782796ab48808aa34d33c079de5d3bf73428894deb2de904c899d36c0.jpg) ## You Will Fail — A Lot Don’t let fear deter you from trying things in those early stages. Your goal is to get that initial traction — and if you’re past initial traction, mastering the growth stage. If you get burned by a channel, keep it moving. If you make mistakes, learn from it (because you absolutely will make mistakes), and then keep it coming. Your favorite phrase should be “Bye, Felicia!” when something crashes and burns. But as soon as something starts working and you get the results you want for a reasonable cost, you know what to do. But most importantly, embrace the failure. You don’t have time to hem and haw. What other marketing insights have helped you? **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Website Teardown: ClientSherpa.com](https://demandmaven.io/website-teardown-clientsherpa-com/) **Published:** May 18, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Ta-da! 🎉🎉🎉 Welcome to my very first website teardown—even though I feel like I’ve been doing them in my head for my entire marketing career. Websites are every SaaS company’s first line of defense. Most startups can’t afford to have a website that doesn’t enable them to: 1\. **Build relationships** with their customers 2\. Ultimately **sell their product** Every visit counts—*especially* if it’s a qualified visit. Because I understand how important messaging, traffic, and conversion are in the early stages, I’m here to offer my first impressions, feedback, and general thoughts on how well that first line of defense is built and prepared! I make a few mistakes while recording *(ugh… desktop notifications reeaalllyyy kill me)* but overall, I think I got the hang of it. 😉 ## ClientSherpa—Friendly, automated client intake for attorneys We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the idea from a good ‘ol series of tweets! Here’s how it shook out. > Would anyone be interested in or watch live website and/or business teardowns? Maybe on something like Twitch or YouTube? > > (“Teardown” feels like the wrong word for this…more like “give stream-of-consciousness UI/UX/marketing/business feedback”) > > — Josh Pigford (@Shpigford) [March 29, 2018](https://x.com/Shpigford/status/979460649976782848?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > @AsiaMatos sign me up [@ClientSherpa](https://x.com/ClientSherpa?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > > — Bryan Marble – bsky (@LostMahbles) [March 29, 2018](https://x.com/LostMahbles/status/979503654125400064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > Well NOW I'm excited. [pic.twitter.com/T0h1vC3L2I](https://t.co/T0h1vC3L2I) > > — Asia Orangio ✨ (@AsiaOrangio) [May 11, 2018](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio/status/995068679372050432?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) So of course, I dig in. HUGE thanks to [ClientSherpa](https://clientsherpa.com/) for being my first guinea pig. 🙏 I’m in the process of figuring out a system through which I can discuss these websites. (So if you like the way I discuss websites, let me know in the comments!) Going in willy-nilly is probably fine for most onlookers, but I like to have a set of things to think about when dissecting and analyzing the parts. **Based on the feedback I think is most important, I arrived at 5 points + the ultimate test:** 1\. Above-the-fold 2\. The Basics 3\. Copy 4\. Design 5\. Content 6\. The Conversion Test: Would I sign up? What I’m *not* covering: – Ultimate conversion rates (because I don’t have those details!) – Pricing—I have [Patrick Campbell at Price Intelligently](https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog) for that 😉 – Onboarding—because [Val Geisler](http://www.valgeisler.com/category/tear-down/) is my onboarding guru ❤️ Let’s dig in, shall we? ## ClientSherpa’s Above-the-Fold ![ClientSherpa's Above the Fold](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/thefold-1024x595.png) My literal first thought was “Oh cool. I bet the image will load any second.” … And so I waited. .. And then it didn’t load. 🙃 *(whispers) ….because there isn’t one.* I admit I was surprised. Reading the headline and its description below, I pretty much get the gist: - WHO: It’s for attorneys - WHAT: It’s for client intake - WHY: Because getting clients to do the intake thing sucks? A lot? - HOW: I think it’s through some kind of software - WHERE: If I didn’t see the “try ClientSherpa for free”, I wouldn’t know where I’m supposed to go from here (except for, of course, to scroll). **That “HOW” is important**. There’s no product image above-the-fold, and that might be a conscious decision (totally legit if it helps conversion rates), but not knowing what I’m looking at might be confusing. Is this software? *I guess… but without scrolling, I really don’t know.* Could just be me, but a high-quality, solid product image is missing. Another thing I noticed? **No immediate call-to-action above-the-fold.** We have this almost-ghost-button in the menu. It’s not totally transparent, but it’s light enough to get lost. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/only-cta-1024x308.png)There it is. Just chillin’. As they say, if you want someone to click it, better make it stand out. (We actually see this later in the page which makes me pretty happy.) ## The Basics Let’s do a quick check for the basics. I consider “the basics” to be just that—the things that I, both as a complete stranger to the brand and a SaaS marketer, expect to see in a website & landing page. **Here’s the checklist I always use:** 1. **Is there a value proposition?** Yes – although I think it could be pushed further and made even more compelling. 2. **Is there a main call-to-action?** Yes – sign up for the free trial! 3. **Is there a way to get in touch with the creators of this product / website?** Yes – there’s a “contact us” link in the footer of the page. 4. **Is there some kind of social proof?** Yes – all the way at the bottom of the page, there are two customer testimonials. 5. **Is there an overview of either the process or the product itself?** Yes – there’s both product images and feature highlights and a page that covers the story of how the tool works in real life. 6. **Is there a way to learn more about the creators?** Kind of – there’s an “About Us” page, but it’s not *really* about the makers! Seems pretty dodgy to me… So okay! Five out of six; not too shabby. Here’s a few noteworthy deep-dives… ## The Social Proof I *loved* these customer testimonials. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/testimonials-1024x506.png) Customer testimonials are like the “hey look at me! I’m valuable and credible!” for a SaaS company, and especially for a startup. As a startup, you’re kinda new to the game, and anything you can do to put people at ease and gain trust is a must-have. Testimonials also need to resonate with your target audience, and be as relevant to the product as possible. Here, the testimonial on the right is 🔥. > “If I get them in the office, I can close 70% of my clients.” WOO BOY. I’m *shook*. Now that’s a powerful value proposition *and* testimonial. Think about it — **if she doesn’t get those people in the door due to some lack of intake or just terrible processing, SHE DOESN’T MAKE MONEY.** Even as a not-actual-lawyer, I felt that in my gut. That makes me think the value proposition could be pushed further into more of a concrete, realized outcome and ClientSherpa focus more on the actual revenue results these lawyers see when they improve their intake. That’s powerful. **But you know what the biggest problem is?** That powerful asf testimonial is aaaaaaallllll the way at the bottom of the page. And it’s tiny. We’re making two strong assumptions: 1\. People are going to scroll that far (better install Hotjar to find out) 2\. They’re going to read that testimonial I highly recommend making those testimonials bigger and pulling them up on the page. ## The CTA Remember when I said there’s a CTA? It’s here at the bottom of the page. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/bottom-cta-1024x397.png) It’s cool that it’s at the bottom—most CTAs are. But I wanted to note that this is a much more visually compelling CTA than the one in the navigation bar. That green *pops*. And it makes me think of all the money I’m going to have because my intake process is going to be 🔥. ## Copy When I work with new clients, I’m always scrutinizing their copy. **I’m looking to see how well they’re able to:** – capture the problem and the pain, – make me relive that pain all over again, and – communicate why their solution is the best solution to my pain. Overall, ClientSherpa definitely understands their target audience (attorneys) and uses the language they might expect (intake, agreements, etc). What I was missing was feeling the tip of a knife pointed at my gut. It sounds gruesome, but that’s exactly how people feel when they buy. It’s emotional. Great copy is kinda funny in that way. **You might not even be an attorney, but great copy will make you feel like you have all of those problems and the only solution is ClientSherpa.** The testimonial at the bottom of the page actually did that for me. As mentioned previously, losing that money because prospects aren’t filling out those forms hurts my soul and makes me want to throw up. I would bet actual lawyers feel the same way. That’s what I mean by pushing the copy; making it more gut-punchy. ## Design We’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about the design of the site. It’s earthy. It’s not-so-saturated (and very toned down). The typefaces give me this elegant vibe. It’s peaceful. But that actually worries me a little bit. *Is it too peaceful? Is it too calming? Would I want to take the next step?* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/issa.gif) I’m not sure, but I will say I love the consistency between what I’m assuming is the product and the website and the overall look and feel. If there’s opportunity to add contrast (like the green button on the maroon background), then design-wise, I’d try to identify those. Visually, there’s not a ton that activates me, and as a marketer, that makes me worry. Still, it’s beautiful. **My only other real design critiques are to give those images some breathing room and to make the text larger!** This poor product image is fighting to either be grounded, or floating—but it can’t be both, so it instead hangs off its own edge. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/design-1024x532.png) And then you have barely-there copy that is so important, but so smol. The smol-est. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/smallest-text-1024x593.png) Yeah.. lemme just… ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/magnify-1.gif) ## Content Okay. This is where it gets a little interesting. When analyzing a website’s content, I’m looking at the actual pages they’ve presented to me, feature pages, pricing, integrations, blog content—the full shebang. There’s a few things I notice: - *What? No blog?* - *There’s really no other content period…* - The About Us page is not an About Page Totally cool that ClientSherpa hasn’t implemented a content strategy yet. *(Most startups won’t right off the bat.)* I also have a feeling the super lean website is probably intentional, but I’d question if that makes sense for the target audience. ***Do attorneys need more information before signing up for something like this?*** I personally don’t know and I’d want to find out. I always find it weird when a company doesn’t have a blog (or even like.. product updates or something), but there’s also just no way to stay in touch with ClientSherpa if I’m not ready to buy. No social profiles. No nada. But perhaps the biggest thing I noticed was that the About Us page isn’t actually an About Us page! It’s really more of a “How It Works” page. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/about-us-1024x576.png) **I feel robbed! Bamboozled! Tricked!** (I’m just kidding—I’m not *that* mad..) I legitimately wanted to read about the founders and their knight-in-shining-armor story about how they’re changing the way lawyers make more money! I appreciate the “How It Works” page (because it’s actually really well done), but under the guise of an “About Us” could be both really strategic and also totally dismissive at the same time. I do wonder if this helps conversion rates at all. If it does, somehow, then ignore me. But if people bounce immediately on this page, I can take a guess as to why. ## So does it pass The Conversion Test™️? Overall—yes. I think it passes. If I were an eager attorney and I *really* felt the pain, I’d probably do the hard work of reading everything and piecing it all together. But if I were a really skeptical or busy attorney, I’d probably bounce because it didn’t do enough to grab my attention. I hate saying this but I feel like I’m going to say this a lot: It Depends™️. It depends on goals, existing conversion rates, and various other factors we don’t have access to! Even still, a splendid start! Bravo, ClientSherpa! 👏 ## Action items for you, dear reader 1\. Share if you liked this article! It lets me know I should keep doing them. 😂 2\. If you want more, subscribe! 3\. Let me know what website would you like to see next. **Categories:** SaaS, Website Teardown --- ### [How to read growth hacking posts like an enlightened reader](https://demandmaven.io/how-read-growth-hacking-enlightened-reader/) **Published:** June 4, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I know you’ve seen them. You saw the sexy title about insane growth over some short period of time, clicked with excitement and awe, and you thought, “I want to know *exactly* how they did this”. You’re hoping this post will give you some kind of shortcut. Some kind of answer. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/couple-guys-crowd-11QbYGDyvV1bSo) The startup journey is hard enough, so if there’s free wisdom just floating around out there, hell? Why not give it a shot? *“We could drop everything, copy their exact strategy and steps, and boom! We’ll see success!”* you thought to yourself, hoping to catch some piece of that success for your own. *“After all, these guys did it.”* **Except without the proper understanding of marketing, growth, what it takes to hit traction, and even the market you’re in, reading those growth posts without context might actually be *hurting* your business.** Add to that the mix of feelings that comes after reading posts about massive growth and growth-hacking. You start to wonder if maybe you’re doing something wrong (or if there’s maybe even something wrong with *you*). You begin to question your strategy, your goals, and sometimes even your team. **It’s a vicious cycle:** the stories of other founders and startups shed some incredibly valuable light and wisdom on how they achieved their successes, and at the same time, internally rattle us with doubt, frustration, or worse: *inaction*. ## Why startups (actually) fail Here’s the truth: startups don’t fail because they *didn’t* read a blog post or properly implement the strategies and insights from it. [According to CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/startup-failure-reasons-top/), the top 5 reasons startups fail are because: 1. No market needed – *a whopping 42% of startups* 2. Ran out of cash 3. Not the right team 4. Get outcompeted 5. Pricing & cost issues ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/cb-insights-410x1024.png) Growth posts are attractive because they look and feel like shortcuts that could bypass the risks of losing cash, getting outcompeted, or poor marketing. Logically, our brains make the connection that if we follow the same path as the authors, we can achieve similar or exact results. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/rogue-one-GRTXPRJc9SFdm) Or, it could waste a lot of time, cash, and the confidence and energy to keep pushing and building great products. ## Experimentation is key The thing we must keep in mind about growth (and growth posts) is that it’s never just *one* thing that leads to success. It’s *many* things culminating and building on top of each other over time—and much of it we don’t see as the reader. Success is rarely linear or predictable, but focusing on growth forces us to ask what the fastest path to success looks like. And the only way to do that is to test and execute priority ideas until we find something that works. [To borrow from Sean Ellis](http://www.startup-marketing.com/where-are-all-the-growth-hackers/), whom I consider to be the father of growth hacking, “An effective growth hacker also needs to be disciplined to follow a growth hacking process of prioritizing ideas (their own and others in the company), **testing the ideas**, and being analytical enough to know which tested growth drivers to keep and which ones to cut.” [According to Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_hacking), the definition of growth hacking also highlights the need for experimentation: Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation across marketing funnel, product development, sales segments, and other areas of the business to identify the most efficient ways to grow a business. A growth hacking team is made up of marketers, developers, engineers and product managers that specifically focus on building and engaging the user base of a business. So as we read posts about growth and growth hacking, we have to keep in mind that dozens of experiments happened leading up to the hockey-stick growth (and most of them were probably duds). We’ll see an example of this later in the post. ## How to read growth posts like an enlightened reader For the rest of this post, I’m going to teach you exactly how to: - Identify the context of every single growth post you come across, - Get the most value out of the growth post without falling into the copy-cat trap - How to confidently stand on the shoulders of giants By the time you’re done with this, you’ll have an actionable framework and mental checklist for everything you read from here on out. You’ll be able to analyze and “teardown” every post with confidence, and walk away from it with the most applicable insights for your business. (You might even learn how to spot the fake growth posts, too.) 😬 **These are the exact steps I use when reading about growth:** - Step 1: Reading with context - Step 2: Reading for prerequisites and gaps - Step 3: Reading for application We will cover each in intimate detail—complete with examples and actionable takeaways. Before we dig into this, I want to make a disclaimer: **I absolutely love growth posts.** I love reading about other people’s successes and the steps they took to achieve them. They’re always thrilling, and when they’re really good, applicable to many different business situations and strategies. **But I’m also a marketer, and I read these posts with one key element that many technical founders don’t quite know how to exercise: context.** The purpose of this post is not to diminish the successes of the growth hackers, marketers, and founders who publish growth-related content, but to equip you, the reader, with a few key concepts to help you make every growth post you read actionable, applicable, and insights-driven. ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/website-previews-07.png) ## Step 1: Reading with context With every post you read, I want you to consider one big facet of the story you’re about to dig into: **what is the context of the post I’m about to read?** Understanding the context of the post is about as fundamental as understanding where you are in the world right this very second. For example, if I were to ask you where you are, what are you doing, why are you doing it, and what are you about to do next, you’d be able to give me a fairly clear answer. We should be able to do that for the growth post as well. **To define context, we have to define the past, the present, and the growth of the story:** - **The Past** - When was the company started? - What events took place that led up to this growth? - How has the product / service pivoted or changed over the years? - What were the challenges prior to this growth? - **The Present** - What is the product / service now? - Who is the product / service for? B2B or B2C? - What marketing channels are mentioned in the post? - Did the market exist before this product / service entered? - Is the market fairly large or more niche? - Is this a simple or complex product? - Is this a cheap or expensive product? - **The Growth** - What was the north star KPI they followed? - What were the other metrics they used to support the KPI? To help illustrate every step, we’re going to use a growth post from the good ol’ interwebs. I head on over to Medium, type in the search bar “growth”, and *voila*! There’s tons to choose from, but I’m really digging [this post about Breather by Julien Smith on Hacker Noon](https://hackernoon.com/this-is-the-growth-hack-that-got-my-whole-company-started-f5572fa6d36f). It’s received applause from 1.2K readers and what I’m assuming are hundreds of comments since they won’t load at once. 🙃 ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/hackernoon-1024x677.png) Clearly, this is a popular AF post. And for good reason—it’s a beautiful story about the low-lows of startup life, the desperation when traction doesn’t happen like you thought it would, and a heroic comeback—the high-highs. ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/hours-time-1024x575.png) Breather’s growth in reservation hours over time After reading the post, your gut reaction might be to say, “*Wow. We need to be more active on Twitter*” or “*We need to run Twitter Ads*“. But we’re not going to fall into that trap. Why? Because you’re an enlightened reader. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/whoa-hd-tim-and-eric-xT0xeJpnrWC4XWblEk) ### The Past Understanding where a company came from, what the events were leading up to the hockey-stick growth, and even details about how the product changed help us lay the groundwork for all of the context we’ll need. - **When was the company started?** - Breather was started sometime around 2013; almost 5 years ago now. - **What events took place that led up to this growth?** - They weren’t getting any traction. No real paying customers and the bank account was dwindling. Most of the runway is gone. The author begged his friends on Facebook to use the space. They launched their market in New York as a big strategic move. - **How has the product / service pivoted or changed over the years?** - They struggled with some technical things regarding locks (as one does) - **What were the challenges prior to this growth?** - They were running out of ideas, and fast. Desperation was sitting in despite their small successes. We should also put ourselves in the actual time and place of what Breather even looked like back then. Breather has a stunning website, no doubt, but what did they look like in 2014 back when all of this was going down? Let’s ask [Wayback Machine](http://web.archive.org/web/20140516011311/http://breather.com/). ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/breather-2014-1024x576.png) Breather’s website circa May 2014. ### The Present We also have to understand the present—what is the product or service, who it’s for, the marketing channels they used, and other details about the market they’re in. This will help us draw comparisons between their market and our own, and what we might be able to apply to our own business. - **What is the product / service now?** - Sounds like it’s mostly the same and never pivoted, but it’s booking conference rooms by the hour for businesses. - **Who is the product / service for?** B2B or B2C? - Primarily B2B, but it’s important we remember we’re still selling to *people.* - **What marketing channels are mentioned in the post?** - At first, Facebook—that’s where all of Julien’s friends were. But then he moves on to Twitter afterwards. What’s interesting to note is that Julien mentions he already had 40,000 Twitter followers before he started promoting there. Lastly, he uses Twitter Ads to push it over the edge. - **Did the market exist before this product / service entered?** - It did! AirBNB and coworking spaces were some of the pioneers of the market - **Is the market fairly large or more niche?** - According to Julien, it’s *huge*. - **Is this a simple or complex product?** - Sounds very simple and straight-forward - **Is this a cheap or expensive product?** - Also sounds very affordable – this isn’t a top-dollar product, but it’s reasonably or fairly priced ### The Growth Lastly, it wouldn’t be a true growth post unless it mentions the primary goal or KPI. We always want to see growth and ultimately revenue, but aiming for pure revenue is daunting. Instead, I recommend founders choose a north star that directly correlates to revenue, is quantitative, and can actually be measured. - **What was the north star KPI they followed?** Julien mentions in the post “hours booked per week” and that he would grow it by 8% week over week - **What were the other metrics they used to support the KPI?** \# of conversations – Julien mentions that conversations were an important metric to sell his product Woo! Okay. We’ve got the context. (I’m also super curious what you wrote down and if you got any slightly different takeaways) Now that we’ve defined the context of the post, we can set the stage for the next big step: reading for prerequisites or what I like to call “gaps”. ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/website-previews-08.png) ## Step 2: Reading for prerequisites and gaps So you’ve learned how to take mental notes for the context of the post—and if you’re a marketer, that might have felt extremely familiar since you probably do this at the speed of light when reading a post anyways. Now we’re going to sweep the post for “prerequisites” or “gaps”. **Prerequisites are the circumstances in the post that served the author, the company, or even the market in some valuable way.** We’re looking for those “stand on the shoulders of giants” moments throughout the post. There’s also a good chance you might have completely missed them. When it comes to crossing chasms, this is where those “gaps” become very misleading if you’re not able to spot them. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/cat-fail-jumping-bU6GKBpWaJ4tO) I found a few prereqs that help us paint the whole picture: **Julien acknowledged that he had early funding to play around with.** I appreciate the transparency here! He got to try something crazy because he started with healthy funding from the get-go. That’s not to undermine how desperate the situation was—his bank account was running low, after all. It’s important to understand, however, that had he much less funding and less supportive VCs, he probably wouldn’t have been able to try it. “Looking back, I was very, very lucky.” “I had a service people actually liked (i.e. product market fit).” “There was nobody else really competing in this space.” “We had a lot of money from the get go, so we could try crazy shit. We had a great team of people that made sure everything worked along the way.” **They built a great product.** Perhaps the most worthwhile growth hack is to build something so awesome and addictive, that people can’t help but fall in love. **Julien spent years building an audience on Twitter.** You might have missed it, but his original Twitter audience was already 40,000 people since he was an early adopter for Twitter. That’s amazing! > Ok NYC. It's time for you to try [@Breather](https://x.com/breather?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw). Reply and I'll send you some hours your way. 🙂 [pic.twitter.com/JAFSChL8ti](http://t.co/JAFSChL8ti) > > — Julien✌🏻️ (@julien) [June 5, 2014](https://x.com/julien/status/474572747075375104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) **Breather had just launched in New York**—and Julien knew it would be key to Breather’s success. This is the kind of event in a company’s history where strategic bets are placed about a product and its market. And right place, right time, yada yada. “Around this time, we launched New York — a market we knew that we had to win, if we were going to be anything at all. This aggressive launch turned out to be prescient; it was a milestone that later helped us raise our Series A.” ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/website-previews-09.png) ## Step 3: Reading with application Finally—we’re able to read this post for “application”. **Reading for application means taking parts of the post and the journey and leveraging it for your own business based on the context and gaps.** The chasm to cross between Step 2 and Step 3 are where we learn to stand on the shoulders of giants—of people who’ve been there, done that, and can teach us something. Perhaps most importantly, this is where **we’re preventing jumping to conclusions about what led to success and the assumptions about what will make us successful**. When most people read growth posts, they skip immediately to reading with application and taking the post literally. This is a fatal mistake—one that could cost you the progress you’re already making. If you fell victim to immediately thinking you needed to start running Twitter Ads, you’re 1) not alone and 2) skipping over context and prerequisites. That said, here’s some of the lessons learned from Julien’s amazing story about Breather: - Build an amazing product. - Decide on a north star KPI. - Build the right audience in the right channels. - When something works, double-down on it. - Create a majestic onboarding flow. **Build an amazing product.** You’ll hear this over and over again throughout your startup journey: build an amazing product. The Breather product might not have been perfect, but it was well-built and designed, and provided value from the get-go. **Decide on a north star KPI.** And then stick it. The best advice Julien received during the struggle-bus days was to decide on a north star KPI and then make it work. His CEO friend probably didn’t even know it was called that, but he was right to give that advice. I remember sitting in a bar, on December 26th over a beer, with another CEO giving me advice. “Just pick a number and grow it 8% a week,” he said. “Really? But then how do I actually grow the number?” Julien asked. “You’ll figure it out.”🍻 Too many founders try to move the needle in too many directions. Pick just one—and focus in on it. Never take your eyes away from it. \[Tweet “Too many founders try to move the needle in too many directions. Pick just one—and focus in on it. Never take your eyes away from it.”\] For Julien, it was **\# of hours booked**. That was his north star. I’m sure there were plenty of other metrics, but that was the only one that mattered. The only other thing that supported this KPI was **\# of conversations**. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/nightcap-poptv-pop-tv-3o7TKGMZHi73yzCumQ) **Build the right audience in the right channels.** If you felt tempted to hop onto Twitter and start running some ads, hold your horses for just a second. Your audience and target market might not even use Twitter. Plus, Julien was able to test this channel organically before putting some paid spend towards it. He spent the previous years building his Twitter audience—not knowing it would be one of the keys to his success. Thankfully, that’s right where his target market was (until he was able to find marketing help and leverage some better channels and tactics). The global truth here is this: build your audience in the right channels. \[Tweet “The global truth here is this: build your audience in the right channels.”\] **When something works, double-down on it.** In line with building the right audience in the right channels, Julien also did something that founders should always do: when it works, double-down. What started out as begging friends on Facebook to use Breather hours turned into testing his audience on Twitter. When that worked, even to his surprise, he scaled it by purchasing ads and expanding his reach. It became the playbook they repeated in every city after that—until they had to focus on other channels. **Create a majestic onboarding flow.** I don’t know if you noticed it or not, but Julien gave you a dope onboarding flow to leverage. If you glossed over it, take a look again. It’s gold, and it’s something you can leverage in your own business. ![](../wp-content/uploads/2018/06/breather-flow-517x1024.png) ## The enlightened reader So you’ve gotten the crash course on how to read a growth post without feeling like you need to hop on the bandwagon. And if you read the above growth post example and gathered completely different insights, that’s perfectly valid. I hope this post helps you gain a critical eye on everything you read from here on out while also helping you appreciate the truly great growth posts out there. Because believe me, there’s tons. As long as you keep in mind the context, the prerequisites, and your own personal application, you can effectively take what you need from a growth post without feeling like you need to copy it to the “T”. The goal is to be inspired and apply its process and its learnings. Hold on to that, and you’re already an enlightened reader! **Categories:** Marketing --- ### [Startup Acquisition 101 - Simply SaaS University](https://demandmaven.io/startup-acquisition-101/) **Published:** July 31, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** “ASIA! Would be you open to giving a talk about marketing and acquisition for Simply SaaS University?” *Hell* yeah. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/television-celebs-fallontonight-SdzqEPdTx9cha) **I get pretty excited about acquisition** — the marketing and growth activities that get you new users, free trial signups, customers, and raving fans. Building and defining that marketing engine you’ve always heard so much about but not entirely too sure how to approach it? That’s got my name all over it. I love that process. To me, it’s like meeting someone for the first time and getting to know all of their likes, dislikes, dreams, and realities. In the early days, that’s all marketing is. (And dare I say that’s all it ever is *period*? Regardless of stage?) And since I’ve been working with startup founders since starting DemandMaven, I was both honored and THRILLED to share the frameworks and processes I’ve adopted, honed, and implemented for my own business and my clients. Last week, I gave a talk on this exact subject for one my favorite communities: [Simply SaaS](http://simplysaas.com) over at Atlanta Tech Village. The founders in the room came from different backgrounds, markets, experiences, and products. We also had a decent number of marketers in the room! Some came from agencies, some from SaaS, and others from enterprise businesses. But honestly, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re from or what your background is. You’ll be able to apply these concepts to your product, service, and marketing department without a sweat. **[The context](../how-read-growth-hacking-enlightened-reader/) (for the most part) remains the same:** you need to build a marketing engine, and to do that, we start with the fundamentals: the customer! The only thing that changes is the goal you pursue, whether that’s new MRR or booked demos or maybe even just customer feedback. There’s also bunch of awesome resources in here — including, but not limited to: - [Userlist.io](https://userlist.io/customer-research-process/)‘s customer research process through JTBD (seriously – the article \*and\* the download are AMAZING and you should get it) - My content marketing gurus over at [Grow and Convert](https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/community-content-promotion/) (if you haven’t heard of them, you NEED to) - My exact process for defining a marketing strategy and engine that works - The formulas I follow when thinking about acquisition for early-stage startups & SaaS companies - Some of my favorite tools to use to start the process - The top 2 marketing strategies for startups in the early days If you’ve ever wanted to know how I think, this is a great way to see. 😉 A video of the entire presentation is coming soon, but if you’d like access to the slides, check out the above. **Here’s a few highlights from the session á la Twitter:** > For [\#SaaS](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaaS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw), the secret is understanding which marketing strategy works the absolute best for your company, your product, and your target market. – @AsiaMatos [\#lessonslearned](https://twitter.com/hashtag/lessonslearned?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#SimplySaaS](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SimplySaaS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) University [\#Marketing101](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Marketing101?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/s39r249uKJ](https://t.co/s39r249uKJ) > > — Simply SaaS (@simplysaas) [July 26, 2018](https://twitter.com/simplysaas/status/1022574796163477504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > Yes! @AsiaMatos recommends: install a free analytics tool and start watching how your customers interact with your product. > > What interactions do your best, happiest customers have in common?[\#SimplySaaS](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SimplySaaS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#SimplySaaSUniversity](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SimplySaaSUniversity?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/TkTLJgk0sS](https://t.co/TkTLJgk0sS) > > — Melanie Crissey (@MelanieCrissey) [July 26, 2018](https://twitter.com/MelanieCrissey/status/1022543211988967424?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > @AsiaMatos gives the best definition of [\#DemandGen](https://twitter.com/hashtag/DemandGen?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) that I’ve ever seen [@simplysaas](https://twitter.com/simplysaas?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [@AtlantaVentures](https://twitter.com/AtlantaVentures?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [@ATLTechVillage](https://twitter.com/ATLTechVillage?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) > > PS – [@morganjingram](https://twitter.com/morganjingram?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [@JohnMBarrows](https://twitter.com/JohnMBarrows?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) were your ears burning? Lots of shoutouts to y’all for [\#SDR](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SDR?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) brilliance [\#SaaS](https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaaS?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#B2B](https://twitter.com/hashtag/B2B?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#MarTech](https://twitter.com/hashtag/MarTech?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#Marketing](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Marketing?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#startuplife](https://twitter.com/hashtag/startuplife?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [\#agencylife](https://twitter.com/hashtag/agencylife?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) [pic.twitter.com/0iXTCP2iav](https://t.co/0iXTCP2iav) > > — Lauren Patrick (@Pretty\_Southern) [July 26, 2018](https://twitter.com/Pretty_Southern/status/1022551689218404352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Enjoy! – Asia **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Year in Review 2018](https://demandmaven.io/year-review-2018/) **Published:** January 3, 2019 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** For me, 2018 was probably one of the biggest, most impactful years of my life. It was easily one of my best years in a decade, and it was full of high-highs and low-lows. We’ll unpack all of that here. But before I actually dig in, thank you. Thank you to the *entire* Unicorn Think Tank family, [Claire Suellentrop](http://loveyourcustomers.co), [Patrick Wiseman](http://deft.services), [Lauren Patrick](http://prettysouthern.com), [Kamil Rextin](https://fourtytwo.agency/), [Ryan Robinson](http://ryrob.com), [Katie Martell](https://www.katie-martell.com/), [Mojca Mars](https://www.superspicymedia.com/), Anand Thaker, Stefan Koenig, Atlanta Tech Village, and everyone else who contributed to this intense, but inspiring year. Thanks to my *amazing* clients — I’m so honored to work with you and help you build amazing businesses and products. And finally, thanks to my future partner in crime, Zac Orangio. It wouldn’t have been the same without your support, and I’m forever grateful (and deeply thrilled to marry you in 2019). ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/website-previews-12.png) ## Theme of 2018: Fearlessness As I sit here next to my Christmas tree sipping my too-strong coffee, I reflect on 2018. While my brain naturally paints a positive picture of the year (believe me — it was truly the best thing that could have happened to me), I have to admit it had its downs too. It was a near-constant cycle of courage and fear. **On the one hand, forming DemandMaven was terrifying.** Working as an in-house marketer at an early-stage, pre-Series A startup was already unpredictable, but creating a company and starting from scratch where *you’re* the product seemed infinitely worse. That amount of perceived instability almost stopped me from starting DemandMaven and throwing in the towel a few times. And on the other hand, I knew I wouldn’t be happy unless I tried it. I knew I’d be sitting at my desk at the next in-house job wondering what kind of growth I would have achieved and what kind of career I’d have. **I was choosing between two evils: regret or fear.** Knowing I’d rather live with fear than live with regret, I chose to start DemandMaven. It wasn’t without a massive amount of hyperventilating, several “Oh my god.. what have I done?”, and “😂💀” emojis, but I dove in anyways. (Surprise: I succeeded.) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cardi-b.gif) The year of 2018, therefore, became the year of fearlessness and the journey of learning to navigate the unpredictable life of a marketer, founder, entrepreneur, and consultant. **I learned to find security and stability in myself while building a business that could withstand one of the most volatile markets in the universe:** startups. I wasn’t 100% convinced or sure that DemandMaven would succeed (and to be honest, time will tell if I’ve built something sustainable). I was, however, willing to draw upon my courage and self-confidence to put forth a solution to a festering problem in the startup world: **not enough early-stage, hands-on, and affordable access to exceptional marketing talent.** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/website-previews-14.png) ## Major 2018 Wins I think this is the part where I get to unabashedly brag, but there’s too many accomplishments to list in this blog post. I’ll do my best to give you the highlights, but it’s going to be tough. ### **🚀 Launched DemandMaven in February 🚀** This probably goes without saying, but forming and launching was an accomplishment in itself. I officially formed DemandMaven in mid-February. By March 2018, I booked my first clients and was off to the races. Executing the launch plan for DemandMaven was a huge success, and is an engine that continues to bring me referrals, introductions, and opportunities to this day. It never slowed down, and that alone has made me incredibly proud. ### **🗣️ Put my voice out there 🗣️** I didn’t do a ton of writing this year, but I still did more than I ever did when I was in-house. I wrote for: - Baremetrics about the [importance of founder-generated content](https://baremetrics.com/blog/the-importance-of-founder-generated-content) - Appcues about [troubleshooting the onboarding experience](https://www.appcues.com/blog/troubleshoot-onboarding-experience) - Ryan Robinson on [how I made my first $10K in 90 days](https://www.ryrob.com/quit-my-job-start-freelancing/) - DemandMaven on [how to read growth hacking posts like an enlightened reader](https://demandmaven.io/how-read-growth-hacking-enlightened-reader/) That same post was also [featured in GrowthHackers](https://blog.growthhackers.com/this-is-how-you-should-be-reading-growth-hacking-posts-3a7f04b381ab). I also did quite a bit of speaking — something I plan to improve and increase over the coming year. I did an [AMA with Stripe](https://discuss.stripe.community/t/ask-me-about-getting-your-first-100-customers/4492), a [podcast with Quuu](https://anchor.fm/qcast/episodes/Conversations-with-Quuu-E2-Asia-Matos-e1qvsu), a podcast with Cheshire Impact, a [talk at Simply SaaS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcAYJvvlUuE), a talk at TechStars, and of course, [Forget the Funnel](https://forgetthefunnel.com/navigate-saas-company-politics/). All of these opportunities were incredible, and I’m excited to do more of it next year! ### **🖋️ First 5-figure deal 🖋️** Right around May, I inked my very first 5-figure deal with one of my existing clients. I don’t typically produce agreements for more than 3 months at a time, but I made a special exception for a client I’m still working with to this day. Our teams really gelled, and I produced some great results and amazing work for them. They asked to book DemandMaven for the next 6 months, and the rest is history. ### **👩🏾‍🏫 Became an advisor of Atlanta Tech Village 👩🏾‍🏫** I’ve been involved in my city and startup community pretty much from the get-go, but I especially dove in this year. I was honored to speak at Atlanta Tech Village, Simply SaaS, and TechStars this year. As of December 2018, I became an advisor for the community at [Atlanta Tech Village](https://atlantatechvillage.com). All of that hard work does help my build my business, but more importantly, it helps elevate the city, startup community, and its founders. Every month, I’ll be contributing a few hours of my time *for free*. ### **🎓 Invested in all kinds of education and skills 🎓** I’m definitely not the kind of person who’s weird about talking about the courses I took. (We’re all still learning, right?) It’s also been actual years since I invested in my skills. While building DemandMaven, I knew I was going to need to upgrade some of my capabilities — whether for money or time (or both). These were the books I read and courses I took this year! More than happy to dive into each one in a separate post. **Let me know if that’s something you’d be down to read in the comments below.** 1. Brennan Dunn’s [Double Your Freelancing](https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/) 2. Grow and Convert’s [Customers from Content](https://www.customersfromcontent.com/) 3. Ahref’s [Blogging for Business](https://ahrefs.com/academy/blogging-for-business) 4. Copyhackers’ [Tutorial Tuesdays](https://copyhackers.com/) 5. Ryan Robinson’s [Built to Blog](https://ryrob.teachable.com/p/built-to-blog) 6. [Good Strategy, Bad Strategy](https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239) 7. [The Business of Expertise](https://www.amazon.com/Business-Expertise-Entrepreneurial-Experts-Convert-ebook/dp/B07B7DFP1B/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546190437&sr=1-1&keywords=business+of+expertise) 8. [Business of Software](https://businessofsoftware.org/) Conference 9. Rand Fishkin’s [Lost and Founder](https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Founder-Painfully-Honest-Startup-ebook/dp/B074DGYVD5/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546190503&sr=1-3&keywords=lost+and+founder) 10. Kim Scott’s [Radical Candor](https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Candor-Kim-Scott/dp/B01KTIEFEE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1546190520&sr=1-1&keywords=radical+candor) 11. Elizabeth Gilbert’s [Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear](https://www.amazon.com/Big-Magic-Creative-Living-Beyond-ebook/dp/B00S52M350/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1546190700&sr=8-1&keywords=big+magic) 12. Elad Gil’s [High-Growth Handbook](http://growth.eladgil.com) ### **🏅 First case study — Exposure 🏅** I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention DemandMaven’s first case study from an amazing client. I’ve been working with some pretty amazing companies all year, but I am especially proud of Exposure. [I helped Exposure](https://demandmaven.io/exposure-case-study/) increase visitor-to-trial conversion rate by 68%, prove out an acquisition models, and gave the founder immense clarity on who he was building for and where he needed to take the product. ### **📵 First no-tech “vacation” 📵** *\*long sigh\** This one makes me glassy-eyed just thinking about it. I took my first “I’m not doing any work” vacation in about 3 years. I used to wear the #hustlemuscle badge on my arm with every vacation I took, feeling like I had something to prove by the amount of hours I put in on PTO vacation time. But over the years, it amassed so much physical tension and mental exhaustion in my body that it started to take an ugly toll on everything. **I signed up for a no-tech, 10-day meditation retreat and was accepted.** It was sun-up to sun-down meditation, 10.5 hours every single day, and on top of that, a vow of silence. For 10 days. It was the best vacation I’ve ever taken, even though it was incredibly hard work. I came back rejuvenated — proud of myself for having accomplished such an incredible feat, and completely de-stressed. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/website-previews-15.png) ## Challenges of 2018 ### **🥾 Bootstrapping this baby 100% 🥾** I understand, now, why many people save up a few thousand dollars before starting their business. **I didn’t.** I took my last paycheck, popped open [Stripe Atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas), and had a company in a few minutes. I hit the ground running with securing a few clients, but I forgot about this thing called “cash flow” and it was a *bitch* the first months of DemandMaven’s life. I realized too late that my contracts weren’t actually going to pay out until May, so I posted a big fat goose-egg of revenue in April. It ended up being perfectly fine, though. It was comfortable again after the first few awkward months. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cash-flow.gif) ### **✍️ Inconsistent content creation ✍️** Looking back on everything I did, I produced a *lot* of content in 2018. It just wasn’t all on [DemandMaven.io](http://demandmaven.io) — something that’s probably fine in the long-run, but I admit I was hyper-aware of the lack of content on my website. I also had several false starts on some content initiatives for the website. Everything from writing a book to filming [website teardowns](https://demandmaven.io/website-teardown-clientsherpa-com/) to regular articles on the DemandMaven blog. There’s a lot of unpublished drafts and unedited videos that I just haven’t been able to bring to the light of day. Part of this inconsistency is due to just running a services business — you end up more focused on clients than your actual business. And at the same time, I know that’s not an excuse. I have the team now to help me streamline the content creation process for the business, and I’m looking forward to producing thought-provoking, high-value, high-quality content next year. ### **🔎 Accurate asf account qualification 🔎** When I first started DemandMaven, I knew *exactly* who I wanted to work with. And for the most part, I had placed amazing first bets. Even though it took a little bit longer to define the services I wanted to offer, I always knew my target market. I just needed to adjust my offerings to fit my ultimate customer: first-time non-marketing founders of up-and-coming SaaS startups. They could be seed-round or Series A. They could even be 100% bootstrapped. For the most part, I can work with any startup in those stages. **The hardest part was distinguishing between a founder being a Time Waster™️ or a Real Deal™️.** Time Wasters often wanted me to start today immediately — stop everything I’m doing and start working on their projects. They also usually wanted me to give them an hourly rate as opposed to my standard project rate. If I hear the words “But how many hours is that?”, I know it’s probably not going to be a founder I partner with. Other red flags include: - not being a subject matter expert for their own product in their own vertical or industry, - not being able to sell their product and close a few deals, and - not being able to describe the pain their product solves. Imagine trying to sell commission tracking software to commercial real estate brokerages, for example, and never having worked a day in a brokerage in your life. Or selling photography software, but you didn’t know Canon and Nikon were different brands. **But the biggest indicator of a Time Waster? They won’t let me go through my tried and true, proven process.** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sweet-brown.gif) Closing deals effectively for DemandMaven meant defining a *real* qualification process — one that I use for every single discovery call I take. They have to fulfill certain qualitative and quantitative requirements. Even if they have the budget, they must be the right cultural fit for DemandMaven. Otherwise, we’ll waste each other’s time and not get the results either one of us wants to see. When a founder is the Real Deal, they know the pain and the product they’ve built so well that they’ve sold it to me by the end of the call. They trust in me and my process, and they follow my lead when it comes to defining their initial go-to-market strategy. They’re incredibly engaged in the customer development process, and they have an ear for hearing the product suggestions and possibilities that emerge in the conversation. The calculator I use now helps me objectively those founders, and it’s been pretty indispensable so far. ### **💼 To become an agency, or not become an agency 💼** Every time I talk about what DemandMaven does and what it’s built to do, everyone and their grandmother tells me to go upmarket. They’re probably not wrong — I could be making infinitely more revenue and money by catering to businesses that can afford a higher-ticket consultancy. I can charge more for our services and therefore pocket more of that income. **There’s a big glaring catch, though: I’m not interested in serving a more mature market or audience.** I *love* working with first-time founders. In a way, we’re in the same boat. I’m a first-time founder, too. Except I’ve got a strong marketing and product muscle and I’d love to use it on fellow founders’ businesses. If I want to keep working with founders, I need to be both affordable and high-quality. Needless to say, it’s tough to do both. At least for now, I’m rejecting the “move upmarket” mindset. I’m not hiring any full-time employees anytime soon. I wouldn’t be able to remain affordable otherwise. Other options include bringing on contractors and freelancers to help execute the strategy we develop during the first strategic engagement — a path I’ve already begun to pursue. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/website-previews-16.png) ## Lessons Learned ### **🧞‍♀️ It’s (probably) okay to be a generalist if the market is niche enough. 🧞‍♀️** I’ve been struggling with this one for a while. At first blush, it very much feels like I’m a generalist (a dirty word in the consulting world). I’m not perfect at everything in marketing, but I do understand the breadth and depth of the marketing channels and strategies available to an early-stage startup. And because my target market and ideal customer profile are so niche, I’ve mastered figuring out that combination for companies. I’ve figured out how to turn my expansive knowledge of marketing into a formula and a process that my client and I can trust, implement, and leverage to get results. For once, being a generalist has paid off, even though it feels incredibly weird. I could probably niche even more, but so far, it’s working. This is something I’ll continue to test in 2019. ### **🦃 Don’t go cold-turkey 🦃** It probably goes without saying, but I don’t think I’d go cold-turkey again. I trust myself more now than ever before, but I probably didn’t need to put myself through that kind of proving-ground. Don’t go cold-turkey, kids. Just don’t. You don’t need that kind of stress in your life. ### **📈 20% effort; 80% results 📈** It’s the mantra I’ve adopted over the past few weeks: **focus on the activities that are 20% of the effort and bring 80% of the results.** Not necessarily from a marketing perspective, but for my own personal productivity. I found myself constantly asking the questions “Is this important? Or is this urgent? And should I be doing it?” towards the last quarter of the year. The reality is that a good portion of the work I do isn’t remarkably improved by me specifically doing it. Perfect example: building a landing page. Can you *really* tell the difference between a landing page I build myself or one I’ve taught my assistant to create? No. Not really. There’s a long list of activities that I don’t inherently contribute value to. Building contracts, landing pages, website pages, writing blog posts, entering content into WordPress or some other CMS, building graphics, re-sizing images, etc. are all things I probably shouldn’t be spending my time on. My true value manifests during the go-to-market strategy work, customer development, and defining and setting up the marketing department. And then, of course, running that engine. So now, every activity that ends up on my plate goes through the following checklist: 1. **Is it urgent?** Sudden, pressing matters; interruptions, etc 2. **Is it important?** Generates a desired outcome, results, and/or revenue 3. **Do I actively provide value by doing it?** The work relies on my deep expertise and knowledge; isn’t easily transferable or trainable This helps me stay more in line with making sure my time goes towards the activities that produce the results with as little of my own time as possible. Depending on the answers to those questions, I’ll either delegate it, or make a plan to do it myself. ### **✊🏾 Just f\*cking believe in yourself. ✊🏾** Kick fear to the curb — where it *belongs*. Fear, imposter syndrome, and anxiety were my close friends at the beginning of the year. By the end of 2018, I lost all of their numbers, blocked them on social, reported them, and had my lawyer send a do not contact and a cease and desist. Some fear and anxiety are perfectly healthy. Keeps you on your toes. **But the fear that prevents you from exploring new opportunities, doing great work, or pursuing relationships just isn’t welcome.** At all. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/break-you.gif) I learned that you must shake fear. And if you can’t shake it, at least put it to work. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/website-previews-13.png) ## Theme of 2019: Balance I’m tempted to say the theme of 2019 is going to be growth, but that’s only the half-truth. It really needs to be about *balance*. I met my revenue goal for DemandMaven in my first year, but it definitely wasn’t 6-figures. I spent the first half of the year understanding my business and figuring out what I could offer that would produce results for clients, and the second half of the year executing on that new vision. (In fact, I just ran the numbers and I only charged my full rate the last quarter of 2018 — which means there’s a lot of revenue to be generated next year.) **For 2019, I’ll continue to execute that vision, but I’ll be introducing a concept that will allow me to accomplish all of my non-career goals: balance.** When I say balance, I mean the things in life that make it complete and whole. I need to make business investments that allow me to take vacation without everything coming to a full-stop. I need to build a business that enables me to enjoy exercise again, meditate regularly, and work no more than 40 hours a week. Remember hobbies? Remember hiking and playing the uke and open mics and hosting dinner parties? There’s also personal relationships with friends and family I want to make sure I can make time for. From a business perspective, this means freeing up more of my time. Cultivating a shortlist of contractors and other consultants who can take on the tasks I don’t need to be doing. (Side note: if you’re a freelancer who works with consultancies like mine, [please @ me](http://twitter.com/asiamatos).) I’d also love to focus on products and even more niche services that can scale my efforts. I have wild dreams of writing books that motivate founders and marketers alike. I dream of designing and building courses for founders that teach them what they need to know about marketing to either execute themselves or hire amazing talent. Some of these dreams have actually taken root and are coming down the pike next year (no spoilers, tho). Stay tuned on that, because it’s coming. 😉 **And then, of course, there’s revenue** — crossing the 6-figure mark in 2019 is 1000% achievable for my business. It’s going to require: - Focus - Excellent project management - Personal work-life balance - Delegation - Community **Did I mention I’m completely booked through April 2019?** I’m mf’ing *booked* through April 2019 and I’ve been booked since November 2018. And yes — there’s a queue forming which is something I need to figure out how my business can reasonably manage without sacrificing the quality and high standards I hold myself and others to. Kind of blows my mind that this even happened, and I consider myself extremely lucky. All said, I know what’s ahead of me. I can see it pretty clearly — but I’ll need to focus and remain as balanced as possible to prevent burn out and keep me executing in healthy non-workaholic way (because ya’ girl can definitely workaholic to a fault). Thank you so much for reading! I’m looking forward to next year, and I hope you are too! *So, uh, will you join me then?* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/queen.gif) **Categories:** Marketing --- ### [How to determine the profitability of your small business](https://demandmaven.io/determine-small-business-profitability/) **Published:** February 26, 2019 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** *Editor’s Note: this is for all of my consultants, freelancers, and solopreneurs out there, but my startup family might find this useful as well. Enjoy!* **Categories:** Business, Marketing --- ### [The Most Frequently-Given Advice to Early-Stage SaaS Founders](https://demandmaven.io/advice-for-early-stage-saas-founders/) **Published:** July 19, 2019 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** A few weeks ago, I had the amazing opportunity to give a webinar to the audience of a very well-known subscription metrics SaaS company. Hundreds of founders signed up for my webinar, and it seemed like that many actually attended. At the end of the presentation, I offered a completely-free 1-hour marketing strategy call where I chat with the founder(s) about their go-to-market and marketing strategy, answer their burning questions, poke holes in what they’re currently doing, and prioritize their activities moving forward. I was blown away by the 20 booked sessions that immediately filled up my calendar. **This, however, is where I f\*cked up.** I definitely forgot to block out my calendar for working session times, and what resulted was two solid weeks of nearly back-to-back meetings. On top of that, I still had client work to do, and it wasn’t exactly easy-peasy dust-your-hands-off kind of work. I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life than in those two weeks, but what resulted was an incredible flurry of connections, marketing wisdom, and overall encouragement to my fellow founder friends. **For context, the majority of the SaaS companies were:** - Bootstrapped - B2B - Less than $20K MRR Very few were B2C, funded, or more than $20K MRR (I think I talked to two funded companies, two B2C companies, and four $20K+ MRR companies). Some were a couple years into the business, others were 5+ years in the business. Definitely varied in terms of longevity. These were perhaps the biggest takeaways, themes, and downright myths I either heard, said, or debunked. ## Too many segments and not enough focus It was the toughest love I had to give, but most founders were too scattered across too many different segments, and I would have been remiss if I didn’t say something about it. Let me take a step back first, though. Whenever I ask founders who their best-fit customers are, most will immediately jump into describing the market as whole. *“We’re going after small business owners.”* *“We’re going after agencies.”* *“We’re attracting anyone who needs to import data directly from Product 1 into Product 2.”* Defining a market is the easiest step. It’s where everyone starts. If you build a product to a solve a pain, you (typically) have a general understanding of the space and what’s out there. But once you scratch the surface on the market, it gets overwhelming really fast and you start feeling like you need to be everything to everyone. **This is where most founders get in trouble. They don’t get specific enough when defining the segments and audiences they need to tackle.** I typically suggest thinking about “market” as if it were an amusement park. Pretend you’re in Disney World or Universal Studios. You buy your ticket, go to Disney World, and thus “entered” the market. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/65BVyV07JLRYp206Sl/giphy.gif) Disney World has many different parks, however. And each one of those parks has its own ecosystem and microcosm of people, attractions, activities, stores, food, and so much more. **Every single one of those parks and microcosms is a “segment”, and when you drill-down into the people who attend those parts of the park, you’re going to find certain “personas”.** You’ll find the “double-income no-kids” couples at Epcot tasting the different imported wines and beer. You’ll find the princess-aficionados in their princess dresses and their weary, stroller-pushing parents in the Magic Kingdom. You’ll find the nostalgic millennials and Gen X’ers at Hollywood Studios in the Star Wars portion of the park or in line for the Tower of Terror ride. You get the idea. Bringing it back to the founders, I found **most of them were trying to be in too many parks at once**. And not focusing on just one park for one audience. Most of the companies I talked to didn’t have any one specific segment they were focused on. They knew their market, but not necessarily the segments and personas they needed to attract. And if they did, they were still spread too thin across those segments. Could you imagine trying to make friends with all of the dozens of personas across all of the major parks at Disney World at once? Could you imagine that being successful or energizing? *Or*, instead, could you imagine focusing on one section of one park and making as much of an impact there as possible? If you’re bootstrapped, you typically don’t have the luxury of free time or dozens of resources. It’s likely just you, or you and maybe two other people. You’re not going to make a dent in the market as a whole if you’re spreading yourself too thin. Especially when compared to the well-funded, highly competitive alternatives. And if you are very well-funded and have the resources, you’re typically up against time — proving the need for more funds in the future and giving confidence to your VCs. In well-funded VC world, it’s about making as much impact as possible as fast as possible. **This is why I’ll always recommend focus and specificity over broad-strokes.** Pick just one segment — and get *extra* specific. Violently, and aggressively specific. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/Y4vfxiMcB6neuEvFye/giphy.gif) “We’re going after small business owners” quickly becomes “We’re going after independent yoga studios and teachers in California and New York” when you’re focused on a segment. Then, reverse-engineer the channels and watering holes you need to be in for that specific segment. Boom! Infinitely more clarity and focus than before. Just remember this: every single segment is going to have its own channels, influencers, watering holes, and places you’ll need to be. So focus on one in the beginning. You can always expand with the right resources later. ## Content without a hint of pain or intent *“What content should we be creating?”* *“We’ve brought on a content writer, but we’re not seeing any results.”* *“We’re considering hiring a writer to produce some content, but we’re not sure where to start.”* *“I’m the only one in my company. I know I should be blogging, but I don’t have the time.”* Ah — content marketing. So easy to do, and so easy to totally suck at. Every founder I talked to was experiencing some form of frustration about their content marketing strategy. Either they felt they weren’t producing enough, or they weren’t confident it was working at all for them. **For everyone who felt their content was a struggle-bus, I had the same feedback:** 1. The content isn’t solving anyone’s pain (and it needs to) 2. It’s not focused enough on the bottom of the funnel (BOFU) 3. I can’t make a direct connection between their users, their product, and the pain they’re solving in the content (which means if I can’t, their prospects definitely can’t) Part of this is due to time constraints and (shocker) not having enough focus on a segment. So the founder (and/or the team) ends up creating really high-level content that does great for driving top-of-the-funnel, high-level traffic, and literally zero “OMG you’re exactly what I’m looking for and you’re clearly going to fix my problem” traffic. **When content is more on the BOFU side, it’s going to blend the pain your product solves with the persona who needs to be reading it**. It will speak specifically to them, their problems, and hopefully fix something for them. Benji and Devesh of [Grow and Convert](http://growandconvert.com) talk about this quite a bit with their articles on “[pain-point SEO](https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/pain-point-seo-increase-sales-cupandleaf/)” and intent-driven content. For example, let’s say we’re a really [sleek, lightweight test case management solution](http://ontestpad.com). We want to attract QA testers and/or their bosses (either QA managers or tech leads) in software companies in the United States. We’re not going to waste our time with creating content that tackles topics like “what is QA testing”. Way too high-level, and the person reading that article probably isn’t a fit. Instead, we’re more likely to create content that directly ties to our product and speaks to the pain the persona likely has. “How to create exploratory test plans in 5 minutes” or “Exploratory test plan templates” or “Manual testing best practices for non-QA testers” or “Competitor A vs Competitor B”. In those examples, we can show off the product and show people what they can do inside the actual platform while still teaching them about what they wanted to know. It’s important to really think about where in the awareness cycle your content falls, because if it’s too high-level, you’re going to have to work harder to move people along the awareness cycle before it really clicks to them what your product does. ## “The first line of defense is your website” I think I said this pretty much every single call I had, but it’s worth re-stating again. **The first line of defense is your website.** Your prospects and customers have literally nothing else to go on except your brand name and the pages on your site. If they’re really savvy, they’re looking for reviews about you on other sites. The website is really all you have, and if it’s not working extremely hard for you, then you’re leaving money on the table. We’re in a crowded space when it comes to technology, and even if you have a really super niche product, you still need to: - describe your exact features, - how they help your super niche people, and - what the process of working with your product looks like **Your prospects need to be able to see themselves in your website**, and more importantly, they need to know “Why should I choose you over the others?” And if they can’t figure it out, they’re going to close the tab, swipe left, and hard pass. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/l0ErBz1hFbqcOhYJi/giphy.gif) I recommended building these same types of pages over and over again (complete with product images — not graphics): - A tried and true, deep-dive “[How It Works](https://www.cypress.io/how-it-works)” page. Not just a “[Features](https://www.cypress.io/features/)” page, but the process to solving a pain or achieving the most important outcome with your product - Vertical / Persona-based pages (think “For Accountants and CPAs” or “For SaaS Marketers” or “[For CRE Brokerages](https://commissiontrac.com/medium-brokerages/)”) - Competitive pages — “Pepsi Alternatives” or “Pepsi vs Coca-Cola” or “[Lexicata vs ClientRock](https://clientrock.com/compare/lexicata-alternative)“ - Case studies of the exact segment they’re trying to attract (check out the folks at [Case Study Buddy](http://casestudybuddy.com) for pointers on writing case studies) Why? Because apart from a few hours of your time and hopefully the help of an [amazing conversion copywriter](http://punchlinecopy.com), those pages will pay for themselves ten-fold. Your website conversion rates will increase, and the quality of your trials will dramatically improve. I wasn’t at all surprised by how lean the websites were (they often are — especially if it’s just you in the driver’s seat). The bigger surprise was the reaction I got after telling the founders their sites were too lean. Most were blown away. *“Really? There’s not enough here?”* Others felt confirmed. *“I knew it. I knew there wasn’t enough here.”* The array of reactions alone was pretty fascinating. ## Get **👏** subscription **👏** metrics *Stop* trying to cobble everything together in a Google Sheet. If you’re trying to get to your first $10K MRR and you’re still hacking and cobbling together the performance of your SaaS business, you’re actively shooting yourself in the foot and robbing yourself blind at the same time. As you grow, which you will, it will become virtually impossible for you to run any reports and figure out what parts of the business need work. On top of that, you’ll have literally no idea which customers, cohorts, and segments are most profitable. **You simply cannot improve what you cannot measure.** I’m begging you to tackle your [subscription metrics](http://baremetrics.com) and business measurement challenges now while it’s a smaller volume and manageable. Trust me — you’re not going to want to fast-forward to the future and tackle it then because it’s now a barrier between you and more growth. Which if you let it, it will become exactly that. No marketer or growth person will be able to help you without good data. Just like you can have technical debt, you *can* have “analytics debt”, too. ## B2B and B2C are virtually the same when you’re less than $10K-$25K MRR The most common question and concern I heard was: “We’re B2C. Is this \[ presentation you gave to us \] going to help if we’re focused on consumers?” Short answer: yes. Absolutely yes. In fact, I’d argue the approach and journey in the early days are extremely similar if not pretty much the same. This is an unpopular and probably wrong opinion, but marketing, in my experience, isn’t remarkably different in either B2B or B2C when you’re less than $10K MRR. And perhaps even up to $50K MRR depending on the situation. You’re still going to have to go through the customer development process, and worry about activation and getting prospects to the “aha” moment. You’re still going to have to do the work of figuring out the right channels and marketing activities to acquire and keep people. **The tactics and channels might be different, but the struggles are still the same.** Not enough people in the funnel, not high enough activation rates, too much churn, etc. Biggest difference I’ve seen is the rate of growth — it’s arguably faster than B2B in most respects, but thinking about go-to-market for both SaaS scenarios is still pretty dang similar. The second has more to do with data. I find B2C SaaS companies end up having to invest in data platforms like Segment and Hull a lot earlier than their B2B counterparts. The third difference actually has more to do with brand and branding — being B2C likely means you’re going to invest in design and UX a lot earlier, too. It helps everyone when brand is point, but when you’re B2C, it’s often a huge game-changer. Overall though, marketing doesn’t morph into some new, unknown Pokemon that’s unrecognizable when you’re B2C or B2B in the early days. It’s still just marketing. (But that could also just be me.) 😉 ## Not a single SaaS had awful KPIs or “holy dang close your business” stats I mean it. Activation rates were healthy. Churn was within reason and overall improving. Some had amazing retention. Some had higher churn, but they were year 1 in the business and totally understandable. **Overall, I was impressed.** ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/11wZ6BOOdPufM4/giphy.gif) Not a single company had me concerned about them. **The only thing that I advised quite a bit on was (shocker) acquisition**. Net new signups were mostly stagnant for many, and adding new customers seemed to be stagnant as well. Part of this was due to either not focusing enough on one particular segment to move the needle, or never doing anything marketing-related at all. Either way, was still very impressed by everyone I talked to. More than anything, they just didn’t know where to start with marketing ([which is exactly how I can help](https://demandmaven.io/services/)). ## Every founder felt they were behind or underperforming I wanted to make sure to include this because it’s so indicative of the tech culture we’re in and the mindset most founders have. Every single founder I talked to either apologized for not knowing enough about marketing, their current status in their journey, or joked that most other founders I knew were probably way further ahead than them. Every founder beat themselves up about their current status in the market. Both funded and bootstrapped, B2C and B2B, and all genders. Now, to be fair, it’s kinda my job to poke holes in things. I’m there to find the gaps, missing pieces, and distractions. The disclaimers I heard were likely there to mentally and emotionally prepare the founder(s) for whatever critiques I had for them. Psychologically, however, when it’s just you in the biz, it often feels one and the same. **It was still both shocking and notable how much these founders internalized the progress of their product.** The product’s success (or lack thereof) became the identity of the founder, and for many, their self-worth lived in the perceived success of the product. And not gonna lie — it kinda pissed me off. On the one hand, I respect feeling the pressure of being “behind” the curve. It gets you off your ass and doing something about it. And on the other hand, I know it’s this exact mentality that can be equally toxic and results in some pretty wild limiting beliefs about yourself. I love the startup and SaaS world. I love the pressure of making things grow. But I will never again equate my self-worth to the success of any business. Believe me — I’ve been there, done that, and thankfully came out on the better end of that road. When I started DemandMaven, I promised myself I wouldn’t equate its success to my own self-worth. And no — you shouldn’t equate your self-worth to the success of your business either. Remember to maintain a certain level of separation: mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. You’ll be happier for it in the long-run. **Be kind(er) to yourself, founder. Seriously.** You’re never behind as long as you’re taking steps forward. *Bonus gif:* ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/iF0eiHvusBHWM/giphy.gif) **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Year in Review 2019](https://demandmaven.io/year-in-review-2019/) **Published:** January 10, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/yearinreview2019-23-1024x393.png) ## Theme of 2019: Balance Not gonna lie, I’m a little early to be writing this. It’s technically October right now, and for whatever reason, I’m reflecting hard on the year so far. Maybe it’s because my birthday is coming up soon. Maybe it’s because it’s Fall and I’m feeling the n o s t a l g i a. But according to Alex Hillman on Twitter, there are no rules. Last year’s theme was Fearlessness, but this year was all about Balance. At first, I was constantly battling fear and the dreaded imposter syndrome. Coming into 2019, I wanted to focus more on bringing calm and balance back into my life. (The kind that allowed me to embody my best self.) I wanted to go back to the hobbies and life practices that kept me healthy, happy, and sane. That included meditation, working out, eating well, and just generally loving life. I also wanted to trick myself into doing the things that brought joy to my life. I gave myself a PTO policy — one that I’m incentivized to take. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/yearinreview2019-26-1024x393.png) ## Major 2019 Wins It’s tough to pick the best wins for the year. I felt like there were so many — on both macro and micro levels. ### **📈 (Finally) Joined the six-figure club 📈** I’m still super proud of the growth from the year. Sailing over the six-figure mark definitely put things into a lot of perspective: - There’s definitely a need for what I’m doing - Holy sh\*t, I gotta do it all over again next year (and somehow still grow maybe?) We also 2x’d in growth from last year, and the profitability of the business tripled. Part of this was staying lean as a solopreneur and keeping overhead low, but also raising project rates. Pretty easy profit combo to replicate. I also consistently stayed booked with projects throughout the year. Still a huge win. ### **💸 Gave myself a well-deserved raise 💸** As a founder, it’s so easy to just not pay yourself. It took a lot of mental-hacking and meditation to be calm enough to even consider giving myself a reasonable salary. After I was in a place where it made sense (and I didn’t freak out), it actually breathed a new life into my business. It turns out that feeling secure is just as important as doing great work and building a profitable business. It makes me wonder how my performance might have changed if I was paying myself the salary I’m paying now. 🤔 ### **👩🏾‍💻 Tech stack on fleek 👩🏾‍💻** Not calling myself an operational genius or anything, but I can manage my projects with my eyes closed and run my business with a lot of confidence. I know where all the money’s going, where it’s coming from, and complete automation on booking meetings. - For my biz: Freshbooks, Xero, Gusto, Acuity, Superhuman - For my clients: Ahrefs, Adobe Creative Cloud, Lucid Chart ### **🎉 Bomb-ass case study: Motivo 🎉** One of my proudest moments of the year was helping my client Motivo reach their very first 3X in MRR, and then watching them continue to 10X throughout the rest of the year. The growth has been incredible to see, and I’m so honored to have been a part of their story. > I've raved about them before, but this time around, I get to tell a different story: how we tripled @wearemotivo's MRR, doubled traffic, proved a CPL, and built a scalable plan for growth in 4 months. > > Here's the full DemandMaven case study: > > — Asia Orangio ✨ (@AsiaOrangio) [June 26, 2019](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio/status/1143868775432957952?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) I wrote and published a case study earlier in the year about how I helped support the first big shift in growth (3X in 4 months) and how I helped them land a killer marketing executive who brought them the next 10X. They also just closed their first round of funding. There’s definitely much to celebrate. Kudos to them! 🎉 > We're excited to announce that we've made an important step toward our goal of revolutionizing clinical supervision! We've just raised $2.2 million of seed financing, and we can't wait to see where it takes us from here! > > — Motivo Health (@motivohealth) [December 13, 2019](https://x.com/motivohealth/status/1205563298722275333?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ### **⚡ Worked with some amazing companies ⚡** Motivo wasn’t the only SaaS company I had the privilege of working with. Pretty much all year long, I got to work alongside some incredible and inspiring founders. And the problems they’re tackling are both fascinating and real, clear pains. Everything from helping CRE brokerage owners make better business decisions through back office automation to helping scaling teams solve workflow problems through automation. Simplifying the QA test planning process and helping sales teams become a 1-call-close company instead of a 5-call-close company. I can’t wait to tell some of these growth stories, too. ### **👩🏾‍🏫 Advising game strong 👩🏾‍🏫** 2019 seemed to be the year where I was asked to do a lot of advising. It seems there’s a clear need for structured advisement and just straight-up offering expertise and past experiences. I had the pleasure of advising founders from TinySeed, Atlanta Tech Village, GrowthMentor, and more. I’ve learned so much from this experience, too. I’ve had a lot practice with teaching founders how to think about specific acquisition or marketing problems, troubleshooting them, and then crafting the plan for how to move forward. ### **🙊 I did a marketing 🙈** I did quite a lot of speaking this year! Whether it was on stage or a webinar, my voice was out there this year. Here’s some highlights: - Baremetrics webinar - [Microconf Starter](https://microconf.com/starter) - Startup School - SimplySaaS - It Takes a Village - [GrowthMentor Summit](https://summit.growthmentor.com/) The same for podcasts — all of which were a ton of fun to do. I upgraded my whole life with a very fancy RODE microphone. I’m pretty proud, too, of everything I discussed this year: - [GrowthTLDR](https://www.kieranflanagan.io/podcast/the-influencer-strategy-asia-matos-uses-to-help-startups-grow/) - Insider Insights with Customer Intelligence - Relay by Chargebee - [Everybody Hates Marketers](https://www.everyonehatesmarketers.com/go-to-market/) - [UI Breakfast](https://uibreakfast.com/153-your-first-100-customers-with-asia-matos/) - [Rogue Startups](https://roguestartups.com/rs198-marketing-201-with-asia-matos/) ### **🍎 Invested in more education and skills ✏️** Last year was such a big year for me in education, so it seemed fitting to scale my knowledge again this year: - [Mojca Mars’ Science of Facebook Ads](https://www.thescienceoffacebookads.com/) - [ConversionXL](http://conversionxl.com/) (monthly) - Don’t snooze on Val Geisler or Ramli John’s courses! - [LTV Conf 2019](https://ltvconf.com/) – New York - [Business of Software Conference 2019](https://businessofsoftware.org/) – Boston - [Product-Led Growth Summit](https://summit.productled.com/) by Product-Led Institute and Appcues - [Product-Led Growth](https://www.amazon.com/Product-Led-Growth-Build-Product-Itself-ebook/dp/B07P6288ZF) by Wes Bush - [Obviously Awesome](https://www.amazon.com/Obviously-Awesome-Product-Positioning-Customers/dp/1999023005) by April Dunford - [Start Finishing](https://www.amazon.com/Start-Finishing-How-Idea-Done-ebook/dp/B07SL9YNGD/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2Z6XYNQT4A25H&keywords=start+finishing&qid=1578508297&s=books&sprefix=start+finishing%2Cstripbooks%2C149&sr=1-1) by Charlie Gilkey - Amy Landino’s [Vlog Like a Boss](https://www.vlogbossuniversity.com/) - [Company of One](https://ofone.co/) by Paul Jarvis - [Great Client Partner](https://www.amazon.com/Great-Client-Partner-Currency-Relationships/dp/1544500920) by jared Belsky ### **✊🏾 Brought on the most amazing business coach ✊🏾** Sometime around the end of summer, I kind of hit a very clear wall: I knew enough to know that something was missing from my business, but I didn’t have enough experience running my business to know exactly how to fix it. It’s tough to explain, but while I know how to build a SaaS business, I don’t really know a ton about how to build a services business. The margins for error and risks are extremely different, and the ebb-and-flow nature of a services business wasn’t something I could effectively wrap my head around. It was time I brought on a business coach, and I’ve gotta say — holy f\*ck what a life-changer. This wasn’t just a business-changer; bringing on this business coach has honestly changed my life. I consider this a huge win, and I’m excited to show everyone everything we’ve been working on. ### **🏆 I won an award??? 🏆** *Skkrrttt*. Say what? > Am I proud? Insanely. But I know for a fact that I wouldn’t even have this award if it weren’t for my incredible clients. This one goes out to my founders, too. You grind, you hustle, and when you win, I win. ✌️🙏 [pic.twitter.com/9ua22CVU2V](https://t.co/9ua22CVU2V) > > — Asia Orangio ✨ (@AsiaOrangio) [December 10, 2019](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio/status/1204213151300030464?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) Yeah. I won TAG’s Up & Coming Marketer of the Year Award for 2019. 💁🏾‍♀️ Was I expecting it? Absolutely not. Am I thrilled and honored and grateful? I mean f\*ck yeah. It was amazing! Special shoutout and a HUGE thank you to Lauren Patrick — head of marketing at Motivo who nominated me for the award and helped me tell me the DemandMaven story. ### **👰🏾 I got married 💍** *Technically*…. Technically, my last name is Orangio, now. 😉 “Matos” is just a middle name these days. But I think it still works. Kind of like how some people go by their first and middle name — like “Kelly Anne” or “Jessie Lynn” or pretty much any other chick in the South. Alright I’ll stop. Here’s some cute photos. **Main takeaway: I married my most favorite person on this planet.** > Project "Marry My Best Friend" was a resounding success (AND the weather behaved). ❤️🔔🎉🎊 Thanks so much for all of your love and support! [pic.twitter.com/RlosB6W2qJ](https://t.co/RlosB6W2qJ) > > — Asia Orangio ✨ (@AsiaOrangio) [March 11, 2019](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio/status/1105103765131145219?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/yearinreview2019-27-1024x393.png) ## Challenges of 2019 Because businesses and consultants have challenges too, right? ### **😑 Depression & burnout (womp, womp) 😑** I’mma keep it real with you. I hit a deep depression in the middle of the summer. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/8erqnrk0fCNNu/giphy.gif) It all started when I took on a client project that didn’t go as well as I had originally hoped. They were far too early for my help, and I should have recognized the red flags when it became clear they weren’t as far along in the go-to-market process as I had thought. That combined with not managing my energy very well and the project dragging on for longer than it should have left me feeling both like a failure and a shell of a person. An empty, energy-less husk of a marketer without original ideas or big-abundance-energy. It was hard to get out of bed most mornings during the summer. It wasn’t until the autumn months that life breathed back into me and I started effortlessly flowing through all of my projects (and life) again. The *weirdest* part? **Running a consultancy can feel very isolating at times, because the people you talk to everyday aren’t exactly the people you can talk to about what’s going on personally.** My clients had no idea I was going through the #struggle, but that’s by design, right? ### **😴 Energy management 😴** Keeping my energy high at all times was definitely a challenge this year. In the beginning of the year, I took on meetings at any and all times of the day. I’d also take meetings on very short notice — sometimes as soon as the next day in advance. As you can guess, that severely impacted my productivity. Because I’m both a strategist and I actually execute a lot of the work for my clients, I’d be barely skimming the surface of good ‘ol fashioned deep work and just reacting to the next trigger — whether it was email, Slack, or a new meeting request within the next few hours. This was draining. *Extremely* draining. On top of that, my meetings were all over the place, and while it left enough time in the day to get the work done, it didn’t set me up for a very efficient workflow. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/wZD7RX1fHKsU7FckHH/giphy.gif) I cleared out my days on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and now I only hold meetings on Mondays/Thursday/Fridays — preferably in the afternoon. And there’s a minimum two-week grace period for meeting people who are not currently my clients. That might seem dramatic, but I run a low-overhead company so I can work with early-stage startups on purpose. Staying low-overhead means managing my time and my energy as if it were gold itself. This frees me up to get back to deep work, and do it as effectively as possible. The only exception to this rule are customer interviews (part of my process) which have complete free reign on my calendar. **To help further manage my energy, I also started:** - Weekly calendar-blocking and time-batching my daily activities - Weightlifting - Waking up at 5 AM - Implementing a morning routine and an evening routine - Sunday night work prep - “Chore” night on Wednesdays where my husband and I do our chores before the weekend - Daily journaling - Listening to EDM and lofi beats to study and relax to I (mostly) feel like a machine now, but in an effortless, flow kind of way. For the nutritionally curious, I’m currently playing around with intermittent fasting, fasted lifting/cardio, and changing up my macros to what my body really likes. ### **💭 The quest for the ideal project engagement 💭** If there’s one thing I’ve learned from consulting, it’s that everyone is always tweaking how they deliver their projects in search of the perfect engagement. There’s probably no such thing as the “perfect” way to deliver or engage in a project, but the idealist in me says there is. Right now, I think we’ve got a pretty good way to deliver projects and run them in a way that feels like you have a marketer on the team who is pushing you closer to your goals, but I did so much iteration over the year to get there. And I’m still making adjustments here and there. ### **🏃‍♀️ Quarterly client pacing 🏃‍♀️** I don’t think anything could have prepared me for how gangbusters late-winter, early-spring, and fall were going to be, and how sluggish the summer was for DemandMaven. **I’m learning that there’s a natural seasonality to the business, and that’s something that can likely be fixed by consistent marketing.** I’m also learning that the cycles of business are in fact directly related to the clients I take on, so if a project wraps up and I’m not prepared to replace that client, then that’s a pipeline problem. I made it out mostly unscathed, but next year will be far more intentional. ### **👋 Skilled resources 👐** Okay this one’s a tough one to talk about because it’s the classic “Just admit it! You’re an agency!” dilemma and also because I thoroughly appreciate the help that I do currently get… **…but as my business matures and we get more data points under our belts, it’s becoming pretty clear that we need more specialists we can tap for client projects.** Even when I was an in-house marketer, I still needed specialists to effectively cut through the noise and get their specialized task done — everything from technical SEO to landing page building to graphic design to copywriting to ads management. The biggest challenge is of course finding great people for a margin that makes sense for the business. Because if they’re really good, they’re charging what they’re worth. The need for content marketing strategy, content creation, and SEO strategy and planning was very real and are consequently the hardest roles to fill for clients. I’m already starting the process of finding these providers for 2020, but it was definitely a struggle in 2019. ### **🤦🏾‍♀️ Still no consistent content engine 🤦🏾‍♀️** This one hurts to write, but it’s true. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/uGw83JU7TW2ju/giphy.gif) About 99% of my clients come through inbound. That *might* be shocking for some of you to read — most would probably assume referrals — but that’s actually not the case! **For me, appearing on podcasts and speaking to audiences all over the world has done wonders for my business, but I know for a fact that generating a consistent stream of quality content would help diversify my acquisition channels.** (Because, well duh, I’m drinking my own demand gen champagne here.) 🥂 And like a good marketing consultant who drinks her own champagne, I can clearly see the greatest marketing weakness that my business has: consistent business-owned and founder-generated content marketing. **I need to be consistently creating content for DemandMaven.io, and 2020 is shaping up to be the year that I tackle that.** In fact, I’ve already got a head start with this blog post, and if you stick around a little longer, you’ll see what’s coming down the pike. 😉 ### **👀 Pipeline management and client onboarding 👀** *Oof*. Goodness this was painful. Managing a waitlist for DemandMaven was quite possibly the messiest thing I had to tackle this year. In many ways, it’s a good problem to have: there’s a lot of demand for what I have to offer, but obviously not enough supply. This means that unless you just caught me at the right time, it was very tough to actually get slotted in for an upcoming project. My project slots would easily book out 3 – 6 months in advance, and telling founders that I didn’t have any idea when something would open up was incredibly frustrating for both parties. I’d get upset that I couldn’t actually help them, and they’d feel disappointed about not getting started sooner (or joining the cohort at all). The operations culprit? **Open-ended, unstructured endless marketing retainers.** Earlier in the year, I made the decision to offer monthly recurring marketing retainers. After we do a strategic engagement, founders have the option to roll into a marketing retainer where we continue to work together to bring our strategic vision to life through execution and demand generation. The problem though was that they were invoiced on a recurring monthly basis (kind of like MRR). And that makes sense for a SaaS business, but was a nightmare for my services business. I would never know if or when a client wanted to wrap-up the project without awkwardly asking at the end of every single month. I also had no idea how to resource or staff around the retainer because if there’s no end in sight, how can we plan? **It became clear that not only was it impossible to manage a pipeline, but it was adding a lot more stress than it needed to.** As of last month, we’re back to running 3-month and 6-month projects with structured SOWs. Now I can actually plan ahead and give prospects clear answers around availability. I find it’s actually a lot better for the founders too. More structure actually gives us a lot more freedom, if that makes sense. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/yearinreview2019-25-1024x393.png) ## Lessons Learned There were definitely many lessons learned, but these in particular stood out to me. ### **🍵 Take care of your body 🙏🏾** It sounds so obvious, right? Just like.. work out a bunch and get enough sleep and drink water and eat enough food? Welp, ya’ girl definitely struggled through this pretty much the entire year. And it took me a century to actually connect the dots that when I take care of my health and my body feels good, then I perform better, I’m able to handle stress better, and I’m able to really think outside myself and get out of my head. Shocking, *breaking* news, I know. ![](https://media.giphy.com/media/3h5pe45FM9qUM/giphy.gif) I did eventually get it together towards the end of the year, and I gotta say, it feels amazing. I’m glad I did even if it took a while to get there. ### **📅 Routines set me free 📅** It took a lot of mental work to get to this point, but I learned as a solo-founder and solopreneur, I need routines. Through routine, there is freedom. The fewer decisions I have to make, the better my mental health and ability to deliver excellent work as a strategist. ### **💰 Charge what the work is worth 💰** The work that I do is designed to help founders bridge the gap between the marketing department they know they desperately need and what they can realistically afford. And the more hands-on experience that I get with SaaS companies of all shapes, funding situations, markets, and sizes, the stronger my ability to troubleshoot and see the future becomes. I’m no longer afraid to charge what that’s worth while still remaining competitive with the alternative: hiring an experienced full-time marketer, a digital agency, or doing nothing at all. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/yearinreview2019-24-1024x393.png) ## Theme of 2020: Build If you’re still with me, you might be wondering where DemandMaven is headed in the next year. **My mantra for 2020 is simple: Build.** There’s much that I need to build next year — not only because I want my business to grow, but because I also need to build an audience in order for that to happen. I also need to build the right types of engagements and project pacing that makes the growth process clear for me and achievable for my clients. I’ll also be tackling other parts of the business that I haven’t put my attention towards, but we’ll definitely start with: ### **✅ Consistent marketing ✅** 2020 is the year I continue to work with other brands and content providers on educating the masses, but that I also produce my own marketing on my own turf. This means really owning the mediums and channels I know I naturally excel at and building an audience through those channels. I’ve already got things cooking up and I’m excited to finally share them all. **But one thing remains certain: I need to be telling more of my own stories, sharing my wisdom, and documenting the observations, patterns, and advice I give on an hourly basis.** It’s become painfully clear to me that most founders are so severely lacking in the basic fundamentals of marketing, growth, and strategy that they end up cornering themselves into impossible situations. I kid you not when I say I’ve talked to founders who, due to a number of wrong turns, came to me with just 3 months to live in hopes that I or some other marketing consultant could turn the ship around. You can probably guess what happens next for those founders — they get deflated, frustrated, distracted by red herrings and “bright shiny objects”, and become so risk-averse that they lose their ability to really “see”. I don’t know \*everything\* about every SaaS or startup journey on the planet, but at least preventing these situations is where I can help. ### **🗣️ Speaking game on point 🔥** Speaking at conferences was both a challenge and a thrilling opportunity this year, but I gotta admit: ya girl needs some work. I’m learning that leading and hosting a workshop or a webinar is very different than actually speaking on stage, and that’s a skill I really want to master in 2020. **So I’m putting it out there to the universe: I want to speak more and really master this medium.** ### **💅🏾 Updated branding 💅🏾** I had a hilarious customer research interview a few months ago where the customer asked if I was over the age of 25. I laughed and said yes, and she flat out told me that my photo makes me look like I’m twelve. TALK ABOUT EMBARRASSING. At first I was like, “LOL THANKS, BOO” but then after thinking about it for a while, I realized she’s exactly right. My personal and business brand needs an update. Can I just say, though, that it’s also weird when you’re deeply proud of what you’ve achieved but know that you’re lacking the polish you need to attract the right opportunities? I’m definitely in that boat (at least, that’s how it *feels*). **I’ll be tackling the “brand” side of the house in 2020 and build something I’m super proud of. I’ll keep you updated on what that journey is like.** Thanks so much for reading, cheering me on, and being a part of this journey! Are we ready for the new decade? Because I am and I hope you’ll join me on this quest. **Categories:** Business --- ### [How to Identify Your Best Acquisition Channels](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-identify-your-best-acquisition-channels/) **Published:** February 6, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DROW (too long; didn’t read or watch) - **An acquisition channel is a place where you find your absolute best-paying customers, and there’s two ways to figure out which channels to spend your time in.** - **First way: Ask your customers.** - There really isn’t a substitute for getting real, live customers on the phone. You can send as many surveys as you want and cross your fingers and hope and pray they fill it out. But even if you did, **the number one problem with a survey is that you can’t clarify their answers**. You can’t call up the person who filled it out. There’s definitely a time and a place for a survey, but the early days are definitely not it. The second downside to sending a survey to answer this question is that if you’re B2B, their role in the buying process, their industry, their titles, all matter. - If you’re a B2B company, here’s what you’re going to ask them: When you want to learn more about your industry or doing your job better, where do you go? - If you’re a B2C company, you’re going to ask them a simpler version of the question: where do they spend their time – either offline or online? And you are going to get so many answers to this question - **Second way: Do your own research.** - Let’s say you have a really specific segment in mind. You’ve got the product, have some initial validation from a specific set of prospects, and now you want to figure out how to get more of these specific people. This is where Google becomes your best friend. - Figure out what books they’re reading, communities they’re hanging out in, conferences they go to, all by - If you’re B2C, the same process applies — where do these people spend their time? - **If you’re really early — like you have less than 10 customers early, then** **reality is you’re going to have to make a few guesses** **and validate those guesses through talking to prospects.** - Prospects are people who are not yet your customers, but they’re feeling the pain and it’s clear to them that your product solves that pain. - Now normally I would say “don’t guess — just know”, but in the very early days when you’re still validating and testing the market, you’re going to have to guess and operate on your own hunches. The best way to do that is through good ‘ol fashioned networking and asking for introductions to people who you think might have the pain. From there, you can start identifying potential customers and then start the acquisition process. ## Transcript What’s up, founders? And welcome to the very first hot take. In today’s video, we’re going to talk all about how to identify your absolute best acquisition channels. Now, before I get into the entire thing, first and foremost, let’s actually defined what acquisition channel means. All of that means is that it is a place where your absolute best prospects and customers hang out. There will be a separate hot take all about what kinds of channels are there and just the deep dive into what that actually can look like. But generally speaking, if it’s a place that you can reach your customers, it’s probably a channel. This can be online, this can be offline. There’s really a variety of different ways that you can acquire customers, but because there’s a variety, it leaves so many founders wondering, “Well, how do we actually pick the best ones?” There is two answers to this. There’s two approaches that we’re going to get into. First and foremost is to actually ask your customers. Now, you have heard me say this a billion times, but it bears repeating because that’s really one of the easiest, fastest, best ways to actually figure out where your customers hang out. It’s really to talk to them. Now, there really isn’t a substitute for actually getting your customers on the phone or in person and really talking to them to understand where do they spend their time, what are some of the watering holes that they frequently visit? And what are also some places that they really trust when it comes to their role, their industry, their vertical, et cetera. Now a lot of you might be thinking, “Oh, well, I could probably just send out a survey and get the same exact information.” And I’m going to say not exactly. See one thing about surveys is that you can send out a survey and in the early days sending out surveys is kind of risky because you can’t necessarily call up the person who filled out the survey and ask them deeper questions about what they said or why they said it or trying to get more information about like, “Well, what do you mean that you listen to podcasts? Well, what podcasts?” With a live conversation, you can actually do that. That’s why I always say if you’re going to try to figure out what those acquisition channels are and you’re talking to the customer, it’s better to actually do it live. You’re just going to get way better information. If you hear a vague answer, you’re going to be able to come back to that point or actually ask better questions to unpack exactly what your customer meant when they said a specific channel but you just want to clarify to make sure. This is so important and it’s really, really, really tough to do a survey and get the same kind of information. Now, don’t get me wrong, there’s a time and a place for surveys. I think that they’re excellent tools, but in the early days when you’re trying to figure out where customers hang out, you want the freedom of being able to actually talk to them. In terms of how do you figure that out, there will be also another hot take that discusses the entire customer research process and exactly what questions. But one of the best questions I like to ask to figure that out and to get more information is when, and this is what you would ask the customer, “When you want to learn more about your industry or your vertical, where do you go?” And say nothing else after that question, and you’re going to hear all kinds of answers and it’s going to be mind blowing. And if you get a vague answer, you can unpack it and you can get the deeper juicy or details about exactly what those channels are. If you’re B2C, you’re likely not going to ask anything related to a vertical or industry, but if you’re B2C, you’d probably ask a similar version, which is, “Where do you spend your time either online or offline?” And again, you’re going to get all kinds of different answers, whether that’s social media, whether that’s family, community kind of related things. It really runs the gamut about what you might hear. But first step is, or at least the first way to figure out the best acquisition channels, is really just to talk to your customers. There’s honestly no substitution for this. You have to pick up the phone, you have to book the meeting, make the call, and just talk to them. The second way, and this is if you’re not necessarily able to do a ton of customer or prospect interviews quite yet, but you still need to be able to do the research. So one to also approach this, and you can actually combine this with just directly talking to your customers, but to actually do your own research outside of maybe your customers and prospects. This is where Google becomes your best friend. There’s a number of ways that you can approach this, but if you think about just where someone might be hanging out in your target audience or in your target market, there’s probably a few places that automatically come to mind. And what’s really cool about doing your own research is that if you have a general understanding of what books they’re reading or podcasts or listening to or blogs they’re reading, or maybe offline so maybe associations or conferences that they’re going to, you can actually do research on those things to see if you can find even more related items or more related channels or just watering holes or sources of information that therefore attracts people. So by doing your own research, you can of course come back to the drawing board with … and you can combine this with your own customer research of the actual interviews and you can kind of **see what aligns, what sticks, what matches**. And also see what’s different, what are some of the outliers in terms of the channels or the places that you’re finding. I find that actually doing both is really the absolute best way. If you are really early in your journey, this does get a little bit harder. And what I mean early in your journey, I mean the first, let’s say you’ve got less than 10 customers, let’s say you were still in beta and you’re still kind of figuring out who was the absolute best segment to go after, who was the absolute best customer type? If you’re still kind of in that journey, then in terms of finding out the best acquisition channels you’re really looking at where do you think your best prospects are going to be? And a lot of that, not going to lie, is going to be through operating off of guesses, hunches, and just your own interviews and just discussions with prospects. Prospect meaning they’re not your customer yet, but they might be one day. So if you’re in that boat and you don’t really have a whole lot of paying customers at all, but you do have a general sense of maybe who could be a customer, those are probably prospects and you can get prospects on the phone too. You can just offer to say like, “Hey, I’d just love to talk, to chat with you more about your role or what it is that you’re doing.” And then of course, where the hangout. So that is one way that you can approach that. And then of course you might just intuitively know through experience like, “Hey, I know that brokers like to hang out in these specific associations because that’s my background and that’s what I know.” Those are all channels to start, but you really aren’t going to know what the best channel is going to be until you either start validating that and actually getting paying customers. And then of course doubling it back with when you do get customers really understanding where those people hang out. It is definitely a two way street and it’s a process that goes on and on and on. As you get new customer segments, your acquisition channels will 100% change. Excuse me. Like I said, when you get new customers and you start entering into different parts of the market, your channels will change. So keep that in mind. But overall, I really hope that this helped. Thank you so much for watching. I hoped that you learned something. If you want to make sure that you keep getting me as hot takes, don’t forget to subscribe below. My name is Asia from DemandMaven, where we help early stage founders get to their very first growth milestones. Thank you so much for watching. Bye. **Categories:** Hot Takes 🔥, Marketing --- ### [How to Approach Your Customer Research](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-approach-your-customer-research/) **Published:** February 13, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DROW (too long; didn’t read or watch) - **What questions do you ask?** - This completely depends on your goal. What are you trying to accomplish with this set of research? - Because the questions we ask are going to be directly correlated to what we want to learn. - Possible goals could be: - Acquisition — do you want to uncover acquisition channels and figure out where your customer hangs out? - Activation — Do you want to understand the exact buying process that your customer went through before deciding on your product? Do you also want to unpack maybe some of the hang-ups they had with your product? - Retention — why did they churn? What would they replace you with? - **Get really good at asking your questions as succinctly as possible and then not saying a peep after.** - As humans, we naturally avoid anything that feels uncomfortable, so when we ask questions, we want to give our customer a leg up by adding in extra qualifiers and almost feeding them answers before they actually answer the question. When you try to qualify your question with extra words, you allow your customer to get lazy and not think for themselves. One of the questions that I ask is “When you want to learn more about your industry, where do you go?” and then I pause…. and say nothing else. Sometimes I’ll get a reply back because they want to qualify their answer, but I just ask it and see where it goes. You’ll be amazed at the responses you get when you let the customer really think about their answer. - **Don’t be afraid to unpack vague answers.** - Customers aren’t going to know something is vague, and if it’s your first time doing customer interviews, you’re not going to have any idea either until you’ve done a few. - But if you hear a vague response like “Yeah I like to listen to podcasts”, don’t be afraid to ask them *which* podcasts. Or if you hear “I’m responsible for all of the office stuff”, don’t be afraid to dig deeper into what office stuff. The devil is in the details, and by asking customers to clarify their answers, you’ll discover hidden tidbits you didn’t know before. - **Do not incentivize your customer research.** - When customers are incentivized either through a free month or gift card, you end up wasting time on people who aren’t actually emotionally invested in the product and they’re emotionally invested in getting the freebie. So if you can help it, avoid it entirely. I promise you you’ll get better feedback by talking to people who are actually taking time out of their day to chat with you. - If you want to throw them a little something afterwards, go for it! Just make sure they have no idea until after the interview is done. - **Example questions.** - Please describe your role. - When you want to learn more about your industry, where do you go? - For the B2C folks, where do you spend your time? Online? Offline? - What was the first thing you wanted to accomplish when you logged in? ## Transcript What’s up founders. Welcome back to another Hot Take. In today’s episode we are going to… Whoa episode, video. I meant video. In today’s video we’re going to be talking all about how should you approach your customer research, and one of the hands down most popular questions that I get ever. There’s really just four very specific things that I would recommend. The first thing is, and this is also a very common question that I get, but what questions should you be asking? I’m actually going to reverse engineer that one and say, have a goal in mind for your customer research. The questions that you ask during your customer interview are going to be directly correlated to what you actually want to accomplish in your interview. What do you want to accomplish with your research initiative? Are you trying to troubleshoot activation problems? Are you trying to understand where your customers hang out? Is it really focused on acquisition? Are you trying to figure out why do people churn? Maybe they are customers who have churned and now they are really cancellations and you’re trying to unpack, well, what happened? Where did we go wrong? What was going on? There’s all kinds of different ways that you can approach your customer research, but hands down the best advice that I can give is well, have a goal in mind. What are you trying to learn? What are you trying to unpack? What are you trying to troubleshoot? That’s really going to determine what questions you ask. If you’re asking about acquisition, you’re going to be asking lots of where and how kind of questions, like where do you hang out and also what was going on in your world that led you to search for a solution, or what was even going on in your world period? How did you try to solve it? If you’re looking for like activation, if you’re troubleshooting something in activation, you’re going to ask more like motivating questions. So what’s motivating you like right now? What is the first thing that you were trying to accomplish? Why did you do this first and not this first? When you signed up for the account, what was the first thing that you wanted to accomplish or do? Those are going to be more around activation and then of course retention. Where did we go wrong? What happened? Talk to us. Did you find another solution? What made that better? That’s really what’s going to determine your ultimate questions. Okay. Number two. The second thing I would always recommend when it comes to approaching customer research and interviews will really just be your ability to ask your question but don’t feed your customer an answer. This is actually ridiculously hard because as humans we don’t really like uncomfortable or weird conflicty environments and asking someone a question and then not kind of like adding a little bit of padding at the end to make it not feel so awkward. It’s so hard to not do that and every fiber and our human being, in our core wants to, give the customer like a little bit of like a slide. Like, I’m going to ask you this question but I want to it feel as nice and fluffy as possible. Here’s an example, please describe to me your role. But like the things that you do every day and you know, talk to me more also about how you spend your time, like during the Workday. You see how I asked the question, or at least, I stated really the prompt. But after that I added all this extra fluffy stuff. Now, what’s also really fascinating is the last thing that you say, the customer’s brain is going to latch onto that, and they’re just going to basically pair it back, whatever it is that you say. So be careful that like, if you have a question or a prompt, just say it. Can you please describe to me your role? And then say, not a peep after. It is remarkably difficult, but you will get used to this over time. You don’t want to feed customers your answers. The human brain is super lazy. It will latch onto the wherever it is, the last thing that you said. If you find yourself feeding customers answers, you’re just going to hear yourself right back. So make sure that you just ask the question, or say the prompt, don’t add any qualifiers after. If they ask questions back like, well what do you mean, kike in my job? You can confirm or deny or provide a little bit more context, but try not to feed customers answers to your own questions. Your interviews will just basically be the same, but also you do the customer a service. You don’t actually let them really think about it, and when you let the customer really think about it, that’s what you get all the juicy details. So just be careful about that. Number three, unpack vague answers. You are undoubtedly going to hear very vague answers and I’m not going to lie, you’re not necessarily going to know if they’re vague until you do a few of these interviews. I find by the second or third interview just in general of practice with interviewing customers, you’ll start to hear a lot of the same things over and over and over again, and you’ll start to form other questions in your head too. You’ll just start thinking about like, well, what does that really mean? So, for example, you might hear really vague answers. Like, I mean, yeah, like I spend time online, and as the interviewer you might be thinking, well where online? Podcasts? Blogs? Like where? Don’t be afraid to unpack a vague answer. If you get something that is a really broad spectrum term or like just, just not really specific at all, don’t be afraid to unpack, and you can do it gently, of course. You don’t have to be combative about it. It’s actually really easy. “One thing I like to say is, oh, interesting. Tell me more.” I absolutely love saying that. I spent a lot of time online. Oh, interesting. Tell me more. Where online? So easy. Don’t be afraid to unpack vague answers. And like I said, you’re not necessarily going to know what’s vague until you do a few. But after you get the first two to three under your belt, you will start to get those like, oh man, we should’ve dug deeper on that. That just sets you up for success for all the next interviews to come. Number four, do not incentivize your customer research. Now this is so controversial because it’s so natural for a founder to think that no one’s going to want to talk to them, that they’re going to have to give customers free things and money basically for them to even want to talk to them, but I completely, one disagree and two, you will be surprised at what an incentive will actually do to your customer interview. I’ve been on both sides of the fence and I’ve got to say when the customer is not incentivized at all, you get the hands down best clearest feedback. When someone is incentivized because they just want the Amazon gift card, or they just want the free coffee or they want the free month. That’s what’s motivating them. They’re not motivated to give you good or… I don’t even want to say good, but they’re not really motivated to talk much, or help you with like this insight, or this insight driven project. They’re just not motivated by that at all. They don’t necessarily care about giving you good information. They only care about getting the gift card, or getting the thing, and you don’t want to talk to those people anyway. You really want to talk to the people who are willing to do it for free. They’re taking their own time out of the day. Those are the people who are going to give you the absolute best insights, and it’s also a very clear indicator of the people who feel the most pain and who do ultimately love your product. You don’t want to talk to people who don’t love your product but do love Amazon gift cards. Just hands down. If you don’t incentivize the research, you’re just going to hands down, get way better feedback. The people who are on the call with you actually care, and not about the gift card, or whatever it is that you’re giving them for free and those people are likely to give you the clearest indicator of who actually has product market fit, who really truly is your best fit paying customer, and who is emotionally invested in what it is that you’re doing. Because if you’re getting a customer on the phone, it’s because you’re probably solving a pain for them, and that’s a great indicator. A lot of founders do get afraid they’re not going to get anyone on the phone, and I have never done a customer project or a customer research project, I should say, or strategic project where I’ve not been able to get customers on the phone. They will, I promise attend. You just have to remind them and also if you don’t incentivize them, you’re going to get the best feedback no matter what. All right, everyone, I really hope that that helped. I hope that you learned something. If you want to make sure that you do not miss a single Hot Take, don’t forget to subscribe down below. My name is Asia of Demand May Event, and I help early stage founders with their very first growth milestones. Thank you again so much for watching. I really hope that this helped. Thanks again guys. Bye y’all. **Categories:** Hot Takes 🔥, Marketing --- ### [What's an Acquisition Channel?](https://demandmaven.io/whats-an-acquisition-channel/) **Published:** February 20, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DROW (Too Long; Didn’t Read or Watch) - **An acquisition channel is a place where you find your absolute best-paying customers.** - **Ideally, you engage those prospects through that channel.** So for example, if I want to reach marketing executives in software companies in the United States, I’m probably going to look at conferences like Martech and Inbound where all of the marketing executives in software companies go. - The conference is a channel. Email is a channel. LinkedIn is a channel. Partnerships are also channels. - **The general rule is that if you can reach your target audience through a specific medium, it’s probably a channel.** - **One of the best ways I’ve ever heard “channels” described was actually as a “watering hole”.** - Imagine the Sahara desert — and now imagine there’s a watering hole, and all of the animals of the African wilderness are gathering at this watering hole. They all want this water, and this is where they gather. - If I wanted to find crocodiles, lions, camels, elephants, I could probably find them at this watering hole at different times of the day. - Your job as a founder and as a good marketer is to figure out what are the watering holes for your target audience. Where do they gather? - Are they all on LinkedIn? Do they spend a lot of time in Slack communities? Where do they hang out? - **The thing about acquisition channels is that they can be online or offline.** - If you’re watching, it’s likely that you’re a digital native in some kind of way — especially if you built a product. But it’s important to remember that there are online channels, and offline channels. - As a business person, it’s so important to not forget about the offline channels that you can reach people. This includes associations, trade shows, conferences, meetups, events, and even partnerships that you can tap. - All of these are also watering holes, and if they have your target market in them, then I’d strongly consider them. What’s funny about offline channels though is that one way or another, it almost always comes back to digital in some way either through email or retargeting or something. Too funny. ## Transcript What’s up founders? Welcome to another hot take. In today’s video, we’re going to talk all about acquisition channels. What exactly are they? How should we be thinking about them? Okay, but first and foremost, before we get into all of that, let’s just define acquisition channel one more time really quick because it’s important. An acquisition channel is a channel through which you reach your absolute best fit paying customer, and if it doesn’t put you in front of that best fit paying customer, it’s probably not an acquisition channel. If we’re using a channel to acquire new customers, then we can call it an acquisition channel. Otherwise, it’s just a channel. We can generate a whole bunch of leads who don’t experience any problem or pain that our product solves at all and they never become customers, but they might become advocates or influencers in some kind of way. But if we’re trying to get customers, we need to be thinking acquisition channel. We’re tapping a place where those best fit paying customers hang out and we’re attracting them to us through some means. Now the channel is something that, if you’ve ever existed on this planet, you’ve been exposed to hundreds if not thousands of channels all over, but what makes channels special for a founder is that it has to be something that ultimately attracts their best fit paying customer. Let’s just say as an example, you wanted to attract marketing executives and software companies in the United States have at least a thousand employees. There are channels or places that those people ultimately hang out and your job as a founder and as a good marketer is to figure out what those are and what do you push through those channels or what do you put out to pull them in. There’s all kinds of different ways to approach channels in at least today’s hot take. We’re just really going to discuss the different kinds and how should you be thinking about them. So from that example, one of the best ways that I like to describe what a channel is and how to think about it is think about them almost like watering holes. So if you close your eyes and you imagine the Sahara Desert, you’ve got desert troubles, you’ve got general desert things and you also have a bunch of animals whether you see them or not. And at first you think that this place is totally dead and you don’t think there’s any life here until you come across a watering hole. Basically just a very big body of water in the middle of the desert, and at this watering hole, this is where you see all kinds of animals gathering. You see birds, you see hippos, you see elephants, you see crocodiles, you see lions, you see foxes, and these animals, you’ll also notice that they don’t come at the watering hole all at the same time. They’re usually taking their turn. They visit at certain times. The nocturnal animals come at night, the animals that prefer the day come during the day, but this watering hole attracts life from all over, all kinds, all day long. Now what’s cool about watering holes is that if you think about watering hole as this is a place where my customers hang out, that’s generally like the same concept. It attracts a certain kind of person. You can tap that watering hole, so to speak, to reach that person or to reach those people, and then boom, acquisition channel. Now what’s also important to remember is that if you are trying to attract a whole bunch of crocodiles, but you’re doing all the things that end up attracting lions but you don’t want lions, well, then it’s probably not the right approach to that channel, but it might be the right channel. So something to keep in mind. But sometimes you go after an acquisition channel and you get one thing. If it’s not giving you the desired result, it’s either the wrong channel or just the wrong approach to that channel. So something to consider. But I love that metaphor because it describes and it communicates the right way to think about it. If it doesn’t ultimately attract your ideal customer or if your customer isn’t found there, then it’s probably not a good acquisition channel for you. That’s it. There’s all kinds of different watering holes and channels. There’s email, there’s organic search, there’s LinkedIn, Facebook ads, there’s all kinds of different blogs and communities and places where people hang out. Now, there was a previous hot take about how to figure out which ones should be the ones that you ultimately invest in, how to find your best fit, acquisition and channels. Highly recommend you go and watch that one, but ultimately there’s tons of different kinds of channels. But again, your number one job as a founder and as a good marketer is to figure out what are the absolute top three to five that I can push some kind of campaign through, whether that’s sales or marketing, and ultimately reach my best fit paying audience. Okay, now the last thing that I want to make sure to communicate about acquisition channels, and this is something that a lot of founders forget about, but don’t forget, there’s really two kinds of channels. There’s online channels and there’s offline. If you’re watching this, it’s probably because you’re a digital native in some kind of way. You’re online on a website watching this video somewhere, whether it’s through YouTube or whether it’s through my actual blog. Now that alone speaks volumes. Something to remember is that just because you’re on a channel doesn’t necessarily mean that your customer is there. And also just because you like a certain thing doesn’t necessarily mean that your customers also love the thing. You might absolutely love GitHub, but you would never in a million years find your best fit paying customers there because that’s not where they spend their time. And that’s really normal. So don’t forget to… Well, there’s two things. Don’t forget to remember that there’s also offline channels, but also that anytime you approach any kind of go to market problem or run a marketing campaign, it’ll likely adding in your own biases. So just make sure that you’re really thinking about the channels that are truly the best fit one’s, not for you, but for the customer. In terms of offline channels, this is something that’s really common, but people always forget about associations, partnerships, conferences, trade shows, about meetups. There’s so many different offline places where people hang out as well, so if you find that you’ve got a target customer or a segment that is really hard to reach and it’s just because they’re just not really online, there’s somewhere. People are spending their time somewhere. Just make sure that if you have more of an offline strategy that you’re able to bring it online in some kind of way and or, of course, just tap those offline channels. How can you speak at those conferences? How can you participate in those associations that reach those people? And then of course, you might be looking at just for the most part, offline channels. Phone, picking up the phone and calling. That’s a different way to approach those people depending on who they actually are. All right, founders, that’s all I’ve got for today. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope that you learn something. If you want to make sure that you keep getting these hot takes, all you have to do is just subscribe down below. Thank you again, my name is Asia. I work for DemandMaven where we help early stage founders reach their very first growth milestones. Awesome, bye all. **Categories:** Hot Takes 🔥, Marketing --- ### [The Biggest Marketing Mistakes Founders Make](https://demandmaven.io/the-biggest-marketing-mistakes-founders-make/) **Published:** February 27, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ## Extra Resources - [How the Marketing Funnel Works From Top to Bottom](https://trackmaven.com/blog/marketing-funnel-2/): I love this article because I think it does a great job explaining how the funnel works, but remember: you don’t necessarily have build all of this awareness and traffic before you build the rest of the funnel. You can actually reverse-engineer your funnel and figure out what needs to happen in MOFU and BOFU to convert people into paying customers. *Then* you can step on the TOFU gas. 💁‍♀️ - The Stages of Awareness: see below 👇 ![Stages of Awareness by Eugene Schwartz](../wp-content/uploads/2019/12/stages-of-awareness.jpg) ## TL;DROW (too long; didn’t read or watch) - **They do not ask their customers the right questions**. - Pretty much every founder is talking to their customers in some way. They’re answering and responding to support tickets, they’re taking feedback about the product. But when it comes to figuring out the right marketing channels or who their absolute best-fit paying customers are, they’re just not asking the right questions. - Now there is 100% going to be a hot take on exactly what those questions should be, so stay tuned for a later hot take on that. - And if you’re not talking to your customers, then we’ve got much bigger problems. - **They jump on paid media way too early.** - We’ve all been there. We read an article about how easy it is to just open up an AdWords account and a Facebook Ad Account and start running ads and then boom — leads and paying customers and MRR. - But if you’re early-stage, you’ve got a lot of factors that you need to consider before putting a chunk of change into a paid acquisition strategy that might not pay off for you over time. - But here’s the thing: paid media (running ads on ad platform in hopes of generating customers) is a huge gamble and waste of time and money unless you know exactly what you’re doing. I recommend taking a course like the Science of Facebook Ads by Mocza Mars to get a good grip on what to expect from the platform, but before you start running ads, make sure your customer journey is crystal clear so that you always know what to put in front of your target audience to generate the desired result. - **They try to build the funnel from the top-down.** - This is a classic marketing mistake that I see all the time everywhere forever. I’ve even made this mistake early on in my career. - When we talk about marketing, there’s a common misconception that you need to start at the very tippy top of the funnel. Top of the funnel means these people have never heard of you, your product, or understand the problem you solve. And from an awareness perspective, we think we need to automatically start educating people who are totally unaware and oblivious of the problem. - As a founder, taking someone from the very tippy top of the funnel all the way down to becoming a paying customer is a huge marketing cycle and it’s an unpredictable one. You’re basically just guessing what’s going to educate people to become a paying customer, and guessing is never where you want to be. - I always recommend trying to attract people who already feel the pain and who are motivated to find a solution. That means looking more at bottom-of-the-funnel and middle-of-the-funnel of the marketing cycle first before trying to tackle these people who don’t even have a clue what the problem is. It’s going to take too long to turn those people into customers, so let’s focus on people with the pain instead. - It sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many founders are wasting so much marketing effort and time on totally unaware TOFU activity. - Let’s take Hubspot as an example. There was a time when Hubspot was only a marketing automation platform, and they marketed to people who generally understood the problems that marketing automation solved. Marketers needed a way to automatically nurture new leads and prospects through the funnel to eventually become paying customers. So naturally, Hubspot produced marketing that tackled exactly that. - Over time, Hubspot’s content became king, and as they grew, they started going more and more top-of-the-funnel and they started ## Transcript What’s up founders? Welcome to another hot take. In today’s video, we’re going to talk all about acquisition channels. What exactly are they? How should we be thinking about them? Okay, but first and foremost, before we get into all of that, let’s just define acquisition channel one more time really quick because it’s important. An acquisition channel is a channel through which you reach your absolute best fit paying customer, and if it doesn’t put you in front of that best fit paying customer, it’s probably not an acquisition channel. If we’re using a channel to acquire new customers, then we can call it an acquisition channel. Otherwise, it’s just a channel. We can generate a whole bunch of leads who don’t experience any problem or pain that our product solves at all and they never become customers, but they might become advocates or influencers in some kind of way. But if we’re trying to get customers, we need to be thinking acquisition channel. We’re tapping a place where those best fit paying customers hang out and we’re attracting them to us through some means. Now the channel is something that, if you’ve ever existed on this planet, you’ve been exposed to hundreds if not thousands of channels all over, but what makes channels special for a founder is that it has to be something that ultimately attracts their best fit paying customer. Let’s just say as an example, you wanted to attract marketing executives and software companies in the United States have at least a thousand employees. There are channels or places that those people ultimately hang out and your job as a founder and as a good marketer is to figure out what those are and what do you push through those channels or what do you put out to pull them in. There’s all kinds of different ways to approach channels in at least today’s hot take. We’re just really going to discuss the different kinds and how should you be thinking about them. So from that example, one of the best ways that I like to describe what a channel is and how to think about it is think about them almost like watering holes. So if you close your eyes and you imagine the Sahara Desert, you’ve got desert troubles, you’ve got general desert things and you also have a bunch of animals whether you see them or not. And at first you think that this place is totally dead and you don’t think there’s any life here until you come across a watering hole. Basically just a very big body of water in the middle of the desert, and at this watering hole, this is where you see all kinds of animals gathering. You see birds, you see hippos, you see elephants, you see crocodiles, you see lions, you see foxes, and these animals, you’ll also notice that they don’t come at the watering hole all at the same time. They’re usually taking their turn. They visit at certain times. The nocturnal animals come at night, the animals that prefer the day come during the day, but this watering hole attracts life from all over, all kinds, all day long. Now what’s cool about watering holes is that if you think about watering hole as this is a place where my customers hang out, that’s generally like the same concept. It attracts a certain kind of person. You can tap that watering hole, so to speak, to reach that person or to reach those people, and then boom, acquisition channel. Now what’s also important to remember is that if you are trying to attract a whole bunch of crocodiles, but you’re doing all the things that end up attracting lions but you don’t want lions, well, then it’s probably not the right approach to that channel, but it might be the right channel. So something to keep in mind. But sometimes you go after an acquisition channel and you get one thing. If it’s not giving you the desired result, it’s either the wrong channel or just the wrong approach to that channel. So something to consider. But I love that metaphor because it describes and it communicates the right way to think about it. If it doesn’t ultimately attract your ideal customer or if your customer isn’t found there, then it’s probably not a good acquisition channel for you. That’s it. There’s all kinds of different watering holes and channels. There’s email, there’s organic search, there’s LinkedIn, Facebook ads, there’s all kinds of different blogs and communities and places where people hang out. Now, there was a previous hot take about how to figure out which ones should be the ones that you ultimately invest in, how to find your best fit, acquisition and channels. Highly recommend you go and watch that one, but ultimately there’s tons of different kinds of channels. But again, your number one job as a founder and as a good marketer is to figure out what are the absolute top three to five that I can push some kind of campaign through, whether that’s sales or marketing, and ultimately reach my best fit paying audience. Okay, now the last thing that I want to make sure to communicate about acquisition channels, and this is something that a lot of founders forget about, but don’t forget, there’s really two kinds of channels. There’s online channels and there’s offline. If you’re watching this, it’s probably because you’re a digital native in some kind of way. You’re online on a website watching this video somewhere, whether it’s through YouTube or whether it’s through my actual blog. Now that alone speaks volumes. Something to remember is that just because you’re on a channel doesn’t necessarily mean that your customer is there. And also just because you like a certain thing doesn’t necessarily mean that your customers also love the thing. You might absolutely love GitHub, but you would never in a million years find your best fit paying customers there because that’s not where they spend their time. And that’s really normal. So don’t forget to… Well, there’s two things. Don’t forget to remember that there’s also offline channels, but also that anytime you approach any kind of go to market problem or run a marketing campaign, it’ll likely adding in your own biases. So just make sure that you’re really thinking about the channels that are truly the best fit one’s, not for you, but for the customer. In terms of offline channels, this is something that’s really common, but people always forget about associations, partnerships, conferences, trade shows, about meetups. There’s so many different offline places where people hang out as well, so if you find that you’ve got a target customer or a segment that is really hard to reach and it’s just because they’re just not really online, there’s somewhere. People are spending their time somewhere. Just make sure that if you have more of an offline strategy that you’re able to bring it online in some kind of way and or, of course, just tap those offline channels. How can you speak at those conferences? How can you participate in those associations that reach those people? And then of course, you might be looking at just for the most part, offline channels. Phone, picking up the phone and calling. That’s a different way to approach those people depending on who they actually are. All right, founders, that’s all I’ve got for today. Thank you so much for watching. I really hope that you learn something. If you want to make sure that you keep getting these hot takes, all you have to do is just subscribe down below. Thank you again, my name is Asia. I work for DemandMaven where we help early stage founders reach their very first growth milestones. Awesome, bye all. **Categories:** Hot Takes 🔥, Marketing --- ### [EP. 1: Marketing in an Economic Downturn](https://demandmaven.io/marketing-in-an-economic-downturn/) **Published:** April 13, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** We haven’t even hit peak COVID-19 yet, but many SaaS companies are wondering: what in the heck do I do with go-to-market and marketing functions now that we’re in an economic downturn? Here’s how Asia Orangio of DemandMaven thinks we’ll shift. ## Extra Resources - [Marketing and Growth for Uncertain Times](https://cxl.com/blog/marketing-growth-uncertain-times/) on CXL.com - [Outlast the Recession with Amy’s Financial Survival Guide](https://stackingthebricks.com/business-survival-financial-priorities/) by Amy Hoy on Stacking the Bricks - [How to Survive in Extraordinary Times](https://stackingthebricks.com/extraordinary-times/) by Amy Hoy on Stacking the Bricks - [If You Have to Cut — 5+ Thoughts On Where](https://www.saastr.com/if-you-have-to-cut-5-thoughts-on-where/) by Jason Lemkin on SaaStr ## TL;DL 1. **Pause to regain ground, but don’t completely stop marketing or selling altogether.** 1. You will be tempted to stop marketing and selling altogether, but there’s way too much data that supports the opposite 2. https://cxl.com/blog/marketing-growth-uncertain-times/ 3. Based on a few different studies — one from McKinsey and another from Harvard Business Review. 4. Cutting costs didn’t necessarily mean outperforming others in the long-term; in fact, it was often detrimental 2. **It’s time to start thinking long-term.** 1. Examples: organic search as an acquisition channel. Thought leadership. Partnership. Community. Content marketing. All of these are long-term strategies. The goal is for you to come out on top of all of this after it’s over. 3. **Shift your mindset to providing value.** 1. What you produce over the coming months should be about providing value. Hard sells and short-term tactics are going to be harder to see results from for some of us. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it’s a little more likely. 2. Now more than ever, prospects will need to see and actually experience value. What are your customers currently going through that you can shed some light on? Where can you provide a beacon of light? 3. And what are you doing today that doesn’t provide value to customers and prospects? This should be reflected in every aspect of the business — including onboarding, demand generation activities, and even sales conversations you have. 4. How can you be of service? 4. **Check your value props.** 1. The market has shifted, so have your value propositions, and your pitch likely need to change to. What’s changed for your customers? How has their perspective shifted? 2. Check your website, onboarding emails, and pretty much any and all communication to ensure it reflects that shift in value prop. 3. Example: I’ve got a client whose value prop was originally about ROI, but now it’s more about mitigating risk and gaining control now that the tables have turned. 5. **Pay off your analytics debt.** 1. You might have heard of technical debt. The same concept applies to analytics. You waited too long or got too big before implementing analytics, and now you don’t know which way is up or can even tell how anything is actually performing. 2. Data is going to allow you to see. And it’s going to help you capture the trends and respond appropriately. 3. This includes subscription metrics 6. **We re-enter the age of “brand”.** 1. It feels weird to actually be recommending this to early-stage startups and small businesses alike. Typically we finding the brand campaigns aren’t the ones that convert. But having a voice — especially a positive one, or one that can help buyers “see” are the ones that build trust. 2. I’m already recommending this to a few of my clients, and we’re answering the call by taking a look at their mission statements and overall vision. If it fits, we sits. And we start thinking about how we can be a voice, and even more specifically, one that provides value. 3. It doesn’t need to convert. It just needs to keep us top of mind and close enough for when the prospect is ready to buy. 4. It’s going to be about building relationships moving forward. And every free trial sign-up, account created, demo requested, and incoming chat message is going to feel more like gold. 7. **Build your resilience.** 1. I’m not going to tell you to stay positive. The reality is that you’re going to have dark moments. You’re going to want to quit. You’re going to worry. You’re going to question everything and everyone. 2. That’s where I’d rather tell you to stay resilient. Professional athletes aren’t super humans. They actually recover faster. And they are trained to perform. 3. So if you’re going to be down, be down. And be compassionate towards yourself while you’re down. But don’t forget to come back up. You’ll find that every time you’re hit again, you recover even faster the next time. We call that building muscle. ## Transcript What’s up founders? Welcome to the very first episode of this podcast. My name is Asia. I am the founder of DemandMaven and we work with early stage startups on reaching their very first growth milestones. We’re kind of in an interesting time right now. First of all, did I think I would be creating a podcast right now? No, absolutely not. Especially not in this climate, and this environment, in this current period that we’re all in. The second thing is most of us are what, four to five weeks now I think into either stay-at-home orders or quarantine. I think most of us are also about two to three months into just overall global pandemic. I imagine most of you’re thinking about what can you do over the short-term to stay alive. What needs to happen financially for you, for your business to survive this incredibly challenging and trying period? Especially since the experts are predicting that we’re going to be dealing with this for at least the next six months, and likely the next 12 months, even up to 18, and potentially, even 2 years, 24 months. Which, personally, is kind of shocking. And also not, when you think about how pandemics actually work. But that said, some of you are also considering what we need to do to stay alive even in the short-term. From a financial perspective, already we’re seeing layoffs, we’re seeing small businesses consider loans, and we’re also seeing contract pauses, overall press the stop button on any go to market activity. Then there are others who might be in a slightly different financial situation from a business perspective, but there are others who are considering, “Okay, even if everything does pause or even if we know that we’ve got at least the next six months, what do we do from a go-to market perspective? What do we do with marketing? What do we do with sales? What do we do with what we’ve got.” This my friends is where, personally, I really feel like I can help. I’ve been going back and forth on what makes sense for me in order to provide value to everyone, and not just my clients. Because what I’ve been working with client-wise or at least what I’ve been helping my clients with, it’s been largely focused on exactly that. How do we navigate the next few months? Then beyond, what do we focus on? How does our perspective shift? How do our clients and customers and prospects, how do their perspectives shift? What do we need to do to meet halfway? Granted, a lot of us are in a pause right now, which is why I think this is actually the perfect time to be thinking about this and to be preparing for it. Overall though, this is where I can at least help. Instead of keeping all of these thoughts to myself, at least, I wanted a way to quickly and easily share with you not only what I’ve been working with my clients on, and how we’ve been approaching this, but also research that I’ve found, studies that I found, and just other perspectives about how to navigate. Especially from a growth, and just overall go-to market perspective this incredibly challenging time. This is my contribution, and I hate that this is my first episode. But at the same exact time, personally, this is helpful even for me to remind myself that these are the truths, or some of these at least are going to have an incredible impact for you and your businesses. At the same exact time, it’s also what I’m already seeing. I think telling these stories and making sure that you guys know this information as well, it brings me joy. A little bit of Marie Kondo there. It can stay. Let’s get into the list. Before I get into what those things are, I’ve got seven, and I just want to throw out the disclaimer. Unfortunately, I do feel compelled to say this, but these aren’t necessarily going to be things that all of you should listen to. Please use your absolute best judgment because only you can really know what your situation is, and what you’re comfortable with, and what makes sense for you in your market. But I can say most of these, I’d say like 80% of these, are going to be pretty applicable. I think that they’re things that you can actively use. Whether you are a startup in early stage startup, late stage, series A, bootstrapped, or if you’re a consultant or a small business, it doesn’t really matter. Most if not all of these things are going to be pretty applicable to you. A lot of it, honestly, is really going back to basics. Let’s dig in. We’re probably going to be here for a while, so apologies in advance, this is long. Again, I wanted to share this and there will be a written accompaniment to this episode, so there will actually be an article if you prefer to read. I know some of y’all are like that. You want to skim, you just want to fast forward. I hope that this provides value, and I’m excited to hear your feedback, your thoughts, and also your experiences. Number one, you are going to be extremely tempted to stop marketing and selling altogether. Don’t get me wrong, pausing absolutely makes sense. Taking that pause to really see how your market reacts, I think absolutely makes sense. But one thing I would throw a massive caution to is pausing all of your go-to market activities too much for too long. Too long, debatable. None of this is something that I really do believe that it just really depends on your situation, where you’re at, overall, in the market and in your business. Some of you will likely not be able to afford certain services anymore. Some of you have already started thinking about tightening the belt. I think overall though, there’s too much research that shows that when you stop marketing and sales and go-to market activities during a recession or during any kind of economic downturn, you’re actually less likely to come out on top. So much so that at least a third of companies who do actually continue continued efforts and go-to marketing in, just marketing and sales in general, those who continue that and are as focused and prioritized and data-driven as possible. Those are usually the ones that actually come out on top. To back this up, there’s actually an amazing article from, I believe his name is Derek Gleason. I could be totally wrong. I should’ve checked his name. He wrote an article on the CXL.com blog ConversionXL. It’s all about how to navigate during pretty dark times. How should you navigate marketing and sales? Actually, what this article was saying is a lot of what I’ve been saying, which I thought was awesome because it felt really good to be super aligned. But one thing that I believe Gleason found was he found a number of different research articles or research in general from pretty well known brands. McKinsey and Harvard Business Review, both of them have analyzed how do businesses not only survive through recessions and economic downturns, but how do they thrive? The overwhelming evidence was that those businesses that didn’t just make cuts, they didn’t just cut, and then held it together. They might’ve made some cuts to some things, but overall, they still continued their go-to marketing efforts. They just got infinitely more focused. They used their data, and they also really focused on the market itself. Those who reacted to the market response, those were the ones who typically came out on top, but they didn’t necessarily stop marketing or stop sales or anything like that. They really just shifted their view. They pivoted how they were doing it. Their execution changed, their priorities changed, but they didn’t completely stop marketing and selling their businesses altogether. What I’m going to say to you is, and this is where it gets kind of tricky because I don’t know your situation, but you know your situation, if you need to pause for a while on marketing and sales, go for it. If that ensures your survival in the short-term, do it. But if you pause and you get to a place, let’s say like in a month or two, eventually, people will, especially buyers. When I say people, I really mean buyers. Buyers will eventually get to a place to where we all adapt to a new normal. As we move through crisis, there is light at the end of the tunnel. It will end. Where you want to be is on the other end of that light. You want to be there. As you start to approach the new normal, so do your prospects and your buyers and the rest of the world. Eventually, they’re going to go back into buyer mode and the world will no longer be as much on pause. I think that’s the important thing to remember. Just throwing caution to the wind and I promise I’m not saying all of this just because I’m a marketing consultant or a growth consultant. I’m telling you this because there’s research and there’s data that suggests actually the opposite. Take your time, think about it, but consider what your longer-term approach will need to be, which is a great segue into my second point. This is something that I’ve actually been telling all of my clients. It’s time to start thinking long-term. Typically, whenever I start working with an early stage company, it’s all about the short-term. It’s all about the “What can we do and see results in the next month or two months or three months?” I would consider that pretty short term just because marketing and growth, in general, takes time, especially if it’s good. I think when it comes to what we’re experiencing now, the shift is going to be far much more focused on marketing and sales activities that stand the test of time. Some of those examples include, I’m just going to give you examples. Not saying that this is necessarily the answer, but these are examples. SEO, organic search, acquisition channels that are extremely low cost, which organic search, it doesn’t cost anything to search inside of Google, for example. The acquisition cost of that, apart from creating whatever the content is and publishing on the site there, you don’t pay for someone to have to search you, unless you’re doing paid search marketing, which is obviously a different story. Organic search, that’s free, in theory. It’s free in theory, but it’s a long-term strategy. It’s always one of those things that a lot of founders wait to execute on. Now that we are entering into a slower time in life, this is the time to start thinking about what that SEO, organic search, content marketing strategy could and should be. Because it’s unlikely that we’re going to see quick turnaround times, at least on getting those closed deals extremely fast. We’re entering into a recession, it’s a downturn so people are going to be much more cautious and risk averse. It’s going to be harder to get paying customers. If that’s the case, then we need to be thinking long-term. What are some of the things that do that from a marketing perspective? Again, SEO, organic search, people searching. Either searching for solutions or searching for answers. Hopefully, you’re providing things that they find and you can build trust and rapport with those people. The other thing that I think about when I think about long-term and I’m just going to throw out a few, but partnerships come to mind. Co-marketing is going to be pretty interesting I think moving forward because those are relationships that you build with other brands and other people and other marketers and other founders. You can leverage those to really both of your advantages over the long-term. Community, this is also something that comes to mind when thinking long-term. Community is not one of those activities or practices or strategies that happens overnight. Building an audience does not happen overnight. What I predict, at least what we’re going to see a pretty big shift in just go to Market Wise. For many companies, it’s going to be a new emphasis on community building, audience building, and thought leadership. Those are the kinds of things that, again, might not turn around a customer immediately, but you are going to be so glad you did it six months from now. Do you need to do all those things? No, but there’s likely a few in there that are going to be good fits for you. There are even some that I did not cover that I would consider a very long-term. They’re not necessarily going to generate a bunch of leads in a couple of weeks. Or even generate buying customers in a short amount of time. As we enter into, again, a much more risk averse market, and as we enter into this new phase and this new way of being, the way that you get customers to close is by building trust and building rapport. That was always the case, but now that’s going to be even more so the focus. What are some of the marketing and sales activities that you can do that encourage that longer-term focus? Content marketing, content creation, in general. When I think about organic search and SEO, those are usually the ones that come to mind. Number three, shift your mindset to providing value. What you produce over the coming months should be almost exclusively about providing value. It’s weird to say this because from marketing and overall growth perspective, that’s always the case. We’re always thinking about what kind of value we’re providing. Hard sells, and again, the short-term tactics, I think that those are going to just become a lot harder. Everyone is slamming on the brakes right now. People are far more cautious about where they’re putting their dollars and where they’re putting their overall spend. I don’t think it’s necessarily a hard and fast rule, but I do believe that this is going to be far more common. We’re going to see just so much hesitation overall. How we work with that energy, if you will, is by focusing on how do we build trust and provide value in sales conversations, in your onboarding emails. Even when people start a free trial or visit your website, how can you position yourself, your brand, your business in a way that it just has tons of value at every single turn. This is more than just “We’re offering free content.” This is every single part or step of the customer-buyer journey. Now, this should always be true, but again, I think this is going to be even more emphasized over time. I think that the businesses that are more flexible, that really want to work with customers and really work within their means, I think that those are going to be the brands that ultimately win. On top of that, the brands that create value and produce content and produce things that provide that value and it is truly experienced by the customer, those are going to be the brands who build trust faster, they build rapport faster. They’re, ultimately, going to be able to bring their deals over the finish line. I think that’s going to be something that I look out for every single one of my accounts. But then also when I would encourage everyone to start thinking about. So a couple of questions for you here. What are your customers currently going through? What are they going through that you can shed some light on? Where can you be a beacon of light? It sounds fluffy, but that’s the real of it. If you can speak to your prospect, to your customer in that way, that’s truly shifting your mindset to be focusing more on how you can provide value. Your customers, your prospects, they’re experiencing something right now. If you can help them in any kind of way, whether that’s providing industry research or reports or insight or guiding strategies or best practices for what to do now, those are going to be the kinds of things that ultimately help people. Then do you need to extend your free trial? Do you need to work hand in hand with customers from now on, on getting everything set up. Going above and beyond, it’s going to just move mountains for you. That is going to be always true in every scenario, but I think especially now. Number four, check your value props. Some of your value props aren’t going to shift at all, but the market is going to shift. They are going to see you, your product, your business in a different light. Some much different than others. For a lot of you, not at all. Identifying what those shifts are is really going to be task number one. Task number two is really understanding where do you need to also shift those value propositions in your messaging. This could be on your website, through your onboarding emails, in your sales conversations. It needs to be reflected everywhere, but really the first step is understanding how has it shifted. Once you’ve identified that, see how it matches up against your existing value propositions. A great example of this… It’s actually a client of mine. There is a client that I have who’s value prop, originally, pre-pandemic, we focused mostly on ROI. The ROI that you get out of this particular product is 10 times that of what you’d see of the competing alternative. Now, in the conversations that we’re having from a sales perspective, now it’s far more about mitigating risk and regaining control, which is a very different shift than focusing exclusively on ROI. Of course, everything that we do needs to shift towards that. The messaging on the website needs to shift. All of our nurture emails need to shift a little bit more to focus less on the ROI and a lot more on the mitigating risk and regaining control. Sales decks are changing. Pretty much every single touch point that we have with a customer, especially through the conversion process or the sales process, needs to be updated and evaluated. And just making sure that we’re not focusing on the wrong value prop at the wrong time, and that we bring them in only after we’ve drilled down into the main ones. Number five. It is time to pay off your analytics debt because a lot of you have it. Right about now, you might be wishing that you didn’t. You might’ve heard of technical debt and think we’ve all, especially if you’re a technical founder, you might have heard of technical debt, just like in the SaaS world in general. It’s pretty much instead of rebuilding a particular part of the code base, you instead continue to build on top of it. Over time that code base becomes weakened because there’s better, more efficient ways to serve up that same exact code. Instead of taking the time to rewrite it, you instead incur technical debt. The same concept applies to analytics, however. With analytics though, it’s really more about you’ve gone for way too long and you’ve grown way too much without proper analytics. This includes subscription metrics. This includes website analytics. This includes really strong overall sales, CRM marketing data as well. What ends up happening to businesses is you go so long with analytics debt and you carry that around with you for however long. Years, sometimes even longer, which is kind of shocking, but it exists and happens. You get to a place to where you really need to make decisions based off of data but you don’t have it. Or if you do have it, it’s not in any easily accessible way. There’s no place for you to go to answer questions. And to look at your crystal ball and see, “Okay, what does the future hold?” This is the perfect time to tackle that. Part of that is because since everyone’s on pause, the best thing that you can do is go to your existing data and go to your database, go to your CRM, go to wherever you go, your subscription metrics. Take a second to really dig deep into what the trends are, what you can likely expect. From there, you can actually make decisions based off of go-to market. Whether you should pause some things and continue to expand others because they’re really well converting. It’s also going to be really important for you to keep your ear to the ground on the pulse of the business. What is actually happening from a go-to market perspective. The reality is a lot of dashboards, a lot of analytics platforms, and tools out there, a lot of it is, actually, really similar to what we’re experiencing in the pandemic mow. There are lagging indicators, meaning they only tell us what happened a few days ago. It doesn’t necessarily tell us what’s happening right now. That latency is always going to be something that you come up against. There are, of course, leading indicators, things that can highlight what the future holds, but if we’re not able to analyze the past, it’s going to be really, really, really hard to understand our present and then, of course, our future. So if you’ve got analytics debt, meaning you’re one of the ones who isn’t using subscription metrics. Or proactively taking a look at their marketing analytics or sales analytics or sales data, or even taking the time to pull that together to ask the right questions to get information to understand, this is the time. You might be worried about what does the future hold from a short-term perspective anyway. But if you have the bandwidth, I would say go ahead and take care of it now because moving forward, you’re going to want that data. You’re going to want to be able to look at something and know if it’s giving you the ROI that you’re expecting and if it’s worth the investment. That is going to be something that I imagine is going to be a pretty big trend over the next three months, six months, probably even longer than that. Number six, we are going to reenter the age of brand. I cannot believe I am saying this because as a demand gen marketer, my background, at least in demand gen, it feels very weird to say, “Yes, be thinking about brand.” The reason why is because, traditionally and very stereotypically, brand campaigns are not big converters. However, again, we’re in a paradigm shift right now. The top priorities that I would say for founders and leaders out there right now is to build trust, to build rapport. Building an audience now has never been more important. Building trust and rapport even more so. That’s because, again, you want to be out on top at the end of all of this. You want to have gained the support, the trust, the reverence of your prospects and your customers. To not means, one your competitors likely well, and two easily forgotten. I think that those are places where we don’t want to be. Building this trust and building this rapport and building an audience, it’s not purely for gain. Again, we need to be of a service mindset. We need to be of a value mindset. How can we provide value? We need our customers, and hopefully, you love your customers. I think from a building an audience and building that rapport, at the end of the day it comes down to building trust. One of the ways that we do that is through thinking about brand. Something that I recommended to one of my clients who was thinking about responding to the pandemic and they wanted to respond to it in a meaningful way, not just like a “Hey, we’ve got a free trial, use our product for free.” Which don’t get me wrong, would actually be beneficial. They’re in the right market, they’re in the right category to do that and it be perceived as valuable. They wanted to go a step further, and they wanted to do more. One thing I asked them was, “What’s your mission statement? What’s your vision statement? How do you see your company existing as a brand, and how do you embody that in every single way?” Now I know some of those answers, but I wanted the founder to tell me because that kind of vision, it might be tough right now. When your mission and the actions that you take, when they match your mission, and when your customers understand and know that, that is brand. That is a customer experiencing a brand. Is that the entire story of brand and branding and all of that other fun stuff? No. In fact, I would say, “I am definitely not a brand marketer.” So if there are any out there who are listening to this, please correct me on that. When a customer really experiences your mission statement and that’s gold, that’s butter right there. This might actually be a perfect time to be thinking and shifting that mindset towards brand. What does your company ultimately stand for at the end of the day? I think the other thing too that is painfully obvious, even now and also very bittersweet, but I think it’s very obvious that customers are reacting to brands that are really standing up for what they believe in, and ones in which they really feel the support from. And not like in the. “Hey, sign up for my free trial because I’m extending it for an extra 15 days,” kind of way.” But in a “Oh my gosh, you’re donating to this particular fund.” Or “Oh my gosh, you helped this particular hospital acquire these masks.” There’s just so many ways to give back and if it matches and aligns with your mission statement, that just strengthens the brand. Other ways that you, of course, can think about brand campaigns or just brand in general, I come back to thought leadership quite a lot. But at the end of the day, people, especially during this incredibly challenging time, they’re looking for answers, and they’re looking for hope. I think it’s really easy to get lost in the doom and gloom. In fact, I think most of our brains are wired for it. Of course, we want the negative, but I also think that so many of us want the positive as well. If you can be that beacon of light, and if it matches your mission statement, perfect. If it doesn’t, maybe it’s time to start thinking about your brand and what you ultimately stand for, what your vision is, and what your stake is and the ground on this incredibly challenging time. How you can be that beacon of hope and light for your customers. Like begets like, your vibe attracts your tribe. If your vibe is, “Hey, we really want to help, you are going to attract people who are probably going to be prospects and customers one day.” You’re going to attract those people. I think that’s the beauty and the magic of brand. I completely forgot to mention voice. Voice is also a part of brand. As you go through this exercise of thinking about what your business is and what does it stand for, that mission statement and how you want to react and how you want to respond and how you want to of course be the beacon of light. It also comes down to voice. One brand, in particular, that comes to mind is Gymshark. This is a fitness brand. I believe they’re B to C, they offer fitness apparel. My favorite example of them using their voice was actually something they did recently. They changed their name from Gymshark to Homeshark temporarily. This is an example of them playing with brand, using their voice as a way to inspire, but also remind people that, “Hey, we’re in this together and we’re going to get out of this together.” They changed the name of their brand from Gymshark to Homeshark because, for them at least, they felt that they need that people needed to be reminded that it’s stay at home time. In order to get through this, we’ve got to stay at home. To me, that was an example of not just “Does this align with our mission statement?” But also using their voice. No, they didn’t change everything to home shark, but still, I just thought that it was a great example of we’re continuing this conversation with our voice and here’s how we’re doing it. I think the biggest thing, and this is the thing I think that hurts even for me to say because so much of the work that I do is driven by “How many free trials can we generate? How many leads can we convert? How many demos can we close?” Don’t get me wrong, that’s the kind of mentality and mindset that a growth marketer should have. That’s definitely the kind of mindset that I have anytime I’m working with a new account or a client. I think that the whole point of a brand campaign or anything to do with brand really is that it doesn’t need to convert. It just needs to build rapport and build trust because when we all do come out on the other end of this, the brands that are remembered are going to be the ones who did that. That’s just exactly why I encourage it for you. The last one that I’m going to leave you with is all about building your resilience. Every single free trial, sign up, account created, demo requested, in-coming chat message, each of those are going to feel more and more like gold. Every time you don’t get them, it is going to likely tank your mindset. It’s going to hurt. MRR, whatever that thing is that gives you that rush, you might not see it as often or as frequent. That’s something that I think a lot of us were just mentally and emotionally preparing for. We’re not always going to see the results as quickly as maybe we did once. Then, of course, there’s the other side of this. Not just from a growth perspective, but from an experience perspective and a financial perspective and a security perspective and a personal perspective. It seems like we’re all kind of getting hit from all sides on this. Overall though, I’m not going to tell you to be positive actually. I’m not going to tell you to stay positive. The reason why is because you are getting hit from all different sides and angles. I think that the reality is that you’re going to have dark moments. You’re going to have moments where you want to quit. You’re going to worry, you’re going to have sleepless nights. I know I have absolutely already experienced that. You’re going to have moments where you do break down and where you do panic. I only wish that you give yourself space, time, and compassion to yourself for experiencing those emotions because they are natural, they are human. I also hope that you give others that, give others the same exact space and time and compassion. I think above all, I don’t know if telling you to stay positive is the best response. I actually think that telling you to stay resilient, be resilient, be thinking about ways that you can bounce back, not anytime, but every time. Cannot remember where I heard this from, but there is this really great example, or metaphor if you will, about resilience. It was about professional athletes and how many people think that professional athletes are superhuman, which don’t get me wrong, they kind of are, but the secret in their super humanness is actually in their recovery. They recover just infinitely faster than the average person, than the average exercise junkie or whatever. Professional athletes recover fast. The secret is in their recovery. That is what I hope that you start thinking about as well. How can you recover as fast as possible under stress? How can you still perform? It only comes with taking care of yourself, taking care of your body, and nourishing yourself wherever you need to. I know that sounds fluffy. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m not sorry, actually. I’m not going to apologize. It is fluffy, but it works. That’s the kind of stuff that leaders actually do. If you’re going to be down, be down and be compassionate towards yourself while you’re down. But do not forget to come back up. Don’t forget to be resilient, you’ll that every time you’re hit again and again and again, you’ll recover even faster the next time. That’s what we call building muscle. Just to make that exercise and fitness metaphor really sink in. To close this out, I want to leave you with a quote from one of Dylan Thomas’s most famous poems. “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” I hope you rage with me, especially since skies seem pretty great at the moment. But my question to you is how are you preparing yourself and your business during this extraordinary time? It’s definitely pretty interesting. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. I really wish you the best. Let me know what you think. Until next time, bye guys. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 2: How to know you're ready for marketing](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-know-youre-ready-for-marketing/) **Published:** May 1, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** When it comes to early-stage SaaS founders trying to grow their businesses, there’s a perfect time for marketing and there’s less ideal times for marketing. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to time your marketing efforts for maximum impact and efficient investment. Asia Orangio of DemandMaven digs deep into what scenarios (including a bonus scenario in the TL;DL notes below) make sense for founders to invest in marketing, and what scenarios would warrant more customer discovery and customer development instead. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL 1. **How to time your marketing efforts.** 1. Let me be specific about “marketing” — I mean the practices, activities, and strategies that help you grow by reaching your target audience and introducing them to your product. 2. Some people call this “growth”. I use the terms interchangeably. 2. **I’ll give you an analogy: marketing is like adding gasoline and wood to an already burning fire**. 1. Gasoline lights it up and then the fire dies down a little bit. Stoking those flames and continually adding fuel (gas, wood, whatever kind of fire you have) ensures that it keeps burning and that it stays alive. 2. If you don’t have a fire, then adding wood and gasoline and all of these other types of fuel does absolutely nothing. 3. Another analogy: when you don’t have product-market fit, marketing is like adding lipstick to a pig. The pig is a little bit more fashionable and certainly more interesting, but if the market doesn’t want a pig, then that pig isn’t going to sell. Conversely, there’s probably a market out there who does want a pig with lipstick, but it’s still your job to figure out who wants this pig. 3. **Back to the fire analogy, lighting a fire with the tools and resources you have is a lot like finding product-market fit. But once you get a little bit of a flame going, you can start to layer marketing (or** **really any go-to-market activity) on top.** **That will keep your fire going.** 1. But it doesn’t mean that your fire is guaranteed. If a fire doesn’t have a good base or a foundation, it will go out whether you’ve got the best fuel resources on the side or not. This is a lot like product-market fit in the real world. 4. **Now there’s three real-life product scenarios that you could be in that we’re absolutely going to break down:** 1. The first — the product isn’t built yet and hasn’t yet entered the market meaning people can’t buy it and use it right now 2. The second — the product is currently in the market and you’ve got a few beta users, but no actual paying customers. 3. The third — the product is live, in the market, and you’ve already got a few paying customers on the product. 4. BONUS: The fourth — this is a scenario that I regrettably did not cover during that podcast, but it is the scenario where you’re either freemium and/or well-funded with a completed MVP. If you plan on being freemium for at least the next 6-12 months, then this is when you could start using marketing to generate users — even if they’re not paying *yet*. Many businesses with giant total addressable markets (think like personal email management or dating apps) leverage this strategy as a way to generate users, learn as much as possible, and roll out plans/feature-gating/other relevant models later. They’ll either retire their freemium plan or figure out a way to keep it while introducing other paid plans. As for the VC-funded, well, you’ve got a very different kind of pressure. As long as there’s an MVP, then it really comes down to the market and the model when deciding between selling first or marketing first. I find founders are more dialed in when they try selling their product first, but many choose to hire marketing very early to move a little faster. ## Transcript What’s up founders, and welcome back to another episode of the [In Demand podcast](https://in-demand.castos.com/), where we talk all about how to get to your very first 100K and MRR. I’m your host Asia Orangio, over at DemandMaven where we work with early-stage founders on reaching their very first growth milestones. Today is kind of an interesting topic. I feel like I’m going to start every single episode with that. I’ll try not to. Today’s a fun topic. It is all about timing your marketing efforts. One of the most common questions I get just from my work with founders, day in and day out is, when is the right time to be thinking about marketing? Am I ready to be thinking about marketing? How do I make sure that I am doing marketing at the right time and place and space in my business? And it’s a challenging question because like most things, you will find that it depends. But there are a few very specific things that I look for. There’s also a few stages if you will, that from just general perspective, allows founders to kind of self segment and figure out, are they even at the right stage to start thinking about marketing? And if they are, what does that ultimately look like? We are going to be talking all about how to actually identify if you’re ready and what does ready mean. I want to make sure that we dig into what I mean however, when I say marketing because whenever I do get this question, usually the word marketing, it can mean different things to different people. Just depending on your background, where you’re coming from. For some people, marketing effort is all about how to brand and how to present a design of a business and what that ultimately looks and feels like. And to others, marketing is all about the activities that you take and that you do in order to generate demand or generate leads or grow in some kind of way. When I say marketing, I really do mean these are the activities, strategies, practices that you would employ and actually execute upon in order to generate growth and to generate revenue. So I don’t just necessarily mean, Oh, this is our brand and this is what we stand for. I’m not necessarily talking about that. I think that that’s definitely helpful, but a different episode entirely. I’m talking about the marketing efforts that ultimately do generate some revenue, some growth, and ultimately helps you put your product to market. That’s the kind of marketing activity that I’m talking about. In order for me to really unpack this topic, however, I want to make sure that I give you a pretty strong analogy. A visual, if you will. Marketing is a lot like adding gasoline to a fire that is already burning. The reason why I absolutely love this metaphor is because think about a fire. Think about the smallest fire, you’ve just started it. You’ve just piled on your leaves, you’ve added in all of your twigs and especially for all the boy and girl Scouts out there, you’ve probably experienced fire in some kind of way. You’ve probably started a fire at some point in your life, whether that was in a grill, in a backyard, wherever. Marketing isn’t necessarily the act of starting the fire. I think there are certainly some cases where that is true, but really starting the fire. That’s really the process of going through that product market fit. You’ve got a product, you’re taking it to market, you’ve started a little bit of a fire and hopefully you can create a fire big enough and large enough that it continues to burn for eons, forever and ever. Think of the Olympics, that kind of thing. But marketing, is ultimately throwing gasoline or fuel. It’s adding fuel to the fire. It doesn’t necessarily make sense though to try to add a bunch of fuel or throw a bunch of gasoline onto a fire that is not already burning because what happens, it just falls flat. It doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t grow bigger, burn brighter or burn cleaner or anything. It just kind of sits there. To say that if you don’t ultimately already have a fire going, even if it’s a tiny one, then it’s going to be really hard to throw fuel on it and expect anything to happen with it. Marketing is extremely similar. It’s not that you can’t do marketing without having something already going. You absolutely can. It just might not actually generate any result for you and instead it kind of ends up being more of a gamble. Another way to think about this is, and you might have heard this metaphor, analogy a few times before, but it can also be compared to putting lipstick on a pig. I don’t know about you, but actually I think pigs are kind of cute, but let’s say you are presenting a pig to a market that does not want pigs. Slapping some lipstick on it. It’s a lot like, Oh, I’m just going to do some marketing and maybe that’ll make people want it. But the reality is, that unless the market already wants the pig putting lipstick on, it doesn’t make them want it even more. Now, there are some out there who would say, okay, well you’ve still got a pig with lipstick. Someone’s got to want that pig with lipstick, and you’re absolutely right. It’s just probably a totally different market. And if that’s the case, then you’ve got to do all the hard work of figuring out what that market is. The problem with that though is that it’s not a guarantee. You’re not guaranteed to find product-market fit with this pig with lipstick on. So whose role is that really? Isn’t marketing’s role to help you find a product-market fit or is it really the entire team? And that’s really where it becomes more of an entire team or global effort as opposed to, Oh, marketing can just kind of fix this. They can kind of just slap lipstick on it and figure out who the right person is to buy it. Definitely, a collaborative effort and you can certainly learn lots from the marketing effort, but it’s possible that maybe instead of putting lipstick on the pig, maybe you just kind of cart the pig around and see who wants it, period. And then maybe there’s a specific niche of people who specifically want the pig with lipstick or maybe you don’t produce pigs. Maybe instead you produce cows. I mean, and that’s kind of where we get into more of the product-market fit question. But taking it back to the fire analogy, lighting that fire with the tools and resources that you already have, that’s a lot like going through the process of product-market fit. And once you do get a little bit of a flame going, you can ultimately start to layer marketing or really any go to market activity on the top over time. That will essentially keep your fire going and hopefully help you build an even bigger fire and one that lasts even longer. But just because you’ve thrown fuel or gasoline on top of your fire doesn’t necessarily mean that your fire’s guaranteed. And what I mean by that is, just because you do marketing doesn’t necessarily mean that your survival is guaranteed. Really the survival depends on the base. If you don’t have a good fire base, if you don’t have a good foundation for having a strong healthy fire, then it will ultimately go out whether you’ve got the best fuel resources or not, whether you’ve got the best marketing or not. If you don’t have a pretty solid foundation and a pretty solid base, it doesn’t necessarily matter if you do marketing or not, and we see this all the time with businesses who struggled to find product-market fit, we also see it all the time with businesses that ultimately take too long to figure out how to position their product. It doesn’t necessarily really matter. At the end of the day, if you’ve got the best gasoline, you’ve got different kinds of fuel, you’ve got the most amazing wooden logs to throw on top of your fire, you can actually smother your own fire. In fact, it’s a hundred percent possible. And this is where founders kind of have to get into the balancing act of, okay, but when do I know I’ve got a strong enough fire? And usually, that’s when we’ve got a pretty strong understanding of our product-market fit. Let’s dig a little bit deeper because we’re speaking in analogy terms right now. In real life, there are typically three different product scenarios that I come across. Whenever I’m working with a founder or I’m talking to a founder and they’re debating on if it’s time to be thinking about marketing, there are usually three different scenarios that they’re in. The first is that the product isn’t built yet. It hasn’t entered the market. People can’t buy it, they can’t use it right now, developers are still actively working on it. There have been zero demos. There might’ve been some customer development or some customer discovery in some kind of way, but for the most part, it’s not used right now. No one’s using it. No one can use it. It’s not live. The second real-life product scenario is that the product is currently in the market and you’ve got a few beta users, but no actual paying customers. You might actually have hundreds of beta users, but no one’s actually paying for the product. And unless you plan on offering pure freemium, there’s a good chance that you want people to pay for the product. You want it to be profitable. The third scenario is that, is pretty simple. The product is alive, it’s in the market. People can ultimately search for it, buy it, pay for it, and actually use it. And on top of that, you’ve already got a few people who are already doing that. So you’ve actually already got a few real paying customers. They could easily be friends and family, but ideally, there are people who are relatively strangers. You might have built a relationship with them over time as you’ve been building the product and keeping in touch with them. But for the most part, they’re not your mom or your cousin or anything like that. So they are actual real paying customers. But you only have a few of them. You don’t have hundreds of them quite yet. More often than not, I encounter founders who are in the very first product scenario. They are way too early to be thinking about any real kind of actionable marketing right now. And the reason why is because their product hasn’t been in the hands of anyone quite yet. So as far as I’m concerned, and as far as reality is concerned, we really don’t know if we’ve got product-market fit until we have people actually using it. And something that I try to explain to founders with every chance that I possibly can get, especially to those who are in this stage, I would say if that’s you, way too early to be thinking about marketing. And many would argue, but you still have to have a plan. And don’t get me wrong, always be prepared. Always be thinking about what would you do in certain scenarios. But the reality is that, unless the product is in someone’s hands, and I know that we’re talking about software, so in this case it would be, they’re able to actually use it in their day to day lives, on their desktop phone, whatever. Until you get actual people using that software and using the tool in some kind of way, it’s going to be impossible for you to know who is actually getting value out of this. And is this actually solving someone’s pain? The reason why that’s critical to know, is because marketing ultimately can’t do its job unless it knows who it wants to target and why. And don’t get me wrong, marketing can help you figure that out, but there’s actually a much faster way to do that when you’re in this stage. When you’re in this scenario, marketing is actually nine times out of 10, a much slower way. It’s not really something that I recommend to early-stage founders who are still like in that beta phase or they’re still in that product design or build phase, but just purely because marketing is a great way, again, to throw gasoline or fuel onto an already burning fire, but it’s not necessarily the most efficient way to figure out if you can get a fire going if that makes any sense. You ultimately have no idea if you have product-market fit, that understanding of product-market fit, yes it does come with generating those very first few users and generating the very first few customers, but marketing probably isn’t the fastest or even the most efficient way for you to do that. Honestly, and this is what I tell every single first-time founder and every single early-stage founder who’s kind of in this scenario, sales is always going to be faster for you when you’re in this stage. And what I mean by sales is, I mean direct selling in some kind of way. You’ve got a product, whether that’s B to B or B to C, you want to know if it actually helps people and if it solves a problem, put it in front of people. Actually facilitate conversations, facilitate introductions, facilitate demos, whatever it is that makes sense for your market and your product, whatever that context is, sales will always be the best, fastest way for you to understand because sales for the most part, is binary. You either get a yes or you get a no and sometimes you get, not right now, in which case, cool. It’s still either going to be a yes or a no at some point. And sometimes if it’s a no, it’s a just a no right now. Sales is one of those activities or one of those practices that I recommend every single founder go through in those very first few months, however long it takes, but really, it’s just because you get feedback and insights so much faster than if you were to do marketing in the early days. Not knocking marketing. Marketing again, is amazing fuel, gasoline, gas, whatever flammable thing you want to throw on top of your fire. But one thing it doesn’t do very well, at least for founders in the early days is, it doesn’t necessarily give you the direct insight immediately, on if someone’s going to think of this product is valuable or not. The reality about marketing is that, you really don’t know what someone thinks about it until they sign up. They become a bank customer and they churn. And that is a very big long funnel to build and to wait for and to try to reverse engineer just to validate if you’ve even got part of market fit in the first place. And that’s a lot of guessing. And I’m going to be honest about the marketing process. Ideally, you minimize the amount of guesses that you have to make in the early days and this is where going through the sales process first, actually makes more sense. By going through the sales process in the earlier days, not only does the founder gain intimate knowledge of who he should be targeting or she, who they should be targeting in the early days versus not, and also what product feedback do their prospects and customers have. Where is their place in the market and how should they be thinking about positioning their product in the market, especially if they’re close to product-market fit. They have a pretty strong idea of who to target, but maybe they’re just not saying the right things about the product. This is critical for the founder to take the time to understand for many reasons. Mostly because if you don’t, you end up guessing and any guess, it takes time, energy and resources to validate. And when marketing doesn’t necessarily know who it is that is best to target, marketing ultimately has to go through the sales process themselves and they ultimately have to figure that out. And don’t get me wrong, there are businesses, people, and scenarios where that makes sense and it has been successful. But if you’re in a situation where you can’t hire a VP of marketing, who will go through that effort and do that for you, then nine times out of 10, you’re probably going to have to figure it out yourself. And even then, I would say it’s still good for the founder to know how to sell their product just as well as the rest of them. Is it scalable? No. But in the early days, few things rarely are scalable. Just to wrap up the very first scenario again, if you don’t have the product ready yet, it’s not live, you’re still working on building it. Your number one mission is really to finish building the product and also not to market, but to do customer development and discovery instead. To continue that process to continue showing product updates to your potential prospects and to your potential customers and to continue facilitating feedback about, if you’re building the right thing. And then also if you can, actually getting either a beta version of the product in people’s hands, prototypes, whatever it is that you need to do, in order to actually bring the idea to fruition and to facilitate as much feedback as possible. That is going to give you so much more leverage overall than trying to build a go-to market strategy before the product is ever even live. I’ve learned this the hard way personally, but I also highly encourage any founders out there. If you really want to know if your product is going to generate any kind of revenue, the best way and the fastest way in the early days, is to honestly, just sell it. That’s whether if you’re B to B versus B to C, enterprise versus small business versus consumer, it doesn’t really matter. You can absolutely sell it first. And I probably can’t say this enough, but it just doesn’t make sense to build a marketing engine for a market that you’re not even certain will buy. Something that I find, especially talking to first-time founders at this stage, is that, what you think the product will do for people and what it actually does for people, it’s usually an entire journey in and of itself, even right there and the amount of learning that you do and also the direction that your product goes in, it’s susceptible to nearly infinite change and nearly infinite possibilities, which means that if you’re uncertain, that means that it’s going to be harder for you to learn through the marketing process than it would be through the sales process. Marketing, again, it’s great fuel for an already burning fire, but it’s not exactly the best way to approach starting a fire, and I think that that might be where a lot of misconception lies. A lot of founders think, Oh, well, if I don’t have anyone right now, I can just do some marketing and get someone. I would actually say that, yes, you can absolutely approach it that way, but if you don’t ultimately know, then you have to guess, and when you have to guess, especially with marketing, that’s where people lose a bunch of money, especially trying to do any kind of advertising, having no idea what they’re doing. And then of course you hear a lot of horror stories about, Oh, marketing didn’t work for us, and here’s why. The reality is that, if you have a very clear idea of a segment of target and you’ve got proof that the product actually helps that segment or target and you know how to position it, you’ll see results from marketing. But if you don’t know, fastest, best way again, is to sell it. Let’s talk about the second scenario. Now, the second scenario is a situation that is also very common, where the product is live. People can actually use it, but you’ve only got beta users. No one’s actually paying for it yet. And this is a very interesting scenario because I actually think that the traditional playbook is to build the product, go to beta, and then eventually launch it publicly where people can actually pay for and buy it and that’s a pretty common playbook and neither here nor there in terms of if it’s good or not. I think it depends on the product that you have, the market that you have and of course the ultimate customer and the pain that you’re solving. But sometimes I’ll get founders who have the question of, okay, well what if I actually have users, but they’re just not paying yet. In which case it’s a similar situation where you’ve got a bunch of people using it for free, you want to charge for it and here’s the difference. You want to charge for it, but you haven’t yet. Even then, I would still say, you haven’t quite crossed the threshold. You haven’t quite gotten ready to be thinking about marketing in any kind of real actionable capacity unless it was to generate a bunch of free users, in which case I would say, if that’s part of the strategy from a growth perspective and a longterm perspective, that also might make sense. There’s plenty of examples out there of businesses that have been focused so much more on generating beta testers than actual paying customers because their market is huge and they need as much data as possible on their target market. But too often, the scenario is actually much more that, they might spend a lot of resources generating these free beta testers, but at the end of the day, they need to start paying. The best way to know if you have product-market fit is to start charging, to announce that you will start charging to, I’m putting my hands up and saying, you finger quotes, but launch. Then that is actually one of the best indicators of if you’ve actually got something. You can roll this out all at once. You can roll this out slowly. There’s all kinds of different ways that you can actually do this. But the challenge with layering marketing even on top of a situation like that is, you really don’t know if you’re attracting people who would pay money until you actually do it. And then that’s when you learn. So I would say, if you’re in the second scenario, you might start thinking about your approach to marketing and also about who is actually the best fit paying customer. But the challenge is that, until you actually start charging, you really don’t know. And that’s something that I cannot iterate enough. I cannot hammer down enough. You’ll hear me say this forever, but you really won’t know until you start charging. And we can operate in hypotheticals or until you start thinking about which part of your prospect base or your user base would be most likely to pay, and then start thinking about how you can actually roll out that payment plan. A couple of things are going to happen when you do this. First, you’re going to see who churns. You’re also going to hear who really doesn’t value the product in the way that you thought that they would. You’re also going to hear people who don’t even blink twice and in fact, tell you to charge them more. You’re going to hear all kinds of different things in between. Now, obviously the people who don’t think twice and even were expecting you to say a higher number, those are probably the people that you want to attract more of. And that’s when we start to say, “Okay, how can we get more of you?” And that’s where marketing again becomes gasoline or fuel on a fire because we’ve lit a match at that point. We’ve started something. When we move into that space where we start to charge or we start to validate if our product market fit is as strong as we thought it was. And the best way to do that again, is to take a look at your overall churn and then of course, are people likely to recommend the product to others? Those are two very basic and there are other ways that we can measure or quantify product-market fit, but ideally, it’s something like that, and this is again where marketing makes sense. But if we don’t have that, let’s say we have more people who say, “Oh, I’m not paying for this, I’m not going to use this anymore.” Well, that also tells us that we’ve got more work to do. Either it’s the wrong market or it’s the wrong product, or we’re not positioning it very well, which is a marketing challenge of course. In that case, even still, we’ve got to dig deeper and we have to learn why what’s going on. In the third case, or at least in the last case where the positioning might be misaligned. That’s absolutely a marketing challenge and that’s usually one of the first places that a marketer will start. But if it’s the product or if it’s the market, we either need to choose a different market entirely, which honestly, you’d do better with sales or it’s the product. And maybe we know what market we want to be in, but the product needs to catch up in some kind of way. Even still, we’ve got a different … Even still our fire is put out and we’ve got to start over. The last thing I think I’ll add to that is, there are some businesses out there who are in a situation where they’ve got literally hundreds of beta users, beta testers, people who are using the product for free, but freemium is not their model. And I think that that’s a very big, there’s some opposing things about that. So if your model has nothing to do with freemium, but you’ve got all these beta testers and all these beta users and you’ve got hundreds of them, there are some situations and scenarios out there where that might make sense, but you’ve got hundreds of them, no one’s paying yet. And maybe it’s because you’re holding out to continue building of the product, so that way, you can feel pretty confident that when you do start charging, you’ll actually retain most of the people who are using it. In that scenario, you’ve got the runway, you’ve got the bandwidth, you’ve got the resources, the time, awesome. But if you don’t, this is where you can get trapped a little bit because you ultimately, you’re going in the same scenario. You’ve got all these people using the product, but you really don’t know if you could start charging and that’s where I would say, especially if you’ve got tons of people using it, I’ll let you define what tons means. I’ll let you define what that number is, but if you’ve got too many beta users, beta testers and they continue to use the product for free and freemium is not part of your plan, then it might actually be time to flip the switch and to start thinking about how you can roll out your payment plans. All right. I saved the third scenario for last. And the reason why is because this is at least in my experience when you would start thinking about marketing. And the kinds that you can actually take steps towards. The third scenario really encapsulates founders who have product. It is live and they actually do have paying customers already. They’ve proven that at least a few people have decided to pay for the product. The number upon which it makes sense to start thinking about marketing is really dependent on your model. Whether you are a very more on the upper tier of price, so you’ve got a pricier product, all the way down to maybe your product is free, maybe it is freemium and you’ve got a few other paid plans and you’ve got a few people on the paid plans. I’ll let you decide on what that number is. But typically, and this is just from again experience. Typically, if you’ve got at least five paying customers, that’s actually enough to start thinking about how you get more. I’ve worked with businesses that have had zero paying customers but they had an extremely strong vision and intent on who they ultimately wanted to target and why. I will say that starting from zero because we didn’t have that very first paying customer cohort, it was very tough to model who … Actually I don’t think I want to say that. I think it doesn’t really drive home my point. It’s really more … Nose is itchy. It’s really more … If you’re to get at least the very first five paying customers as a marketer and just overall growth expert, that tells me a few things. It tells me that, you’ve got people who have decided that the product was valuable enough and worthy enough, that they kept paying for it and they did not churn. It is pretty critical that the segment or the cohort that you leverage are customers that do not churn. Meaning they’ve been with you for at least enough time where you’re pretty confident that if they do churn, they’ll at least talk to you first about it. And again, there’s no hard line and I think that this is also where so many of us kind of fall, but there’s no hard line in terms of, okay, well is it just five customers and how long do they need to have stayed with me? This is really where it becomes a balancing act and I’ll talk more about that balancing act and just a second, but if you’ve got at least five paying customers, marketing overall can work with that. We can ultimately say, okay, great. Here’s what those customer segments are. Here’s based on our interviews with them. Here’s where we would start to try to attract them and also, here are the most important value propositions and just overall messages that we need to make sure that we carry with us as we entered this market. Even if you have five customers who look relatively different, we can still work with that. That’s something that we can still base a few different campaigns and just overall strategies around. The challenge of course, will be having enough volume to really hone and refine our strategy over time. But generally speaking, if you’ve got at least five paying customers, that’s where starting to think about marketing becomes more of a reality. Now you probably are actually acting on marketing and you’re starting to deploy some of the marketing strategies and just ideas that you’ve had and you’re starting to learn even more. The one caveat that I will throw to founders who are in this scenario, is that, don’t get me wrong. Marketing doesn’t suddenly become this perfect science where it has all the answers and it knows exactly what kind of results you’re going to get. It’s still very much experimental and it likely is going to continue to be experimental until you get the magical SaaS or startup flywheel, which is the thing just seems to grow without me having to force a boulder up a mountain. It’s much more like you’re guiding a boulder down a mountain as opposed to having to feel like you’re pushing it up. But it at least will help you again, throw fuel and gasoline on the fire to still see if you’ve got something and that is still incredibly valuable. That’s when you start planning for marketing and when you start really thinking about, okay, who are we targeting? Here’s why we want to target them, here’s where we would target them and here’s exactly what kind of relationship we want to build with these people. Here’s where they are in their journey and here’s exactly what we need to say to them to capture their attention, but then also help solve some pain, help provide some amazing value, and hopefully we’re really painkilling something for them and we’re actually delivering something that changes their world in some kind of way. This is when marketing actually starts to become incredibly valuable, but then also, this is where it really works and where it helps. If you’re still very early on, in terms of how many customers you have, marketing is far more experimental, but it will still enable you to learn. Before you have at least those few paying customers though, most of the work you’re going to be doing probably isn’t the kind of marketing that you might be thinking of doing, it’s probably much more product work. You’re doing some just business level go to market strategy work as well. So you’re thinking about how to position the product or maybe you’re thinking about just based off of the feedback that you’re getting from customers, you’re getting about what probably needs to be built and what could be postponed from a build schedule perspective and just from a development planning perspective. And even then, marketing very rarely is the most effective or efficient way when you’ve got zero paying customers. It’s very rare and it’s a very rare marketer too, who can actually take a company from zero to a hundred and do so without having to do a lot of guessing and or pivoting. So that’s really the biggest caveat. But after you got the first few, most marketers can work with that. That’s when even if the founder plans on owning marketing themselves and becoming the marketer themselves, that’s really when marketing makes the most sense. If there’s one thing I want to leave you with, it’s really this, the biggest balancing act that you as a founder will have to do is really two things. It’s gaining the confidence in what you’re bringing to market as fast as possible while also securing the runway in the time to do so. And what I mean by that is, many founders end up in a few different situations. Either they try to take on marketing way too early or they wait too late to bring on marketing and then they’re backed up against a wall and they don’t have a whole lot of time left to live. They end up with like six months or less of the runway, which is a very tight, tough position to be in, especially if you don’t know if you’ve actually got product-market fit or not. And even then, product-market fit is a constant process and a constant cycle. If you’re in the latter situation, meaning you’re up against a wall, you’ve got a product, it needs to sell soon, or maybe you’ve already got a few paying customers, but you need more right now and not in six months or even three months, but today, I will always say that focusing on sales will just hands down be the most effective and efficient way for you to not only learn as fast as possible but actually generate some deals and hopefully some revenue. If you’re actually pretty confident in your product-market fit and you’re also less than six months of runway, but you know that you’ve got a fire and you need that fuel and you need that gasoline, then marketing absolutely is one of the best things that you can start thinking about investing in. Keeping in mind, however, that the best marketing does take time. It truly is like wine or beer. It takes a while. And not to say that marketing can’t generate results for you fast, don’t get me wrong. Like I said, it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire. It can absolutely do that. But if you want to build a larger fire and you want to build something sustainable, you’re going to be looking at adding wood to the fire. You’re going to be looking at expanding it in some kind of way. And that’s the kind of stuff that slow burns, takes some time. Yes, the gasoline gets you like the big spike, but like most things, it’ll come down. So really you want to balance out your marketing efforts with both long term and short term strategies. If you’re in the former example though, so you’re a founder who you might be thinking about marketing too early. Just wait, just pause. Just pause for a second. Because if you’ve got the time and the resources to just wait a little bit on marketing and to learn more in the interim, then whatever you do after, is just going to be that much more informed, better, higher quality and quantity overall. Usually whenever I’m talking to a founder and they’re just way too early to be thinking about marketing, I say, “If you think you know now, just give it a few weeks of doing any kind of customer discovery or research and you’ll be shocked at how different your perspective is.” So if you’re a little bit too early, maybe the product isn’t live yet, maybe you’ve got a lot of beta testers, but no one’s actually paying yet. Just by changing one of those variables. I mean, you’re going to learn a ton. And that’s when we start to ask ourselves, okay, do we have something or do we not? And to be fair, most founders don’t really know that until they hit a certain amount of revenue of customers. But those are the main switches, at least that you can flip. So the product being live and built and actually in people’s hands, that’s one switch. But the second is actually charging. That’s the second switch. And when those two are on, you learn so much. The third switch is really, after you have determined that you got a little bit of a fire going and now it’s time to throw some gasoline on there, that’s when we think about marketing. I hope that this was helpful. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope that you learned a lot. I hope that if anything, I’ve validated some things for you. So if this took off the pressure and gave you a little bit of reprieve to actually really focus on the product and the customer and the market and not necessarily marketing right now, awesome. If it also may be kind of lit a little bit of a fire underneath you and to start actually start thinking about marketing, then also awesome. And for what it’s worth, from a DemandMaven perspective, we almost always work with businesses who already have paying customers and they’re ready to throw fuel and gasoline on the fire and they just don’t really know what kind, what kind of fuel. Is it gas? Is it gasoline? Is it wood? What do I need to do? That’s what we help founders discover. But if you’re in the first two camps, again, scenario one or scenario two, no product yet, lots of beta testers, no paying customers. Those are usually things that are better off, validated and vetted by the founder and maybe an advisor or some kind of strategist, which we definitely do the strategy work, but in terms of execution, until you flip those two switches, until you start charging or until you start offering the product live to people in the market, it’s going to be really tough to know, but I digress. You guys already know this now because you listen to this podcast. Thank you so much again for listening. My name is Asia. I work at DemandMaven, where I work with early-stage startups and founders on reaching their very first growth milestones. I hope that you enjoyed this. Let me know some of the other indicators that you need marketing help or that you’ve learned over time because some of you guys are super experienced and you’re much further along. What were your indicators that it was now time to start thinking about marketing? I would love to hear in the comments below and also don’t hesitate to hit me up. I’m also an open book. Happy to answer any questions you guys have. Thanks again so much. Have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 3: What to do when your growth is stagnant](https://demandmaven.io/what-to-do-when-your-growth-is-stagnant/) **Published:** May 7, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Growth suddenly going stagnant? Here’s the top 3 strategic questions you need to answer in order to unpack and troubleshoot your stagnant growth. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL The first step is not to panic. Then, answer these strategic questions: 1. **Do I understand what is broken?** - Usually this points us to looking at some form of analytics - Find what’s broken - Stagnant growth = something isn’t working the way we expected it to. - Look at the business performance first (traffic, free trials/demos, paying customers, churn) - Pay off analytics debt 2. **Do I understand what got us here?** - Get back in touch with the customer - Few problems aren’t solved with doing the customer research 3. **What experiments or tests would I need to execute in order to learn as fast as possible?** - Need a strong understanding of what activities impact certain parts of the funnel - There are no silver bullets - you’re likely dealing with a few challenges that need to be addressed, and they could be in the range of marketing, product, customer service or support, sales, you name it. - they could also be at any stage of the customer journey — acquisition, activation, or retention ## Transcript What’s up founders, and welcome to another episode of the [In Demand podcast](https://in-demand.castos.com/) where we talk all about how to get your very first 100K MRR. I’m your host Asia over at DemandMaven, where we work with early stage founders on reaching those exact growth milestones, those very first milestones, the 100 customers, the 10K MRR, and then of course the 100K MRR. Today we’re going to talk about one of my absolute favorite topics, which is what to do when growth is stagnant. You have been, it seems like you’ve been really putting in the effort, you guys have been building, launching new features, talking to customers. Maybe some of those, maybe none of those. Maybe you’ve been testing ads, maybe you’ve been testing a bunch of different things or trying a bunch of different things, but for whatever reason, growth itself is just, it’s just not budging. The MRR is not increasing, the revenue isn’t increasing, and it’s probably one of the most frustrating situations to be in because you’ve probably been putting in a lot of effort, but it’s not netting out into a particular result. The desired result, which is growth. Well, the first step is really to not panic, which if you have been putting in a ton of effort in terms of growth, and you’re really not seeing the result, it’s very easy to sink into this like, “Oh man, like I’m doing all these things and it’s not generating the desired result.” This could have been for months, this could have been for some of you, years. Either way, it’s sounds obvious, but it’s so important to remember, don’t panic. It’s okay. We’re going to talk all about how to not only troubleshoot this, but what are some of the questions that you need to answer, and what are some tactics that you can actually do to answer these questions? There’s really just three questions that you need to answer when you’re trying to figure out why your growth is stagnant, and what you can do to overcome that stagnant growth. What I’m going to do today is I’m going to first give you the strategic question, the big overarching question that you ultimately need to answer, and then I’m going to give you a few steps or tactics if you will, to actually take to answer those questions if you don’t already know the answer. So, we’re going to cover three. The very first one is actually a very, it is both very complex and at the same exact time, there’s beauty in simplicity. The first question is, “Do I understand what is broken?” Typically, whenever we are dealing with a business that is experiencing stagnant growth, usually the number one indicators of that is that something is broken. There is something in the funnel, there is something in the business that has ultimately broken and not functioning as well as it could be, should be or at all. Basically stagnant growth means that something isn’t working the way that we expected it to. Whether that’s in our control or outside of our control, is really to be determined. And the first step, and this is this the first step that I almost always take, especially when dealing with stagnant growth, is we have to look at the business performance first before we ever dive deep into marketing or growth or customer success or sales or whatever part of go to market that could be suffering. The first step is really to understand well, is the funnel broken overall? And we look at the business performance first. The reason why we almost always take a step back and we look at the business performance first is because before we assume that it’s a marketing problem, or a customer success problem, or a sales problem, first we have to really take a step back and look at the overall business and look at the overall picture and say, could it actually be spread across many of these different departments, and we just didn’t realize or we didn’t know or it was. It’s been a looming challenge or a looming issue for a long time that we’ve kind of accrued a little bit of a debt, and now we need to pay it off. What I mean by that is when looking at the business performance, or basically just looking at how many free trials you’re actually generating our signups or whatever that main entry point KPI you actually have, and then we take a look at how that’s converting over time. Do you have a healthy, and I’m putting that in big giant finger quotes, but do you have a healthy free trial to paid conversion rate? Do you have a healthy freemium to paying customer conversion rate based off of just super basic industry standards and also historical measures? So you likely have quite a lot of data that you’re sitting on top of that you just need to actually take a step back and analyze yourself, and then all the way down to churn. Do we have an unreasonably high churn? And then of course when we look at the top of the funnel, are we getting enough traffic? Are we getting enough introductions? Maybe demos are really your main entry point KPI, and maybe you need to book as many demos in order to close deals. Well, same overall formula. You either need traffic or you need introductions in order to book those demos obviously. So we’re really looking at when we look at from top to bottom, very at the very, very tippy top, are we overall seeing growth at the top of the funnel? Meaning that traffic or maybe it’s the introductions or the referrals and then are enough of those people converting into paying customers? So is that free trial to paid conversion rate healthy? Is a freemium to paid conversion rate healthy? The demo to close deal conversion rate healthy? And then from there, we get down to return. Are we retaining enough month over month? The reason why we start by looking at the overall business funnel is because it becomes pretty obvious pretty fast that if one of those things is broken, meaning if we don’t have a healthy conversion rate in one particular place, maybe we’re getting tons of traffic, but we’re not getting enough signups. Maybe we’re actually getting tons of demos, but not enough people are becoming customers. Maybe we actually have both of those things off the charts in terms of free trial signup or paying conversion rate, but we have an insane amount of churn. It could also be that it’s actually really expensive for us to acquire a customer, and it could also be that every time we do acquire a customer, one customer doesn’t create another customer, meaning they recommend the product, or they refer it to someone else, which means that every single customer that we acquire is actually really expensive because they don’t generate any others. When we take a step back and we actually look at how the business is performing, that’s when these things become much more clear and they become much more obvious. And it actually also becomes much more clear and obvious, where do we need to dig deeper? Because if we see that we have a retention problem, is that because we’re attracting the wrong kinds of people, or is that because we’re attracting the right kinds of people, but we haven’t achieved the level of product market fit that we expected to achieve? That tells me, okay, well we either need to look at how we’re acquiring customers and closing them, or we need to be looking at the product or both. It’s the same thing for top of the funnel activity. If we’re not converting enough of our free trials or our signups or our demos, that tells me also we’re either attracting the wrong kinds of people or we’re not positioning the product in the best way that we can be. It could also be that we’re doing the wrong activities. Maybe we’re acquiring people from the wrong kinds of channels, and we should actually be focusing on different parts of the funnel instead. This is where we start to dig deeper into not just the overall different functions of the business, meaning like marketing, product, sales, et cetera, but now we’re kind of drilling down into, okay, well what about our acquisition strategies are inadequate? What about our activation strategies aren’t adequate? This is where we start to really understand and begin to answer that very first strategic question. Do I really know what’s broken? Now if taking a dive into, do I understand what’s actually broken business wise, funnel wise, if that gives you a little bit of a heartburn, and you’re super overwhelmed by the analytics, or you don’t have any analytics installed, I would say this is the time. Because if you’ve noticed in some kind of way that your growth has been stagnant, I’m assuming you’re measuring something. And if you’re not, it’s definitely time to start. It’s time to start paying off your analytics debt. Just like you can accrue technical debt, you can accrue analytics debt. And believe me, when you are trying to grow, analytics debt, paying that off is not fun. It’s not, but you’re going to have to. Because if you don’t, if you can’t actually look at your business and really point to parts that are broken, you’re likely not measuring the right things in the first place or you’re not measuring at all. Both of those situations, one of those is definitely worse than the other, but if you are not measuring anything at all, it’s time to pay off the analytics debt so that way you can actually point to a different part of the business and say, “Oh, it’s really this. It’s here. Here’s the problem,” or it’s spread across the different functions of the business. That’s also very likely. All right. Question number two. This is the second strategic question that you need to answer before you start digging into how to fix your stagnant growth. And that second question is, do I understand what got us here? This one is a little bit different than understanding my present. This is really understanding the past. Do I know or understand what things in the business and in the market that were happening that led us here? Stagnant growth is not one of those things that necessarily happens overnight, unless a big market change actually happens. So meaning something outside, totally outside of your control. Maybe an integration partner changes the way that they measure something, or maybe they release an API or maybe a competitor does something that dramatically changes the way that people view your product or convert or become paying customers. Either way, do I really understand what has actually got me here? Whether that was market wise or whether that was internal or both. So the activity to take here, and this is where it really does depend on what ultimately is broken in the business. And I say broken, I don’t mean that super negatively. It sounds super negative, but it’s true. Usually stagnant growth is because something just isn’t working very well, or isn’t working at all. But based off of what you find, you also might find that there are very clear tactics that align with what wasn’t ultimately functioning very well. What was misaligned or what was actually broken, and then of course there’s also things in the market that are happening that you might be aware of and might also not be aware of. But one activity that I almost always recommend for people answering this second question, it’s really all about getting back in touch with the customer. You will hear me talk about customer research pretty much forever because it is the one activity that pretty much always tells us exactly where we need to go, and who we need to be focused on, and what activities we need to be doing. And I also just firmly believe that very few problems are actually solved by not talking to the customer. Find that nine times out of 10, especially in that journey to a 100K MRR, being extremely dialed in with your customer, what their wants, needs, fears, dreams, goals, understanding those things, like where they hang out, where they go. Those are the kinds of things that I’d like to understand and know about our customers so I can make the appropriate judgment based off of how we want to grow. I find that whenever growth is stagnant, especially with a business trying to get that first 100K MRR, typically whenever growth is stagnant, it’s usually a combination of two things. There’s something in a particular function of the business, or several different parts of the business or departments, functions, practices, whatever you want to call it. Could be marketing, sales, product, could also be acquisition, activation, retention. It really depends on your situation and what’s actually going on, but I find that when one of those things is contributing to stagnant growth, at the end of the day, there’s something about that function or practice that isn’t aligned with the customer. Because what we’re ultimately measuring is really customer behavior. At the end of the day, all of the MRR, the activation, the free trial to paid conversion rate, free trials in general, those are directly correlated to actual real customer behavior. When we take a step back to analyze the business, and then take the next step of interviewing the customer based off of what we find, we can usually unlock what actually got us to where we are today, and what we need to do to fix it. One of the best examples of this was actually a client that I had where, as we started working together, we did a bunch of customer interviews as per usual, because that’s always one of the very first places that we start. But as we were looking at what was leading to the business’s stagnant growth, we realized that we had these amazing customers who had been with us for like two years, sometimes a year, and they were raving fans. They were so excited about what we were doing and what we had to offer. And there was a moment where we thought maybe we need to attract customers exactly like this and it’s not wrong thinking. In fact, I think it’s absolutely part of this particular business’s future. But one thing that we learned as we did more and more and more of these interviews was they’re raving fans now, but when they first started their profile, their makeup, the kinds of customers that they were back then two years ago, a year ago, they were in a different part of their journey. So we were attracting property management companies that had what, 100 to 200 properties, but when they joined this particular, when they became customers of this particular product, my client, they were actually much smaller. They only had like maybe 10 or 20 or so properties, and they grew with the client’s product over time. We realized that a lot of our messaging was really catering towards, well, it wasn’t really specific to anyone except for people in this overall industry. People in this particular nation, this like property management kind of company world. And it became very clear that we really have two main segments that we go after. There’s the property management company that’s just starting out in their journey and needing a tool to help them automate their listings and properties. And then there’s this other vertical or this other segment of the market, much more mature, they definitely don’t need as much handholding. They generally know what it is that they want, and how they want to be helped, and they just don’t need as much guidance, but they need confidence. It became very clear that our stagnant growth was largely contributing to, well, we’re getting the signups, but we’re not doing a whole lot to cater to this other segment, to the younger one, to the earlier one. So, now we can start to brainstorm and plan for not just acquisition activities, but activation too. So what are the resources that these shorter, or excuse me, smaller companies need? The other very big indicator that we needed to offer more support to this other segment was that the sales team was spending a lot of time and effort trying to convert basically these smaller deals. And that’s not to say that that was our fault. That was just the nature of what was also happening. It was a wake up call, if you will, that “Oh man, like our marketing is doing the best job right now of converting these smaller companies. Sales has to do it.” So we were really seeing this problem manifest in not just the acquisition side but the activation side as well. So, we were spending extra resources getting these smaller businesses and smaller deal sizes to convert. And that’s not to say that that’s a bad thing. It just, it became very obvious that, “Oh, part of our stagnant growth is because of this. It’s because we’re not doing the best job of converting these smaller customers passively.” And not to say that passively is the best way, it’s just it wasn’t as efficient, and our marketing wasn’t exactly doing the best job. So from a tactical perspective, at least in this case, we decided to invest more on better onboarding, and also creating marketing content that speaks to those smaller businesses who need a lot more handholding. But we can do that as automated and as optimized as possible now. In addition of course to brainstorming and designing campaigns that will attract those smaller property management companies. With that example, it became pretty clear also what got us here into the situation that we’re in, and by doing that customer research and by really looking at the overall business and how it was performing at the time, it became pretty clear that what’s really brought us here was an underinvestment in two different segments, and also potentially I want to say an over-investment but maybe a little bit too much focus on a different segment when really the first one was the one that we should have been doubling down on. All right, the very last strategic question that you need to answer now. This is the clincher. This is the one that will bring it all together, especially if you took your time and you really answered the first strategic question, and you also understand generally speaking, what the activities were or bets were that you made that got you into the situation that you’re in now. And this last one brings it altogether into something that you can actually execute. And that is what experiments or tests, what I need to execute in order to learn as fast as possible. This question is one that does depend on just your understanding of what’s impacted the overall business funnel, and also what opportunities are currently available to you. It also really depends on how well you currently understand how marketing, sales, product, customer success, the overall go to market functions work together, and also if, depending on if you’re struggling with acquisition or activation or retention, what are the strategies that ultimately help you impact each of those parts of the business? Your understanding though doesn’t have to be perfect. At the end of the day, after doing the two question analysis if you will, you aren’t going to come up with some pretty strong ideas of what you need to execute. The goal of course though, is to think about them in terms of experiments, and your ultimate goal is to learn as much as possible. I think it’s really easy to fall into the trap of, I need to execute these things and expect a growth result, when in reality they’re really more like experiments. If you put too much pressure on achieving a very specific growth result off of an activity that you’re really not certain if it will actually contribute to growth, what will end up happening is you’ll try it, it’ll fail, and you start wondering if it’s possible to grow at all. Or, maybe if you had done something different, you would see a different result. At the end of the day, I just want to emphasize how important it is to, if you can afford to at least, think about your tactics as experiments. There is never a promise of growth at the end of the day. But if we can design really smart experiments and if we can think of them as experiments in hopes of learning something, then that’s actually what brings us faster to our result than executing a few different things, not treating them as experiments or tests, not learning anything. And then of course never actually achieving the desired result because we really didn’t think about our experiments or our tests in the best way. And in addition to that, maybe we didn’t prioritize them as well as we could have. And also maybe we didn’t have enough information in the first place. Are there best practices and do those best practices likely bring us a desired result? Of course. But I think that the most important thing to remember is of course that they are truly experiments. Nothing is promised in this world, in this space, especially this space, where a startup life is so volatile, which is why I always encourage founders if they can afford to, delay the expectation of the outcome to really approach things as scientifically as possible. But also keep an open mind, because you would be surprised at what generates a result versus not. I think the second thing about this third strategic question, so when you’re thinking about those experiments or tests that you need to execute in order to learn, something to remember is that it is extremely rare, have it been my experience of working with, at this point, dozens of startups and founders at an early stage. It’s so important to remember that there are no silver bullets. There just isn’t one. I’ve never worked with a founder, I’ve never worked in a business, whether it was B to B, B to C, early stage, late stage, mid stage, funded, non-funded. Doesn’t really matter. When growth is stagnant or when there’s issues with growth. It’s never just one thing that we need to execute in order to see the growth. It’s so very rare. It’s just extremely rare. I’m pretty confident in saying that 10 times out of 10, a hundred percent of the time, it’s actually a combination of several different things. You likely took action, not just an acquisition but an activation or maybe you took action in marketing and sales and product. It’s very likely just one thing that unblocks the growth and that’s just purely because businesses are complex, but so are our markets and our customers. It’s very rarely ever just one headline change or one specific activity that we took that generated or resulted in massive growth. Usually, it’s several things. Back to the property management example, this particular product was experiencing stagnant growth, and we conducted several different experiments. We designed several different experiments in all parts of the business. It wasn’t just, “Oh, we just need to maybe change a headline or change a campaign.” It was, “Oh my gosh, like we’re missing case studies. Our website messaging could be a lot better. We need different pages. We also need to be thinking about onboarding changes and the emails that we’re sending out whenever people sign up aren’t up to date. Oh, and also customer support has not scaled as effectively as it could have. We need to scale our customer support and our customer success efforts.” One of the best ways to do that is through knowledge base. “Oh man. We’re missing a few features.” It was across the board, and usually whenever growth is stagnant, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s usually across the board. And we can take a look at specific marketing activities and specific product activities and specific sales strategies to impact that. But it’s very rarely ever just one. So keep that in mind. There are no silver bullets. We want to believe that there is one. But I always encourage founders, if you’re ever struggling with stagnant growth, don’t come to the table with just one idea. Come to the table with several. We need many different experiments. We need to learn as much as possible at once. And the only way to do that is to, of course, design conduct and actually do them. And to learn from them. We prioritize them as best as we can, and we always double it back with research and we double it back with what we know. And then we try to backfill our knowledge of what we don’t know. But that’s how we approach it. All right. Time to around this out. So, if you were able to answer those three questions, the first question was, do I understand what is broken? The second question is, do I understand what brought me here? And the third, what experiments or tests do I need to execute in order to learn as much as possible? If you’re able to answer those three questions, not only are you light years ahead, but you’re already on the path to figuring out what’s creating the stagnant growth and what do we need to do to fix it. As always, thank you so much for listening. I really hope that helps. I hope you learn something. I hope that this helped unblock you in some kind of way, and also as always, I want to hear from you. What are some of the questions that you’ve asked yourself about unblocking stagnant growth, or what questions have you asked others to help them unblock their growth and to figure out what was contributing to that stagnant growth. And of course, I always want to hear stories. I love stories. I also love telling them. So, if you have a story about what you did to unblock that stagnant growth, I would love to hear it. Thank you so much again for listening. I hope this was helpful. Again, my name is Asia. I hope to catch you next time. Awesome. Thanks so much guys. Bye. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 4: The WORST Assumptions You Can Make as a SaaS Founder](https://demandmaven.io/the-worst-assumptions-you-can-make-as-a-saas-founder/) **Published:** May 14, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** In our personal lives, we’ve learned that assumptions will often lead us astray. When it comes to an early stage SAAS startup, they can be the difference between success and failure. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the six worst assumptions that you can make as a SAAS founder and how to reframe them for success. ## Extra Resources - Check out the Baremetrics blog post on SAAS milestones: ## TL;DL 1. **If you build it, they will pay.** - The traditional saying if you build it, they will come. But - Here’s the thing – it’s too easy to build software these days. - Don’t get ahead of the paying process - Two approaches: getting beta users, keeping them for a long time and rolling out a payment plan later, or rolling out a paid tier now - Generally speaking, if you’re in a market with competitors, offering a cheaper plan will be your best bet; offering it for free may or may not be perceived positively if they expect to pay something if you’re in a market without competitors or it’s net new category, offer it for free for as long as you can. charge after you have clear adoption 2. **“It worked for them”.** - Copying someone else’s tactics will work for your business. Not always. There’s certain situations where certain activities make sense and work, but more than anything, it’s a particular context. 3. **The first 100 customers are fast.** - https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr-milestones - On average, 217 days to get to $833 MRR - 400+ days to reach $100K ARR (or $8300K MRR) - 716+ total days to reach $1M ARR (or $83,000K MRR) - Reaching $100K MRR — 2.5 years 4. **You can change a market’s behavior.** - Product adoption happens because of two things: - It’s truly easier to use your product - It’s solving a problem better than the competitive alternative 5. **The market moves as fast as you.** - On average it takes a few months for the market to catch up to you. they’re not waiting for your every update 6. **Others are doing better than you or have it more figured out.** ## Transcript What’s up, founders? And welcome to another episode of the [In Demand podcast](https://in-demand.castos.com/) where we talk all about how to get to your very first 100K in MRR. I’m your host, Asia, over at DemandMaven where we work with early-stage founders on reaching those exact growth milestones, the first 100 customers, the first 10K in MRR, and then of course the first 100K in MRR. Today, we’re going to talk about the worst assumptions that you can make as a SaaS founder. I’ve got six here today. So buckle up. We’re going to dig pretty deep into each of these. They are myths, assumptions, global perceptions that at the end of the day really aren’t true. And we’re going to dig into each one, debunk a little bit of those myths, and form some new assumptions. So sit back, relax, or not. Panic. No, I’m just kidding. Don’t panic. Don’t do that. But seriously, sit back. Take some notes. If anything really resonates with you, I would love to know. But also, I hope that more than anything you walk away from today with some confidence but also with an enlarged perspective or a widened perspective of where you’re at in your SaaS journey and what’s, finger quote, normal and also what’s not. Let’s dig in. The first assumption, if you build it, they will pay. If you build it, they will pay. This one is shockingly more common now. Where it comes from is it comes from … Well, first of all, in the market today, just in the real world today, it is easier than ever to build software and to acquire software. If you have an idea as a founder, you can build a SaaS relatively easy, quickly, and in some cases affordably. It’s easier now more than ever to even build no or low code software. So if you have a concept, pretty much anyone today can either hire a developer or build it themselves. And it’s not so much anymore that if they build it they will come. That’s always pretty much going to be true. And that speaks more to the global assumption that you don’t need marketing or you don’t need to promote your product once you’ve actually built it. Maybe I’m stretching this assumption a little bit, but I think most founders generally understand, at least now. It’s a widely accepted and known now that, well, of course you need to promote it, and of course you need to market it. There’s too many software choices out there today. What makes us really think that we wouldn’t need to? Maybe I’m being a little bit too optimistic there on how many people do understand that and know that. But the opposite side of that is not just if we built it, they will come, but will they come and actually pay? This is an assumption that we have to be extremely careful of as founders. Because if we don’t have any paying customers yet, and I find this is far more common for founders who don’t have paying customers yet, at the end of the day, you do have to fundamentally believe that they will pay at some point. But if we don’t know, if we don’t actually know if they will pay or become a paying customers, they’re paying you real money and they’re not like your mom, your grandma, your cousin, then we have to validate that assumption at some point. Sometimes, and I think this really speaks more to whenever I’m talking with founders, sometimes we get ahead of ourselves. We make the assumption that, oh, if I just build it, they’ll pay, but I need to skip to the they will come part. And this is actually where I think a lot of founders put themselves in dangerous situations where they are so considered about the marketing aspect and they haven’t even considered is this product valuable enough for people to pay real money for. Otherwise, you are doing charity work and you are offering a product for free. Which if that’s part of the plan, awesome. There’s zero judgment there. But if you do expect to actually get revenue from a product, if you actually expect to charge for the product, it’s so important that we don’t skip too far ahead and just assume that people will pay for it. The best way to know if someone will pay for your product is to actually try to charge them for it. What I love about that part of the process … And typically, with the founder journey, just in general, the journey looks like I’ve got this idea, I’m going to validate it in the market, I’m going to do some customer discovery and a little bit of customer development and see if I can get some users. I need to actually build the product. So then they go through the process of building the product and validating it with what they’ve got or what they’ve heard from those potential customers. Then, at some point, they have to actually make it live. I’m putting that in finger quotes because this could be like a mobile app or this could be more traditional, like browser, SaaS. But at some point you have to make it accessible in some kind of way to your users. Then at that point, this is where it gets a little tricky because you either need to immediately validate if people will pay for it right off the bat or you see if people will just use it first. But either way, there’s so much magic that actually happens. And I call it magic because it is truly something that you have to experience at the right time and at the right moment. But when you do, it is unforgettable. Because when you actually do get to that moment of I’m going to start charging money for this, for access to this product and for you to be able to use it, something magical happens. And the most base human instinct kicks in, and it’s that fight or flight, or that heck yes I’m going to pay money for this, or this is not worth my time, I’m out. And there’s literally no faking that. There’s no replacement for that moment of truth. That moment of truth, there’s no denying it, and there’s certainly no faking it or replacing it. And unfortunately, many founders skip way far ahead from that moment of truth. They focus much more on selling and the marketing side of things before they’ve ever even charged for their product because they assume that people will pay for it. And I always backtrack. Sometimes I’ll talk to founders who really, really, really want to hire DemandMaven to build out their marketing or to lay a marketing foundation, or some kind of growth foundation, or even execute a few tests for them. But if they’re not actually charging for the product, we’re basically generating a bunch of free users and hoping that they pay without actually ever knowing if they’ll pay, and that’s the difference. This is an assumption that can unfortunately cost you a lot of time, blood, sweat, tears, and money. I always recommend to founders if this is an assumption that you’re carrying with you, you don’t have any paying customers, two things. How can we validate that, that people will ultimately pay? Or, and/or, how do we ensure that when we do start charging that we learn as much as possible, either about the user, or about the market that they’re in, or their vertical, or their segment, or their persona, if you will, and also about their behavior? There’s really two approaches, and these are the approaches that I hope that you take with you. You can choose either one. There is no right or wrong answer. There’s certainly caveats to them and disclaimers to them in terms of when would you use which. But if you’re not certain if people will pay for your product, well, first, let’s make sure that we’re actually building the product. So let’s not get too, too ahead of ourselves in terms of thinking about pricing and what payment plans we need to offer. If the product isn’t even built yet, that’s really mission number one. After the product is built, we can start getting it to the hands of prospects, people who could become customers but they’re not paying right now. We also call these people beta users or beta testers, either one. Although, typically, beta users and beta testers are there to explicitly test the product, whereas prospects are people that we would like to ultimately attract at some point. They could technically be both. But, there’s really two approaches here if we’re not currently charging for our built product. The first approach is we can offer it for free. So offer it as more like of a beta program. Or maybe it’s something that people can apply for. They get to use it for free, but they don’t pay for it quite yet. There isn’t a payment plan quite yet because we need to validate that we actually have something that people will use. The second approach is, okay, let’s maybe get … Let’s focus on getting our very first few 10 paying customers. All you need, really, is 10 to begin with and that’ll give you a pretty indicator of who is most likely to actually pay and stick around. But we offer a payment plan right off the bat and try to find our very first 10 customers. So maybe we don’t offer it for free quite yet. We might have a free trial, an extended free trial. Maybe it’s 21 days or 30 days. But beyond that, we’re entering the market with the intent of charging immediately. Neither one of these is, honestly, right or wrong answers. It does ultimately depend on your market. There’s two indicators, at least, of when you would choose one over the other. For example, if you have competitors in the market, maybe you’re in a slightly competitive market and your product is something that people generally recognize … So let’s say you’re entering into the project management industry, for example. You’re much more likely to either offer a much cheaper plan, meaning you can probably enter into the market charging right off the bat, but maybe you offer a cheaper plan. Or you still have the intent to charge but you’ve got much more flexibility on when that actually happens. So maybe you offer that extended free trial. Maybe it’s three months. You could also approach it much more like an annual deal where they get three months free but you’ve booked them for the entire year. There’s many different ways to approach this. But if there are competitors in the market, you have a lot of flexibility in terms of offering it completely for free. Maybe you do just do freemium for a while so you can learn as much as possible, but you could also just immediately start charging for it. And it’s really up to you and the market of what is expected here based off of what your product is and who you ultimately serve. There are some cases where your industry and the market that you’re in, it would be weird to offer a platform for free, especially if it’s something that there are other competitors and your prospects expect to pay and it would be weird to offer it for free. This is especially the case in terms of enterprise software. But play that one by ear. So if you’ve got competitors in the marketplace, you’re probably okay. Just go ahead and start charging for it. That would certainly be a way for you to learn as fast as possible. But you’ve got flexibility so use your best judgment in terms of what people expect product-wise in the marketplace that you’re in. The flip side to that. Let’s say you’re in a market that doesn’t have any competitors. You are entering into a totally new category or it’s a category that’s adjacent to an existing one but there’s not really anyone who looks exactly like you. Couple things. First, what are your competitive alternatives? Meaning, what are the things that people are doing instead of using your product? Are they using a spreadsheet? Are they using one of the more popular, well-known freemium versions of what you offer even if it’s not as cool or awesome as what you do? What are people using instead? What is the existing behavior? That will let you know if you can likely enter into immediately offering it for free. But chances are, if there aren’t any other real competitors, meaning people aren’t used to paying for something in your vertical, or market, or industry, then you’re much more likely to focus on acquiring as many beta users as possible, focus on acquiring as many people to try it out for as long as is necessary as possible, and then roll out a payment plan only after you’ve really figured out who you have the best product market fit for. Either one of these approaches absolutely works just based off of your business, your product, your market, your prospects, and your customers. There’s no right or wrong answer, but there’s certainly a way to challenge that assumption of if I just built it, they’ll definitely pay for it. Wrong. You really don’t know that until you actually do start charging, and that’s kind of, honestly, the scariest bit. Push come to shove, though, it doesn’t really make sense to push the gas on marketing efforts when we don’t really know who is most likely to pay. I tell this to founders all the time. It’s a concept that is so tough to communicate sometimes because many founders believe that they have to do marketing first, but I almost always disagree. In fact, I actually recommend that it would be faster if founders actually did sales first and customer development first. And no, it is not a scalable strategy. It’s not meant to last you for your entire journey. I’m not even saying go build a sales function or go build a sales department. It’s not what I’m saying at all. All I’m saying is if you don’t know if someone’s going to pay for your product, try selling it. You’re going to learn really fast if they will or they won’t. And if they don’t, figure out why. Understand why. And if they do, ah. Now we have a segment that we can start to build around. Now we actually have a market that we can build marketing around. One thing that marketing is amazing at is it is really, really, really good at expanding, and growing, and filling your pipeline with abundance with what you’ve already got. It’s not the best at figuring out who the best paying customer is. The hands down fastest, best way to do that is to do actual sales. And no, like I said, it is not meant to be a scalable strategy. In fact, if you’ve got, let’s say, like a less expensive product, maybe you’re only charging two dollars a month or something, I would still say even then it’s actually much better to talk to people about it and to actually try selling it yourself even though it’s as cheap as it is because you will learn so much more doing that than us trying to make a bunch of guesses on the marketing side, just hands down. So from now on, it’s not if you build it, they will pay, it’s much more like if you build it, test it out, validate it, get some feedback, they’re more likely to pay. The second assumption. This one really gets under my skin, but it is unfortunately so common. It’s so common that I actually wrote an article about it for Growth Hackers a couple years ago. But it’s this general assumption that if it worked for them, it’s going to work for me. I want to light that assumption on fire. I want to light it on fire. The reason why is because, yes, one of my favorite things, stories, if you will, or parts of being in SaaS and startup world in general is talking about our experiences of how we’ve grown and what we’ve done to achieve our goals, dreams, results, you name it. I love sharing those stories. I love talking about those stories. I love unpacking those stories. But one critical thing about all of those growth stories, you can do all the research on the planet, you can do all the Google searching, and all of the hacker news scrolling, and all of the product hunt scrolling, and all of the tweeting back and forth, you can do all those activities, you can unearth so many ideas, and strategies, and paths, and journeys that people have taken to achieve the results that they’ve gotten, but one thing that is so critical about all of those strategies, and tactics, and stories is their context. One assumption that definitely gets founders in a lot of trouble is the assumption that if it worked for someone else, it’s going to work for you. This is false. This is so false. But it’s not false for the reasons that you might think it is. It’s only false by way of the context. Certain tactics, certain strategies work extremely well for certain markets, but only based off of those certain markets. The reality is that certain strategies, tactics, and practices, while many of them are extremely consistent, some of them are just completely broken when they’re applied to a different kind of customer or a different kind of market. There are some strategies in marketing, for example, that for the most part are shatterproof. For example, if you can build an inbound organic SEO strategy and build that content and get the traffic, amazing. That’s one of those strategies that for the most part across most industries it’s pretty shatterproof. But the second that you put inbound in front of a market that doesn’t search for content, shockingly enough, it falls apart. This is the kind of context that many founders don’t actually have when they’re studying another company’s strategy. One thing that I always try to emphasize for them is, yes, the strategy is cool. Don’t get me wrong. The tactics that you see on the other end of those strategies, those are really cool, too. I love when a company does a really good job of marketing or growth. In fact, a great example of this is Superhuman. I absolutely love Superhuman. I love everything that they do. I’m a huge fan of Superhuman. But I often hear from other founders, “Oh, man. It would be so cool to copy their onboarding strategy.” And something that I have to remind them is, don’t get me wrong, it’s an amazing onboarding strategy, but it was born out of a very specific set of contexts in a very specific market. And also, the way that Superhuman as a company is built, there’s so many different parts of that context and so many layers of that that we don’t understand or know because we’re not in the company ourselves. So if you find yourself doing research on other founders’ journeys on how they achieved a certain result, I’m not saying don’t do the research. I think that that’s still important. It’s still important for you to understand what are the different strategies, and tactics, and challenges, and practices that are available to me. What can I do from a go-to market or just marketing perspective that might generate the desired result for me? That’s not the bad thing at all. And even bad is a strong word. It’s much more like it would just be much more helpful if you also remembered and reminded yourself that there is a specific context upon which this story worked or this journey worked. And if you know what to look for, you’ll be able to pick up on those things. For example, how long did it actually take them? An example that I hear a lot also is actually from Drift. Drift is an example that many founders use from a standpoint of total admiration, which I completely agree with. I totally get it. I also admire their growth and what they’ve achieved. Something that I hear a lot, though, that founders want to copy is creating a category. Drift created a category, this conversational marketing category. I’ve also heard it on behalf of account-based marketing, companies like Terminus. And don’t get me wrong, creating a category is really freaking cool. The challenge with it is that there’s many arguments around when creating that category, when that context actually really supports what a company is doing. It’s not that it couldn’t work for you, it’s just simply that if you’re going to do it, here are the things that made that successful for Drift. For one, funding. It’s really expensive to create a category, actually. And April Dunford, she is a positioning expert for software companies. But April Dunford actually talks a lot about her experiences attempting to create a category and just how challenging, and expensive, and long term that is. The other thing about Drift, for example, that people don’t really remember or realize is that Drift didn’t come out of nowhere creating a category. The reality is that it had actually taken them two to three years before we had ever heard of them to have created such a name for themselves. It actually took them much longer than you would’ve thought beforehand. So if you’ve got five years to create a category and you got the funding, be my guest. But that’s the kind of context that so many of these success stories are … It’s not that they’re missing, it’s just we don’t know to look for it. So if you find yourself really studying certain stories or really studying certain strategies and tactics, again, just ask yourself, “What is the context here that has made this successful? And what is the context that I’m in that could make this fail?” Those are the questions and things that you should be asking yourself. Otherwise, if it’s a more or less pretty low risk strategy or tact, I say go for it. So it’s not really if it worked for them, it’ll work for me. It’s much more like if it worked for them in this market, in this industry for these kinds of people under this kind of software category, then it will probably maybe work for me. It’s not a guarantee. So don’t get too hung up on copying a strategy exactly like what another company has done to achieve a particular result. But if you are going to, at least take a step back and just think about what is the context that could make this really work and what is the context that could make this not work. That’ll help save you quite a lot of time, money, and energy, and also could help you gain as well. Adapting a strategy could also be something that you achieve by going through that exercise. The third assumption. Ooh, this is a good one. I just looked down at my list and I was like, “Oh, man.” Okay, the first 100 customers is fast. I’m going to say it. The first 100 customers is fast. This one actually hurts to say sometimes because I don’t know that it gets talked about enough. I don’t know that it gets talked about enough amongst founders how long it actually takes from day one of working in the business or on the business to I’ve achieved the first 100 customers to I’ve achieved the first million in MRR or 100K in MRR, either one. There is an article by Baremetrics on the Baremetrics blog. I believe it was actually by Josh Pickford. There’s an article on the Baremetrics blog that talks about how long on average does it take SaaS companies to reach these growth milestones. The growth milestones being 10K in ARR or I think like 100 or so dollars of MRR, all the way up to a million in ARR. The results across a thousand SaaS companies, it’s fascinating, and it’s also a little bit shocking how long it actually takes to get to these big milestones. I say 100 customers, but really could be any of these milestones. Just for fun, I’m going to give you some of these stats from this article. According to this article, on average, it takes about 217 days to get to $833 of MRR. 217 days. That’s the first day of working on the product and offering it, go to market is what we’re assuming. So we’re assuming that the product is finished and it’s live. So if it took you two years to build it and now it’s launched and it’s live and now you’re trying to get customers, it could take you an extra 217 days on average to get to $833 in MRR. To get to 8,300 or so dollars … Excuse me. To get to nearly 10K MRR, technically this 8,300 MRR, but to get to even just like 10K in MRR, it could take you 400-plus days total. Let’s see. Almost an extra year after that first year. So maybe like a year and a half it could take you just to get to 10K in MRR. And then finally, to get to 1 million in ARR, so that’s about little less or little more than 83,000 MRR, 1 million ARR, 700-plus days on average. Now, what’s really cool about looking at these numbers is that while it takes a long time, or at least it seems like it takes a long time to get to these particular milestones, the cool part is that once you get over it, once you get over that hump, reaching the next increment is actually much faster than it was to get to the very first one. The saying goes your first 100K is always going to be the hardest, but the second will be much easier and much faster after that. Same thing for the first million. After you reach the first million, it gets much easier after that. In fact, it appears, at least on average, that the time to get to the second million is reduced by, what, 60%, 70%? So it’s much faster to get to the next million. But getting to those very first milestones, a lot of effort, time, and energy, money even, resources … I don’t want to say money because that’s not necessarily a requirement, but at least the resources. I think part of the challenge with this particular assumption is that back to what I was saying earlier, so many of us, we do so much research, and listening, and talking to other founders and unpacking their journeys. What I don’t know is as obvious or clear, however, is how long it actually takes people to achieve these milestones and achieve these results. Sometimes it can take a year, year and a half just to even get to the first 100 customers, let alone the first 10K in MRR. Doesn’t really matter what you’re charging. Sometimes the first 100 paying people is one of the hardest things that you can possibly accomplish. But once you do, it gets easier to acquire the next 100, and then the 100 after that. You know I love my disclaimers, so of course I have to say, I feel compelled to say that just because it takes some companies a really long time to achieve certain results, it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t push for those results. It’s not at all what I’m saying. But what I am saying is that even with effort, even with hard work, it can still take quite a long time, long, of course, only being defined by what our perception of long is. I actually think that, personally, getting to a million, if on average it takes about 700-plus days, and that’s assuming that you’ve survived and you’re able to survive that long just to see that, then that’s actually pretty fast. You’re doing pretty good. I don’t know that most businesses see that much revenue in that much time. But 700 or so days, two and a halfish years, two and a half plus years, that’s on average how long it can take. I think more than anything, I want to make sure that we’ve got the right mindset when I say this. It’s not to say that this is a bad thing or you need to be worried or concerned. It’s much more like it will take time, and it truly is a journey. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t push, but it’s certainly not something that is rushed. I think that is, more than anything, the resounding truth. If you put in the work, you’ll likely see the results. And if you put in the right work, you’ll potentially see the results faster. But overall, when you hear another founder say it takes time … I put that in finger quotes. It takes time. It takes time. It really truly does take time. In fact, on average, it could take you two and a half years to get to the first million. And again, that is not to scare people. But if if grounds you a little bit into reality and if it motivates you to take the best action now or to at least prioritize what you’re doing or to make sure that you are building the right thing, definitely do that. Know that this will be a journey, and it truly will be, and it will take time. So it’s not necessarily that the first 100 customers is fast or that it should be fast. If anything, the first 100 customers is exactly correlated to your market, to you, your resources, your business, and really, I mean, at the end of the day, the product. All right. Number four. You can change a market’s behavior. This one kind of falls in line with creating a category, and maybe that should’ve actually been an assumption. But it actually does work for some businesses so I don’t want to be too overzealous there when I say this. But a very common mistake that we make as founders, as marketers, as researchers, as whoever, a very common mistake that we make is that sometimes we assume that we can just change a market’s behavior. What do I mean by that? I mentioned competitive alternatives earlier. A competitive alternative is really a behavior or it’s an action or a step that someone takes instead of using our products. That competitive alternative, it can be anything from taking a particular street every single time you walk home, all the way down to I only use Excel for these things, all the way down to, well, this is how I do my checklists every single day. And sometimes we hope that as SaaS providers and founders that, oh, well, we’re offering this product. Well, certainly just use it. But here’s the tricky thing about building a product and actually having adoption. Product adoption happens because of two things. It’s truly easier to use your product, not perceived easy, but it’s actually fewer steps for people to use your product as opposed to the competitive alternative. The second thing is that it’s solving a problem better than the competitive alternative. Better is to be defined by your market research, your customer research, of course. And we can also define better really by is it saving us time, or money, or both, or is it preventing us from experiencing a pain, so risk aversion in some kind of way. And there’s likely other examples of this. But it has to be doing those two things. It has to be helping us do something better and solving a pain better than what I was doing before, and it has to actually be easier. What I find is sometimes we come across problems in the market that we want to solve with a product, but the product isn’t really well positioned in terms of the prospect’s workflow or just their flow in general. In fact, sometimes we create a product and we assume that we can change someone’s behavior in order to use it and to actually get value from it. This is a dangerous assumption to make, and it’s one that’s much more closely related to the actual product development process and then also, of course, the customer development process or the prospect development process of really understanding, well, what is the customer’s pain, what should we actually be building, and how can we put ourselves in the right position that way we actually get used. It’s not as often that I come across this. But every now and again, if I’m talking to a founder about their product and they’re not seeing the adoption, they’re not seeing people actually use it, sometimes it’s the market. Sometimes we’re just targeting the wrong people. But sometimes, and more often than not I find, we have made the assumption that we can just change the market behavior, that we can change how they already take certain steps and take certain actions. But as long as we fulfill those other requirements, we can see that production adoption. So for example, as long as we’re truly making it easier and we’re better than the competitive alternative, then we’ll see the adoption. So that’s where, of course, changing the market behavior does actually become possible. But if we’re not doing those two things, we’re not going to be able to change what people actually do. I’m going to give you example. And actually, this is also a client example. I’ve got a client in the therapy mental health space. They are a client that I’ve worked with before, an amazing client, great, great overall case study and example, but they are in the telehealth space. What they offer is a software that helps connect pre-licensed therapists with clinical supervisors. And what they do is they offer a way for pre-licensed therapists to actually get clinical supervision virtually. You wouldn’t have thought this, or you might not have known this, I should say, but apparently it’s actually really hard for a pre-licensed therapist to actually become real therapists, like licensed, credentialed therapists. They’ve got to get clinical supervision. Sometimes those clinical supervisors are super far away from them or they’re not able to reach them. So this particular product offers a way for these two people to connect virtually, complete supervision. The pre-licensed therapist is happy because they complete their supervision hours. The clinical supervisor is happy because they’re able to retain in a way a client. The therapist actually has to pay for this time. And they can do it without … They both can do this without having to drive anywhere. Then, of course, they can do this, really, cross-country depending on what their licensure time is and what state they’re both in. That’s the context. Now, here’s the thing about the therapy industry. Therapists are not traditionally the most technical people in the world. That’s not really where their training is or where their best strengths lie so we can’t really expect them to use incredibly complex software. And at the same exact time, there is a behavior that they already take that if we can identify that behavior and figure out a way how to insert ourselves into that process then hopefully they will see … Well, first they’ll discover us, but then also they’ll see that, really, we’re a much better solution than the competitive alternative, which the competitive alternative is I’ve got to Google search a clinical supervisor in my state for my licensure type, and I got to hope and pray that they’re affordable, and I also have to hope and pray that I can actually drive to them. This particular product, however, eliminates the need to drive and also enables pre-licensed therapists to find available clinical supervisors within the price range more or less of what they’re expecting to pay. If we had just assumed that we could change a market behavior, we would’ve just built a product, and just let it out loose, and just hope and prayed that, well, not only did people find it but that they just immediately used it. But what we found instead was that there was a competitive alternative and a behavior set that we knew we weren’t going to be able to change but we could at least influence, and that behavior was … Well, the way that most pre-licensed therapists find clinical supervisors is by really just searching them. They use different directories, and they use referrals, and they ask their friends, they ask communities. But more often than not, they’re actually just doing the organic search research. What I mean by that is they’re literally just typing in clinical supervisors in a particular state for a particular credential. That was the behavior that we identified through customer research and through customer development. We wouldn’t really have guessed that or at least validated it without doing that actual research and talking to customers and talking to prospects not necessarily about how they found us, because that’s not really what is important, but how would they have found a supervisor in the first place. If we didn’t exist, how would they have found a clinical supervisor? Again, I’m trying to identify the market behavior that already exists. I’m not trying to create an entirely new behavior. So what did we do when we discovered that pre-licensed therapists look for clinical supervisors in their state for their credentials? We created landing pages for every single state for every single credential. So if anyone is looking for a clinical supervisor in Georgia for an LMFT, for example, they will find our landing page, upon which we will educate them on what clinical supervisors are actually available in Georgia. But also, this is an opportunity to instead of having them change their behavior of looking for a supervisor, we’ll actually help them change instead how they solve it. So we haven’t changed the market behavior necessarily around, well, what do pre-licensed therapists do when they need to solve this pain. Instead, we matched it and then we offered them a different solution. That’s what I mean by we can’t just assume that we’re going to be able to change your market behavior. The chances of that are actually really small. But what we can do is identify it, insert ourselves into that process, and offer ourselves as a different, better solution. And if we do our job right, both from a marketing and a product perspective, then our customers will see that we actually are easier and that we are doing it better than whatever it was that they were doing before. That’s really true product adoption. So it’s not necessarily that you can change a market’s behavior. It’s much more like you can’t change a market’s behavior, but you can put yourself in the right place at the right time and offer the market a different solution to their behavior. Okay, number five. The market moves as fast as you. My background originally wasn’t in marketing. Honestly, it was about art, actually. I was a traditional oil painter. I painted figure. I loved oil paint in particular, and my degree was actually in art. It wasn’t until I moved into technology that I was introduced to a marketing career. And when I moved more into technology, I pretty much doubled down on software and marketing pretty much from the get-go, as much as I could at least. One thing that I’ve learned as a marketer is that especially in your early marketing career it’s that the market just simply does not move as fast as you do. As the founder, as the marketer, as the growth expert, as the whatever, you will always move faster than your market. What I mean by that is your insight, your ideas, your campaigns, your execution, pretty much every single thing that you do, it’s going to take a little bit of time for the market overall to catch up, especially if you’re doing something that is really innovative and really, really, really different. In fact, the more innovative, the more likely it is that it will take even longer for people to understand and to adopt. Airbnb is actually an example that gets thrown around a lot in general, but I actually do believe that it resonates pretty well or fits pretty well here. What I mean by that is, again, similar to Drift, most people don’t realize that Airbnb was actually around for, gosh, I think it was about four to five years. Don’t quote me on that. It was around four years that Airbnb existed before anyone ever really truly knew that it existed. Their first few years was them trying to sell and build a relatively different kind of product. They originally had a different idea and a different concept. When that didn’t take off as fast as they thought it would, they decided to actually focus on a totally different product and sell and market that instead to keep the lights on. But when they came to it, they came back to it with a very different set of insight and a very different set of expectations around how the market will react. It wasn’t until after they came back to their original concept for Airbnb, or Air Bed and Breakfast at the time, that they realized that they were focusing on the wrong part of the marketplace that they were ultimately trying to build. Originally, they were focused on just offering a bed and breakfast to people who were traveling or to people who were really just needed a spot to stay for the night. And instead, they decided to focus much more on the property management aspect of everything. Surely there were other people who had places to rent or to offer to others who were traveling who didn’t want to do a hotel. They also realized that their positioning and the way that the product was designed and built at the time wasn’t really conducive to this new set of behaviors. But even still, it took Airbnb four to five years to actually get the rest of the market on board. Airbnb pretty much always moved faster than the rest of the world. And it’s something that’s so hard to internalize, but absolutely true. You can run a campaign. And some campaigns, if they are well designed and if they’re well timed, will generate great results. But pretty much overall, you as a business, as a product, as founder, as a marketer even, you’re always going to move faster than your market. So it’s important to remember that there are some scenarios and situations where whatever marketing you pull together, everyone else usually needs to catch up to. So if you don’t see instantaneous results overnight, just keep that in mind. It is likely because the campaign or whatever it was that you produced might not have been the best optimized. But even in that scenario, even with the best optimized campaigns, sometimes our timing into the market is just a little bit too early. So we have to figure out do we … For lack of a better phrase, how do we dumb it down a little bit for customers to be able to get on board with us? Because sometimes we jump way too far ahead sometimes. We make assumptions that we think that everyone understands, that everyone knows, and it’s not necessarily the case. So it’s really not the market moves as fast as you. It’s really much more the market moves as fast as it wants, and you can choose how you match your cadence to that. All right. We’re into the last one, the home stretch. This last one is very near and dear to my heart because I personally feel like I talk about this, at least with my founders, all the time. But it’s that others are doing better than you or have it more figured out. I can tell you with confidence, with just the utmost confidence, that no one really truly has it all figured out. And also, it really truly is your journey, and it’s not supposed to look like anybody else’s. It breaks my heart in the most emotional and kind of clichéd way whenever a founder asks me if a client is doing better or worse than them. Part of it is because I think we all kind of have that … We all have a little bit of that insecurity that maybe we’re screwing it all up and we really don’t know what we’re doing. Maybe we got the imposter syndrome speaking in our ear or in our minds. I think a lot of us are generally afraid of taking the wrong step. It’s also really easy to compare your results and your successes to another’s, especially when results and successes are all that seems to be lauded. It’s very rare that you read a story about failure. It’s very rare that you read a story even more so about how much was lost, how much money or revenue was lost, or how much we wasted, or how much time we wasted, or all of the wrong turns that we took. It’s much more likely that successes are celebrated. And that’s not to say that we shouldn’t celebrate our successes. Of course we should. Not saying that. But what I’m definitely saying is that if you’ve got this assumption that others are doing way better than you, or that you don’t have it figured out, or that they have got it more figured out than you, just make sure to pause there. Just pause. Because those kinds of assumptions about yourself, about your business, about your place in the world, those kinds of things impact your mindset way more than you might think it does. Being on the receiving end of that, even as a consultant, or a team member, or what have you, being on the receiving end of that mind space and that mindset, it has a lot of impact, and not all of that impact is positive. Sometimes it’s actually very negative. But if you find yourself constantly comparing your current place or your status to someone else’s just make sure to pause and check those assumptions. Would you ever say that to a friend ever, especially a good friend? Probably not. So don’t talk to yourself that way. Do a little bit of self work on figuring out where those insecurities are coming from. But also, take it from me, and take this with a grain of salt, but take it from me if you can, just know that no one is really doing better, not really. There’s a trade-off in every way. You might see success on the outside in one place, but just know that everyone has struggles, everyone has challenges, everyone has things that they’re working through, and it’s just so rare that anyone has everything perfect. But also, your journey truly is your journey. You’re never going to be able to follow someone else’s path exactly as they’ve laid it out. At the end of the day, it’s still going to be your journey and your path. So if it feels like you’re behind, just be careful about that kind of thinking. Not saying that you shouldn’t push at all. Not saying that you shouldn’t strive for greatness and excellence in virtually everything that you do. But what I am saying is don’t hold yourself to some perceived reality or to some massive cognitive distortion that tells you that you’re not enough, that you’re not doing enough, or that things are just really shitty and they can’t be repaired or fixed in any kind of way. Very rarely ever true, but it’s also it’s really special, and beautiful, and unique that it truly is your journey. Don’t mean to get super crunchy on you guys, and I don’t mean to get a little bit spiritual on y’all, but I’m just saying if you find yourself comparing, pause. So it’s really not that others are doing better than you or have it more figured out. It’s much more that others are just doing them, and you should do you. That’s the magical, beautiful thing about founder journeys in general and entrepreneurs in general. We’re going to do us. You should do you. And that’s a cool, and amazing, and a wonderful thing. I hope I get to do that with you. Sounds awesome, actually. But also, now a little bit of a caveat, no one really has it figured out. Everyone is struggling with something. Never forget that. Everyone has their own struggles and challenges, especially in this early stage. Does it get easier? Debatable. Ask Rand Fishkin if it got easier for him when he had more to lose. Some things did, and other things didn’t. It’s all about perspective at the end of the day. Thank you so much for listening. That was a fun one. That was a really fun one, actually. I hope that you learned something today. I hope that this was helpful or valuable in some kind of way. As always, I want to hear from you. I want to hear about some of the assumptions that maybe you’ve got or others that you’ve identified in founders in general. So what are some of the other assumptions? What did I miss? Let’s talk about it. As per usually, thank you again for listening. Hope this was helpful. My name is Asia. We’ll chat next time. Thanks again, guys. Bye. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Insider Insights: Skyrocket Your SaaS Growth](https://demandmaven.io/skyrocket-saas-growth/) **Published:** May 14, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** A few months ago, I had the wonderful pleasure of joining Lorin McCann on the Insider Insights show. Insider Insights is run by the Customer Intelligence Institute. Watch (or just listen!) to the full episode for even more on: ✅ Positioning and growth for early startups ✅ The magic of working with a business coach ✅ Scaling a consultancy AND client revenue at the same time Enjoy! **Categories:** SaaS --- ### [EP. 5: Let's talk about FUNNELS](https://demandmaven.io/lets-talk-about-funnels/) **Published:** May 21, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Funnels are a great thinking tool for founders. They help us clarify the journey our customers take and help us plan the steps needed to scale. But thinking in funnels can narrow our vision if we don’t truly understand the reality behind the tool. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down the basics of funnels. From the different types of funnels to common misconceptions and how marketers and founders can use them to maximize them to grow their business. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **\[1:00\] What actually is a funnel?** - It’s a simple way to visualize how a prospect becomes a customer. From the top were prospects/leads learn about a product, down to where they consider it, and finally become a customer. - **\[2:50\] The two funnels.** - Sometimes talking about funnels can get confusing because there is an overall business funnel and then there is the marketing funnel. - **\[6:00\] The marketing funnel.** - At the top of the marketing funnel are activities that help build awareness of your brand and product. As you move down the funnel, marketing focuses in on consideration — teaching about the problem and your potential solution. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, you get very specific about your product as the solution to the problem to help prospects make the decision to buy. - **\[16:20\] How to think about funnels in your business (and common misconceptions).** - The funnel isn’t a linear experience for your prospects and it isn’t the only experience. While you think of a customer moving from step to step and stage to stage they are often hopping around or doing things you can’t measure (like exploring competitors or chatting with friends). It is important to remember that a real customer journey is much more detailed and harder to track. - **\[29:50\] When you change the customer, you change the journey, and you change the funnel.** - As your business grows and you start to focus on new segments, you always have to come back to your campaigns and think about if your funnel still matches your customer journey. Sometimes it will, but often it won’t and you will need to adjust, adapt, and expand your marketing. ## Transcript What’s up, founders? Welcome back to another episode of the In Demand podcast. My name is Asia. I’m your host. I’m also the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage startups on reaching those very first growth milestones, so those first 100 customers, the first 10K in MRR, and the first 100K in MRR. Today’s episode we are going to dig deep into funnels. This is one of those and one of those words that incites and inspires a lot of different ideas I find in both marketers and founders alike. This is also one of those words that within a specific context means a different thing, and that’s really what I want to chat about with you today. Not going to lie, this is going to be one of those episodes where I’m really focused on helping you with the foundational aspects of thinking about funnels and also some things to keep in mind about them, too. There’s a lot of misconceptions about what a funnel is and how to actually think about a funnel. Then, there’s also just lots of overall golden rules, best practices, and specific contexts upon which we think about funnels, and that we talk about funnels, and that we apply them. But first, what actually is a funnel? A funnel is a pretty simple way to actually describe or visualize how a prospect becomes a customer. Whenever we think about how we attract leads … And when I mean leads, I really mean people who are most likely to buy. Whenever we think about how we attract those leads, one of the best ways to visualize that is to think about an actual funnel. At the very top of the funnel, we’ve got people who are in that awareness stage. In the middle of the funnel, we’ve got people who are considering the product. And at the bottom of the funnel, we’ve got people who are actually very deep in that consideration process, potentially even becoming a converting paying customer. Maybe they have signed up for something. Maybe they have actually entered into the product in some kind of way, created an account, cleared a free trial, signed up, something. And all the way down into on the other end of the funnel, now we’ve retained them as a customer, and now we’ve also got to focus on keeping them, so that retention stage. But depending on the context upon which you’re thinking about the funnel … And when I say the funnel, I put in, as per usual, big, giant, fat quotation marks. Whenever you’re thinking about the funnel, there’s really two parts of the funnel that you’re really actually describing. First, there’s the overall business funnel. This is where I think there’s a lot of, not just confusion, but I think a lot of use the word funnel pretty interchangeably. And many of us don’t really think twice about how we’re actually using the word. And not to get into semantics … That’s not my goal or my mission at all. It’s really much more whenever you hear someone describing their funnel or whenever you hear someone saying the word funnel, just keep in mind what the actual context is of whatever it is that they’re talking about because there’s also the marketing funnel, and that’s really what we’re going to talk about today. We’re really going to talk about the difference between the two, how to be thinking about both, and really the breakdown of what you should be looking at when, and what actually makes sense, and then, of course, the common misconceptions. So in terms of funnels, whenever I specifically say me personally, whenever I say the funnel, usually the is like a capital T and a capital F. Usually that means we’re talking about the overall business funnel. A business funnel, the overall business funnel when put under a microscope is extremely quantitative. You can actually take a look at what top of the funnel activity looks like. What I mean by that is what your acquisition activities look like. The middle of the funnel, which is really all of your activation activities. And what I mean by that is it’s usually product, or free trial, Or model related. It’s whatever activity someone has to take in order to become a paying customer. Usually, it’s directly tied to that product experience. Then, of course, the very bottom of the funnel, which is they’re pretty much already a paying customer at this point and/or you’re focusing on retaining them. And the bottom of the funnel is really the journey from customer and then on. This is kind of where it gets a little bit tricky, though. Because if you ever hear a speaker talk about the funnel, it’s important to know are they talking about the overall business funnel or are they talking about the other kind of funnel, which is the one that splinters into 50 million different pieces, which we’re actually going to talk about right now. And that’s the marketing funnel. The marketing cycle and the business cycle, or, conversely, the marketing funnel and the business funnel, they, on the one hand, are part of each other. So the marketing funnel is ultimately a part of the business funnel. It’s part of the business cycle. But one thing about marketing funnels in general is that they do splinter off. There are usually many different funnels that contribute to the overall picture. This is kind of where funnels get really confusing. And I admit that it’s one of those words, too, that I wish that everyone used it synonymously or at least as consistently as possible in terms of what they’re talking about. But there’s the overall SaaS funnel. And that’s that business perspective, again, that acquisition, activation, and retention. But then there’s also just marketing funnels in general and demand generation funnels that are built based off of how you actually acquire customers. And this is kind of something that we’ll also unpack a little bit. But what’s wild is that it’s usually very rarely ever just one funnel. There’s usually dozens of funnels. And also, they sometimes nest inside of each other. This is where it gets potentially confusing. Earlier, I mentioned top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel. And in the context of a business, it makes a lot of sense. Okay, yeah. So that’s acquisition, activation, and retention. In the context of marketing, however, it’s much more closely aligned to the very basic stages of awareness. If you have never seen the stages of awareness before, I would highly recommend pulling up a picture of it. But on the one side, you’ve got people who are totally unaware. Then you’ve got problem aware, then solution aware, then product aware, and then you’ve got most aware, people who already know the brand. They know the product back and forth. Maybe they’re customers. They’re most likely to become customers at this point. Top of the funnel, middle Of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel, however, at least in the marketing context, sometimes it describes specific kinds of content and/or marketing activities, or demand generation activities that a prospect would mostly take in order to become a customer. This is where the two different funnels between marketing and business don’t necessarily mirror each other exactly, but they’re certainly very similar. In which case, top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel are described in a very similar way. So from a marketing or demand generation perspective, for top of the funnel activities, for example, let’s say that that’s mostly building awareness. So all the activities marketing-wise that we’re doing, it’s really to build awareness about a product, about our product. If we’re putting this in the context of in-bound marketing, so let’s say we’re focusing on content creation, top of the funnel content, for example, would look much more like content maybe related to your general sphere of who we’re ultimately trying to target and what our segment or our market is. But maybe it’s not so specific to problems that our product solves. When we look at middle of the funnel activities from a marketing perspective, this is where we’re looking at all of our activities related to consideration. This could be webinars. Maybe it’s kind of related to the product and the problem it solves. Ideally, yes. It’s a little bit closer. But maybe it’s not so focused on actually generating a lead or generating an actual customer. Bottom of the funnel activity is extremely tied to the actual pain that the customer is trying to solve. And even more specifically, this is where we get into not just consideration but actual … I’m actually going through the motions of trying to solve my problem. From a content perspective, you might be creating content about how to solve a problem but using your product specifically. This could also be, yes, this could be webinars. This could be different activities. But really, the context upon which we’re actually leveraging those activities really determines if it’s bottom of the funnel or not. I actually consider pretty much anything on the website, at least for a SaaS company, to be pretty closely bottom of the funnel. But just purely because it’s that most SaaS companies don’t have the luxury to create any kind of content or any kind of marketing activities. Usually, it has to drive some kind of result. There’s absolutely use cases for creating more middle and top of the funnel content, especially if you have the budget and also if you’ve got a longer buying cycle or a longer sale cycle where it takes a longer time to build rapport with prospects. But overall, most businesses should at least be focused on very bottom of the funnel activity. But, this is where it kind of gets even more confusing. Because if you think about it, earlier, we talked about, in bottom of the funnel activities for businesses at least, being the point upon which someone actually signs up for a trial or creates an account. But from a marketing perspective, really, bottom of the funnel means what are the activities that we need to be executing to actually acquire that very high level of interest from a potential customer. So sometimes bottom of the funnel activity from a marketing perspective isn’t necessarily creating the account. It’s really they’ve shown a very strong intent to actually sign up. Traditionally speaking, marketing is focused on the acquisition piece and working with product and any other departments or teams. They’re also helping the activation side as well. Sometimes there’s content that needs to be produced in order to more effectively convert people into paying customers. Sometimes there’s just knowledge and feedback that needs to be shared with a customer success team or with a product team. But overall, this is kind of where it gets a little bit more splintered. And funnel means a different thing depending on which team is actually talking about it. It also gets a little bit splintered when you think about, well, what does top of the funnel mean versus bottom of the funnel in a marketing context versus a business context. My biggest advice to people who get kind of stuck on this is to just take a step back and really think about, well, what is it that you’re trying to dig into in the first place? What are you trying to solve? What are you trying to understand? Something that I like to do is to actually pull up the customer journey map and from there really figure out, okay, am I looking at the funnel from a business context or a marketing context? Overall though, that’s how funnels break out from a business perspective and a marketing perspective. And of course, we can dig deeper into what does top of the funnel mean for content. What does top of the funnel mean for the marketing site? What does top of the funnel content mean just in the global context of what marketing does? I can give you some generals. Top of the funnel activity, at least from a marketing perspective, that can look a lot like building pretty much any kind of awareness. And top of the funnel usually also means that there’s a little bit less intent to actually buy. It’s really more about attracting your ultimate customer. Traditionally speaking, this is very high-level content. Also, just top of the funnel content in general, not specific to solving a pain necessarily, but it’s hyper at least relevant to the kind of person that you are trying to attract. Usually, this is also paid advertising. This is conferences. This is that very first touchpoint that draws in or generates awareness with your target audience. Middle of the funnel is where we get into that consideration phase again. And again, these are marketing activities that get people to consider your product just as a way to solve their pain. This could also be just general awareness at least about the problem. So this is kind of where we see case studies. This is where we see different product pages, feature pages. This is also where we … That’s, of course, the marketing side itself. From a content perspective, though, this might be content related, kind of related to a product. Or excuse me, kind of related to a pain but now we’re digging a little bit deeper or we’re actually educating the prospect about the pain and potential solutions. By the time that we get to bottom of the funnel … And again, this is really where it really just depends on your product and your market. But this is as close to the actual behavior that a customer would take before signing up for your product. So this is they’re looking at your pricing page. Maybe they are reading case studies in this case. Sometimes case studies are both middle and bottom of the funnel. And sometimes there’s really no right or wrong answer here. It’s just a matter of what the vast majority is, but we’ll talk about that in just a second. A bottom of the funnel activity could actually also be creating an account, so maybe your freemium. Maybe creating an account is actually an extremely frictionless process and a very easy thing and common thing for people to do and it’s considered bottom of the funnel because it is before they actually become a paying customer, but they haven’t quite made that leap yet. But bottom of the funnel, again, it’s really all about the context upon which you’re thinking about it and, of course, applying it to your business. But bottom of the funnel ideally is extremely close to understanding that you’ve got a problem or at least that the customer has a problem and they need to solve it with your product. I find that one of the best examples, actually, of bottom of the funnel content is actually product marketing. And one of the best ways to do that is to create content about solving a very specific problem or pain point that the prospect might have and then showing people exactly how to solve it with your product. While there’s general guidelines on what’s top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel, the reality, however, is that there’s really no hard and fast rules. There’s a third way to think about funnels, and it does nest inside of the marketing funnel example. And that’s whenever you build and design campaigns. Whenever you build and you design a campaign, you’re essentially building a funnel. You’re anticipating the steps that a customer or a prospect would most likely take to actually then become a paying customer. You have just build a funnel. It is one of many funnels. So just building one campaign, it’s building one funnel. And inside of that funnel actually has many different steps, everything from you’ve gotten their attention from an advertisement all the way down to now they’re signing up for the webinar and now they’re convinced that they have a problem and your product is the solution, and now they’re signing up for your product. That is a funnel. But, this is actually where we get into all of the different misconceptions about funnels. I think from a fundamental perspective we talked about here’s how to think about funnels, here’s the two different kinds, but this is where we really get into the theory and the philosophy about funnels. And this, I think, is really what I want to unpack for you, but then also make sure that you walk away with a certain sense of confidence about how to actually think about them. The first very common misconception about funnels in general is that they are these perfectly linear experiences. And I’m here to tell you that they are not perfectly linear. What do I mean by that? What does a perfectly linear funnel mean? The perfectly linear funnel is simply this. It is the customer takes step one that you put in front of them. They take step two that you put in front of them. Then they take step three that you put in front of them. Then, step four is maybe signing up for the actual product. Then, step five is maybe becoming a paying customer. What you will find is that customers don’t actually take those five exact steps in the time that you expect them to or even in the order that you expect them to. Usually, what ends up happening is the steps that we outline, what we think is really a funnel, is actually dozens and hundreds of complex tiny interactions that we can’t measure and probably will never be able to measure ever in a million years. The reason why is because a funnel really only measures the steps that you actually put out there. But the reality is that you only get to see what you’ve put out there. You don’t actually ever see what the customer actually does unless you have a tool like FullStory or even Hotjar so you can actually look at the customer behavior. But even then, you only are able to measure your website. You don’t know if they actually took five extra steps between step one and step two. So from the moment that they see your ad, for example, or the moment that they do a search query and they actually open up several different tabs, they have several different options in front of them, they’re considering many different things, you actually don’t get to see that because you don’t get to measure other people’s websites. The only thing that you see is, of course, the funnel that you defined and the one that you’ve actually put out. But the reality is that they’re not these perfectly linear things. And it’s so important to remember that any time you’re designing a campaign and any time you’re troubleshooting a campaign. Any time you’re troubleshooting a channel as well. Channels are also a great example of this. If you are currently generating leads from Capterra, or Google Ad Words, or even just Facebook, you already have a funnel that is really defined by the channel. But what you don’t necessarily know are all the steps that happened before and in between each one of those steps of the actual funnel. It’s a very common misconception. And I think to be helpful here, in terms of, okay, well, how should I be thinking about it and what do I need to know, what’s important are really two things. One, that you’re measuring your funnel in the first place. I mean, I don’t think I need to necessarily hammer this down, but make sure that you’ve got some kind of analytics to measure your performance of a particular campaign. But the second thing is to remember that if a campaign or a channel is not performing in the way that you expected it to, just remember that customer journeys are not these perfectly linear entities. There’s likely other steps that are happening that you just don’t know about. So it’s not necessarily that marketing didn’t work for you. It’s just we probably just didn’t do the best marketing. And there’s probably something that we’re missing that we need to learn that would make our campaigns stronger, more effective, and more relevant to the people that we’re trying to target. In terms of other misconceptions, there are really a few ideas I think I want you to walk away with or understandings and just overall knowings about who to actually think about the funnel and then all of the little micro funnels that you actually build. The first, and this is very philosophical, but the first is that the funnel doesn’t actually exist in the way that you think it does. Something I tell founders all the time is that you will always move faster than the market. And really, that hearkens back to how customers actually go through their customer journey, how they actually find and decide on products, and the pains that they experience. How do they actually go about solving those pains? Our mission as marketers is to really identify a few different funnels in that customer journey that we can build, test, design, and then ultimately scale over time. One thing about funnels is that usually, one is not enough. We need several. And some will perform better than others. Typically, to keep it easy at least, many of us start with just channels. We think about our funnels as channels. But over time, we realize that there are actually many different components of a funnel that actually leads to the desired result, which is a sign-up or a conversion, even down to a paying customer. But, this leaves us to wonder, at least from a philosophical perspective, did we build a funnel because that was the absolute best way that people do make decisions and do actually convert, or did we build a funnel and just assume that the way that we built it was actually what convinced people into buying in the first place. This is where you’ve got to do your customer research. This is how you would validate if the funnel that you’ve built does actually, generally speaking, match your customer journey. If there’s one thing I’ve learned at least as a marketeer, it’s that if you’ve built and designed a funnel that doesn’t actually match how a customer makes a decision about a product, then you’ve likely just wasted a lot of time and a lot of effort. But if you’ve designed a funnel that maybe is not the most typical way to convert a paying customer but it did, generally speaking, match how they would actually decide upon a product, then you might’ve just hit solid gold. But overall, the funnel doesn’t really exist without the ultimate customer journey. And knowing what the customer journey is means that you’ll just be able to build and design ever better funnels for now but then also for the future. It will influence how you think about your campaigns. It will influence how you think about marketing in general. And it’s also let you know when you need to focus more on bottom of the funnel activity versus maybe, say, top of the funnel activity. What’s even more interesting is you will switch up your focus on different parts of the funnel at different parts of your journey. So in the beginning, I might be really focused on bottom of the funnel activity. But over time, you’ll notice that you start to expand more and more into top of the funnel. Not always a hard and fast rule, but very common. A funnel is really just a way for us to think about how people make decisions. But again, they’re not perfectly linear. People jump in and out of different funnels at different times. Also, it’s just not this per cookie-cutter, clearcut thing. Reality is that there’s so many different inputs and there’s so many different influences into how someone actually makes a decision and very few of that we can actually see. We can make our best guesses with software, and with analytics, and data, but for the most part, though, we really don’t always know the exact steps that someone takes. And the best that we can do is to, of course, interview our customers but then also make sure that we’re measuring the right things. So it’s really not a funnel. I honestly don’t know what visualization would make the most sense. It’s really like a really junky-looking scribble with the customer on one end and then somehow, through many different steps, twists, turns, considerations, and other entities that we produce, they somehow end up on the other line of paying customer. Where does that leave us, though, from a marketing perspective? How are we supposed to be thinking about funnels if we don’t even know if there are these perfectly crystal clear entities and they’re not these cookie-cutter things? Well, really, our goal as marketers, as growth experts, is to identify the patterns. There are patterns upon which people make decisions. There are pages on your website, for example, that more consistently convert people into paying customers. And there are other pages on your website, also for example, that do a terrible job, actually, at contributing to the overall customer journey. That’s just the website as an example. Imagine all the different entities and all the different channels that we have access to. Imagine all the different variations upon which we can push messaging through those channels. This is why whenever I’m talking to an early-stage founder and they don’t have any paying customers, usually, what I recommend to them … There are a few outliers, of course. But usually, what I recommend to them is try selling the product first because there’s infinite inputs and outputs that we can try to build and test. But building a funnel blind is one of the hardest and most time and energy-consuming things you can try to do. That’s why I always recommend customer research. And if you don’t have customers prospect research, customer discovery, customer development, those are all tools in your toolbox that you can leverage to learn as much as possible not only on how to market to your customer, but how to sell to them as well. Overall, though, when it comes to measuring funnels, designing them, testing them, it’s really important to, yes, measure the parts of the funnel that you know that you can actually measure, and especially the parts of the funnel that make the most sense to actually measure. We don’t want to inundate ourselves with data that has no real application or context. But what we want to also make sure to do is to measure patterns over time. That’s also one of the hardest concepts I think to impart to founders and marketers alike. I think we all don’t really understand or sometimes we don’t really realize just how many different data points actually go into turning someone into a paying customer. But that’s not to say that not everything actually helps provide or generate a result. It’s just much more that everything has a different weight, if you will. Certain pages on your website will do an amazing job at converting customers. The pricing page is one of the most common pages, actually, that does that, which makes sense. It’s part of the decision-making process, especially with those who have high intent. But there are other activities, at least on the website, that do also contribute to that. It’s just really, really, really, important to remember that it truly is a journey and an experience. It’s holistic. It’s very rarely ever just one, or two, or three things. It’s usually the entire experience. That’s why funnels are, one the one hand, an incredibly valuable tool to visualize how someone actually becomes a customer. And at the same exact time, I think it limits us. It limits the way that we think about our brands and how we actually do generate customers. It truly is a whole universe of an experience. Our job as marketers, as founders, as growth experts, whatever you want to call it, our job is to really identify the patterns and also identify the absolute total gaping holes, the things that we aren’t really meeting that we should be. What do we kind of suck at when it comes to our funnel? Where do people drop off? Where are people not really crossing the chasm? This is also where understanding the funnel, the customer journey, and how the two match each other or don’t, that’s where this becomes really critical. It’s also really important to remember that there’s not just one funnel. You’re very rarely ever building just one funnel. As soon as you build one, you’ve already really built a hundred. There’s so many different parts of campaigns and marketing activities in general that not only depend on a strong foundational business funnel, meaning you actually are able to convert people into paying customers, but even when you do start marketing, you’re building dozens of funnels at any given time. Every new channel, every new campaign, every new marketing activity that you do, it’s just another layer onto another funnel or it’s an entirely different one. There’s never just one funnel. And even the funnel that you can see, there’s always that many more that you don’t know about. We only really get to measure the activities that are currently being taken now. But even then, there’s others that are unknown that we have no idea about. That’s not meant to scare you. That’s really more meant to ground you in putting forth your best effort and really understanding the customer journey, but then also just knowing that if you execute a marketing campaign and it fails royally where you see absolutely zero results, it’s likely because the funnel that you’ve build isn’t one that actually matches the customer journey and/or doesn’t resonate. And that’s something to remember as well. But this is why marketing is hard, y’all. This is exactly why. The last concept I think I want to leave you with today … This is really going to blow your mind. Not actually. But it is something that comes up at almost every single time we start thinking about expanding our market. Many of you have many different segments that you would like to go after. You might actually have one in particular that is going strong. But you’re actually thinking about expanding into maybe another part of the market or another segment. One thing about funnels, if it’s not already obvious, is that it does ultimately match, or it should as close as possible match the customer journey. But when you change the customer, you change the journey, and that means you got to build new funnels. You might not have to build globally different funnels. The beauty about good marketing and also the beauty about building a product that is versatile enough to fit in many different segments is that you might not actually need to dramatically change too much. But it’s important to validate this, of course, with customer research. But then also, just realize that just because one funnel works for one segment, it’s not a guaranteed, yes, 100% that it’s going to work for another segment, which is why sometimes you find businesses expanding into a different part of the market but they don’t have as much success or it’s harder for them because they realize that … Well, sometimes their product market fit isn’t as strong for the new segment. But also, their funnel doesn’t really work for the new segment. All of the marketing, all of the different entities that we’ve built that really worked extremely well from a digital perspective for one segment, we might find that it doesn’t work hardly at all for another. And now we have to create an entirely new funnel or set of funnels that match this new customer journey. Remember, when you change the customer, when you focus on a different customer, you’re essentially now focusing on a different customer journey. There might be subtleties, but they’re still worth noting and they are still worth considering. This is why as a brand gets bigger … Let’s take Asana for example. As Asana has grown, their messaging has also become a little bit more general. It’s now much more catered to a huge global market as opposed to maybe what it was focused on before. Another great example of this is ConvertKit. When ConvertKit first started their SaaS journey, they were focused on bloggers. They were focused on creating an email platform just for bloggers. And even more specifically, I think it was food bloggers if I’m not mistaken. As they’ve grown, however, now their messaging is much more, well, really, we’re email marketing for creators. Now that’s a much more broad term, not to say that it is not niche or focused in any kind of way. Because if you compare it to other email marketing platforms, they’re certainly not saying the exact same thing. But as ConvertKit has focused on different parts of the market, so has their customer journeys and also so has their marketing activity, their positioning, their messaging, their everything. Their business funnel also has probably changed over time. Also, thankfully, their marketing has been strong enough that they haven’t … They likely, at least that we can see on the surface, they probably haven’t had to change a ton, but they’ve definitely expanded the kinds of funnels, the amount of funnels. Then also, they’ve likely also had to shift a little bit of how they thought about their overall customer journey. And then even more specifically, the more niche customer journeys within every single segment that they target. As you grow your overall business funnel, and your marketing funnel, and then every single funnel that goes in between, those will evolve and change over time. As we grow, we also take note of the patterns and we take note of the outliers. When funnels are no longer performing as well, we either troubleshoot them or we move on and we find new, untapped sources of prospects, of customers, and also other opportunities that you might not have considered. In the early days, we might also focus very heavily on bottom of the funnel activity or not. Maybe we’re too tied up in top of the funnel activity that doesn’t actually generate any real paying customers and maybe all of our demos or conversations fall flat and we really need to be focused on bottom of the funnel activity. It just really depends on where you’re at and what in the business is currently happening. But, that’s how we leverage funnels in order to think about what activities should we be doing, what’s actually performing well, and what’s not performing well, and then, of course, what are just some global truths about funnels. It’s, again, so important to know at least the … I’m putting this again in finger quotes. But the philosophy, if you will, of a customer journey, and of the funnel, and when they are explicit sources of truth, and when they kind of fall apart. Again, you really don’t know what’s actually happening in the funnel because we’re not able to measure every single thing that happens. Everything from the billboards that they see, to the ads that they hear on the radio, to the conversations that they have with their friends or if they even have conversations with friends about products, we really don’t know. The funnel is usually far more complex than we actually think it is. And again, it’s really just our best guess according to what we think that the customer journey actually is and what we know the customer journey to be when we validate it with customer research. Funnels are complex, especially if you run campaigns and they don’t actually generate the results. Sometimes it’s because we didn’t execute the channel very well, but the other part, too, is that it just might not be the actual customer journey that the prospect actually takes to become a customer. It’s very likely. It’s actually more likely. This is also why I also recommend doing customer research before you launch any big campaigns because you’re basically guessing if something’s going to work, if you don’t, I mean. The funnel, whether from a business or a marketing perspective, they’re really a guide. The patterns, the outliers, those are the things that matter and your ability to measure the, and also your ability to grow and expand them, and then of course sunset them whenever they are not performing, to troubleshoot all of those, all of those and above and beyond. I hope this was helpful. I feel like I say that at the end of every single podcast. I hope this was helpful. Let me know that this was helpful. Let me know if you learned a thing. I would love to know what questions do you have about funnels. Did that make sense? What can I explain even better? Are funnels confusing, period? Are they intimidating? Are they not? I would love to hear from you. My guess is that for some of you it is. And hopefully, my goal at the end of this podcast was really to ground you in some realities about them, to highlight at least what can you trust about them, and also take certain things with a grain of salt. Because again, funnels are not these perfect entities, they’re not linear, and they’re also really just best guesses at what we kind of think we know about something. But overall, I hope that it took some pressure off and also maybe sparked some ideas and some questions. Maybe this inspired you to take a look at your analytics. Maybe this inspired you to really analyze what campaigns or funnels have you presented that maybe aren’t exactly the best performing things. And now we know how to think about them at least a little bit better, hopefully, if I did my job right. Maybe now we can start thinking about troubleshooting or expanding some and really validating others. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Again, I hope this helped. Let me know. And I’ll catch you on the next one. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 6: Top 8 Customer Research Mistakes](https://demandmaven.io/top-8-customer-research-mistakes/) **Published:** May 28, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Customer research can be an absolute game changer. It gives you insight into not only what your current customers think of your product, but also who they are, what they want, and how you can better serve them and others in the future. But not every type of customer research is right. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down 8 ways that you might be doing your customer research wrong and how you can update your research to upgrade your results. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **\[1:20\] – #1 You’re not doing customer research at all.** - If you’re not doing research, you can be sure what you’re customers think about your product and business. You’re not only missing out on improving your product now, but you’re liking missing the big picture on where you should go in the future. - **\[4:42\] – #2 You’re asking the wrong questions.** - There are lots of resources outlining customer research questions to ask, but asking general questions won’t get you the information you need to solve your specific challenges. - **\[7:26\] – #3 You’re not digging deep enough.** - In a research interview, you will often get vague answers like “It made my life easier”, as a founder you need to know the specifics of what you’re customers are thinking, so don’t be afraid to follow up and don’t just accept the first response you get if you don’t fully understand. - **\[10:18\] – #4 You’re answering questions for your customers.** - When you’re doing a customer interview, it’s natural that some awkward moments come up. And it’s human nature to fill awkward moments with words. But when we do that in a customer interview we influence the responses we get back. - **\[14:21\] – #5 You’re not taking the feedback objectively.** - If you built the product yourself, it’s easy to critical feedback personally. Instead, once you have the feedback you need to take a step back and put it into context. What are the patterns? Who are the outliers? Don’t let your prior viewpoint influence the answers you get back from customers. - **\[ 21:14\] – #6 You’re the only one doing the interviewing.** - At the end of the day a customer interview is a conversation, and the interviewer is one half of the conversation. So if you have one person doing all of the interviewers they will likely be missing information because they have the same blinds spots. A strong customer research process allows for this by having more than one person interviewing. - **\[24:31\] – #7 You’re not recording or sharing your interviews.** - When we recount an interview we filter out information. And when you do that you miss crucial details. If you have a team, more than one person should be watching an interview and even if you are a solo founder right now, if you expect to grow, start recording your interviews for the future. - **\[28:00\] – #8 You stop after just a few interviews.** - You can do a set of customer interviews, learn lots, implement it, but as you grow you inevitably attract new types of customers. So you need to be connecting with your customers frequently. Product market fit isn’t a state you enter, it’s an ongoing process, that means customer research should be too. ## Transcript What’s up founders, and welcome back to another episode of the In Demand Podcast. I’m your host Asia. I founded DemandMaven, where we work with early-stage startups on reaching their very first growth milestones. That first 100 customers, the first 10K MRR, and the first 100K MRR. On today’s episode, we’re going to talk all about what you’re doing wrong with your customer research. When I think about the questions that I get from founders when it comes to their customer research, usually it’s an indicator of something that they’re trying. It’s not working out. Maybe they don’t believe in customer research as much as maybe they should, and maybe they’ve done customer research, but it didn’t exactly net the insight or the result that they were hoping for. Here’s a few of the things that not only have I made these mistakes myself personally, but these are also some of the things that I observed, let’s just say, in the overall Saas and startup community. So without further ado, here’s what you’re doing wrong with your customer research. Number one, you’re not doing customer research at all. I’m not going to spend too, too much of this episode banging up against your head about why you need to be doing customer research. But what I will say is if you’re not doing it, you are missing out on a critical part of not just your growth trajectory, but your business. If you’re not really certain about what your customers ultimately think about your business, your product, and what challenges your product is ultimately helping them solve, you are basically drawing a big giant question mark, and a big, giant blank on how strong is your product market fit in the first place. But then also, where do you go next? What are the next features that you ultimately need to build? And what is the ultimate pain that people are solving here? Customer research translates to every single department and function, especially when it comes to the overall go-to market team. If your marketers, if your sales team, if your product team, if your customer success team, support team, even development team, if no one really understands what they’re building or why they’re building it or who it’s for, then we’re basically just guessing the entire time, which is a pretty risky place to begin. It’s why I will always say no matter what we need to be doing some kind of research. If there’s a problem that you’re facing, usually you can use customer research to either outright answer it altogether, or at least point you in the right direction on where to solve it or how to solve it. Some of you are actually doing a form of customer research, and I’m going to say a form here because I wouldn’t necessarily call it very structured. But some of you are actually talking to customers, but it’s only through support or customer service means. In this case, if that’s you, I would still highly recommend that you do put some structure around your customer. I hate to call it research because I don’t know if I would say that it’s research per se, it’s really more like customer interaction. You need some kind of structure. What I mean by that is have a set list of questions at any given time that you say over and over and over again for every single interaction that you have, because that way, asking a certain question the same way over and over and over again to your different customers in the whatever context it is that you’re actually working with them in that would at least give you a little bit of structure. But overall, I would still say, even if you have these touch-and-go customer interactions, it’s still best practice. And also just way better to actually have a dedicated 20 or 30 minutes where you ask them your research questions, your interview questions and you actually get a response back that is in the right context, in the frame of mind that you kind of want the customer in. When they are in a support or some kind of they need to be “successed”, when they’re in that support context, they’re in a I need to fix this problem or challenge that I have. They’re not necessarily in a unlimited space, if you will, like just mentally, emotionally. So you’re likely going to get different answers anyway, especially if they’re frustrated. That’s why I always recommend if you can do actual dedicated customer interviews. The touch-and-go questions as you’re working with people like through their support problems or whatever, I find that that can definitely help if you are personally strapped for time, but at some point, make the time to do a dedicated 20 to 30 minutes. Even 15 would still be incredibly valuable. Number two, you’re asking the wrong questions. Okay. This one it’s interesting because on the one hand you don’t know what you don’t know, but on the other hand, there’s so much research and just resources out there that can actually tell you exactly what questions to be asking at any given time. But one thing I want to make sure to emphasize here is you can actually structure your interviews to focus on a specific business problem that you have. For example, don’t feel like you need to just ask these super basic questions just because it’s on a list. If you have challenges with acquisition, ask act acquisition-related questions. If you have challenges with activation, ask activation-related questions. Some examples of that, there’s tons out there that you can ask. There’s so many different free resources out there in terms of what exact questions to ask. But I think more than anything, it’s so important to remember that you can actually structure your interviews to help you solve the problem that you’re trying to solve. Every single time I approach customer research, I always think about, well, what problem is the client really trying to solve by doing these customer research interviews? What are we ultimately trying to impact here? Are we simply just trying to figure out where the problems are? Are we specifically looking at acquisition and saying, okay, we really need to touch bases here, but then we also need to double it back with what we think we know about our product-market fit or what we think we know about the customer. Sometimes it’s that and sometimes it’s more broad spectrum where we really want to get the lay of the land in terms of what all of our different customers mean or what their experience is. The other part to this is of course who you interview. So if you don’t have any real structure in terms of not just what questions you’re asking, but who you’re actually asking, then we’re also looking at just kind of this like willy-nilly random customer research or random customer interview. Overall though, don’t forget that you can actually ask different kinds of questions. It’s not, you don’t have to stick to this like super rigid, oh, I just found this questionnaire online. And like, I can just ask these questions and not actually think about which ones you’re actually asking. And also what kind of responses you think you might get. Sometimes what I’ll do too is I will make sure to ask a certain question a few different kinds of ways, because I know that they will elicit different responses. That’s also something to be very critical of. So overall be critical of the questions you’re asking. Make sure that you’re asking the ones that will help you unlock something for yourself and for the business, and also generate a little bit of rapport with the customer. All right, number three, you’re not digging deep enough. It’s so natural whenever you ask a question to a customer to just accept the very first few, maybe short responses that you get. And what I find too is depending on who it is that you’re interviewing. Now, I think that the reality is that many of us are global companies. We have customers all over the world. So sometimes even cultural differences can give you different kinds of responses. Sometimes you’ll get some customers who will just give you like a sentence and that’s it. Some cultures and some people just depending on wherever they’re located, they will seemingly talk for feels like hours. And in my experience, I have found that, yes, it definitely varies from culture to culture, from region to region. But what I find is if a customer is just is giving you like one-word answers or they’re giving you answers that are vague, don’t be afraid to dig deeper. There’s a few different trigger words that I personally have because by this point I’ve done hundreds of customer interviews. But whenever a customer says words like, or phrases like, Oh, it just made my life easier. Well, what does easier mean? What does that really mean? What did you gain that you would have lost otherwise if it were harder? And what’s the harder version? What was the current status quo? Don’t be afraid to dig into any phrases like that. Things are like easier, faster, better and even like in regular language, these are words that are, they’re kind of like cop out words, but don’t be afraid to dig deeper. Don’t just accept the very first response that you get. Also, especially if it’s vague and it’s usually pretty obvious when it’s vague. If you find yourself wondering what does that really mean? Or in what specific way or like, in what context, that’s your intuition guiding you to ask and to dig a little bit deeper into what the customer is actually saying. Sometimes I also, if I find that maybe a customer is having a hard time expressing themselves, sometimes I will actually give them polar opposites to pick from. And what usually ends up happening is it’s neither one of those and it’s something really specific or some specific thing that they actually really truly mean. But I almost always clarify when something seems vague or I sometimes I just want to make sure that I understand it. Don’t be afraid to do that. It’s incredibly helpful. And you’ll get, instead of just saying easier, you’ll usually get a response that’s just even better than whatever it was that they said the first time. This makes for a better customer testimonials. This makes for better quotes case studies, website copy, messaging in general. It’s just going to hands down, just be way better than whatever basic response that they had the first time. Number four, you’re answering the questions for your customers. I used to be guilty of this, like forever ago. Way back in the day when I used to do my own customer interviews and research, when I was in-house, sometimes I would answer the questions for the customers, and this is a huge mistake and it’s a very uncomfortable, easy thing to do. And what I mean by that is whenever you’re interviewing a customer, especially if interviewing in general makes you nervous or talking to customers makes you nervous in any kind of way. Our brains are hardwired to avoid anything that makes us feel anxious or uncomfortable. We get that fight or flight response. We just want to sink into our chair, run away, hide, scream, whatever. What ends up happening is we’ll ask a question and instead of just letting the awkward silence happen, we’ll fill it and we’ll fill it with a very easy response for the customer. A great example of that, I’m going to do my best to give you an example. Let’s say I’m asking the customer a question, “When you want to learn more about your industry or your job, where do you go? For example, do you go to like Google? Do you go to communities or groups? Where do you go?” And instead of just asking the actual first question, I back-filled it with, for example, communities, Google, blah, blah, blah. And it’s so natural for us to do that. And it’s something that I will only do if I can sense that the customer is very uncomfortable on the call, but overall, you should never do this. Don’t ever do this purely because our brains are very lazy. And when a situation is uncomfortable or if it’s weird or if we’re not as engaged as we like to be, it’s easy for us to just latch onto the very first thing in our minds to just answer the question and kind of get out of it in a way. And I’m not saying this to say, make your customers uncomfortable, but I am saying, make them actually think. Let them think. They actually do have really well thought out responses. And you know, they have brains, they have minds, they have personalities. Let that shine. Do your absolute best, not to answer questions and to feed answers to your customers when you’re asking some of the harder questions. Usually people, if they just like take a breather or if they really think about it for a second, they’ll come up with responses and actual answers that are, again, way more insightful than anything you could have just fed them accidentally. So just be careful overall, when it comes to answering questions for your customers. Again, there are situations where I might give some examples. If let’s say, for example, I’m asking a question that’s related to what kinds of channels or something related to that, like what kinds of channels they use to make decisions about things. Sometimes I’ll use a word that they might not understand, especially like the word like channel, like who apart from marketers and or startup people really know what that means. So still trying not to feed answers, but sometimes I will provide clarifying words or clarifying phrases to guide the direction that I’m really trying to go into. But overall, do your absolute best not to feed answers to your customers, especially if it’s a very obvious answer. And it’s something that if you’re just being extra lazy, you’ll just latch onto and you won’t… It’s hard to get away from that after someone latches onto the answer that you’ve given them. So just be careful about that. When a customer comes back with, ‘what do you mean by that? Or can you clarify for that?’ That’s when you can at least give them guidance on in what context you’re kind of thinking, but even then do your best not to just give them something that they can just kind of like pair it back at you because then the feedback really is kind of you as opposed to no, this is really them really giving you the feedback that you’re kind of looking for. Number five, this is one of the ones that whenever you do customer research and you take a step back and you look at all the interviews that you’ve done, this is where even after doing everything right, you can still walk away from the customer research process feeling inundated and overwhelmed. And number five is you’re not taking the feedback that you just gained or that you’ve heard objectively. This is really, really hard, especially if your product is kind of like your baby or your masterpiece or your brainchild in some kind of way. I think, especially if you’ve built the product to yourself. It’s very easy to take certain things very personally or, and, or I should say it’s very easy to be inundated with what you hear. You hear all of this feedback, you hear all of these ideas. You also hear it from many different kinds of people, but you’re not really certain well, what is the feedback that is the most important for me to take back to the products, to take back to the team, to leverage, to do some kind of growth or go-to market activity. In order for you to make the most of your customer research is to after you’ve actually completed it to take a step back from it, to look at it with this a very objective lens. At the end of the day, we need to take what we know qualitatively and what we know quantitatively, and not just isolate the feedback, but really put it into the context that we’re ultimately trying to solve and to… We’re trying to use the customer research to fix something or to solve something. So let’s take a step back and let’s ultimately look at what we’ve learned. When you take your customer feedback and you are looking at this objectively, you’re still combining that with, okay, which customers that we interviewed, which ones were paying the most, which ones seemed to be raving fans and which ones overall have been with us the longest? Usually what you’ll find is you’ll find a few different patterns. They’re going to be some that are absolutely amazing and they check every single box and they’re going to be some who they checked some boxes, but maybe they don’t check all of them in the best way. And then there are some customers that you’ll interview who are churn risks. And defining a churn risk is %100 up to you, to your business, to your product, to the market that you’re in. But there are going to be some that are very clearly churn risks. They would be churning if a particular thing did or didn’t happen with the product. Some are already thinking about churning and they just haven’t yet because there’s something blocking them from that. It’s important to know what about them makes them a churn risk. I mean, there’s just so much to unpack even here, but we still have to take a step back and look at everything that we’ve heard objectively. And we can start to eliminate a few. Not that we’d totally disregard certain feedback, but we start to eliminate some of the interviews that we’ve done just based off of that alone. And we start to really focus on the few who really check every single box. That’s approaching it from an objective perspective, but the second thing is now we also have to look at the patterns and the outliers. Who was an outlier? Why were they an outlier? Why don’t they really fit the mold? And overall, what are the patterns here? What are the things that we kept hearing over and over and over again? What are the things that really like what are the data points that really trump other data points according to us and what’s important to us? A great example of this to get more specific, because I realize I’m speaking a little bit in theory here, but a great example of this was actually a customer interview and just overall research project that I did for a client a few years back. And one of the number one problems that they had was they didn’t really know who their best-paying customer was. This was a combination of not having the right analytics in place. So they had pretty bad analytics debt, but the other problem was they felt inundated with the information they feedback that they hired. And they weren’t really sure who to focus on and who to prioritize. So the first part of the project was really, okay, let’s identify what analytics you really do need to ultimately make the best objective quantitative decision, but let’s combine it with actual qualitative feedback. We need to actually hear from these people. It’s not enough to just see a number on a page. We need to know what are these people experiencing. Because at the end of the day, a number on a screen, we don’t know if those are happy numbers. We don’t know if those are about churn numbers. We don’t know if those are numbers that we should be paying attention to or not. So we need to double it up with that qualitative feedback and that qualitative insight. So what we ended up learning was while we were fixing our analytics debt in the background, we ended up learning that overall, there were a few patterns and a few very clear outliers. There were also very clear churn risks as well. But the pattern, the overall sweeping pattern was one particular persona, one particular segment. And this segment of the market was very clear. It was a very specific kind of business owner. It was a very specific kind of entrepreneur in a very specific kind of industry and market. And there are the use cases for using the product were also very specific. The outliers that existed were specifically related to like just certain boxes that they didn’t check, but they were still raving fans. And then others that were very clearly churn risks. Like they were going to churn at some point. It was just a matter of time. So whenever you’re doing your customer interviews and your customer research, don’t forget to actually take a step back and look at the data that you’ve acquired as objectively as possible. It’s not that you don’t want to listen to what everyone has to say. Definitely not saying that. What I am saying though, is when you do get all of that qualitative feedback, you’re going to put your eagle eyes on and you’re going to put your laser focus on to a very particular pattern and segment that you’ve identified in the customer research that you’ve already done. Part of this does ultimately depend, however, on the people that you do actually get to interview. So do keep that bias in mind. This is why volume of interviews always matters a ton, but we usually seven to 10 interviews. That’s a pretty good number at least to start. And that’ll give you enough to identify the patterns and also give you enough to identify the churn risks and the outliers. Okay. Number six, you are the only one doing the interviewing. Now, this really does depend of course, on who else in the business has capacity to interview, or if you have anyone else in the business at all. Some of you are solo founders and you’re cranking away on the product yourself. Others have larger teams. If you’re the only one doing the interviewing and that’s because of present circumstances, totally fine. But if you’re the only one interviewing, but you’re not the only one who could be interviewing, I would highly suggest considering having someone else also do an occasional interview and just purely because not everyone is super honest with the founder, especially if they know that you built the product. I have experienced this both personally, but also on the opposite end of doing case studies, of doing customer interviews, just in general, there are things that a customer will tell me that they’ve never told the founder before. And then usually that’s not always the case, but sometimes more often than not I find there’s usually some small snippet of something. For example, I was doing customer interviews for a client for a particular growth project. And as we started doing customer interviews, we found out that they were actually using a competitive product in addition to the existing, like the actual client project. So they were using these competing projects in different parts of the business and the founder had no idea. And that actually happened three more times with customers. That told us that it seems that we’re meeting the needs of certain departments, but not all of the departments in one business. Otherwise, why not roll out the tool to everyone? And then at the same exact time, maybe it’s actually okay that this is happening. So maybe we need to dig a little bit deeper into when do we potentially have churn risk and when maybe don’t we. Maybe it’s actually okay that you can use both of these tools together, even though they’re basically the same tool with, of course, a few different value propositions and a few different feature sets. You know what I’m saying? But it just goes to show that if you can have someone else do the customer interviews and do the research for you, or in addition to what you’re already doing, it’ll also give you some insight that maybe you didn’t have before. And maybe also that the customer might not have just been comfortable sharing with you. They didn’t want to hurt your feelings. They don’t want to make you feel bad or guilty. This is also very apparent with certain different cultures as well. So this is just my personal opinion, but I actually find that Americans are much less likely to give you super honest feedback. And I find pretty much everywhere else like especially Europeans, they are much more likely to give you incredibly honest feedback. That’s just my personal experience. Not always the case, but I do find that sometimes cultural differences also give you a certain kind of feedback. So it’s especially helpful to have someone else just come to just to double up your efforts, you usually unlock something else that you didn’t know about your own customers. All right. Number seven, you’re not recording or sharing your interviews. Oh my God. I wish I could just like bang my head up against the wall for this one, because it seems so obvious, but it’s something that so many of us forget. Whenever I even think about building a business to scale. So if you expect to grow both in revenue and in team size, start recording your interviews, even if it’s just you. And the reason why is because filtered feedback is the worst feedback. Can you imagine guacamole without avocado or garlic or cilantro or tomato, Pico, whatever? Can you imagine guacamole without its most important ingredients? No. And yet so many of us try to do customer interviews and pass on feedback second hand, highly filtered, not even the actual transcript or the recording, not even like clips of those things. Sometimes we’ll get written versions of those things. So sometimes someone will actually transcribe what a person is saying and then send it off. But without the context, without understanding where that feedback is coming from or where that idea or praise even is coming from and why, what it’s connected to you basically just create just forever blind spots. And people because brains are complicated and complex, people will fill in, they’ll backfill in parts of that customer story with whatever they believe or what they think they’ve heard. And on top of that, different people will hear different things whenever they hear feedback. It’s so important if you can, in the early days to create structure, not just around your customer research, but about digesting that information and about digesting that research. Get the team together, have them listen to the interview before the meeting or a couple of days before the meeting and then actually have a meeting and tear down what you guys heard. Different people will come to the table and come to the plate with different things that they heard. And you’ll also be able to dissect together as a team. And also this is also really the goal, you’ll also get an alignment about what you heard and what particular parts of the interview or the research that you guys conducted, what particular parts of that were so critical and were so important and what wasn’t. Who were the patterns? Who were the outliers? Who were the churn risks? This is why sharing this knowledge with the team is so critical and to not filter it. This is much easier said than done. It’s so easy to actually do a customer interview and walk away from it with a particular idea or a particular piece of insight that we then share with the rest of the team. But even with that, it’s like playing the game of telephone. It’s the exact same thing. So if you can actually record, share, transcribe, highlight, whatever you need to do straight from the customer’s mouth. Here’s exactly what they’re saying, and in the context upon which they were saying it. Let’s talk about it, let’s interpret this. But when that happens, you don’t add on this like extra filter. And then people don’t feel compelled to backfill with whatever ideas or fantasies that they heard about whatever it was that was being talked about. Number eight, this is the last one. But it is that you stop after just a few interviews. Some of us get this like little ego trip whenever we do a few customer interviews, we’re like, yeah, we’ve done like four and we get it. We totally understand. Now let’s go heads down and like, let’s execute for awhile. And then like five years go by and you haven’t done a single customer interview since. This is shockingly common. But what ends up happening is you can do a set of customer interviews. And that’ll unblock you, give you the insight that you need to move forward in some kind of specific way, confirm some things, reaffirm some things, but then also disprove some things. And then at some point, you and the team, you guys trudge along and you build, you break things, you test different things, you learn, you grow. But then what ends up happening is as you grow, and this is inevitable for every single business. But as you grow, you inevitably attract different kinds of customers and different parts of the market and different segments of that market. And then what ends up happening is as you grow, you built the product and the company based off of that first set of interviews that you did, but now you don’t have any new interviews. You don’t have the voice of the customer representative of this new segment that you’ve attracted. In fact, you might not even know that you have a whole new segment. You might not even know that you’re solving a whole different set of problems. Something that I tell founders all the time is you can achieve product-market fit within a particular segment. But as soon as you grow and you enter into another segment, you’ve got to get to product-market fit all again. Product-market fit is not a thing that just happens and you’ve achieved it and you’re done. You’ve got to consistently and constantly evolve the product and your experience and your customer set purely because your customer set is also evolving. And as you grow, you just naturally will attract different segments. You’ve got to achieve product-market fit every single time constantly, and you can lose it too. There’s countless cases of businesses that have grown, lost touch with their customer, no longer really had product-market fit. And then a competitor either came in and land-slided, or just like totally siphoned the original business, or sometimes the business dies. And that is something that you can absolutely avoid by doing consistent customer research and doing consistent customer interviews. It’s an ongoing process. Never forget that product-market fit is not a state that you enter. It’s something that you are just constantly working towards, and that might sound exhausting, but that is ultimately the product-market life cycle. So don’t forget if you can consistently do customer interviews. It is a game changer. It’s a lifesaver. It will make all of your insights and everything that you build from this day forward so much more applicable, especially as you continue to do them. You’ll also notice your patterns shift over time. You’ll notice the curve shift of your customer base just move over time. It’s just like keeping in touch with the seasons changing. You feel much more grounded when you do it. All right, everyone. I’m just going to very quickly list out everything that we just talked about, all-in-one. Okay. Number one, you’re not doing customer research at all. Okay, well, it’s time to start if you’re not. Number two, you’re asking the wrong questions. Don’t forget that you can actually change your interview question set to match the problem that you’re trying to solve. You don’t have to just ask random questions, you can ask ones that actually help you. Number three, you’re not digging deep enough. Don’t accept vague answers. Just don’t. Things like easier, better, faster, cheaper even, those are things that you got to dig deeper into. What are the opposites here? What is someone’s sacrificing or what is the opportunity cost of doing this versus another? That’s how you get that deeper insight and just the insight that you need that will unlock something else. Four, you’re answering the questions for your customers. Do your best not to feed customers answers, especially for those really critical strategic product-related questions and or those growth-related questions. Try not to feed people answers. If you need to clarify, do that, but try not to just give the customer a way to answer something. Five, you’re not taking the feedback you hear objectively. Also, don’t forget to take a step back after you do customer research and look at this objectively. Use your qualitative and your quantitative data. Six, you’re the only one doing the interviewing. Guys, don’t forget to also do a little bit of extra interviewing from someone else because you’ll get different feedback. Seven, you’re not recording or sharing your interviews. I just went over this, but don’t forget to actually record these, especially if you expect for your team to grow at some point, you’ll want to be able to share that insight and that feedback with other people and actually have it be a source of truth. And lastly, you stop after just a few interviews. It’s not a one done kind of deal. It really is constant. It’s a moving target, especially as you grow. Some of you will have niches that you only focus on, like maybe you only focus on boutique agencies, but even then movements inside of a particular market happen all the time. You’re going to want to keep a pulse on that, no matter what. All right, founders, thank you so much for listening. My name is Asia. I really hope that this really broke it down for you. I hope this was helpful. I hope that you walked away with something that you were kind of like, oh man, I’m totally doing that. Here’s how I can change it. And more than anything, I hope that you actually do your customer research. Do these customer interviews. They are absolutely game-changing. Even now, it’s pretty much impossible for me to do a great job growth-wise without doing that customer research and without doing those customer interviews. It’s just so critical to the process. Anyways, thank you again and have an awesome day. Bye. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Lessons Learned from Competing in an Overcrowded Market](https://demandmaven.io/lessons-learned-from-competing-in-an-overcrowded-market/) **Published:** June 8, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we just wrapped up a project for a client that was in one of the most competitive markets. While we had some incredible wins, we also had many lessons learned — some of which I wanted to document and share here. I don’t want to be one of those marketers who only tells the rosy, glossy stories of growth and marketing. Social media and content often becomes limited to just being a highlight reel: you only see the good stuff. But there’s also a time and place for talking about the hard stuff, too. ## Here’s our lessons learned from competing in an overcrowded market For context, our extremely crowded market was project management. Productivity software, in general, is both extremely competitive and yet consistently attracts more SaaS apps to the space. This wasn’t my first rodeo in regards to competition. Quite the contrary — most of my experience has been competing with 3-5 other products at a time, all striving for significant market share. What made this experience different was just how competitive the productivity space was in addition to having a few 800 lb. gorillas with clear market share and longevity in the market. “Competitive” doesn’t even quite feel like the right word because “competition” is only indirectly felt. You might hear about a customer leaving your product for another solution; perhaps you hear in a demo that you’ve been compared to another product or way of accomplishing the same goal. We were competing in the project management space which easily holds hundreds of products with a few key 800 lb. gorillas — Asana, Trello, Monday.com, and Basecamp to name a few. And pretty much every single demo or customer interview revealed the dozens of products the prospect or customer had considered throughout their buying process. *Yeesh*. What on earth was our foothold going to be in a market like that? ## The 6 basic principles of competing in a highly competitive market Hindsight is always frustratingly 20/20. Knowing what I know now, if you’re going to enter a market with a total addressable market (TAM) of $1B or more with 100+ competitors, there’s a few things you’ll need to do differently than if your TAM was $100M with no competitors: 1. **You’re going to need a clear, competitive differentiator.** This differentiator is what makes you different, better, and special. It sets you apart from everyone else. Maybe you’re tackling a specific pain for a specific audience better than the other guys. 2. **It’s going to have to actually *be better* than all of the other competitors.** “Better” is also not as cognitively clear because to almost every founder, their product already is “better”. But it has to be *recognizably* “better” to the customers as well. They’ve got to feel that “betterness”. 3. **If it’s not better, it’s going to have to be a little cheaper**, although some would argue this would need to be the case regardless as a new player in a highly-competitive market. 4. **Have zero friction to signing up and becoming a paying customer**. It needs to be pretty easy to make a decision about the product and actually sign-up. Some would argue that adding barriers to entry would increase demand, but that totally depends on how many competitors there are and how frictionless they appear to be. Time to value is also a critical component when weighing how to approach this. The longer time to value, the less friction you’ll need to have. 5. **Find a channel with the most opportunity**. If you’re in an extremely crowded market, then it’s likely that most acquisition channels will be tapped (and maybe maxed out with extremely high CPLs). You’ll need to follow basic rules on ARPU and adjust CAC accordingly, but after that, prioritize the channels you can either beat the competition at, are totally untapped, or both! 6. **Lean into your strengths skill-wise and resource-wise**. This one’s a tough one because they’re not always obvious and it seems like a weird thing to list. But knowing the competitive landscape, you’ll need to identify what you can provide that’s better and different from a marketing perspective. So if you’re good at speaking, networking, writing, building, whatever — leverage that because it (usually) can’t be copied. All of that, of course, within the context of what your buyers are most likely to do, consume, and care about. These 6 basic principles are really just the start, and to be honest, we only did a few of these extremely well. Our clear, competitive differentiator started as a few features that later became our vision. Eventually it became the thing that our customers raved about. It’s tough to say, however, if the product was actually better in a global context. For example, many would say that Clubhouse is a clearly superior alternative to a tool like Asana if you were using it to manage software development — with software development being the context. Asana wasn’t built for managing software development to the extent that Clubhouse covers the need. Our product was clearly better when pitted against the big players if you wanted to be able to automate your tasks and workflows and build processes that scale across many different departments, and if you managed the same processes over and over again. Through customer research, we discovered that some of our absolute best customers were also still using competitive solutions for other teams and contexts. So were we better? Yes, but for a very specific kind of problem. We couldn’t cover every base, however, and I don’t know that it would have made sense to (focus being the prevailing wisdom, here). Competitively-speaking, the big players had everything except for the one thing we did absolutely best for just about every vertical. Beyond that, we had to make a few bets on what we could do growth-wise that the other guys either couldn’t do, or weren’t doing very well. ## Making your competitive bets The best way to evaluate this would be across the four main quadrants according to Brian Balfour: [product, market, model, and channel](https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-market-fit-isnt-enough). [![Brian Balfour Quad](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Brian-Balfour-Quad.jpeg)](wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Brian-Balfour-Quad.jpeg) And then, of course, layer in with what we already know to be true about growth. There’s 5 main growth levers according to [Katelyn Bourgoin](https://twitter.com/KateBour): 1. **Increase general awareness** — harder to measure, but this could be brand awareness or problem awareness 2. **Increase in website traffic** — drive more traffic month-over-month to the website from various channels 3. **Increase in leads** — generate demand for the product through sign-ups, downloads, etc. 4. **Increase in sales** — improving conversion rates, increasing revenue per user, total sales, etc. 5. **Increase in capacity (team)** — hiring more people to do more After following the main 6 principles to competing in an overcrowded market, identifying our best bets and prioritizing our main growth levers, we can finally start building a go-to-market strategy that’s going to give us the foothold that we need. And the cool part is, we just need to get over The Wall, like, once to learn what we need to do next. [via GIPHY](https://giphy.com/gifs/prepareforwinter-game-of-thrones-snow-3ohzdQKOgNdvjvz09q) ## Using guardrails to guide growth A business can navigate their growth in a few ways, but the first is to put “guardrails” or a “baby gate” on the TAM. Imagine trying to go after the entire market all at once. It’s similar to boiling an ocean: unless you’ve got bookoos of dollars, it’s going to take forever and you’re going to get overwhelmed. The total $1B TAM is really only the focus after we’ve hit significant traction and can expand the go-to-market team. But to start, we focus on just one specific segment in the market. A great example of this is actually [Nathan Barry of ConvertKit](https://nathanbarry.com/sales/). He took his TAM and broke it down into a segment that he could market and sell to immediately and later expanded his focus as he found product-market fit within certain segments. The problems we had with this, though, was we never really doubled-down on any one particular segment, and we never committed to building the product specifically for any one segment either. There’s a few reasons why that I won’t get into here. We stayed broad in the project management space, and I firmly believe that was to our detriment. It meant that we built broad, and while it’s amazing to build something that solves many problems across many verticals, it made our go-to-market strategy equally as broad. Unless you’ve got an insane amount of capital, staying broad becomes insurmountable if you’ve got hundreds of other competitors scraping the same sides of the can as you are. You can try to carve the market by focusing on one segment at a time (and that’s absolutely what you should do with the right resources and a product that solves a BIG problem for a big market), but even that makes the assumption that: 1. They care about what you have to offer 2. You can align your product messaging fast enough Instead, I recommend one of two approaches: - Enter the market with a clear vision (even better if for a specific group of people) - If you don’t have a clear vision, implement a growth strategy that enables you to learn as much (and adjust) as fast as possible. Let’s dig into each, shall we? ## Option A: Enter the market with a clear vision It’s rare, but some founders build products with a very specific audience and market in mind. That’s not to say this group outperforms the other group; on the contrary! Plenty of products are built for a particular audience and discover too late that it was the wrong product. But every now and again, a founder will do extensive research and build a specific product based on the pain of a particular part of the market. Again — that’s not to say this approach is strictly “better” because even this can fall flat. I want to be careful here. Building a business is hard, and there’s many ways to do it. It certainly decreases the risk, however. Typically these founders build an MVP with a specific vision in mind: to eliminate a particular pain for a particular segment of the market. If they make good product bets and do their research well, they end up with an MVP that is pretty sellable as-is. From there, it becomes more about catering to a specific audience and continuing to expand and align the vision. Like I said… these examples are extremely rare. The only that comes close is actually a current client of mine: Motivo. Before ever even building a product, the founder built a service offering first and productized it later. The audience and the pain were always focused; it was just a matter of if a product could be built that could later scale to solve the global pain within the clinical supervision world and if there’s a model that could be extremely profitable and serve as a win-win for the audience. However, if you don’t have a specific vision for the market or the problem, that’s fine. It just means your approach will likely do a little bit more meandering and a whole lot more experimentation on the market and the product. That brings us to Option B… ## Option B: Implement a more informed approach to growth This is a far more common scenario across the board, and 9 times out of 10, exactly what more founders experience. They identify a pain in the market and decide to build a product for the market, but they know it’s a larger pain that can be solved across other segments as well. Sometimes the mission is to tackle a BIG problem in a BIG market, and sometimes the founders just want to find their niche and double-down on that once they find it. A great example of this approach is a well-known one: [Convertkit](https://nathanbarry.com/5k/). Nathan didn’t just wake up one day and was like “I want to create an email platform for creators”. It took him several years to arrive at the focus that his brand has now. This introduces a critical component to this approach however: you need to implement a growth framework that allows you to do either find your niche and/or solve a BIG market problem within the constraints of your competition AND scope, time, and budget (or the “iron triangle” as the COO from my first role used to always say). Your go-to-market strategy, in a way, kinda depends on what your own personal goals are for the business as well. So, naturally, you’ll need an approach that helps you arrive at the right conclusions to make better decisions moving forward. We tried to do this with the project management product I mentioned earlier. While we had a few wins, it took us way too much time to learn from our mistakes and get there — especially given the competitive market we were in. Looking back, I think we should have brought product to market much differently, especially if we wanted to stay broad in order to explore our options. **This is how the framework probably should have gone**: 1. Raise money pre-product 2. Launch with a freemium (if possible) 3. Implement paid plans over time 4. Remove as much friction as possible 5. Re-position with more customer feedback and data 6. Invest in channels according to ARPU ## Strategy 1: Raise money pre-product I can feel the hissing from across the screen. Some of you are violently against raising venture capital, and I totally get that. But when you’ve got a market that’s absolutely huge, an extremely competitive landscape, and a product without clear PMF, then it becomes a “whoever is loudest, wins!” game really fast. I don’t think it’s necessarily *required* to raise a bunch of money to compete in an overcrowded market, but we’re all beholden to the **iron triangle** of scope, budget, and time. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/iron-triangle-300x252.png) If you didn’t care how long it took to reach your goals, then you could go about your merry way and budget and scope don’t really have the same pressures. But if you wanted to reach $1M ARR in 2 years, then you’d likely need to get the budget and blow out the scope in some way. Otherwise, we need to go back to Option A and think long and hard about who we want to to serve and why and what product we should actually build. If we want exploration, however, and the ability to choose, it likely comes at some cost and we’ll need to calculate that. ## Strategy 2: Launch with a freemium Freemium is a scary word for founders. To be honest, it was even scary for me until it became painfully obvious that most of the market expected some sort of freemium plan in the project management space. A freemium plan does two things: 1. It allows you to learn as much as possible since it has low-risk 2. Builds your awareness Many experts agree that “freemium” really isn’t a revenue model to begin with, but it certainly helps with acquisition and product development. And if you’re in an extremely competitive market where achieving feature parity is unlikely and freemium is expected, then you might strongly consider it. In our case, we were never going to “catch up” and achieve feature parity in time with the other big players, and the big players have the majority market share anyways. If we want market share in our current landscape, then our mission would be to generate as many users as possible with the goal of identifying a niche that we compete for. But of course, that’s only if we stay broad. Nicheing would have lended a different strategy and probably put us in the Option A category, but even here, I think we still would have launched with a freemium, saw the behaviors of our customers and existing patterns across the entire base, and focused on a segment that had clear product-market fit. Freemium comes with its own risks, of course, but only if we think of it as a permanent plan. ## Strategy 3: Implement paid plans over time Let’s assume we did step number one and “freemium” is clearly not the way to go. You should still hold off on implementing paid plans — at least for a little while. Many businesses launch with an unpaid beta plan and roll out paid plans over time. I actually like this approach a lot when thinking about the competitive landscape. If it’s an overcrowded market, rolling out paid plans over time allows you to: - Grow your user base - Identify the most critical product features across user segments - Study the way other products are priced in the market - Launch a paid offering that is both fair and competitive - Still niche down when a prevalent segment reveals itself (if that’s the plan) I don’t have a perfect science on “when you hit X users, launch your paid plans” because it will be totally dependent on the feedback you get from users. It does, however, imply that again — you’ve got the scope, time, and budget to successfully do this. ## Strategy 4: Remove as much friction as possible It probably goes without saying, but I think it needs to be said again. It should be ridiculously easy to sign-up for the product *and* get value from it. Not every product can achieve this, however. Some products have **natural friction** built into them. Others take a while for users to experience the value. In these cases, there’s a few ways to think about it: 1. If the product has a shorter time to value, remove as much friction as possible to sign-up or try the product and [tighten up the onboarding](https://userlist.com/user-onboarding/) 2. If the product has a longer time to value (i.e. several weeks or months), then remove friction, but introduce more whiteglove onboarding This brings us to **product complexity** — which is probably a whole other post, but the more complex your product, the more likely you or the team will need to be involved in helping the customer achieve success. Generally speaking, we only introduce friction when we: A. need the user to understand something critical to receiving value and/or B. disqualify users from entering our pipeline or becoming a paying customer (and therefore churning later because they’re not good fits). The irony of this is that if you’re in Option B in a competitive, overcrowded market and want to learn as much as possible, then we’re assuming that you want to explore your options as much as possible. You’d likely not introduce friction without the explicit intent of learning something or improving the experience. There are some strategies that incorporate a little bit of friction when signing up to increase the demand of the product and/or to solidify product-market fit (think like Superhuman’s extensive invite-only and qualification process). However, I’d argue this works best with incredible **market focus** — even if they are solving a BIG problem (email management), they’re still competing with free products that are distinctly “not better” which satisfies all of the 6 basic principles mentioned earlier. When I began working with the client, they had already launched with a pretty basic 21-day free trial, but they required a credit card to sign-up. At the time, it generally made sense. People who were high-quality and weren’t tire-kickers would be the ones who would sign-up thus improving our overall funnel metrics and only highlighting the quality people. That remained pretty true, but growing the net new leads month-over-month became increasingly more challenging as we started to explore different segments. The overwhelming lesson learned was that if the market generally didn’t expect to enter a credit card to start a trial, then why would they waste their time signing up for our product? It was too easy to bounce from our funnel and sign up for Monday, Asana, or Trello for free without any friction *and* a freemium account. The **perceived benefit** of entering in the credit card would need to outweigh the friction of doing so, and I don’t know that it’s easy for a new challenger in the market to make that clear with so many free and easy competitors to fall onto. We, admittedly, spent 13 months with a required credit card in our funnel, and I still regret every month of it. When we finally did remove the required credit card, the results were instantaneous. Churn dropped from 40% to 4% and net new free trials tripled overnight. Our free trial conversion rate, however, suffered, but it became clear that customers weren’t converting on their own anyways. They were just forgetting to delete their credit cards from their accounts. ## Strategy 5: Re-position with more customer feedback and data After learning from the market as much as possible and growing your user and customer base, you’ll need to identify the best segments based on the data and feedback you receive. Ideally, you’d then re-position the product based on this feedback. Convertkit, again, is a great example of this. They spent the first few years broadly going after the market until realizing that bloggers and content creators were the way to go. And even then, they focused exclusively on food bloggers to start. You need customer volume to do this, however. The trouble with positioning is that it’s tough to do without the customer base. April Dunford, SaaS positioning guru and a dear friend, would probably say that it’s impossible, or perhaps, that it’s definitely not recommended. The best you can do is start with your early-stage positioning and best guesses and further refine it after getting a significant base. A significant-enough customer base isn’t exactly defined (how many is tough to say), but once you have around 100 paying customers, you’d need to evaluate your customer base and do some form of positioning research based on the best paying customers. With my client, we were hitting the wall against the same conundrum with pretty much every single churned customer and demo we had: we either didn’t have enough features for people looking for pure project management (no feature parity), or they couldn’t justify the cost of the product compared to other market alternatives (cost outweighed the benefit). [April Dunford’s book came at the perfect time.](https://aprildunford.com/obviously-awesome/) This was especially true when we focused on project managers and small agency owners. As soon as we evaluated our positioning and launched our new messaging, that’s when we saw the 30% lift in MRR and it felt like magic. Our positioning efforts weren’t perfect, however. But it was certainly a start. It gave us the pulse-check that we needed. ## Strategy 6: Invest in channels according to ARPU Your average revenue per user (ARPU) is somewhat of a damning number. Don’t respect it, and you’ll spend more to acquire customers than you’ll actually make. If you don’t figure out how to increase the ARPU over time, then you’ll likely be stuck focusing on content marketing and SEO for forever until a more cost-effective channel comes along. We can actually use the ARPU, however, to prioritize channels. For example, if you have a lower ARPU, then you’ll likely need to invest in channels that have a lower cost to acquire a customer (CAC). If you have a higher ARPU, then we can probably spend a little more to acquire customers (like paid acquisition and other means). If we have a really high ARPU (in the hundreds or thousands, for example), then investing in sales probably makes sense. This is good advice regardless of your competitive market, and you’ll do a few things that don’t scale or are cost effective anyways in the beginning stages of the business. When you add on the layer of an extremely competitive or overcrowded market with clear market leaders, however, then a few things impact the channels you invest in: - **If you’re able to find a niche** — upon which you’d focus on the customer segments that are the most profitable for you and their market channels - **If you’re able to uncover untapped potential** —upon which you’d focus on the channels that a) aren’t crowded, b) actually tap your target market, and c) are cost-effective - **If you’re able to acquire enough funding to effectively compete (with respect to your ARPU)** — for example, you likely won’t outspend your 800 lb. gorilla competitors, but you’ll at least be able to pay enough to acquire leads at a CPL that makes sense Basically, you’re either able to go head-to-head with you competitors and can afford to, or you can’t, and you’ll need to find other options based on your target audience. That brings us back to putting the baby gate on the TAM, but if this isn’t possible, then we’ll need to chart our path accordingly. ## What we’re doing differently for clients moving forward So what does this all mean for DemandMaven? And how do we identify these things and adjust our strategy according to what we find? Well, as my friend and fellow agency owner Andrew Askins says, “It’s only a lesson learned if we truly learned a lesson.” **Moving forward, we’ll ask a few specific questions to founders who want to enter competitive spaces with or without significant funding**: 1. What’s the vision and the mission for the product? 2. Do you have an audience in mind? 3. Are you open to focusing on a specific audience? 4. Are you open to making changes and adjustments to the product, the model, the market, and the channel where appropriate? 5. How do you feel about being a spokesperson on behalf of the brand? The questions will help us serve two purposes: level set with the founder on expectations, and identify which path the founder prefers to take. Are they really taking Option A and have a clear vision in the marketplace? Or are they expecting flexibility and experimentation as they go-to-market and would prefer Option B? It also forces us to get real about what’s possible and realistic given our time, budget, resources, and scope of what we hope to achieve in the market that we’re in. As for us on the marketing-side, we do more due diligence in regards to the client’s TAM and competitive landscape. A highly competitive landscape and a TAM of $1B forces us to think about our growth path much differently than if we were in a $50M TAM and competing with spreadsheets. We’ve adjusted our SOPs and sales process to address these questions when it becomes clear we’re entering a competitive market and also adjust our strategic investments accordingly. Many critics of strategy and strategic efforts would *heavy sigh* at the amount of competitive analysis it would take to emerge with a go-to-market strategy and plan that could ensure the success of the business. But if it reduced the risk of wasting time, energy, and resources, then why wouldn’t you? **Categories:** Business, Marketing, SaaS --- ### [EP. 7: How to pick the best acquisition channels](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-pick-the-best-acquisition-channels/) **Published:** June 11, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Understanding your acquisition channels is key to growing your business, but convoluted terminology, different strategies, and numerous channels it can be hard to know where to focus your efforts. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down the basics of acquisition channels, from overviewing different types of channels to a general and specific strategy for maximizing your use of acquisition channels to grow your business! ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **Let’s break down a channel really quick because it so often gets confused with a strategy or a medium or content-type.** - A channel is how you gain access to a prospect (or how the prospect accesses you) - Online channels, for example, are often directly tied to the traffic they generate for you, so this is often paid search, direct traffic, organic search, paid social, email, social traffic, and referral traffic - Then there’s offline channels — conferences, billboards, direct mail, television (although some would argue these are online as well) and so on. - A medium, however, is usually what you’re offering to them. For example, a postcard that gets sent through the mail channel. Mail is the channel, but the postcard is the medium. Another example is the blog. The blog is really the medium, but it gets traffic through a number of online channels: your articles could rank for search, paid search, and so on. - Your acquisition strategy is usually some mix of both channels and mediums, and when you get really advanced, you’ll start layering on specific growth strategies over time (such as product marketing or community-building as a sub-strategy within an overarching strategy). - **But let’s bring it back to channels.** - The channels you choose are the channels that are most likely to attract and win your best paying customer. - I’m going to say that again: the channels you choose are the channels that are most likely to attract and win your best paying customer. The emphasis is on the customer, here. - **How do you find out? There’s three ways:** - Ask your customers! - Map their journey! - Do your own research! - **Channels to try despite what I just said.** - Paid search — are people actively searching for a solution to their problem that you can pay for? - Paid social — can you get the attention of someone looking for a solution to a problem they already have, or don’t yet know they have? - Organic search — are people actively searching for a solution to their problem? - **Aim for a balanced mix and diversification over time.** - You’ll double-down on what works — let’s say paid search for example is the first channel that works for you - Sometimes, a channel goes haywire and implodes. A great example is actually because for example, search could suddenly die because of some event that’s way outside of your control. ## Transcript What’s up Founders. Welcome back to another episode of the in demand podcast, where we talk all about how to get to your very first 100 K and MRR. I’m your host Asia. And I’m over at DemandMaven where we work with early stage founders on reaching those exact very first growth milestones. Today. We’re going to chat all about how to choose the absolute best acquisition channels for your audience, for the target market, for your customers. This is really going to be the masterclass. This is we’re going to break down every single part of what a channel even is, how it actually tears up to an overarching strategy all the way down to, well, how do we just actually pick the best channels? Well, let’s break down a channel really quick because I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. It so often gets confused with strategy and with content mediums and content types in general, many people, whenever they talk about channels, they think of them as synonymously as strategy. So for example, we’re going to double down on paid search and sometimes that feels and sounds like a strategy. And in some cases it certainly could be. But I actually find that a strategy is really more of the overarching vision. In addition to the steps that you need to take to get you to the goal paid search is really just one part of the overall puzzle of the acquisition strategy, but let’s, let’s dig a little bit deeper into what I mean when I say channels specifically, a channel is really how you gain access to a prospect or how the prospect accesses you. So for example, there’s online channels and there’s offline channels online would be, it’s typically directly tied to some form of traffic. That seems to be the unit, that most of the internet currently uses. We measure our online channels by how much traffic we’re able to generate, how much impressions or, um, visibility or awareness if you will. And then we get down into, well, how many conversions do we generate from the traffic that we got from a specific channel examples of online channels? Actually, I think Google’s breakdown is, is pretty synonymous with what we’re going to be chatting about today. And it’s extremely common. So I find that all of the big players, at least in the, just the online marketing space, they seem to use the same overarching buckets if you will, but they are paid search direct traffic, organic search, paid social emails, social traffic, referral traffic, and then there’s depending on the platform or product that you’re using. So for example, HubSpot, maybe versus Google analytics, there might be a few different in between then there’s offline channels, offline channels. These are the more traditional marketing channels. I think that we’re all pretty familiar with, but those include conferences, billboards, direct mail television. Although some people would actually argue that television is now more online and then than anything. And if you would consider YouTube to be television, then YouTube is technically online. So now we’re kind of crossing the, the barriers already. So those are some examples of some channels, but oftentimes I find that a lot of people actually confuse them or at least blend them with the medium upon which you’re actually distributing information or, uh, doing the marketing. So for example, a medium, it’s really what you’re offering to the audience. Typically another word for this as content. But I actually think that content can feel a little bit confusing, especially when you don’t directly identify content as content. So I find that medium, I think does a pretty good job of explaining, well, this is what we’re actually pushing or pulling through these channels. For example, a postcard that gets sent through the mail. Well, the mail is really the channel. That’s, that’s the actual access point upon which you’re, you’re pushing something through. But the thing that you’re pushing through is, is the actual postcard. The postcard is the medium in this case. So mail is the channel, but the postcard is the medium. Another example that gets, it definitely gets, uh, uh, it blends pretty quickly, pretty fast. Uh, but the blog is another interesting example. So the blog is actually a medium, many people would actually consider the blog to be the channel, but actually completely disagree. It’s it’s really the traffic that you get to the blog. That’s really where channels come into play. But the blog itself, it’s, it’s the content, it’s the medium. You could technically get traffic in through many other different means other than a blog. It just so happens that the blog is one of the most effective mediums for the channels that you actually want to acquire traffic through, but you could technically promote your blog through paid social. You could, uh, potentially do paid search and ideally, most everyone wants this, but everyone really wants to rank organically for the content that they produce, but organic searches the channel here, and the blog is really the medium. When it comes to your acquisition strategy, you’re really looking at a mix of both channels and mediums. It’s actually really hard to invest in a channel without also thinking or contemplating about the content or the media that you’re actually going to push through the particular channel. And when you get really advanced, you’ll start layering on specific growth strategies over time. So for example, you might have an overarching acquisition strategy, but within your strategy, you actually might decide to leverage product marketing as part of your strategy or content marketing or inbound as part of your strategy. This also includes things like community building. It could really, I hate to say run the gamut, but when it comes to building an overarching acquisition strategy, many of us start pretty basic. We start really by just focusing on channels. And then we start layering on even more strategic growth practices or strategies over time that really encompass many different channels, but let’s bring it back to the actual channels. The channels that you choose are the channels that are most likely to attract and win your best customer. I’m going to say that one more time for those in the back, the channels that you choose are the channels that are most likely to attract and win your best paying customer. The emphasis is on the customer here. We’re not necessarily going to choose channels that don’t have a very good chance of driving actual paying customers for us, even more specifically, the paying customer part. What we don’t even really want to do is just generate a bunch of leads that have no intent to buy. Aren’t going to stay, are likely going to churn. These would be channels that we would likely want to avoid. And even more specifically, the mediums and those channels are really the things that we want to avoid, but that’s not to say however, that all channels are always available to us. And at the same exact time, we should only focus on really specific ones. It’s just really much more depending on where you’re at in your journey, which channels or what kinds of channels are just most likely to net a positive outcome for you. In that case, it would be the best paying customer, but we’re also just not going to waste our time with channels that will literally never do that for us. It just would not make sense. It would be like burning cash in the front yard, right. That part might seem kind of obvious. So how do you find out how do you figure out what are the absolute best acquisition channels for you at your stage at this time, there’s actually really three ways to figure out your absolute best acquisition channels. So the first way is to actually just ask your customers. Now the misconception here is that, uh, you’re just going walk up to your customer and say like, Hey, what channel did you use to find my product? And that would not necessarily be the best way, unless of course you were talking to marketers, in which case most marketers would be able to tell you exactly what channels they used. But if you are not marketing to marketer, then you’re likely going to ask questions about how they discovered you, how they heard out, how they heard about you, and if it’s really more of a self fulfilling prophecy. So for example, maybe you prospected the customer, not. So they found you and they’re just going to say, well, you reached out to me then another way to approach it would actually be to ask questions about how they would search for a product that did something similar to what you do, or what would their first step be. Another way to think about this would be well, if they’re online, what channels are they currently leveraging? For? What reasons are they learning more about their industry in any kind of way? Where are they going? Do they like Facebook groups? Are they Facebook people, are they Instagram? People are, they live on LinkedIn? These are all different channels that you can ask just about just generally, but then also you can ask them about their own behavior. And from there reverse engineer with the channels might, could be if they were looking for a solution, the second way is, is really tied to the customer research part, but it’s also about mapping their customer journey. So the second way to figure out what the best channels would also be to actually map out their journey, especially if it was not a sales journey. So if, if you acquired paying customers through non sales channels, what you could do is you could actually interview those customers and actually ask them, what was your process? How did you even figure out that you needed something like this and you might actually hear different kinds of stories like, well, I was really struggling with this problem. I did my research on it. Okay. Well, what kind of like, how did you do your research? Well, I Googled it. Okay, awesome. What did you Google? Do you remember what you searched for? You’ll be surprised and amazed at what the actual journey is. Whenever you pry a little bit deeper, you dig a little bit deeper and you ask them specific questions about how they even figured out that they had a problem, but usually the customer journey is a great way. Not only to see or to suss out like what those potential channels would be, but also what kinds of content or mediums, if you will, what kinds of content would you need to produce and put in front of them as you’re nurturing them along the cycle? Okay. The third way to figure out the best acquisition channels would actually be to do your own research. Now, this is something that I do like to combine with actual customer research, meaning I’m talking to the customer, I’m asking them questions, but then we can also technically do our own research outside of the customer. Meaning we really go and we look at well, what is the market saying as a whole about either this problem or what are some places that are talking about this problem? Or maybe people who might be together, who we think are good paying customers, but maybe they are coming together in a way that we just need to find first. So communities are a great example of this. Uh, another way I like to do research is actually to go and figure out, like, what are the top books on that particular industry market sub topic theme? Let’s say you are in the recruiting space, who are the thought leaders in the recruiting space. And even more specifically in specific kinds of recruiting, um, who like, what are the best books about headhunting? Who’s talking about this, where are some potential places that these people could be just congregating in general, whether online or offline, this could also be associations. That’s going to be conferences. It really just depends on your product and the market that you’re in, but this is where we can start to do our own research. And we can kind of figure out, who’s talking about something similar. Who’s talking about maybe the same problems or similar problems. And also are there influencers in the space? Are there people who we can really look to? So doing your own research is a third way that you can find your acquisition channels. But what I find is that with research, you’re still kind of in a vacuum, you’re still kind of in a bubble just a little bit. Sometimes you can totally nail this and everything that you hear from customers is pretty synonymous with the work and the effort that you already put into it. But what I find is it’s best when it’s combined, because sometimes you can do your own research and you really follow your own biases and your own instinct on things, which is usually pretty correct. What I find is you also just might naturally go down a rabbit hole that has very little to do with what your customer’s actually doing, which is extremely possible, and definitely combine the two you want ideas for, for sure. And you want places to be able to tap whenever you run out of ideas from just what your customers say, but you also just want to make sure that you confirm what you found with actual real customer evidence, because the customer is, is truly going to be your best source of where to find more of them. But some of you are out there kind of thinking, okay, that’s cool. Maybe we’ve done the customer research, but are there just any channels that we should just absolutely be thinking about no matter what, and this is where usually nine times out of 10, I would say, yes, there’s absolutely three channels that I can think of that you are going to want to test, regardless of whether or not you, uh, think that these are viable channels. The biggest differentiator, however, is some of these channels are going to be cost effective. And some of them are not going to be as cost effective for you. And many times more often than not actually find that these three channels that I will absolutely discuss in just a second. But these three channels I find their performance really depends on your understanding of the customer. What I typically find with early stage businesses is they might not be as dialed into the customer journey and the problem that their product is solving for that customer. It’s actually very common in terms of you’ve got this product. It does a wonderful job of a very specific thing, but you might not fully understand what the real pain is that your product is solving for your customers. And on top of that, sometimes you might not even know who the best customers are. I find that when you’re in that situation, certain channels just aren’t going to be effective period. And especially these three, but if you have a pretty good understanding of the journey, if you have a pretty strong understanding of the pain that you’re solving for your customers, and you have a very strong indicator of exactly what kinds of customers you’re hoping to attract, then these channels are absolutely viable places to start after that. It really comes down to your pricing model actually, because not all of these channels are going to be super cost effective and some are going to be slower than others, but let’s dig into the three. The first is paid search. This is more commonly known as AdWords, but basically it’s any platform that you can pay to show up as a result for anyone who is searching for something. Another example that’s very commonly, used at least in the early days are solutions like Capterra, G2 crowd, basically any directory or place where someone is searching for a solution to something you can pay to surface as a result. Another example in some people kind of consider Quora to be in this and to be in this bucket. But Quora kind of fits this as well, especially for people looking at asking questions and looking for solutions, but paid search. I would say AdWords is probably the most common and the most popular. It can also, depending on your business and of course your pricing model, it could be one of the most lucrative just depending on the market that you’re in, because anyone who is actively searching for a solution or a solution to their pain, they want to fix their problem. And your product does that. You can just pay to just, you know, obviously like be the top result, depending on how much your product is currently charging. However, so depending on your pricing model, this may or may not be the best. It just completely depends again, on what that pricing model is. And then even more importantly with the customer lifetime value is because if it costs more to generate leads, then longterm probably not the best solution, but in the short term, it will absolutely, uh, be a way to test ideas, to be a way to test what kinds of queries are currently out there. This will also give you an early indicator of what kind of organic search traffic you can possibly rank for. But the thing about paid is that if it doesn’t scale, it’s probably okay in the beginning, as long as you learn as much as possible. And if it does scale then awesome, double down on it, put that egg in your basket and keep it moving. And paid searches is amazing. It’s almost always where we test ideas and if it nets out, it is something that is very lucrative for the business. And of course, it’s a channel that we continue to expand. So we continue to optimize on and we continue to test on After paid search is organic search actually mentioned organic search earlier, but you know, this is the more typical channel that is, instead of paying to be at the top result, you just rank for it organically. So someone goes into Google, they’re typing in. I want to see the top project management software in, you know, whatever the world I don’t know. Um, but show me the top 10 project management systems out there that do this, this and this, or for small businesses or whatever, you could absolutely pay money to be that number one search result. And it would probably be pretty expensive. It might be like, I don’t know, $20, $30 a click maybe, which is incredibly expensive, but let’s say you actually ranked for that instead. Well, that’s free traffic. In theory, you might have spent money to create the content, but if you were to think about how much traffic you would get after that, how many leads you’d potentially get out of that your cost per lead actually drives down significantly compared to doing something like a paid search. The big question, however, is are people actually searching for queries or things directly related to the problem or the pain that you’re solving for people? It’s more specifically that your product is solving for people? What I find is with organic search, you really have to balance very bottom of the funnel or high intent keywords, meaning this is something pretty closely related to what your product actually does versus maybe a more top of the funnel. Overall general awareness kinds of content or general awareness kinds of keywords, the other consideration. And this is a very common one, but what I find is doubling down on a channel like organic search, it does imply that people are actively searching for something related to what you’re solving for people, or it just is what you’re solving for people. But the other part is that it usually is a longer term strategy. You can absolutely get short term results. I think a great example of this is what a Benji and Devesh are doing over at Grow and Convert. They are able to help generate traffic organically search wise, even within like the first two to three months of producing content. But what I find is it’s actually really rare for businesses to double down on that so early, because of how longterm that strategy is not to say that it’s bad. I actually think it’s hands down. One of the best channels you can possibly invest in because not only do the results compound over time, and if you understand how investments work search, it’s one of those things that compounds over time, you get enough articles over time ranking, uh, just for traffic in general, on Google top page, whatever top 10 results. Those are things that will carry you for sometimes years and help you get to traffic amounts that most businesses take like five to 10 years to get to period. So I love organic search. I think it’s great. But sometimes though, when you need faster results, I find organic search is one of those things that it’s a, it’s a longterm investment and you should treat it that way. You should think about it that way. It’s definitely not something that can turn over your net free trial volume overnight. It’s definitely something to invest in. It’s definitely something to take your time, uh, and to, and to really put some effort into it. It’s just not something that is a fleeting. Uh, and if you treat it that way, it will perform that way. That’s another thing as well. And that’s true for pretty much every single channel, but should you be creating some kind of content or be thinking about organic search in some kind of way? Yes, there’s, it’s just so rare that I find a business that doesn’t have to think about this. So normally I would say, you know, let’s make sure that it’s something that our customers are thinking about, but nine times out of 10, probably honestly, 10 times out of 10, you’re going to be thinking about organic search and some kind of way. It might not be something that you focus on right now. It might be something that you invest in later, but I find that when founders do invest in it early on, and they’re pretty confident about the level of product market fit that they have. That’s usually when organic search overall the investment, it really pays off in like the next year or two. And that’s something that I find most founders pretty much never regret. It’s very, very rare for a founder to regret investing in organic search when they do have very strong product market fit. And it is very clear at least what the journey is when it’s not clear when the product market fit is not very strong. When people aren’t even really thinking about the problem, they don’t really care about it. That’s kind of when it takes much longer time or getting searched, probably isn’t something that’s going to happen or produce positive results soon and obviously we, we hear a different story. Okay. The third channel it’s paid social. Actually. I never thought that I would ever say this, but paid social is actually something that I find can actually generate some pretty incredible results if, and only if you have a very strong understanding of the customer journey and also you’ve got to, you’ve got a pretty dialed in understanding of what’s the right kind of content to promote. And also maybe what’s the right kind of offer when I say paid social. I mean, leveraging things like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, even technically LinkedIn, uh, those are the top three. Oh, I guess Twitter as well. That’s funny. I never think about Twitter, but anyway, not, not in the paid way. At least I find organic Twitter is usually far better, but paid social is actually something that I would recommend testing, but purely because you get to test different parts of your funnel and you also get to leverage some of Facebook’s just incredibly creepy, but also pretty accurate algorithms paid social is tricky because even if you’re B to B, like yes, you can absolutely see the results from paid social. In fact, I actually find that, you know, between B2B and B to C, I find e-commerce and BDC overall, it tends to be faster. You tend to be more dialed into a very specific conversion rate because we’re assuming you’re not selling sass, but if you’re B2B and you’re selling SAAS, you can absolutely see results from paid social. It’s just much more likely though that you’re either looking at a direct acquisition cost, which is probably pretty comparable to what you’re currently paying for paid search. But the other part is that you’re, it’s easier to test content ideas actually, and in content ideally should be mapped to different parts of your funnel. So I actually find that in testing different content ideas, you can also test different parts of your funnel. Sometimes a lot of businesses get hung up on, well, should we be doing webinars? Should we be writing articles? What kind of articles should they be interviewed? Should they be this blah, blah, blah. You can, well, one leverage customer research to figure all that out, honestly. But the second part is when you do have an idea or a set of ideas that you want to test, you can use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you think your people are most likely to be. Although I would, I would error on the side of almost everyone is on Facebook and if they’re not on Facebook there, they might be on Instagram. And even then, those are probably your top two period, LinkedIn and Twitter. And I think it depends, but at least for a, from a Facebook perspective, I find most businesses are testing that out in some kind of capacity. And I think it’s still worth testing in general. Most of the world is on it for one but two. I just find that you’re able to learn pretty quickly, not just targeting, but you’re able to test different parts of your funnel pretty fast. And the same thing is true for if you wanted to promote a webinar versus maybe say, um, uh, like maybe you wanted to promote your community or what have you. You’re able to figure that out pretty quickly on Facebook. I find the only times where I find Facebook is just not a great idea is when you are looking at enterprise kind of deal sizes, um, in which case sales is always going to be your best channel in your best effort anyway, but then also the other, the other case would where Facebook probably wouldn’t make the most sense would be for those who expect freemium now direct acquisition, Facebook ads. This is kind of where it really just depends on your model, your market, all of those wonderful go to market things. But overall though, pretty much everyone can do retargeting on Facebook. I think that even then, that’s probably still a pretty safe bet. Those are the three channels. So we’re looking at paid search, organic search and paid social. Those are the top three channels. Now the fourth channel, and this is really something that everyone experiences, I would be shocked if you didn’t, it would mean that you wouldn’t be online, but direct traffic in general. It’s one of those channels. That’s like, okay. Yeah. Like we expect to get direct traffic, but it is something to be measuring as well. The increase in direct traffic is usually an indicator of an increase in word of mouth. That is not always the case. In fact, there’s a lot of debate about how to actually measure word of mouth, but direct traffic is typically an indicator of people literally typing in your website, address into the search bar or into the address bar and directly go into your website from there. So we can assume that if people know your brand well enough to know your website or to know your domain name or what have you, then, then we can count that as word of mouth. Now, of course, we can’t always count that as word of mouth. Cause some, you know, channels kind of get convoluted a little bit. Some people see your ad on Facebook, see the domain and then go to a new tab and then directly type it in. And like, how do you attribute that? Can you, yeah, that’s kind of where it gets into, um, you know, like fuzzy gray area. But what we can say is the fourth channel that should definitely be ideally increasing over time is of course direct traffic. But the way that we increase that is of course, through doing any kind of awareness, building marketing or acquisition. And then of course building relationships, networking, those are all things that contribute. I’m going to leave you with this last little tidbit. Your goal is to aim for a balanced mix and diversification of your channels over time. One thing that you will hear a lot, especially in the early days is to find what works and double down on it. And I completely agree. I don’t, I don’t want to, um, uh, I don’t disagree with that actually at all. But what I will say is you do want to diversify your portfolio over time. Diversification is important, not just in investment is it’s important in marketing too, because something that is also very true about markets in general and the world is that certain channels can fluctuate over time. And I think, especially in the case of like, you know, COVID-19, depending on the market that you were in, you might have seen your search traffic completely tank, you end up seeing your traffic tank in general and others explode. And this is kind of why it’s so important to say like, well, yes, like we figured out what worked in the beginning, we’ve diversified over time. We’ve expanded our channels over time. So that way, if any, one of them goes down for reasons beyond our control, maybe a competitor does a very big thing in the market or maybe something happens. The market in general, GDPR is another example of this, like GDPR heavily impacted certain industries. I mean, there are all kinds of things that can happen to your industry, to your market, to your product. Even it’s important to have different ways of acquiring customers. And that’s exactly why, because one can just suddenly die. It seems like overnight sometimes. And I think in the case of the pandemic, that was definitely true. And then other channels can skyrocket over time. Referral traffic is something that I didn’t talk about today, but that’s a channel that depending on your industry or your market could actually be one of your absolute best ones. It just depends on, uh, obviously like what you’re building and what you’re doing. But over time you want to diversify your channels. And also, I mean, paid search and paid social things like that. Um, those really overarching categories, there’s all kinds of channels in each of those categories. And not that your attention deserves all of them, but it’s still important to test different ones over time, especially as your market shifts and as they change, as they expand, you’ll find that you acquire different kinds of customers who are also great customers, figuring out what their acquisition strategies should be or what their channels are. You’ll be amazed at what you learn or just discover over time. Anyway, I hope that was helpful. Thank you so much for listening today. Let me know if you learn to think today, let me know how this helped. I always love hearing from you guys and also let me know what questions you have, what didn’t I cover? What would you like to dig deeper into next? Don’t hesitate to reach out, via email or leave Twitter, always, uh, you know, just excited to hear feedback overall. Thank you so much again, have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 8: The Biggest Growth Lessons I’ve Learned the Hard Way](https://demandmaven.io/the-biggest-growth-lessons-ive-learned-the-hard-way/) **Published:** June 18, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Some lessons in marketing are easy to learn. You pick them up from a book, take a class, or hear a talk and get it immediately. Other lessons are harder to come by. They are the ones learned over time and through experience. The ones that we look back on and think about the head start we could have got from applying them earlier. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the four biggest lessons that she learned the hard way. From customer journey’s to funnels and go to market strategy, you’ll learn growth lessons you can implement today to avoid learning them the hard way yourself in the future. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL 1. **Not Focusing on the customer journey.** - Marketing is a dance. Customers lead and we need to learn to read and move with them. We have to match our content and marketing work to the places people are and the way they make decisions. 2. **It’s harder to build a funnel from top to bottom than from the bottom to the top.** - You can build an awesome marketing funnel on paper from top to bottom but then realize that you no one is going through the funnel! - To create a funnel that works, start with the bottom of the funnel activity, learn from your customers and create the middle and then top of the funnel activities. 3. **.Your market determines how you go to market** - If you are entering an established market, with established competitors, you need to look around at the market to see how you fit in. If there are established norms (like free trials, needing to enter credit cards, etc.) not following those in your go to market plan will create a lot of friction. 4. **Balancing long-term vs short-term efforts.** - Especially in startups with VC funding, there can be lots of pressure from investors to create short-term wins at the expense of losing focus on long-term marketing efforts. Marketing wins in the short term are great, but you should always have an eye on long-term marketing plans and activities that compound over time. ## Transcript What’s up founders. And welcome back to another episode of the in demand podcast, where we talk all about how to reach your very first 100K MRR. My name is Asia. I’m your host. I am also the CEO and founder of demand Maven where we work with early stage startups on reaching their very first growth milestones. Today, we’re going to talk all about the biggest growth lessons I’ve learned. The hard way part of this is me admitting to making these mistakes in the end. A part of me is declaring to literally never make them don’t ever do these narratives. They’re awful. I, as a very junior marketer, I’ve done these things and, uh, I’ve, I’ve had to learn the hard way. And then there are some that even in some client projects, some of them have resurfaced and others were totally new. So I hope that you, enjoy this. There’s only, let’s see, I’ve got one, two, three, four, so this might actually go pretty quickly, but these are strategic mistakes. Some of them are a little bit tactical and I’ll, and I’ll give you context on when some of these work and when they don’t work. But overall, I definitely had to learn these the hard way. Okay. The first one, I hate this. It’s ignoring the customer journey. I’m trying to think of a time where ignoring the customer journey has ever done me a good service. And I’m, I’m certain that there’s outliers of products in certain markets where, the customer, you know, doesn’t really know the, the best way to do something or, um, you know, sometimes the customer is wrong and sometimes you have such a small sample size that you really don’t have the full story or the full spectrum. I think that those are probably edge cases. I think most of us are in businesses where listening to the customer journey and actually, mapping it out and also mapping out your acquisition to that. And your activation to that, those are, those are best practices. Those are things that you absolutely should do. It’s very rare that you ever would not do them all that said I have definitely been in situations where the customer journey was an afterthought and not something that we really focused on. And what I mean by that is it was almost like we didn’t really care how our customers actually made decisions, how they actually did research on their problems, what they were researching, or if they even were researching, what were, what were their concerns? What did they really fear and whether typically, I’ve worked in a B2B capacity. This could also be B2C as well, but w who really was this customer? There have also been times where, especially as a junior marketer, you get kind of caught up in like the tactics of how to actually execute something. And I’ve definitely been guilty of that. In fact, I think most marketers start out with heavily focusing on a particular or a tactic. There’s some thing that they’ve been tasked with. And over time they become more strategic and they are able to see more of the whole story, especially from the business side and the customer side. But what I found is customer led growth was something that I learned over time, and I became far more proficient in it when I was more focused on SAAS and just overarched startup startup in general, when I was precise and pre-start up, I definitely was not focused on the customer journey and don’t get me wrong. It, it was pretty evident. We would produce campaigns that just didn’t net the results that we were expecting. And I also think too that our strategy, our approach to how to acquire a certain kinds of customers, it was just, it was so misaligned. And it was, it was so clear. It’s clear now it was never, it was not clear at the time. It definitely became clear over time. Especially as I’ve grown as a marketer, but looking back at my, you know, at my entire career, it just became so obvious that, um, there were just things that we did that just didn’t make sense. I’m going to give you a few examples. Pretty much every single business is going to create some kind of blog. I don’t actually don’t think that, um, I don’t know necessarily that any businesses going to not create content. I think we are, we’re all creating content all the time and we don’t even realize it, but the kinds of content that I was creating way back, you know, when I was early, early marketer, didn’t really know a ton about growth in the way that I do now, but I was creating content that on paper was very well executed. It looked great. It read very well. It probably told a compelling story, but when it came to that, our customers care about it. Absolutely not like at all. And when you think about it that way, it suddenly seems so obvious. It’s like, Oh, well this is a giant waste of time. Maybe not the content itself, but, um, or excuse me, maybe not creating inbound interest. Inbound was still a core function of that particular business, but it was just the content itself. Like the content itself was really the part that wasn’t strong. And this is where I had to really learn the customer journey is we’re, really kind of wrapping ourselves around that the customer journey is not influenced by what I do, if that makes any sense, really we’re discovering the customer journey and it’s a dance we’re kind of matching our steps to theirs. They are the lead and they don’t really know it. And it’s our job to kind of dance with them and match our steps to theirs. It’s, it’s really not the opposite. So it’s, I think it’s very rare that we force customers to go through hoops. Um, it’s really much more like they have a way that they like to buy. They have a way that they like to be approached. They even have a way that they like to be convinced and we really have to match ourselves to that. I think even in the cases of doing like really interesting things from a customer journey perspective, I think even those are still technically inline with what the customer would expect anyway. So for example, you’ll see companies like drift, even Intercom, I would say, who are really challenging how they go to market. And they’re challenging a lot of the best practices and status quo things. But what I actually think what they’re doing is they’re, they’re typically marketing to marketers or they’re marketing to people who want to see that and who want and expect that, challenging, like the best practices in the status quo. I think that’s something that is attractive even to that particular market. You probably could not do this, do the same exact thing for a different market. I don’t know. I think that that’s kind of where looking at the customer and the customer journey, it’s just so critical. And it’s something that I have made. I’ve made that mistake countless times in my career. I would say it’s something that I’m extremely passionate about now, but I would say when I was like a junior marketer straight out of college and like, you know, first few like real career moves back then it, it definitely wasn’t that way. Huge mistake that I’ve made. I’ve learned the hard way now. I know what it looks like to actually map to a customer journey and to really care about it in the way that, um, actually nets out a positive outcome and actually nets out growth and results. Okay. The second lesson, trying to build a funnel from top to bottom, from super high level awareness, all the way down to high intent, bottom of the funnel activity or practices, it’s actually much harder than reverse engineering it. And what I mean by that is it is just so much harder to start at the very tippy top of the funnel. Okay, well, we’re going to build all of this awareness and all of this traffic with no where to lead them down that’s and like, we’re going to try to build the funnel along the way. I actually find that’s way harder than reverse engineering it. And starting with people who want to solve the problem now and figuring out what the steps are above that. And then of course, above that. So starting with bottom of the funnel first, and then moving to middle of the funnel and then moving to top of the funnel last, I actually find that building it out that way, way better and faster, and usually more informed. This is one of those growth lessons that you really don’t realize that you’re making it until you arrive at this robust funnel that you’ve built, that doesn’t convert anyone into anything at all. And you just find yourself incredibly frustrated with the entire marketing foundation that you’ve built. And this is why personally I have come to really value a strong marketing foundation. And also I’ve come to really value bottom of the funnel activity, whether that’s sales activity or just marketing activity in general, bottom of the funnel activity. If you’ve, if you’ve heard my re my previous episode about funnels, then you know what I mean? When I say bottom of the funnel activity, these are marketing practices that attract people who are most likely to buy and who are closest to the bottom of the funnel, meaning they’re about to take that next step into becoming either a paying customer or that very first conversion point that puts them into the sales funnel, whether that’s a demo request or whatever, these are the kinds of that we’ll ask the customer activity that we want. But then the marketing activity that happens around that, it’s about the website. It’s about case studies. It’s about pricing. It’s about how well do your features communicate the value of what it is that you’re doing. And then of course, there’s bottom of the funnel activity like paid search, which in theory generates a conversion pretty quickly. That’s just an example, of course, could be a few different channels that are considered bottom of the funnel for you. But those are just, you know, very basic best practice examples. It’s actually easier to start there than to start all the way the tippy top and have no idea if what you’re building actually will convert into paying a customer or not what I find. And this is a huge mistake that both marketers and honestly founders make, but they start with this like top level awareness marketing activity. They’ve never even tested if someone, if they could just generate a conversion now based off of some search query or something. And they started this like very tippy top of the funnel and they build all this content, they build all this awareness and then they take people down to another part of the funnel that they’re kind of guessing at this point, because they don’t really know if it’s actually going to generate the positive result or not, which is a purchase or a conversion. And then they do even more activity here and they bring them out down to like this next step of the funnel, way harder to actually know if you’ve got the right message. If you’re even targeting the right person, if what you’re doing even remotely matches what a customer journey could be. This is why I almost always say, if you can help it, don’t start with this like super top of the funnel awareness building, start with bottom of the funnel. First, can you attract people who are ready to buy now, do those people exist and who are they and why? So this is a lesson that I’ve learned the hard way, and that I have built out entire marketing campaigns and practices and just strategies I’ve executed, like, just so much before where we started top of the funnel first. And then we kind of, we hoped and prayed that we would understand everything by the time that we got to the bottom of the funnel. But the reality was that if we had just started bottom of the funnel first, we would have learned more and we would have been able to build the right kinds of top of the funnel and just middle of the funnel activities. This might sound really nebulous and really, um, or maybe the opposite, maybe this sounds like really high level and kind of fluffy. But I think the best example I can give is we can target people who are actively looking for a solution right now, or we can build a bunch of stuff that hopefully educate some about the problem. And maybe also hopefully makes them realize that they have a problem and actually motivates them to solve the problem with our product. Don’t get me wrong. You can totally do that. There are some businesses where you need to do that. But what I find is it’s actually much harder. You do a lot more guessing, and this is where customer research really comes into play pretty hardcore, but it’s just, it’s just so rare that, um, you will be in a situation where building top of the funnel is more important than building out bottom of the funnel. Usually building out that other kind of like awareness model. So like, let’s say you do start at like really high level top of the funnel activity. And you do that first. Usually it’s because you’ve got a lot of funding, you’ve got a lot of runway, you’ve got the time and you’ve, you’ve got the resources and the funding to actually carry an entire market all the way through to I’m converting now. And I’m purchasing from, I don’t even know what the problem is to I’m now a paying customer. That’s a huge, huge buying cycle. It’s absolutely huge. Or at least it could be. I find the only times where it’s not are actually, like B2C and e-commerce kinds of, plays. I find when it’s B2B, however, pretty much never gonna start super top of the funnel. Pretty much always going to go for the bottom of the funnel activity first. And then as we learn more about the best paying customers and also about the buying triggers in general, then we can start to say, Oh, okay, well maybe this kind of middle of the funnel activity actually nuts out the kind of people that we want to be talking to in the first place. And then from there now we can kind of start at the more top of the funnel activity. But basically if you can help it start with bottom of the funnel activity first, don’t try to like, guess your way down a funnel that doesn’t make any sense. Number three, your market heavily influences how you go to market. This is going to sound so obvious. It’s gonna sound so obvious saying it, and it feels obvious saying it. Now your market really heavily influences how you go to market. And what that ultimately means is when you sit down and you define your go to market strategy, go to market meaning, well, what’s my pricing model. What really is the product that I want to take to market? What’s my MVP, who am I ultimately targeting? And what channels am I going to use to acquire this part of the market? So much of the market itself dictates that almost to a point to where it might not make sense necessarily to dramatically change one part of that for any other reason than like, it’s just for fun. I’m like you just want to, there was a product that I was working on a actually recently, and I actually worked with this business for quite a while. So they, they were, they were a pretty long time client for me for Demand Maven. And when we first started working together, the go to market strategy, it kind of went against everything that would be expected of them in their particular market. So instead of having a 30 day free trial, they opted for like the 14 day, even though other competitors were offering a 30 day, but it seems like every single go to market decision, we made like directly defied, like what the rest of the market would have expected from us. So instead of making it incredibly easy to sign up, it seems like we were making it actually even harder on top of that, the product itself, we couldn’t really compete with the big guys quite yet. Anyway, there were so many decisions that we made that seemed to completely go against what the market would have responded to anyways, all the way up to like required, like requiring a credit card, which don’t get me wrong. Totally works in some cases. But when the entire market does not expect to enter a credit card, and you’re the only one who does, it’s just adding another friction layer. And so there were so many of these go to market decisions that had been made that seemed to, again, just defy what the market would have expected. Anyway, it’s probably one of the hardest lessons that I personally have had to learn, but it’s also, it’s so tough to teach this because you really don’t understand or realize it until you’re actually doing it the best way that I can offer advice though, to people who are struggling with us, where they’ve got to go to market strategy, but they don’t know if it’s going to work. If you have competitors in your space, that’s actually in many ways a blessing and a curse, obviously you’re competing, but at the same exact time, you kind of have an inkling of what your market might expect. The other thing that you can, of course leverage is your own customer research. So by leveraging customer research, you can also understand if what you’re building go to market wise is actually going to stand if it’s actually got legs, and if it doesn’t have legs, you will also be able to learn pretty quickly. Not that not that businesses don’t have power. Of course we do. It’s just that we’re so much under the influence. If you will, of our potential customers, then we realize, and we really don’t know until we talk to them about it until we actually start to market ourselves or start to sell ourselves in some kind of way. And then we start to learn pretty quickly like, Oh, okay, this is where maybe things don’t fit, go to market wise, or maybe we’ve missed the Mark in these ways. Or people are not as interested in this kind of model, but they’d rather pay for this kind of model. And if you don’t have competitors, there’s usually some kind of competitive alternative that, businesses are weighing or people are weighing in general. So for example, like if you’re competing with Excel, you would have to offer something so much more, incredibly high value, time saving, cost saving and some kind of way that it’s just going to have to be much less friction for people to use your product over Excel and so much of how the market, or at least part of the market that you’re views your product and also views the problem that you’re trying to solve for them. So much of those things have to be incredibly aligned. And if they’re not, then you never really achieve product market fit. It gets really hard to sell your product or to market your product in any kind of meaningful way. And on top of that, you end up with more unknowns than knowns, which is incredibly frustrating. I think not being aligned with the market and not being aligned with the expectations thereof. It’s, it’s definitely a trap I’ve fallen into before. And it’s one I can recognize now, but I would say years ago, definitely not something I would have ever even really realized to be honest, but seeing it now, it’s so clear when a product is not quite aligned with the market that they’re in or the one that they’re trying to target. And this is something to, of course, to distinct cause there’s where you’re at and where you want to be. But when you are aligned, it is reflective in every single part of your go to market strategy, your pricing, your model, and everything that you produce from a marketing perspective, who you’re targeting all those things, even, even down to the features that you release, all of those in theory are working together and you’re not going to get, you know, perfect scores on everything. There are some things that are going to be able to be a little bit misaligned or put you in an entirely different market. In which case you’ve got to now find product market fit there as well. But overall, so much of your market dictates how you go to market, which means that if you want to go to market in a certain way, you need to either change your market or change your product or both. That’s just the kind of implication that you’ve got. So if you’re misaligned in any kind of way, it will reflect and which case you would need to make adjustments. This is why so many businesses I think, changed their pricing. So often they changed their models. So often every now and again, they’ll even pivot and maybe even change the product or change the market, change their positioning. There’s just so much, so many levers that you can pull, but it’s, it’s really to, to achieve that. Ideally all of these pieces would work together and you would see the growth in a way that seems so natural, but I find that not always the case and a lot of that really just is because of the market that you’re in. You’ve really got to be critical about what market do you ultimately want to serve? Is there a better fit for your market or is there, is there a better market really that you can actually go in and be in and based off of what you’ve built based off of the model that you’re comfortable with? What makes sense here? And a lot of that might not be negotiable depending on who, what you’re actually building and who you’re serving. And some of them are, some of it might be some of it sometimes it’s as simple as, Oh, we just, we just focused on this segment and not the segment. And then it’s like, okay, well that’s fixed. And sometimes it’s not as simple. And that’s where so much more work has to go into it. And it’s, and it’s work that goes beyond just marketing. This is work that goes beyond just sales or just any one department it’s really full business strategy. And that that’s something as a marketer I’ve had to come to terms with, but then also, manage around because, you know, obviously we all want to grow, but, uh, I find that when there is such a clear misalignment, we’ve obviously got to put in the work to fix it. All right. The last one, number four, this one is one that comes up quite often, especially whenever I’m talking to founders who, who really aren’t certain, what is actually going to give them the best bang for their buck. And then also what’s actually going to take them to the state that they’re looking to be in. And it’s balancing long term versus short term efforts. And when I say that this has been one of the hardest lessons for me to learn as a marketer and it’s, and it’s one that I have to I’m naturally sensitive to. So I have to temper accordingly depending on who I’m talking to. But what I do find is that, especially in a funded company, I find that short term wins and short term outcomes and short term, efforts are usually more valued than the longterm efforts. I don’t think that there was ever a conversation I had ever had with an investor where they weren’t wanting to know, well, what, what was the win this week? Or what was the, when this month or what have you. And I found what it, what it did was, it created a culture of really prioritizing short term wins. What’s a win that we can scrap together in the next week and don’t get me wrong. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it’s actually really cool to be able to come every week to the table with a win of like, well, we did this and this and this, and this was awesome. And like we saw these results, but what it kind of also did was it kind of made some parts of the go to market team, forget about long term and longterm activities are things that might not have short term wins every single week in terms of like results or outcomes. It might just be that the short term wins for those longterm efforts are really more around execution or they’re really more like tasks in a way, but those tasks over time build up to a larger effort. A great example of this is actually organic search. It’s not that you can’t see short term results with organic search. It’s just much more that you have to know and understand that this stuff compounds over time. If you get hung up on the short term results, you’ll forget to build the longterm stuff too. It’s that kind of balance that I worked to achieve for all of my accounts and my clients now, for sure. But I’ve definitely made that mistake as a full time marketer, you know, previously and some of my previous roles before. I just think overall, like we just get, so again, we get so obsessed over like the small wins and we were disappointed by the longterm outcomes, but it’s just because we never made those longterm investments. We, there were, we weren’t taking steps or taking action every single day or every single week towards that longer term vision. And part of this is because we might not know enough to have it. And the other part of it is sometimes the environment that we’re in or the culture that we’re in. It just, it caters more to those short term wins than the longterm ones. So I would say as a founder, if you’re obsessed with the short term wins, that’s absolutely fine, but just make sure that you’re balancing it with okay, but what are the things that I can invest in that will net a longterm result? Organic search is just one marketing or growth example, but there are plenty others. So for example, community building, building out partnerships, co-marketing relationships in general brand building even sometimes not all the time, but sometimes, sometimes that’s an important thing. The other thing to is, and this is something that I wish I had done earlier as a marketer, but there are some investments that just are worth making now because of their longterm net result. So for example, you’ll hear a lot about, well, when you first start, you don’t need the best website in the world. And, you know, to an extent, I agree with that, but eventually you kind of come back to my number three, which was your market, ultimately does determine how you go to market. And if you’ve got a website that looks terrible and it doesn’t do the best job of converting people and you’re competing against others who have a much more polished look, uh, you might suffer, maybe especially if your product is not better. So if your product isn’t better, you’re definitely not probably going to see a better result, but overall, like, those are the kinds of things that, can sometimes hold us back and investing into a website. That’s to me, at least that’s for sure, it’s like a, it’s a little bit short term, but it’s also a longterm investment. Like we’re hoping to stick with this website for a couple of years, at least. So it should be something that we’re pretty comfortable with and that we’re pretty happy with, but there’s all kinds of other examples. I think product marketing is definitely one of those. Um, these are things that produce longterm. They can also produce short term wins, but it’s really a longterm practice and a longterm investment. Those are just some examples again, but those are the kinds of things that, um, in a previous life, as a marketer, I did not do the best job of balancing those and the businesses that I worked for. I definitely paid for those something. It’s a mistake I’ll never, ever, ever make again, but it’s definitely, it’s definitely a possibility gets a thing that can happen. And it’s something that, I would just say to all founders, just to make sure that if you can balance your approach balance it, not just with the short term, and if you’re building a culture around short term, then your future vision will only ever be three to six months out. We want to be in a place where we can see two to three years out. That’s the kind of longterm vision that we want to have, which means that we’ll need to make longterm investments. If you have a marketing team, there’s a really good chance. They already kind of have this in mind. And depending on the culture in your business, you should be able to ask and say like, Hey, like we love the short term stuff, but what about the longterm? Ask them, see what they have to say about it. And if it’s just you in the business, let’s talk about that. That’s something that, I can absolutely help us out. I would just say from a short term versus long term perspective, you want to have a balanced approach. You want to make sure that you’re taking steps in both areas, even if it feels very weird too. I really hope that was helpful. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope that you’ve learned something today. I hope that I helped at least unpack one particular thing or at least maybe helped you avoid some terrible lesson that you’ll have to learn the hard way. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 9: How to Know You Have Product-Market Fit](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-know-you-have-product-market-fit/) **Published:** June 25, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Product-market fit is often talked about like it is a specific destination. A place you arrive at once and know that you’ve arrived. But the reality of growing a SaaS company is that you may not know if you have product-market fit or if you have it, you may not know how good the fit really is. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the seven best indicators for when you’ve found product-market fit and how to take action if you haven’t reached them yet. ## Extra Resources - [The Lean Startup Playbook for Achieving Product-Market Fit](https://leanstartup.co/a-playbook-for-achieving-product-market-fit/) by Eric Ries - [The Never-Ending Road To Product Market Fit](https://brianbalfour.com/essays/product-market-fit) by Brian Balfour - [The Only Thing That Matters](https://pmarchive.com/guide_to_startups_part4.html) by Marc Andreesen - [How To Find Product Market Fit](https://youtu.be/0LNQxT9LvM0) by David Rusenko - [How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit](https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/) by Rahul Vohra ## Tl;DL 1. It doesn’t feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain. It feels more like you’re guiding it down the mountain. 2. Prospects are willing to pay right now. (And they don’t bat an eye when considering the price.) 3. Retention and active users improve with every new cohort of paying customers. 4. Run the Superhuman/Sean Ellis PMF survey. 40% who say they be upset if the product went away. - 1. How would you feel if you could no longer use Superhuman? - 2. What type of people do you think would most benefit from Superhuman? - 3. What is the main benefit you receive from Superhuman? - 4. How can we improve Superhuman for you? 5. One new customer generates two or more customers. They recommend it in the wild without you having to ask them to. 6. Your CAC:LTV ratio is solid. It consistently costs less to acquire new customers. 7. You constantly hear about how wonderful the product is. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Hey, we are going to be talking all about how to know if you have product-market fit, product-market fit is one of those milestones. That’s kind of hard to define. There are certainly ways to measure it, which we actually are going to talk about today. But when it’s described by VCs or other founders, sometimes it’s often painted as like this specific moment in time that you can find. And then after that, it’s all just extremely obvious. But the truth is that product-market fit at least entering a state of product-market fit, and then consistently working to improve your product-market fit with new segments and markets. It’s much more like shades of gray, and it’s also much more like a continuum. It’s like a continuous cycle. It’s a process. And it’s something that doesn’t actually ever begin or really end. As you enter into a state of product-market fit. You’ll continue to strive for it. As you grow your business, as you enter new markets, as you attract different kinds of segments and expand, and you’ll find that while you have a really strong product-market fit for some markets and some segments, your product-market fit for others might not be as strong. And that’s something too to keep in mind. So part of market fit really isn’t this point in time, it’s not a specific moment. It’s much more like a continual process. And again, you gradually, depending on the segment that you’re focused on, but there’s a few indicators of product-market fit. And this, these are really the points I want to chat about today because they are, they are things that I have experienced on my own, both working for clients and also working in house at some of my previous in house roles, different SAAS companies, both VC funded and part of market fit. Again, it’s one of those things that when you have it, it’s very, very, very obvious. And if you don’t have it, and you’re not certain, if you do, you probably don’t and that’s just kind of, one of the harsh realities about product-market fit is it’s one of those things where when you’ve got it, it’s very obvious and you know, it, you feel it deep within your bones and when you don’t and you’re uncertain, you’re unsure probably likely that you don’t actually have it yet, but let’s talk about the indicators of actually having product-market fit and beat some of these I’ve actually experienced myself. And some of these are things that I look for and things that I absolutely challenged founders on whenever they tell me that they have product-market fit. Usually, these are the questions that I’m asking them or the things that looking for about what they’re telling me about their experience. And then of course, some of these are pointers direct experiences from others who have achieved pretty incredible growth. And then, of course, product-market fit. The first indicator that you’ve got product-market fit is that it doesn’t feel like you’re pushing a Boulder up a mountain. It feels much more like you’re guiding it down the mountain. If working on the product and working on marketing and sales and growth, if it feels like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain the entire time getting every net new lead is like pulling teeth, getting every single new closed deal or closed opportunity is pulling teeth. Usually, it’s, it’s not because of a limiting factors based on the product itself. Usually, it’s on behalf of the customer. The customer is uncertain. They have to think too hard about like, why is this valuable? And is it worth my time then, should I really invest in this? Or why would I use this in a way that satisfies a pain or satisfies maybe a want, these are the kinds of things that usually lead to product potentially not having product-market fit whenever the customer has to think too hard about, well, why would I use this in the first place? Or why should I sign this contract? Or why should I pay, why should I pull up my credit card and pay? Usually, that’s an indicator of, you might not have product-market fit. And if you don’t have product-market fit, that could be because of a number of reasons, maybe the product isn’t positioned very well. Maybe you just need to build more product. There are all kinds of reasons why that could be happening. Conversely, if it seems like you cannot keep up with the demand if it seems like your customers are becoming customers without you having to force them to do anything, but they become customers despite maybe some product issues or what have you, without you ever having to even talk to them, that’s usually an indicator that you do have product-market fit because they are willing to go through a friction experience just to get whatever it is that the product is helping them solve. Becoming a paying customer to them is so clear. It’s so obvious they get it. They don’t have to be, coerced, or forced into becoming a paying customer, which happens. There are some SaaS companies out there who absolutely do that. And then they wonder later why they churn, but sometimes nine times out of 10, really, it’s just because for whatever reason, the customer at that time wanted to give it a shot. They just wanted to test it out. And then they find out later that maybe they weren’t the best customer in the end. It happens. But typically I can always tell when a company has product-market fit it’s because it seems like the stuff just flies off the shelf and in its own digital software way, the second indicator that you have product-market fit prospects are willing to pay right now. And on top of that, they don’t even bat an eye when considering the price. This is something that is a little bit challenging, depending what phase of launch you are in. So, for example, if you are in the beta stage, maybe the product isn’t even done being built yet, or maybe it is done. And you want to spend a little bit of extra time being in that beta phase, where you’re getting as many test users as possible, and you’re working really hard to understand what more product do we need if we do, how does our current MVP exist in the outside world? All of those other wonderful, fun things. And on top of that too, this is also kind of a tough one because if you are, if you are not VC funded, then ideally you’re able to generate revenue right off the bat and part of that is because if you’re bootstrapped, things have to net into positive revenue, almost instantly. In theory, if you have the resources to not have to worry about making a or being cashflow positive, you know, within the next year or two then awesome. But nine times out of 10, if you have to start immediately charging for something, you can usually tell if you have product-market fit because people don’t bat an eye at ping. It doesn’t matter if it’s $1. It doesn’t matter if it’s $20 or a hundred dollars. If people will pay right now, they are more likely to have, or you might actually have the product might actually have product-market fit. And that probably sounds wild because I think a lot of us think that we have to have a depending on the market that you’re serving and depending on if you’re a VC funded or not, some of the strategies that you guys might be encountering are to actually build up a giant base for free work, really hard to acquire as many free users as possible with the hopes of turning them into paid customers later and later could be a year, six months, two years, three years. And it just really depends on again, what you’re building and how big your market is and what kind of resources you have available to you. And in that case, then yeah, like expecting someone to pay right off the bat. Maybe, maybe that’s something that actually happens. Maybe it’s not, maybe it’s something that you test, but if that’s not your situation and you’re finding that getting actual paying customers is actually really hard, that they’re, that they don’t want to pay money for it usually it’s because there’s just no product-market fit for it yet. There are absolutely ways to overcome this, but typically that’s a huge indicator that you don’t quite have product-market fit. This is also something too that I actually challenged a lot of founders on. and I say challenge as gently as possible. But, whenever, whenever someone says, Oh, we have amazing product-market fit. Usually, I define that as, okay, well, so they either have a lot of active monthly users, whichever one you want to say, or they have people who are actually paying. And sometimes every now and again, I’ll come across a founder who isn’t quite yet charging for their product. They want to, but they haven’t yet. And maybe they’ve got a couple of users who are using the free trial and they’re not paying quite yet, but they’re also not really even using it. And usually, my assumption is, okay, we don’t quite have part of market fit yet. Or at least that we know of, which means that going to market is going to be a one big giant experiment. And that’s, that’s something too that you have to keep in mind. If you don’t have strong product-market fit, usually going to market figuring out what acquisition channels you might run a few tests, but for the most part, they’re going to be just that they’re going to be tests. They’re going to be experiments. It’s not necessarily going to be known. And that’s just purely because if they’re not paying, how can we get more of them? So ideally you’d build your business around people who will actually pay you money to have the platform. I mean, I’m assuming we’re in this for capitalistic reasons and it’s not a charity, which if, you know, if it is maybe a different talk, but usually if a customer is willing to pay, they don’t bat an eye, that’s usually a sign. That’s a good sign. It’s a sign that you likely have product-market fit. Okay. Number three, retention and active users improve with every new, every new cohort of paying customers. Okay. So, this one is one where if you actually have subscription metrics, so say you’re using like a Profit Well or Chart Mogul or bare metrics or SAAS optics. If for every new cohort of users, customers, if the retention on them improves and on top of that, activity, as you grow as a company, the very first batch of customers that you acquire, they likely aren’t going to be the perfect batch of customers. , some, usually nine times out of 10, what we see is the very first sets of customers that you actually get. They don’t really stick around for too, too long. And part of that is just because the product-market fit isn’t quite there yet. sometimes it’s very rare, but sometimes some companies just to hit the nail on the head, they know exactly who they’re targeting. They know exactly what pain they’re solving, and they’re extremely confident that the product addresses that for that specific group of people. And for those companies, you typically see a pretty high product-market fit right off the bat. I’ve had the pleasure of working with one of those companies, or one company I’ve had the pleasure with working with has experienced that. And it was awesome. It was amazing, but I think the vast majority of companies out there are going to experience the ladder, which is, are really the former, which is the very first few cohorts that you get. They don’t really stick around for too, too long, maybe three months, six months. But when it comes to looking at annual retention, that’s where you start to see maybe more than half of that very first cohort isn’t even around anymore. Ideally you get to about 50%. So maybe after six months to a year, you’re retaining about 50% of that very first, cohort or looking back at least in the last 12 months of that window. , all of this probably sounds, hopefully I’m explaining this well, it probably sounds really confusing, but basically think about it like this for every new cohort of customers that you add every single month, month over month, if you’re retaining them at least 50% of them, six months to 12 months out, ideally 12 months. Because when we look at lifetime value, we’re typically looking at years and not just a couple of months, but I digress. Ideally we’re retaining at least 50% of those. And that number improves over time. I would say 40% is the absolute minim but ideally, we’re retaining at least 50 to 70% of our customers from 12 months ago. And that number improves over time. In addition, you could also look at active users or activity overall, number four, this one is actually, I feel like this has been written about tons, but if it’s the first time that you’re hearing about this, awesome, there’s going to be a few links to this resource, but it’s going to be all about running a product-market fit survey. A couple of years back, there’s a company called superhuman. And also if you’ve never heard of Sean Ellis before I know him, at least from his book hacking growth and also from the platform growth hackers and community growth hackers. So a couple of years back, the CEO and founder of Superhuman Raul. He actually pulled together a product-market fit survey, and I’m honestly blanking if he designed the survey or if it came from base camp. I honestly can’t remember, but what you need to know is he created a very simple survey, what he calls a product-market fit survey, and he is just as obsessed with measuring product-market fit, as I am, and also has, I would love for every founder to be ever. But he created these four very basic questions. One of which actually came from Sean Ellis. which the question is, how would you feel if you could no longer use superhuman or to you the listener, how would you feel if you could no longer use the product, whatever that is. There’s only three options. It’s either very disappointed, somewhat disappointed or not disappointed at all. And there’s this whole like tear down process of how Raul from Superhuman, not only, designed his survey, but also how he actually executed it for his now thousands of users and really the number that you’re looking for. And this is also according to what Sean Ellis has discovered, but you need about 40% of people who would say that they would be upset if the part went away. So you’re looking for 40% of people who would say very disappointed. The reason why is because this is a pretty close indicator of who, who would be just be distraught if the product went away. And what I love about this is because it does make it emotional, which I think as we know the purchasing and buying process, it is not a logical one. It’s not a rational one. It’s an emotional one. I don’t think I need to pull up survey and results and research about why that’s important. Cause I feel like most of us probably understand that to some cognitive level, but very disappointed. That is so specific. I mean, it’s, it’s the like, man, I like life would suck if this product went away. And what I love about using this as a framework is that it makes it measurable. And I think that that’s something too that so many companies and founders are lacking. They’re lacking this ability to be able to directly measure what their actual product-market fit is. And also what to improve. The important part of this particular product-market fit survey is that you’re not just looking at who says number one, who says very disappointed across the board for your entire customer database, but you’re also looking for patterns on what kinds of customers are saying that what kinds of people, what segments they belong in. And if we were to focus on just one particular segment, do we have product-market fit as strong as another segment that we have, what’s really cool about using that, that framework. And that survey model is that you can start to analyze your product-market fit for different parts of the market. And that’s also critical. And it goes back to what I was saying earlier about being able to not only measure your product-market fit over time, but the reality is that it’s going to be shades of gray depending on the segment that you’re looking at. And there are going to be some that are just a hundred percent black and that like, that’s the exact, like it’s very clear product-market fit. It’s, it’s a hard, yes, but then there are going to be some that aren’t maybe as strong, but ideally you’re focused on your best paying customers and not just your best-paying customers, but the ones who would be very disappointed again, this entire process and framework. I actually am going to link this both in the podcast and also on the blog because this podcast will be on the blog as well, but you should be able to pull this up, read this and see his exact step by step process on exactly how he did it. It’s amazing. but I absolutely love using this to really measure product-market fit. It’s a survey that I run for my clients if we’re unsure, if we’re uncertain and, usually the results almost always come out pretty much, , pretty clear and also makes it very clear on who needs to be improved, what segment needs to be improved. That’s also an important part as well. The fifth sign that you’ve got product-market fit is one that I find a lot of companies really struggle with as they dart finding the right segments and audiences. But over time they get blocked by this and it actually has everything to do with their growth loop. The growth loop is just basically a loop that says, as you acquire one customer, that customer generates more customers in some kind of way. And some people call this like a vitality loop. Some people say referral loop just really depends on, on, you know, how you like to think about it. But a growth loop is basically when you acquire one customer, somehow some way that produces more when one customer generates two or more customers, or even just one other customer, they recommend it in the wild without you having to even ask them to, that’s usually an indicator that there is a certain someone who absolutely loves your product, which is awesome. It’s even better. When you notice that certain kinds of customers continuously recommend refer, promote your product without you having to do anything. We call this word of mouth, word of mouth, traffic, word of mouth acquisition. really just word of mouth. People are talking about your product in a positive way, and it generates more customers. This is critical from a SAAS perspective and really any business perspective, just purely because all of the work that it takes to acquire one customer, not to lie, it’s substantial. And I don’t know that many founders really truly understand just how complex and how vast it is, how much work it takes to just acquire one customer. But when you think about all of that work spread across acquiring one customer, and then one customer doesn’t really become one customer. Really, they become five because they recommended it to their friends, their colleagues, people who they’re part of groups with their communities. So now all of the hard work gets spread across many different kinds of customers. This decreases your cost to acquire. This keeps it much more affordable, much more. I don’t want to say cheap, but it keeps it for every net new customer that you generate. And for every extra referrals that they generate the cost to acquire, the customer can sometimes even be free. And that’s awesome if you don’t have this though, meaning you have to work really hard to acquire just one customer and they don’t recommend it to people, they don’t refer it to others. And usually that’s a sign that you don’t have a product-market fit or the segment that you are currently serving. Probably isn’t the most profitable one. And that’s a distinction too that, could honestly probably be its own podcast episode, but when it costs a lot to acquire a customer and they don’t actually refer others or promote you in any kind of way, that can be challenging. It, it basically means that your cost to acquire will probably is pretty high but it’s also linear. You might not ever get that like virality effect. You might not ever see the growth curve. That is so awesome to see and not to say it’s not possible. It’s just mathematically speaking. If an acquisition effort nets only one customer at a time and that customer never refers. You just don’t see like that really like crazy growth curve spike. Typically, not always, but you know, typically on the contrary, however, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a company where they got absolutely no referrals. It was just much more that referrals were so slow. And when we, when we found that we kind of pulled it all back and focused on a very specific kind of customer, we found that there was actually a pattern between the customers that were referring and what we ended up doing was doubling down on those customers. Okay, well, how do we get more of you? Cause you’re actually referring the product to other people, which says a lot. So what segment w what part of the market would we put them in if that was the case? But anyway, I digress basically when one new customer generates two or more, that’s usually a pretty good sign that you’ve got product-market fit. And if not, it probably means that there’s something about their experience that just prevents them from recommending it to others. Or it could be that they’re just not a really profitable customer. They don’t share, for some reason it could be due to their industry, personality, demographics, like there’s all kinds, mindsets, psychographics, all kinds of things that actually could be preventing them from doing that. or it’s just not in their nature to, they don’t think to do that. If that’s the case, then how can we find a certain segment of customer that would do that? And on top of that, you know, actually have the pain that the part of the solving could be an excuse, or I don’t want to say excuse much more like could be a reason to maybe evaluate, could we potentially serve a more profitable part of the market, something to think about, okay, number six, your CAC to LTV ratio is pretty solid CAC to LTV. What does that mean? The cost to acquire a customer and LTV is lifetime value. So, the cost to acquire a customer for the most part, it’s within a third of what your lifetime value is of that customer. So let’s say your customer is worth a $3,000. If they throughout the lifetime of, of using your product, let’s say that there is $3,000 is how much a customer is worth to you. Ideally we want a three to one, or I guess technically this would be a one to three ratio. If you were to do, LTV to CAC, it would be three to one, but ideally the cost to acquire a customer is a third of the cost of what they ultimately end up spending with you. So if the lifetime value of our customer is $3,000, then in theory, we could spend up to a thousand dollars on acquiring that customer. And that would keep us within that, three to one or one to three, depending on how you’re looking at its ratio. Ideally. Now another way to think about this is it just simply consistently costs less to acquire new customers in the early days in the very early days. So, we’re talking less than 50 K in MRR, sometimes even less than that, 2010 10 K MRR, sometimes it’s actually you just end up breaking even the entire time. So maybe your lifetime value is only a thousand dollars, but you spend a thousand dollars to acquire just one customer, one paying customer, and they only stay with you for a year. They’ll end up ever paying you back a thousand dollars, but you’ve broken even that’s actually still valuable. You might not necessarily have product-market fit, but so many different SAAS resources recommend, and SAAS experts recommend that you actually still go through that process and still do that because you learn one and two, you’re technically not losing any money, but you’re gaining the knowledge you’re gaining an understanding of who actually does stay with you for several years, who actually does have a very high LTV. And also it forces you to think about how you’re actually allocating your resources and allocating your budget and really digging deep into, okay, well, what does it actually cost to acquire a customer that was simple math, not everyone is going to have an LTV of $3,000 or, and some might be much higher. Some might be much lower than that, but ideally the cost to acquire that customer is less than the LTV. If that consistently happens for you, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve got product-market fit. Ideally, it’s pretty cheap, or at least it’s cost-effective to acquire new customers. And if it is that tells me a couple things, you probably know exactly where to go to find new customers, they find you and they are, it does not cost a lot for them to find you. So there’s a good chance that you’ve got a pretty strong content marketing game. Maybe the sales team just has their outbound strategy nailed. It could also be that you’ve started with paid acquisition. And it just so happens that based off of your market, based off of your keywords or your strategy that you’re able to acquire, not only net new leads, but net new paying customers, just purely based off of that. And on top of that, you have, you have a strong product. It solves a pain for them. It’s obvious, it’s clear, you’re not pushing a boulder up a mountain. You’re actually guiding it down the mountain. Instead. Usually that’s an indicator that, Hey, there’s something happening here. And it doesn’t feel like you’re pulling teeth to get new customers, which is always a really nice spot to be in. All right, here’s the last one. Number seven, you constantly hear about how wonderful the product is hearing. Just any compliments about your product. It’s one of those, Oh my gosh. I could burst with joy moments and it’s something I think that not only do I aspire towards, in my case, it would be for my clients, but every time a founder ever hears positive feedback about the product, whether it’s through a chat support or whether it’s during the demo or wherever that feedback happens, especially the positive feedback. It’s absolutely wonderful. And I find that founders that have strong product-market fit in their market or audience or segment or wherever, usually it seems like they’re constantly hearing how great and how wonderful it is. And this kind of goes back to customers recommending and referring the product without you ever, having to even ask them to when you have strong product-market fit, you can also find testimonials and reviews and people who rave about the product both publicly and also to use specifically to the founder, to the team when that happens across the board, especially publicly, that’s also a great indicator that you have product-market fit. If you find that it happens only for certain kinds of customers, then I would say, figure out what those patterns are because maybe you don’t have global product-market fit, but maybe you have product-market fit for a very specific kind of segment that kind of goes back to the superhuman survey, the product-market fit survey, where what kinds of people are saying, I’d be very disappointed, very, very valuable to know who is saying such positive feedback, what the feedback is and what is the context upon what you’re saying it. Okay. I’m going to do a very quick recap because I think that was seven points. Okay. So the first is it doesn’t feel like you’re pushing a boulder up a mountain. It feels more like you’re guiding it down. The mountain to prospects are willing to pay right now. And they don’t bat an eye when considering the price three retention and active users improve with every new cohort of paying customers. And again, ideally, you’d be looking for 50% retention 12 months, ideally after signing up. But it could, you could use six months if you don’t have 12 months quite yet for run the superhuman slash Sean Ellis product-market survey, put a market fit survey, excuse me, at 40% who say that they, are upset. If the product went away, that’s usually an indicator of product-market fit. If you are less than that, go through the process. Again, I’ll link to it in both the blog and the podcast, but go through the process again, see if that 40% is coming from overall, like overall the entire survey and or for specific segments. Cause that also could be a way to see if you actually have strong product-market fit for specific kinds of users. Number five, one new customer generates two or more customers. They recommend it in the wild without you having to ask them to, this is critical. Everyone should be striving for word of mouth, but that’s also a good indicator that you’ve actually got a strong product-market fit. Six year CAC to LTV ratio is solid. It consistently costs less to acquire new customers. Ideally it’s a one to three ratio. So, the cost to acquire is roughly a third of what their lifetime value is. Is this a perfect science in the early days? No, actually I find that most businesses are more like one to one. So however much it costs to acquire that’s how much they end up spending, lifetime value-wise. So basically, just breaking even, but in a more mature company, cactus LTV, ideally, traditionally it should be that one to three ratios. And in the last one you constantly hear about how wonderful the product is, both in the wild, but also to you, the team pretty much everyone involved As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Why you need to start delegating those trivial tasks NOW](https://demandmaven.io/why-you-need-to-start-delegating-those-trivial-tasks-now/) **Published:** January 3, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Truth: If your brain can learn it, there’s usually another brain that can learn it. It’s a fundamental truth that took me years to learn, and blocked me from growing the company a lot faster than if I had just accepted the truth. What delayed me for so many years from delegating roles, tasks, projects, and responsibilities off my plate was a dangerous, simple lie that I believed: **that no one else could do it nearly as well as I could.** In my mind, I was faster, more efficient, and more technically sound than anyone else I knew at certain functions in my business. And I believed the lie — born out of years of independence, small budgets, and lacking leadership — that I could do it all. But after about 1.5-2 years of doing it on my own for so long, I was starting to feel the effects of burnout. I hadn’t actually enjoyed most of the tasks and responsibilities I had on my plate in months, possibly years. I loved running the business and working with clients, but details started to slip and it was getting harder and harder to execute basic tasks. It was time for a change, and that meant hiring people to help me execute. ## On delegation Delegation is wonderful thing, and there’s a few simple reasons why we do it: - **Preserves our precious energy** as leaders, CEOs, founders - **Unlocks growth in the business** by expanding the team’s capacity - **Enables us to devote more focus** and attention to the things that need us - **Facilitates mutual trust amongst the team** when they prove to be reliable - **Decreases stress and anxiety** for the self and everyone else around them ## Why we get stuck And yet, there’s a million reasons why we *don’t* do it. Here are the most common lies and how to completely dismantle them: ### 1. “I’m the expert.” We might be, but there’s always someone better who could do it ### 2. “I know better than anyone else how to do it.” Possibly true, but if you can learn it, can’t someone else? ### 3. “No one else can possibly learn how to do it.” This one is just plain offensive since it implies you’ve hired unintelligent people ### 4. “There’s no time to teach someone else.” Just like firing someone or becoming pregnant, is there ever a good time to take an important action? We must make time for what’s important to us. ### 5. “I believe I can handle everything by myself.” Except science and psychology has proven that we really can’t do it all without severely impacting our health and wellbeing. ### 6. “We can’t afford the talent we want or find someone with the right skills.” This may actually be true, but there’s probably plenty of people you could hire whom you could coach or train. Even then, there might be someone excellent within your budget. There was a time I had believed most of these lies, but now that I know better, I think of this list. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [EP. 10: 6 Basic Principles for Competing in a Competitive Market](https://demandmaven.io/6-basic-principles-for-competing-in-a-competitive-market/) **Published:** February 7, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, shares the principles for growing a SaaS company when you are competing in an overcrowded market. At DemandMaven, we just wrapped up a project for a client that was in one of the most competitive markets. While we had some incredible wins, we also had many lessons learned. We distilled those lessons into 6 principles for founders to apply when they are entering a highly competitive market. ## Extra Resources - Dive deeper by reading the full article that inspired the episode: ## TL;DL 1. **You’re going to need a clear, competitive differentiator.** This differentiator is what makes you different, better, and special. It sets you apart from everyone else. Maybe you’re tackling a specific pain for a specific audience better than the other guys. 2. **It’s going to have to actually be better than all of the other competitors.** “Better” is also not as cognitively clear because to almost every founder, their product already is “better”. But it has to be recognizably “better” to the customers as well. They’ve got to feel that “betterness”. 3. ****If it’s not better, it’s going to have to be a little cheaper******,** although some would argue this would need to be the case regardless as a new player in a highly-competitive market. 4. **Have zero friction to signing up and becoming a paying customer****.** It needs to be pretty easy to make a decision about the product and actually sign-up. Some would argue that adding barriers to entry would increase demand, but that totally depends on how many competitors there are and how frictionless they appear to be. Time to value is also a critical component when weighing how to approach this. The longer time to value, the less friction you’ll need to have. 5. **Find a channel with the most opportunity****.** If you’re in an extremely crowded market, then it’s likely that most acquisition channels will be tapped (and maybe maxed out with extremely high CPLs). You’ll need to follow basic rules on ARPU and adjust CAC accordingly, but after that, prioritize the channels you can either beat the competition at, are totally untapped, or both! 6. **Lean into your strengths skill-wise and resource-wise****.** This one’s a tough one because they’re not always obvious and it seems like a weird thing to list. But knowing the competitive landscape, you’ll need to identify what you can provide that’s better and different from a marketing perspective. So if you’re good at speaking, networking, writing, building, whatever — leverage that because it (usually) can’t be copied. All of that, of course, within the context of what your buyers are most likely to do, consume, and care about. These 6 basic principles are really just the start. To stay competitive in a crowded market requires an ongoing commitment to improvement and innovation, but if you take care of these 6 principles you will be off to a great start. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. We’re going to be talking all about how to compete in an extremely overcrowded and or competitive market. A couple of weeks ago, and honestly, by the time that you guys listened to this episode, this article should already be on the [Demand Maven blog](https://demandmaven.io/lessons-learned-from-competing-in-an-overcrowded-market/). So if you want to see a really read the entire piece, then you’ll be able to do that by the time that this goes live. But I recently wrote a huge tear down on just lessons learned in competing in an overcrowded market. I wrapped up a project for a client a couple of months ago, and we had worked together for quite a long time. It was actually one of my first clients and one of my longest lasting clients. And it was awesome working with them. And also just so happened to be one of the most competitive markets. I think I ever got to market in on top of continued to build a marketing function for, and there were many lessons learned, there were many wins, but I think it was also just a huge learning experience for both of us. Moving forward, there are some things that I would definitely do differently in hindsight. It’s one of those things that just always 2020, you never, you can always prepare, but until you actually execute something where until you actually experience it yourself, it’s so hard to know exactly how you’re going to react to different things. In this case, we were in one of the most competitive markets, I think, known to the SAAS world. And it was project management. I didn’t notice at the time, but there’s hundreds of thousands of tools in the productivity space period, not just project management, but everything from being able to automatically track time to managing your workflows and projects and tasks, literally everything. When you, when you look at the productivity space as a whole, there’s just, there’s so many solutions. And when a SAAS company enters that market, what in the world are you supposed to do? I actually find that at the end of the day, it comes back to your go to market strategy. And there’s really six things that knowing what I know now, I would have done just much differently, just infinitely differently. So we’re actually going to unpack those six things today. Again, if you’d like to read the full breakdown, the, the, I think it’s like 4,000 word posts on everything about our strategy and what I think we, would have done differently now that we know what we know again, that’s going to be on the demand maven.io blog. But today we’re really just going to cover the six basic principles of competing in that highly competitive market. Whenever you analyze a market, one of the acronyms that you’re going to hear is Tam or total addressable market. How many people or businesses could potentially buy your product. There are some SaaS companies out there that have a total addressable market of only maybe a couple of million dollars. And then there are total adjustable markets or Tams of a billion plus. And if you’re B2B versus B2C all of these things have an implication on how big your Tam is, the larger the Tam. The more likely it is that you’ll either need a lot of funding or you’re going to need time. And sometimes both, every single SAAS company is beholden to the same iron triangle and that’s scope time and budget scope is what we’re doing. What are we actually building? What are we delivering time is how long do we think it’s going to take us? And budget is what assets or really cash assets do we have to effectively see through, our scope within the time that we have. And if you blow one out, then the others typically construct, the fundamental theory here is that none of the three things are unlimited. There is a limit in some kind of way. So you either minimize the scope or you extend your time, or you increase your budget. And sometimes you do two of those things. And sometimes you do none of those things. It just really depends on your situation. The Tam, however, is usually also indicative of how many customers you need to serve. And if you also have a lot of competitors, now, a lot of competitors is to be defined by you and your market, really. but if you have maybe like 10 or so competitors, okay? So that’s, a size, especially depending on your total adjustable market that you probably differentiate pretty easily, but let’s say you have a hundred customers or competitors. I should say a hundred competitors. Let’s say you have a hundred competitors. There’s going to be a couple of things. We’ll really six things that you’ll need to do differently than if your Tam was maybe only a hundred million with no competitors. The first is that you’re going to need a clear competitive differentiator. This is honestly always true. Even if you don’t have any competitors, you still probably are going up against competing behaviors or competitive alternatives. These are things that people are doing instead of using your product. Many companies compete with Excel because it’s easier to use a spreadsheet than it is to use the product. that’s not always the case. Sometimes it is actually easier to use the product instead of Excel, but, that’s a competing alternative. It’s not technically your competitor, but it’s a competitive behavior. If you have hundreds of competitors, your differentiator needs to be clear and it needs to be something that is actually experienced by your target market. The differentiator is really all about what makes you different, better and special. And yes, you have to be all three. We’ll actually get into some of these later, but the first most critical thing is that it has to set you apart from everyone else, something about what you’ve built or who you’re serving sets you apart. Maybe you’re tackling a specific pain point for a specific audience, and maybe you’re doing it even better than the other guys, but no matter what it is, it has to be clear and you really need at least one, if you have none, it’s going to be really hard to actually compete. When you have a clear competitive differentiator, then now we can start to effectively compete. I mentioned better earlier. Well, the second thing actually has everything to do about actually being better. It’s one of those things that isn’t as cognitively clear because to almost every single founder, their product already is better. And this is not to be shady to the founders out there who built the products for themselves or who, or, you know, for founders who really do feel like their products are better. Not, this is not meant to be shady at all. I promise, but something I always put on its head at least, or something I always come back with is it might be better to the founding team. And that’s something that you probably already understand. You probably already get why it’s better, how you built it and what makes, how you built it better, but better betterness is something that has to be experienced by the customer, either with your education or without sometimes the customer doesn’t really know that something is better until they actually go through the motions and they go through onboarding. They go through setting up the product themselves, or maybe they even get some education on why the product is addressing a problem in the way that it does, but the betterness still has to be actually experienced. And it needs to be something that they really strongly feel and that they can actually point to. Whenever we say that, Oh, this has to be better than something else. We have to also be very clear on what that better is. In what way is it cheaper? Is it faster? Is it more effective? Do I get better results? Do I get more results? And this is kind of where we have to be very clear. And this kind of goes back to also our competitive differentiator, but when a product isn’t fundamentally better, it’s going to have a hard time competing in pretty much every single way, because if it’s not a better product, then it pretty much has to be cheaper or something else is making it different, better and special something. And if it’s none of those things, then it’s going to be almost impossible to compete. Very few customers. And very few audiences will choose products that don’t actually do something better for themselves. But again, that better has to be clear and it has to be something that is understood and felt by customers. If it’s not, it’s going to be really hard to communicate your competitive differentiators and your value propositions. And then of course convert people into paying customers. So that was number two, number three, if it’s not better, it’s going to have to be a little cheaper. And this is something too that, I’ve, I’ve done tons of research on. Does a product actually have to be cheaper in a market that there are tons of competitors. And I’m sad to say that. I think in most cases, yes, I was having a hard time finding outliers in this scenario where you could, where you could charge more and charge more than your competitors and not be fundamentally better. It’s just so rare. So if you’re, if you’re not better than your competitors, you’re probably going to have to be cheaper. And ideally you’re both, you’re both better and you’re cheaper, ideally, cause that way it becomes such an obvious, choice to make, which is to choose your product somewhat are you, that you would have to be cheaper no matter what. and just regardless of being a new player in a highly competitive market, I mean, if you’ve got to think if you’ve got hundreds of competitors and if you are not necessarily a better product than you’re probably going to have to be a little bit cheaper, because the idea here is that the tradeoff of that betterness, whatever that is, is matches up to whatever they’re not paying. So basically the savings match up to the betterness that they’re maybe not getting in some kind of way. And ideally of course, you’d never have to compete on being the cheaper solution. Ideally you’d compete on the butter solutions. That way you can charge really whatever you want over time. But overall, if there’s, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, especially going through my own experience, in this particular competitive market, matching the price and struggling with showing how the product was better. What was interesting was we knew that the product was better. We, we, we saw how it was better than our competitors, but I think combining that with also being just a little bit cheaper would have sweetened the deal. I think, that is something to keep in mind when entering into a competitive market. Now there are some products out there, some competitors I should say out there who, it seems like their prices are just like ridiculously cheap. and I think that this is kind of where you get into well, is your product better than theirs? And if the answer is yes, then, okay, it’s probably cool that you’re, you know, more expensive or, roughly the same price, but if you’re not better than even the cheapest of tools, then now we still have to evaluate what is our actual market, who are our actual competitors and, from a pricing perspective and just as a positioning perspective, do we have, are those things aligned properly? The fourth thing is something that, I think every company strives for, and it’s not always something that ends up executed as well as you’d like. And it’s something too that the more that you work with it, the better it is in theory, at least, but it has to have zero friction when signing up and becoming a paying customer. This was one of those lessons that we learned the hard way. and what I mean by friction is when someone comes to your website to sign up for your product, it should be a seamless start to finish experience. There should be very few barriers to entry. In theory, there are some markets where there aren’t that many competitors. You can probably introduce a little bit more friction to generate a certain kind of demand, but in a competitive market, if it’s too easy to go sign up for 12 different other tools, but your product is the one that has the most friction, then you’re likely going to turn people away without even realizing it by not having a very easy, sign up process. And then of course, onboarding process, a great example of this is actually for, required, requiring a credit card on signing up. So that is a way to, it’s a, it’s a friction point that ultimately kind of, it encourages people to, if they, you know, sign up for the product that they’re serious. And it’s a way to kind of get people in the head space of, okay, well, if I’m signing up for this, it’s because like I’m really considering it. And in a way that’s actually a really good qualifying activity. The people who input their credit card in theory, at least they’re more likely to be serious and they’re more likely to stay engaged. That’s only, however, under the assumption that we’re not in a super competitive market, if we have hundreds of competitors and none of them are requiring credit cards to sign up, what do we think the customer’s going to do leave? They’re going to bounce and they’re going to go to the other tool that doesn’t require the credit card. So these are elements of friction. And sometimes it works really well depending on the market. Sometimes, especially when you’re creating a tool or a platform in a totally new category. So let’s say you don’t really have any competitors, but you’ve got competing behaviors and there’s not really any other SAAS platform. It looks just like yours or is even really close to it. Usually you can get away with like adding friction points and in some cases that does actually generate demand, but in others, again, if you don’t have your different, veteran’s special nailed, and maybe you’re a little bit cheaper, and you’ve got that competitive differentiator, very clear your value props are clear, then it might actually be harder to use friction points in that way because those things have not been fulfilled. Something else that’s really important here beyond just the signing up process is also the actual becoming the paying customer Time to value is a metric that, or a KPI rather that many SaaS companies measure, because they know that maybe there’s a certain level of complexity to their product and the shorter, the time to value, meaning the less time it takes for a customer to get the aha moment or understand like, Oh, this is the most valuable part of the product. And like, this is why I would use it the longer that takes the less likely it is that they actually do become a paying customer. But this also has a lot to do with the products experience and how much friction it has if the onboarding experience, for example, is not on point. If the competitive differentiating features in the product, if the things that make you different better in special, aren’t really discoverable by the customer in enough time or in the right amount of time. Then you could lose them that way as well in a perfect world, the longer, the time to value, then the less friction you ultimately have. This is true, no matter what, but if you’re doing something truly different and truly better and truly special for customers, then the likely become paid customers no matter what, because the product market fit ideally is strong, but if it’s not, then you’ll need to really no matter what, make the experience as frictionless as possible. All right. Number five, find a channel with the most opportunity. This is true, especially in an incredibly competitive market. The likelihood of there being an untapped channel is small, but the goal here is that you find a channel that you can provide the most value through. And that actually does have the most opportunity. It has the most potential for you. What I mean by that is it’s likely for example, that if you’ve got hundreds of competitors, they probably have their SEO game on point. They probably have their paid acquisition game on point. They probably have communities. they’re being mentioned in every single blog. It seems like, and they might feel like you need to go exactly where they are, but I actually would throw a little bit of caution to that. There’s a really good chance that you’ll be in some of the same places for sure, but ideally you’d find the places that are either untapped or they are maybe just less sought after a good example of this is ad words actually. So let’s say you decided to do some kind of paid search, but the cost per leads on most of the main keywords is like sky high. Like you’d never be able to afford it well, okay. If that’s the case, then let’s look at what organic search would look like. And also are there some paid search keywords that we could look at that maybe the competitors don’t really care about? This really encourages the new product entering into the competitive market to really think about different segments that maybe they could serve, that the competitors just aren’t serving as well. And that could be a very early growth strategy. And then of course, there’s just all the different opportunities around what have the competitors just not touched at all. You might be hard pressed to find that, but if you do find that it’s something absolutely to try, there are going to be a few channels, like, you know, organic search and SEO and paid advertising that you’ll likely test anyway. But even within those channels, what are the opportunities that have been relatively untapped? You will need to follow those basic rules based off of your average revenue per user RPU and then adjust your cost to acquire accordingly. So for example, it’s based off of your AI. RPU, that’s likely going to put you in a very specific kind of acquisition model or acquisition strategy, if you will. And again, we can absolutely get more into that and maybe another episode, but after that, though, you would still prioritize your channels based off of what are you most likely to succeed at? Are you likely to succeed at content marketing, for example, are you likely to succeed at paid acquisition? What kind of paid acquisition are you likely to succeed by conferences or whatever that extra acquisition channel is going to be? It’s important to remember that it’s unlikely that you’ll beat the competition right now, but if you’re looking just to gain market share, which is really the first goal, then we should be looking at the places where we think we can have the most impact. And that’s something too that, I always knowing now what I know, I wouldn’t have strived for more on the impact side and especially in the places where I knew that we could win that’s something to, to of course, think about strategize and plan for. And then, and then on the flip side, there’s going to be channels and strategies that you’re going to have to enter, but just be smart about them. Be smart about how you enter the market, using certain channels. All right, the last one, lean into your strengths, skill wise and resource wise. This one’s a tough one because it’s not always obvious what your strengths are or what resources you actually do have. And it’s also kind of a weird one to list. I’m not going to lie. And a lot of that is just because like, what would your strengths have to do with how you compete? And I actually would argue, well, has everything to do with how you compete, because there’s has to be something that you do. That’s again, different, veteran’s special than your competitors. Knowing the competitive landscape you’ll need to identify what you can provide. That’s better and different, not just from a product perspective, but from a marketing perspective as well. And this is why I list number six. So if you are just naturally good at speaking or networking or writing or building or whatever, you can use that because usually it can’t be copied. It can’t be copied by anyone else because who can copy you if you think about it. All of that of course, is, you know, within the context of what your buyers are most likely to do, consume and care about. So for example, I worked with a client a while back, so founders for our product and through working with the account and with the product and the founders, we discovered that the founders didn’t really love writing, but they loved speaking. And I wrote an article actually about creating or the importance of founder generated content. It’s so important for founders, true create content, even if they literally never share it. But what we discovered was it was actually really, really, really hard for the founder to write, but when they spoke with each other, it was so natural, it was so easy. And so I worked with them on creating their own podcast and also creating their own content. Like how can they actually do this in a way that really can’t be copied? It’s not to say that they couldn’t be copied by their competitors. Their competitors could spin up a podcast probably in a few days, but the difference is the relationship that you build with the founders versus the other brand and how likable they naturally are whenever they’re just, you know, talking. And those kinds of things are not as directly copyable, as you would think. Another really great example of this is actually I say that I’ve used him as an example all the time, but Alex from Groove HQ, I think now it’s just groove. He created; I think one of the very first SAAS founder blogs that are at least one of the most recognizable to me. and basically, he just, he basically journaled, he created content marketing about his journey as a SAAS, founder, and many, I mean, it inspired probably hundreds of thousands of companies by now, to do something similar. But what was so unique about what Alex did was you can’t really copy Alex he’s Alex, there’s no one else in the world like him. So even if other people start up their own growth blogs, it’s Alice Alex’s does not diminish or limit the success of others. It’s truly abundant. So that’s what I love about leaning into your strengths. It was a, I don’t want to say it was easy, but it was certainly natural for Alex to use one of the strengths that he has. And I, and I also, if I recall correctly, he really had to learn how to create content. He really had to learn how to write, it was uncomfortable in the beginning, but over time it became a strength of his, he mastered the process, he mastered it. and again, his success did not take away from other success. So that’s also something too that is so important about leaning into your strengths, into your skills and into your resources. Is that, not only are they not directly copyable, but your success doesn’t take away from someone else’s, I mean, and even in the competitor case, but that said leaning into your strengths. It’s important from a competitive perspective, because it’s not going to be as easy as you think it is for competitors to directly copy it. And then on top of that, because I fundamentally believe that the universe and the world is abundant to get a little bit of woo on you, but because of that, you actually end up doing something even greater, which is being a leader, inspiring others. And again, what you achieve, it doesn’t limit the achievements of others really more than anything, it just continues to propel you forward. I think it’s so important when a company is able to really double down on what makes them strong and they’re able to minimize their weaknesses as much as possible. That’s when you start to see a brand really, truly emerge and start to gain market share because they’ve doubled down on what makes them special and different and better. And they know how to leverage their own internal resources and their own internal strengths. And this is really about, you know, not just like the brand as a whole, but like the individuals and what are they good at? What can they do? Did you know that, you guys actually were great speakers or great writers or a great videographers, or what have you, maybe, maybe you do, maybe you don’t, maybe you’re thinking about it and you’d need someone to tell you to go do that thing. Well, I’m here to push you over the edge and say, yes, do it. Cause if it’s not something that your competitors can do, or at least easily copy you’ll at least know that it was done with all of the personality and flair and, just abundance and growth potential that you guys have. And again, your competitors can’t copy that. And vice versa, these six principles of competing in a highly overcrowded competitive market, they’re honestly just the beginning. They are. These are, these are the lessons. Part of the lessons learned at least the part of the principles of the overarching lesson, which is if you’re going to enter an extremely competitive market, these are really the first six things that I would tackle. And these are the first six things that I would analyze and strategize around. They are in many ways what I would consider success gaps, meaning if we know that we’re not strong at one of these things, we’re going to have to figure it out because if we don’t compete is actually going to be really challenging. It’s going to be an effective and it’s going to be expensive. And I think that’s the latter part is the one that I always makes me extremely cautious for a lot of obvious reasons, but it’s definitely just a starting point. And again, if you’re listening to this, now you can absolutely go to the demand may have been done. blog and read the full, the complete article about, you know, everything. This was really just the beginning in a way. I’m sure that there’s other things that you could add to this. And I’m deeply curious about what you have learned from competing in an overcrowded space or an overcrowded market, overcrowded, of course, to be defined by you. But if you have hundreds of competitors, hundreds, just, it seems like, you know, you could throw a rock and hit like 50 of them. there’s just, there’s a few things to consider. And if you’ve been in the market for a long time, this could also help you to, double down on what you know, to be true and successful about what you guys are currently doing. And if you’re about to enter into a market, again, these are just the six basic things I would make sure that you have checked, and completed As always, thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, head on over to [demandmaven.io](https://demandmaven.io/). You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you on the next one. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 11: Why Every Founder Needs a Market Vision](https://demandmaven.io/ep-11-why-every-founder-needs-a-market-vision/) **Published:** February 8, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** We all start our businesses for different reasons. For some, it is a personal pain point–a problem that we want to solve for ourselves. For others, it is a person or group that we want to help. No matter how you start as a founder, it is crucial that you find the big why for your business–the reason your business exists. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, dives into the different ways businesses start and the overarching importance of vision when it comes to growing your company. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL 1. **When you boil it all the way down there are two ways to build a business.** 1. You build a product to solve a personal pain point, and then launch it. 2. You enter the market with a clear vision of the problem you want to solve and then you build the product along the way. 2. **When you build the product first, you have a clear vision of the pain it solved for you, but you don’t know if there is a market for it yet, and you probably won’t know what the bigger market vision for your company is.** 3. **Entering the market before you’ve created a larger scale company vision isn’t a problem, but it’s important to be honest with yourself as a founder if that is the case and invest in customer research and discovery.** 4. **The second way to start is entering the market with a clear vision on the pain point you want to solve, and then working to create the product.** Often this happens because you are offering a service and then turning that service into a product. - For example, a company I work with knew that they wanted to help therapists get accredited because it is a long and hard process. They started out as a service, but as they learned about the market and technology they realized they could build a SaaS product to solve the pain point. - When the pain point, person, and vision is clear, everyone on your team can work together in a fast and effective way. 5. **If you’re not sure what your vision is, take time to think about it and unpack the purpose of what you’re building.** - Ask yourself why you got started? Who you want to help? And what motivated you to work on the problem you’re working on. 6. **At the end of the day, focus and vision will set you free when you’re starting a building a business.** - If you already have that vision, great, make sure everyone on your team knows it and is on board. - If you don’t have the vision yet, take the time to work on understanding what it is. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. All right. So today we’re going to be talking all about why every founder needs a market vision. Vision is one of those words that feels very fluffy and just in just intangible and almost every single way. It’s not the most concrete word, but when I say vision, I’m really talking about that. Focus on the problem and who you want to solve it for who you want to solve the problem for a vision for a founder. It could be something as simple as to create a marketplace, to connect friends and family in the world. That would be a Facebook vision. For example, another vision could be to make it as seamless and easy as possible to pay my employees and my contractors that could potentially be the vision for Gusto. Another example. I actually don’t know what either of those companies, vision statements are, but just to give you two examples of what I mean, what’s interesting. However, is that a vision statement doesn’t necessarily tell you what to build and that’s kind of the beauty of a vision statement is it really just says, okay, well, who are you serving? And what is the w what is he the benefit that you’re providing or the pain that you’re solving for people? And in Facebook’s case, it’s being able to connect with anyone anywhere, and even more specifically your friends and your family from anywhere in the world. For Gusto, it could be as simple as making it easy to pay your employees and contractors as hassle-free as possible. How you do that is, is, is really up to the business. The reason why I feel so strongly about this topic and the reason why I write about it so much, I speak on it so much. I mention it in just about every single presentation or conversation that I have, if I can is because of how critical it is and how it actually lays the foundation for you to go and build your business. There are really two ways to build a business that I have identified. And I’m sure there’s more, but from what I’ve seen, at least in the SAAS industry, there’s really two ways to go about it. The first way is to build the product. First based on some pain that you experience, this is very common. So you, as a founder might experience a very specific kind of pain. You see it in your industry and you want to fix it for yourself. And so you typically build software for it. And the next step after that is after building the, then the question becomes, okay, who else needs this product? That’s one way to build a business. The second way to build a business is it’s not, I, I’m not going to say if it’s more or less common, I honestly don’t know if it’s less common in my experience, it’s less common, but the second way is to actually enter the market with a clear vision and figure out what to build later. And this to me is a very critical differentiator in the longevity of a business, and also potentially the success rate of a business. I can tell you that from a go-to-market perspective, it is much easier to go to market with the latter strategy. It’s much harder to figure out where to plug and play a particular platform. So let’s say you build a product and you know that it can solve a problem for people like you, but you don’t really know where else it can go. Usually, that’s a much more challenging journey, and we’re going to talk all about why and how you can really arrive at your own very specific vision. If you don’t already have one now building a product first and, you know, nine times out of 10, like you, you already have an idea at least of what you need it to do. We already know what problem you needed to solve when it comes to turning that into an application that generates money. However, you have to cross a few hurdles. And the first hurdle is really well. What is the overall vision for the product and for who, what part of the market? This is our tour. This is where we start to really define who the audience is, but really what is the number one pain that we hope to solve and for who? And when we first build a product, usually it’s just for us. But sometimes from a founder perspective, at least if we enter a market and we analyze a market and we identify what the potential pains are. And we also start to identify who will, who experiences these pains? And is it strong enough to pay for them? That’s when we can actually define a product or even a service, but we can really start to define what a business could be. And I find when you approach it in that way, a couple of things happen. The first is you really start to understand what kinds of problems are out there in a particular market. And the second thing is if it’s going to be profitable sometimes and, and I say, sometimes I know that these are not like hard concrete numbers, but I find a very common experience for founders. Who’s already built a product and they don’t know where to plug it. Usually, the pain is something that they might have directly experienced, but in order to make it applicable to a particular market or a particular audience, they have to go through the process of product market fit. And that’s something that every company has to go through. What is especially true for businesses that don’t necessarily enter a market with a clear vision, but they have a product that solves a very specific pain for themselves or someone they know, and they want to figure out what are all the other applications of this. It’s a very long process going about it that way, but just purely because the possibilities are endless for one, but also too, you almost kind of have to rein in what those possibilities could be. It’s very easy to take something that you’ve built for yourself and apply it to just about any market, depending on what the pain is. But I think the tough part is you’ve got to figure out, well, what is the audience? What is the market that you’re ultimately hoping to serve and why, what, what do you want to help them with? Is it to make it easier for them to be able to pay their employees? And contractors is it to provide a space for minority-owned businesses, to connect with enterprise contracts, creating a marketplace in that way, there are just infinite gains that you could be solving. And if you’re able to hone in on a specific pain, the next question really becomes well for what part of the market, for who, for what market. And that’s when we create the big list of all the different potential markets that we could put the product in front of. And you could go down the list, you could prioritize that list. Maybe we’re targeting moms, maybe we’re targeting businesses, maybe we’re targeting businesses with 50 employees or higher from there you start strategizing about, okay, well, who’s going to be the best person to buy this, or who’s going to be the person who was able to solve the pain. And then you find, you have to build sales processes and marketing campaigns for every single one of those different audiences over time. And sure you might strike gold. You might find a particular market or audience who really loves your product and who could really solve some pain with it. But if you don’t find the right audience, if you don’t find the right market, you might actually end up wasting a lot of time and burning resources and energy and the entire process of going through building something. And then on top of that, trying to figure out, okay, well, where does this fit in the world? It ends up being a very, I don’t want to say soul sucking process but it can be frustrating. It feels like everything that you’re doing, isn’t working, it’s inefficient and you end up spending a lot of time here. Sometimes you get really lucky and you find out that someone somewhere is able to actually really use your product or service in a way that is, is very beneficial and powerful and revenue-generating. And on the contrary, on the flip side, it could take a very long time. I don’t know if this is the most common way to be honest. I think in my experience nine times out of 10, I’m definitely talking to a founder who was in that latter situation where they might’ve experienced a pain, they built something just for themselves, but then they wanted to figure out if it could be applied in many other markets not to be discouraging. That’s not the goal of this. It’s much more to help really focus and align on a specific vision for the market. But what I typically recommend to founders who are kind of in that bucket, and they don’t really know where to paddle or even where to go in, you know, the ocean of possibilities that they’re in. There are really two things that I recommend the first is really take a step back and think about the ultimate pain that you’re solving. Did you build what you built to save yourself some time? Did you build it to save money? Did you build it because something was frustrating you and there was a very specific thing about that frustration that just deeply resonated with you that, you know, caused you to build this or motivated you to build something. And then when you take a step back and you think about knowing what the pain is, and also knowing who you are, think about what other products or experiences are similar to your own. And that’s usually enough to get you thinking about not only competitors or competitive products, but also think about maybe companies and brands and products that you really like, and that you really admire. And when you really think about your interests and where you would like to market-wise enter and also be thinking about what kind of business do you want to build that usually stresses out a little bit more of a vision statement or a little bit more of what is your vision, not just as a founder, but as an entrepreneur, I can speak for DemandMaven, for example. So, for DemandMaven, it’s not necessarily just about offering growth services or whatever to SAAS companies. Actually, the reason why I built my business, my number one motivating factor was I personally think that it’s, it’s too difficult to be an early-stage founder. These days you’re inundated with information and at the same exact time, you’re not inundated with resources. And I think that that’s unfair. That’s what motivates me. It doesn’t really matter what I do. So demand even could be a course. It could be a service. I mean, I technically am a services company now, but it could be like a full-service agency, but my focus has always been on the plight of the early-stage founder. That’s always what motivated me. What’s motivating you is, is my first question. The second piece of feedback has actually much more to do with how you build your business. So it’s okay if you have entered a market and you have no vision, or maybe your pain at least is very clear, but you have no idea where to go from a go-to-market perspective or who else is experiencing this. You’ve no idea how to figure that out. I actually think that the second thing is something that you could do to mitigate the risk of either efficient or wasting too much time or wasting too many resources. And that’s implementing a growth strategy that will enable you to learn as much as possible. I probably need to record a whole separate episode about this, but it’s actually possible to build a product and to launch it and to go to market with it without taking on a ton of extra funding or resources, and to figure out if what you’ve got is something that has legs. And also, specifically on a particular part of the market. I’m not saying that you can do this with zero funding or any resources at all unless you plan on just doing everything by yourself, which is absolute, legit impossible, but if you wanted to experiment as much as possible, and if you wanted to learn and you wanted to implement a strategy that enabled you to learn, but also remain data-driven, then I would actually recommend focusing on the different parts of the market that you think could get the most value out of what you have to offer, but also doubling down on customer research, customer discovery, and really understanding in the ballpark area of what your, of, what, of the pain that you’re ultimately solving. And then also for who the other part to that is really, you can actually implement a go-to market strategy that again, helps you learn as much as possible. And typically, that looks like having a freemium model of some kind of way, and really working hard mentally, personally, emotionally to figure out where do you actually want to be? And what kind of business do you actually want to build on top of that, implementing a data-driven strategy. So, or at least a data-driven function of your business. So that way, as you start to see some inclinations of product-market fit, for example, you know exactly where that’s happening, who it’s happening for, and what to actually do later, if you have a really strong product-market fit for a very specific kind of segment, you would, you would know it one and two, you would know exactly what you would need to do later. Before I, before I leave off from the very first point, one of the most popular examples of a business entering a market, maybe without a clear vision, but they, they were experiencing a pain and they wanted to know if anyone else was experiencing this pain is actually Airbnb. And Airbnb is one of those companies that gets thrown around a lot when it comes to not only how much VC funding they’ve been able to raise, but also just from a, we want to be like Airbnb, or we want to be like this company, especially in a marketplace perspective, I feel like marketplaces are one of the most profitable SAAS models out there today. And it seems like everyone wants to do some kind of marketplace. And Airbnb is a name that gets thrown around a lot. But the part of the story that many people don’t know is that it took Airbnb like six or seven years to get to where they are today, which probably seems wild, but it’s the truth. And you can go and you can learn about their story. You can listen to all the podcasts and articles about them, but it was as simple as the two co-founders were experiencing the same problem of wanting to get a little bit of extra revenue based on their extra bedroom or couch or whatever. And if not mistaken, they actually they experienced the pain themselves, where they want it to just be able to go and stay at someone else’s place whenever they were traveling and they experienced it so often that they decided to actually open up their room for it. And so they, they built air, bed, and breakfast and they rented, they rented their couch. And over time they started to get people actually booking their couch, but they started to realize that, Oh man, like this is actually something that, you know, maybe other people are experiencing the same exact pain. And then they thought about themselves and their use case and the pain that they were trying to solve and immediately realized that they had a huge total addressable market. I’ve talked about TAM before on the podcast, but their total addressable market, if you think about it is it’s easily in the billions. I mean, it’s anyone who travels, who wants to feel like a local, but it took them, I think, two to three years to achieve a certain sense of market timing. And of course, product-market fit. It was hard for them to find investor money and the, in the early days and it was also hard for them to figure out what exactly needed to happen that would encourage people to book and also encourage hosts to open up their properties. And it took, it took a long time. It took, you know, two to three years. But when it actually happened,, it took off like lightning. And of course, like that’s how you, once one of the ways that you know, that you have a product-market fit because it’s almost like you’re guiding the Boulder down the mountain. You’re not, you’re just making sure it doesn’t fall off. You’re not like pushing it up the mountain anymore, but for a long time, they were pushing the boulder up the mountain. They were trying to overcome challenges in the marketplace where people didn’t quite get it or there was still some hesitation around either being a host or being a guest. And once they implemented a lot of the right things to overcome those fears, really all they had to do after that was focus on the acquisition piece and think about the acquisition for marketplaces. It’s a, it’s all about supply and it’s all about demand. And typically nine times out of 10, you build the supply. This, you build the supply first. The demand comes later and as they built and focused on making their product even better and even better, they realized that once they overcome some of the hurdles of getting the supply together, meaning the hosts, then all they have to really do is just provide an amazing booking experience for guests. And once those things aligned, it grew, and it grew and grew and grew. And it’s the company that we know today, but that took five to six years. It’s a very long process. And it’s something that they’re still learning, especially with the pandemic and especially with travel being something that is not so encouraged right now for Airbnb. It’s how long it took them. Now it could have been different potentially it could have been different if they had entered the market saw that the hotel space and just the travel industry, in general, was lacking something. And that the aha moment was really that they just realized that all these people have all these different rentals and properties that they could actually be making money off of. So there’s the, there are the host and supply-side right there. And then of course there are people who, when they travel, they want to feel like they’re local. And if they had entered the market with that specific vision, who knows if they would have been nearly as successful because of the timing, but if they had entered the market with a very clear vision of, we want to build this, this is what we think we need to have an implement. And this is how we can test the overall market and test what we’re seeing. It’s very likely that they could have achieved their success in a little bit less time. I think the ultimate clincher, however, was they had a hard time finding an investor in the beginning because most investors didn’t think that people would want to stay in a stranger’s house. But little did they know little? Did they know but if they had access to capital or resources or if they had the access to, to, to do those things, they actually might’ve found success or growth, at least even faster. It’s very possible. So that’s an example. And before I gave that example, I was about to go into what it looks like to enter the market with a clear vision. And I admit that this is rare. It’s so rare. And I, I would definitely argue that it’s a better way to go about it. I think in the end, Airbnb was lucky. That’s probably something that they might agree with. They hit the market at a time where staying in a stranger’s home and paying for it, wouldn’t have been weird. People were already doing Uber and Lyft by this time. And I actually think that they credit a lot of the hard work of writing in a stranger’s car actually to, to their own success. Because once Uber and Lyft got over that hurdle it actually in many ways, mentally paved the way for something like an Airbnb, where it’s no longer weird to be in a stranger’s home or in a stranger’s car, but entering the market with a clear vision. That is something that I strongly encourage founders to if they can, because when you enter a market with a clear vision, again, you understand the pain that you’re trying to solve. And you’re pretty clear and focused on for who, when those two things happen, whether you have a product or not, usually that means that you can start to define what is the right product to build. And this is actually where I very much believe that the market really comes first. The customer really comes first and the product comes right after that. Sometimes you can build a product first and never find the right kind of customer for it. It’s very likely, I actually do fundamentally believe that it’s far less risky to go the opposite way to really focus on a very specific market first. Even if it is a TAM of a billion dollars, maybe you are focused on the world, but at the end of the day, if you’re very honed in on who you’re trying to serve, why then the, what is, is really a byproduct of that. And it’s, it’s what, it’s, what kind of spits out after you really figure out, okay, well, who do I want to actually help at the end of the day? And how am I solving that for them? Like how, like, what is the ultimate pain that I’m solving for them? And then you get into the, okay, well, how is the best way to solve that? Is that a product? What I like about this approach is that you might not necessarily have to build a SAASs product to build a great business. And I think that’s a very common misconception, especially among early entrepreneurs who are just starting on their SAAS journey, is that the w is that they believe that they have to start a SAAS. One of my favorite growth examples was actually a company that I had the pleasure of working with. They were very focused on the therapy and telehealth space, meaning, you know, how you can do like therapy online now. Well, this particular company was really focused on the actual therapist part of that. So their patients need to be able to connect with clinical supervisors and other people and become licensed. It’s actually really hard to become a licensed therapist, which who knew, but what I loved about their business model is they knew exactly what market they wanted to focus on. They knew also exactly who they wanted to serve. They wanted to serve these pre-licensed therapists. They didn’t quite know what to build, but they knew exactly at least the pain that they wanted to fix. What they learned later was that this would actually become very profitable. And also what they would learn later is that they could actually productize this. They started out with service and there are actually many examples of very successful companies who started out building a service. First, they created the service model first where you know, all that really matters is making the revenue. But if you can offer a service well, that’s, you know, in theory, a pretty low-cost point of entry, they productized it later. Bench I think is another great example of this. Although belief the product technically came first and the service came later, it could actually be vice versa demand curve, a bell curve. They started out with a service and over time they productized their knowledge into a course. There are all kinds of examples of this. I actually think that entering into entering a market with a very clear vision and then figuring out what to build later is a slightly better approach. I want to say slightly because I don’t have any actual data on this, but from what I have seen, it just dramatically improves not only your chances of survival but also how you go to market because when the pain and the person and the vision are clear, everyone can work to support that vision. When the vision is not clear, everything gets questioned, everything also needs to be defined at the same exact time it’s simultaneous. And that can create a lot of confusion. It can create a lot of chaos. It can also just create a lot of doubt in terms of what exactly you’re building and why you’re building it. So if you are in that camp of, well, I don’t really have a vision. I don’t really know what we’re ultimately trying to do for people or why. I definitely take a moment just to, in many moments, probably this probably isn’t something that just happens in 10 minutes, but I highly strongly encourage you to take time to think about it and to really dissect and unpack the purpose of the business that you’re building and the why. And I think you’ll find that the, what the, how you accomplish that if it’s close to what you’ve built, awesome. And if it’s not close, then at least, you know, to turn your ship in that direction. On the other side, if you have a clear market vision, if you know exactly what you want to do, and maybe you’re even, you know, 80% of the way there on having the actual product or service or whatever it is, do not be afraid to hold onto that focus. And don’t let the market deter you until you’ve actually entered it. And you’ve actually tried. There are many examples too, of founders who have entered into a market with a very specific vision, a very specific goal, a very specific segment only to find out that their monetization strategy wasn’t as effective as I thought it would be that they built the right product. They built the right thing, but it wasn’t profitable. So now they pivot and that is still that’s still a faster path to profitability and to revenue generation. Then, of course, I’m guessing the entire time. But even that path I would say is still better because usually, you can find that you expand the market or you take the problem that you’re solving and you apply it elsewhere. But overall though, if you have a clear vision and it’s really just about the, what, like, so what do you build? How does this actually get executed in the real world? That’s where you actually have a lot more freedom than you think that you do focus and vision will set you free when it comes to running your business and building a business. And I highly encourage every founder to strive for that, if they can. And if you do have a strong vision, if you have a clear vision, you know exactly where you’re focused, where you’re trying to go, make sure your entire team knows it, and make sure that everyone is on the same page about what that vision is. That’s going to help you create an amazing product, and that’s going to help you build an amazing business. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 12: How Long Does it Take to See Marketing Results](https://demandmaven.io/ep-12-how-long-does-it-take-to-see-marketing-results/) **Published:** February 9, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** When it comes to measuring marketing nuance is key. For every market, product, and business, the results of marketing have their own specific context. To understand when you should be expecting results from your marketing efforts, you need to understand the context of that work. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down four key questions you need to ask yourself to understand how long it will take for your marketing to start driving results. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **2:58 – The key questions we’re diving into in this episode.** - **4:15 – What is the general amount of awareness in your market? And how long is your sales cycle?** - Before someone is a customer they are a prospect, and prospects go through a few stages of awareness, from completely unaware, to being aware of the problem, to be aware of the solutions out there, to finally being aware of your specific solution. - Depending on how aware your market is, your marketing will take more or less time to show results, this is likely the single biggest factor when it comes to time to see results - If you are focusing on prospects earlier in an earlier stage of awareness, you should focus on the audience your building and not yet on the sales you’re converting - Depending on your sales cycle (how long does it take for a prospect to buy) the speed of the results will be faster or slower - **20:08 – What is your ultimate starting point when it comes to marketing?** - There are three main marketing starting points - 21:00 – No marketing and trying to just do something - 25:00 – Bad marketing trying to go to good marketing - 27:15 – Good marketing trying to get to great marketing - **30:15 – What resources do you have available to you?** - What is your budget and who are the people you have to help? - If you’re spending less than $1000/month on marketing or doing most of the work yourself, then the results you’ll see will typically be more long-term (because it usually makes the most sense to focus there) - Sales will always be faster marketing, so if you need results fast, focusing on marketing may not make sense - More resources don’t necessarily mean faster or bigger results, but it usually does - **40:30 – Are other parts of the business functioning and functioning well?** - Marketing is just one cylinder in the engine. For a business to succeed all parts need to be working well. So great marketing doesn’t help if your business isn’t functioning well - If you don’t have a strong product-market fit, marketing can help with generating awareness, but measuring results of marketing in revenue probably doesn’t make sense - **53:15 – What are the questions we need to ask when thinking about how long it will take to see results from marketing?** ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Most intense questions that I get. It’s a question that I see also just all over Twitter, especially on LinkedIn and in forums and communities. And it’s a challenging question because it really depends on our understanding and our knowledge of quite a number of different things. And also just previous experience levels with marketing in general. But it’s the ultimate question of how long does it take for marketing to produce results? I might’ve touched on this in one of my earlier episodes, but I really wanted to just take an episode and really dedicate it to this question. And it’s one of those questions that many people will say. It depends. And in my own personal experience, I completely agree. Generally speaking, there is a range of time upon which we start expecting to see some pretty consistent results when it comes to marketing. And that range is anywhere from three to six months. I think that that’s a pretty typical baseline. It’s a pretty typical standard when it comes to, if you’re actively investing in marketing, you should expect, expect to see some kinds of results. Period. Within three to six months, sometimes some businesses see results much faster, and sometimes it takes much longer for marketing as a practice, as a department to start generating some very notable results, but really we’re actually going to unpack what results even means. What, so what does that mean and what are some of the factors or variables that play into what ultimately brings business results when it comes to marketing and also what is the timing of that? What kind of timeframe can we reasonably expect from that? So right off the bat, I’m just going to give you the questions that we are going to unpack. And I, and I really pose these as questions you can think of these as prongs or pillars, but these are really the things that formulate that ultimate. It depends on the “answer”, and I’m putting that in finger quotes. So whenever someone says, well, how long does it take for marketing to generate results? Or how long or, or what kind of results can we expect to see? Usually, the answer is, well, it depends. We can make a few guesses about what is reasonable to expect, and also what are some of the different things that you can prepare that you can align. And then of course, we’re going to just break down in general that, that timeframe. So the first quote that we’ll, I’ll give all of them to you and I’ll, I’ll break down each one, one by one. But the first question is what is the general amount of awareness in your market? And we’re going to, of course, unpack that in just a second. The second one is what is it, your ultimate starting point from a marketing perspective, meaning what are you ultimately starting with then there’s well, what are, what resources do you have available to you? So this is that budget people, tools, resources, et cetera, are the other parts of the business, ultimately functioning, and are they functioning well? And this really correlated to what kind of ultimate growth results can we really expect, not just from marketing, but from really the entire business as a whole. And there is one last question, and this is really related to one of the already it’s, it’s really related to the, to the, to the first one, but there is this sub-tier of what is the sales cycle currently look like today. And that really does correlate with just how users buy or how prospects buy in general in your market. But if you have an especially long sales cycle, for example, you can expect the marketing cycle to pretty much be just as long, if not be maybe a little bit shorter, but it usually the marketing and the sales cycles overlap. Okay. So let’s, let’s break down the very first question, which was what is the general amount of awareness in your market? And the sub-question really is also so right along step with that, how long is your sales cycle? So the general amount of awareness in your market, this really speaks to when you are thinking about targeting your ideal, best-paying customer before, they’re your customer, they’re really your prospect. There’s someone who hasn’t purchased from you yet, but they are, they, they, they could, and not only could they, but they’d be a great fit, they are your prospects. So they haven’t yet purchased from you yet, but you would love for them to you’d love for them to become customers. Prospects usually go through various stages or levels of awareness, meaning they go from totally unaware. They have no idea what it is that you do, what problem that you solve, what other options are out there in the market. And from that unaware stage, they go from completely unaware to now I’m problem aware, and now I want to solve that problem. So I’m going to look for solutions. Now, solution aware to product aware, I’m aware of your product specifications, and now that I’m aware, love your product. I’m also just generally aware of everything that you do, the different pricing plans that you offer, the different ways that I can engage with your brand industry or brand in general. So that awareness, this is called the five levels of awareness or the five stages of awareness was actually coined by someone else. I think I’m Eugene Schwartz. If I’m not mistaken, it’s one that I, it’s an awareness model that I reference often, especially if you’ve ever seen these speeds, but this awareness model, those levels of awareness is there exactly what your prospect goes through when they decide that they want to solve this problem. Then of course they start looking for solutions, but the reason why this has an impact on how quickly you’ll see results from marketing is abuse. Just because if the vast majority of your market is unaware, not just of your brand, that’s, that’s pretty obvious. Of course, they haven’t purchased from us yet. Haven’t heard of us yet, but the other consideration here is, but are they even looking at for solution to the problem in the first place? Are they blissfully unaware of the problem or are they aware of the problem, but there’s maybe competitors or competitive solutions that have varying degrees of solving that for them, if they’re extremely pain aware and they know that the pain exists and also, so they are motivated enough to actually solve for it, then it’s very likely that you’ll see results a little bit faster in that scenario. This is why choosing the right customer or segment is so critical. You don’t want to waste your time on people. In theory, at least you are completely unaware of the pain. There are not enough budgeting dollars marketing dollars on the planet to force an entire swath of people to suddenly care about solving the pain. Ideally, you’d focus on the people who already experienced the pain and need to ultimately just get introduced to your brand and your solution and convince them that you are the best solution. And from there convert them into a paying customer. There are very rare situations, especially in the SAAS world, and also the startup world. Very rare situations where you would focus all of your marketing and go-to-market efforts on a completely oblivious, unaware audience. It’s very rare. The reason why I say it’s rare is that there are some products and tools out there that do something that is incredibly, extremely different than anything that’s ever been done before. And in that case, yes, it makes sense to invest in educating a market, invest in educating and building general top, top of the funnel aware, or just really focusing on those unaware people and building marketing and, and messaging around, taking those unaware people to that problem, the aware stage like, Oh, I have a problem. I want to solve it. I want to fix it. It is a very, very, very slow journey. If you are targeting those unaware people, they have to go through all of the ups and downs of learning about this, of ultimately caring enough about, and then eventually deciding that they do want to solve this problem. They acknowledge the pain it’s there and it motivates them enough to fix it, especially after having tried other kinds of solutions. And like I said, it’s really rare to target an audience that is completely unaware. But if, if you were then expecting the marketing journey to be longer expect, expect to see results be much more by way of the audience that you’re building, as opposed to the customers that you’re converting. So I would actually argue to you from an awareness perspective that this is really the biggest indicator of how fast you will see results from marketing. And the reason why is because, at the end of the day, the results really come from the people that we want to turn into customers. So if we’re expecting revenue, if we’re expecting trials or demo requests or whatever that action is that indicates growth. And then of course that someone’s actually interested in buying our software or try and get at least then how aware that customer is of their pain and how motivated they are to solve it. That’s ultimately going to be the biggest driver of if we see those kinds of results or not. And also if we do, how fast does it happen and what is the overall volume of that ultimate KPI or whether that’s, you know, again, the free trial demo, et cetera. You’ll also notice that there’s, in some ways, not as much control as you might think, that you have over what that ultimate awareness level is of that prospect of that best-paying customer segment or whatever that is. There’s actually a lot of debate on do marketing departments truly generate demand, meaning they take someone who has no demand and turn them into someone who does or are they really just meeting that prospect? Halfway? The demand was already there. They are really just creating a very fast back channel to that prospect who already had the demand. They already had it. They just didn’t know that the supply was there for them. So there’s a lot of debate on if that exists or not. And it really impacts the way that you think about marketing at the end of the day, is marketing something that convinces people that they have a problem, or is it something that really meets them halfway when they acknowledge that they already do have a problem? And it says, Oh, did you know there are solutions? Did you know that our product exists? Here are all of our pricing plans. Here’s everything you need to know about our product to consider it, to solve your problem, lots of debate here. And one I won’t get into and at least in this podcast cause it would, it would not only is it very, very philosophical about what is the ultimate role and purpose of marketing, but yeah, we just wouldn’t have the time, but that said, this is easy. One of the biggest questions to think about when it comes to your product and when it comes to your marketing and the ultimate market that you are serving and the various customer segments that you could serve, those various customer segments in the market. So let’s say you’ve got software and you’re targeting universities high schools and something else like maybe non-profits each of those customer segments are going to have various degrees of just general awareness when it comes to solving that problem. In more, if we take this a step further, we also get into what sales cycles look like. So is it your product for your particular customer segment and your market? Is that a product that is generally sold really fast? Meaning you can technically go through the problem solution, product awareness phases extremely fast. Maybe it happens in a day or just a few hours, or is it a much more traditional sales cycle where maybe it takes months to close a deal? It really varies from product to product pricing has a huge impact on this as well. And then of course your market, how fast did they move? How fast do they make decisions? How many people are involved in decision-making, all of these things have an impact on again, how likely are you actually to see results from marketing to not the likelihood of them much more than the speed. I don’t want to indicate that marketing doesn’t ultimately get results. Of course, it does. Otherwise, it would not be as big of a deal as it is today. I wouldn’t be talking about it. Right. but it really comes down to two. If the sales cycle is slower than the speed upon which marketing is able to bring this up, coats generate results also just really comes down to, well, how fast do people make? And therefore, what does the marketing cycle look like at that point? And what is the speed upon which that happens? And then of course, what is, what is the ultimate KPI or result that we should reasonably expect from that point? So just to recap, if you’re talking, the audience is not searching for a solution to their pain, then naturally we have a longer journey. And oftentimes there’s just a greater investment that you’ll need to make in, go to market, let alone marketing. So again, if your target audience, if there’s not looking for any solutions, they’re completely unaware, it’s going to take longer to, I see that pure revenue related result and at the same exact time, you’re probably right. And I have to make a much more substantial investment in marketing in order to see the results that you want to see. And when I say the result, I really do mean that pain customer at the end of the day, the other indication here is that if your market is truly unaware, then you’re probably going to have to make investments, not just in marketing, but across the board. And this is true really for any business, but you’re not, it’s not just going to be like Oh, we depend on a hundred percent on marketing. It’s also going to be, well, you’re going to have to depend probably on sales in some kind of way or end also maybe on product kind of way and so on and so forth across all the different investments. If the target audience Lance is actively searching for solutions to their pain, but they aren’t, but there aren’t very many competitors or maybe there are that many great alternatives. Then we actually probably see results really fast from marketing. And this is where we can get into that two to three months range, just depending again, on if that target audience, if that prospect is searching for a solution. And if this is actually a very quick, easy decision for that prospect to make, it’s really rare when this happens, but when it does happen, it’s actually really awesome. So personally and all of the products and SAAS companies that I’ve, that I’ve ever worked with, and this is just, this is me working across gosh, dozens now, dozens of SAAS companies all over the world, many different markets, many different models, many different just overall customer types and customer verticals. This is across the board B to B, B to C doesn’t matter. There’s only one company I’ve ever worked with where all I had to do was turn on a channel and it was instant. Just one, there’s only been one company out of maybe the, let’s see, 30 to 40 that I’ve worked with, where it was almost instantaneous. We were seeing results within a very short amount of time and not just we’re getting trials and signups, but we’re actually getting paying customers. And it was as easy and as simple as turning on just one channel and implementing a few marketing best practices, it was great. It was wonderful. This is actually a case study on my website today. But this is extremely rare as well. And part of this is just because of where we were in the market. There weren’t that many, there were no competitors and the alternatives sucked this market, for the most part, was it truly was a blue ocean and it was an open Greenfield for us to come in and scoop up the market. So the first two scenarios are rare. One, I would say, you definitely need greater investment. If the audience again is completely unaware. And then the second one is also awesome, except it again, you really do have to be the best solution that is such a no-brainer for people to choose. And also this gets easier, even easier when the alternatives aren’t that great. And then of course there are no competitors, if any, at all, again, rare, but pretty dope whenever, whenever it does happen. And then the, and again, have the third piece to, this is if the target audience is actively searching for solutions to their pain, but they’re actually are some pretty good competitors or great alternatives. Maybe there aren’t specific competitors per se, but the alternative is actually still pretty good. And people for the most part will deal with it and live with it. For example, believe it or not, many people, many companies, I should say, really compete with Excel and Excel. I hate to say it, but for, for many folks, it does the job just fine. This is where it’s only faster. It’s only faster than maybe if that audience wasn’t searching for a solution to their pain at all. So for example, we’re, we’re technically solving for people who are problem aware, but they’re not necessarily as motivated or they’re actually pretty well-served by others, other co-market competitors, and maybe even other alternatives in your space, but it still might be, of course, the growth here, or at least the potential for marketing to deliver results. It still might be a little bit slower than if there weren’t any competitors at all. And this is where it really does come down to, I hate to say it, but part of market fit and it really just comes down to, so is your, is your product truly different? Veteran’s special than w at least some of the others for at least one customer segment doesn’t have to be better and different and special for everyone, but at least for one customer segment, this would have to be the case in order for you to see true results from, but also this could make the job of marketing much more. I don’t want to say harder. It’s just that you’ve got to really think about your marketing strategy at this point. And so your ability to strategically maneuver in the market and position your product well, and make sure that you’ve got a really well-converting website everything from the first experience with a brand all the way down to that very last touchpoint where they’re actually converting and becoming a paying customer, that journey needs to be pretty simple. And especially if there aren’t any other competitors, this is, definitely I would say an a slightly easier journey. If there are competitors, though, then we have to make sure that marketing ultimately gets the resources that it needs to do a really good, effective job. You’ll probably have to invest a little bit more in marketing in this scenario. Maybe, maybe less so than if you were again, targeting a totally unaware segment or totally unaware prospects, but it still needs to be enough in order to start seeing results from here. Again, I will put this in the middle. So this is probably isn’t going to be super-duper fast, but it’s also probably won’t take you years to see yours in this scenario unless of course your sales cycle just is a very complex or very high touch sales cycle. So this is kind of where, again, it depends, but I would still put all of this into that three to six-month range again, unless your sales cycle takes longer than six months, for whatever reason, the second question that we’re going to unpack, which is what is your ultimate starting point? Okay, what this means is what are you starting with when it comes to marketing? I think that my business advisor, my coach, his name is Charlie. Something that Charlie and I talked about recently was what is our ultimate marketing baseline? What is their ultimate marketing foundation? And there were really three that he described that I thought were brilliant. And so I’m sharing it with you now, but there were really three main starting points when it came to marketing. And just what, what that ultimate baseline was that they were coming to me with. And those three are, we’re either going from nothing marketing-wise to something, meaning we’re implementing something marketing related, then there’s, we’ve got bad marketing and we’re trying to get to good marketing. So maybe we’re doing some things marketing-wise, but it’s not necessarily very well done, or it’s not generating those results that we would like to see. And then, of course, there’s, we’ve actually got really good marketing, but we’re trying to get it to that next level of great marketing. This starting point has a lot to do again with how quickly will you see results? How long does it take to see results from marketing? One of those inputs of information is okay, but what are you, what are you starting with? So if we’re starting with nothing, for example, this means that maybe, maybe we don’t even have a marketing website. Although I find this is rare nowadays, sometimes there is a marketing website, but it’s not necessarily focused on any one particular customer segment. Maybe it doesn’t do the best job of communicating about the product at all, or if it does, it doesn’t really, it doesn’t really do a whole lot for me in terms of helping me make a decision about if it’s really going to solve my problem. And if it’s actually better than some of the other solutions I’ve already done research on. And then of course we get into, are we running any kind of paid acquisition? Are we doing any kind of content marketing? Is our strategy, mostly inbound versus outbound? Are there other parts of the business that we need to just make sure that we’re able to understand and measure? Are we measuring anything? Do we have any marketing tools at all? So this is kind of where it gets into the space of, do we have any kind of marketing foundation nine times out of 10 there are varying degrees of this is not definitely not like a black and white situation, but this is another indicator of, okay, if we’re going from nothing to something, then we need to make sure that we spend some time investing in implementing something. And sometimes the ultimate marketing result is, well, we went from nothing to something and that based off of the time and the investments that we made that was still a, a worthy experience to do, because it doesn’t necessarily make sense to, as, as you’ve heard me probably described in a number of talks and podcasts episodes, and then in speaking engagements, it, it doesn’t make sense to invest a ton into, let’s say a paid acquisition channel when we don’t even know if our website performs. So why would we make an investment into something we can’t ultimately measure? It’s just doesn’t make any sense. So if we, if we’re starting with nothing and we’re trying to go from nothing to something, then the marketing results that we should expect, probably aren’t going to be this like two X or three X, you know, in number of free trials, it’s probably going to be closer to, Oh, well, we don’t have this, we don’t have this and we don’t have this. We need to implement those things. And boom, that’s your very first marketing result. It’s not necessarily always a quantitative result. Sometimes it’s a qualitative one. It’s a, it’s a strategic one. And it says a strategic investor. So this effort is a huge investment, but it’s something that sometimes we overlook as founders. And we, we expect to see marketing triple or, you know, 10 X something in a very short amount of time. What the reality is that if we haven’t even started with the very basic foundation aspects of marketing, then necessarily going to know where that two X or three X or even 10 X is going to come from anyway because we haven’t actually set any kind of baseline. We don’t even know-how, in theory, at least if we truly have nothing, then we probably don’t know how anything performs for us, where any of our customers are coming in from who our customers even are. And if we’re doing, doing a good enough job of converting them, and that’s something that, again, if we’re going from nothing to something, we have to establish those baselines, the second starting point is we’ve got bad marketing and we need to get, we need to make it, you know, good marketing. And this one, this one, okay. Again, it’s, it’s, it’s not quite so black and white. There are definitely shades of gray here, but maybe we’re firing on some cylinders, meaning maybe we’re running some paid acquisition, or maybe we’re doing really basic analytics. Maybe we’ve also got some content creation going on where someone’s doing something someone’s producing blog posts the week. But all of this effort, it’s not necessarily generating the greatest results that we can very confidently see, and that we are competent in this could also relate to positioning and messaging. This could also be that we’re focusing on the wrong customer segment entirely, or we’re not really doing the best job of speaking to them at all. Maybe we have some funnels going on, but none of those aren’t necessarily converting as well as they should also be that we’re not even really measuring them. So again, this is kind of bad marketing, turning, not into good marketing, and the results here when it comes to how fast can you see results at this stage? If this is your starting point, then we can actually, we can, I usually see results relatively fast. You’re probably already seeing some results, but to improve those results, it really depends on the investment we need to make if especially if the marketing that we’ve and doing hasn’t ever been good. And also if we’re missing certain kinds of marketing, usually we can, you see results again, in that, that three to six months, it’s a combination of turning a few knobs and maybe making a few various strategic investments and doing some heavy lifting in some areas and others, very small iterations, and tweaks. It’s the combination of all the above. Sometimes again, depending on some of the other factors here, it does take longer to see results if you’re going from bad to good, but just because we might peel back the layers and find that, Oh man, you’ve really got to invest in organic search, or you really got to invest in inbound marketing, SEO, content, marketing, you know, all that wonderful stuff. And the reality is that depending on the investment suggested or made, that’s not necessarily something that you’ll see results instantly from, unless of course you combine it, you combine it with something else, but in those scenarios, that’s where it’s kind of like, okay, yeah, it might take, you know, much longer than three to six months to start seeing some results based off of that kind of investment. There’s usually more than just one opportunity to identify is really what I’m saying here. Finally, we go from good to great. And this one, this one is one of the more nebulous ones. And again, this is part of, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy because the businesses that I work with very rarely have good marketing, usually, it’s, we’ve got absolutely nothing or it’s, we’ve got stuff, but it’s not, it’s definitely not good. Maybe he even kind of bad. It’s very rare that I work with personally a business that is doing good marketing, and they’re trying to go from good to great. Now I will say that I just joined the board of MAs. So this is probably one of the few previous in-house roles now that I’m thinking about it, that did have really good marketing. But when I, when I think about going from good to great, this is where this is probably the longest path when it comes to seeing marketing results. There’s usually a combination of really small investments that you can make when it comes to going from good to great. But usually, greatness is something that is molded and evolved over long periods of time. So for example Arby’s burger King brands like that, that come to mind,, they probably have always been considered great in some ways. But when I think about what they’ve done from a social media perspective, what they’ve done from just a customer messaging and brand identity and tone perspective, I actually feel like they, they were already really good. They were already great even, but they went into this space of excellence that was really satisfying to watch, but that didn’t happen overnight. That was something that transformed and evolved. And they’ve invested in for years, not saying that this is true for SAS companies, per se. It’s very likely that we can go from, you know, pretty good marketing to pretty fricking great marketing, but this is something that likely doesn’t happen overnight. Probably not even in like three to six months. And it’s probably something that is it’s, it’s a very long-term investment and it happens over quite a bit of time. And it is something that needs to be visibly and recognizably experienced by the customer audience. It’s also very likely that maybe you’ve got many different customer segments. You are actively targeting acquiring, but maybe a few of those are only great the rest, however, not so great. And it’s really just a matter of really focusing on, well, how can we improve the acquisition of these different customer segments for this particular product or this particular part of the market? So this is kind of where it’s much more nuanced and therefore, or likely takes a long time to really start seeing the result of it. That again, though, very rare, the good to great again, it’s in that nuance, it’s likely in a combination of both short-term and long-term investments, but especially on the longterm, the next question to unpack has everything to do you with resources. What are the resources that are currently available to you today? It depends on the budget that you have. How much do you have available to spend on marketing every single month? What or who are the people involved in leveraging or building or investing in marketing? So, yeah. Is it just you the founder, or is it you and a team of marketers, of writers, of contractors, of employees, or whoever, or that is, and then we get down into tools. Are we, do we have the right tools? Are we investing in the right tools? Generally speaking, when it comes to, I think for results from marketing, if you’ve got less than a thousand dollars to spend per month in marketing, then the results that you’re going to see or expect probably shouldn’t be super substantial for, for, for some time, maybe even longer than that six months. And the reason why is just because if you don’t have a huge budget and again, I’m going to, I’m drawing a triangle, but if you can imagine with me a triangle at the top, we’ve got the scope on one corner and we’ve got time. And on another corner, we’ve got budget, it’s called the iron triangle and it’s of scope time and budget. If we don’t have a whole lot of time budget. And if we don’t have a whole lot of time, so maybe it’s just us as founders, then our scope is probably going to have to be relatively minimal, which means that the results that we’re going to see from any kind of marketing investment, if that’s our investment, then we likely can expect a huge scope here. We also probably can’t really expect correct big overwhelming results when it comes to marketing. Are there rare cases here? Yes. But if one of those corners frees up a little bit, so let’s say we actually do have, we actually have all the time in the world, but we don’t really have a whole lot of budget. There’s nothing we have investments that we can make now. So if we have time, well, we can invest in content marketing or we can invest in something, whatever that one thing is that is most likely to generate the positive result for us based off of our market, based off of our product and the general awareness of our customers. It’s very possible for us to actually see results in that three to six months. But again, results should be tempered here with the, that is probably not necessarily going to be exponential increments or let’s, let’s even say that two X or that three X and growth like that kind of mindset. It’s probably going to be much more like percentage lifts, which is absolutely fine because if, again, if you’ve got a very limited scope time and budget if your iron triangle is a little bit on the more modest side, then, okay, that’s okay. Let’s focus on results that are also a little bit more modest and that’s okay. And healthy and normal happens all the time. I’ve experienced it, founders. I know I’ve experienced it sometimes. That’s just what you have to focus on. You have to focus on those percentage lifts as opposed to yeah. These you know, multiplier, Xs, and growth. However, let’s say we actually have a pretty substantial budget, or maybe we have both quite a bit of time and budget to invest in marketing ourselves cope naturally can expand. It can handle more activity. It means that we can likely just execute and do more things. This also means that the more that we’re able to do in theory, at least the more that we’re able to learn, which also again, just fuels our growth experiments. It fuels us, how we think about marketing and it just, it just continues to expand and learn and grow from there. Sometimes I ex I think about marketing almost like an algorithm, except its one that we’re building in real-time in real life, all an algorithm is, is it’s really just a pattern of behaviors that achieve the same desired result, you know, more or less every single time except behaviors might change. Especially if we’re thinking about machine learning, where the algorithm suddenly learns, and it gets a new piece of information or to produce the desired outcome. It’s the same thing with marketing. We’re really just building get in real life. And we’re constantly taking new inputs to see if we can get better at it. So if that’s the case, then we likely can see pretty succinct results or at least impressive results in that three to six-month timeframe, the degree upon which we experienced. So results. However, still depends on, well, are we starting with nothing? Are we starting with something is bad, is it good or is it already good? And we’re looking for great. And then of course it also, still ultimately depends on what is that general level of awareness that your prospect has when it comes to solving this problem? Are we able to meet them halfway? And is that exp, is that effective enough or is it not necessarily the case? I have to invest a lot more in upfront awareness and taking them from I’m totally unaware. I have no idea that this pain exists to now. I have to convince them that they should solve it a much longer journey, right? So this is kind of where that three to six months the results might be much more qualitative might not be so quantitative might not be that three X or what have you. Again, this is why there are so many things, varying degrees in various inputs that impact how quickly we’re able to see results from marketing, the resources that you have available to you in general if you’re spending anywhere from three to five K per month on marketing in some kind of way, whether that’s content marketing, paid acquisition, working with an in-house marketer or something kind of, you can, you likely are going to see results a little bit faster than someone who’s spending, nothing at all. That’s only with the assumption that you’re able to actually learn from what it is that you’re executing on, and you are taking those insights and you’re actually applying them to what you’re doing from a marketing perspective. It does not necessarily work in a, in a blind, in a vacuum. This is where it’s very possible to spend this kind of money on marketing and see absolutely nothing from it for years. It’s, it’s totally possible. It’s happened before I’ve seen it before. It really is only effective to have that kind of monthly budget on marketing, and also make sure that you’re able to learn from it and implement those learnings. That’s where we start seeing that iterative cycle of marketing. And then of course it gets smarter. It gets better at what it does. You’ve evolved your algorithm. You’re now better at that, right? You know, executing on this spending more than that, I would say anywhere from, let’s see, let’s say you’re spending more than six K per month spending more than that. Again, it, it increases the capacity upon which you’re able to execute and again, learn it ma it matters more when you’re able to truly learn from something and implant and those learnings. And again, continue to evolve the machine. If that last step happens, meaning maybe we’re not measuring the right thing, things, we don’t have the best analytics or attribution on what it is that we’re executing on. It could also just be that we’re, we’re doing a whole lot of stuff, but no one’s really optimizing anything or really the questioning on if we can execute something better, then it’s very possible to again, spend that much and never learn it and never get better at it. And now we’ve got bad marketing and we need to make it good marketing. So that’s the one caveat I will throw at that. But overall, however, if you’ve got a very limited scope time and budget, if you’ve got a very limited iron triangle, then the expectations from that have to align. It’s very unrealistic to have a very limited iron triangle and expect massive amounts of growth. At least from marketing. And it’s not to say that you can’t see any growth, but there is a huge caveat to it. It might not be maybe a marketing. It’s probably something much more like maybe more sales efforts. So something that I tell founders all the time, that if you need results right now, like right, right now, and you’ve got nothing going on from a marketing perspective, then we can go from nothing to something. But if you need results right now, I always recommend sales. Even if it’s not scalable because you need it right now, right. And sales will always be faster than marketing, at least again, depending on those various levels of awareness, in theory, however, it’s usually a whole lot faster than marketing. So that’s something that I always it’s a caveat that I throw it at founders. We’re expecting it from marketing. However, we’ve got to, if we have a very limited iron triangle, then we have to really think about what the Delta is for what kind of reasonable impact and change we can expect on behalf of what that investment is in marketing. So this is where we have to temper expectations a little bit, wrap it up when it comes to how fast we’re able to see results from marketing does also depend on that investment. Yeah. That, that resource availability that you currently have today in budget and people and time. And then of course the scope upon which we’re able to actually make investments. So what investments are those things ultimately making all of these things are connected, and it does correlate with where you’re at in your journey. A higher monthly budget doesn’t necessarily mean more results, but it certainly adds this element of speed and also how much you’re able to learn and to given time. And then of course, if you do actually implement your learnings, you will absolutely see results faster. And then of course, in theory, more volume from here is this break apart all the time? Well, this is where the operations process. And then, of course, how able, how, how we’re able to tackle our animals, all of those things where they have a direct influence on, on the latter piece. So finally we get into the last one part of this, and this was, you know, this was already kind of, you know, kind of like a long podcast. Why don’t, I kind of know it would be, but the final piece, and this is, this is the piece that I’d actually tweeted about this recently, but it has to do with other parts of the business if they’re functioning and if they’re functioning well, there’s a very common misconception that marketing is a silo that you can make investments in marketing, you can execute on marketing and it has nothing to do with other parts of the business. And in fact, we can, all these investments, we can do all the execution. We can do all the things when it comes to me, but we still somehow believe that we’ve put marketing in this box and it has no influence or no impact and is not directly impacted by other functions and practices. And the business in this would be, this could not be more wrong. The truth is that marketing just like, just like an engine. It is just one cylinder and your business, or at least the growth function of it is the engine marketing is just one cylinder. And do you really need all cylinders firing every single one of them, every single part of the engine needs to be firing. It needs to be firing well, and it needs to be effective. All of those things combined, ultimately tears up into that multiplier, exponential growth that we all wish that we had in our businesses. It’s, it’s imperative to really internalize and know that marketing is not in its own vacuum and that it is not, or at least it should not be in its own silo. The reason why this impacts how we see results from marketing is because of the obvious. If we ultimately don’t have a really strong product-market fit with us with a customer segment. And I’m really speaking to those early stages, those early SAAS companies out there when it comes to this. But if we do not have a strong level of product-market fit with any given customer segment, then any amount of investment that we do on the marketing end is probably going to be awesome for generating traffic, but maybe not so awesome for generating customers. And that’s not necessarily any anyone’s fault, not pointing the finger at product over here. But what I am saying is, well, the results that we’re likely to expect is a direct impact of, well, how well does the product serve the market today? Are we losing to competitors because of really particular features or experiences that our customers are primed and ready to receive, but we’re not quite so meeting the Mark on that, or have we been targeting the wrong person the whole time? And we need to establish a different customer segment that might have a stronger product-market fit than what we currently do today with other segments. It’s a critical consideration when it comes to thinking about how we get results from marketing and how we go to market in general because the reality is that we can do all of this work when it comes to marketing. But if we don’t have a strong product, there’s just no amount of arm polling or blindfolding or convincing that you can do to get someone to buy who doesn’t ultimately want to buy dress me, you, you, you can try to pull arms. You can try to, you can try to, to, to push people along the path, but people are people they’re humans and they are more or less capable of making their own decisions. And if they don’t see the value, they’re just not going to purchase. There’s like I said, no amount of arm wrestling you can do to force someone to pay. But this is also where we have to get really honest with ourselves about if we’re not just ready for marketing, but we can reasonably expect any kind of results from it. Especially if we know that we don’t have a strong product and that’s, that can be really hard to hear for a lot of people out there listening and at the same exact time liberating, let that be a liberating message. If, if that’s something that you’re kind of, you’re stuck on and you’re spinning the wheels on, you know, that your product isn’t quite there yet, you know, that it’s something that based off of the segment that you want to target. It’s just not, it’s just not, you know, meeting the mark, there are competitors in the space who are doing it much better. Give yourself permission to continue to be thinking about, okay, well, what marketing investments do we need to make? Can we at least get ready? Can we get prepared, but release that from needing results from it? I think that that’s the thing I would, I, I would want to release you from not necessarily that you can ignore marketing and you can continue to hide under a rock. Superhuman is a great example of this. They were building, I think the product for what, two to three years before they really started to push hard on the acquisition, but they were still doing marketing. In the meantime, they were still working on building an audience. They were still telling the superhuman story. They didn’t, they did not really bury themselves under a rock for, you know, maybe in the first year, but they needed to build the product for at least two to three years. So I will say, yes, they’ll care about some marketing. Don’t, you know, don’t emerge from the, from under the rock and be like, okay, now I’m ready to compete. And you’ve done nothing because again, we’ve got more heavy lifting to do. We’ve got to go from nothing to something now. But when I will say, however, is you can at least release yourself from expecting these instantaneous large, huge swaths of results. And that’s what I think is, is the thing to release yourself a little bit from, and for no other reason than you, you know, that you might not have the strongest product-market fit if at all. And maybe you’re not meeting the Mark in many different ways, competitively speaking, or alternatively speaking, cause there’s probably maybe something else that people are using that isn’t necessarily a business. Again, this is where we have to really temper our expectations. Not saying that marketing will ever be a huge driver here. It just probably won’t be the first hugely revenue-generating thing. Especially if we don’t have a strong product-market fit will be the product, but that said, there are other parts there’s, there are other more nuanced things. So that was the obvious one. Well, if you don’t have a really strong part of market fit, then it’s like, you know, and it doesn’t really matter what a marketer does. They’ll probably get you a whole bunch of traffic and maybe some signups, but the product’s not there. Then maybe don’t expect customers for a while or at, or at least use your efforts as a way to learn as much as possible. And sure. Generate awareness. That’s definitely something you can absolutely do. That’s an option that marketing has, but when it comes to giving marketing a revenue goal when you know, the product-market fit is not strong, doesn’t sound like a recipe for success for anybody. That’s the obvious one, but there are more nuanced examples. It could be anything from is our product activating new users as effectively as it could be. Do we have a very low free trial to paid conversion rate? Do we actually have a really high revenue churn? These are all considerations as well to take into, well, from a marketing perspective, we really expect to be able to build an audience. And then of course, turn our audience members into paying customers. But if we know that other parts of the business aren’t necessarily functioning very well, then we also probably can’t really expect marketing to be the only torch. And the only cylinder that fires in, in that, in that makes all of this, you know, engine go probably not as realistic. And it also probably means that if that is the case, then you’re basically not saying that marketing shouldn’t have expectations, but it’s actually a really inefficient business model at that point. There’s a lot of emphasis on that LTV to CAC ratio, for example. So for those who are new to that, that’s your lifetime value of your customer in direct ratio to the cost that it takes to acquire a paying customer. And the golden ratio is three to one. So for every, for every customer that you generate the cost to acquire them, should it be one-third of what their LTV is? So if you were to take their LTV, let’s say it was $3,000. Let’s say that a paying customer, their LTV on average is about three K. Then the cost to acquire them should in theory, be about one K. If we have a ratio that is four to one or five to one, then we’re not spending enough on marketing. If we have a ratio that is much lower than that, then we’re probably spending too much on go to market. There are some scenarios where some investors and SAAS experts will say, even if break even. So if you’re one-to-one the constant takes to acquire a customer, the LTV is about the same. Some experts will say they continue to even do that. And we’re in focus on maximizing the LTV of the customer at that point or, and also decreasing the cost it takes to acquire that customer. That’s still, especially for the early stage. It’s actually still pretty solid advice, but if it is lower than that, then you are actively losing money. This means that we either need to figure out how to, again, increase that LTV of the customer and also decrease the cost it takes to acquire. But these are all more nuanced implications of, okay, the results that we expect from marketing. Can, can we reasonably what we’re expecting at that point, the results that we’re seeing? So the business is not quite so operationalized or is effective or running as efficient, then the results from marketing, not that they are, you know, suddenly nil, like of course you’re going to have results and expectations from what kind of results marketing can produce, but keep in mind that it’s potentially we’ll be directly impacted by what else is happening in the business. Again, marketing is not in a silo. It never ever was, and it never will be, this is another implication of marketing is directly impacted by everything else that happens in the business and outside of, and it’s really up to the marketing team and the marketing leadership and the marketing strategy to work with what it has, and then stretch a little bit further than that just to make it challenging. But then of course, we get down again into even, even down to, from an operational perspective and a development perspective. Are we regularly shipping new features? Are we regularly investing in the product? Are we continuing to make better? How about the signup funnel? Is it actually really hard for people to sign up into the funnel is, is our everything from our signup flow to how people create accounts to how people request a demo is that as streamlined and as effective as it possible, they can be in this case, those kinds of journeys fall under their marketing. But then they also have a direct implication on behalf of the development, our product team too, because those, those teams are naturally involved in the process. And so now marketing product development engineering, all of these departments and teams suddenly need to make decisions about what the best possible funnel code and should be. And if marketing isn’t enabled in, in that direction, bi-directionally then we also have kind of take a step back and wonder like, okay, well, if marketing doesn’t ultimately have control over the signup funnel, or if they can’t influence it in any kind of meaningful way, then what can we reasonably expect at that point in time? This is this, and this is automatically if you felt friction just now by hearing that and listening to that good that’s, that’s exactly the kind of thinking we have to have when we’re sitting down and we’re thinking, Hmm, what kind of results can I expect from your marketing? And it’s like, yes, that’s perfect, that’s the right question to ask. But the other, question to ask is also what are some of the other things that are impacting marketing results that maybe we didn’t consider before? And these are the more nuanced things that have a direct impact on marketing results what’s reasonable to achieve. And also what is unimagined \[inaudible\] numbers and the results that you could potentially see what is the potential. And those numbers are exciting too, and they should be, they should be extremely exciting and they should absolutely motivate you and get you to continue to make the right investments and to really think strategically and to think critically, not just about marketing, but about the rest of the business. And that’s the exciting part, that’s the fun part. But then also we get to be grounded in reality. And we also get to be grounded in our own baselines, our own base levels that we’ve achieved in that we are able to measure. And we’re pretty confident in those and we continue to invest in them expand over time. All right. So wrapping all this up, the questions that ultimately tear into that, well, what kind of, how fast take to see results from the marketing, and what kind of results can we see from marketing? The ultimate questions that tear up into that are, what is the general amount of awareness in your market? What’s the general amount of awareness in your market? What is the sales cycle is the average sales cycle? How long does it take to close a deal? The customer segment that we’re targeting? What’s our starting point from a marketing perspective, do we have nothing? And we’re going to go to something, do we have bad marketing? And we need to make good marketing hate to say bad marketing. It’s usually just like, Nope, not so great. Marketing is really a, but we want to be good. Maybe we have good marketing and we want to become great. And then we get into, well, what are your resources? What’s your, what’s your iron triangle look like? What about the resources and people about tools, budget, et cetera. And then finally we get into are the other parts of the business functioning and are they functioning well, there was the obvious approach of product-market fit. If you don’t have a really strong part of market fit, it’s going to be really tough to expect just glorious, exponential results from marketing. It’s going to be tough, but if we actually do have a really strong product-market fit, then what are some of the other implications? And this is where we get into the more nuanced approach of what is functioning in the business. And is it functioning well, the combination of all of these things in varying degrees, many different factors in each of those all again, impact what we can ultimately expect to see from marketing and the speed upon which the velocity upon which we’re able to realize those results and also marketing results, at least in the early days are often much more qualitative? And over time with the right investments, they become far more quantitative and it becomes far more obvious when things are working versus when they’re not. And to what degree are they working? I really hope that that helps. I hope that that expanded your knowledge when it comes to thinking about marketing. And then of course, when it comes to thinking about how to invest in these things, and I just really hope that that helps refine your approach when it comes to what can you reasonably expect and to, to what speed upon which you can expect. Those things, both that net multiplier, that two X at three X at 10 X versus the maybe’s a 30% lift and we’ll have to be happy with a 30% lift. And then on average, of course, we look at that three to six month Delta upon which you can reasonably expect to see marketing results and then certain implications upon which it’s shorter than that, or longer than that. And that’s, and that’s what we really unpack today. I hope that that helps again. And I hope that if anything, it released you a little bit from feeling super under pressure if it actually had the opposite effect of getting motivated also good, so good all around. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 13: How product-market fit ACTUALLY works](https://demandmaven.io/ep-13-how-product-market-fit-actually-works/) **Published:** February 10, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Does your business have product-market fit? Are you sure? There can be a lot of grey area when it comes to understanding your business’s product-market fit, but with a bit of examination, we can bring clarity to the topic and plot a course for strengthening your products fit with the market. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down product-market fit and how to think about measuring and improving your own product-market fit as you bring to market and grow your product. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **1:30 – What is product-market fit?** - Product-market fit is the degree to which you’ve built the right product for the right market. ie.The people you had in mind when building the product are willing to pay for the product and love it. - For some businesses, product-market fit happens quickly and it sticks. But for most businesses product-market fit is a cycle and something that is always in progress. - **4:19 – Research alone can’t tell you if you have product-market fit.** Until someone is using the product regularly and would be upset if you took it away or you have paying customers, you can’t know if you have product-market fit. - **8:15 – As your business grows, you add new markets, and your product-market fit needs to be assessed.** - **11:00 – Money changes everything.** When you start charging for your product, you’ll find that the way users think and react to the product will change. Figuring out who is going to be willing to pay for the service is very important, so when you’re working on going to market, using a phased approach will help you strengthen your product-market fit. - **15:50 – Reminders for founders.** If you’re a founder in the phase before you have active users and paying users, remember that your conviction about the idea does not mean you have product-market fit. You’ll only know that once you have customers using and paying for the product. - **18:25 – Recap.** Product-market fit is an ongoing process, you won’t know if you have product-market fit until you have paying customers and as you grow and enter new markets, your product-market fit will change, so be prepared to measure that quantitatively and qualitatively. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Today we are going to talk about reaching one of those topics that’s pretty widely accepted by the SAAS and startup community, especially when it comes to the early stages of the SAAS or the product. And it has everything to do with you guessed at product-market fit. And I just want to give you a little bit of context for where I’m coming from as a consultant who works with SAAS, founders and startups on defining their go-to market strategies, go to market. Whether that’s in the early stages of really defining a launch or working to a certain level of product-market fit or go to market in the sense of we’re troubleshooting growth, and the business has achieved a certain level of growth, but we haven’t necessarily achieved. What we were hoping for or expecting or growth is actually really challenging. It’s uncertain why, or there are many reasons why, and we need to figure out how to divide and conquer. So from a product-market fit perspective, product-market fit is the degree to which upon you have built the right product for assuming the right market, right, is one of those words I’m going to put in finger quotes here, but just purely because right. Can mean different things to different people. In this particular scenario, we’re going to assume that right means that these people will ultimately pay for the product and not just pay for it, but also love it, really love it. And product-market fit is one of those things that there’s a lot of misconception about how it actually works and others, of course, just think that product-market fit is a particular end point or milestone. Again, it’s something that is only achieved once and has never really considered or thought about ever again. And then, and then others really strongly feel that product-market fit is a really specific point in time. And it is, it is really clear on any given day or week when you have product-market fit, versus when you don’t and depending on your industry, depending on your market, depending on the product that you’ve built, even, there’s certainly varying different experiences of product-market fit. So there are certainly going to be outliers. And those who do experience product-market fit almost instantaneously, or it does very, very clearly feel or seem like a particular milestone or end point things that they have achieved. And then they’ve never had to think about it ever again. And then there are other businesses that experienced the opposite product-market fit is a continuous, never ending process and cycle. And I would argue that more often than not most businesses are in the latter scenario than in the former most businesses need to continuously improve their product-market fit. Product-market fit really is not black or white. It is really much more shades of gray. It occurs in degrees as opposed to this really clear black or white scenario where you implement one feature and then suddenly you have product-market fit. It is much more likely that it’s actually varying there’s. It’s certainly a spectrum across a few different just inputs in general. And part of the founder’s job is to figure out what are those inputs and to what degree are we in at any given time, you’ll find that one of the most common inputs, if you will, or degrees that will determine the level of product-market fit is the customer segment that you’re targeting. So if you decide to change the market or focus on a particular part of the market, that can have very distinct varying levels of product-market fit, something that happens quite a bit, uh, with, with founders in the early days. And it’s specifically when they are going from building their MVP to enabling users, customers, or people to use it more often is that there tends to be this moment where the founder just assumes that they have really strong product-market fit, even though they’re not charging for their product. And even though they don’t have any paying users, it’s actually really, really, really easy to just assume that you’ve built the right thing that you’ve built in the right context, that your users and customers ultimately want to use a product in. And it’s not to say that you haven’t done the work or that you haven’t done the research. There are plenty of founders who spend months and months and months really validating and really testing their assumptions. But I would argue that until someone is actually either a using the product regularly so much so that they would be really upset if you took it away from them or B are paying for the product and continue to pay for the product, it’s actually really difficult to know if you truly have product-market fit. It’s something that happens a lot in my conversations with founders who are thinking about hiring demand Maven, for example, and they will have zero paying customers. Sometimes they’ll have maybe one or two users, but the users are friends or they are colleagues in some kind of way. And the conversation in almost always turns to product-market fit in some way. And, um, the founder will say something like I have amazing product-market fit. The product-market fit for the product is great. And to which I say, well, technically we don’t have any paying customers and we don’t have any active users who are total strangers. So how do we really know if we have product-market fit until people are regularly continuously using the product-market fit levels are relatively unknown. However, um, the conviction of the founder or the belief or the confidence of the founder now that might be really strong. And, and that’s not, of course, to, to, um, you know, say don’t be confident in what you have built or to what degree you think it will really satisfy the needs of a market. But to say that you have product-market fit before you have paying customers that I would say I would rethink that I would, I would take a step back from that statement and, and really, um, break down what parts of product-market fit do you feel like you do have, and then what still remains to be unknown. And I think the answer ultimately is here that it is relatively unknown and, and that’s okay. And that I think is something that is perfectly normal and fine and good to accept in those very early days. You really won’t know what product-market fit is truly going to be like until you get people, either a using the product. This could be for free. It could be closed beta open beta doesn’t really matter, which, but they are actively engaged in using the product. And when I say actively engaged, of course, this is going to depend on the nature of the product itself, but this isn’t just a, Oh, they signed up for the product or they signed up or they got access to it. And then they never used it ever again, this is something where they do continue to use it. And on top of that, they seem to be relatively engaged. They seem to get value out of the product. And then on the flip side, they are paying for this. They are paying for access to this, and it does not feel like twisting arms to get them to pay for it. That’s usually a really great sign of product-market fit. So we know that product-market fit is a constant ongoing process. It’s not this end point or this final destination. Instead, I actually encourage founders to think of it much more like degrees of strength, rather than just a check box. Your product-market fit could be extremely strong. It could also be kind of average or neutral even. It could also be very weak. Something else to know, however about product-market fit is that it absolutely changes as you enter new markets and as you acquire new customer segments. So for example, product-market fit will constantly fluctuate as new competitors enter the market. And of course, as the product gains new customers and markets, and this is on the one hand very much in the control of the product of, of the founder of the business in itself, and then at the same exact time, very much not. So for example, we could decide to go after a very specific customer segment, and we could really evaluate our value propositions, our positioning, and our messaging for that particular customer segment. Or we could say, you know what, we are actively not going to try to acquire them. We’re really going to focus on this other customer segment over here. And we’re also going to actively decide therefore to not maybe build certain features that that particular customer segment does not necessarily care about. And then as your competitors are also making decisions about the market and the product that they build, it, it creates, uh, just this natural ebb and flow of who you end up attracting, who you also intentionally attract, and then also varying degrees of product-market fit. Based off of that, a great example of this would be if you were to think about notion, the product notion, and then also another product that’s really similar to notion with different value props and also different features. And it’s called slight, they’re both incredible products used in very different contexts but based off of who they ultimately work to acquire. So what their go to market strategy is probably very different and the kinds of customers are hoping to attract probably pretty different than what notion is currently attracting and to continue to really hone in and focus on their primary customer segments and markets, their product-market fit across those different segments and markets probably pretty variable. And where notion is really strong, slight might not be as strong and were slight, is really strong. Notion might not be as strong. Even in that scenario. There’s many different ways that both of these products can ultimately win in their markets. And then at the same exact time, they absolutely have varying degrees of product-market fit depending on the customer segment part of the market. And then also compared to competitors that they have. One last thing I’m going to leave you with when it comes to product-market fit is that money does actually change everything. And this is, this is one of those concepts that is actually really hard. I find it to really teaches founders about it and even I’m still figuring out why is that? Why is, why is that phase so gray and so hard? But whether you decide, go to market wise to launch with an open beta, a closed beta, maybe you decide to launch the product with a pure free trial model or a demo model. Whatever that is. One thing to keep in mind is that money will absolutely change everything. It might change it a little bit. It might change a lot. You might find that once you start charging for the product, the diehard users that you thought were absolutely amazing, might completely fall away and say, you know what? That is not what I wanted to paint. I don’t want to pay anything for this. I want this to be free forever. And then suddenly you have to figure out, okay, well, who’s actually going to pay for this. And that is a transition that every business, at least one that wants to profit from the software or from the product, it’s a transition that every business goes through and it can be a really short one and it can be a really long one. Most of us want it to be as short as possible and also as clear and predictable as possible. And to be honest, I think the only way to make that as predictable as possible is to have, um, a very phased approach to going to market, meaning you maybe start out with a closed beta, maybe then you move to open beta, and then eventually you get to the fully self-serve free trial model or demo model that you’re hoping for. And then on the flip side, of course, depending on what your expected LTV is, or maybe what your expected average revenue per user is going to be, perhaps that also, um, dictates how you ultimately end up going to market. Maybe instead you focus on sales much more aggressively first, either way. We ultimately still have to reckon with when we do launch pricing or we start charging in some kind of way, do you know that psychologically it changes the perception of the product. There are some businesses that launch right off the bat with pricing. There are some who decide not to. There are some who, um, depending on the size of the customer that they’re trying to acquire, maybe they go enterprise. Instead. They might actually have a scenario where they require a one-year agreement where maybe it’s free for the whole year, but then after that they start charging. And here’s maybe the pricing plans and models that they’re thinking of launching at that time. There are so many different ways that you can do this, but do know that psychologically speaking money will change everything. Once you start charging, it’s suddenly a different world. And it’s one that I guess you can absolutely prepare for, if you don’t necessarily have the resources to prepare for that, then you do have to make slightly different decisions when it comes to how you go to market, how you want your product. But overall, keep in mind that when you do start charging for the product, your product-market fit will be much more solidified, whether that makes it strong or weak or average or neutral, how it, whatever degree upon which it is, you know, remains to be seen. But when you do start charging for the product, that’s, that’s truly, when you start to really know where are we product-market fit wise. And that I would say is incredibly invaluable information, but I would also say that doesn’t necessarily mean let’s rush to charge. It’s not always the case. Sometimes you need the time in order to really understand how people in the market will react to the product in general, how your target audience, or how your target customers might react. And then of course, really identifying what is the best monetization strategy that is going to be attractive to the market that we’re hoping to attract. And then of course, close into paying customers. It’s a complex constant cycle. And it’s one that I think can only really be solved by doing pretty heavy customer research, but then also doing some form of beta launch where you do get to identify who those active users are going to be. And then from there, you can start to gauge, okay, who really gets a lot of value out of this. And it would be painful for this to go away and then who doesn’t get value out of this. And if we were to start charging them, no skin off of our nose, if they don’t ultimately become paying customers because they weren’t super high value users. Anyway, of course, to be continued overall, if there’s one thing I wanted to leave you with, if you are a founder and you’re in that phase where you don’t have active users and you don’t have paying customers, and you’re unsure about your product-market fit well, first I just have to say, that’s absolutely normal. This is one of those phases of the journey. It’s a part of the journey. It’s a part of the cycle. And the wheel will turn eventually where you get to a place where you get people in the app, or you get people in the product or the marketplace or whatever it is that you’re building and launching. But it is really important to remember that you’re, you aren’t necessarily going to know and like really know what that product-market fit is going to be until you have one of those two things. You either have active users, they are using the product actively regularly. They, it could be daily, it could be weekly, whatever that frequency is, but it’s really clear that it provides value. Or, and I’m going to say, and, or cause it could technically be both. These are not mutually exclusive, but it could also be that you’re charging them and they’re not churning. And that’s really another strong indicator that you are closer to achieving product-market fit. Just remember that conviction doesn’t necessarily mean product-market fit. It’s okay to be confident and you should be confident in what you’ve built and the research you’ve done, the customer discovery and the customer development that you’ve done. But also remember that part of market fit won’t really truly be knowable until one of those two things happens. And the reason why I, I hone in on that and I focus in on that so hard. And I, I encourage this thinking is because when you do get active users or you do start the process of getting people into the product, it won’t feel as much of a bumpy ride. And it won’t feel as disappointing even if product-market fit is a challenge. In fact, you’ll go into it, expecting it even. And I think that that’s a much better situation to be in because then you don’t have to get over the emotional or mental baggage of, Oh crap. This isn’t exactly what our users wanted or isn’t exactly what customers will pay for. But now we have a place where we can iterate off of it and we can build off of it. And we can kind of move on from the well, we should just have product-market fit because we did all of the hard work ahead of time. If anything, I’d argue that the hard work really begins when you actually get active users. And then you kind of have to figure out who do we prioritize? Who do we build for? Who do we charge and what do we charge that’s to me, the hardest part, just a quick recap product-market fit. It’s an ongoing process. It’s not a milestone. It’s not a, it’s not an end point. I’d argue with certainly a stage. It’s a phase it’s degrees of strength. It’s certainly gray. And there are moments where it does become really clear. And then as you gain new customers, as you enter new markets, you start all over again. It’s a constant, never ending process, never ending cycle. You’re not really going to know product-market fit. If you, if, if the product really hasn’t, you’re not really going to know until you either have those active users or they are paying customers and, or I’ll say it could be both, but you really won’t know what the degree is until that happens until then. It’s really much more about your conviction level or your confidence level in what you have built. And that’s okay. That’s good. That’s normal. Your part of market fit will absolutely change as you enter new customer segments and markets. So just be prepared for that. Be prepared to identify what that is and be able to measure that as quantitatively as possible in addition to qualitatively. And then finally money changes everything. Once you start charging, there is something psychological that happens for people where they really start to value if what they’re paying for and the value that they get from it, if those two things are imbalanced and if they are not imbalanced, they will churn. If they are not imbalanced in terms of, they don’t feel like they’re getting enough value, they will turn. If they feel like they’re getting tons of value, then that can actually be an opportunity to charge more, which could be really interesting. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that this was helpful. And also that you learned something today. And I think if anything, give yourself some grace around the product-market fit process. It is certainly a process it’s definitely degrees and stages and phases. I would not say it’s just like okay, January 1st, 2021, you got product-market fit. We’re done. So be open to that process and make sure that you have the tools and resources that you need to identify what those degrees for the product actually are. And when you do start getting those active users and paying customers that you can continue to measure as quantitatively, so qualitatively as possible. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 14: Can you measure product-market fit?](https://demandmaven.io/ep-14-can-you-measure-product-market-fit/) **Published:** February 22, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** How do you know if you have product-market fit? You measure it! In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down the different ways to think about measuring product-market fit and how to apply it in your Saas business. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - - **1:25 – Yes, you can measure product market fit.** - **2:25 – How to use cohort analysis.** - Grouping customers using customers from the last 6 months, and looking to see if you’re keeping more than 50% of your customers. - As your business matures you’ll be looking for 12+ months, or how many customers stay on for more than 12 months. - **6:40 – Net Promoter Score (NPS).** You can measure N.P.S. by simply creating a survey asking, “on a scale of 10″ how likely are you to recommend the product to someone?” Then you can use this information, along with your background info about the customer, to identify what the customers with low N.P.S. and high N.P.S. have in common - **9:50 – There are some downsides to Net Promoter Score.** Because it is just one question, you don’t have a ton of insight into what is driving the score. - **10:40 – Understanding churn.** Maintaining less than 5% churn is a sign that the business is quite healthy. There are a number of different ways to look at churn, from the percentage of users to percentage of revenue. - Churn can be a great signal, but without more context it can misleading, so it’s important to think about the overall context around the churn. - **15:40 – The four question framework.** - How would you feel if you could no longer use this product? With three options: Very disappointed, somewhat disappointed, and not disappointed - What type of people do you think would most benefit from this product? - What is the main benefit you receive from this product? - How can we improve this product for you? - If you have 40% of your desired customer segment saying that they would be very disappointed, that is a great sign you have product market fit - **22:30 – Recapping the different ways to measure product-market fit.** ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Let’s do this today is actually going to be a continuation of something that we’ve talked about before on the podcast. And it is going to be all about if you can actually measure your product market fit before I have discussed product market fit in terms of have we built the right product for the right market and right, of course, being defined by are they paying for it? And are they staying? Are they sticking around? Do they love it? Hopefully they love it. But product market fit is one of those things. Again, I have argued before that. It’s really not an end point. I would, I even don’t like saying it’s a milestone because it is something that is constantly fluctuating depending on the market or the segment that you’re currently acquiring at any given time. However, one of the big questions that comes up whenever it comes to part of market fit is what can we measure this? How do we, how do we know quantitatively is that possible? And the answer is well, yes, actually it is kind of possible. And the fun part about this is that there are actually many different formulas and KPIs that we can use to identify if we have product market fit from a financial perspective. And then also we’ll discuss a little bit about what you can do from a qualitative perspective to identify product market fit. We’ve discussed how to know if you’ve got product market fit before, but today’s episode we’re really going to focus on again, the more quantitative side of product market fit. Okay. So can you actually measure product market fit? I would say the short answer is yes, there are certainly metrics, KPIs and practices that can give you a really strong sense of if we’ve achieved product market fit. Or if we have reached a certain strong level of part of market fit for a particular customer cohort or a segment. And there’s, there’s a couple of ways I’m going to list out the first way is to do a cohort analysis. Now, cohort analysis, that’s a really fancy term for visit going to analyze a particular group of our customers or users, ideally customers. Ideally, these are paying customers that we’re actually analyzing. And a cohort is just a fancy term for, we are going to group a particular set or subset of customers by some, either it could be taxonomy. It could also be which another fancy word I apologize, but it could also just be, we’re just going to group people by some variable or some attribute that they all share together. So for example, you might have customers that, um, maybe one cohort could be, well, these are marketers or one cohort. Another cohort could be, these are people who have started a trial in the last 30 days. Another cohort could be these are school teachers, or these are, um, maybe they are in the medical industry or what have you. There’s a billion, one different cohorts that we could technically name define. Maybe there’s a cohort of people who signed up for a particular feature of the product. That’s another cohort, so that those are examples of cohorts. This particular cohort is going to be people who have signed up for the product in the last five to six months and became paying customers. So the first cohort is going to be paying customers of the last six months. And if we have retained at least 50%, 50% being the least, because if it were less than we’d be losing more customers and we’re keeping, and if it’s more than 50%, then we are keeping more. If it’s about 50%, like exactly like on the nose, then it’s about the same. It’s about breakeven, which honestly, there are many, um, there are many investors, VCs and other analysts who very strongly feel that even a 50% is very acceptable after six months. But the goal would be to see, are we acquiring at least 50% of our customers of our paying customers after six months of being customers. And eventually you get to a place to where, when you look at your cohort retention, after that six months, even up to 12 months and beyond you’ll hopefully see that the retention kind of flat lines a little bit, it gets flat. You see this big curve in the beginning where you see, you know, like 80%, 90% retention. And then after the first six months to 12 months, maybe you see it start to flatten out a little bit. And it flattens out around that 50% Mark, a really strong sign of product market fit. It basically means that again, the customers that you’re acquiring are sticking around, which is, which is good. We want that. We liked that. We liked that retention. So the cohort retention analysis is one way and in your early stages. So for my earliest age, SAS founders, the first six months is really what you’d be looking for. And then as the product matures, and as the business matures, you’d be looking at 12 plus months. So how many people, how many customers stick around for longer than a year, another incredible KPI to be looking at? And this is a pretty simple metric or KPI to pull from a tool like ProfitWell or bare metrics or ChartMogul. So I highly recommend using one of those platforms. It probably already has that data inside of it, especially if you do have it connected properly and you do, uh, actively use it to just measure the progress of the product in general, but that data’s just kind of sitting there. I’ve pulled these reports all the time inside of all of these tools. So in my mind, I can see exactly like where this is, but it’s pretty easy to, to go and pull it. In fact, I’m pretty sure if you were to go and look up cohort retention analysis inside of any of those products or on their blogs, they probably have our little report about it. Okay. After that, the second one is going to be net promoter score, net promoter score NPS. This is one of the, this is one of, I think the underrated KPIs or metrics or litmus tests, if you will, for product market fit, because it measures the overall happiness. And in other ways, the value add on behalf of any particular customer net promoter score is really a simple, it’s a really simple survey. It’s probably the simplest survey that you can send a customer. Usually it sent an app, it could also be sent via email or chat, but it’s really simple. It’s on a scale of zero to 10. How likely are you to recommend X product to a colleague, a friend, someone and anything above eight is great. That’s really positive. And then I believe I could be wrong about this, but I think like six and seven, maybe actually also technically eight, I think six and seven are N they are, they are much more neutral. Um, and then anything, I think below five is like an attractor. Like it’s, you know, they’re, they’re not super gung-ho about the product, or there’s definitely a lot of room for improvement. There are many different scales for net promoter score that I highly recommend going and researching, but net promoter score can actually be a wonderful way of gauging, especially on the customer type. What kind of, how much of a promoter is the customer? And on average, what is the global net promoter score and based off on segments, based off on any number of other data points, who, who is a true promoter, who has a really high average net promoter score, and then who is not, who is a much more of a tractor, these data points, especially when it’s sent with a tool that can help you, not just identify who actually like who literally, who like the customer itself, which customers gave you really high net promoter scores, which ones did not. And what unite, those who gave a really high net promoter scores. What about their customer journey or customer experience made that number so high? What about their demographics made that number? So high, same thing for psychographics, meaning what were they hoping to achieve? What, what were they thinking? What were they expecting? What motivated them. And then, of course, demographics, meaning, you know, job title, industry role, all of these things work together to, um, provide some insight into what are some of the things that unites the people that gave us really high net promoter scores versus not. And again, I mentioned, if you’re using a tool that is strong at helping connect those dots, then you end up with even more data and insight opportunity than before, which is incredibly powerful. You can typically make pretty good decisions based off of that net promoter score. However, also does have some downsides. So for example, because it has just one question, it does not give you a ton of extra context again, about what influenced or inspired the score that was given. So a customer who might’ve had a relatively great experience up until one particular moment where something was not great. And then that influenced the net promoter score. That’s where our net promoter score does get a little tricky. And there are other reasons why net promoter score on the w does have some downsides as with any of these frameworks. But if you were, if you were to combine it with some other practices, this could also be a really interesting way to, again, gauge product market fit. And the next quantitative Dana point, when it comes to product market fit, it’s probably one of my least favorites, unless it is applied with a certain level of diligence, because it’s really easy to misconstrue and that’s churn low churn, low churn numbers. When we say turn typically, we mean, these are people who continue to use a product up until they decide not to, upon which they cancel. And the cancellation is considered part of the churn. So churn numbers, turn rate, for example, it’s about how many customers you lose on average every single week or month, year, et cetera. And then there’s of course revenue churn, how much revenue is actually churned it from, from the MRR total, but there’s, there’s user churn. How many users do we turn on average? How many customers would be turned on average? And then there’s course there’s revenue churn. How much money do we actually lose on average every given month? And what’s the rate of that. And here’s where churn gets a little tricky when you have really low churn. And I would say typically we’re looking at less than 5% for most. I hate to say traditional SAS, because what SAS is truly traditional, but for most SAS products, less than 5% churn is considered pretty, pretty healthy, less than 3% churn is pretty great. And then negative turn is just like, Whoa, Holy crap, teach us your ways. What are you doing to get negative churn? You know, tell us your secrets. And with churn, it gets kind of tough. It gets tricky because churn can indicate so many different things and without proper context about why the churn is happening, it can be a great indicator of product market fit. It could also be a terrible indicator of product market fit. Here’s what I mean. You might have a customer segment that has incredibly low churn. They have just the lowest churn. It’s, I mean, it’s like two to 3%, and then you might have another customer segment that has really high churn. However, based off of the rest of the product based off of your funnel could actually indicate why the churn is as high as it is, or just the overall level of product market fit. So for example, one customer segment might have extremely high churn. And the first assumption at that might be, Oh, well, they just don’t have the best product market fit. And I would generally agree, however, there might actually be other indicators elsewhere. So for example, that customer segment, let’s say your funnel requires a credit card to sign up for the product. And for whatever reason, one particular customer segment has no problem with that. They sign up easily. They they’re not tripped up by the credit card requirement and it doesn’t bother them in them at all. They might actually have a credit card on hand on file. They might be a leader in a team and have their own budget. And then this other customer segment might have a lot higher churn, but they also might not be a credit card holder. The credit card requirement might have an actual implication on the level of turn, whether or not they have challenges with the product or what have you, you know, of course remains to be discussed, but there are certainly other implications across the entire business and that ultimately results in the churn that happens. So. I would say churn, I think is great just from a, a face level perspective, but to really understand it, it does require a certain level of diligence like any of these frameworks or KPIs or resources, but especially when it comes to making assumptions about product market fit churn can be a really easy, quick way. And at the same exact time, it can be a tricky way because depending on the customer segment you’re focusing on, or the cohort that you’re focusing on, you might find that some have incredibly high churn, some have incredibly low churn. And then of course there are other aspects of the business that impact that churn is the last activity or thing someone can really do with your product, assuming they don’t reactivate or re-engage later. What I mean by that is a cancellation. It’s kind of like, I wouldn’t say it’s the final, final straw, but it’s certainly one of those last moments that a customer experiences with the business, unless of course they reactivate later, which means that every single little turning point in every single little experience or, um, uh, engagement with the brand or the product itself could have had an impact. And it’s really tough to know exactly how much of it was customer experience, brand experience versus product, and how much of it was just, you know, what this product didn’t meet my needs. That’s why I would say if we’re going to use churn as an indicator of product market fit, just make sure that you double it up with something else. And also some customer research, if possible. Okay. Finally, we are going to get to probably one of my favorite ways to measure product market fit. And the last way certainly has many different opportunities, but it’s to use a framework that measures product market fit. You might’ve actually have heard me talk about this particular framework, but I learned about it through superhuman and superhumans founder role actually found out about it through a few other various sources. Some I believe had to do with Sean Ellis, the author of hacking growth. And if I’m not mistaken, it was either base camp or buffer who actually used this process as well. I could be wrong about that, but the framework itself is actually really simple. It asks just four questions. And by asking these four questions, we can actually dig a little bit deeper and retrieve a quantitative assessment of what our degree of product market fit is for a particular customer segment, which is incredibly powerful. The four questions are this. The first is how would you feel if you could no longer use superhuman or in this case, you’d put your product name. The choices are just three choices, and this is critical because some I’ve noticed some teams will change these options. And this is where I would say, I don’t know if it says statistically relevant or scientifically relevant at that point, if you change the framework in general, but the options are very disappointed, somewhat disappointed and not disappointed. And this is very similar. It’s kind of reminds me of net promoter score. But what I love about this is disappointment level is a direct reflection of how much value someone is getting, and then therefore, how many other opportunities or options do they have? AKA what makes a product truly special? So in superhumans case, if they got mostly not disappointed, that says a number of things, it says they probably have other options. Superhuman probably didn’t allow them in the way that they were expecting. And it probably wasn’t solving the right kind of pain on the contrary. If they’re very disappointed, then superhuman probably has a very unique value proposition that they need to uncover. And it’s probably providing a very special kind of value to a certain kind of customer. The second question is what type of people do you think would most benefit from superhuman? And what I love about this question too, is that it’s a psychological question. And it’s one that will imply what kind of person would answer, not disappointed versus very disappointed. Most people receiving the survey will answer with their profile. So if a photographer is completing this survey, they’ll probably say, Oh, well, a photographer will get the most value out of this product. And if it were a CEO founder, they’d probably say, Oh, well it would be a CEO, founder, someone just like me. Number three is what is the main benefit you receive from superhuman or in this case, of course your product name. Again, this is just an open text box, nothing specific here to put, but this gives you a hint at what that value proposition is. As I mentioned in number two, and then number four, how can we improve superhuman or the product for you? And this gives a sense of out of the different kinds of customers who replied to the survey, what are they expecting in order to stay or get more value? And this can actually be critical when it comes to deciding and determining what customer segment to ultimately focus on. And then also what degree of product market fit do you currently have with a segment? Some people will answer not a single thing. I absolutely love this product. It’s great. I wouldn’t change anything. And then others might have an essay, a list, uh, what feels like a novel of features and requirements, even though they might love the product, it might actually cost them more to keep them. And that’s something that I think this survey does really well. It helps identify who those key people are. What are, what are the value propositions or benefits they’re currently experiencing? And then finally, what is the laundry list of things that they’re looking for, if anything, and this can kind of give you a sense of, Oh, we’re really strong in these particular customer segments, but maybe not so much in these, but of course this would not be a true framework. If it did not have some degree of quantitative data mining and reverse engineering when it comes to figuring out, okay, but how do we effectively measure this? There’s an article that I’m going to list, uh, or link to at the bottom of the description of this podcast. Hopefully this works in Spotify or wherever it is that you’re listening today. But the article actually goes through superhumans exact process for how they calculated this. And basically what they ended up doing was they have the entire dataset, which is great, but they really wanted to focus on the people who were very disappointed. So they ended up taking that particular part of the pie, just sifting out the rest of the data just for now. They just wanted to look at this one cohort who said very disappointed. And then from there they broke down and measured. What kinds of customers said very disappointed. And then from there they were able to reverse engineer. What degree of product market fit did they have within every single customer segment? The ultimate number to reach in this particular case was if you had 40% of your desired customer segment or target market that said very disappointed, then you likely had really strong part of market fit, or you were well on your way. If you were less than that, if you had 22% or 32% or whatever other number, then you probably didn’t have super strong product market fit role in the article that I’m going to link to on first round role talks about how close he at the time, at least of writing the article was to product market fit. And then also he talks about the other signals that he noticed throughout the process. And then of course there are breakdowns of exactly how he broke down these numbers and how he really sifted through the data and, and focused in on one particular data set. But it’s actually, it’s pretty inspiring. And it also makes product market fit feel and seem at least on paper, a lot more achievable and also measurable, which I absolutely love. Okay. So as a quick recap, we just talked about using a framework to measure product market fit. And the one that I’m going to mention is the one that superhuman did use highly recommend leveraging that process throughout your founder journey in general, it doesn’t have to be when you are super early stage, this can be for any stage, any stage can use this particular framework. We talked about cohort retention analysis. So leveraging the data that you already have and analyzing, if you keep at least 50% of paying customers after the first six months to 12 months, and then of course beyond then there’s net promoter score. We can use net promoter score to identify, engage who is getting value out of the product and who’d recommend it. And then finally we could use churn again, a tricky one because there’s lots and lots and lots of, uh, implications when it comes to churn. But churn can also be a really quick and easy way to gauge what your level of credit market fitness. Thank you guys so much for listening. I, as per usual, I always hope that this is helpful and that it helps break down some ways that you can start to quantitatively measure your product market fit. And also a little bit of qualitative stuff as well, especially with the superhuman product market fit framework. Of course designed, I think originally by Sean Ellis. So I want to make sure to give credit where credit’s due. However, hopefully these are some, again, due to just some simple ways to make it a little bit more crystal clear, even though product market fit is something that is, can be at least shades of gray. Thank you again for listening. I hope this was helpful. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 15: How to prioritize your growth ideas](https://demandmaven.io/ep-15-how-to-prioritize-your-growth-ideas/) **Published:** February 24, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** As a founder, you probably think of new growth ideas everyday. But how many of the ideas do you follow through on? Deciding how to prioritize your growth ideas is the critical first step to implementing them. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, walks through the different frameworks you can use to evaluate your growth ideas and decide which you will prioritize. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - - **1:40 – It’s hard to find the best lever for growth.** As a founder you’ve got lots of ideas about growth projects, but you might not have the structure for how to evaluate which project or idea is the best investment of resources. - **4:15 – Short-term vs long-term prioritization.** More often than not, early stage companies prioritize short-term projects and let long-term projects fall down the priority list. - **10:10 – Frameworks for evaluating projects and ideas.** The first framework is I.C.E. (Impact, Confidence, and Ease) - Create a spreadsheet with all of your growth ideas, then in three columns to the side, on a scale of 1-5, rate each idea for each category and then calculate the average. This overall rating should give you a sense for which is the most effective project to focus on now. - **13:50 – The I.R.C. Framework ( Impact, Risk, and Control).** Similar to a framework that Asia uses to asses risk that goes along with certain growth projects. - **18:05 – The time to revenue framework.** This is simply evaluating how quickly can you expect to see revenue from the growth ideas. How important this is will depend on your individual situation, but you always want to ask and have an estimate of how long the project will take to have an impact on revenue. - **19:30 – Reversing the funnel.** Our tendency is to focus on improving a sales funnel from the top down. But if you start from the bottom of the funnel and optimize for conversation at each stage going up you will be more effective. To do this start by identifying where the weakest part of your funnel is and then prioritize the ideas and projects that focus on that stage. - **25:00 – Building your own growth prioritization framework.** After you’ve tried and used a few different frameworks, then use what works best for you to create your own. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. I’m super pumped to talk about this particular topic because it is something that comes up just about every single time I talked to a founder about their ideas, about the projects they want to execute, prioritize, and do. It ultimately ends up coming down to the fundamental question, which is… I have all of these ideas; how do I actually prioritize them? Which ones should ultimately come first? And this is where I would say it depends on the stage of the growth process, you’re in. So, for example, if you are early stage versus maybe you’re in attraction stage, like you’re a series B or series C, and you’ve got these really big growth idea and projects to execute versus maybe some others where they’re much smaller, but you have fewer resources it’s going to, it’s going to vary. However, there are certainly some frameworks that we’re of course going to talk about and just some really quick and dirty tips and tricks. And then of course, just, you know, my hot take when it comes to how to prioritize those ideas based off of where you’re at in your journey. All right, let’s go. First of all, it completely makes sense. Growth is extremely overwhelming. Even for me, sometimes growth is one of those things where it is my job to think about it’s, it’s my job to really brainstorm, to plan, to measure, and to really, really understand what are the growth levers that are available to us and which ones do we pull at which times there’s also just a billion ideas all the time. And especially as CEO, as founder, as team leader, you are constantly getting exposed to all kinds of different tactics and strategies and practices and opportunities that can help you and others that might slow you down, just depending on your approach. Part of our job as strategists is to really figure out which ones are the ones that are going to help us accomplish our goals, generate revenue, build an incredible team, whatever it is that you are trying to achieve. I’m going to start by breaking out two really fundamental concepts when it comes to prioritizing specifically for growth. And this is really just based off of my own personal experience. The first aspect of this is going to be short-term and long-term prioritization. So how do we prioritize ideas for the near term? So within the next three to six months versus long-term, six months and beyond, and then the other facet of this is the stage of growth that you’re currently in. Whether you are very early stage, maybe you are still really honing in or solidifying product market fit. Maybe you’ve achieved a certain level of product market fit within a, within a part of the market, but now we need to move into traction. And then of course, maybe you’re in the attraction phase. You are, you are growing very, um, maybe very fast, but it might not be efficient. It might actually be very wasteful growth. It could also be growth in other ways that are more than just revenue, which is growing the team or identifying other market opportunities. So with these two aspects of growth combined, it adds, it adds a few different layers and there are certainly tools and tricks and things that we can do and use in any of these scenarios. But I just wanted to give you just the overarching mindset, if you will, that you should be in if you’re in one or more of these buckets. So if you’re coming to this from a place of, I’ve got a bunch of ideas and I don’t really know how to prioritize them, or we’d have a bunch of projects, but we don’t know which ones should ultimately come first. The first spectrum, if you will, that I’ll give you is what’s short term versus what what’s long term. And the trick here is you’re going to need a balance of both. It’s a very common oversight to focus too much on short term project prioritization. So we’re going to, we’re going to do all of the growth activities that only give us short term results versus prioritizing the ones that are long-term. And more often than not most CEOs and founders will prioritize short term projects and not always to their detriment, but sometimes to their detriment where they don’t have enough long-term projects going on that carry the short-term projects through the next few years. Even a common classic example of this is focusing on short term, which would be, let’s say marketing wise, we are going to spin up ads. We want to spend a bat as if that’s one of our growth ideas we’re going to do paid advertising. It’s like, okay, great. That’s a short-term long-term however, we are going to, as, as we do paid acquisition, we’re going to use that to learn about organic search SEO and content marketing, except what ends up happening is you start the short-term projects, but you never prioritize the long-term ones. And that’s kind of where a lot of businesses get in trouble. They start the short-term projects and then never add long-term ones to their weekly and monthly cadences or sprints. And then six months a year later, they’ve got no, except for what they pay for. And the now they’ve got to figure out, okay, well, how do we suddenly get organic traffic? I laugh, but it’s common. It’s really common. It’s really, really common and SEO versus paid advertising and organic search. Like that’s just one example. There are countless others. So that’s one framework or mindset to be in is how much of what’s on your plate growth wise? How much of that is short-term versus long-term and what are some of the other implications that require those things? Do we need to focus on the short-term because we have to, because we don’t have a whole lot of runway. That’s the case then that already changes or influences what our short term projects might be, or do we have runway? Do we have time? Is that something that we have available to us? Because that means that we can do both in some cases, and we should prioritize both. There you’ll need a balance of both in order to ensure that you get the best bang for anything that you do, too many short-term projects, you might risk burning out, not getting the results you need. And then of course, you end up working a lot harder, not necessarily smarter, and then too many long-term projects. And you might not see the short-term spikes that give you the confidence that you’re heading in the right direction in the first place it’s possible happens. It’s also normal, I would say, but ideally you want to get a balance. Balance is key here. The second has much more to do with the phase of growth that you’re currently in. And a lot of this has to do with the stage of the business. We always want to be respectful of where we’re at in the process and in the cycle of growing the business. Again, you could be very early stage, very early on and growth projects early on. A lot of it is very tactical and at the same exact time, there are some strategic projects that happen at that phase, but execution is usually pretty critical and being able to execute and being on blocked pretty important. I find when it comes to prioritization because so many of the growth projects are very highly tactical. There’s very rarely any dependency, meaning a lot of it can be done async with other projects sometimes not always, you know, not always that’s, uh, I hate to say that’s definitely just like the blanket rule, but usually in the early days, the ability to execute and execute fast is usually far more important. And then of course, layering on some really strategic plays that are vetted in that are very well thought out and designed. It’s usually much more important when you get to the later stages of growth, you get to more traction stages and then just high growth. We start looking at much more strategic plays. I find it’s far more important to have more strategically aligned projects. And you usually are able to execute. It’s much more about how do we really steer the ship and make sure that all of our ships are pointing in the same direction. It becomes much more about leading and guiding the teams. And then also when prioritizing projects, it also just becomes about ensuring that everyone’s enabled, aligned, focused, and incentivized to accomplish the projects. It’s a very different flavor. Here is where I would say prioritization frameworks are incredibly helpful and order definitely does tend to matter for the most part. That’s not to say, however, that frameworks prioritization-wise, at least aren’t going to be helpful. Regardless. In fact, I actually find that a lot of founders, especially if it’s just them in the business, prioritization frameworks help a lot. It helps make it pretty clear what to do next. And the cool part is that there’s usually very little dependency, whereas with a larger business, a larger company, a much more mature growth cycle or growth phase, there’s a lot more to dependency and that’s where it gets a little trickier. So those are the two aspects or mindsets, if you will, that you might be in at any given time and they’re not mutually exclusive. So that context, we’re going to dig into a few of my favorite frameworks that we use to prioritize projects. The first is one that I use all the time and this one was actually recommended by Sean Ellis of hacking growth. A great read, a wonderful book, highly recommended, and it is called ice and just impact confidence and ease. I want you to imagine a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet of, with a list in one column of all of the different growth ideas that you have. And in the next three columns over, you’ve got one column for impact, one column for confidence, one column for ease. And then the last column is going to be the average of all of those three numbers. Ice can be used on a scale of one to five. It can be used on a scale of one to 10. I prefer one to five. It keeps it much more simple, maybe a little bit less nebulous of going from one to 10. You might find that one to 10 is better for you and your team. One to five might also be better for you as well might be simpler, but on a scale of one to five, you’ll give every single idea a score according to the impact of it, the ease of it. And then of course your confidence level. And then after that, you’ll take the average of those three numbers. Let’s break down impact confidence and ease. So impact really refers to what is the impact of this particular idea. It doesn’t have a direct impact on what it is that we’re hoping to accomplish for the year or the quarter for the business doesn’t have impact. Is this going to move the needle? And we give it a score of one to five, five, ideally, at least being the absolute highest. So this is going to have a huge impact all the way down to one or even zero, which is actually very little impact. The confidence are we confident? This is going to work now; I love this one because sometimes growth projects are actually experimenting, and we need to honor the experiment. So if we’re not really confident it’s going to work. It’s an experiment. II hate to say it’s a test, but it’s a test. It’s like, we don’t necessarily know. We’ll have to experiment with it. We have a hypothesis. We’re pretty confident about the hypothesis maybe, but we don’t necessarily, it’s not a guaranteed done deal. So if we have really high confidence, it’s going to work that we put a higher score. If we have less confidence going to work, but a less or a lower score. And the finally ease, how easy is this for us to execute? Do we have the resources, the skills, the team, the people, the tools, et cetera, the knowledge even to execute this, is this going to be easy for us? Sometimes content marketing. I think of content marketing specifically because a lot of the technical founders really have challenges with creating content regularly. It’s not easy for them. Then they’re confident it’ll work. It’s going to have a really high impact, but the ease is so low. And so then the average of that idea ends up actually kind of being a little bit lower. And this is one of those. This is one of the situations where; depending on the framework or the mindset that you’re in, if you need short term or you need long-term goals or projects, then you might put content marketing in the long-term bucket, but you have to overcome the easy part. This is how an average can certainly help really highlight some things about how you think about certain projects. And then also what stage you’re in can also impact how you think about it. In a short term world, content marketing might seem like overkill. And then in a long-term world, content marketing is clearly the way to go. So we probably need to figure out how to overcome the ease aspect of it. Another similar framework. This is one that I’ve actually developed internally. This is one that I use at demand may have been for client projects, impact, risk, and control. So a very, a very similar framework. And this one is much more about minimizing certain risky projects, not minimizing in terms of like, we’re not doing them, but just much more minimizing the impact of them. So if there’s going to be a project that we’re going to put up on the list of ideas, that is actually really risky for us to do, it’s important to acknowledge that in this, I would say this is much more relevant to SAAS companies in industries, where they might need to take risks, but it’s uncomfortable. And so, impactors can control again. It’s not for definitely not for everyone, but this can also be helpful. Similar situation to ice. Will this have a big impact? Is it risky? How, what is, what is really risky to us? Five would be not really risky at all. Whereas one would be incredibly risky. Like maybe let’s reconsider this and then control how in control of this. Are we, are we in control of how much to what degree do we control, like this particular activity or project? And this one might be kind of a weird one to list, but there are some projects or ideas where we really don’t have a whole lot of control over the outcome. And that is where we have to be careful. An example of this was actually one that recently happened in a client project where the client really wanted to launch new pricing. And the new pricing was going to have a pretty big impact for a very small number of customers, but it was going to be a change regardless, across many different customer accounts. And there were some particular client accounts where the price was going to rise significantly. And I think that there were only like five or 10 of these, but it was a very, it was a, it was definitely risky. Unless of course we got information that made us feel like it wouldn’t, it would absolutely have an, a high, it would have a high impact on growth in general, raising the prices and raising the, the person plans and changing those readjusting. Those was absolutely going to have an impact on growth. It was very obvious where it was a little tricky was the control aspect of it. Well, we weren’t necessarily in control of how these customers were going to react to changing these plans. It was also during 2020 COVID pandemic year. And it was, it was very, very likely that we could lose some customers maybe more than what we were hoping to gain. And so the risk was, I would say, relatively high and then the control was relatively high. So, in this case, I would give it lower scores, you know, high control score in this case would be we’re super in control of what happens after. And in this case, I would actually say we were closer maybe to like two or three. We were much less in control. And then the same thing for risk, we weren’t, it was pretty risky. It was going to significantly impact a few customers and it’s definitely risky. So again, lower scores there. And by the average you’d think, Oh, when, well, this idea is great, but if there’s another, that is better than we should do that. And the, the fun part about this is that while we technically already were, we’d already prioritized all the other ideas and this one was the next one listed tackle. And so my approach to it was, well, if we can reduce the risk and if we can be comfortable or confident in our level of control, then this is a very worthy project, regardless, because it has a high impact. And that is exactly what a framework that helps you prioritize at least helps you do. It helps you have those conversations. So if you’re talking about it with the client, we decided that the best approach would be to, to, to phase out the approach to get feedback first, before we just launched it. And the feedback was positive and that made us increase the control score a little bit. And also the risk score a little bit is suddenly became much less risky and we actually had more control than we thought it was great. One of the other prioritization frameworks, and this is one that you can tack on to any of these ideas. It could also be one that you use independently, and it’s just time to revenue. How quickly can you expect to see revenue from any of the projects that you have on the list? And this is again, that short-term versus long-term mindset that I mentioned earlier in this episode, some of these projects and ideas that you might have, some of them are very much the short term and others might be over time, over a long period of time, more than six months, which in SAAS or startup world feels like a very long time, but sometimes our projects or ideas, sometimes they do have a revenue path. And that time to revenue is something to keep in mind, especially if it is something that is incredibly worthwhile and can complete the short-term versus long-term requirement. So again, you can actually add this as a column to any of these frameworks. You can also just use this independently, either one works, but that could also help really give you a sense of based off of the projects that we have, the things that we’re thinking about, our ideas, some of these are going to take a lot longer. Others are going to be hopefully a lot shorter. We’ll be able to learn from them much faster, the next framework to use or prioritization framework. If you will actually has a lot more to do with the funnel itself. This one is much more relevant to early stage SAAS businesses and their founders. Something that comes up often in any kind of growth planning for an early stage company or a company that does not have a marketing team is what do we do first? What do we execute first? And when it comes to marketing and growth, usually we reverse engineer funnel wise, what growth should look like? There’s a common misconception that you have to go from top of the funnel activity. So you generate awareness first, never thinking about the website performance or how your free trial conversion rates are, or even your retention. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of, uh, assumption that you start top of the funnel, meaning you generate traffic first. And then once you get the traffic, then you figure out how to convert it. And then once you convert it, then you figure out how to optimize your free trial conversion rate or your demo conversion rate. And then you, you know, and so on and so forth, you go from top of the funnel to middle of the funnel. And bottom of the funnel to me, when I find is much more successful for early stage founders, it’s actually reverse this process and to start with making the bottom of the funnel as seamless as it possibly can be, and then moving up to middle of the funnel and then top of the funnel. And the reason for that is because it’s much more expensive, much more expensive to drive a lot of traffic to a website that doesn’t convert. And then to therefore also not actually convert free trial users. So if you have a very weak onboarding funnel, if you have a very low converting website, it makes much more sense to invest time and activity into those entities first, and then to focus on driving a bunch of traffic. That’s not to say that you don’t drive any traffic that you don’t drive any top of the funnel activity. It’s just much more weighted towards the more middle and bottom of the funnel first. And that’s just purely because if you don’t have a strong middle and bottom of the funnel presence or baseline or foundation, then it’s going to get really challenging to drive traffic and convert them and do that efficiently. The analogy or the metaphor that I give is, I guess it’s really more of analogy, but it’s kind of like burning cash in the front yard. We’re just going to set this money on fire, just picture that. And that is what driving top of the funnel activity before you ever have a strong middle or bottom of the funnel really looks like, and don’t get me wrong. Sometimes you have to experience that in order to really know. And in fact, it’s kind of one of those chicken and the egg scenarios, where, how can you really know if you don’t get any traffic? And I agree with that to some extent, but it’s certainly not the only focus I will say that. So when it comes to prioritizing growth activities or ideas, if we know that we don’t have a strong middle of the funnel or bottom of the funnel, or if we don’t know what we don’t know, then really our activities and projects become around understanding that better. And then also what are the projects and activities that do strengthen that? Whether that’s copywriting new pages, updating the messaging, creating a much better onboarding flow, creating activation emails. There’s a, the list goes on in terms of what you can do. That’s middle and bottom of the funnel. And then finally, some other ideas might be to do some top of the funnel activity, but maybe more of the activities are bottom and middle of the funnel. This scenario is much more specific to early stage founders, but really any stage business can use bottom of the funnel, middle of the funnel and top of the funnel in terms of how to prioritize activity. So for example, if you actually have the reverse challenge, you really struggle with top of the funnel awareness. You actually have a pretty well-performing funnels so far, meaning your website converts really well. You actually do convert your free trial or your demo prospects and users who come into the product and you also convert those into customers and they retain then that tells us, Oh, well, let’s focus on top of the funnel activity. So what part of the funnel would you say is weakest in the business? You can use your growth activities and ideas and apply them to different parts of the funnel based off of where it’s weakest at. And then sometimes you might find that you really don’t have a, you’ve got a ton of ideas when it comes to middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel and all of your projects and activities are in those two places. And then it really just becomes a question of what do you have time for what’s realistic. And then you just take it from there because sometimes the answer just is, well, you do all of these things. And the ones that you do first is really just what you have the bandwidth for. Sometimes that’s totally an acceptable answer. It’s usually an acceptable answer. Actually, if you don’t have the resources, then you know, obviously you can’t, you, you kind of have to abide by the law of scope, time and budget, right? I would say cut yourself some Slack. If you find that you have this big, long list of middle of the funnel and bottom of the funnel things and the only person to do it is you definitely some grace here, all right, the last thing I’m going to leave you with, and then we’ll run and then we’ll close it out for today would be to actually build your own building your own growth prioritization framework. It is so much fun. And the more that you use prioritization frameworks, the more that you start picking up on things that you like, things that you don’t like and things that are parts of the framework that help and enable you to guide the team, execute the work, prioritize the projects, and then frameworks that don’t necessarily like there’s something that’s missing about them. Maybe there’s a particular part of a framework that doesn’t really help you make a decision about something else it’s kind of correlated to it. This is where I would say definitely build your own, especially after trying a few and you get a sense for how each of them work. I use any of these at any given time during my projects with my clients, but sometimes we do end up creating our own just based out of sheer necessity. So I would say, take your time with these. They are absolutely designed to be flexible at the same exact time designed to kind of hold you to some truth and some realism about what makes sense for you to handle for the team to handle resources, skills, capabilities. And then of course the reality of just the business situation you might have to focus on short-term goals. Maybe you do have runway to focus on long-term goals. It just depends on, on wherever it is a trap, which is of course honored and special and respected so on or wherever it is that you’re at, but then also prioritization frameworks can kind of help you get at your comfort zone, encourage you to do some different things. Okay, great. Thank you so much for listening. I hope this was helpful. It’s definitely something that has been on the list to chat about for a while. I’ll probably write a much longer form article about this because it is a question that comes up all the time about what do I focus on first and why, and what are the implications of that? I would say if you’re an early-stage founder, again, it’s going to be much more about you’ll probably have a lot less dependencies in the business, meaning it’s possible to focus on bottom of the funnel and middle of the funnel synonymously, and it is not too painful to prioritize one versus the other. And then the larger that the businesses, you won’t have a lot more dependencies where you’ve got a lot more moving parts and a lot more implications and contingencies and things do have to move together in a certain way. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 16: The 3 stages of growth](https://demandmaven.io/ep-16-the-3-stages-of-growth/) **Published:** March 3, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Is your growth strategy working? There are few questions as important. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, walks through the three stages of growth, and the key actions for assessing and planning for improvement from each stage. Understanding where we are at when it comes to growth will help you know where to focus and what next steps make the most sense on your growth journey. ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - - **2:30 – The three stages of growth – These are distinct stages, but they’re not mutually exclusive. You can have one foot in one and another in the other** - Going from zero growth to some growth - Going from some growth to fast growth - Going from inefficient growth to efficient growth - **4:00 – Going from zero growth to some growth** - This stage is likely the easiest to measure. Simply your M.R.R. (monthly recurring revenue) is not growing or it is growing very slowly - This usually means that something in your funnel isn’t working. We can assume that either the top of the funnel or the bottom of the funnel is off and that something isn’t aligned strategically. This is a signal to go back and look at if the product, the market, or the positioning within the market. - **8:50 – Going from some growth to fast growth** - In this stage you have some growth (2-10%) but are looking at how to improve that growth to get to exponential growth (100% or more) - At this stage it’s about a tight sales and marketing funnel that is working well, having low churn, and expanding to scale. Looking at what you are doing at the top of the funnel and looking at the activities you can do to expand the top of the funnel quickly - Usually, to make this jump to very fast growth, there is some type of growth loop involved. Some way for clients to recommend, invite, or refer others so that one client can turn into 3,4,5 other clients - **16:35 – Going from inefficient to efficient growth** - This stage is usually associated with having relatively strong growth, but it is costing a lot. The cost of acquiring customers is high relative to the lifetime value of the customer - When you think you’re here, the first step is to really get solid on your KPI’s so you can identify what is and isn’t efficient. - There are obvious places to look, like churn, and there are also less obvious places, like your pricing and plans. ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Today, we are going to talk about the three stages of growth. The reason why I wanted to chat about this is because more often than not, whenever I have a conversation with a founder, who’s in those earlier stages of growth, we inevitably talk about where exactly they are in their growth journey. And so much of that growth journey has everything to do with what kinds of results you can expect from marketing, from sales, from any growth effort and at the same exact time. So much of where you are also impacts what you’re reasonably going to be able to accomplish, to measure so on and so forth, and really acknowledging and understanding where you’re at in that journey and what those stages of growth are and where you might be more mature in some areas and maybe less mature in others. This is going to be incredibly helpful for really establishing what needs to happen from a strategic perspective. And then also what needs to be established from an execution perspective in order for you to meet the goals that you’re hoping to achieve. So whenever we’re thinking about early stage SAS companies, and when I say early stage, I’m going to put early stage in the general category of less than 1 million in ARR and purely because it just really depends on of course, how big of a company you expect to get. Um, but I’m assuming that at some point, the business will be worth much more than that. If your total adjustable market is much smaller than that, then the, I mean, to be honest, the rules don’t really change, or at least the structures don’t really change. It changes far more when you get into the 10 plus million, the hundred plus million and so on and so forth. So that’s where things really start to expand to get even more complex, but it will, but less than that, I would say these stages of growth are still very applicable. So first I’m going to break down the three different stages of growth, and then I’m going to get into what to actually do in each of these stages. The first stage is going from zero growth to some growth. The second is going from slow growth to fast growth. And then the third is going from inefficient growth to efficient growth. What’s interesting about each of these stages is that a business can technically be in one or two of these at any given time. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And you’ll also find that while these are really distinct stages, it is still possible to be in between one or two of these and to have your one foot in one of these. And then another foot in a previous stage from a demand may have been perspective. So from, from my perspective, and from a consulting perspective, it’s pretty critical for us to know which stage the businesses in at any given time. That way it helps us not only set the right expectations for what’s possible in let’s say a three-month strategic engagement, but it also really helps us focus in on what business functions need to actually be adjusted in order to reach these goals. And also just to complete the full growth picture because each of these stages have their implications on what needs to happen. That’s something from a consulting perspective that we’ve got to be prepared for. So part of our job is really identifying what stage of growth is this business, and let’s start with going from zero growth to some growth. Okay? So this stage is probably the easiest to measure because you can actively see that the MRR is not going in the direction that you want it to go. It’s not growing at all, or it’s increasing by barely a percentage or two. It feels very much like a flat line when it comes to growth. What’s interesting about this stage though, is that it does imply that you’re still acquiring just enough customers where you are still offsetting any churn that you might be experiencing, but overall it’s a flat line. It’s not growing at all. And if it’s not growing at all, it could also just be extremely, just snail pace growth. We can, we almost can hardly call it that because it’s probably not even a percent, maybe 2%. So here’s what we do in this stage. The flat line is pretty easily measurable, but it usually means that something in the funnel just actively isn’t growing and part of the magical equation of SAAS, especially if you’re a much more genomic hit stage traditional SAS. But if you’re a pure SAS and you have a monthly recurring revenue model of some kind or something, subscription-based, then we know that we have to continuously add more customers to the top and also continuously retain more and more customers, and also continue to convert them at a really efficient rate. We can assume that either the top or the bottom is probably not operating as well as it could. It’s not expanding in some kind of way, whether we’re not adding enough, you know, net new free trials or demos, or what have you, or it could also be that we’re just not retaining enough. It really depends on the different ends of the spectrum, but something in the funnel overall is relatively broken and the keyword or mantra here, if we were to add something to really focus on, if you’re in this boat is to plan. Typically when we see really like extremely slow minute growth or absolutely zero growth, even down to decline, it means that something is amiss strategically. It usually means that we haven’t been making the right bets from a strategic perspective, and we need to realign. If we find that we need to realign, it’s, it’s likely in a really big area of the business nine times out of 10, probably it has to do with product. Sometimes it has to do with the market. And then also sometimes it has to do with the positioning in that market. It could be a combination of all of the above, but these are all really big strategic bets to understand, and then to therefore make. And so when we see zero growth decline, even this is when we really need to take a step back and really look at the bigger picture. And I use the word plan here because there is something that we missed. There’s something that wasn’t aligned and it could actually be many different things. And I, and usually it’s several different things that are kind of all impacting growth at the same exact time. Usually that means that we’ve got probably a big, a few very big tasks to take care of or to do, and to really think about what the strategy is going to be moving forward. And it’s a lot of heavy lifting for sure. And then on top of that, we have to actually execute against whatever it is that we decide in the end. And again, if you’re here, I would very much challenge you to take a step back and look at the overall business vision from product all the way down to how are we tactically executing across all of the different departments in the business functions of the business, whether you’re just a solo founder or whether you’ve got, you know, 50 people on the team, whichever one, this is where something has to shift. And nine times out of 10 usually is very strategic. And then from there we have to figure out, okay, are we executing against this strategy as best as we possibly can? And if not, what needs to actually change for us to do that? So if you’re in this stage, there’s again a really good chance that we need to do a lot more strategic work and then therefore plan to execute against that. I definitely advise and recommend just taking a step back and looking at the business or the product, whichever one with as fresh of eyes as you possibly can, and also to not be afraid to really start to measure things and to really start to understand both qualitatively and quantitatively where things might be missing the Mark, where things might be broken, or if it’s not broken, it’s not happening or expanding enough. The next stage is going from really slow growth, too fast growth. This is where we might actually be growing, okay, but we want to get to the fast growth. So maybe we’re only doing 2% or 5%, 10%, but we would like to be in the 2X. So this is where we jumped to the 100% growth or the 500% growth. In some cases, this is where we start telling the 2X, 3X, 10 X story, which might honestly make you groan. If that is not the way that you like to think about growth. And that is something that’s exciting for you. The next section is going to be for you, especially if you are actually in this stage, this is where MRR goes from percentage growth to multiplier growth. And this is where we start telling that story about 2X and 4X and ect. The keyword, our mantra here is to really focus on expanding as much as possible. So before we talked about how do we plan this one is expansion by definition, what are the activities and things that are going to bring us scale and scale in acquisition scale and retention. I mean, wherever we can really put our efforts and focus, imagine doing that, but, but even bigger than maybe what it is that we’re currently doing, slow growth itself is obvious. So it’s, you know, it was probably not super hard to measure this. Here’s what we’re going to do. If we want to go from this slow growth that we’re experiencing. And again, this could be that 10%, 20% that might actually be really fast for some of you. But if you are VC funded, for example, a 10% growth or 20% growth, probably isn’t going to cut it at the end of the year. My guess is especially depending on the type of funding that you’ve taken on, you’ve got to look at like, you know, what is 2X and 10X growth look like? What is, what does that look like based off of you know, just what we’re currently doing in the market that we have so on and so forth. So what we’re going to do is if we’re experiencing this, if we’re kind of in this camp, it usually means that something in the funnel, again, just isn’t expanding enough. It’s very possible that top of the funnel is really struggling. We’re not getting enough people, either booking demos, starting a trial, creating an account, whatever that activity or conversion point is. And it’s also not happening at a scale that we need in order to accomplish our goals. And so this is really where it becomes about not just strategic alignment, but execution really becomes important if you are in this stage, the ability to execute on many different strategies and channels, and in particular ones that actually align with your business vision and the product in the market, these can’t be willy-nilly strategies like obviously have to be aligned. But the goal here is to really focus on, okay, what is it that we are not growing enough? And then what needs to happen to grow the crap out of that? And not just like small beans, but like big beans. We want this to be as expansive. And we want to take advantage of as many of the opportunities that are available to us. There are absolutely channels and practices and things that do scale. But one caution I will throw to this particular group is to not forget about churn here, churn retention, there it’s actually possible to run a business where you experienced net negative churn. I’ve experienced it previously in roles where I served as head of marketing. I’m not saying it’s going to be something that is destined for everyone. However, there are ways to experience exponential growth, and it usually has to do with a combination of having an extremely efficient bottom of the funnel, including churn. We likely don’t have super high churn. We have just enough churn for it to be as efficient as possible and even potentially net negative. The other thing I think that really impacts the amount of growth that happens here is be looking for the growth loops that are available to you in your business and the product. What I mean by that is how do you take one customer and turn them into five customers usually that has to do with referrals or people inviting others to their accounts. We see, I mean, Dropbox, I think is the example that is used a billion. And one times with the same thing can be applied, um, across many different businesses and products. It’s very possible to identify a growth loop that you might have that gets a customer to recommend or refer automatically naturally. And it could also be not necessarily recommending a referring, but inviting. So where are the opportunities for people to collaborate and then therefore invite others to what it is that you are currently, whatever the experience of the product is. And then therefore the value that’s associated with that, this isn’t something that is easily done by every single kind of product. But whenever we see extremely high growth that exponential growth, sometimes not always, usually however, there is a growth loop involved in some kind of way. There’s something about the inherent nature of the product that makes it really easy to share with other people to expose publicly in some kind of way. I think a great example of this is if you were to think of like a mural board, for example, every time I share a strategic roadmap in mural with a client and they invite others to leverage that they have gotten exposure now to the product itself, they’ve gotten exposure to mural. So in a way I’m a customer of mural. I am part of murals functionality is to collaborate with others and to share boards. So in a way, a very natural inherent growth loop just within the product itself, again, not always possible for everything. There are some products and subscription-based software companies that that’s actually really hard, maybe even impossible to do, but I would encourage at least some kind of referral program or something’s out effect on the backend as well. That’s where we start to see exponential growth. There’s a few other ways that you can think about exponential growth, whether that’s really scalable sales practices and then really scalable marketing practices as well. And then of course, business development and partnerships. So this is where we start again, getting into that higher level strategic planning and also decision-making and what are the opportunities, just identifying the opportunities that are in the market today that bring you that sense of scale. That’s also something too to be thinking about, but again, if you are in that bucket of the slow growth to exponential growth or the fast growth, you want us to be fast, we need to be thinking scale, but then also what are some of, what are some of the things on the bottom of the funnel that impact the growth in the customer experience overall? How do we ensure that customers are actively recommending and referring it to others? The product has to be great. That’s probably, um, something that is already known, like it’s obvious, but is it so great that people recommend it to others? And this is something too that you can start to grow on the opposite end of the funnel as well, where customers B get more customers. And that’s a really powerful growth engine as well. And when both are operating on all cylinders, then it’s pretty natural to see that no, the 10% growth become the two X growth and that’s also incredibly powerful. Okay. So finally, the last stage or phase going from inefficient growth to efficient growth, okay, this one is one where I find the business is probably growing fairly well already. They’re doing a great job actually. And they might be in that, you know, two X, 10 X growth camp. They might also be in the 30% growth camp. And that’s honestly perfect for them, especially if they are a very big business and they are far more mature, it’s possible. However, that the growth that they’re experiencing isn’t as efficient and inefficiency to efficiency. This is something where we can certainly measure this in some ways, but some indicators of this for example, are the CAC to LTV ratios could be really low, meaning we’re not, we could be under spending when it comes to customer acquisition. We could also be overspending when it comes to customer acquisition, when directly compared to the lifetime value of those customers, we might actually have really low activation rates. Our churn might be high, but at the same exact time, however, we seem to be acquiring new users and customers just at a breakneck pace. And that’s awesome. But sometimes there are some core KPIs in the business that might not be as efficient as they could be the businesses growing again, but it might not be again as effective or efficient as what, at least from a SAAS perspective, we’ve identified to be relatively well-performing. I’m going to put that in a finger quotes because there are some businesses that perform extremely well. And it’s actually really hard to compare one businesses, KPIs and metrics to another’s and you come away with the same exact conclusions. I think the reality is that we’ve got benchmarks when it comes to the SAAS world and they serve a great purpose, but they aren’t always necessarily the only truth. Okay. So here’s what to do in this scenario first. It absolutely completely depends on what we would consider efficient, putting out a finger quotes versus what is not efficient. And honestly, one of the only ways to really identify that is to work with, let’s say, a chief revenue officer or someone who can really start to measure and define based on your own businesses terms, what is truly efficient, everything from what, what is the overall cost of the software? What is the dollar value that you get back from that? And how do we maximize that as much as possible? This is where we get to the nitty gritty details of everything from how much has it even cost to sell the software versus how much we’re at, or actually gaining back, like, what is the actual ROI value on every dollar that we’ve gained versus what we spend? I mean, it can get pretty nebulous here. And even this is where I would say working with, like a CFO or a CRO would be highly recommended if you have that available to you. But typically if you’re in this stage, you’re looking for how to maximize revenue potential and decrease any potential losses that you might have. And that can sound really, really conservative fiscally, but it certainly implies that we’re making, we could be making really tactical decisions based off of that. And we could also be making really strategic decisions based off of that. So if you’re looking to get more efficient, when it comes to the growth that you’re already experiencing, there’s really obvious places to look like looking at churn revenue, churn, use return, et cetera. And then there’s also may be less obvious places to look at such as the pricing plans that you have and how much of the average revenue per user you’re actually getting or average revenue per account you’re actually getting. And then of course taking look at no expenses versus the income you’re generating and it can go even further and deeper than that, if possible. And then from there you really decide, do you make decisions? Is there anything to execute or to decide that’s rooted in the product and the market itself in the model that you’re currently leveraging. And then also even potentially the channels that you’re currently investing in, especially if, for example, you find that your CAC to LTV ratio is actually really inefficient. There’s a number of KPIs metrics, et cetera, that you can use to identify that. And then of course there are some steps that you can take to remedy that and to make it even more efficient, sometimes growth isn’t necessarily how much you can fill the funnel with sometimes growth actually happens elsewhere in the business from an operational perspective, a financial perspective, there’s all kinds of different levers that we can pull when it comes to growth and part of the CEO’s job or the founder’s job is to identify those or to work with someone or some people who can help you identify those. Okay. So we covered the three stages of growth. The first growth was, or excuse me, the first stage was going from zero growth to some growth. Then there’s going from slow growth to fast growth, and then finally inefficient to efficient growth. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP. 17: The 3 stages of marketing](https://demandmaven.io/the-3-stages-of-marketing/) **Published:** March 10, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Is your marketing great, good, or non-existent? No matter where it is today, it’s important to recognize where you are and what your next steps should be. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down the three stages of marketing, how to know which stage you’re in, and what to do to level up from one stage to the next! ## Extra Resources - None ## TL;DL - **2:05 – What are the three stages of marketing?** ○ From No Marketing to Some Marketing ○ From Some (or bad) Marketing to Good Marketing ○ From Good Marketing to Great Marketing - **5:50 – Stage 1: Going from no marketing to some marketing** ○ The key part of this stage is establishing your baseline with analytics and basic strategy. In this stage, you probably have a website, but might not be producing any content and probably don’t have much acquisition activity happening. ○ The first thing to focus on in this stage is having the right tools and structure in place. Do you have the ability to measure your key analytics? Are you doing some type of regular marketing meeting? ○ When it comes to marketing strategy, the most important thing in this first stage is just to have one. Have a strategy in place so you can learn and improve it over time. It doesn’t make sense to jump into marketing activities until we know that we can execute it and can measure it! - **12:00 – Stage 2: Going from some marketing to good marketing** ○ The key to this second stage is really about optimization both in your internal processes and for the channels you’re working on. In this stage, you might have had a few false starts when it comes to creating content or marketing activities, your website is likely more robust, but from a funnel perspective isn’t dialed in. ○ In this stage you should be analyzing the business from top to bottom, everything from how marketing is being executed all the way down to product and internal business and optimizing as much as possible. ○ If you’ve had false starts with marketing efforts, the goal in this stage is to look into those activities to see what worked, what didn’t, and what could be improved. - **19:20 – Stage 3: Going from good marketing to great marketing** ○ Growing in this stage is truly about connecting deeply with the customer experience of your brand and innovating from there. In this stage, everything is firing on all cylinders. You have a robust website that is converting well, you have many different funnels that are converting well all the way down into paying customers. You feel like you are doing well, but know there is a next level and what to take your marketing to great. The key to taking that next step is innovation and then experimentation ○ Some of the activities that often happen in this stage are reinventing your brand or telling a different story or vision about your product and mission, making larger strategic moves like partnering with other brands, or more creative and innovative marketing activities. ○ The best way to know when you’ve truly achieved great marketing is when other people start raving about how great your marketing is - **25:00 – Recapping the three stages** ## Transcript What’s up founders! And welcome back to the In-Demand podcast where we talk all about how to reach your first $1m ARR. I’m your host Asia Orangio and I’m the founder of DemandMaven where we work with early-stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Whenever we work with founders and usually early-stage marketing is the missing link in some way to their growth. It could be that they’re not doing anything from an acquisition perspective. It could be that there’s nothing set up or configured from an activation perspective. And yes, even from a retention perspective, it’s possible that we’re attracting the wrong kinds of customers in the first place, which of course trickles all the way back up to marketing. They might not be executing marketing at all, or maybe they are, but nothing seems to be working. Perhaps they’re paralyzed by marketing as a function, have no idea where to start. It really runs the gamut in terms of what’s happening from a marketing perspective and what’s not happening and what the actual cause and effect really truly are. But whenever we work with an early stage business marketing is something that inevitably comes up. Usually they are tapping us to work with us because something is completely amiss marketing wise and yes, overall growth wise. And yes, overall go to market wise, go to market. Remember is that overarching strategy across the entire business, upon which marketing as a function needs to align to, but no matter what’s going on, there’s usually three marketing phases for pretty much any business that we try to identify whenever working with a company in previous episodes of the podcast, I’ve talked about the different stages of growth, but this time we’re actually going to dig deeper into the different stages of growth and really focus on marketing. So without further ado, these are, I should say the three stages of marketing the first age, going from zero marketing to some marketing. So we’re doing absolutely nothing to we’re doing something after that. We could be going from maybe some marketing to good marketing or in the words of my business coach, bad marketing to good marketing, and then finally going from good marketing to great marketing, most of our early stage clients. And when I say early stage, I really mean less than 1 million in ARR. Most of them are in the very first phase. They might be doing absolutely nothing and they need to start doing something. They could have absolutely nothing going on, but they don’t have anything or very little, at least from a foundational perspective. And when, I mean foundational, I mean, all of the things that need to be put in place for you actually execute marketing and know what you’re getting out of it. So today I’m going to break down each of these stages, and we’re also going to talk about what to do in each of these stages. So if you are kind of in one of these or you’re in between one or two of these, or you’re kind of in maybe both, depending on the aspect of marketing that we’re looking at, there’s going to be a list of things to contemplate. And then also to do this is based on my own personal experience with founders of early-stage companies from the past three years now. So DemandMaven will have been around February of 2021 will be our third year anniversary, which is incredibly exciting. And also remind me to never start a company in the middle of tax season, because it’s almost like you can’t enjoy it because you’re too busy, focused on like making sure that everything else is taken care of. But I believe if I’m not mistaken, I think February 4th, 2021 will be our third year. And in those three years, we have worked with countless founders, whether actually talking to them just about their business all the way down into actually working hands-on in their businesses. And whenever we work with founders, especially first time founders of a SAAS company, usually our job is to figure out where are they at in this spectrum of what they’re doing from marketing perspective. And this is where it can get really interesting these stages. Aren’t always mutually exclusive. Sometimes you can actually be in one or two of these at the same exact time. And also you can be in between them. You’re not quite dedicated to the one after and not necessarily the one before. Although I will say every time you enter a new market, you start the wheel all over again. So you start right back at one and sometimes you start at two it’s very rarely, however that a business just automatically launches directly into number three, which is you’ve, you’re already knocking out of the park from a marketing perspective and using to be perfect at it. You just you’d be great. Usually, if someone’s not starting at one, they’re starting at two. And then from there they really work to get to number three. And by that point, you probably don’t have to necessarily be perfect at it. It just needs to be good enough to help you get to the goal that you’re trying to reach or to reach the milestone or whatever it is that you want to achieve. This could be revenue based. This could also be more lifestyle-based or something really personal to you completely depends. There are all kinds of different motivations that founders have. So whatever that is for you, you can leverage that whenever you’re thinking about what these stages are and what they mean to you and how they help you get closer. So we’re going to start with going from zero marketing to some marketing. And this is like the bare minimum. Maybe you’ve got a website. If that I have worked with businesses where the website was a single page website, and that was it. And then some, they had maybe like launching or like a coming soon kind of page. And we have worked to expand the website over time. You might not be producing any kind of content, whether that’s blog, writing, maybe even like social media, like there’s, there’s really nothing that you’re producing. You’re probably really focused on the product, or you’re really focused on either generating business partnerships or potentially even doing some kind of customer development. There’s no acquisition activity really happening. There’s probably not even any onboarding or activation activities happening either because especially with a really lean website, we’re kind of assuming that something was set up pretty fast and it might’ve been there for a really long time. And also it’s very possible that especially if you’re early stage, the product is still in that MVP phase, you might still be like in a limited beta release or something to that effect. And there’s not really any way that people can just directly sign up today. There’s no retargeting or pay channels, no lead capture really of any kind. That’s not the main funnels. So for example, you’re only offering a free trial or demo. You’re not offering any other kind of lead magnet. Like people can’t download like a guide or anything like that. The website’s extremely lean. And I mentioned that already, but maybe there’s a couple of pages on the website today, but not a whole lot. You might not have done any customer research in a really long time, or it could also be that the customer research that you have is actually kind of outdated. It could be either or so what do we do in this stage? Because there’s a whole lot that we’re not doing. So what do we do and how do we focus our efforts if you’re in this stage, here’s what to focus on the first, we need to establish the baseline and the foundation. So for example, do we have the right tools in place, the right marketing tools to acquire, to convert, to nurture, and then also to optimize, to measure, do we have the right analytics in place? Do we have the right attribution in place? Do we have just the right software tools, et cetera, that we need in order to know if we’re improving or not. And sometimes that alone is enough to make the difference. Do we also have the right structure in place from an internal perspective? Now this one’s an interesting one because a lot of founders and just people in general very feel very much feel strongly about providing structure to the marketing function. But part of that sometimes is just having the weekly marketing meeting, having the monthly growth dashboard that is the defined and actually, you know, inputted and used, leveraged there’s data. That’s getting put into the growth dashboard every single month that you can actually take a look at and measure and start making decisions from. And then also there’s the, well, can you confidently do that in the first place? Can we confidently measure anything apart from establishing the baseline and the foundation, we also get into strategy. So do we know what our strategy is going to be? Do we know where we are headed and what we need to do to get there? Part of the confusion and the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to do with marketing usually drives down into, well, we don’t necessarily know what the strategy is in the first place. And that is really the core of where your activities and execution and tactics come from. And the interesting part about strategy is that it doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be overwhelming or brilliant or genius, even. It just needs to be enough that it gets you moving and hopefully moving in somewhere of the right direction. And then as you learn, and as you interview customers and use customer research and run experiments and test things, use AR to inform and refine the strategy over time. So if you’re doing absolutely nothing from a marketing perspective, and you want to start doing something really focusing on establishing the baseline, the foundation is going to be critical. It doesn’t make sense to jump into a bunch of marketing activity and execution and tactics until we know that we can accurately measure it until we know that we can actually execute those ideas. So for example, if you want to start running activation or onboarding emails, you’re going to need a tool to do that. And if you don’t have a tool to do that, we’re going to need to go find one, or someone’s going to do this manually and therefore not scalably. And it could possibly cause you far more pain down the line. You might have to end up getting a tool anyway. So there’s all kinds of those considerations to make. Can we actually do what we want? And if we can’t, what are the tools and resources and things that we need to put in place, can we measure and report on the success of anything that we’re doing? Do we know where our conversions come from? Do we know how many we even get every single month? Do we know how well that funnel converts in the first place? There’s so much that goes into all the nitty gritty details of marketing, that if we don’t have the foundation and the baseline to really measure against or to operate on top of it just gets even harder because we end up having to guess and guessing. And then also on top of that, we get wrong information. And then we start making decisions based off of that incorrect information, which is a pretty crappy place to be in. So again, if you’re doing absolutely nothing and you want to start doing something, that’s awesome. Let’s just make sure that we’ve got the baseline. And that also, that we’re going to take our time to really think about what our strategy is going to be moving forward. This will help us focus. Our efforts, focus our tactics and increases the chances that we don’t just totally swing and miss in the dark and end up spending burning cash in the front yard, or what have you. There’s a lot of pain to be avoided here. If we just take the time to do it next, we’ve got going from some marketing to good marketing and there’s an activity happening in this stage. So there’s probably a few things that you might be doing, but it might not be consistent. For example, you might have had quite a few false starts when it comes to producing content. It could also be that you’ve run maybe one campaign on a particular channel. So you tried Google ads once, or you tried LinkedIn InMail messages once or outbound cold calling or prospecting. One time the website might be a little bit more robust, but only slightly. So there’s quite a few more pages, but from a funnel perspective, it’s probably not as tightly measured as it could be, but there’s a Relic there. So there’s a sense of maturity there. So there’s pricing plan pages. Maybe you’ve got some case studies, maybe you’ve got a product page or a feature page of some kind you of course have your homepage, but these, this probably isn’t a single page website. This is probably much more than that, but it’s also likely not as expansive or expanded as it could potentially be. And I say potentially in finger quotes, because it really does just depend on your market and what your market needs to see on your website in order for them to convert as effectively and efficiently as possible. There might be some email onboarding, very little activation efforts in general, but there might be a few things that you’re doing. And then finally there might be some paid channels that you’re leveraging, but again, it’s not consistent. You might’ve tried it a few times, but didn’t necessarily have the tools or the knowledge or the skills or resources internally to be able to make that as effective as possible. So if you’re in the stage, here’s what to focus on. The keyword or mantra here is going to be to optimize. Optimizing is going to be how you think about everything that you’re currently doing. The challenge with any new channel is that if you think it’s a good opportunity, that’s probably not based on anything, but it is. However, it does imply that you’ve got the tools and the resources. And again, the skills, the knowledge to be able to build on top of it. On average, it takes anywhere from three to six months to really fully optimize a new channel, especially a paid one. So for example, if you started running Google ads, you ran it for a week or two or two weeks. Maybe we’re really disappointed in what you saw and didn’t optimize it. Didn’t change the copy or the targeting strategy or the landing page after it. Then it’s very possible that the channel was cut off too short. It was, it was cut off too soon. It was too early to know if that was going to be something that was going to pay out for you or generate trials or the demos or whatever it is that you’re looking for. The downloads, even it could be really anything that matters to you conversion-wise. And it’s very possible that it just didn’t have enough time inside of it because, uh, for better, for worse, these channels do require attention and they demand our attention and they need to be optimized in order to convert as well as possible. So if that sounds like something that you might’ve done before, there’s a lot of false starts. This could also include content creation. Maybe you tried blogging for a couple of months but then didn’t see any results from it. And it wasn’t for lack of trying, but for potentially at least lack of optimization, maybe it wasn’t the right content. Was there a distribution plan possibly? Where are they the right channels? I mean, there are so many questions that we can ask and dig into to really understand what else wasn’t done for those channels that the channel probably needed in order for it to be successful. It’s also very possible, however, that it’s not just the top of the funnel that’s leaking or broken or whatever word you want to use there, it’s also possible that we’re not activating enough new free trials or demos or users or whatever that conversion point is for you. It could be that we’re not converting enough of those people. And our activation funnel is not really strong. So we need really strong onboarding and some kind of way, and a really strong activation strategy. It could also be that we still are seeing relatively higher churn, but the marketing that we’re doing that’s correlated to that it could be that we’re focused on the wrong kinds of customer segments. So from an optimization perspective, it can be applied to any aspect of marketing. It just depends on what is not performing as well as it could be. And the only way that you can do that is if you have a strong again, baseline and foundation, and you don’t have a whole lot of analytics that you’re able to pull reports with relative ease, you can get the information and the data that you actually need to make really good, strong decisions. And on top of that, you trust what’s coming in. So you trust the data that you’re actually seeing. If we did not accomplish that in phase one or stage one, then by the time that we get to stage two, that could be really challenging and really hard. And then we ended up having to go back to number one anyway. So if you’re in that stage two, if you’re in that, well, we’re doing some things, but it’s not, it’s not good or it’s not great. Part of that could actually just be, there are some things that aren’t optimized as well as they could be. We could have had a lot of false starts and now we need to really figure out how do we optimize maybe our process around executing this work, or it could also be, do we have the right data to make good decisions? And then also it could just be a customer experience, a challenge as well. And we need to optimize that also, or instead part of being in stage two really means that you’re able to sit down and analyze the business from top to bottom and to find all of the gaps, all of the things that could be blocking are preventing that growth. And then also that good marketing that we’re seeking. So just again, it really depends on your situation. However, if you, if you’re in that stage, I definitely recommend that you sit down, analyze the business from top to bottom, identify all of the holes and gaps and places that might not be as performing as well as they could be. Everything from how the marketing itself is being executed all the way down to internal business, where maybe you don’t have the right meetings on the calendar to actually go through and analyze the stuff in the first place. I mean, it could, it could vary from operations to process, to product, to all the way up, back to marketing. And so that’s what I definitely encourage in this stage. These things are all interconnected. It’s very rarely that it’s just marketing in isolation. It’s much more likely that it is marketing and something else. So that is what I would encourage you to seek. What is the something else? What, where else in the funnel and the business with the product that could be better or could be better optimized or more efficient, and that can help use art to achieve and see the needle move when it comes to what marketing is able to accomplish and achieve generate. Okay, finally, we’ve got the lab stage. Now this stage is a rare stage where you might have good marketing already, but you need to get to great marketing. Excellent. Just award-winning marketing. We’re going to assume that everything for the most part is firing on all cylinders. You have a very mature, robust website that converts really well. You could be executing on a number of acquisition channels, whether that’s organic or paid. You might also have some really high levels, strategic business partnerships. It’s possible. At least you’ve got many different funnels. Many of them already convert incredibly well into the overall lead funnel and then all the way down into generating pain. So if you’re in this stage, you’re kind of feeling like we’re actually doing a lot already. And a lot of it is pretty good, but we want to become great. And I’ll let you define what great means. This could vary from a strategic perspective. Yes, all the way down to a tactical perspective. But if you’re here, what you want to focus on is innovation. So the keyword, the mantra, whatever it is that you would like to use to me, it’s all about innovation. And then therefore experimentation. What are the experiments that are really exciting to you, to the team, the business that could put you in a very different spot and an elevated spot. Ideally, innovation is one of those things that doesn’t get talked about enough. I feel like in early stage SAAS companies, and part of that is just because early stage is so focused on surviving and moving to a place where they can thrive. But eventually when you do get to that place where you start to thrive, the ability to be creative, to innovate and to surprise delight, spark joy, even that becomes incredibly important for the customer base. And then also the overall market. Typically what I recommend here is if, again, you’re looking to go from that good to great marketing. It usually has everything to do with the overall customer experience and being able to get into the shoes of the customer. And this is where I find we can start to innovate. And then also, again, experiment, it’s possible that there are some small tweaks to make, and it’s also possible that there’s actually some very big dramatic changes to make. And when I think of what businesses do here, at least in this stage, it can be everything from reinventing their brand, all the way to telling a very different story, to painting a really strong product vision. I mean, it could really, it really, um, I hate to say it runs the gamut, but it gets into this new visionary, innovative space that feels very creative and very alive. And then also hopefully very dialed in with the customer. So this isn’t random. It’s again, very directly connected to the customer into the market. And we’re also probably making some larger strategic moves. We’re partnering with maybe different kinds of brands. We could also be looking at making different kinds of partnerships, whether through integrations or what have you. And that all that also elevates the experience overall of the product. And of course, four, it provides value for the customer. And then of course, it comes down to the team’s ability to come up with really interesting, fun and innovative ideas. And I will let you guys define what that means ultimately for you and for the team, but the ability to start to innovate it comes from a place of no longer being afraid of surviving and allowing everyone’s minds to really think beyond what the current status quo is. So it’s, it is really important, especially if you have a team that you’re able to think beyond, but also that the team feels safe enough to also do that. It’s really hard to be innovative and creative in a space of stress. So if you’re again in this stage where you want to go from good to great, your ability to be creative and innovate, it’s going to be critical and crucial to moving to that space of greatness. However it is that you define it. Unfortunately there is no real number I can give you. That’s like, yep. Okay. You’ve, you’ve done it. You’ve achieved. Excellent marketing. Honestly, the best way to know is if other people rave about how wonderful and amazing your marketing is, it’s usually an indicator that you’re in this stage and to continue to do great marketing. So much of it does assume yes, that you are converting things extremely well. But the other part of it likely means that you are also digging deep into that creativity and to that innovation and into that vision, you run experiments, not necessarily, uh, being super overwhelmed by what happens when it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t work. And you, you take that in stride, you can afford to experiment is really what it comes down to. And then on top of that, you can also afford to be visionary and to be creative, which probably sounds insane, crazy, especially from, you know, if you’re early stage, it probably sounds crazy to think that you’ll get to that place, but you absolutely will. So I just want to, you know, I just want to throw that out there, but once you get to that place where you are thriving, the world opens up in a really different way. And I think that that’s a really, it’s another really beautiful space to be in. Okay. So really quick recap, we talked about three different stages. We talked about going from zero marketing to some marketing. So again, you might have very little, but you ultimately need to start doing something. So what I would say here is establish the baseline, established a foundation. That’s going to be the most important part of this stage. This is directly applicable to the overall strategy and go to market strategy. And it’s also directly applicable to analytics and also the ability to measure the success overall of anything that it is that you do, you need that foundation and that baseline in order to, again, build on top of, and then to start to move in that space where you’re executing ideas and you’re also making strategic bets and you can see how that works and how it performs. Next. We talked about going from some marketing to good marketing, and this is again where we are. We have some activity happening, but it’s not necessarily consistent. We might’ve had a few false starts. What I typically recommend here is really focusing on the optimization of those practices of the channels of your own internal meeting structure, even your own internal processes. So how do you communicate and get work done? How do you ensure that the ideas that you have are actually executed on, and then also whether the channels or the practices that you’re thinking of, of leveraging and deploying, what do you need to know about them in order for you to continue to optimize them? I threw out that, um, it takes about three to six months to optimize a new channel and specifically a paid channel. So how do you ensure that, you know what you need to know about a particular channel in order for you to really truly invest in it and then therefore optimize on top of it. But also if you’re going from some marketing to good marketing, we can also make the assumption that we need to optimize something internally as well. This can, of course, be process-related. This could also be related to a number of things that are happening from a product or business perspective. So optimization can mean things in a different way, in a different context. So I’d be looking for that as well. And then finally going from good marketing to great marketing, which is such an interesting stage to be in, I myself, have had the opportunity to be in this stage. I think maybe only twice ever in my whole life. It’s, it’s truly a beautiful stage when you get here, it is very much dependent on your ability to innovate and to be creative and to experiment. And also the thing I’ll add to this is how close to the customer experience can you really get, especially in new markets and existing ones. So the more that you’re able to put your, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and go through the entire experience of the brand from very top of the funnel, all the way down to very bottom of the funnel, you’ll get some ideas on what to improve. And sometimes even some really innovative things as well. Come, come through this process. All right, everyone, that is everything that I have for you today. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that you learned something. Please let me know what you thought of these three stages of marketing. If there’s anything that you’d add, or if there’s anything that you’d recommend, that’s a little bit different than what I’ve presented today. As always thank you so much for spending this time with me to learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SAAS business, head on over to demand maven.io. You’ll find all kinds of free resources, articles, and content. Don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t already and I’ll see you at the next one. Let me know what you think. I am always available on Twitter, [@AsiaOrangio](https://x.com/AsiaOrangio). Thank you so much again and have an awesome day. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Doing customer research? Start doing this](https://demandmaven.io/doing-customer-research-start-doing-this/) **Published:** November 9, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** If you’re doing customer research, you’re already way ahead of the game. Not to make it a competition, but let’s be real here — if your competitors are doing customer research and you’re *still* not, then you’re making it way too easy for them to surpass you. But in the world of customer research, simply talking to customers, running through a list of questions, and writing down answers is only scratching the surface of the strategic insights that are roiling beneath in untapped potential. Here’s how to take your customer research to the next level: **make it data-driven.** Yep. You heard me. If you feel inundated by the information you hear in customer interviews or aren’t sure what to do with it when you’re done, then it’s time to take the research you’ve done and do what we call “parsing.” ## How to make your customer research data-driven **1. Start by asking 10 customers the same 10-15 questions over and over again.** By asking the same questions and only straying when absolutely necessary, you automatically bring structure to your research (a common misstep by many teams). Make sure to record the conversation (with permission of course), and pull a transcript using a service like Rev.com. **2. Create a spreadsheet or a tool that allows you to create fields, tags, and basic charts** (we love Airtable for this). Create a column for every question that you’ve asked, and next to each question column, create an empty column. If you have 10 questions, you’ll end up with 20 columns — one for the question, and an empty column right next to it. If you want a column to store customer identification information, do it. **3. For every question you asked, copy/paste the customer’s answer.** In the empty column next to it, you’re going to “extract” the themes from what the customer said and either write down the theme or create a tag in Airtable. You’ll pour through every transcript, every customer, and every answer, and you’ll create tags or themes as you go. Finally, the fun part. **4. We’re now going to create a chart based on the tags/themes for each question.** If we asked the question “How did you find \[insert solution here?”, and we have 10 different answers, we can create a chart based on the tags or themes of those answers. And voila! We’ve now made our customer research data-driven. No more guessing or following an ill-informed hunch on what answer was the winner or the pattern. Instead, take what was qualitative and make it quantitative. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [If you’re talking to customers and feel like you’re not getting any meaningful insight, this is for you](https://demandmaven.io/if-youre-talking-to-customers-and-feel-like-youre-not-getting-any-meaningful-insight-this-is-for-you/) **Published:** November 16, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Any time I talk to a founder and they’re frustrated because they’re talking to customers but feel like they’re not getting anything meaningful out of the conversations, my mind always drifts to how I’ve seen founders run interviews in the past. They’ll ask questions like “How did you find the platform?”, “What are your favorite features?”, and “What should we add to the product?” And they’ll drill-down into the specific use cases and requirements of whatever features or requests they make. “Well when would you actually use that feature?” “What does it help you accomplish?” “What if you could accomplish the same goal, but instead did it this way? Does that meet your needs?” **And then poof! The 30 minutes they had with the customer are gone**. They’re off the call and they feel like they got some valuable information…. …Except when they sit down to do any kind of visioning or strategic planning for where the business should go next, all they can think of are the features they need to add and the bugs they need to squash. Product-related interviews certainly have a time and a place, but if we’re hoping to do customer research and get valuable strategic insight from them, **we’ll need to resist the urge of asking pure feature-related questions.** ## It’s time to start asking “why?” Instead, we’ll need to ask questions that give us a peek into the customer’s psychology: 1\. How they make choices 2\. Why they choose our product over others 3\. What they were doing before, during, and after choosing the product We also have to de-couple the assumption that there’s nothing to be gained from understanding the “why” behind our customer’s decisions. On the contrary — it’s this exact information that you want so you can **adjust your marketing to get as close to that “why” for the best paying customers as possible**. Tomorrow, I’ll cover a few examples of customer interview questions you can ask that will give you incredible insights and not the same-old-same-old. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [These are the "must ask" questions you should be asking in your customer interviews](https://demandmaven.io/these-are-the-must-ask-questions-you-should-be-asking-in-your-customer-interviews/) **Published:** November 23, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** If you caught [last week’s post](https://demandmaven.io/if-youre-talking-to-customers-and-feel-like-youre-not-getting-any-meaningful-insight-this-is-for-you/), you learned about shifting the types of questions you ask customers from product-centered to psychology-centered. The below are some of my absolute favorite questions to ask that will enables us to extract further strategic insight. These questions are designed to feel a little less tactical and more intuitive (which — trust me — you want). ## 1. When you first discovered \[solution\], what were you hoping it would help you accomplish? This question unpacks the desires that the customer had when they first encountered the product. We call these “desired outcomes” internally at DemandMaven, and **understanding what attracted them to the product tells you a lot about what their expectations were**. In marketing, if you can match the target audience’s desires with fulfillment of that promise when using the product, then you’ve got a match made in heaven (and an easier acquisition cycle). ## 2. What was the last solution you implemented and how did you find it? By asking this question, you’ll get some ideas on what other kinds of software buys they’ve made and **channel opportunities you might not have considered** if you only asked about your product. It’s perfect for companies where the primary acquisition channel is actually through outbound sales or where the customer is hard to reach digitally. ## 3. What was the moment you knew \[solution\] was the right choice for you? This question gives you the “Aha!” moment when the customer made the connection between your product and their desired outcome. Understanding this “Aha” moment also gives you incredible perspective as to what the product onboarding and activation experience needs to help people accomplish. It also highlights huge gaps in getting prospects to the moment where they’re convinced they must become a customer. ## 4. What would have to be true in order for you to \[become a customer/use the product regularly\]? This one’s a two-parter and can be applied to understanding either usage or conversion into becoming a paying customer. Either way, this gets at the requirements the customer is looking for before they ever consider becoming a customer. We call these consideration sets internally at DemandMaven, and they represent the requirements or must-haves for the customer to achieve success. Sometimes you’ll get features or attributes, and sometimes you’ll get less tangible information that speaks more to their psychographics. For example, you may hear from one person that they need to be able to access the product on their phone (a feature request) and you may also hear that they need to be convinced that it’s going to be reliable and never accidentally drop an integration (a desire for reliability and proof). What other game-changing questions would you ask? **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Stuck on analyzing your customer research data? Do this instead...](https://demandmaven.io/stuck-on-analyzing-your-customer-research-data-do-this-instead/) **Published:** December 7, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** The process of surfacing strategic insight relies on our team’s ability to do two functions fairly well at the same time: **1. Asking the right strategic questions** — related to the customer journey, the business model, the product, the market, the competitors, and so much more. **2. Analyzing the customer research** — noticing what interesting trends there are in the reports we’ve generated (especially after filtering out not-so-great customers) ## Asking the right strategic questions If you’re going through any kind of strategic initiative, it’s critical that you know two things: **what you want to achieve**, and **who you are as a business**. The “what to do to get there while remaining true to who you are” is what you’ll use this strategic process for. After a round of customer research, here’s what we’re asking of the data we just acquired: 1\. What is the customer hiring the product for? 2\. Are they achieving that success? 3\. What’s currently blocking the customers from achieving success? 4\. What aspects of the business could be improved to help…. - More customers achieve success? (increasing growth volume) - Specific customers achieve success? (improving a specific customer segment) - Customers achieve success faster? (decreasing the sales cycle) - More customers to expand their plans? (increasing expansion revenue) - More customers to recommend the product to others? (increasing referrals) ## Analyzing your data set Next, let’s analyze. Assuming you’ve been making your customer research data-driven and turning what was once qualitative into something quantitative, you’ll have a pretty in-depth data set to take a look at. Most teams will stop at just analyzing the main data set reveals without any adjustments to it, but thanks to the ability to filter data (yay, Airtable!), you can filter out various cohorts of customers to find patterns. Try toggling filters on: - Customers with specific JTBD - Not-so-great-fit customers - Customers of a certain cohort combination — such as firmographics, plan type, or LTV - Customers with specific product requests or needs This process alone will reveal a few hidden secrets. You might notice that dealbreakers or acquisition channels change for certain cohorts of customers. You may notice different challenges or needs based on LTV ranges or even plan type. ## The bottom line Document these observations and findings. Share them with marketing, product, and other stakeholders — they’re the start of your strategic insights. As you learn and discover more, the parts of your strategy that you need to pay attention to start coming together. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Why we no longer define strategy around the client's KPIs](https://demandmaven.io/why-we-no-longer-define-strategy-around-the-clients-kpis/) **Published:** December 14, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Before you throw tomatoes and come with the torches, hear me out. *\*audience lowers tomatoes for a brief moment\** As marketers, it’s really easy and tempting to focus on just the KPIs that matter to us and our CEOs, sales leaders, colleagues, etc. We obsess over the number of leads, the click-through-rates on ads, the cost per lead, the number of booked trials or free trials that we started. We fixate on MRR, ACV, and just about every other lagging indicator out there. Sometimes it’s so obsessive that we’re convinced by staring at the number more, it will somehow increase. And yes — we need something to measure and track our progress towards our goals (that’s why KPIs and OKRs can be extremely powerful in the right contexts). But when it comes to finding the best growth opportunities or troubleshooting growth, **we no longer put all of the strategic pressure and stress on KPIs that are lagging indicators of success for the client**. Instead, we shift our focus to the success of the customer. **The old way.** What needs to happen to increase MRR? **The new way.** *What needs to happen to help our customers succeed?* We call this “Customer-Led Growth” — a strategic approach championed by fellow growth strategists and pioneers Claire Suellentrop (@ClaireSuellen) and Gia Laudi (@ggiiaa) of heyelevate.com and forgetthefunnel.com. ## The fundamentals truths behind “growth” Growth cannot exist without customers. Growth can’t continue without a customer saying “yes” to the product every month and every year after that. Growth also can’t expand without customers growing into higher-tiered plans and/or recommending it to other customers. Everything about growth comes down to the customer — an easily forgotten fundamental truth. ## Customer success as growth KPIs In our work, we teach clients to focus on the KPIs that matter to the customer — the success metrics that indicate a customer has progressed along their journey to winning with the product (and therefore contributing revenue in the client’s pocket). We focus our efforts around the product’s North Star KPI and help as many customers as possible achieve success with the product. When we see gaps to the customer’s success (an unclear website, unclear positioning, a poor onboarding experience, or less efficient sign-up flow, etc.), we recommend projects to execute and overcome them. Do customers care about how many leads you’ve generated? Or how much it cost to acquire them? No. They care about satisfying their needs and winning. ## The bottom line By defining strategy around the customer’s success and helping them get there, you both win. (And if you still want to throw the tomato, I get it.) **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [What even is "strategy," anyway?](https://demandmaven.io/what-even-is-strategy-anyway/) **Published:** December 21, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Many people think strategy is a glorified plan — to most, it’s a list of goals and action items to help you accomplish certain objectives. It may have deadlines, specific outcomes, and potential requirements for executing that strategy (think like budgets, tools, people, GANTT charts, etc.). Others feel that “strategy” is just another word that corporate CEOs, executive leadership, and marketers throw around to confuse people or draw attention away from the “real” work (which, to be fair, I’ve certainly seen this happen). **Even still, I’m here to tell you that your detailed, tactical plan isn’t your strategy**. Can a strategy include a plan? Of course. But according to AG Lafley and Roger Martin in “Playing to Win,” strategy is the process of making choices — it’s the why, the where, the what, and the what-not. And when we’re being “strategic,” we’re taking in information, deciding how and where it impacts us, and simultaneously deciding where we want to go and what we need to do to get there. If you think about it like planning a road trip, it’s not about the destinations you’re going to hit or the things you’ll need to take with you. It’s the *purpose* behind taking the road trip in the first place and the *constraints* (and freedoms) you put on taking that road trip in order to maximize some desired outcome. Put simply — strategy is where to play and how to “win” where “winning” is defined by you. The strategy guides your plan for action. As much as strategy informs the plan for what you’re going to do, it also vehemently dictates what you’re *not* going to do and where you’re not going to waste time, energy, or resources. This is illustrated in the HBR article “What is Strategy?” by Michael Porter and his thoughts on defining a “strategic position.” Many CEOs and founders discover (sometimes too late) that while they had a plan — an endless list of tasks, to-dos, projects — *they didn’t have an actual strategy that was guiding it*. They weren’t aware of the choices they were indirectly or directly making by focusing on the tactics. Strategy doesn’t have to be complex, either. It can actually be simple — so simple that it lives on one page as in the case of TK Kader’s GTM Framework or Louis Grenier’s 1-Page Marketing Strategy. But it *does* have to be intentional if it’s going to be successful. And as new data points roll in, the strategy either shifts, or it takes on the risk. ## If you aren’t sure if you have a strategy, ask yourself these questions: 1\. What is “winning” to us? 2\. Where do we want to play? (i.e. markets, customer segments, geographies, channels, etc.) 3\. How do we think we’re going to win? (i.e. increase acquisition, decrease churn, etc.) 4\. What capabilities, information, or resources are we going to need to win? 5\. How will we conduct ourselves in order to win? Answering these questions alone will help highlight any gaps you may have. If you’re unsure, it may be time for a deeper dive! **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Every little thing I did to grow my consultancy by 36% so far this year](https://demandmaven.io/every-little-thing-i-did-to-grow-my-consultancy-by-36-so-far-this-year/) **Published:** December 27, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Was just taking a look at Xero and I noticed that we did two things at DemandMaven: 1\. We **reached our revenue goals** for the year back in August. 🤯 2\. We **grew 36% from last year** — and we still have a whole quarter to go. 📈 Considering the past two years we’ve had, I’ll take it. Proudly. ## Here’s every little thing I did to help us get there ### On productivity and operations 1\. I delegated every little tiny thing off my plate. Everything from booking customer interviews and discovery calls to updating something on the website. 2\. I delegated some of the big stuff off my plate. This included hefty client deliverables, running customer interviews, configuring paid acquisition campaigns, and so much more. 3\. I analyzed where our team lost the most time during our projects and planned ways to help them save time. 4\. I invested \*tons\* into client operations by creating SOPs for our big and small functions of the business. 5\. I added internal strategy meetings for each client after our first wave of customer interviews. This helped get everyone on the same page about what we were hearing. ### On hiring 6\. I hired a client services manager to help keep us on track and improve the client’s experience of working with us. 7\. I hired more growth strategists to own more of the strategic process during client projects (and take pressure off of me to do all the thinking and executing). 8\. I streamlined our hiring and onboarding process to make getting up to speed smooth and fast. ### On communicating ideas 9\. I designed internal strategic frameworks that my team could use to enable them to arrive at strategic conclusions on their own. 10\. I taught my team just about everything I knew about growth for SaaS through content and internal wikis. 11\. I also created an internal Client Strategy Meeting where we discuss each client in detail, ask questions, and get feedback on our work. 12\. I brought in copywriting experts (hey, SNAP Copy 👋). ### On service offerings 13\. We became certified in Customer-Led Growth! 🎉 14\. We also dramatically increased the quality of work thanks to CLG. 15\. We split our main strategic engagement into two offerings to better satisfy the needs of both early-stage and later-stage clients: the GTM Engagement and the Growth Engagement. 16\. We actually didn’t really raise rates at all; just took certain low-quality deliverables out. ### On marketing 17\. I spent my time on just two channels: Twitter and Linkedin. 18\. I created and published video content to our YouTube channel. 19\. I completed another season on the In Demand Podcast. 20\. I spoke at relevant virtual conferences such as Business of Software and Wynter. 21\. I even spoke at in-person conferences such as Traffic & Conversion, MicroConf Local, and soon-to-be SaaS North. 22\. I’m currently giving away some of my best work for free through #Ship30for30. There’s more, too, that I could list, but I think it’s a strong start. Here’s to the rest of 2021, and looking forward to 2022! 🎉 **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Why you need to start delegating those trivial tasks NOW](https://demandmaven.io/why-you-need-to-start-delegating-those-trivial-tasks-now-2/) **Published:** January 3, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Truth: If your brain can learn it, there’s usually another brain that can learn it. It’s a fundamental truth that took me years to learn, and blocked me from growing the company a lot faster than if I had just accepted the truth. What delayed me for so many years from delegating roles, tasks, projects, and responsibilities off my plate was a dangerous, simple lie that I believed: **that no one else could do it nearly as well as I could.** In my mind, I was faster, more efficient, and more technically sound than anyone else I knew at certain functions in my business. And I believed the lie — born out of years of independence, small budgets, and lacking leadership — that I could do it all. But after about 1.5-2 years of doing it on my own for so long, I was starting to feel the effects of burnout. I hadn’t actually enjoyed most of the tasks and responsibilities I had on my plate in months, possibly years. I loved running the business and working with clients, but details started to slip and it was getting harder and harder to execute basic tasks. It was time for a change, and that meant hiring people to help me execute. ## On delegation Delegation is wonderful thing, and there’s a few simple reasons why we do it: - **Preserves our precious energy** as leaders, CEOs, founders. - **Unlocks growth in the business** by expanding the team’s capacity. - **Enables us to devote more focus** and attention to the things that need us. - **Facilitates mutual trust amongst the team** when they prove to be reliable. - **Decreases stress and anxiety** for the self and everyone else around them. ## Why we get stuck And yet, there’s a million reasons why we *don’t* do it. Here are the most common lies and how to completely dismantle them: ### 1. “I’m the expert.” We might be, but there’s always someone better who could do it. ### 2. “I know better than anyone else how to do it.” Possibly true, but if you can learn it, can’t someone else? ### 3. “No one else can possibly learn how to do it.” This one is just plain offensive since it implies you’ve hired unintelligent people. ### 4. “There’s no time to teach someone else.” Just like firing someone or becoming pregnant, is there ever a good time to take an important action? We must make time for what’s important to us. ### 5. “I believe I can handle everything by myself.” Except science and psychology has proven that we really can’t do it all without severely impacting our health and wellbeing. ### 6. “We can’t afford the talent we want or find someone with the right skills.” This may actually be true, but there’s probably plenty of people you could hire whom you could coach or train. Even then, there might be someone excellent within your budget. There was a time I had believed most of these lies, but now that I know better, I think of this list. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Overwhelmed by too many marketing channels, tactics, and experiments to run? Do this instead.](https://demandmaven.io/overwhelmed-by-too-many-marketing-channels-tactics-and-experiments-to-run-do-this-instead/) **Published:** January 10, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** So you’re staring down a list of experiments to run and you have no idea which ones to prioritize. There’s a million channels, tactics, and things to try, but nothing really sticks out at you as the thing you need to do first. In order to know what to do next, we first have to ask ourselves some hard questions (but stick with me — you’ll dramatically reduce any wasted energy, time, and money simply by starting here). ## Asking the right questions When thinking about what experiments and tactics to try, start with a few strategic questions instead of banging your head against the wall: 1\. **What are you trying to achieve?** e.g. growth, stability, peace of mind 2\. **Where’s the greatest area of opportunity to achieve what you want?** e.g. acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, etc. 3\. **Can you prove that area of opportunity is the best one?** e.g. voice of customer research, measuring the funnel, low activation rates or website conversion rates, high churn, etc. 4\. **What would have to be true in order to see improvement** in that area of opportunity? 5\. **What’s currently blocking you** or the team from achieving that improvement? Alright — so we answered some tough questions, but hopefully you’re more focused by answering them. Based on the desired area of opportunity, ask more targeted questions to further decrease overwhelm. ### If we’re struggling with acquisition, then ask questions like this: - Who are you trying to attract? - Why are they hiring the product? What’s triggering them to use it? - Based on the two above, where do those folks hang out? Where can they be reached? - Based on where they hang out, what’s going to come more naturally to you to leverage? - What’s the KPI that needs to be improved in order to consider it a win? e.g. more traffic, more trials, more leads, etc. - Finally, what’s the LTV of the product and which channels give you best payoff either long-term or short-term or both? Your answers for prioritization lie somewhere in the mix of those things. It also means you can probably drop a lot of what’s on your list (and increase focus, etc.). ### If we’re struggling with activation, then we’ll ask ourselves slightly different questions: - Who are we trying to improve activation for? - Why are they hiring the product? What’s triggering them to use it? - What’s the key moment where they realize value from the product? When does the “Aha!” moment happen? - How do we know when the user has experienced value? - How can we bring the user to that moment as fast as possible? - What resources, tools, or information would they need in order to reach that moment? - What prompts would they need to see in the product from the moment they sign-up or book a demo to realize that aha moment? - How are we making it as simple, clear, and easy as possible for users to enter in their payment information? And so on. As you can imagine, the questions change based on what we’re looking at and our greatest areas of opportunity. You can apply this line of thinking to virtually any growth challenge. **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Why empathy is the secret to a great activation strategy](https://demandmaven.io/why-empathy-is-the-secret-to-a-great-activation-strategy/) **Published:** January 17, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** It’s the most common onboarding and activation approach for early-stage founders: 1\. Create self-serve sign-up 2\. Show a bunch of pop-ups and modals of the features 3\. Send a few emails I guess? 4\. ???? 5\. Profit! And in the early days, this is perfectly acceptable. There’s certainly best practices when it comes to activating new users into customers, but in the early days, what matters is shipping as much as possible. The team doesn’t waste too much time overthinking the onboarding process, and it allows them to focus their energy and efforts elsewhere (like building more product and spending more time talking to customers!). This strategy becomes dangerous, however, as the platform and the customer base grows and onboarding is never revisited. The free trial or freemium conversion rate might be statistically healthy (15-30% conversion into paid), but many founders leave hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table without realizing it could actually be better. Why? It’s the experience debt of the current onboarding and activation flow. ## On using empathy to overcome the debt The greatest growth opportunity for any activation or onboarding experience is actually based on this simple principle: empathy. > **Empathy** (noun) is “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.” To describe empathy, we’ll say things like “it’s getting into the shoes of another person and walking through life as they do.” When it comes to onboarding and activation, the best way to re-imagine this experience is to ask ourselves a few questions. Before diving in, pretend that you’re a best-fit paying customer who hasn’t become a customer yet and you’re trying the product for the first time. Then, answer these questions with fresh eyes: 1\. As a best-paying customer who isn’t a customer yet, what am I trying to accomplish? 2\. What do I need to do in the product in order to experience value from the product? 3\. What is the first thing I need to do or know next? 4\. What are the steps the product is taking me through that don’t contribute value? 5\. What are the steps and information that distract me away from achieving my ultimate goal? ## The bottom line Using empathy as the tool to get as close to the desires of the customers as possible will help you imagine an onboarding and activation experience that can easily double or triple the current conversion rate. Assuming you do it right, it’ll be a win-win — more customers reaching their moment of success, and more money in your pocket! **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [How to get the most value from an advisor or mentor](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-get-the-most-value-from-an-advisor-or-mentor/) **Published:** January 24, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’ve been a mentor and an advisor now for quite a few SaaS accelerators, incubators, communities, and VC funds — from Atlanta Tech Village and TechStars to TinySeed and GrowthMentor (and more recently MentorPass). After running hundreds of calls for both early-stage and later-stage founders alike, here’s some basics for how to get the most value from your first mentor or advisor call: ## 1. Get clear about your goals for the call Do you want tactical advice or do you need help with something bigger? Advisors come with such vast knowledge and information that you want to make sure you’re choosing the right kind of advisor for your needs (and not wasting their time or yours). It might seem obvious, but your goals for the conversation should directly mirror who you talk to. If you’re looking for tactical help, choose someone who’s going to be able to answer the tactical questions you have. If you need help with something bigger and more strategic, be prepared to choose someone with that experience. ## 2. Research the advisor Take some time and get to know your advisor before you actually meet. *What kinds of experiences have they had?* *What are they doing now?* *What are they writing about or saying on social media?* *What talks have they given?* Answering these questions ahead of time will give you talking points *and* it will trigger other questions you can ask directly related to your needs and their experiences. ## 3. Send context about your challenge before the call Provide as much information about the problem as you possibly can. The more context the advisor has, the more likely they’re going to be able to help you. Give the advisor details about the type of business you have, what you’re selling to whom, and what your goals are. Send them your questions in advance to give the advisor context about what kind of call this will be. ## 4. Get ready to be challenged The most rewarding part about advising is helping the founder unpack a complex problem and arriving at a few options the founder can then take to accomplish their goals. Sometimes, it’s just providing a different perspective that helps the founder unlock something else. The most productive conversations usually happen because the advisor did two things: 1\. They asked questions for more context 2\. They directly challenged the founder’s line of thinking Some of the best conversations I’ve ever had were when we took a step back and unpacked how the founder arrived a particular conclusion and the assumptions they’re making. If you book time with an advisor or a mentor, if they’re great at what they do, they’re going to challenge you. (At least, that’s what happens with me, anyway.) **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [The #1 limiting belief preventing most SaaS founders from growing their businesses](https://demandmaven.io/the-1-limiting-belief-preventing-most-saas-founders-from-growing-their-businesses/) **Published:** January 31, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** > *“Well I only want to invest in growth when there’s a guaranteed result.”* > *“We’d be willing to spend more if we knew that it would generate results.”* I’ve heard this concern from SaaS founders more times than I can count. I heard it when I was in-house as a marketer, and I hear it even now from early-stage founders as a growth consultant. Don’t get me wrong — *no one* wants to waste money on activities that don’t impact the bottom line in any kind of way. Nobody has an innate desire to take cash and burn it in the front yard. But when budgets are small and the company is still in its infancy, much of the initial investments in growth and overall marketing can feel like a waste. All of this, however, flies in the face of a fundamental truth about growth: it takes a consistent investment of some kind in order to grow whether through time or money. > Truth: *It takes a good plan for growth to experience growth.* ## The Iron Triangle We’re all held by the same Iron Triangle of Scope, Time, and Budget. They are our angels and demons. It’s either going to take time or budget based on the scope for growth that’s been defined. Sometimes it’s both and there’s no way around it. **If you have a small budget** (let’s say $1-2K per month), it’s going to take longer (more time) for you to execute enough experiments (smaller scope) before you find winning projects. Founders with smaller budgets have to consider how long they’re willing to wait and how much they’re willing to execute on their own to save cash. **If you have a larger budget**, you’ve got more to play with and can expand the experiments and projects (more scope) and learn from them in less time. Founders can usually hire experts or FTEs to invest in growth It gets even more complicated depending on the market as well. If there are many competitors or there’s a huge, problem-aware market that is actively looking for solutions, you’ll likely see results faster from growth initiatives than a product in a market with zero competitors or completely unaware prospects. ## The 3-year plan When a founder enters the market with the mindset of “We’ll only invest in growth if we see positive results,” it cuts the product’s future at its knees. It’s the same as saying “I’ll only get checked for skin cancer when it becomes malignant” or “I’m only going to invest in my 401K or ROTH once I see that it’s grown.” > We need to adjust the limiting belief of “We’ll only invest in growth if we see results” to “*If I make the best decisions with the information I have about growth, I \*will\* see results.*” **First, you have to plan for growth based on the market and situation you’re in.** If you don’t plan on raising funding, that’s perfectly legitimate! You may be able to stay small and keep investments low if you’re willing to either learn marketing and growth yourself or focus all of your energy on making sure you’re building a product people will pay for. For any kind of business — funded or bootstrapped — prepare yourself for the next 3-5 years of learning and investing in growth to see the return. **Second, you will have to invest in growth making the best decisions you can possibly make while knowing that it will eventually pay off**. You have to be comfortable with investing in growth (building product, interviewing customers, running marketing campaigns, running experiments) over the short-term and long-term. Otherwise, it might be time to re-think your goals and desires. ✨ **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [EP18: How to Transition From Founder to CEO](https://demandmaven.io/ep-18-how-to-transition-from-founder-to-ceo/) **Published:** February 21, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Hi founders 👋 I’m Asia Orangio, the host of the InDemand podcast and founder of DemandMaven, where we work with early stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. If you’re new here, here’s a quick recap of our goal: We’re here to discuss what it takes to build businesses that are in demand and stay in demand. Yes, we’re going to talk about marketing. We’re also going talk about growth, leadership, and strategy. For this upcoming podcast season, I’m diving deep into being and becoming a better CEO. Of course, we’ll still be talking about marketing, but we’re going to discuss the softer skills of marketing: - How do you build and manage a team? - What are your options and how do you actually lead? - What does leadership look like from a marketing perspective? If you’re wondering where a lot of this content is coming from – it’s largely inspired by my own journey. This is the journey I’ve been on and it’s the one I’ve been wanting to take other founders on. Of course, I’m a founder, but I also work with other founders and CEOs. I’ve noticed quite a few trends during our projects: what makes our projects go extremely well and also when there’s something missing. So, what makes a project go well? The projects where clients get the most value of our work is when they have a CEO who: 1\) Has strong analytical thinking skills 2\) Has transitioned from founder to CEO In this episode of the podcast, we cover what the role of CEO is and how different founders define it. And last, we’ll talk about what this transition actually looks like. So of course, I took to Twitter and asked people what the role of CEO means to founders across the web. Rand Fishkin, CEO of SparkToro said that CEOs make great decisions. And I could not agree more. On my own journey to CEO, my day is filled with decisions. It’s also filled with creating frameworks to help other people make decisions. I’m at a point in my journey where I’m starting to see patterns in these decisions. Jeff Perkins, CEO of Park Mobile, said that being the coach for the team and getting the best out our your players is the key to being CEO. Jimmy Macon, CEO of Curators, said it’s vision, strategy, people, resources and culture. And last, we researched what Ludo Van der Heyden says being a CEO entails: - Visioning or framing of the firm’s business challenge - Planning or generating potential solutions to the issue at hand - Deciding or making a commitment to a course of action - Explaining the rationale that led to this commitment - Presenting legitimate expectations stakeholders can hold about the results that will be produced, about how this will be done and about the rewards that successful execution allows - Executing where all energies are devoted to the execution of the decisions until results are realized in which concludes with the distribution of rewards - Evaluating where one evaluates both the processes followed in generating a vision and the outcomes thus obtained, and the rewards shared with the search for errors that may have occurred, and for corrections and adaptations that need to be made for errors not to be repeated in the future. All of that was a really, really fancy way of saying there’s six things: 1. Visioning 2. Planning 3. Deciding 4. Explaining 5. Executing 6. Evaluating. And if I’m not mistaken, Ludo crossed out number five because CEOs shouldn’t actually be executing. They should really be focused on the other five things. So here’s the thing about all of these definitions. They are all correct. Pretty much every single one of them is correct and some are more correct in certain contexts. All of these definitions are great, even the ones that I got from Twitter and also the more academic ones. They’re all incredibly true, but they’re also incredibly relevant, even if you are a SaaS company, a startup. And if you are funded or bootstrapped, there’s tons of wisdom locked away in these definitions, the books and podcasts they’ve been sourced from, etc. This is something that I’ve been studying for years. As my business grows, I’m learning how to be a better CEO every day, every week, every month, every quarter, every year. And as I’ve accumulated this knowledge, I’ve been inspired to share all of this information with you, but also do a little bit of a call to action in a way, because I have seen firsthand how much better a business performs when the founder makes that transition to CEO, no matter how big or small the company is. It also helps when founders become better leaders. Even if you’re bootstrapped and you don’t necessarily have funding and a board to contend with, why should you care about being a better CEO? There’s a few reasons that I’ve been able to identify, but these are also reasons that we’ve seen and observed in other companies outside of our own. Being a better CEO means building better businesses, period. That’s not to say that if you never make this transition, that you can’t build a great business. Of course you can. We’ve seen tons of businesses grow with very questionable leadership. But from what I’ve been able to observe: founders who start to take themselves seriously as CEOs build better, more effective, efficient businesses. They’re able to build more resilient businesses because they are able to take a step outside of their world and look at it as objectively as possible. This means that they’re able to: - Make better decisions. - Build better teams. - Utilize resources better. - Become a better marketer. By this we mean that they have a better sense of psychology and awareness about their target audience on top of having a really good understanding of the landscape that’s available to them Great marketers know what channels, programs, and practices are going to be great fits for whoever it is that they’re targeting. And they also have a very deep sense of awareness and understanding of the target customer at the end of the day, all the way down to their psychology, how they make decisions, how they think about things, and also what’s blocking them from achieving success in addition to what’s pulling them towards the product or towards the solution. So whether you believe it or not, expanding your CEO-ness (whatever that looks like for you) will naturally help you become a better marketer. You’ll be able to better understand the strategic side of things. You’ll also be able to better strategize in general, whether it’s for marketing, product, or even engineering. That’s why this transition is critical. But not every founder makes it, which is really interesting. For those founders, it’s like defined chaos. The company starts bursting at the seams. And you might get in a place where you realize, “What did I miss? What happened?” If that’s you, what you’re missing is the transition to CEO. So how do you become a CEO? How do you get into a role where you are primarily inspiring, leading, and managing? Assuming this is a role you want, then I recommend the next step is to ask yourself: - Where are you getting stuck? - Where are you blocking the growth of your business? One of the benefits of transitioning from founder to CEO is that you can start to see these problems with a bird’s eye view. I’ve experienced this several times as a founder. It was hard to see a problem clearly when I was the one doing the work and in it every day. The transition to CEO, delegating, and stepping away from the work allowed me to see what needed to happen. So what do you risk if you don’t transition to CEO? You risk moving slower than the rest of the market. We have seen this time and time again. There are worse products that are louder in the market that end up winning. An effective CEO is able to lead, decide, and enable others to execute as fast as possible. And that is the power of being a great CEO. To be a better CEO is definitely an investment worth making. And on top of that, you deserve it. You deserve to invest in yourself, to be a better person, to be a better leader, and to inspire yourself while also inspiring others. That’s at least what I’ve learned in this process. Ok that’s all for today’s episode. We hope you tune into next week’s episode; you can subscribe to our newsletter to hear when all of our new content drops ✨ **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP19: Four Traits of High-Performing CEOs](https://demandmaven.io/four-traits-of-high-performing-ceos/) **Published:** February 28, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Welcome to the In Demand Podcast where we talk about how to reach your first $1 million ARR. I’m your host, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, where we work with early stage SaaS companies on reaching their very first growth milestones. Let’s do this. Today we’re talking about what ultimately makes a high-performing CEO. What does a good CEO look like and what are they doing? Many founders in the SaaS and software world think that certain CEO advice isn’t relevant to them. However, I think it’s the opposite. CEO advice is more relevant to startup founders as they enter very unknown territory for them as developing leaders. The best way to become a great CEO is to be exposed to many different types of educational knowledge, so you can apply and leverage as much wisdom as possible. According to Harvard Business Review, there are [four things that set successful CEOs apart](https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart): 1. Decide with speed and conviction 2. Engage for impact 3. Adapt proactively 4. Deliver reliably ## Make decisions Decision making is one of those skill sets that, for most of my career, I didn’t think about how well I did it or how quickly. It actually wasn’t until I was running DemandMaven that I realized I was becoming more and more conservative whenever it came to making decisions. It became much harder for me, and it got to a point for me where I realized this has to improve. I wanted to be able to: - Make decisions quickly - Trust the decisions I was making As a CEO, it’s important to make good decisions. And while these decisions don’t have to be perfect, they do have to be fast. They also need to be made without complete information, which can be really terrifying for anyone who wants to have 100% of the info before making a decision. There’s no way to predict everything. When CEOs don’t make decisions, it blocks everyone from taking action, period. In fact, perfectionism can be a huge barrier to being CEO. It can hinder a CEO from making quick decisions with conviction. What’s really fascinating about decision-making as a CEO is that it’s actually better to sometimes make wrong decisions than no decisions at all. At the very least, when you make the wrong decision, you’re making progress by learning how **not** to do something. You can then move forward with a lot more information. When a CEO stalls a decision and the entire team waits to take action, you’re losing precious time. One of the top reasons why startups and SaaS companies fail, of course, is due to product market fit, i.e. there’s no real need or demand for what the product is ultimately solving. Or, the company can’t find enough customers. Another common reasons earlier startups fail is by not executing fast enough, which is basically another way of saying not making decisions fast enough. Because in order to take action, decisions need to be made. CEOs of large companies (let’s say running $50-100 million dollar companies) need to minimize risk as much as possible because there is a lot to lose. But for earlier-staged companies or even bootstrapped companies, there’s very rarely a decision that will completely put you out of business. It’s very rare to find excruciatingly wrong decisions. As long as you learn from mistakes and course correct, you’re almost always going to be fine. This goes back to the decision making process. If you can make decisions quickly and learn from any errors, then you’ll be okay. But if you’re too slow to take action, the company might not be able to keep up in the market. As the CEO, you’re the leader and deciding things with conviction (even if they end up being wrong) is ultimately healthier for the team so there’s always a clear sense of direction. It’s okay to course correct as a team, but a team without any direction is not going anywhere. Here are two questions to ask yourself when making a decision: 1. What is the impact if I get this wrong? 2. How much will it hold things up if I don’t make a decision on this? Avoiding making a decision is an avoidant behavior and it’s a very common pitfall as founders transition to CEO. Here’s the other thing about being a CEO and making decisions: not every decision is for the CEO to make. Ideally, the CEO is surrounded by strong teams of people who support them in their work. Assuming they’re experienced enough, it might make sense for the CEO to strategically pass off decisions to other stakeholders. This is something I’ve been personally transforming internally at DemandMaven. As the CEO at DemandMaven, I’ve gotten better at fielding questions from the team and understanding when a question is in my realm to answer and make a quick decision, and when it’s an opportunity to guide, coach, and ask thought-provoking questions for the team so that they ultimately arrive at an answer on their own. One great example of this was when we needed to re-package how we do retainers here at DemandMaven. We were running into a problem where we would sell a retainer but it was work that only I could deliver on the team, which is a problem, because as CEO, I’m not the best person to execute on a retainer. I consider myself a SaaS marketing ghost: I’m there when summoned, but for the most part, I’m ideally just quality control. So when we kept running into this problem, I ultimately brought the problem to the team and they decided for me. It was awesome. We ended up walking away with a far better understanding of what was required from a retainer perspective. Moral of the story: CEOs don’t have to make every single decision. Sometimes, the teams they rely on can help. ## Engage for impact Engaging for impact is ultimately about moving towards your growth goal effectively, getting everyone on board with the decisions, and moving in the same unified direction with team buy-in. It also means understanding what the problems are and having the right people on board to address those challenges. As a whole, engaging for impact is making sure all of these pieces of the puzzle are aligned so that the company can achieve what they’re hoping to achieve. In order to do this well, CEOs have to be really good at communicating with the team. Whether your team is just a few people or way bigger, it’s still important. When communicating with the team, it can be helpful to remind people time and time again. You have to be good at communicating ideas to other people. For example, at DemandMaven, I often communicate to the team: here’s where we’re going, here’s your part in this, and ultimately, it’s a matter of depending on your team to contribute in order for the goal to be achieved. A key part of getting the team on board is communicating all of this in the first place. And last before we move on, it’s important when engaging for impact that CEOs don’t avoid conflict. When CEOs can dive in head-first into the problems, they’re going to eliminate roadblocks much quicker than a CEO who avoids them. In the book Traction by Gino Wickman, he recommends creating an actual database where you track problems. For example, what roadblocks are consistency slowing down your team? The CEO can and should spend time reducing those problems as much as possible to give the team a much better experience as they execute. These could be challenges related to culture, hiring, team, or even technical workflow issues. ## Adapt proactively One of the roles of CEO is to spend their time on thought-provoking information and insights that they can use to influence the company. For example, as the CEO of DemandMaven, I’ve been keeping a very close eye on the impending economic downturn because it might greatly impact my clients who are VC-funded, as well as my own business. It’s my role as CEO to understand how this greater market shift will change things and how we might need to adapt proactively as a result. The best way for a CEO to keep tabs on their market is to conduct objective structured research. Another example where this comes up is **[customer research](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/)**. We perform detailed customer research for clients here at DemandMaven and we’ve seen with clients at times that their target customer base can have one JTBD profile one year and potentially have a shift by the next year. CEOs that are regularly researching not only the market, but also their core audience, can ultimately adapt much more proactively. ## Deliver reliably As CEO, it’s your role to unpack and figure out: where does performance fall apart? Where can we take responsibility and hold ourselves accountable, while also giving ourselves grace and compassion for not being perfect? Here’s what I’ve learned in my career: In order to deliver reliably, you don’t have to win every single time. This was something that gave me a lot of anxiety in my own career. There are inevitably times when we get things wrong. To deliver reliably, it’s okay to sometimes get it wrong as long as you always learn. The learning is the win. It’s the opportunity for growth. It’s not something to be shameful about, it’s ultimately what helps us become stronger performers and ultimately stronger leaders. That’s considered a win to me. Before ending the episode, I want to provide a few book recommendations: **How to Decide by Annie Duke** – honestly, this book has a little bit of a surprise therapy in it. Be prepared for re-evaluating not just how you decide at work, but also how you decide personally and in general. **Traction by Gino Wickman** – this is helpful for any CEO or leader And last, I would love for you to pause and think: - What could you work on or improve, even if you’re not a CEO or founder yet? - How could you be a better CEO of your life? - Are you engaging with the right tools, people, and resources? - Are you as organized and effective as you want to be? - Are you adapting to change? I hope this brings a few things to mind. Alright, thanks again for listening. I’ll see you next time ✨ **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP20: Hiring a Marketing Team](https://demandmaven.io/hiring-a-marketing-team/) **Published:** March 7, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Hey founders 👋 Today I’m writing about the most common question that I get asked! How do I build my marketing team? It’s so common that we’ve actually built documentation around this and we’re starting to share it with clients. It’s a very understandable question, and not a lot of founders know what their options are when it comes to building a marketing team. So today, we’re going to break down your four options: 1. Contractors 2. Agencies and consultancies 3. Full-time or part-time employees 4. DIYing it by learning marketing and growth yourself One of the big questions that I get all the time is how do I source folks? Where do I find marketing talent? How do I know who is the right fit? For this last question, the main factor is honestly your budget. The other factor is based on what makes sense for the business and what it needs. Something that I’ve noticed is that there really isn’t a wrong answer. The only wrong answer is the one that seriously does not agree with your energy and also puts you out of business. The only way to do this wrong is to violate both of those two things! Let’s think about the iron triangle: scope, time, and budget. Technically, you could get to your goal extremely fast if you had an endless budget. But typically, there are restraints. I’ve worked with dozens of SaaS companies and startups (both bootstrapped and funded). And I’ve seen a lot of different models for building marketing teams. Here’s what I’ve noticed: ## Rule of thumb for hiring If you have less than 10k MRR, then usually hiring contractors is a better bet for you. You might be able to afford some agency or consulting help, but it depends. If you’re making more than 10k MRR, then you might be able to start considering your first full-time hire. Some folks recommend waiting to hire full-time once you get to 50k MRR. It depends on your growth trajectory. It also might depend on your leadership style and how you want to manage talent. Below I’ll get into more detail for what it’s like to work with each of these different types of hires. ## Contractors Contractors are typically what I most often recommend to founders. They’re typically freelance workers who are paid either per hour, month, or deliverable. Some contractors are marketing generalists and others are highly specialized where they focus on one particular talent, skill, or expertise. In general, I recommend working with contractors who are at least a little bit specialized so you know they have concentrated knowledge in a particular area. Something I love about working with contractors is that it’s pretty low risk and you can usually find solid talent. While you need to create a hiring funnel and vet talent effectively, it’s overall not too challenging to accomplish. The only caveat with contractors is that you end up managing the talent. The tasks typically involve: - Providing guidance and leadership - Communicating the big picture strategy to your team of contractors - Providing feedback - Reviewing deliverables for quality control These are tasks that you’ll have to get comfortable doing no matter what type of talent you hire (contractor, full-time, etc). In many ways, getting started learning your leadership skills and style with a team of contractors might be a low risk way to get started and learn. Personally, I love working with contractors and freelancers. It’s absolutely amazing. I truly enjoy managing and leading. So if that’s interesting to you, too, then contractors might be a great place to start. ## Agencies and consultancies Agencies and consultancies tend to have higher price tags. For a more specialized agency, the price tag is usually between $5-7k per month. They can also be as expensive as $10-50k per month, especially if they’re covering several marketing areas for you, such as demand gen, paid acquisition, social media management, content marketing, etc. I haven’t really seen any agencies out there, no matter what they do, to be less than $5K per month. One benefit of working with an agency is that their speciality is typically execution. They usually have a deep bench of resources, meaning they have tons of people who can come in and help. For this reason, they typically work extremely fast. Consultancies, on the other hand, are a bit different. They’re not necessarily executing the work, but they’re going to help you solve specific challenges you’re facing. I consider DemandMaven to be a consultancy. While we do have an agency arm where we have a team of people who execute, our bread and butter is the strategic, data-gathering, and market research side of marketing. When it comes to hiring consultancies, it’s usually similar to agencies, starting at around $6k per month all the way up to $80k for highly-specialized consultancies. So it really boils down to whether you need an agency for execution or a consultancy for the more strategic and research side of things. I recommend only working with an agency if you have a 6-12 months runway to work with them on retainer ideally. Something to keep in mind when working with an agency is that they’re not all created equally. There are many agencies out there that don’t necessarily do the greatest work. So the hard part is to find an agency that you trust to give you results. Here’s our recommendations for figuring out if an agency is trustworthy: - Look at their previous work (case studies, examples) - Make sure they’re worked with companies like yours before (type, stage, budget) - Ask if you can talk with a previous client And remember, once you hire an agency, it takes time to get up to speed. This is true of a full-time marketer, too. Even if your hire starts executing right away, it takes time for the market to start to notice. For example, if you start publishing Twitter threads, it will take time for the audience to start to recognize and pick up on who you are and pay attention. It’s also helpful to keep in mind that agencies can execute all day, but if you don’t have the right overall marketing strategy in place or know who your target audience is, then their work will struggle to make an impact. This is why we recommend our clients invest in our [customer research](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) projects. This helps you clarify your market positioning and understand your customer. If you have that type of strategy already in place, that’s amazing. But if not, this is a great place to start investing so you can ensure all execution is going in the right direction and will succeed moving forward. ## Full-time and part-time employees Next, let’s chat about employees. I’ve noticed that founders don’t have a hard time finding agencies and consultancies, but when it comes to full-time employees, they’re often lost. Finding incredibly talented marketers with a track-record for growth in SaaS is somewhat rare. **When should you hire a full-time marketing employee?** I recommend that you don’t consider it until you have at least an entire year’s worth of salary for that person. If you don’t have one year’s salary, you might be putting that person in a weird position to justify their salary as fast as possible, and that’s not a fun position to be put in. **How much salary do you need?** The numbers are across the board mostly because you can hire talent from different countries. US talent is typically the most expensive. If you’re hiring a head of marketing, then the salary is at least $75-90k and that’s likely still too low. It can be upwards of $150k. For more junior talent, it will likely be in the 75-110k range. Senior or more director level is likely 120-150k. A lower end CMO salary would likely be 180-200k. Senior executive levels are as high as 400-500k. If these numbers sound really high, you might also find that you’re already investing monthly at a similar level but on agencies and consultancies. One benefit of hiring a full-time marketer is that you’ll have someone on the team with true ownership. Typically, that marketer will hire and outsource based on any skill gaps. For example, if you hire a marketer who isn’t the best content marketer, then they’ll likely bring on a part-time content marketing strategist or a contractor. Once you have a head of marketing, they are ultimately responsible for building out the team from there, which is a huge benefit. ## Learning marketing yourself The last option, which I’m not covering very deeply, is that you can learn marketing yourself and execute. There are tons of courses, programs, and books. This can be a great option on a lower budget. The trick is that while you’re busy executing, you won’t have time to do other business-growing activities. Founders and CEOs typically outsource marketing so they can continue focusing on the overarching business, rather than get lost in the weeds. ## Wrapping up I’d love to hear from you: How are you thinking about building your own marketing function based off of what you’ve heard today? What are you thinking of doing next? To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP21: How and Where to Find Your Startup’s First Marketing Hire](https://demandmaven.io/saas-first-marketing-hire/) **Published:** March 14, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** For any SaaS startup, marketing is critical in driving growth and gaining traction in your market. But sourcing qualified candidates who understand SaaS, are excellent in marketing, and can help your startup progress can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. In this article, we’ll look at some of the challenges of hiring your first marketing leader and share some tips on where and how to find them and how to set them up for success once hired. But before we dive in, let’s talk about some assumptions we’re making about you. - You have the budget for a year’s worth of salary for this marketing person. - Your marketing leader will be full-time. - You’re prepared to manage, lead, and coach a marketing employee (even if you’re not a marketing expert yourself). Hiring your first marketing leader isn’t about simply filling a role, it’s also about creating a creative, collaborative, and supportive work environment. Without setting the foundation for success, any new hire can struggle to meet your expectations and your business’s needs. With that said, let’s dive into who your marketing professional should be. ## Your First Marketing Hire: Demand Generation vs Content Marketing Marketing is a massive industry and its nuances are’t always so clear to a technical founder or CEO. It’s totally understandable if you’re overwhelmed with all of the specialties, strategies, and tactics candidates bring with them as you’re searching for your first marketing hire. But as a startup in software, there are really only two kinds of marketers that we recommend in your pre-traction and traction stages. They are: 1. Demand-Generation Marketers 2. Content Marketers A demand-generation marketer is someone who specializes in tactics and strategies to create demand for your products or services. They focus on driving sales-ready leads and customers through awareness-raising campaigns like email marketing, paid acquisition, pay-per-click advertising (PPC), and more. A content marketing expert is someone who specializes in creating and distributing high-value content that’s relevant and targeted for your target market. This kind of marketer uses blog posts, videos, podcasts, e-books, webinars, and other kinds of digital media to engage your audience and drive traffic and leads to your website. The really interesting thing though is that a demand generation marketer often actually uses content marketing as a way to generate demand, so the content types aren’t specific to each role. Also keep in mind that while these are the top two skillsets that we see across successful first-hire marketers, their role or title might be a little different. Such as *Head of Marketing* (most common) or *Marketing Manager.* If you’re hiring for more senior roles, you’ll naturally hire someone with more executive-level skills like leadership, management, and high-level strategy. So who should you choose? This depends on your ideal customer’s lifetime value (LTV) and buying cycle. If a customer’s LTV is relatively low, then an inbound marketing expert who keeps the cost to acquire new customers low will likely be the best choice. On the other hand, if you have a high LTV and a slightly more complex buying cycle, a demand-generation marketer can help drive leads and qualified traffic into your sales funnel. As you vet and interview potential candidates, you’ll find that many marketers have experience with generating demand and content marketing, while others are highly-focused and have highly specific work histories. In most cases, both generalists and specialized marketers can successfully fill your first marketing role. So unless you have a clear need for one or the other, don’t get too caught up in this. We think it’s even more important to pick a candidate with experience in a startup at a similar stage as yours. For example, if you’re pre-traction, then hiring a marketer who has helped a pre-traction startup reach high growth is much more valuable than finding a highly specialized content marketer. ## Where to Find Your First Marketing Hire When it comes to finding your first marketing leader online, we have a few recommendations for where to look: **1. Your Local Network.** In our experience, your own backyard is an easy and accessible way to reach out and make contact with highly qualified marketing professionals. Reach out using your company’s Twitter, LinkedIn, and even Reddit profiles. Oftentimes, leads will come to you, and we’ve had great success finding professionals for our roles this way. **2. LinkedIn.** Next, we’d like to reemphasize LinkedIn. We’ve sourced tons of incredible talent using this platform. Compared to platforms like Indeed and SmartRecruiters, LinkedIn lets you target a specific skill set or work history and prescreen candidates more thoroughly, which can help in finding qualified candidates who match your unique criteria. **3. Recruiting and Headhunting firms.** Recruiting firms will help if you’re struggling to find the right candidate on other platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed. And headhunting firms are great if you’re looking to fill executive-level roles. We’ve seen clients successfully fill positions using both types of firms. **4. Digital Talent Marketplaces.** Digital talent marketplaces, like The Mom Project, are excellent resources for finding part-time and hourly contractors and freelancers. These platforms are designed to help you contact professionals quickly and give you the tools to manage those relationships effectively. ## What Happens After Making Your First Marketing Hire? The last thing you want your first marketing professional to Google is, “What to do as a first marketing hire at a SaaS company?” They should have a clear picture of what’s next for them as an employee in your business. They need to know: **1. The Company Vision.** While this may sound cliche, understanding the mission and vision of your company will help marketing hires identify with your company and understand how their role contributes to where the company is going. **2. The Company Goals.** It might sound obvious, but new marketing professionals should know the company goals. For example, what is your [monthly recurring revenue](https://demandmaven.io/how-we-helped-our-saas-client-4x-mrr/) (MRR) goal? In addition to sharing your company’s goals, there should be a discussion on how they plan to support those goals. Bonus: this information can easily be integrated into your onboarding process. **3. Your Expectations.** Sharing your expectations is critical, and it transcends a description of roles and responsibilities. Here’s an example: how do you expect them to communicate when they disagree with your vision for a project? Keep in mind that this is a two-way street, and you should create space for employees to share their expectations of you as well. **4. Existing Marketing Strategies.** You’d be amazed at how often marketing professionals are hired but never receive a breakdown of how the company has arrived at its current stage. Without this critical background information, your new employees might waste time reinventing the wheel, start from scratch when they don’t need to, or fail to meet your expectations because they don’t know where you’ve already been. Sharing your existing [marketing plans](https://demandmaven.io/creating-a-marketing-plan-for-your-saas/) and strategies can help new marketers get up to speed and begin making progress sooner. **5. The Product.** Ideally your new marketer has quite a lot of experience with the product and its many nuances. If there’s a clear market position that your product takes in the market, ensuring that they have a clear understanding of the true competitors and the competitive differentiators the product has will better enable the marketer to make compelling cases for new prospects to give it a shot. **6. The Customer.** If your new marketing hire isn’t talking to customers within the first 90 days of starting, that should be a red flag — but it’s one that you can help facilitate as startup founder or CEO. A new marketer should have direct access to customers, and within the first 90 days, they should be interviewing customers and getting to know their pains, desires, hopes, and dreams when it comes to the full context of why they chose your product in the first place. ## First Projects for Your First Marketing Hire A 90-day plan is a strategy that new, junior to mid-level employees can use to quickly acclimate to their company’s culture, build relationships with team members, and begin working toward achieving the goals of their role and the company overall. Such a plan may be as detailed as you’d like. For example, some companies create goals for each day during an employee’s first three months. Those goals may include things like becoming familiar with company-wide technology or systems. For higher-level positions, a first project could be a company-wide audit that seeks to identify opportunities for improvement. But regardless of the new hire’s role, it’s essential that they’re talking and listening to customers. Encourage your first marketers to get on the phone with customers, shadow a customer success employee, or review existing voice of customer (VoC) research. Some teams (like new marketers at Ahrefs) even make new marketing hires onboard as customer support for the first 30 days of their new role. ## Final Thoughts Remember, the first step in hiring your first marketing leader is making sure you’re ready to support them in the first place. Establish clear expectations and a roadmap for success. And as you begin looking, take the time to source the candidate who’ll bring the right mix of marketing, enthusiasm, and experience to your startup. Interested in learning about how long it can take to see marketing results? Check out our podcast episode on [measuring marketing success](https://in-demand.castos.com/episodes/ep12-how-long-does-it-take-to-see-marketing-results) and setting your expectations. We’ll see you there. ## Wrapping up To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP22: Unaware Audiences](https://demandmaven.io/unaware-audiences/) **Published:** March 21, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we work with early-stage SaaS companies to help them reach their first growth milestones. Recently, I was on a discovery call with a company founder and was surprised by their view on the market. They said they felt like they’d hit the market cap and there was nowhere else they could go in terms of growth (even though they were only at $3K MRR). To solve this, they were thinking of shifting all their focus to unaware audiences. To me, this was a huge red flag. For the majority of software companies, going after unaware audiences should be the very last tactic on the list. You should not be even considering targeting unaware audiences unless you are a unicorn already making billions of dollars. And if an agency suggests going after totally unaware audiences is the move, run. Run far away. Since there seems to be some confusion around unaware audiences and what it actually means, I want to help clarify the definition and when it might make sense to target unaware audiences. ## ## What are Eugene Schwartz’s Five Levels of Awareness? You’ve probably seen Eugene Schwartz’s five levels of awareness before, but let’s clearly define it. ![Stages of Awareness by Eugene Schwartz](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/stages-of-awareness.jpg) **The first level is unaware.** These are people who don’t think there is a problem. There is no pain or frustration they experience. If you tried to explain the problem and your solution, they wouldn’t be able to grasp the scenario because they simply don’t have the experience to understand. **The next level is problem-aware**. Problem-aware people are experiencing pain and frustration. There’s something about their circumstances that make what they’re using or doing no longer ideal, which creates a lot of stress and problems. However, they often don’t know what to do about the problem because they don’t think there is a solution. **They enter the next level, solution-aware**, when they decide to look for better solutions. They’ll consider using anything that makes the process easier or faster. However, the solution has to remain valuable and timely enough for them to take action. **When a solution-aware person** starts the process of finding a better way, they are probably going to start with a Google search or asking a friend or coworker with relevant experience. They’ll start investigating other solutions — both direct and indirect competitors along with competing alternatives — and move to the next level: product aware. **When someone becomes product-aware**, this is when they’ll become aware of *your* product. This usually means they’ve landed on your website or read some product reviews. They’ll start acquisition and activation activities, meaning they sign up for a trial or book a demo of your product. They might also sign up for your newsletter, consume some content on social media, or download a resource. That’s when they become most aware. They’ll do all of the most critical things: attend a webinar, try the free trial, read documentation, go through product tutorials or educational content, and use the product in some way. At this point, they’ll consider whether or not the product solves their problem and in what way. They’ll know the brand and the product, and they will compare and contrast your product and product experience to others. ## ## What is an unaware audience? Imagine you have a product and want to get it in front of the right people. However, you aren’t sure who the right customer is or how to find them, and don’t know who you are either. For example, you’ve built a storyboarding tool for executive-level designers and want to get them using your product. Let’s say most designers currently have a manual storyboarding process where they use Illustrator or InDesign to manually create artboards. They probably have a few templates they’ve created or downloaded to make the process easier, but over time they have a use case where building it manually doesn’t make sense anymore. This can become quite painful for them, but they don’t ever think there might be a software that does this. You might think this is an example of an unaware audience. However, in this scenario, the designers are actually problem-aware. They know there is a pain point, but they don’t know that there are solutions out there. Again, unaware audiences truly don’t think there is a problem. An unaware audience would be a designer who is happy to do their storyboarding manually and sees absolutely no issue with how they are doing things. You can present the problem to them and from there, they can decide if they want to act on it or not, but chances are, a truly unaware person doesn’t experience the slightest hint of pain and likely won’t until something in their context shifts. ## ## Why shouldn’t you target unaware audiences? When it comes to buying and selling goods, you generally want to sell to people who have a problem. Unaware folks, however, are truly unbothered and will take an enormous amount of effort to educate them around the pain. There’s no amount of marketing bombardment or sheer force that is going to make them care unless their context changes, causing them to go from unaware to problem-aware, and from there to solution-aware. In the storyboarding example, the context that might switch when someone gets a different job, a promotion, or their responsibilities change. Once the context shifts, that triggers people to become problem-aware. However, as a marketer, there’s nothing you can do and no amount of money you can spend to shift their context. All you can do is wait until they agree they have a problem and decide to solve it. And even then, you cannot guarantee results. Many marketers believe if they just show up enough, people will check them out and see if they have a problem, but this just doesn’t happen. Of course, there are some circumstances where people have spent a bunch of money on awareness campaigns and gotten really lucky. But in most cases the truth is that anyone who comes across your product and decides to try it isn’t actually unaware. Chances are they are problem-aware and didn’t realize that solutions existed and or that they could solve it. ## ## When does it make sense to target unaware audiences? When you have exhausted the problem-aware segments in a market, then it makes sense to start looking at expanding into unaware audiences. This is the only scenario where it might make sense to target unaware audiences. But even then, it’s a strong “might.” There are scenarios where startups and SaaS companies have to start marketing to truly unaware audiences (granted, this is still technically very rare since most audiences actually are problem aware — they’ve just never considered solutions before). ## ## Unaware Audience Case Study HubSpot is a great example of a company that spends a lot of time and investment on unaware audiences. However, let’s think about who HubSpot is. HubSpot is a huge, multi-billion dollar company. They are one of the most well-known marketing automation platforms out there, and you’d be hard strung to find a marketer who has never heard of HubSpot these days. They are truly a leader in the market. Therefore, they are now focusing a lot of their energy on making sure that unaware people are aware of their products so when they do have a problem, they will check them out. Keep in mind, though, that this strategy is a several-year process. It’s not something that happens quickly and there they are still not guaranteed to see the end result. And on top of that, it costs an absolute fortune. HubSpot has played their cards right over the years and is a huge company that can now take that risk. But for almost everyone else, it makes more sense to start with the problem-aware folks, get them to consider your solutions, and ultimately work on getting them to go through conversion, retention, and expansion. ## ## Key Takeaways: Targeting Unaware Audiences So, while there are some successful use cases for large, established companies, most companies should not bother focusing on attracting unaware audiences. Truly unaware audiences are simply that — they have no idea about the problem and there’s nothing you can do about that until something happens to them that makes them care about solving it. You can’t control this. Here’s a personal example to help reiterate this point. I recently ran a 5K and while I was at the expo picking up my number, I was approached by someone who provided home repair services. I told him that I rent an apartment, and he immediately backed down because he knew I hadn’t experienced the problems of home ownership and therefore didn’t need his services. He gave me some swag and told me to “remember us when you buy.” In my mind, I knew I was going to throw away the swag because it wasn’t sustainable or useful to me. Already, I don’t even remember the brand name. In this case, I was an unaware audience. The man didn’t waste my time because he knew that I am truly unaware of the problem and not experiencing it. I will continue to be unaware until I buy a home and experience the frustration. There is nothing he can do to change my situation (context) or and he cannot control when I will buy a home. Until then, I am a completely worthless audience to his business and there is no benefit in targeting me or my demographic. And even when my context does change, I am not going to call him. Why would he waste any more time, effort, or money on me, who wasn’t in the context of the problem? So, in conclusion, early-stage SaaS companies should almost always start by targeting problem-aware folks and solution-aware folks instead of unaware audiences, because the aware folks are the people who are open to solutions and will ultimately become customers. To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP23: Customers Drive Growth: 8 “Yeses” You Need to Care About](https://demandmaven.io/customers-drive-growth/) **Published:** March 28, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** We can talk about new technologies and strategies to drive business growth until we’re blue in the face and one thing will always remain true: customers drive growth. Without attracting, converting, and retaining customers, you have no growth. You need customers to pay you money and, well, keep paying you over time. And that’s why it’s so important to understand how customers operate—as humans, not just as data points or KPIs. Each customer is a human with real problems and needs, searching for a solution. They make a myriad of choices every day that can contribute to your business’s revenue or growth. But it’s not just about the choice to enter their credit card into your point-of-sales system—that’s just one “yes” a customer makes. There are actually eight (plus a sneaky bonus) “yes” every customer makes that directly contributes to your ability to attract, convert, retain, and expand in your business. Some are a mindset “yes” and others are an action-oriented “yes”—but all are essential to understand. So, here are the 8 customer “yeses” you need to care about and why they’re so important. ## 1. Yes, I have a problem It always starts with recognizing there’s a problem. Before any change takes place, customers need to know they have a problem that needs to be solved. This is the first mindset shift that starts a chain of “yeses” towards becoming your customer. ## 2. Yes, I want to solve the problem It’s not enough just to recognize a problem—you need to actually want to solve it. The reality is that it’s near impossible to brow beat people into a solution. No one likes being forced into change. And, even if you could, they wouldn’t stick around for the long-term. Instead, customers need to come to a point where they know there’s a problem and are actively looking for a solution. ## 3. Yes, I want to try your solution Most customers, after recognizing the problem and need for a solution, will look around at their various options. Then, they’ll create a shortlist of solutions to try. If your product-market fit is aligned properly, they’ll consider your product or service as a solution to the problem. Once they’re willing to try your solution, you have a chance to demonstrate the value you can offer to solve their unique problems and needs. In the SaaS industry or with subscription-based services, this exploration takes place during a trial period or initial collaboration. ## 4. Yes, I understand why this is valuable After using your solution for some time, you need potential customers to see the value you offer them. If someone doesn’t see the value in your solution, they’re simply not going to become a customer. This is why the focus always needs to be on creating value for customers that meets their real-world problems. ## 5. Yes, I want to become a customer This is the first “yes” that brings in revenue. Whether it’s a simple credit card transaction or a lengthier custom contract process, this is where they convert from potential customer to a paying customer. Too often, we stop here. You’ve onboarded a new customer, collected their payment, and the journey ends. But the reality is there is so much more to come. If you stop at the “yes” to become a customer, you’re leaving money on the table. ## 6. Yes, I want to renew Many of us in the SaaS industry are subscription-based. This meant that we need customers to keep saying “yes” on a monthly or yearly basis to our products and services. And while payments may be automated, your customers are still evaluating the value they receive and whether they want to continue. When they start questioning the value of the product, they may become inactive and even forget about the charges each month. This will show up in your analytics and can be a good predictor of churn rate or clients you may lose. Customers need to continually get value to keep saying “yes” each month. ## 7. Yes, I think that new plan or add-on will be valuable to me Attracting, converting, and retaining clients is all fine and good. But if you want to truly grow and expand, you need to think bigger. And this is where new plans, add-ons, or product tiers come in. You create greater value for your customers by meeting their ongoing needs, which may go beyond their initial purchase. If you don’t offer add-ons and upgrades, they may take their business somewhere else. ## 8. Yes, I recommend this product Ultimately, you want your customers to be active promoters of your company, not detractors. Whenever their friends or colleagues ask their opinion, you want it to be an enthusiastic, “yes, I recommend it.” The truth is that there will always be customers who don’t like your product or service. But if you can focus on turning most of your customers into promoters, you’re on a good track. Focus on, again, creating value, but also going the extra mile to surprise and delight customers. ## Bonus: Yes, I’m cool with these price changes This last one is a bonus and builds off of #7. You will, inevitably, need to increase prices or change the pricing structure. When this happens, happy customers will be fine with it they’re getting the value they want, so a price increase doesn’t make or break their decision. ## So, why do all these “yeses” matter? It’s so easy to get caught up in KPIs that we forget customers are humans with human problems and human decisions to make. By going back and thinking through each “yes,” you can identify the gaps in your business and roadblocks to bringing in more revenue. Every time a customer hesitates to say “yes” at any stage, you’re leaving money on the table. So, take some time to evaluate where your customers are getting stuck to say yes. You can look at your KPIs, talk to customers, and tap into your intuition to identify those barriers. Then, take some time to evaluate how you can make changes to your business so that customers are saying, “yes-yes-yes” and you’re bringing in the revenue. ## Wrapping up I’d love to hear from you: So which customer “yes” have you been neglecting lately? 🙂 To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP24: Painkiller vs. Vitamin: Which one is Your Startup?](https://demandmaven.io/painkiller-vs-vitamin/) **Published:** April 4, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Painkillers vs. vitamins is a marketing concept. As a SaaS startup, you can use these terms to categorize the products and services your business offers and more effectively position your business on the market and across your marketing efforts. Just like reaching for a vitamin instead of a painkiller can derail your afternoon walk, categorizing your business as a vitamin when you’re a painkiller can completely derail your marketing efforts and stunt your growth. So in this blog post, we’ll define painkillers and vitamins (of the marketing variety), share some examples of each, and explain exactly why you need to know where your startup falls. Let’s dig in. ## What is a Painkiller? A painkiller is a solution for a specific pain point or set of pain points. The goal of a painkiller is to resolve an existing issue. From a SaaS perspective, these types of offerings are about relieving tension or solving an existing problem within a business. For example, say you struggle with sharing asynchronous feedback with your remote teams. You may find that Loom, a video communication software for work, is positioned as a solution to your asynchronous communication pains. While “painkiller” may be a bit dramatic, it doesn’t have to be. In some instances, a specific pain point can completely stall progress in your business. In other cases, it might just slow things down. Using the Loom example, your business may not grind to a halt without smooth asynchronous communication. It could be that simply finding meeting times for the team is a huge inconvenience and slows production down. In this scenario, Loom could help speed up productivity. But if your company needs meetings to complete projects, a communication tool like Loom could quite literally help keep your business running. ## What is a Vitamin? A vitamin is an offering that aims to improve a current situation or a future scenario that hasn’t yet happened. You can think of SaaS vitamins as a “nice-to-have” rather than a must-have, but it plays on being a better version of yourself after having used the “vitamin.” An excellent example of a SaaS vitamin is Duolingo. Duolingo positions itself as a fun, free way to learn a new language. By using the software, eager learners can improve their language skills by using Duolingo fun games, activities, and science-approved learning path. Duolingo could easily position itself as a painkiller by comparing itself to the less-than-ideal ways to learn new languages, but instead, it focuses on how easy it is as a beginner to get started and how cool you’ll be once you learn a few phrases in another language. It’s a vitamin — not a must-have, but a nice-to-have if you’re a casual language learner who wants to feel awesome while learning. ## Key Differences There are 2 key differences between painkillers and vitamins. They are: - Necessity - Timing **Necessity vs. Luxury.** Painkillers are almost always needed (budget-permitting, of course). In contrast, vitamins are always a luxury (with one exception, which we’ll discuss in the next section). Painkillers often increase the bottom line, which means losing an effective painkiller or switching to a less effective alternative can cost companies money, time, or both. Vitamins may increase efficiency or quality, but in most cases, a company (or person) can get by without them. The urgency driving customers to purchase a painkiller is different than the urgency leading to a vitamin purchase. That perceived urgency can directly impact how much customers are willing to pay and how quickly they are to make a purchasing decision. **Now vs. Later.** The second key difference between painkillers and vitamins is the difference in their appeal to timing. Painkillers often act as solutions for existing problems. That means customers need to purchase them right now, and the solution needs to work right now. On the flip side, vitamins are, by definition, never “needed” but are “desired.” In many SaaS cases, vitamin products or services are positioned as a solution for a future or potential problem, not one that’s happening right now. Vitamins are also always marketed and sold as the “better version you or your company will be once you purchase.” ## Examples of Painkillers and Vitamins in SaaS All this talk about vitamins and painkillers can get a little confusing. So let’s look at two more examples. **Asana vs. Notion.** DemandMaven used to use Asana, which is a popular project management tool. However, we found that it wasn’t quite meeting all of our needs, which led to several pain points, but mainly, it wasn’t easy to store and retrieve valuable data. With a little bit of research, we found Notion. Notion allowed us to customize our project management experience to our business, alleviating the pain points we had with Asana. In this example, Asana started as a painkiller. It would be incredibly difficult to function without a project manager, if not impossible altogether. However, because it wasn’t the best choice for our business, Notion could come in and act as a painkiller to our new issues and resolve our existing problems. **Security.** Cybersecurity software companies are an excellent example of what we consider to be vitamin services that flip into a painkiller once an incident occurs. If your company experiences a data breach or some other security risk, cybersecurity software acts as a painkiller. But in most cases, cybersecurity services appeal to the potential for threats. In other words, they’re helping prevent future disasters, but they aren’t necessarily solving existing issues. This example also shows how context matters. Contexts change, and vitamins may often be a “nice-to-have” until they become essential, after which they act as a painkiller for that specific customer in that specific context. ## Why Does This Matter? A company offering painkillers will market itself with urgency in mind, target a specific audience, and create an online presence that communicates its type of offering accordingly. Miscategorizing your company can lead you to poorly position your products, target the wrong market, and incorrectly communicate your identity online. All of these things can have a major impact on your marketing efforts, so knowing exactly what type of products or services you offer is critical, especially for startups. To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP26: What is the SaaS Black Hole?](https://demandmaven.io/saas-black-hole/) **Published:** April 18, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** As a new SaaS founder, you’re about to embark on one of the most challenging yet rewarding journeys: bringing your product or service to market. You’ve put in tireless months of research and development, coded feature after feature, and finally have a minimum viable product (MVP) to test. Welcome to the SaaS black hole. At Demand Maven, we define the SaaS black hole as the unpredictable and chaotic period between testing your MVP with non-paying users and bringing your product to market. This blog post will explain what this means for your startup, what you can expect, and how to eventually get out of the black hole. ## The SaaS Journey Before the Black Hole As a startup founder, your journey probably looks something like this: 1. You’ve identified a problem you believe you can solve. 2. You’ve researched and refined your potential solution 3. You’ve developed an MVP, which is your solution to the problem you’ve identified. 4. You test your MVP with users who are not paying for the service or product. 5. And finally, you launch your MVP for paying customers. We refer to step number four as the black hole. This stage can consume a startup and spit out an unrecognizable business on the other end. There is no way to predict, guesstimate, or map your journey as you test your MVP with non-paying users, but we find that you’ll likely end up in one of these three groups. 1. **Nailed It.** Your product is a match for the market and audience. Your users convert to customers at a high rate, and you’re startup is ready to grow. 2. **You Almost Nailed It.** Your conversion rate isn’t high, but it’s not low either. Overall, there’s significant room for improvement before you take your product to market. 3. **Back to the Drawing Board.** Your conversion rates are low, and it’s time to rethink some things. Your product may not be a match for the market. Much like Pluto, you could be in for an identity crisis up ahead, and it’s anyone’s guess where you’ll end up. Now let’s look at what this means for you. **You Nailed It.** If you’re in this group, congrats! Your test users found value in your product and converted to paying customers. Now you can invest your energy into finding new acquisition channels and identifying areas for growth. **You Almost Nailed It.** Many people use free tools simply because they’re free. Unfortunately, the second you place a price tag on your offering, you introduce a value exchange to the relationship. The user now has to assess whether or not the product is valuable enough to warrant an exchange of money. If you’re in this group, you’re likely finding out that more users do not find value in your product than you initially thought. While this is disappointing, there’s still value in your users. Determine what your users are unhappy with. What are they missing? What don’t they like? Many companies in this group discover they built the wrong product, targeted the wrong audience, or a combination of both. But often, exploring new product models or pricing structures can go a long way. **Back to the Drawing Board.** When a startup experiences low conversion rates during its product testing phase, the product is not resonating well with potential customers. This can mean the product doesn’t meet customer expectations, marketing is underperforming, or you’re targeting the wrong audience segments. The implications of a low conversion rate can be detrimental to a startup, so take a step back and reassess. This will require the company to collect and evaluate relevant data, including user feedback, competitor analysis, industry trends, technological advancements, customer preferences, and other market dynamics. Once you’ve identified the primary reasons for low conversion, you can begin making informed decisions to reshape your product and improve its overall value proposition. This entails reassessing the [product-market fit](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-know-you-have-product-market-fit/) and ensuring that your product or service effectively addresses the target audience’s needs and pain points. You might also revisit how you define your target audience. This involves an in-depth understanding of your customers and their needs and preferences. A well-defined target audience allows for more [effective marketing strategies](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-know-youre-ready-for-marketing/), better customer acquisition, and maximized return on investment (ROI). As you continue to analyze customer feedback and testing results, it’s important to iterate and improve your offering. Over time, you’ll see improved conversion rates and higher traction in the market. Unfortunately, one of the most challenging aspects of the SaaS blackhole is that it can last anywhere from a few weeks to a few years, During this time, taking on new employees can be difficult and even unproductive. We recommend only taking on team members that will help your startup launch a paid service or product. In many cases, this is someone with experience launching a product, with startups, or with startup growth, which brings us to our final question on the SaaS black hole. ## When is it Right to Seek Help? As a consulting agency specializing in SaaS startups, we often engage with founders in or around the SaaS black hole. A common question is, ‘When should I hire help?’ The best answer is before or after the black hole. In the black hole stage, your startup may pivot entirely, change up its marketing strategy, or redefine its target audience within a day’s notice. That makes it hard for new members to gain traction and add value. Adding valuable members before the black hole can help you perform [customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/doing-customer-research-start-doing-this/) or assess product-market fit before you bring your MVP to the testing stage. Similarly, adding members after the black hole stage allows you to communicate a strong direction, vision, product, and strategy so they can hit the ground running and help you grow. Are you in the SaaS black hole? Rest assured, knowing it won’t last forever, and the end could be in sight. But remain flexible and ready to adapt to any changes the data might encourage you to make. ## Wrapping up To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP25: 5 Growth Opportunities for SaaS Startups](https://demandmaven.io/top-5-growth-opportunities-saas-startups/) **Published:** April 11, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Founding a SaaS startup is a challenging task. And when it comes to actually growing your startup, many founders turn to marketing and customer acquisition first. While marketing and acquisition may help your business grow, we’ve found that other critical areas can help make your efforts more meaningful. So in this post, we’re sharing the top 5 growth opportunities for SaaS startups. Let’s dive in! ## 1. Activation The first area we recommend looking for growth is your activation rate. The term “activation” has many different definitions in startup lingo. But for this post, we’re defining it as the practice in growth where you engage and encourage your target customers to become “activated” and achieve value from the product (therefore becoming paying customers). This stage is all about converting people who are aware of your product or service into paying customers. To get even more specific, we recommend looking at people who have started free trials, created free accounts, or booked product demos. If you have an activation rate of 45%, all that means is 45% of the people who signed up for your free trial “activated” a paid membership at the end of the trial. In general, aim for activation rates between 30% and 60% with free trials and 2% to 3% with freemium models. If you have a sales model, you’ll want to close 20-30% of deals. If your rates fall below these ranges, there’s likely room for growth. [Improving your activation rate](https://demandmaven.io/why-empathy-is-the-secret-to-a-great-activation-strategy/) can ensure that your efforts in areas like awareness and acquisition have an even larger impact, which is why it’s number one on this list. Low activation rates can result from several things, including an unappealing product or service, a slow onboarding process, or your marketing and sales efforts attracting poor leads. Determine the cause of your low activation rates and then focus your efforts on resolving the issue. ## 2. Retention Next, consider your retention rate. Retention refers to your company’s ability to keep existing customers. The goal is to keep customers engaged, satisfied, and loyal by maintaining a positive relationship over time. A high retention rate means you’re keeping a high percentage of your customers over time. A low retention rate indicates you have high customer churn. And if you aren’t retaining customers, you won’t grow. Period. Why? Because acquiring a new customer can cost several times more than retaining a current one. If you constantly lose customers, the never-ending cost of bringing more in will drain your cash over the long-term. In other words, there’s a severe leak in the ship. To figure out the cause of a low retention rate, you’ll need to go directly to the source. If you can, gather surveys and relevant data from customers who are leaving. This will help you understand why they’re leaving, but don’t forget about your existing customers too. While they may be actively engaged in your service or product, it doesn’t mean they won’t exit in the future. Understand their pain points and work to make a better product for both your current and future customers. Pro tip: identify leading indicators in behavior that indicate if a customer is a churn risk and create a program to identify it before it happens. ## 3. Expansion If you’re happy with your activation and retention rates, then it’s time to look at revenue expansion. This refers to increasing your revenue by increasing sales. That doesn’t necessarily mean selling more of your flagship product or acquiring new customers. Examples of revenue expansion include: - **Upselling.** encouraging customers to purchase add-ons or to upgrade to higher-value assets - **Cross-selling.** Offering complimentary products or services to existing customers - **Subscription models.** Shifting from one-time purchases to a subscription-based model - **Pricing optimization.** Strategically adjusting your prices to reflect market demand Expansion can be a fantastic growth opportunity for SaaS startups, but you need the right people behind it to make it work. For example, a strong product team will help you identify when a feature should be an add-on (upsell) vs. an addition to an existing service or product. You’ll also need a good product marketing strategy that helps current customers adopt new features and creates awareness with potential customers. ## 4. LTV & ARPU For the fourth growth opportunity, we’re actually encouraging you to look at two different metrics: 1. **Lifetime value (LTV).** This is the amount of revenue a customer is expected to generate throughout the lifetime of your relationship. 2. **Average revenue per user (ARPU).** This is the amount of revenue you expect from a customer in a given period of time. The key difference between these two metrics is time. LTV refers to the entire relationship, while ARPU can refer to a month, a quarter, a year, or whatever else you’d like to measure. Higher LTV and ARPU are good, but low metrics can indicate that you’re not retaining customers well or monetizing your customer base appropriately. Similar to retention and expansion, if your LTV and ARPU are low, you’ll want to reevaluate how you engage with and provide value to your current customers. When your retention and expansion rates increase, your LTV and ARPU will likely follow. One thing to remember here is that the quality of your data is critical in evaluating these metrics. You need to look at your LTV based on very specific metrics because it can vary from market to market and customer segment to customer segment. The more specific and detailed data you can get, the more you can derive from that information. ## 5. Operations Finally, if everything else looks strong, consider your operations. The goal is to identify key areas for improvement and optimization, and it may take an unbiased third party to help you get there. When evaluating your operations, ask these questions of your company: - How do we function as a team? - How are decisions made? - How are responsibilities distributed? - Are we collecting and analyzing data effectively to make data-driven decisions? - Are we effectively managing costs and maximizing profitability? No amount of advice, mentorship, or support will help your SaaS startup grow if you don’t have strong systems and procedures in place. For example, we’ve worked with a company that wanted to start by looking at marketing as an opportunity for growth. While we did find opportunities for growth in their marketing efforts, over several years, we found that some teams couldn’t execute plans. After a few new hires and implementing some new processes, everyone in the company measurably improved, and we made significant progress. ## Bonus: Acquisition As a bonus opportunity for growth, consider acquisition. Acquisition is always an opportunity, and you may have been surprised it wasn’t mentioned sooner. But new customers won’t solve growth challenges without solid activation, retention, expansion, and operations. Bringing new customers to a product or service with growth gaps is like pouring water into a bucket with holes. You should focus on the top 5 growth opportunities for SaaS startups before worrying about acquiring new customers (unless of course you’re starting from scratch 🙂). ## Wrapping up To learn more about how to reach your growth goals for your SaaS business, check out our top offers here: - [Done-for-you customer research ](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) - [Growth audit ](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) - [Customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) [Book a time with me](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) here and I can point you in the right direction. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP35: The value of founder communities](https://demandmaven.io/ep35-the-value-of-founder-communities/) **Published:** May 6, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Welcome to the new season of the In Demand podcast! For this season, Asia is joined by her new co-host Kim Talarczyk, the Client Services Manager at DemandMaven. In this first episode of the season, Asia and Kim discuss recent conferences like [MicroConf](https://microconf.com/) and Indie Founders, highlighting the value of founder communities and the insights from conversations with founders. They cover how DemandMaven is evolving and new projects, like Asia’s work as a fractional CMO, and how the shifting tech paradigm is changing businesses in 2025. Let’s get started! ## Meet our new co-host, Kim Talarczyk At retreats and conferences, fans of the In Demand podcast frequently express a desire for more content. As a solo host and business owner, recording and publishing podcasts consistently can be challenging for Asia. Between getting diagnosed with ADHD last year and understanding her own work style and motivators, Asia has been on a journey to improve her operations and figure out the best way to share all of the knowledge she is accumulating every week. Enter Kim Talarczyk, who has been working alongside Asia as the Client Services Manager at DemandMaven for the last four years. Not only is she managing client projects but she’s played a huge role in keeping Asia organized and on track behind the scenes. Kim’s background is in marketing and tech operations where she’s done everything from scaling companies to building teams, creating processes, growing the business, and handling client relationships. Kim keeps the DemandMaven ship sailing, and her operations-focused POV is the perfect complement to Asia’s strategic insight. Over the last few years, they’ve been hashing it out behind the scenes. Now, they’re excited to be distilling and sharing their observations with you on the pod. ## Indie Founders retreat recap Asia recently returned from Italy where she attended a few conferences, including Indie Founders, an invitation-only founder retreat run by [Rand Fishkin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/) and cohosted by [Giacomo (Peldi) Guilizzoni](https://www.linkedin.com/in/peldi/). The event distinguishes itself by focusing on zebras – smaller, profitable businesses prioritizing long-term value over a fast exit —rather than unicorns or decacorns. Indie Founders could be described as an “un-conference” fostering real, transparent discussions among the founders in attendance. There’s a “leave your egos at the door,” human vibe thanks to a diverse mix of people at various stages of their careers and company growth. For Asia, Indie Founders 2025 was a grounding experience, giving her time to reflect on her goals for the growth and evolution of DemandMaven. She realized it’s not about hitting that next milestone or completely changing the business in order to scale. She’d rather continue to solve problems for people while maintaining financial and emotional balance. She also acknowledges how important it is to spend time traveling to events like MicroConf and Indie Founders, whether it’s going to New Orleans or Italy. Gatherings like these are critical for making new connections, shifting your energy, and rewiring your brain so you can see just a little bit more clearly. ## What makes a good CEO (and why founders often aren’t best at CEO work) Asia’s biggest download from IndieFounders was about understanding how and where she wants to stretch. In 2025, DemandMaven has started taking on fractional-CMO-as-a-Service opportunities, and – surprise, surprise – she’s been loving it. She does worry about feeling boxed in in the CMO role, which led her to contemplate what it takes to be a CEO. In general, founder CEOs are makers who have had to learn the role of CEO. They face challenges that a traditional CEO or interim CEO might not, for example: 1. **Managing people.** As a company grows, CEOs must focus on leadership and coaching. 2. **Adapting energy.** Matching the energy of high-level VPs can be difficult. 3. **Making decisions.** The pressure of running a growing business can be draining. 4. **Handling daily tasks.** Shifting from hands-on work to strategy can be tough. Discussions like these, along with topics like marketing channels, founder “therapy,” product vision, and industry shifts, are just a few examples of what makes events like Indie Founder so valuable. ## Planning in unpredictable times The tech market is always changing, but feels especially volatile now. It’s why Asia stopped making 3 or 5-year plans for her business instead choosing a path of constant iteration. So when another conference attendee asked the question “How *do* you plan in 2025?”, it made her think. When you’re leading or managing a team, you still have to have a plan on paper. You can’t predict the future, but you have to be able to create some palatable vision that people can digest. How should bootstrapped founders figure out their next best move? They have to look at the leading indicators that are signalling that change is underfoot. Acquisitions are a red flag for major industry changes. If certain roles or hiring trends are taking place, that’s a good indicator. You can also look at shifts in the political climate. Asia gives the example of DemandMaven’s clients in the education space, who had to look at how the current administration treats certain education programs to figure out what strategies to prioritize. Strong leaders have to constantly be paying attention, looking for signals and making sure they’re documenting and collecting data around them when possible. But no shame when you miss something! There will always be things you can’t predict – take the example of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse of 2023. ## And now, something random: Delta’s 100-year anniversary video Time to make a slight detour from founder content. During her travels the last few weeks, Asia happened upon another, unexpected, benefit of leaving home: In-flight entertainment. On her trip back from Paris to Atlanta, Delta showcased their latest safety instruction video which walks viewers through the last ten decades of styles, logos, and culture. It may not have been perfect – the last thirty years felt noticeably off – but Kim and Asia think this Delta marketing experiment paid off. What do you think? ## The power of podcasts and the challenge of creating when it can feel like you’re talking into a vacuum At MicroConf and Indie Founders, Asia was amazed at how often people brought up the In Demand podcast. When you’re in the middle of the production process, podcasts can feel like a one-way street. You’re putting content out in the world, and sometimes it seems like that’s where it ends. It’s easy to wonder whether podcasts really deserve a place in your marketing strategy and talk yourself out of it. Maybe you’re not someone who is naturally inspired to share. Maybe you don’t know how you’re going to ever attribute any business to it. Maybe you think too many people already have podcasts, or no one is going to really listen. But just because you’re not getting consistent feedback or the attribution you wanted doesn’t mean it’s a wasted effort. At the end of the day, it’s valuable content that people probably want more of. Which brings us to today… ## What’s next for In Demand? It’s not fair that Kim gets to hear Asia say brilliant things everyday during their calls with clients and discussions together. So many juicy nuggets have been mostly locked away until now. And while she shares a bit of what she sees through her speaking engagements, not everyone is going to have the opportunity to see Asia onstage at a conference. The goal of this podcast is to bring you organic learnings from other tech clients and founders. Asia and Kim have promised to capture the aha moments that happen each week and unpack their discoveries over time. The podcast might feel a bit different to long-time listeners – you’ll notice some new strategies and experimenting, and we hope you’ll stick around for it all. Indie Founder was a good reminder about how important it is to connect with and hear from other founders. So, let’s keep the parasocial conversations going right here. If there is anything specific you want to hear us cover, reach out to Kim or Asia and let us know! **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP36: Hiring for growth](https://demandmaven.io/ep36-hiring-for-growth/) **Published:** May 13, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Hiring your first marketer is one of the most critical and confusing decisions an early-stage SaaS founder will face. It’s not just about growing your team, it’s about laying the foundation for how marketing will function inside your business. In Episode 36 of the In Demand podcast, DemandMaven’s Asia Orangio and Kim Talarczyk unpack the challenges, mistakes, and best practices that founders – especially technical ones – face when making that hire. ## Why hiring for marketing is so hard Marketing is often one of the least familiar functions to technical founders. While they may have built and scaled engineering or product teams, they often lack firsthand experience in marketing – and that makes hiring tough. Asia emphasizes that if you don’t know what great marketing looks like, it’s hard to know who to hire or how to evaluate them. As a result, founders often compare potential hires to visible marketing personalities or influencers – people like Gary V. or Seth Godin – not realizing that these professionals are often working in very different capacities than what a small SaaS company needs. The reality is, many of the best marketers are doing the work quietly, behind the scenes not promoting themselves online. This disconnect makes it difficult to set reasonable expectations. Marketing is frequently misunderstood because its outputs – brand presence, content, campaigns – can take time to show ROI. Founders without direct marketing experience may underestimate the effort it takes to produce meaningful results. ## From budget to role: foundational decisions The first question to consider: what is your loaded marketing budget? Not just for tools or ad spend, but for people. This includes salaries, contractors, freelancers, or agency fees. Understanding your budget helps determine whether you can afford a full-time hire or need to assemble a marketing function through external help. If the budget is too limited for a full-time employee, you might want to invest in your own marketing education or utilize contractors and freelancers. Asia points to bootstrap founders like Alex Turnbull of Groove and Arvid Kahl as examples of technical leaders who learned and executed marketing themselves until they were able to hire help. The next question is: do you need a generalist or specialist? That depends on what your company needs to achieve. If your biggest opportunity is in SEO or content marketing, it might make sense to hire for that skill directly. If paid acquisition is key, then a demand generation marketer may be the right fit. Founders also need to assess their own strategic capability. If you can define marketing strategy yourself, hiring a tactician or specialist can work well. If not, it may make sense to hire someone more senior or bring in help to guide your strategy. ## Use the Skills, Experience, and Characteristics Framework Asia shares a clear and actionable framework for defining a role: Skills, Experience, and Characteristics. 1. **Skills.** What are the specific capabilities you need? Do you need someone who can run Google Ads? Write content? Manage email campaigns? Make a list of tangible tasks this person needs to perform. 2. **Experience.** What kind of environments has this person worked in? Have they taken a product from your current stage to the next? Have they worked in a bootstrapped SaaS business before? Founders often overlook this – but someone coming from a large enterprise or VC-backed company may not thrive in a lean startup environment. 3. **Characteristics.** What kind of person will thrive in your culture and with your leadership style? For example, do they need to be highly iterative, comfortable with ambiguity, or analytical? Asia notes that great demand gen marketers often show a pattern of constantly refining and improving, rather than sticking to one approach. It’s worth a reminder here: If you don’t know what you’re looking for and if you don’t know what good or great looks like, hiring is going to be difficult. That’s why even founders who aren’t hiring yet should talk to experienced marketers, just to understand what strong candidates sound like and how they describe their work. ## Hiring process and role clarity The hiring process itself can either clarify or complicate your search. Asia and Kim stress the importance of clear expectations. Don’t just say you want a “Head of Marketing” and expect that person to run paid ads, manage content, do branding, and write copy all at once. Be realistic: no single person can do everything. Job titles also mean different things in different contexts. Some candidates may have been called “Head of Marketing” but worked as a junior-level executor. Others may have held less prestigious titles while doing high-impact, strategic work. You can’t evaluate someone on title alone. You need to have conversations to dig into their real responsibilities and results. Interviewing for the right experiences – such as stage of company, price point, or team size – is more important than prestige. You should also clarify whether you’re looking for a strategic leader or an execution-focused hire. These are different roles, and mismatching them can lead to disappointing results. ## The Bootstrap vs. VC context Asia highlights an important distinction: bootstrap vs. VC-funded companies attract different types of marketers. VC-backed companies often require 10x growth and have large budgets to chase aggressive KPIs. Bootstrap companies, on the other hand, may focus on sustainable growth with leaner resources. Candidates coming from VC-funded backgrounds may find the pace or constraints of a bootstrapped business frustrating. Conversely, some marketers are explicitly looking to leave high-burn environments and are attracted to more sustainable, values-aligned work. Understanding this dynamic will help you evaluate candidate fit beyond skills alone. Salary expectations are also affected. Asia points out that Head of Marketing roles often start at $160K+ in the U.S., which may be out of reach for many early-stage founders. She encourages exploring international or remote hiring if the company is remote-friendly, as this can broaden the talent pool while maintaining affordability. ## When to hire – and when you’re not ready So how do you know it’s time to make your first hire? Asia looks at a few signals: - You’ve hit $1M ARR - You’re spending too much time managing marketing tasks outside your zone of genius - The business is profitable and can afford the role - Your current growth rate and profit margin (e.g., the “Rule of 40”) suggests you’re under-investing in growth She also cautions that hiring a marketer won’t fix everything. If your product, retention, or onboarding aren’t working, marketing alone won’t turn things around. Marketing is one cylinder in the engine – it needs the rest of the system to fire, too. ## Final thoughts: Be strategic but realistic Hiring your first marketer isn’t just a talent decision – it’s a business strategy. Early marketing hires have the potential to change the trajectory of your company. But first, you need to know what problem you’re solving, what kind of person can solve it, and whether your company is ready to support that hire. Use the Skills/Experience/Characteristics framework. Talk to marketers even before you’re hiring. Be clear about expectations. And most of all, be realistic about what one person can do. Then you’ll be ready for the next stage of hiring: crafting a good job description, posting to the right places, and getting the best candidates in the door. There’s so much to dig into, we’re already working on another pod to make sure we’ve covered everything. Stay tuned! **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP37: Why SaaS founders shouldn't accept growth problems as unsolvable](https://demandmaven.io/ep37-why-saas-founders-shouldnt-accept-growth-problems-as-unsolvable/) **Published:** May 20, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Most SaaS companies hit growth plateaus, and too many founders assume the problem is either unsolvable or too complex to fix. In reality, that’s rarely true. In this episode of In Demand, Asia and Kim unpack how to shift your mindset from “This can’t be solved” to “Who’s already solved this, and how can I learn from them?” ## The “Unsolvable Problem” mindset As growth consultants for SaaS companies, we’ve noticed a concerning pattern with founders—particularly bootstrapped ones. When facing challenges like poor activation or retention rates, there’s often an underlying assumption that these problems are simply “unsolvable mysteries” that everyone struggles with. This mindset manifests in a few ways: - “All my founder friends struggle with this too, so it must be normal” - “We know it’s a problem, but we have no idea how to fix it” - “It’s easier to focus elsewhere than tackle this complex issue” This passive acceptance is particularly common among technical founders who are more comfortable with product and engineering challenges than growth, marketing, or sales problems. ## The Reality: Someone has already solved your problem Here’s the reality we want every founder to understand: It doesn’t matter what challenge you’re facing in your business—someone else has already figured it out and absolutely crushed it. Whether you’re struggling with: - Activation rates - Customer retention - Revenue expansion - Pricing optimization - User acquisition - Product experience issues Someone has not only solved this problem but has developed frameworks, methodologies, and processes to handle it systematically. ## Why knowledge isn’t being transferred Why do founders feel like they’re reinventing the wheel? As Hiten Shah once noted during the pandemic years, “As a sector, we’ve lost so much progress because there’s a lot of business knowledge and founder knowledge that didn’t get preserved well enough and distributed well enough.” The tech sector has seen a significant influx of new founders who may not realize there’s a vast library of existing knowledge on building successful businesses. Even newer concepts like Product-Led Growth (PLG) have been practiced for decades—we just didn’t have terminology for them until recently. ## How to find solutions Where should you look for solutions? Here are the resources we recommend: **1. Books.** Books are well-packaged knowledge tomes, especially valuable for busy executives who don’t have time for courses. They’re often our starting point. **2. Expert Content.** Look for consultants and specialists who publicly share their expertise. For example, Asia learned activation fundamentals from Samuel Hulick and Ramli John through their books and websites. **3. Courses.** While not ideal for every founder, courses can provide structured learning for those who enjoy the format. ## Understanding concepts versus having expertise It’s important to distinguish between understanding a concept and having expertise. You may read about Jobs-to-be-Done theory, but actually implementing it effectively requires practical experience. For founders, the goal isn’t necessarily to become an expert but to: 1. Learn enough to know the problem is solvable 2. Understand key concepts and trade-offs 3. Either apply solutions yourself or hire someone who can implement them effectively ## A framework for prioritizing solutions: CUES Once you understand that your problems are solvable, how do you prioritize what to work on? Asia recommends the CUES framework instead of the common ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) approach. CUES stands for: - **Confidence.** How confident are you that this will make a meaningful difference? - **Understanding.** How well do you understand what you’re trying to do? - **Ease.** How difficult will this be to implement? - **Speed.** How quickly can you get this done? The Understanding component is particularly valuable because it forces you to confront knowledge gaps before diving into implementation. If your understanding is low, that’s a signal to learn more before proceeding. ## Case study: Solving pricing problems One client we worked with had experienced flat growth for two years. By examining their Net Revenue Retention (NRR) data—a critical metric showing how much revenue is retained from cohorts over time—we discovered significant drops in months following pricing changes. The company didn’t initially realize pricing was their core issue. After implementing a new pricing strategy based on a “good, better, best” model aligned with customer segments, they experienced positive growth for the first time in years. This highlights an important point: pricing may seem mysterious, but it’s rooted in commerce fundamentals that have existed for centuries. The principles aren’t new, even if the SaaS implementation has unique aspects. ## Key metric to watch: NRR For SaaS businesses, Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is one of the most critical health indicators. It shows what percentage of revenue from a customer cohort remains after a specific period (typically 12 months). - Healthy NRR: 80-100%+ at 12 months - Below 80%: You need to replace that percentage of revenue annually just to stay flat - Ideal NRR: 100-120%+ (indicating both retention and expansion) By segmenting NRR by plans or customer types, you can identify which customers are most valuable for sustainable growth. ## Remember: Growth is compoundable, not a silver bullet There’s rarely one single problem holding back your growth. Instead, several interrelated factors compound together—from targeting the right customers to product experience to monetization strategy. The key is acknowledging that each element is solvable, then systematically addressing the highest-leverage points first. ## Conclusion The next time you face a seemingly “unsolvable” growth problem, remember: 1. Someone else has already solved this exact challenge 2. Resources and experts exist to help you understand the solution 3. You need to be committed to making changes (which is often the hardest part) 4. Use frameworks like CUES to prioritize your approach Don’t accept flat growth or poor metrics as inevitable. With the right approach, every growth challenge is ‘figureoutable’. If you’re experiencing growth problems in your SaaS business, [contact us ](https://demandmaven.io/contact/)for a free 45-minute growth audit today. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP38: Troubleshooting growth—What it really means for PLG SaaS](https://demandmaven.io/ep38-troubleshooting-growth-for-plg-saas/) **Published:** May 27, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** When we talk about “troubleshooting growth” at DemandMaven, we’re often met with confusion. It’s not exactly a mainstream concept, and for many founders—especially those running early-stage SaaS companies—it’s cryptic at best. In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim break down what troubleshooting growth actually means, why it’s different from marketing, and why focusing solely on marketing might be holding your SaaS company back. ## Marketing vs. Growth First, let’s clarify some terminology: Marketing is about efficiency within specific marketing channels and programs. A Head of Marketing or Director/VP of Marketing typically: - Analyzes which channels can be “exploded” for maximum impact - Focuses on optimizing SEO, paid acquisition, or specific marketing channels - Works primarily within the marketing function (though they may collaborate with other teams) When talking Growth**,** a Head/VP of Growth or Growth Strategist takes a much broader view: - Looks at efficiency across the entire business - Examines not just marketing but onboarding, activation, retention, expansion, monetization, and revenue - May even analyze pricing, sales processes, and other business functions The trouble is that most early-stage founders put all their eggs in the marketing basket, and when growth is slow, their first instinct is to say, “We have a marketing problem.” ## The bigger picture approach When we’re troubleshooting growth at DemandMaven, we look at the entire business. Yes, marketing might be a challenge—but there might be bigger issues at play: - Maybe your net revenue retention is the real problem - Perhaps your activation rate is abysmal (even if you tripled your trials, a poor conversion rate means minimal impact) - Your expansion opportunities might be the low-hanging fruit you’re missing As Asia explains, “You could optimize marketing to death, but that’s not going to matter if you can’t upsell or cross-sell.” ## Process for troubleshooting slow growth When growth is slow, our process typically looks like this: 1. **Quantitative Analysis.** We start by examining your metrics across the business: - Subscription analytics - Product analytics - Web and marketing analytics - Sales performance data 2. **Benchmarking.** We compare your performance against industry standards: - Free trial to paid conversion (should be 20-30%, industry average is 15%) - Website conversion rates (2-5% is common, below 2% is concerning) - Net revenue retention - Customer balance (new vs. churned vs. expanding) 3. **Qualitative Research.** Once we identify the weak spots: - We talk to paying customers - We interview churned customers - We may speak with prospects or strangers who fit your ideal customer profile - We conduct UX interviews or surveys as needed 4. **Root Cause Analysis.** - Through pattern matching, we identify what’s really holding you back 5. **Implementation.** We either: - Provide recommendations for your team to execute - Guide the implementation process - Help bring in the right resources to fix the issues ## Common culprits of slow growth When troubleshooting growth, we often find these issues: - **Acquisition problems.** Positioning, messaging, channel selection, or landing page experience - **Activation issues.** Poor onboarding, confusing first-use experience, or unclear value proposition - **Retention challenges.** Product-market fit issues, customer success gaps, or competitive disadvantages - **Expansion limitations.** Pricing strategy flaws, lack of upsell paths, or poor monetization ## Growth vs. product marketing A common question we receive is how troubleshooting growth differs from product marketing. While there’s overlap, they’re distinct functions: Product Marketing focuses on: - How to position and present the product - Making the product irresistible to the target market - Feature positioning and messaging - Competitive analysis Growth encompasses all of that plus: - Efficiency across the entire business - Behavioral optimization (getting users to take desired actions) - Growth loops and network effects - Nuanced optimizations throughout the customer journey As Asia puts it, “A product marketer might not necessarily be looking at activation rates for all segments, or efficiency across the whole business. They’re very much concerned with the aspects of going to market with the product.” ## When to bring in a growth expert The best time to bring in growth expertise is when: 1. You’re sick of trying to figure it out on your own 2. Growth is clearly slower than it should be 3. You’re ready to take action on the recommendations The worst scenario? Learning what’s wrong but doing nothing about it. ## The bottom line For most SaaS companies under $10M ARR, there’s usually a fundamental issue holding back growth—not just a marketing problem. Troubleshooting growth means finding that issue and fixing it. As one client discovered: “Even if I tripled our trials, we would only convert 8% of them.” Sometimes, the biggest growth opportunity isn’t getting more leads—it’s converting the ones you already have. If you’re experiencing slow growth in your PLG SaaS and want to uncover the root causes, [reach out to us](https://www.demandmaven.io/). We’re your first head of growth—helping you identify the real issues and providing actionable solutions to get your growth back on track. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP39: When does it make sense to bring on a Fractional CMO?](https://demandmaven.io/ep39-when-to-bring-on-a-fractional-cmo/) **Published:** June 3, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we’re all about helping SaaS companies understand and navigate their growth challenges. In this week’s episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim dive into the world of fractional CMOs—what they do, when you might need one, and how they compare to full-time marketing executives. ## What exactly is a CMO responsible for? A Chief Marketing Officer’s role boils down to three core responsibilities: 1. **Budget management.** Keeping costs aligned with business goals and ensuring proper ROI 2. **Strategy development.** Setting the vision and direction for marketing initiatives 3. **Team leadership.** Building and inspiring the right marketing team As Asia explains, “A CMO is someone who is ultimately hiring the team, inspiring the team, and hopefully never firing the team, but ultimately ensuring that budget and strategy are always in check.” The exact balance between these three pillars varies by organization. In some companies, budget management takes precedence, while others might prioritize strategic vision or team building depending on their specific needs and growth stage. ## Full-time vs. Fractional CMO: When does each make sense? The decision between hiring a full-time or fractional CMO typically comes down to two key factors: **Cost considerations.** Full-time CMOs command significant salaries—typically starting at $200-250K in the US market. Fractional CMOs provide access to high-level marketing leadership without the full-time expense. **Bandwidth requirements.** Not every company needs a full-time CMO. If you estimate needing 10-20 hours per week of strategic marketing leadership, a fractional approach might be perfect. As Asia notes from her experience as both an accidental and intentional fractional CMO, “The telltale sign for hiring full-time is if your executive team is running circles around the fractional CMO. If they’re constantly behind the ball because everyone else is moving faster than they are, that’s when you need to consider a full-time position.” ## Signs you might need a CMO (fractional or otherwise) Consider bringing in CMO-level leadership when: - The CEO is no longer able to effectively lead the marketing function - Your investments aren’t yielding expected results - You’ve got multiple marketing specialists (demand gen, ABM, product marketing, etc.) without strategic coordination - You’re struggling to measure marketing ROI and determine where to make your next investments ## The CMO vs. VP of Marketing distinction What separates a true CMO from a VP of Marketing? According to Asia, the key difference lies in strategic thinking: “A great CMO thinks like a CEO and a CFO simultaneously, with a deep understanding of how marketing works. They’re concerned with markets, geolocations, products, and investment allocation across these variables.” In contrast, VPs of Marketing typically focus more on channel-level strategy and program execution—they may be excellent at optimizing specific marketing functions but might not yet have developed the high-level strategic perspective required of a CMO. ## Setting up for success with a fractional CMO If you’re considering bringing on a fractional CMO, here are some practical tips: 1. **Start with a trial period.** Before fully committing, implement a 90-day trial to ensure alignment 2. **Look for industry fit.** Seek someone with relevant SaaS or industry experience 3. **Clarify expectations.** Understand what style of CMO you need—visionary, operational, or somewhere in between 4. **Set clear time horizons.** A great executive always thinks across multiple time frames—two weeks, 60 days, and two quarters ahead ## The balancing act of fractional leadership One interesting benefit of fractional CMOs is their forced focus. With limited hours, they must concentrate on the highest-impact initiatives rather than getting bogged down in day-to-day busywork. As Asia puts it, “Having less time has forced me to aggressively focus. Not everything actually is going to move the needle. To me, 80% of the result comes from 20% of the work.” However, this comes with the challenge of maintaining momentum and ensuring the fractional executive isn’t inadvertently becoming a bottleneck as other departments scale. ## Final thoughts Whether you’re considering a fractional CMO or evaluating your current marketing leadership structure, the key is matching your business needs with the right level of strategic oversight. A fractional approach can provide the perfect balance for companies that need high-level marketing vision without the full-time investment—especially during crucial growth transitions. Interested in exploring whether a fractional CMO might be right for your SaaS business?[ Get in touch with us at Demand Maven](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) to discuss your growth challenges. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP40: When your product takes you in an unexpected direction](https://demandmaven.io/ep40-when-your-product-takes-you-in-an-unexpected-direction/) **Published:** June 10, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** What happens when the market wants one thing, but you want to build something else? In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim unpack the emotional tension founders face when their product attracts a different kind of customer than they originally set out to serve. From internal conflict to organizational confusion, they explore how this misalignment can quietly stall growth and what it takes to move forward with clarity. ## What the founder wants versus what the product wants Many founders, especially solo bootstrapped ones, experience a unique conflict: the product they’ve built begins attracting users they never intended to serve. This creates a fundamental tension between the founder’s original vision and the market reality. This tension often appears as an internal conflict—especially among solo founders who lack partners to help resolve these strategic questions. When left unaddressed, this conflict manifests as a lack of focus that can significantly hinder growth. ## What this looks like A technical founder builds a productivity tool to solve their own problem, initially attracting customers just like them. Over time, a larger, unexpected customer segment emerges and gradually becomes the dominant user base. The founder struggles emotionally because their passion was for the original audience, not this new segment. A PLG SaaS in the HR space discovers their product appeals to three distinct segments. Each segment wants features that are often “diametrically opposed” to what other segments need. The founders now have to decide which direction to take the product, knowing they can’t effectively serve all three segments equally. ## Recognition is the first step The first step toward resolving this tension is simply recognizing it exists. Many founders experience this conflict but aren’t fully aware of it or how it’s affecting their decision-making. It’s important for founders to explicitly acknowledge this tension, especially before getting too big and the misalignment becomes more costly to address. ## Understanding the source of the conflict This tension can stem from various sources: - **Emotional attachment** to an original idea or vision - **Identity concerns** ‘I’ve always seen myself as a founder of a developer-based company’ - **Fear of the unknown** path or customer segment - **Team considerations** and worries about disrupting existing structures - **General discomfort** with making significant strategic shifts ## Making peace with a direction The most important step is making a commitment to a direction—any direction—rather than remaining stuck in perpetual indecision. It’s better for founders to make a commitment than to just keep thrashing. That is how you low-key die on that long slow SaaS ramp of death. Bootstrap founders have unique freedom—if you don’t have a VC to answer to, you can do whatever you want. But this freedom means there’s no objectively “right” path—only the path you commit to, with full awareness of its trade-offs. ## How to resolve the tension 1. **Identify all potential options**, not just the obvious choices 2. **Understand the trade-offs** of each path 3. **Decide and commit** to a direction, even knowing it’s not perfect 4. **Practice radical acceptance** of the chosen path 5. **Remember decisions are mutable** – you can always adjust later ## Getting outside perspective Sometimes, founders need outside perspective to break through this tension. Whether it’s working with a company like DemandMaven, seeking executive coaching, or consulting resources like [Dr. Sherry Walling’s work for founders](https://www.sherrywalling.com/), external input can be invaluable. People often underestimate how much our own emotions and egos get in the way of growing their own company. If you’re a solo founder, it’s especially important to be able to reflect, seek council and make a decision and move forward. ## The bottom line Don’t let internal tension around product direction become the reason your growth stalls. Recognize the conflict, understand your options, and commit to a direction—even if that direction might shift later. Got a question you’d like Asia to unpack on the podcast? [Record a voicemail here.](https://www.speakpipe.com/indemandpodcast) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP41: The hidden patterns in customer research](https://demandmaven.io/ep-41-the-hidden-patterns-in-customer-research/) **Published:** June 17, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** In this episode of In Demand, we explore how to transform customer insights into actionable growth strategies, and discuss why the difference between management and leadership matters for SaaS founders. ## Seeing what others miss: The pattern recognition advantage in customer research As growth consultants for SaaS companies, we know there is a big difference between simply listening to our client’s customers and truly recognizing meaningful patterns that can drive business decisions. This is why we love when we get to do a research sprint with our SaaS clients, during which we talk face to face with 10-15 of our client’s best customers so we can identify patterns and draw various insights that will drive messaging, positioning, product and more. This pattern recognition manifests in a few ways: - Identifying what customers actually value versus what they say they value - Spotting competitive comparison patterns across different customer segments - Recognizing implicit value themes that customers may not explicitly mention The reality is that customer research isn’t just about collecting feedback—it’s about developing the ability to see patterns that lie under the surface and turning those insights into strategic action. The key difference is in how you process the information you’re hearing: - **Surface listening.** Hearing only what customers explicitly say - **Pattern recognition.** Connecting dots across multiple interviews to identify underlying trends - **Strategic translation.** Converting those patterns into concrete action items Where many founders get stuck is in the translation phase—understanding what patterns mean for their business and how to prioritize the resulting opportunities. ## What happens during customer research During our latest customer research sprint, Kim noticed something interesting about Asia’s approach – she’s able to listen to customer interviews and draw interesting insights and conclusions on the fly. As Asia explains: “Every new thing that I’m hearing, I’m checking against every other single interview that we’ve done. I’m checking the box of is this new? Or have I heard this? Whether I’ve heard it before or if it’s new, it either builds the algorithm in my head or it’s breaking it.” This constant pattern-matching creates a mental model that reveals: 1. **Value disconnects.** What customers say they value versus what they actually spend time discussing 2. **Competitive blind spots.** How different customer segments compare your solution to alternatives 3. **Hidden opportunities.** Areas where customers are getting value that you aren’t explicitly promoting ## The customer comparison pattern: A case study One of the most valuable patterns we identified in recent research was how customer perceptions varied based on their previous solution: “There was a clear pattern in what the context of that person had before they actually got into our solution. If they came from one of the big 800-pound gorilla solutions, they would look at us like, ‘Oh, this is awesome. It’s great value.’ But if they came from something fringe… they actually would look at our solution and think, ‘It’s nice, it’s helping us in some ways, but not in others.'” This insight revealed a critical messaging gap: “We spend all of our time competing against these major players, but there are people comparing us against these smaller solutions, and they are not nearly the solution that we are, but we don’t have messaging that speaks to them.” Without pattern recognition across multiple interviews, this opportunity would have remained invisible. ## Turning patterns into action: The execution challenge Once you’ve identified patterns, how do you translate them into growth strategies that actually get implemented? This is where the distinction between leadership and management becomes crucial. “There is a very big difference between being a good manager versus being a good leader,” Asia explains. “And I think if you are in any executive or leadership position, you probably are going to have to do some mixture of both.” The difference breaks down like this: Leadership is about vision and direction: - This is what the world should look like. Follow me along to go and make this world a reality. - I have this vision of what marketing should look like at this company. I now have to share that vision with my team. - Leaders focus on transformation and the big picture. Management is about execution and operations: - It’s far more concerned with the output and the outcome. - It’s asking “is this effective, efficient, and operationally sound?” - Managers create the work paths and ensure the vision becomes reality. Most SaaS growth challenges require both capabilities. You need the vision to recognize what patterns mean for your business, and the operational skill to turn that vision into action. ## The execution misconception: What really blocks progress Here’s a counterintuitive truth we’ve discovered: For most SaaS founders, especially technical ones, execution is not the real blocker. “I do think especially for technical founders, this is kind of where folks get stuck because there might be a little bit of overthinking about the execution side,” Asia observes. “Actually, maybe we’re a little better off if we under-think this a little bit because what matters is actually just doing it.” The actual bottlenecks are: 1. **Unclear priorities.** Not knowing which patterns matter most 2. **Undefined work paths.** Not making it clear who needs to do what and when 3. **Process paralysis.** Creating unnecessary complexity around execution As Asia puts it: “Operations and process and creating work paths to execute shouldn’t be the problem. It’s actually too easy to execute these days.” ## The CUES Framework: A better way to prioritize To determine which newly discovered opportunities deserve immediate action, we recommend the CUES framework instead of the common ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) approach: - **C – Confidence.** How confident are you that this will make a meaningful difference? - **U – Understanding.** How well do you understand what you’re trying to do? - **E – Ease.** How difficult will this be to implement? - **S – Speed.** How quickly can you get this done? The Understanding component is particularly valuable because it forces you to admit knowledge gaps before diving into implementation. If your understanding is low, that’s a signal to learn more before proceeding. ## Creating artifacts: The bridge between insights and action One practical way we’ve found to bridge the gap between customer research insights and execution is creating clear artifacts that make action inevitable. This means creating: 1. **Research summaries.** Documentation of the key patterns you’ve identified 2. **Prioritized opportunities.** Clear ranking of which opportunities to address first 3. **Project briefs.** Comprehensive plans that remove execution guesswork These artifacts create what Asia calls “clear work paths” that make execution straightforward. ## The orchestra conductor approach A metaphor that captures the balance between leadership and management is the orchestra conductor: A conductor doesn’t have to manage. Their orchestra is a team of experienced musicians, but the conductor is the only one who knows the sound we need to hear when we play. This approach means: - Setting the overall vision - Recognizing which sections need attention - Making real-time adjustments - Creating harmony between different functions ## Conclusion: Pattern recognition as competitive advantage The companies that grow fastest aren’t necessarily those with better products or bigger budgets—they’re the ones that recognize patterns others miss and know how to turn those patterns into action. As our research consistently shows: - Customer research is valuable only if you can identify meaningful patterns - Patterns create opportunity only if you can translate them into priorities - Priorities drive growth only if you can execute them efficiently The gap between insight and action isn’t as wide as most founders believe. With the right balance of leadership and management, and by creating clear artifacts that bridge vision and execution, you can turn customer research patterns into sustainable growth. If you’re looking to unlock the hidden patterns in your customer research, [contact us for a free 45-minute growth audit today.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP42: Diary of my first 90 days as a fractional CMO](https://demandmaven.io/ep42-diary-of-my-first-90-days-as-a-fractional-cmo/) **Published:** June 24, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** When I accepted a fractional CMO role in mid-February, I knew the first 90 days would be make-or-break. Not just for the company, but for determining whether this was the right fit for both of us. Now that I’m coming up on my 90-day mark, I wanted to document my process, approach, and key learnings. This isn’t just for other fractional executives or founders considering hiring one—it’s also my own diary of what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d do differently next time. ## The reality check: Why 90 days matter I’m always hesitant to shout from the rooftops about joining a new company until I’ve completed those critical first 90 days. That’s when you really know if it’s the right fit. It’s when you understand whether your approach aligns with the company’s needs, culture, and leadership style. I joined mid-February, navigated through March and April, and I’m recording this in May. Three full months of real-world experience that I can actually analyze and learn from. ## My framework: People, Processes, Tools, and Data When I think about what a CMO does at an early-stage company, it boils down to four critical areas: - **People.** Do we have the right people in the right seats? - **Processes.** Do we have clear ways to accomplish the work? - **Strategy.** Do we understand what the right work actually is? - **Operations.** Do we have solid budgets, performance tracking, and data flows? This framework guided everything I did in those first 90 days. ## Month One: The information download **Weeks 1-2: Getting Access to Everything** The first two weeks were pure information gathering. I needed access to all the tools, folders, artifacts, and “marketing graveyards”—you know, those dusty persona documents from three years ago that everyone forgot existed. I approached this with healthy skepticism. Not everything was going to be relevant, but I needed to understand where we came from to know where we were going. The team was transparent about what was still useful versus what was outdated. During this phase, I was also digging into the technical side: - How do our systems talk to each other? - What are we measuring and tracking? - How do we define key metrics like “trial” or “conversion”? Every company has its own language for these things, and understanding both the business definitions and technical implementations was crucial. **Weeks 3-4: Creating the Foundation** By the third and fourth week, I was focused on creating two critical artifacts: **The marketing strategy document.** This outlined our approach for the rest of the year (initially just the next two quarters, since I wanted to test my assumptions before committing to longer-term plans). **The CMO’s mandate.** This was my constitution—a document that clearly outlined: - My areas of focus - How to work with me - What everyone could expect from me - Which territories I’d be investigating I chose to create a document rather than a presentation because it felt more concrete and permanent. I even recorded a Loom video to walk the team through it, banking on their curiosity to engage with the content. ## Month Two: Getting the right people in the right seats Month two was all about execution and alignment. We needed to find a paid ads agency and hire someone to own SEO and content marketing. But more importantly, I needed to understand our work paths—not just processes, but how things actually got done and who was doing them. **The Financial Deep Dive** One of the biggest investments of time was getting our budget and goals crystal clear. Working closely with the CEO (who also wore the CFO hat), we dove deep into three critical areas: - **Forecasting.** Where we think we’re going financially based on past performance - **Budgeting.** How much we can spend based on cash on hand and expected revenue - **Planning.** Working backward from our target to understand what we need to hit This distinction was crucial. Planning is different from forecasting because you’re backing into goals rather than projecting forward. It’s a completely different mental exercise. We spent 2-3 weeks getting aligned on this, with constant iterations as we remembered forgotten variables or uncovered new considerations. But this alignment was essential—the CMO and CFO really do need to be best friends. **Identifying Gaps and Opportunities** Throughout this process, I was constantly looking for gaps in four categories: - **“Setting Cash on Fire” moments.** High-priority issues like extremely low conversion rates where we’re wasting money on traffic that doesn’t convert. - **Future problems.** Issues that aren’t critical now but will become painful if ignored. - **Nice-to-haves.** Positive impact items that aren’t high priority. - **Opportunities.** Things we could leverage that we’re currently missing, like better content alignment or new program possibilities (they’d never done ABM, for example). ## Month Three: Streamlining and executing Month three was when everything came together. My mantra became “get executors executing.” **Building the marketing hub.** One of the first operational changes was creating a centralized marketing hub in Notion. Everything was spread across Google Drive without a clear source of truth. I didn’t care what task management system people used individually, but I needed marketing under one umbrella with clear links to all our artifacts. **Establishing rhythms.** I also established a weekly marketing meeting cadence and streamlined our one-on-one processes. Instead of repeating the same information to everyone individually, we could share updates once a week in a group setting. For a remote team, you need clear boundaries about where information goes, when to have meetings versus when to use Slack, and where to capture ideas—whether in chat or a proper database. **Cross-team alignment.** The third month was also when I started interfacing more with product and sales teams. The first two months were about understanding my own team; month three was about understanding how we work with others to accomplish the company’s overall mission. I could already feel the shape of Q3 and Q4 taking form. My business coach always says to keep your eye “two weeks out, two months out, and two quarters out”—and I was already seeing opportunities for activation work in Q3. ## What’s next: Beyond the 90-day mark Moving forward, my focus shifts to: **Streamlining and gap-filling.** We have some resource gaps and I need to figure out how to cover those bases within our budget constraints. **Pivoting two ships.** There are a couple of strategic directions that need adjustment. My job isn’t to execute the work myself, but to get executors aligned and executing in the new direction. **Cross-team collaboration.** Deeper work with product on activation opportunities and with sales on campaign collaboration. I want to get to a place where working together feels like play rather than something hard, unknown, and scary. ## Key learnings and reflections What worked well: - **Document over deck.** The CMO’s Mandate as a written document was more accessible and concrete than a presentation would have been. - **Healthy skepticism.** Not accepting everything at face value while still respecting the work that came before. - **Financial alignment first.** Getting aligned on budgets and goals before diving into tactical execution. - **Clear communication boundaries.** Establishing where information lives and how we share it across a remote team. What I’d do differently: - **Earlier financial context.** I might have done the financial planning work before the initial strategy document (although in this particular case I was happy to have context before diving into financials). - **Faster resource gap identification.** Some resource gaps became apparent early but took time to address properly. The ongoing challenge: - **Gaps and opportunities continue to surface over time.** You can’t catch everything in the first 90 days, and that’s okay. The key is identifying the most mission-critical issues and addressing those first. ## The bottom line Those first 90 days as a fractional CMO are intense, but they’re also energizing. Every day brings new challenges to coordinate and problems to solve. The key is having a clear framework for how you approach the role and maintaining focus on what matters most: getting the right people executing the right work in the right direction. For founders considering a fractional CMO: be prepared for someone who will dig into everything from your technical integrations to your budget planning. The best fractional executives don’t just optimize marketing channels—they optimize your entire go-to-market engine. For other fractional executives: document your process. You’ll be surprised how much you learn about your own approach when you’re forced to articulate it clearly. And for me? Well, I’m looking forward to the next 90 days and seeing how these ships we’re pivoting actually perform in the market. If you’re considering bringing in fractional marketing leadership for your SaaS company, I’d love to hear about your challenges and goals. The first 90 days are just the beginning—the real work starts when you can shift from setup to acceleration. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP43: How our customer research process has evolved](https://demandmaven.io/ep43-how-our-customer-research-process-has-evolved/) **Published:** July 1, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we’ve been helping SaaS companies unlock growth through customer research for nearly eight years and we’ve fine tuned and optimized our processes to be more effective along the way. In this episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim dive deep into how our customer research sprints have evolved, the different types of research we now conduct, and the critical research activities we wish more teams were prioritizing. ## From Jobs-Inspired to true Jobs-to-Be-Done Looking back, our early customer research was what Asia calls “jobs-inspired” rather than true jobs-to-be-done interviews. We had good intentions, but we weren’t quite hitting the mark. **How we used to do it:** - 10 interviews with active, paying customers - Structured script with the same questions every time - No incentives—customers participated out of goodwill - Client wasn’t present during interviews - Took 3-4 weeks just to complete the interviews **How we do it now:** - 12-15 interviews (still with active customers, but we’ve expanded) - Unstructured interviews following the jobs timeline - Gift card incentives for participants - Client participates in every interview - Compressed into an intensive week-and-a-half sprint The transformation came after Asia worked directly with Bob Moesta, the co-architect of jobs-to-be-done theory. As she explains: “Once I really learned jobs from the man himself, Bob Moesta, that was when I realized we weren’t doing it wrong, but that it was not a true jobs interview and we weren’t getting the level of insight we probably needed.” ## Why we changed our approach **Offering Incentives.** One of the biggest revelations was around incentivizing interviews. We used to believe that offering gift cards would attract the “wrong” type of customer, but we learned the opposite was true. “When you don’t offer a gift card, you’re only going to get people who have goodwill and aren’t going to be totally honest with you about what’s wrong with your product,” Asia notes. “When you offer the gift card, you still get those helpful customers, but you also get people who are more real with you about their buying context and how they actually view your product.” **Including Clients in the Process.** Perhaps the most significant change was bringing clients directly into the interview process. We moved away from the “black hole” approach where we’d disappear for weeks and emerge with insights. “Most people aren’t going to listen to the recordings. Most people also aren’t going to really extract what they need to extract on their own,” Asia explains. “As the experts, it’s really our job to ensure that they absorb this information in whatever way they need to absorb it.” The benefits of having clients present include: - Real-time insights and context from people who know the product best - Immediate recognition of patterns (“we hear that a lot”) - Identification of feature awareness gaps when customers ask for things that already exist **Conducting Real-Time Debriefs.** We now conduct debriefs after every single interview, mapping the four forces (pushes, pulls, habits, and anxieties) and identifying potential jobs live with the client team. This creates shared understanding and gives clients language they can apply across marketing, product, and growth initiatives. ## Beyond Jobs: The research types we wish more teams did While jobs-to-be-done is powerful for understanding what drives customers, it can’t solve everything. We’ve expanded our research toolkit to include several other critical interview types: **1. UX Interviews** Perfect for understanding activation challenges and onboarding friction. These typically involve 3-5 interviews with prospects (not existing customers) who closely match your target buyer profile. “When it comes to an activation challenge, I might not prioritize customers because they’re already familiar with the process,” Asia explains. “I like to use prospects who are very close to who we’d want to acquire, and we watch them actually navigate the product.” **2. Churn Interviews (The Most Underrated)** This is the research type Asia wishes more teams prioritized. If you’re experiencing anything above 4-5% monthly churn, you need to be conducting churn interviews regularly. More than likely there wasn’t just one reason why your customer churned. It was probably 4-5 things and that one little cancellation reason you’re having your former customer select in a pop up isn’t telling the whole story. Key insights from churn interviews: - Understanding what’s controllable vs. uncontrollable about churn - Identifying anti-patterns in customer qualification - Separating qualified churn from unqualified churn in your metrics **3. Competitive Intelligence (Asia’s Personal Favorite)** This involves interviewing people who use your competitors’ products to understand: - What type of customers are your competitors attracting? - How can you differentiate your positioning and messaging? - What’s working (and not working) about competitive products? The goal of this type of interview is to understand what type of customers competing products are attracting and how that is fundamentally different from the customers you are attracting. **4. Win-Loss Interviews** These deep-dive interviews with prospects help you understand why someone chose you (or didn’t choose you) over alternatives. A true win-loss interview can run for an hour and involves ranking features and getting specific about product comparisons. ## The operational changes that made the difference **Speed Matters.** Bob Moesta’s mentor taught him that if you do something for three months, everyone forgets what your initiative was. But if you tighten it down to a week, insights are fresh and actionable. **Gift Cards Work.** Incentivizing interviews attracts a broader, more honest sample of customers. You get both the naturally helpful customers and those who might not otherwise participate but have valuable, unfiltered feedback. **Live Documentation.** We now document potential action items and projects during the debrief sessions, so by the end of the sprint, nobody feels confused about what was learned or what comes next. ## Making research accessible One of Asia’s key messages is that customer research doesn’t have to be overwhelming or time-consuming. It doesn’t have to take six months. You can be talking to people in days and get insights. For teams looking to get started, platforms like [userinterviews.com](http://userinterviews.com) and [respondent.io](http://respondent.io) make it easy to find and recruit research participants quickly at relatively low cost. ## The bottom line Customer research has evolved far beyond simple surveys and cancellation reasons. The most successful SaaS teams are conducting regular, varied research that includes jobs-to-be-done interviews, UX research, churn analysis, and competitive intelligence. Numbers don’t talk. You have to start thinking about conducting occasional batches of qualitative research to help support your quantitative research. The key is making research a regular, integrated part of your growth strategy rather than a one-off project. Your customers have the answers to your biggest growth challenges—you just need to know how to ask the right questions. Ready to dive into the exciting world of customer research? Start by booking your [free 45-minute growth audit today.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP44: A realistic look at EOS](https://demandmaven.io/ep44-a-realistic-look-at-eos/) **Published:** July 8, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we work with countless bootstrapped founders and growing PLG SaaS companies navigating the complexities of scaling their operations. In this week’s episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim tackle a question that comes up frequently: should you implement the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) in your organization? ## What is EOS exactly? The Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) is a complete set of practical tools and simple concepts designed to help entrepreneurs get what they want from their businesses. Created by Gino Wickman and popularized through his bestselling book [*Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business*](https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6R44EV6XXBM7&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.HROLXn_YSz_EcgfcU_eLHsozmm9ycS4NvpqX3US7Sbn8PWTbThKjBmDTiZYm-bnv3bVTbP5ACrn13ZoqFbF2wBvO3Kjs65d8oTenkSt2OFqy5iB7ceY0w3XpvgCasaDLOnwgbe4hWx505WgYZyqB20GZffrq72klCLeVzpRVAbF74Mk-zlo5zWRXF3LcExr0gLrih_1sLllxb7EZjPRZDrgwqf5WwGUk5LJmmWedZRk.S7C9x2HibRdq8-hlf9LjRsSrYjt9qI04YPzUNa_iByo&dib_tag=se&keywords=Gino+Wickman+traction+book&qid=1749663338&s=audible&sprefix=gino+wickman+traction+boo%2Caudible%2C217&sr=1-1-catcorr), EOS strengthens what it calls the “Six Key Components” of any business: Vision, People, Data, Issues, Process, and Traction. Originally positioned for privately held entrepreneurial companies with 10-250 employees, EOS has gained significant popularity among entrepreneurs looking for structure when business feels chaotic. The framework promises to help leadership teams get better at three core areas: getting everyone 100% aligned on where the company is going, instilling focus and accountability throughout the organization, and creating a more cohesive leadership team. EOS consists of several core components: **Meeting cadence and structure**: EOS prescribes specific meeting rhythms, including the L10 meeting for leadership teams. These meetings follow set agendas focused on scorecards, issues, and priorities. **Metrics and scorecards**: Companies track 5-15 key performance indicators that serve as leading indicators of success, with 1-3 of those being the ones that are a true ‘health check’ for the business and/or department. The idea is to limit focus to metrics that truly signal business growth or contraction and review if they’re on or off track on a weekly basis. **Right people, right seat philosophy**: EOS emphasizes having the correct people in appropriate roles, supported by accountability charts that clearly define everyone’s responsibilities. **Visionary and Integrator roles**: The framework identifies two critical leadership positions—the Visionary who sets direction and the Integrator who translates that vision into operational reality. **Issues tracking (IDS)**: Teams identify, discuss, and solve problems systematically rather than letting issues fester or talking in circles with no clear and actionable solution. **Vision alignment**: Everyone in the organization understands the 1-year, 3-year, and 10-year targets, ensuring the entire team marches in the same direction. **Process documentation (The Way)**: Core business processes are documented so everyone understands how essential functions operate. ## EOS sounds great—on paper The appeal of EOS is obvious—it promises to transform chaotic organizations into well-oiled machines. The framework addresses real pain points that growing companies face. Many of EOS’s individual components make sense. Having clear metrics is valuable. Regular strategic meetings can drive alignment. Documenting processes prevents knowledge silos. The problem isn’t with these concepts individually—it’s with the assumption that implementing the entire system will automatically solve organizational challenges. ## Where EOS falls apart—in practice **The flat organization problem**: Many bootstrap founders operate with flat organizational structures—no (or minimal) management layers between leadership and individual contributors. When you implement EOS meetings in this context, you end up with what Asia calls “the king holding court.” Individual contributors often lack the strategic perspective needed to meaningfully contribute to discussions about company-wide issues or high-level metrics. They’re focused on tactical execution, not business strategy. This creates awkward meetings where the CEO does most of the talking while everyone else sits in uncomfortable silence. **Strategic thinking gaps**: EOS assumes your team can engage in strategic problem-solving discussions. But if your individual contributors haven’t been empowered over time to think strategically or solve problems collaboratively, you’ll find that issues tracking sessions become one-way conversations rather than productive team discussions. **Implementation overhead**: EOS comes with significant complexity—templates, specific meeting formats, scorecards, accountability charts, and more. For small teams already stretched thin, this administrative overhead can become a distraction from actually running the day to day of the business. **Cultural mismatch**: The rigid structure of EOS meetings, including elements like the “segue” portion where everyone shares a win, can feel forced and awkward, especially for remote teams or organizations with different cultural norms. ## Taking what works, leaving what doesn’t Rather than implementing EOS wholesale, we’ve seen many successful companies pick and choose elements that fit their context: **Scorecards and metrics tracking**: Having 3-5 key health metrics for your business makes sense for any organization. This doesn’t require the full EOS framework—just disciplined tracking of what matters most. **Issues identification and solving**: The IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) process is valuable, but only if your team has been trained in problem-solving and feels empowered to surface real issues. This often requires cultural development and some training before it becomes effective. **Process documentation**: Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) are crucial for any growing business, especially if you need to bring on new resources quickly. EOS calls these “The Way,” but they’re simply well-documented processes. **Meeting structure**: Regular strategic meetings with consistent agendas can drive accountability, but they don’t need to follow EOS’s exact format. Adapt the structure to your team’s communication style and needs. **Goal setting**: Whether you call them Rocks, OKRs, or key projects, having quarterly priorities makes sense. The specific framework matters less than consistent execution and accountability. ## When fully implementing EOS might work EOS tends to be most successful in organizations that already have: - A genuine leadership team (not just a founder plus individual contributors) - Team members comfortable with strategic thinking and problem-solving - A culture of open communication and issue resolution - Sufficient organizational size to justify the administrative overhead Companies with 50+ employees, established management layers, and existing strategic capabilities are more likely to benefit from comprehensive EOS implementation. ## Implementing core values One EOS component that deserves special attention is core values development. While EOS provides exercises to help leadership teams define company values, this process often feels forced when done as a workshop exercise. The most authentic core values are discovered rather than decided. They emerge from how the organization actually operates, not from what sounds good in a leadership retreat. For smaller organizations, spending time on formal core values documentation may be premature. Focus first on modeling the behaviors you want to see, then codify them when they become natural patterns worth preserving. ## A practical approach to EOS If you’re considering EOS, start with honest self-assessment: **What problems are you trying to solve?** Are you looking for better accountability, clearer metrics, improved communication, or more strategic focus? Different problems may require different solutions. **What’s your organizational maturity?** Do you have people capable of strategic thinking beyond their individual roles? Can your team engage in productive problem-solving discussions? **What’s your implementation capacity?** Do you have the bandwidth to properly implement and maintain EOS systems without them becoming a distraction? **What’s your change management approach?** Remember that any new system takes 2-3 quarters to become effective. Are you prepared for that investment? Rather than viewing EOS as an all-or-nothing proposition, treat it as a toolkit. Extract the components that address your specific challenges, modify them to fit your culture, and implement them gradually as your organization develops the capacity to use them effectively. ## You know your company best EOS isn’t inherently good or bad—it’s a framework that works well for certain types of organizations at specific stages of development. The key is matching your business needs with the right level of systematic overhead. For most bootstrap founders and small SaaS companies, a customized approach that borrows selectively from EOS while staying true to your organizational culture and capabilities will yield better results than trying to implement the entire system. The goal isn’t to follow any framework perfectly—it’s to build systems that help your specific team accomplish your specific goals more effectively. Ready to streamline your operations and focus on what truly matters? [Contact us](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) for a free 45-minute growth audit today. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP64: What early stage SaaS companies miss about product discovery](https://demandmaven.io/ep64-what-early-stage-saas-companies-miss-about-product-discovery/) **Published:** May 15, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** You ship a new feature and 10% of your customer base uses it. You thought it would solve a real problem. Customers said they wanted it. But now it’s sitting there, mostly ignored. Here’s what happened. You skipped problem space discovery and went straight to building a solution. Most early stage SaaS companies do this. They take snippets of customer feedback at face value, build what was requested, and wonder why adoption is terrible. The issue isn’t that you’re building. The issue is you’re building before you understand the actual problem. There’s a difference between idea validation (testing if a solution works) and product discovery (understanding user stories within a problem space before you define solutions). Most teams skip the second part entirely. ## Problem space vs. solution space There’s problem space and there’s solution space. This concept comes from Newell and Simon in 1972, popularized by Eric Ries in [The Lean Startup](https://theleanstartup.com/book). The problem space is understanding what problems exist within a particular market. I think about problems as the jobs people are trying to accomplish. In business contexts, problems sound like “my tasks are spread across disparate systems” or “I don’t know what questions I should be asking when I pull reports.” The more that you understand the context of a problem, the better you’re going to be at defining solutions. There are many different solutions you could produce, but there’s likely a handful that will be adopted, stick, and have lasting staying power. What I’m observing right now is how many teams skip right over problem space thinking and jump straight into solution space without really questioning what they’re building. ## What’s happening in most early-stage product teams In most early-stage product functions where the founder is also the head of product, discovery isn’t happening. Teams operate on snippets of customer feedback taken at face value. “I want the report to have this filter.” “I want to be able to send text messages, not just emails.” These requests get built without questioning whether they’ll support growth or retention. Some of these will be safe bets. But without a product management process, you can’t distinguish between what will move metrics and what will sit unused. Many teams think discovery means asking “What do you struggle with?” or “What don’t you like about the product?” But customers aren’t product managers. They can’t tell you what to build. If you’re building for developers or product people (like Notion), you might get useful feature requests. For everyone else, you’re putting the burden on the customer to design your product. ## Two ways to approach discovery **Observational studies.** You observe them accomplish a task and ask questions along the way about what they’re trying to do and why. When we work on activation, we do UX interviews where we watch people sign up. Watching someone struggle through what you thought was an intuitive flow is humbling. We’re doing pricing interviews right now where qualified prospects navigate the pricing page. What we thought was clear design turns out to be confusing when you watch real people use it. UX interviews surface gaps between your assumptions and reality faster than anything else. **User story interviews.** You’re interviewing people based on actualized behavior, not fictitious or hypothetical behavior. This is the key difference. A hypothetical question sounds like this. “How often do you go to the grocery store?” “Well, I probably go like, usually it’s two to three times a week.” That’s a generalized hypothetical statement. Useless. Ask about actual behavior instead. “When was the last time you went to the grocery store?” Now I’m remembering the day. Last Wednesday. I picked up a sub sandwich because I had to play tennis. And some sushi. And milk. See the difference? You’re listening for real behavior, not what people think they usually do. You’re trying to get to what was the actual thing that you did. Then ask contextualized questions. How did you know to do that? What triggered that? Was there anything frustrating about that experience? ## A real example: budget vs. cash flow We’re doing pricing interviews for a client. In one interview, I spent 5 to 10 minutes digging into the prospect’s budgeting process because it’s correlated to reporting in this product. She kept saying “budget.” I asked “When was the last time you did it? Why did you do it? How did you know that you needed to do that?” And people are going to be like “Oh, well, generally I…” And I’m like “No, no, no. I want to know exactly what you did.” The answers were so much different than I would have thought. She has all these different things she’s pulling up. The budget isn’t a budget like you and I would say. It’s a number she comes up with every week. She does it weekly. We learned that “budget” to her means something very different than what it means to us. To her, she’s cash flow managing. She’s not budgeting. She’s reacting to her cash flow, not setting a budget. From that one user story, I can see 3 to 4 features the product could build that would fit her context. Imagine if we had done 20 of those interviews. Now that solution space starts to get clearer. ## The consequence of skipping discovery Most early stage product functions skip all of that. They’re like “I’m just going to add this feature to reporting and just see if people use it.” This to me is no different than “I’m just going to build a whole product and just see if people want it.” If you skip the problem space, you’re going to ship something, pat yourself on the back, and then nobody uses it. They’ll say “That’s a great idea.” And then never use it. That’s extremely common. So you ship something and 10% of your customer base uses it. If you’re small, like if you’re less than five or 10 million, I would be concerned. I would want to see at least 40 or 50%. But 10% is insane. You shipped a new feature and 10% of people use it. We didn’t do enough discovery or validation. ## This doesn’t have to take weeks Discovery doesn’t have to be hundreds of interviews. The best way to do discovery is 15 to 20 minute interviews. Get 5 to 10 of those. Pack the front half of your week. Knock all of those out Monday and the next day is ideating around the solution space. Slowness is a choice. This can happen in hours. We’ve conducted pricing interviews in hours. From zero to five interviews booked takes a day. You don’t need a million user stories. You need 10, maybe 20. They don’t have to be long. 15 to 20 minutes is all you need. Ideally focused on a product area. You already have data. If you have support tickets, you already have data on what areas to focus on. Pump that through LLMs and have it tell you where to put your energy. Really validate and test assumptions related to what customers ask for. Some of it is obvious. Some of it’s feature parity stuff that you should just have. But some of it, there’s a deeper story. Teams either don’t collect user stories at all, or they collect two or three and call it done. This isn’t enough to surface patterns. You need 10-20 to see what’s consistent across users versus what’s individual preference. Surfacing problem stories requires focus. You have to be sensitive to the difference between generalized hypotheticals (“I usually do X”) and actual behavior (“Last Tuesday I did Y because Z happened”). The best book I recommend is [Continuous Discovery Habits](https://www.producttalk.org/) by Teresa Torres. It’s my favorite resource for digging deep into what user stories that surface problem spaces sound and look like. ## How to fit this into your process If you’re using the sprint methodology, part of the sprint should include a few days of discovery within your core target areas. The way you strategically prioritize should be based on data. Chances are you already know your top three to four areas of opportunity in your product. You probably have great ideas for what to do, but they need to be validated using discovery and user stories. If you already have the idea of building AI features, spend a week talking to 10 customers, collecting their user stories around the specific business problems you’re hoping to solve using AI. Don’t pitch them the AI solution. Talk to them about how they’re currently using reporting and what challenges exist there. The more you understand the problem space, the more you’ll be able to define what the AI feature should do and where it should live. When you kick off your sprint, maybe you already know your core areas of focus, but maybe you don’t know exactly what the solutions are until you do user discovery. That’s what informs your solution space. I do feel like sometimes we commit to sprints when clearly this thing over here is dying. That’s a lot of our teams. The award winning growth creating part of the product is getting no love, but the new shiny thing, probably AI, is getting all the attention. Meanwhile, all of your customers are like “I just need the report to do this.” Founders don’t have confidence when they listen to customers on what to build because they’re not doing the user stories. If they did that part, they’d uncover a deeper pattern which is more applicable to more people. You don’t want to run the risk of launching something disappointing and then people never use it again, even after you’ve made improvements. You launched something under baked, people got disappointed, and then they ignored it even after you fixed it. ## Where to start If you’re going to change one thing about how you build product, start with user story interviews. 15 to 20 minutes each. 5 to 10 interviews total. Focus on a product area where you already have data showing problems (support tickets, low adoption rates, customer requests). This doesn’t take weeks. You can book and complete these interviews in a few days. The insight you gain from understanding actual behavior will save you from building features that sit unused. Want help figuring out what your customers need? This is something we help with at DemandMaven. Let’s talk: **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS **Tags:** growth, product --- ### [Best SaaS growth strategy consultants to break through growth plateaus](https://demandmaven.io/best-saas-growth-consultants/) **Published:** June 1, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Here’s the thing nobody tells you before you start Googling “best SaaS growth consultants”: the word *growth* is doing an enormous amount of heavy lifting, and almost nobody means the same thing by it. When you search for a SaaS growth consultant (whether you’re typing it into Google or throwing it into Claude), you’re probably picturing one specific kind of help. But what you’ll actually get back is a pile of firms that do wildly different things, all wearing the same word. Some are growth *marketers*. Some are product people. Some are pricing specialists. And a small handful are actually doing what “SaaS growth” has traditionally meant: looking at the whole business. So before I give you names, I want to make sure you’re hiring for the right problem. Because the most expensive mistake I see founders make isn’t picking a bad consultant. It’s picking a perfectly good consultant for a problem they don’t actually have. Let’s dig in. ## Understanding growth plateaus in SaaS Most founders don’t go looking for a growth consultant when things are humming. They start looking when growth *stalls*; when the line that used to go up and to the right flattens out, and nothing they try seems to move it. ### When they happen Plateaus tend to show up at predictable moments: You hit one when your original acquisition channel maxes out and the next one isn’t producing yet. You hit one when the segment that loved you early stops being enough to carry the whole business. You hit one when your pricing was set in year one and never revisited, and now it’s quietly capping how much revenue each customer can ever generate. And you hit one when activation and onboarding leak so many users that no amount of top-of-funnel volume can fill the bucket. ### Why they happen Plateaus almost never have a single cause, which is exactly why they’re so frustrating to diagnose from the inside. The real reason is usually that *one growth lever has stopped pulling its weight, and you can’t see which one*. **The [six SaaS growth levers](https://demandmaven.io/ep58-why-marketing-isnt-your-best-growth-lever/) (acquisition, activation, monetization, retention, team, and operations) are interconnected.** When acquisition slows, founders pour money into more marketing. But if the actual leak is in activation or retention, more marketing just means more expensive churn. You’re filling a leaky bucket faster instead of patching the hole. ### Myths about growth plateaus The biggest myth is that [a growth plateau is a marketing problem](https://demandmaven.io/saas-growth-plateaus/). (Sometimes it is!) But in my experience working with over 100 SaaS companies, it’s more often a *retention* problem wearing a marketing costume, or a *pricing* problem, or a positioning problem that’s making every channel underperform. The second myth is that more execution will fix it. If you don’t know which lever is stuck, executing harder on the wrong lever just burns runway. Strategy has to come before execution, not after. And the third myth, the one I want you to internalize before you hire anyone: that there’s a playbook out there that worked for some other company and will work for you if you just run it. There isn’t. We’ll come back to this, because it’s the single most important filter for choosing well. ## Top recommendations for the best SaaS growth strategy consultancies Okay. Names. But organized by the *type* of growth you’re actually trying to create, because that’s the decision that matters. ProviderGTM strategyGrowth marketingPricing & monetizationActivation & onboardingProduct growth & designGrowth operations**DemandMaven**✅✅✅✅✅✅ProductLed???✅✅Forget The Funnel✅✅ (product marketing)Refine Labs✅ (demand gen)42 Agency✅ (ABM + demand gen)Kalungi✅✅Powered by Search✅ (SEO + AISEO)Foundation✅ (content)Animalz✅ (content)Growth Sprints✅ (content)Ramli John (Delight Path)✅Samuel Hulick (UserOnboard)✅Love At First Try✅✅The UX Team✅Pace Pricing✅Pricing I/O✅ ### Best overall SaaS growth strategy consultancies This is the category for you if you don’t yet know which lever is stuck, or if you suspect more than one is. An all-around strategic growth firm looks at all of your growth levers (pricing, go-to-market, activation, product, acquisition, retention) and helps you figure out where the real opportunity is before anyone executes anything. Honestly, there aren’t many true all-arounders out there. The two I’d point you to: #### 1. DemandMaven [**DemandMaven**](https://demandmaven.io/) (that’s us). We work with SaaS companies experiencing growth plateaus, with a specialty in product-led growth (though we also work with sales-led companies). A lot of our clients are bootstrapped; some are VC-funded. We go deep across go-to-market strategy, pricing, onboarding and activation, acquisition strategy, product and growth strategy, *and* the operations and process side that makes all of it actually stick. We don’t just look at marketing (remember — [marketing is the least efficient growth lever for SaaS companies](https://demandmaven.io/ep58-why-marketing-isnt-your-best-growth-lever/)); we look at the entire SaaS business to identify gaps and walk you through how to close them. Through our tried-and-true framework for helping SaaS companies overcome growth plateaus, we can: ✓ Evaluate and adjust your go-to-market strategy (positioning, product, marketing, price, and channels) ✓ Refine your positioning & messaging ✓ Map your customer journey ✓ Find gaps in your onboarding and activation experiences ✓ Review your customer acquisition & marketing strategy ✓ Find inefficiencies and gaps in your customer acquisition experience ✓ Overhaul your pricing and monetization strategy to improve retention and expansion revenue ✓ Help you identify and define personas based on your ideal customer profile ✓ Analyze churn and create a plan for improving monthly and long-term retention (NRR) ✓ Help you enter new markets using customer discovery ✓ Identify product opportunities for growth leveraging product discovery and opportunity mapping (aka continuous discovery habits) The benefit of an overall growth strategist over a specialist is simple: if you want to tackle several growth levers at once, or you genuinely don’t know whether activation or pricing or something else is your biggest lever, you want a firm that can see the whole board. #### 2. ProductLed [**ProductLed**](https://productled.com/), founded by Wes Bush.¹ ProductLed is great for companies adding a product-led motion to an organization that started somewhere else; think a sales-led or more corporate SaaS company building out PLG for the first time. They take a holistic approach too. The distinction I’d draw is that we tend to get deeper into the operations and process side; ProductLed’s center of gravity is the PLG transformation itself. Looking at their services today, it’s not clear if they still provide their all-around growth consulting work. It seems they’re mostly focused on providing prototypes for companies without a PLG experience (potentially because they work more with companies that don’t already have a PLG GTM-motion, but TBD!). Something worth validating if you check them out. If you already know exactly what’s broken, skip ahead; a specialist will be faster and cheaper. ### Best growth marketing agencies and consultancies for SaaS and startups Here’s where the word *growth* gets slippery again. “Growth marketing” is its own discipline, and even *within* it you have to get specific about the type of marketing you need. We’ve also already written about [SaaS go-to-market agencies](https://demandmaven.io/best-saas-gtm-agencies-consultants/) I recommend, but here were a few of my favorites, sorted by what they’re actually best at: - [**Forget The Funnel**](https://forgetthefunnel.com/) for product marketing, with a customer-led growth approach. (They’re on the strategic side rather than execution.) - [**Refine Labs**](https://www.refinelabs.com/) and [**Kalungi**](https://www.kalungi.com/) for demand gen. Kalungi runs a fractional-CMO-led model: they pair you with a fractional CMO who scopes the work, which is great if you want that level of engagement. I’ve worked alongside them on a mutual project and was genuinely impressed with their process. - [**42 Agency**](https://www.42agency.com) for demand gen and account-based marketing execution; they’re excellent at running an ABM playbook end to end. - [**Powered by Search**](https://www.poweredbysearch.com/) for inbound; they’re masters of it. - [**Foundation**](https://foundationinc.co/) (Ross Simmonds’s team) and [**Animalz**](https://www.animalz.co/) for content marketing. - [**Growth Sprints**](https://growthsprints.co/) by Brendan Hufford, an incredible content marketing consultant and a great friend, if you want a sharp individual operator rather than a big agency. Now, the most important thing to understand about growth marketing firms: most of them are **channel-strategic, not business-strategic.** They’ll be brilliant about *how to win a channel*. They will not, generally, set your overall business or go-to-market strategy, and they’ll expect *you* to bring that to the table. So if you need help defining go-to-market strategy itself, that’s a different kind of firm (an all-arounder like us or ProductLed), not a growth marketing agency. Get crystal clear on which one you need before you sign anything. ### Best activation and onboarding consultancies for SaaS and startups If you’ve diagnosed your leak as activation (users sign up and never get to value), this is your category. - [**Ramli John**](https://www.delightpath.com/) (*Delight Path*). Ramli is the author of *Product-Led Onboarding* and someone I recommend constantly, especially to founders who want to learn the craft but don’t have the budget to hire it out. A lot of what I know about activation and onboarding, I learned from him.² - [**Samuel Hulick**](https://www.useronboard.com/) (*UserOnboard*). An incredible individual resource in the space and a great fit if you want to work directly with one deeply experienced person. I’ve learned a ton from his work over the years. - And again, [**DemandMaven**](https://demandmaven.io/) and [**ProductLed**](https://productled.com/) both do activation and onboarding as part of a broader engagement. The reason to choose an all-arounder here instead of a specialist is the same as everywhere else: if you’re *sure* activation is the lever, hire the specialist. If you’re not sure activation is even the right thing to focus on, hire the firm that can confirm it before you sink three months into it. ### Best product growth consultancies for SaaS and startups Two firms I’ve been admiring from a distance: [**Love At First Try**](https://loveatfirsttry.io/), run by Jim Zarkadas, whom I advise. I love their model: they give you a pod (a product manager, a growth designer) with Jim overseeing the projects, plus access to a growth advisor on some tiers. Their whole goal is finding opportunity *inside* the product and smoothing out the UX experience. [**The UX Team**](https://www.theuxteam.com/), a women-led fractional product team with a similar pod model (product manager plus a fractional UX team). They handle new-market product expansion, MVP co-creation, and ideation. I haven’t worked with them directly, but I’ve heard good things and I love what they’re building. Here’s the gap I want you to understand with product growth firms, and it’s not a knock on them; it’s structural. A product/UX consultancy is excellent at thinking about the *product* holistically. But they’re often siloed from the rest of the business, which means they can’t always make strategic calls that ripple outward. A product growth consultant will rarely run churn research or cohorted net revenue retention analysis, because that’s just not the scope of their work; their mission is finding product and UX opportunities to improve the experience. A firm like ours *would* dig into cohorted NRR by customer type, and then hand that insight to the product or UX team so they actually know which customer to optimize for. That’s exactly why we don’t have a design arm; we layer on top of teams like Love At First Try or The UX Team. The strategic firm sees the whole business and points the product team at the right target. The product team executes beautifully against it. There’s a real case for hiring both. ### Best pricing consultancies for SaaS and startups We’ve written about the [best SaaS pricing consultants](https://demandmaven.io/top-saas-pricing-consultants/) in more depth elsewhere, so I’ll keep this quick.³ My top picks: - [**Bill Wilson**](https://www.pacepricing.com/) at Pace Pricing. My personal favorite; I’ve worked with Bill several times and have enormous respect for him. - [**Marcos Rivera**](https://www.pricingio.com/) at Pricing I/O. I haven’t worked directly with Marcos, but Bill respects him, which tells me everything I need to know. - **Price Intelligently**, now part of SBI Growth (it was spun out of ProfitWell/Paddle and is now housed inside SBI’s go-to-market advisory). They skew toward enterprise SaaS pricing.⁴ And, yes, [**DemandMaven**](https://demandmaven.io/top-saas-pricing-consultants/) does pricing projects too. Here’s my honest fit guidance: we’re an excellent fit if you’re under ~$5M ARR, ideally PLG, with under ~5,000 customers (a data scale we can work with), you’ve never run a pricing project, and you want to learn how to actually execute one. We are *not* the best fit if you need a 99% confidence interval on the data, you have a very high volume of customers, or the pricing change is so risky it could make or break the business. If it’s that high-stakes, go to Bill or Marcos. > *Digging this post? Subscribe for free to get new posts in your inbox when they drop. Ten minutes, once a week, on something you can apply to your work today.* ## Highlights of successful case studies The pattern I want you to notice across good engagements isn’t a tactic; it’s a *sequence*. The work that moves the needle almost always starts with research that reframes the problem, and only then moves to execution. One example from our world: a client was convinced their growth problem was an acquisition problem and wanted more top-of-funnel. When we segmented their revenue cohort retention, the actual story was that one customer segment was retaining beautifully and another was churning hard, dragging the blended number down and making every acquisition dollar look worse than it was. The fix wasn’t more marketing. It was tightening who they acquired in the first place. You don’t find that by running a channel playbook. You find it by looking at segmented data before you touch a single campaign. That’s the through-line in every case study worth trusting: the insight came *before* the execution, and the execution was aimed by the insight. ## Evaluating the consultants: what to look for ### Key metrics and performance indicators How you measure success depends entirely on the type of firm, and conflating them is how founders end up disappointed. For **growth marketing** execution, you’re watching cost to acquire a customer (and your ability to bring it down), qualified lead and trial/demo volume, and channel-specific top-of-funnel metrics depending on what you’re scaling (SEO, ads, Reddit, LLM/AI search visibility, whatever the channel is). For **pricing and monetization**, you’re watching whether baseline ARR/MRR went up and whether expansion revenue as a percentage of new MRR increased. For **activation and onboarding**, it’s refreshingly simple: did your activation metrics go up? That’s how you know it worked. For **strategic** firms (us, and to my knowledge Forget The Funnel sits on the strategic side too), the math is different. You don’t evaluate a strategy engagement on immediate ROI, because strategy doesn’t produce growth until something gets executed. You evaluate it on a *cost-benefit* basis: what does it cost me to do this myself and get it wrong, versus hiring someone who already knows what to do? How much time does it save me? The time horizon to results only seems longer with a strategic firm, because execution still has to happen afterward. But in comparison to an agency that could waste a lot of valuable time and resources, it actually saves you money and energy in the long run because you were more diligent about crafting your approach to overcoming your growth plateau. So even with a strategic firm, look at how they enable execution, and judge the combined investment (strategy plus execution) against the net effect on growth. That two-month delay before results is often worth it, because the alternative is doing the wrong thing for six months. ### Experience with scaling SaaS startups You want a firm that has lived inside the specific stage and motion you’re in. Scaling a bootstrapped, PLG SaaS company past a plateau is a fundamentally different animal than scaling a VC-backed, sales-led one. Ask whether their experience matches your reality, not just whether they’ve “done SaaS.” ### Past client experience Talk to their past clients, and ask the unglamorous question: *did the work actually produce a different outcome or way of thinking, or did you just get a nicely formatted deck?* The best signal is a former client who can describe a decision they made differently because of the engagement. ### Strategies used by top consultants #### Leveraging data for better decision making Here’s a distinction I’ll die on: **data informs decisions; insights solve problems.** A firm that hands you a dashboard has given you data. A firm that segments that data, finds the thing you couldn’t see, and tells you what to *do* about it has given you an insight. You want the second kind. And almost always, the insight lives in the *segmented* view, not the aggregate; blended metrics hide the truth more often than they reveal it. #### Research and insights-gathering Understand the firm’s research process, because this is where the real value gets created. Do they actually talk to your customers? Do they run discovery and churn research, or do they pattern-match from other clients? The depth of the research is usually a direct predictor of the quality of the strategy. ## Making the right choice: questions to ask potential consultants ### Assessing their experience with similar businesses Ask whether they’ve worked with companies at your stage, your business model, and your go-to-market motion specifically. “We work with SaaS” is not an answer. “We work with bootstrapped PLG companies under $5M ARR” is. ### Understanding their approach to growth This is the most important filter, so I’m going to be blunt about it. Ask them to walk you through their *process*, and listen carefully for whether they’re describing a process or a playbook. Because they are not the same thing, and the difference will make or break your results. A **playbook** is a fixed set of actions that worked somewhere else. The firm runs it on you the same way they ran it on everyone before you. You see this most in marketing agencies that go ham executing the identical motion for every client without ever truly understanding the market, the context, or the constraints. It assumes they already know the right execution *before they’ve done any strategic thinking about your business.* And in my experience, “it worked for them so it’ll work for you” is almost never true. Every SaaS company targets different people, with different needs, in different market contexts, against different competitors, with different products. That adds up to different customer journeys and different buying experiences. There is no single playbook that fits everybody. A **process**, on the other hand, is repeatable but produces *different* outputs depending on the inputs. Think of the scientific method: same process every time, completely different results depending on what you feed it. That’s what you want. A firm whose process adapts its conclusions to *your* reality will outperform a firm running a frozen playbook nearly every time. So ask: “What’s your process, and how does it change based on what you learn about my business?” If the answer is really just a list of deliverables they produce for everyone, that’s a playbook in a process costume. ## Finding the right consultant to propel your growth The decision was never really “who’s the best SaaS growth consultant.” It’s “what kind of growth am I actually trying to create, and who’s built to create *that*?” So before you book a single call, get honest about three things: 1. Which lever do I think is stuck (and how confident am I, really)? 2. Do I need strategy, execution, or both? 3. Am I hiring someone who’ll adapt their thinking to my business, or someone who’ll run the same play they ran last quarter? If you can answer the first one with certainty, hire a specialist and move fast. If you can’t (if you’re staring at a flat line and genuinely don’t know whether it’s acquisition, activation, pricing, or retention) that uncertainty is itself the diagnosis. It means you need someone who can see the whole board before anyone executes anything. That’s the work we love most. If you’re plateaued and not sure which lever to pull, [book a discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and let’s figure out what’s actually stuck. Happy growing! ✨ --- ¹ Wes Bush, *Product-Led Growth: How to Build a Product That Sells Itself*, 2019; ProductLed. [https://productled.com](https://productled.com/) ² Ramli John, *Product-Led Onboarding*, 2021. [https://ramli.co](https://ramli.co/) ³ DemandMaven, “Top SaaS pricing consultants.” ⁴ Paddle, “An update on Price Intelligently,” 2024. **Categories:** Growth, Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Creating a Marketing Plan for your SaaS](https://demandmaven.io/creating-a-marketing-plan-for-your-saas/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  Here’s a scenario I see play out all the time: a founder hears someone on a podcast rave about how LinkedIn ads changed their business, so they dump three months of budget into LinkedIn ads. Nothing happens. They try cold email next. Crickets. Then someone tells them SEO is the real move, so they hire a content writer. Six months later, still nothing meaningful. The problem wasn’t that those channels are bad. The problem was that they were the wrong channels for that particular business, audience, and price point. Choosing marketing channels isn’t a guessing game, and it’s not a popularity contest. It’s a strategic decision that should be driven by who you’re selling to, how they buy, how much they pay you, and where they actually go when they’re trying to solve problems. Get this right and everything else gets a lot easier. Get it wrong and you’ll spend years wondering why growth feels like pushing a boulder uphill. Let’s break this down. ## Strategy first, plan second Before we can talk about channels, we need to be clear about something that trips up a lot of founders: the difference between a SaaS marketing **strategy** and a SaaS marketing **plan**. Your strategy is the “why” and “who.” It’s based on customer research, market research, and a clear-eyed look at your KPIs. It answers questions like: Who is our most profitable customer? What do they care about? What problem are we actually solving? Your marketing plan is the “what” and “when.” It’s the list of campaigns and programs, the budget, the timeline, all built to serve the strategy. The plan doesn’t work without the strategy underneath it. Most founders skip to the plan. They build a content calendar, run some ads, try cold outreach, and then wonder why their marketing feels scattered. That’s because there’s no strategy directing any of it. ## Here’s how to build an effective SaaS marketing plan **Choose specific target markets or segments.** Marketing plans are zoomed in. For this particular plan (say, the next six months), which segment or market do you want to acquire or grow? Your strategy tells you who. Your plan executes on it. **Identify the lifecycle stage.** Are you focused on acquisition (getting new leads), activation (converting trials to paid), or retention (keeping customers longer)? Different stages call for different tactics, channels, and metrics. **Select channels based on LTV and ACV.** More on this in the next section, but don’t even pick your channels until you know what a customer is worth. This is the single biggest mistake I see founders make when choosing where to invest. **Design campaigns and programs.** Campaigns are one-off events like a feature launch or conference. Programs are ongoing efforts like content marketing that run continuously. Your plan will have both. **Align to key KPIs.** Before you build anything, ask: do these campaigns and channels actually point toward the metrics that matter? Use leading indicators (blog posts published, campaigns run, outreach sent) to know if you’re on track before your lagging indicators (traffic, trials, revenue) confirm it. **Prioritize ruthlessly.** A few prioritization frameworks I like for this: ICE (Impact, Confidence, Effort) and PIE (Potential, Importance, Ease). Score each activity and stack rank them. Then look at your north star KPI and make sure you’re spending time on the things that actually move it. **Get realistic about timeline and budget.** How long will each initiative take? What’s a realistic time-to-results? Does every item have a start and end date? Assign a dollar amount to each activity and prioritize by expected ROI. **Select your team and schedule check-ins.** I cannot tell you how many brilliant marketing plans I’ve seen get created and then never executed. Build in monthly or bi-monthly check-ins to ask: are we moving at the pace we planned? Are the metrics improving? What needs to adjust? ## The biggest mistake: ignoring ACV when choosing channels This is where I’m going to get specific, because the original advice I’ve shared on this topic wasn’t quite pointed enough. Your annual contract value (ACV) is one of the most important constraints on your marketing channel options. Not because some channels are inherently better than others, but because your unit economics have to work. If you can’t recoup the cost of acquiring a customer before they churn, no channel is going to save you. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/acv_channel_recommendations.jpg) Here’s a rough way to think about it: **Less than $1,000 ACV per year:** You’re looking at almost exclusively organic methods. Organic search, AI search, organic social, and inbound email marketing (where leads opt in to your list). Paid acquisition, outbound sales, and conference sponsorships are likely not going to be CAC efficient at this price point. Your growth engine needs to be lower-cost by design. **$1,000 to $5,000 ACV per year:** You have more room, but you still need to be careful. Paid acquisition might work if you’re in a niche with low CPCs and your conversion funnel is very tight. Cold email as a lightweight, scrappy outbound motion could work, but a full sales team probably doesn’t. Conferences and events are on the table if the math checks out, but it’s tight. **More than $5,000 ACV per year:** Now the door opens much wider. Conferences, paid acquisition, outbound sales, ABM, direct mail, speaking engagements with travel budgets, all of these become much more feasible. A sales team starts to make real sense above $7,000 to $8,000 ACV. At $10,000+ ACV, you can invest in channels with longer payback periods because the reward is high enough to justify the wait. This isn’t a hard and fast rule for every business, but it’s a useful gut check. If you’re charging $99 a month per user and you’re running outbound sequences through a dedicated SDR, the math is probably not mathing. ## Your marketing mix is unique to your target customer I want to be really direct about something: **there is no universal channel playbook for SaaS.** Not for 2016, not for 2026, not ever. I’ve worked with hundreds of SaaS companies. I’ve advised even more. And I can tell you with complete confidence that one person’s marketing mix is not going to work perfectly for you. What worked for the company you admire, the one with the case study you bookmarked, the one whose founder gave the conference talk you watched three times: it worked for them because it fit their audience, their market, their price point, and their motion. None of those things are yours. The reason founders keep chasing the shiny channel is this pervasive belief that there’s some secret playbook everyone else is using, and that’s why they’re growing while you’re not. But mostly they just got really dialed in on their customer and figured out where that customer lives. So that’s the actual work. What you need to deeply understand before you can make smart channel decisions: **Your target market.** Not just “small business owners” or “marketing teams.” Get specific. What industry? What size? What region? What type of problem triggers them to start looking for a solution? **The segments and personas within that market.** The decision-maker is often not the end user. The person who feels the pain most is often not the person who signs the contract. Understand who is who and how their buying roles interact. **How they buy.** Do they want to try before they buy? Do they need a demo? Do they need to get budget approved by a committee? Do they google things, or do they ask colleagues, or do they trust review sites? Do they attend conferences in their industry? Understanding the buying motion shapes everything. **Where they go to make decisions.** This is channel selection in a nutshell. Your buyers are somewhere before they buy from you. Find out where that somewhere is. ## Levels of awareness: the buyer’s journey, but better ![Stages of Awareness by Eugene Schwartz](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/stages-of-awareness.jpg) Most frameworks for thinking about the buyer’s journey are too linear and too tidy. I find it more useful to think about this through the lens of Eugene Schwartz’s Levels of Awareness, which maps out five stages a buyer moves through before they’re ready to purchase: **Unaware.** They don’t know they have a problem. They’re not searching for anything. You can reach them, but only through very top-of-funnel content that meets them where they are, often through broad educational content, social media, or channels they passively consume. **Problem aware.** They’ve started to feel the pain. They know something is off but don’t yet have language for it. At this stage, they tend to search for symptoms. Things like “why are our signups not converting” or “how to improve email open rates.” They’re reading blog posts, watching YouTube videos, lurking in communities. **Solution aware.** They know solutions like yours exist, but they haven’t picked one yet. Their search behavior shifts to more comparative and categorical queries: “best onboarding software” or “Intercom alternatives” or “CRM for SaaS companies.” Review sites, comparison pages, and content that speaks to your category become much more relevant here. **Product aware.** They know your product exists and are evaluating whether it’s the right fit. They’re on your website. They might be in a trial. They’re reading your case studies and testimonials, watching demos, asking questions in sales conversations. **Most aware.** They’re close to buying. They might just need a nudge: a trial extension, a discount, a conversation, the right pricing plan. The reason this matters for channel selection is that different channels reach buyers at different stages of awareness, and you need to meet your buyers where they actually are. Here’s how each stage maps to buyer behavior, their actual mindset, and the channels most likely to reach them: StageWhat they’re doingWhat they’re thinkingChannels that reach them**Unaware**Going about their day. Not searching for anything. Consuming passive content: social feeds, podcasts, newsletters in their industry.*“Things are fine, just a bit annoying sometimes.”*Organic social, sponsored content, trade publications, podcast sponsorships, word of mouth**Problem aware**Googling symptoms, searching for explanations, lurking in communities, asking peers if they’ve dealt with this. Looking for language to describe what’s wrong.*“Why is this taking so long? There has to be a better way to do this.”*Organic and AI search (informational queries), forums (Reddit, Slack communities), industry communities, educational blog content, podcasts and YouTube**Solution aware**Actively researching categories and tools. Comparing options, reading reviews, visiting G2 and Capterra, asking for referrals in communities. Might be building a shortlist.*“Okay so there are tools for this. Which ones are actually worth looking at?”*Organic and AI search (comparison queries), review sites and directories, marketplaces, referrals and word of mouth, speaking engagements and webinars**Product aware**On your website. In a trial. Reading case studies, watching demos, talking to sales, checking your pricing page, comparing you against a specific competitor.*“Is this the right fit for us? Can I justify this to my team or boss?”*Your website and pricing page, free trial and PLG motion, email nurture sequences, sales outreach, retargeting ads**Most aware**Ready to buy or very close. Looking for a final reason to commit: an offer, a discount, an onboarding call, someone internally to help them move quickly.*“I just need to figure out which plan and get this signed off.”*Direct sales conversation, trial extension or offer, onboarding call, promotional email, ABM and direct outreachIf your buyer doesn’t search online at all, organic search will always underperform for you, no matter how good your SEO is. If your buyer decides at a conference, your blog isn’t going to close them. The channel has to match the stage and the behavior. ## The master channel list: my rapid-fire take Below is a comprehensive breakdown of every major marketing channel, along with my quick thoughts on how to think about each one. I want to be clear upfront: this is not a ranking. None of these are universally good or bad. What matters is whether they fit your audience, your price point, and your market. **Word of mouth** - The best channel in the world, full stop. But you can’t manufacture it. - It’s the outcome of building a product people actually love. Works for literally any product in any market. - Focus on building something worth bragging about and this takes care of itself. **SEO / Organic search** - One of the most sustainable and scalable channels for most SaaS businesses, but only if your audience actually searches for their problems or solutions online. - Also worth bundling AI search in here: still a fraction of overall search volume, but growing fast and worth paying attention to. - Generally very CAC efficient. **AI search** - Increasingly important to track separately as behavior shifts. Still nascent, but data from SparkToro and Datos suggests it’s a fraction of overall search. - Worth optimizing for, especially if your content answers specific, nuanced questions well. **Search ads (SEM / Google Ads)** - Similar application to organic search: your audience needs to be actively searching. Requires meaningful ACV for the math to work. - Very competitive markets will eat your budget. Commit to at least two quarters of testing before drawing conclusions. - Budget typically starts at $30,000 to $50,000 before you have enough signal. **Organic social** - Higher conversion rates once people come through, but very low top-of-funnel volume for most B2B SaaS. - Much stronger for B2C and consumer products. Some B2B companies do it well, but ROI is often hard to justify unless you’re very committed to it long-term. **Social and display ads** - Great for promoting top-of-funnel assets: webinars, lead magnets, events. Harder to make work for direct acquisition in B2B SaaS unless your ACV supports it. - Meta’s algorithms are genuinely powerful if your audience lives there. Same math concerns as search ads apply. **Content marketing** - More of a practice than a single channel. It powers and amplifies almost every other channel on this list: SEO, email, social, speaking, and more. - Applies to most businesses. What makes it work is being very clear on which channels you’re using to distribute the content. **Email marketing** - Still one of the best-performing channels when done well. Cost is relatively low and conversion rates are strong for inbound-built lists. - Cold email is a numbers game with lower returns, and inboxes are crowded. Needs a clear trigger or qualification signal to be effective at scale. **Affiliate marketing** - Better suited to more mature businesses with established brands. Affiliates generally don’t take risks on newer companies. - Works best in industries where referral links are culturally normal. Your mileage will vary significantly by industry. **Offline ads / traditional media** - Relevant at scale or for very specific consumer applications. If you’re seeing airport ads for a SaaS, they have a massive budget. - Not a realistic early-stage channel for most bootstrapped founders. **Existing platforms / integrations** - Highly contextual. If your product can plug into a high-traffic platform ecosystem (like Shopify or Salesforce), the discovery and distribution benefits can be significant. - Consider platform risk, but don’t dismiss this if the ecosystem is strong and active. **Forums (Reddit, etc.)** - Incredibly effective for some businesses and irrelevant for others. Depends entirely on whether your audience is active in forums and whether they ask questions there. - Can be one of the cheapest channels imaginable. Requires ongoing time investment, not a “set it and forget it” approach. **Marketplaces / directories** - Depends on adoption: how actively is your audience actually using that marketplace? If they use it a lot, it’s worth having a presence. - Capterra and G2 are heavily used in many industries. Do the research before investing. **Product-led growth (PLG)** - A go-to-market strategy as much as a channel, but it is a channel: the act of finding your site and signing up is its own motion. - One of the most effective and cost-efficient approaches for the right products. But it needs feeding. If you build it, they will not just come. **Engineering as marketing** - Two distinct applications: targeting technical audiences by showcasing your engineering depth through docs, GitHub, and community presence; or building tools, calculators, or microsites that help buyers make decisions. - Cool when you have bandwidth. Don’t recommend it for most early-stage bootstrappers who already have a full plate. Vercel is the canonical example done right. **Speaking engagements** - One of my absolute favorites for most SaaS businesses. Most industries have conferences and events where you can be in front of your exact ICP. More valuable than a booth. - Also includes podcasts and webinars where you’ve been invited to speak (as opposed to ones you host, which is content marketing). Very cost-effective for the audience reach you get. **Industry media and trade publications** - Highly contextual to how verticalized your market is. Can be great for awareness building in specific industries. - Don’t expect perfect ROI upfront. Best treated as a testing ground if you can afford to experiment. **Conferences** - Great if you have a sales strategy before you walk in. Don’t show up with a booth and no follow-up plan. - The math needs to work: $15,000+ ACV makes conference investment much more defensible. Some conferences cost $100,000 for a booth (looking at you, Dreamforce). Scale your investment to what the numbers can actually support. **Offline events** - Hosting dinners, local meetups, or invitation-only gatherings. Excellent for closing deals and building relationships, not great for reach or scale. - Best for higher ACV products. Not something I’d prioritize until you’re more established, but very effective when the timing is right. **Cold outreach** - One of the cheapest channels to run. Works best with a compelling offer, a very clear trigger for outreach, and strong qualification. - Spray-and-pray cold email is increasingly ineffective. Tools like Apollo and Clay have made list-building easy, but personalization and timing still matter enormously. Convert rate expectations: 1 to 3% at best. **Account-based marketing (ABM)** - Basically enterprise marketing applied to any segment. Start by identifying your highest-fit accounts, then deploy a multi-channel campaign (often including direct mail) that’s too interesting to ignore. - Mangomint scaled to $25M ARR with a dialed-in ABM and direct marketing strategy. Requires creative execution. If you’re going to be boring, skip it. **Viral marketing** - Capturing lightning in a bottle. Hard to predict, hard to engineer consistently. Can happen for any business, but I wouldn’t rely on it as a strategy. - Dollar Shave Club didn’t plan to go viral. When it translates to SaaS sales is a whole separate question. **Community building** - Better for retention than acquisition, especially in the early stages. Requires at least one full-time person to sustain. - Not something I recommend before $1M ARR. Works best when your market actively wants to connect with peers online. HubSpot’s Inbound community is a great example, and they built it years after they were already established. **Partnerships** - Can be powerful, but requires the partner to be just as focused on your audience as you are and actively engaged. - Partnerships fall apart when the program isn’t structured, there’s no dedicated partner manager, or the partner’s audience is too broad to be relevant. Worth investing in around $3M to $4M+ ARR. **Business development (biz dev)** - Deep, strategic product partnerships. Think rev share arrangements, data partnerships, or embedded product integrations. SparkToro and Datos is a good example. - Higher lift to establish, but can create durable, compounding distribution. More relevant as you grow. **PR / unconventional PR** - Traditional PR (TechCrunch, Forbes, major publications) is tough to land until you’re established. - Unconventional PR, things like a speaking tour, consistent podcast appearances, getting mentioned alongside known players, is more approachable and relatively low cost (mostly your time). Consumer SaaS and B2C benefit more from traditional PR than B2B SaaS. ## Putting it all together If this list felt overwhelming, that’s actually good news. It means you’ve been absorbing the context. Because here’s what you’re going to do with it: you’re going to whittle it down to one to three channels. That’s it. One to three. When you do the actual work of understanding your audience deeply: who they are, how they buy, what their ACV tells you, where they go at each stage of awareness, the right channels become pretty obvious. The list stops being overwhelming and starts being a filter. Most of the best-performing SaaS companies I know aren’t on every channel. They’re very, very good at the two or three that actually reach their buyers. They’ve done the work to understand their market and they’ve committed to the channels that match. That’s the real playbook. Not chasing someone else’s success, but figuring out what works for your business, your customers, and the price point you’ve built around. If you’re not sure where to start on any of this, that’s exactly what we do at DemandMaven. [Book a call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and in 45 minutes we can identify your most sustainable growth opportunities together. ✨ **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Why your SaaS is stagnant and which go-to-market consultant can actually help](https://demandmaven.io/stagnant-saas-go-to-market-consultants/) **Published:** June 1, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** A few years ago, I had an email exchange with a founder that I still think about. He had a product with real potential, a growing sense that something was off, and a very specific idea of what he wanted help with. He didn’t want to “talk to people,” he said. He wanted “sales and marketing experiments.” He wanted execution. He wanted to move. I couldn’t take the project. The fit wasn’t right, and to be honest, I was worried. A year later he emailed back. He’d hired an agency. They ran click-testing experiments. At the end of it, he wrote: “Working with an agency turned out to be a nightmare. We spent a lot of money and time. I think the experiment was mis-specified.” The agency gave him a refund, and they put the product on the backburner. This story plays out more often than it should. Not because execution-focused firms are bad at what they do, but because founders hire them when what they actually have is a strategy problem. The execution is fine. The foundation underneath it isn’t. If your SaaS is stagnant right now, the most important question you can ask before hiring anyone isn’t “who has the best case studies?” It’s: “do I know *why* I’m stagnant, and do I know *which type* of help I actually need?” This post is designed to help you answer both. *Digging this post? Subscribe for free to receive new posts in your inbox when they drop. Just 10 minutes, every week, on something you can apply to your work today.* ## What “stagnant” actually means (and what it doesn’t) Before we get into consultants, let’s be honest about what stagnation looks like. It’s rarely just “growth slowed down.” More often it looks like one of these: - MRR is flat or creeping upward, but it feels like you’re running on a treadmill - Churn looks fine, but new customers aren’t sticking around long enough to offset what you’re losing - Activation rates are weak and you can’t figure out why - Net revenue retention at 12 months is under 80%, which means expansion isn’t covering losses - You’ve tried a bunch of tactics: a new channel, a redesigned onboarding flow, a price increase — and nothing seems to move the needle meaningfully Here’s the thing: not all of these are GTM problems. Some are product problems. Some are pricing problems. Some are operational problems. And some are genuinely GTM: the wrong ICP, weak positioning, a broken acquisition motion, a channel strategy that made sense two years ago and doesn’t anymore. Hiring a go-to-market consultant before you know which category you’re in is expensive. And it’s the most common mistake I see. ## The single most important distinction: strategic vs. execution Before anything else, you need to understand the difference between strategic and execution-focused help. **Strategic help** is about figuring out what to do and why. It diagnoses the problem, defines the direction, and builds the plan. It requires research: talking to customers, analyzing cohorts, understanding why people buy, why they churn, and what the market actually values. Strategic help is appropriate when you don’t yet know which lever to pull. **Execution-focused help** is about doing the thing at scale. Running campaigns, building RevOps systems, managing paid channels, operating a content engine. It’s appropriate when you’ve already diagnosed the problem and need horsepower to execute the solution. The founder in that story above needed strategic help. He needed someone to help him understand why things weren’t working before investing in making them go faster. Instead, he hired execution. And the result was a well-run experiment pointed in the wrong direction. Most consultancies lean clearly toward one or the other. Some do both. The critical thing is knowing which one you need before you get on a discovery call. One note on [DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/): we sit in both camps, but the strategic work always comes first. We’re not full-stack (we don’t do everything), but we are full-range. If we’re running execution work with a client, it’s because we’ve already done the strategic work to know exactly what we’re executing toward. ## The five types of GTM help Once you understand whether you need strategy or execution, the next question is: which of the five GTM lanes does your problem actually live in? ### 1. Positioning **What a positioning problem looks like:** Deals are slow to close. Prospects say “I need to think about it” without a clear objection. You’re losing to newer competitors despite having a better or more mature product. The messaging on your website has been rewritten three times and still doesn’t feel right. Positioning is about helping the market understand why you’re different, who you’re for, and why that matters. It’s strategic almost by definition: no amount of execution will fix a positioning problem. At [DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/), positioning work is almost always part of a broader [GTM engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/): we don’t do positioning in isolation, but because we run customer research as a foundation, we arrive at positioning insights as a byproduct of understanding who the best customer actually is and why they buy. If you need positioning work alongside market research, ICP definition, or pricing, that’s where we fit. If you need a dedicated positioning engagement on its own, the specialists below are the right call. [April Dunford](https://www.aprildunford.com/) is the best-known positioning expert in the SaaS and software space, and for good reason. Her positioning workshops are strategy-only: you come out with a positioning foundation you can actually use, not a deliverable that sits in a Google doc. She’s a friend, and I’ve had the chance to see her work up close. It’s excellent. [FletchPMM](https://fletchpmm.com/) (Anthony Pierri and Rob Kaminski) are great for earlier-stage companies that need positioning work done without a big-firm budget. They specialize in translating positioning into homepage clarity, which is often exactly where positioning breaks down first. I know them well and they’re the right call for founders who know their positioning is off but can’t afford a full engagement elsewhere. [PitchKitchen](https://www.pitchkitchen.com/) runs 90-day messaging sprints focused on getting positioning off the whiteboard and into the sales team’s hands. Useful when the problem is a messaging crisis rather than a foundational positioning rebuild. ### 2. Market research and market strategy **What this problem looks like:** You have multiple customer segments pulling you in different directions and no clear conviction about which to prioritize. Your ICP exists on paper but doesn’t guide real decisions. You’re not sure what your actual best customer values most, or why they bought in the first place. GTM feels directionless because the foundation of who you’re for hasn’t been properly established. This is one of DemandMaven’s primary lanes. We run customer research ([Jobs to Be Done interviews](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/), [customer discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/), competitive intelligence, win-loss analysis, MaxDiff surveys, [price sensitivity analysis](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/)) to figure out who the best customer actually is, what they value, what they’re willing to pay for, and what’s keeping others from converting or staying. That research then informs everything: positioning, product roadmap, channel strategy, pricing. [Forget The Funnel](https://forgetthefunnel.com/) (Claire Suellentrop and Gia Laudi) also lives here. They’re strong on customer-led growth strategy and product marketing: understanding what customers actually value and translating that into growth motions. Their focus is more B2B SaaS marketing strategy; ours is broader across the GTM picture. ### 3. Product strategy **What this problem looks like:** You’re shipping features but retention isn’t improving. Customers activate and then drift. The jobs your product was designed to solve may have shifted as your customer base has evolved. Or you’ve accumulated a roadmap full of quality-of-life improvements and not enough of the features that actually keep people around. I’ve written about [the quality-of-life improvement trap](https://demandmaven.io/blog) before: it’s one of the most common ways SaaS product teams accidentally undermine their own retention. The fix usually starts with understanding what jobs customers are trying to complete, and whether the product is still solving the right ones. This is squarely in DemandMaven’s wheelhouse. We run JTBD research specifically to uncover which jobs customers hired the product to do, which jobs have emerged since, and where the product is falling short of either. That work feeds directly into product roadmap prioritization and [activation strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-activation-onboarding-strategy/). If you’re not sure whether you have a product problem or a GTM problem, that’s often the first thing we help founders sort out. [Sixteen Ventures](https://sixteenventures.com/) (Lincoln Murphy) focuses on customer success, retention, and expansion. If stagnation is showing up in your NRR and you suspect the post-sale experience is the culprit, he’s worth a look. [Winning by Design](https://winningbydesign.com/) goes deep on recurring revenue architecture — what they call the “Bowtie Funnel”: the idea that the post-sale customer journey is as important as pre-sale. They’re good when the problem spans product, customer success, and sales handoffs together. ### 4. Channel strategy and customer acquisition **What this problem looks like:** Pipeline is inconsistent. CAC is rising. You’re getting traffic but it’s not converting. Your PLG motion isn’t moving people from free to paid. The channel that worked when you were smaller isn’t scaling. You’ve been running the same demand gen playbook for two years and it’s diminishing. This is where most execution-focused firms specialize, and there’s real depth here. DemandMaven can support [channel strategy and acquisition](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/), but we approach it differently than the agencies below. We typically work on channel strategy after (or alongside) the market research and ICP work: figuring out which channels are worth investing in based on who the best customer is and where they actually spend their time, before recommending any execution. If you’re not sure whether your channel problem is really a targeting or positioning problem in disguise, that’s a good place to start with us. [Refine Labs](https://www.refinelabs.com/) is built on the idea of demand creation vs. demand capture: shifting away from gated content and aggressive paid search toward building genuine category presence. They’re mid-market B2B SaaS specialists. I’ve worked alongside them on a mutual client engagement and was genuinely impressed with their process and rigor. [Kalungi](https://www.kalungi.com/) runs a fractional CMO model: they pair you with a senior fractional CMO who scopes the work and leads a full-stack marketing execution team. It’s great for founders who need execution speed and senior marketing leadership at the same time. I’ve also worked alongside them and was impressed. The important caveat: Kalungi is most effective when you already know your ICP. If you don’t, the fractional CMO will spend the first few months figuring that out before they can execute well. [Directive Consulting](https://www.directiveconsulting.com/) is performance-oriented: paid acquisition, SEO, attribution, and RevOps integration. Best when the bottleneck is specifically inefficient paid spend or weak pipeline economics. ### 5. Pricing and monetization **What this problem looks like:** You changed your pricing and churn went up. Net revenue retention is flat because there’s no meaningful expansion path. Your pricing hasn’t been revisited in years. You’ve been told to “raise your prices” but you don’t actually know how much, by how much, or what your customers would support. I’ve written about [why “raise your prices” is incomplete advice](https://demandmaven.io/blog/why-raising-your-prices-isnt-the-actual-strategy) before. Pricing is one of the highest-leverage growth levers available, and it’s also one of the most mishandled. Getting it right requires research: price sensitivity surveys (we use Van Westendorp), willingness-to-pay analysis, customer interviews, and a structured experimentation process. [Pricing is another of DemandMaven’s core lanes](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/). But there are also specialists worth knowing about. [Pace Pricing](https://www.pacepricing.com/) (Bill Wilson) focuses on SaaS pricing strategy with a research-first approach: understanding what value customers actually perceive and pricing to match. Good for founders who want to go deep on the methodology. [Pricing I/O](https://www.pricing.io/) (Marcos Rivera) takes a similar research-grounded approach, with experience across both B2B SaaS pricing structure and packaging. Marcos has been a resource in the SaaS pricing conversation for a while and knows his stuff. [Monevate](https://www.monevate.com/) is worth mentioning for VC-backed companies that need pricing work tied directly to monetization strategy and investor expectations. [Simon-Kucher](https://www.simon-kucher.com/) is the enterprise-grade option here: serious depth, serious process, serious cost. Relevant for companies at $50M+ ARR where pricing complexity has grown significantly. Probably overkill for most founders reading this. ## How to diagnose which lane you’re actually in Before you book a discovery call with anyone, run through these questions: **Do I know who my best customer is?** If you can’t describe them with specificity (industry, company size, role, the job they hired your product to do), you likely have a market research problem before you have anything else. Start there. **Do I know why customers churn?** If the answer is “not really,” you’re missing foundational insight that every other type of GTM work depends on. Positioning work without this is guesswork. Channel work without this is expensive guesswork. **Has my positioning been validated with real buyers in the last 12 months?** Not hypothetically. With actual customers, in actual interviews, testing whether your differentiation is landing. If not, positioning is suspect. **What does my revenue cohort retention look like at 12 months?** If it’s under 60%, [the leaky bucket is the primary problem](https://demandmaven.io/blog/revenue-cohort-retention-the-sneakiest-chart). No amount of acquisition or channel work fixes a leaky bucket. Product strategy and pricing need attention first. **Has your pricing changed in the last two years?** If not, it’s worth investigating whether you’re leaving money on the table or whether your current structure creates churn by misaligning price with the value customers actually receive. The answers to these questions will tell you which lane your stagnation lives in, which type of consultant you need, and whether you need strategic help before you need execution help. ## Red flags when evaluating consultants A few things to watch out for when you’re talking to potential partners: **Execution-first proposals before any diagnosis.** If someone jumps straight to “here’s our process for running campaigns / building your RevOps stack / managing your paid channels” before asking what’s actually broken, that’s a flag. Any good strategic consultant will want to understand the problem before proposing a solution. **Generic “increase pipeline” framing.** Pipeline is an output, not a lever. If a consultant can’t get specific about which part of the funnel is broken and why, they’re probably going to sell you a process rather than solve your problem. **No mention of research or customer data.** If the proposal doesn’t include any form of customer research (interviews, surveys, cohort analysis), be skeptical. You cannot build a sound GTM strategy without understanding why customers buy, stay, and leave. **Promises of outcomes without understanding your situation.** Guaranteed results before anyone has looked at your metrics, talked to your customers, or understood your product are a red flag regardless of how impressive the case studies look. ## All of this to say The go-to-market consultant landscape is crowded, and most of the names that show up when you search for help are good at what they do. The problem isn’t quality: it’s fit. The founder I mentioned at the beginning of this post didn’t fail because he hired a bad agency. He failed because he hired the wrong type of help at the wrong time. He needed someone to help him understand the problem. He hired someone to help him scale the solution. The five lanes above, and the strategic vs. execution distinction, are the diagnostic framework I’d give any founder before they start evaluating consultants. Figure out which lane your stagnation lives in first. Then find the specialist who lives there too. If you’re not sure which lane you’re in, that’s actually useful information: it probably means you need strategic help before anything else. **Need help figuring out what’s actually stagnating your SaaS growth?** That’s exactly what we do at DemandMaven. In a single discovery call, we can help you identify which of the five growth levers is most likely holding you back and what type of consultant (or what type of research) would actually move the needle. [Book a discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact) and let’s take a look together. Happy growing! ✨ --- ¹ For a deeper look at revenue cohort retention and how to interpret it, see [Revenue cohort retention: the sneakiest chart if you’re not careful](https://demandmaven.io/blog/revenue-cohort-retention-the-sneakiest-chart), DemandMaven. ² For the full case for why pricing strategy requires research rather than guesswork, see [Why raising your prices isn’t the actual strategy](https://demandmaven.io/blog/why-raising-your-prices-isnt-the-actual-strategy), DemandMaven. ³ On the quality-of-life improvement trap in product development, see [The “quality of life improvement” trap and how to avoid it](https://demandmaven.io/blog/the-quality-of-life-improvement-trap), DemandMaven. **Categories:** GTM, Marketing, SaaS --- ### [Best SaaS customer discovery & product-market fit consultants](https://demandmaven.io/saas-customer-discovery-product-market-fit-consultants/) **Published:** May 28, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** A few years ago, I had an email exchange with a founder that I still think about. He was in his second product cycle when we first connected, working on a B2B SaaS tool in a competitive productivity-adjacent space. He was trying to find product-market fit, had a bunch of assumptions he hadn’t fully stress-tested, and he knew something was off. It was tough, though, because they didn’t necessarily want to do “more research” because they felt, in their minds, they had done it already. They also didn’t feel 100% solid regarding their abilities to prove their ideas. And yet, instead of pausing to do the proper customer discovery work, he made the decision to hire a marketing agency and run experiments. He actually told me in that first email that they wanted “more than talking to people.” They wanted “sales and marketing experiments.” I couldn’t take the project. The fit wasn’t right. I was also a little worried. A year later, he emailed me back. “Working with an agency turned out to be a nightmare. We spent a lot of money and time. We followed their program of learning via click-testing. But I think the experiment was mis-specified.” And then: “The agency gave us a refund for that month, and we went our separate ways. We’re putting that product on the backburner.” This happens more often than it should. **Founders skip the foundational discovery work**, outsource to the wrong type of firm, or do it themselves without the right skills or resources, and end up burning budget without getting the answers they actually needed. They don’t get clarity. They get data without insight, and they keep building something the market doesn’t want. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: according to [CB Insights](https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/startup-failure-reasons-top/), **poor product-market fit is behind 43% of startup failures.** And it’s rooted in a discovery problem that’s all too common. So if you’re searching for a SaaS customer discovery consultant, this guide is for you. But before we get to the list, we need to talk about something that most of these roundup posts skip entirely: not all “customer discovery” firms are the same type of firm, and hiring the wrong category can cost you more than doing nothing. ## The three types of firms to consider Customer discovery is a term that gets applied to a lot of different types of work, and the firms that offer it come in meaningfully different shapes. **SaaS growth consultants** are typically individual practitioners or very small firms with deep specialization in research, strategy, and go-to-market. They won’t write code or build a prototype for you, but they’re excellent at the work that has to come before any of that: hypothesis development, customer and user interviews, jobs-to-be-done research, customer journey mapping, value proposition design, and translating all of that into a product and GTM strategy that actually makes sense. They’re the right fit if you already have design and development partners you trust, if you’re a founder seeking funding and need rigorous research to put investors at ease, or if you’re an agency or consulting firm exploring whether to launch a SaaS product. **SaaS market research firms** specialize in qualitative and quantitative research at scale. They can run brand tracking studies, buyer journey research, competitive analysis, segmentation studies, and things like MaxDiff and conjoint analysis. The important caveat here: not all market research firms do idea validation or true product discovery. Some are focused purely on research outputs, not strategic recommendations. If you’re looking for someone to help you decide what to build, make sure you understand whether they’ll translate findings into a product strategy or just hand you a report. **SaaS design and venture studios** are a different category altogether. “Design” in this context doesn’t just mean visuals. These are organizations that can take you from raw idea to a working MVP: branding, product design, engineering, and often VC connections or even co-investment. They tend to be the most expensive option and also the most comprehensive. If you’re pre-product and need a full build partner, not just a research partner, this is where to look. Knowing which type of firm you need is probably the most important decision you’ll make in this process. The rest of this guide breaks down specific firms within each category. ## Why customer discovery actually matters Before we get into the list, it’s worth making the case clearly for why this work is non-negotiable. Most founders know they *should* be talking to customers. The problem is that they talk to them in the wrong way, ask the wrong questions, or interpret what they hear through the lens of what they already believe. Teresa Torres covers this well in [*Continuous Discovery Habits*](https://www.producttalk.org/continuous-discovery-habits/): we all have assumptions baked into our product strategy, and if we don’t surface and test them, we end up building toward a reality that doesn’t exist. Rob Fitzpatrick makes a similar point in [*The Mom Test*](https://www.momtestbook.com/): customers will lie to you, not maliciously, but because they’re trying to be nice. They’ll tell you your idea is great. They’ll say they’d pay for it. And then they won’t. The skill of customer discovery is designing conversations that get past the politeness and down to the actual truth. The value a good customer discovery consultant brings is exactly this: the structure, the objectivity, and the methodology to get real answers. As that same founder put it after completing a structured discovery process: “When I talked to customers on my own, I’d understand macro problems of the space and a generalized view. After doing this properly, we got deep into feature sets and the nitty-gritty core issues that customers are wrangling with.” That specificity is what changes a roadmap. ## What good customer discovery work actually includes Whether you hire a consultant or attempt this yourself, here’s what a rigorous customer discovery engagement should cover: **Hypothesis development and assumption testing.** Before any interviews happen, a good research partner helps you document your current beliefs about who the customer is, what problem they have, and why your solution should win. These hypotheses become the guiding structure for everything else. **Recruiting and qualifying research candidates.** This is harder than it sounds. Getting the right people into interviews, not just whoever is willing to talk to you, requires careful persona definition and often access to sourcing platforms like Respondent.io or UserInterviews.com. The quality of your insights is only as good as the quality of the people you’re talking to. **Customer and user interviews using JTBD or similar frameworks.** Jobs-to-be-done is one of the most powerful frameworks for understanding why customers actually buy. It focuses on the progress a customer is trying to make, not their demographics or surface-level preferences. Bob Moesta, who popularized the JTBD interview methodology alongside Clayton Christensen, lays this out in [*Demand-Side Sales 101*](https://www.bobmoesta.com/). Understanding the “job” someone is hiring your product for unlocks positioning, pricing, and product strategy in ways that traditional personas simply can’t. **Product idea validation.** If you’re pre-product or launching a second product, this is the core question: is there sufficient signal here to build? A good discovery partner helps you design and run the research sprints that answer that question with real evidence. **Customer journey mapping.** This is where you document where customers are coming from, what triggers led them to search for a solution, what the evaluation process looked like, and where they get stuck. It becomes the foundation for your activation strategy, your messaging, and your acquisition channels. **Value proposition design.** Once you understand the jobs customers are trying to accomplish, you can build value propositions that actually land. This goes well beyond features and into the language, framing, and sequencing of how you communicate value to your best potential customers. **Market and competitive research.** Understanding how competitors are positioned, where the gaps are, and what former customers or employees of those competitors have to say is often some of the most valuable intelligence a young company can gather. One underused approach: interviewing former employees of your top competitors. They can tell you what worked, what didn’t, and where the real opportunities are. **B2B customer insights and segmentation.** Not all customers are equally valuable, and not all customer segments want the same thing. Part of the discovery process is identifying which segments have the highest willingness to pay, the clearest problem, and the best fit for what you’re building. MaxDiff surveys and Van Westendorp price sensitivity analysis are two methodologies that do this particularly well for SaaS companies. ## Top SaaS customer discovery consultants ### SaaS growth consultants #### 1. DemandMaven That’s us. We’re a boutique growth consultancy that has been helping SaaS founders and early-stage software companies for nearly a decade, and customer discovery and idea validation is one of our core capabilities. We offer standalone customer discovery projects for founders and CEOs who want to validate product ideas, establish product-market fit, or deeply understand their best customers before making major product or go-to-market bets. A typical engagement includes hypothesis development, sourcing and qualifying research candidates, conducting JTBD-style discovery interviews, defining user stories, clarifying problem statements, mapping the customer journey, and synthesizing everything into a strategic brief that tells you what to build, how to position it, and who to go after. We don’t have a design or development team, and we don’t build prototypes. We’re the right fit if you already have design and dev partners you like working with, if you’re a venture studio that needs a dedicated research partner, or if you’re a founder seeking funding and need airtight customer research to give investors confidence. We’re also particularly well-suited for agencies and consulting firms exploring whether to launch a SaaS product from their existing expertise. You can read about the discovery work we did for [Hamilton Rock](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-hamilton-rock/) (47 interviews to map the full JTBD for a fintech product from scratch) and [SearchPilot](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-searchpilot/) (customer interview research that led to a clear roadmap and GTM strategy) to get a sense of how these projects typically go. **Best for:** Bootstrapped and indie-funded SaaS founders, early-stage teams validating product ideas, founders preparing for fundraising, agencies and consulting firms spinning up SaaS products. **Website:** [demandmaven.io](https://demandmaven.io/) #### 2. Game Thinking [Game Thinking](https://gamethinking.io/) is led by Amy Jo Kim, a behavioral neuroscientist and product designer who has worked on hits like The Sims, Rock Band, Netflix, eBay, and Replika. The firm applies a framework built on game design principles to help product teams validate ideas early, understand what actually drives customer retention, and design experiences that pull people back over time. Their core methodology centers on what they call “Journey Design”: mapping out the customer’s progression from first touch through long-term engagement, identifying the moments that create habit and value along the way. Discovery and customer research are baked into this process from the start, with a focus on understanding not just who the customer is but what progress they’re trying to make and what keeps them coming back. Game Thinking is a particularly strong fit if your product has a strong engagement or retention challenge, and especially if you’re building something with consumer or community elements where the behavioral and emotional dimensions of the experience matter as much as the functional ones. Their client roster skews toward larger organizations and game studios alongside startups, so they’re comfortable at multiple stages. That said, their framework translates well to any SaaS product where activation and long-term retention are the core challenge. **Best for:** Founders and product leaders building engagement-driven or consumer-adjacent SaaS products; teams where retention and habit formation are central to the product strategy. **Website:** [gamethinking.io](https://gamethinking.io/) #### 3. GCD [GCD](https://gcdtech.com/services/discovery-sprints/) is a Belfast-based digital product studio that offers structured discovery sprints as a standalone service. Their process is designed to help teams validate product ideas with real customer feedback in a few weeks, covering customer research, user interviews, assumption testing, and the translation of findings into a product brief and roadmap before any development begins. One important distinction: GCD is primarily a software development firm, and their discovery sprints are most often a precursor to an engagement where they also build the product. If you’re looking for pure research and strategy without a build partner attached, they may not be the right fit. But if you’re looking for a single firm that can take you from discovery through to a working product, their integrated approach is a meaningful advantage. Think of them as sitting somewhere between the pure research consultants and the full venture studios on this list. Their portfolio includes digital transformation work across property technology, healthcare, logistics, and more, which gives them practical exposure to the kinds of niche vertical problems that are increasingly fertile ground for AI-native SaaS products. **Best for:** Founders who want discovery and development under one roof; teams building in niche verticals who need a partner that can both validate and execute. **Website:** [gcdtech.com](https://gcdtech.com/services/discovery-sprints/) ### SaaS market research firms #### 4. Bixa Research [Bixa](https://www.bixaresearch.com/) is an award-winning market research firm focused specifically on technology and SaaS companies. They offer a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research capabilities including buyer journey research, customer segmentation studies, persona development, brand tracking, and UX research. What sets Bixa apart is the depth of their statistical rigor. They use methodologies like MaxDiff, conjoint analysis, and cluster analysis to get past surface-level survey responses and down to statistically meaningful patterns in how buyers think, evaluate, and decide. They’ve worked with companies ranging from well-funded startups to enterprise organizations including Google, IBM, and Cvent. One important distinction: Bixa’s focus is research outputs and insights, not necessarily end-to-end product strategy. If you need someone to interpret findings and turn them into a product roadmap or go-to-market plan, you’ll want to supplement their work with a strategic partner. **Best for:** Companies that need rigorous, methodologically sound research at scale; teams that need statistical credibility for investor presentations or major product decisions. **Website:** [bixaresearch.com](https://www.bixaresearch.com/) #### 5. Adience [Adience](https://www.adience.com/b2b-saas/) is a B2B-focused research firm that works exclusively in business-to-business environments, which is a meaningful differentiator. They describe their approach as combining research methodology with consultancy techniques to turn insights into actual business change, which suggests more strategic engagement than pure data delivery. They serve a wide range of B2B industries from niche startups to global technology companies, and they explicitly emphasize speaking to “genuine, senior B2B decision-makers” rather than broad panels that dilute signal with unqualified respondents. If you’re building a B2B SaaS product and your target buyer is a senior business decision-maker in a specific vertical, Adience’s exclusive B2B focus could be a strong fit. As with any research firm, clarify upfront whether they’ll help translate findings into product and GTM strategy or deliver research outputs only. **Best for:** B2B SaaS companies targeting senior business buyers in specific industries. **Website:** [adience.com](https://www.adience.com/) ### SaaS design and venture studios #### 6. Transformative Studio [Transformative](https://www.transformative.studio/) is run by Clark Valberg, former CEO of InVision, and is built around the idea of co-creating new companies with deep-domain operators who understand a specific industry but don’t have the product or design capabilities to innovate within it. The model works by bringing together an industry operator (who funds the engagement and provides domain knowledge) with the Transformative team (who brings product design, AI, and venture-building capabilities). The research process is structured around phased sprints: first a kickoff and hypothesis phase, then an industry research phase that includes competitive intelligence and data analysis, then a user interview sprint of seven to ten interviews with qualified candidates, and finally a synthesis phase that results in a go/no-go recommendation and findings deck. If the signal is strong, the engagement moves into a venture-building phase where Transformative helps design, prototype, and ultimately staff and spin out the company. Notably, Transformative connects to a venture fund, so there’s potential for co-investment in the companies they help build. They’ve already spun out two companies, with one closing a $30 million funding round. This isn’t the right fit for bootstrapped founders or small teams looking for standalone research help. But for operators with industry expertise who want a full-stack partner to go from insight to investable product, Transformative is worth a serious conversation. **Best for:** Established operators in niche industries seeking a partner to co-create and launch a net-new AI-native or software product; founders who need both research and a build partner under one roof. **Website:** [transformative.studio](https://www.transformative.studio/) #### 7. NineTwoThree (923) [NineTwoThree](https://www.ninetwothree.co/) is a Boston-based product design, engineering, and marketing studio founded in 2012 that has shipped over 150 products. Their process includes a discovery and design sprint phase before any development begins, and they’re particularly strong in AI integration and mobile product development. They’ve worked with clients ranging from fast-growing startups to brands like FanDuel and Consumer Reports, and they’ve built an internal playbook from launching 14 of their own startups in addition to client work. Their team includes MIT- and Harvard-trained product managers alongside senior engineers, and they operate on what they call a “Full Transparency Development” model where clients have real-time visibility into everything being built. 923 is a strong option if you need a partner who can both validate and build. They don’t offer a venture capital arm, but they have a strong network and have repeatedly helped founders bring products to market and secure growth. **Best for:** Founders who need a product design and engineering partner alongside discovery; teams building AI-powered or mobile-first SaaS products. **Website:** [ninetwothree.co](https://www.ninetwothree.co/) #### 8. High Alpha [High Alpha](https://www.highalpha.com/) is the most well-known name on this list, and for good reason. They pioneered the venture studio model for B2B SaaS in 2015 and have since raised over $300 million in assets under management, launching more than 45 companies in the process. Their portfolio includes recognizable names like Lessonly, Zylo, Visible, and SalesLoft. The High Alpha model combines company-building services (design, finance, talent, marketing, brand, go-to-market) with a capital arm that invests both in their studio companies and in other leading B2B SaaS companies. When it works, it works at an exceptional level. These are not scrappy experimental builds: they’re designed to scale. The tradeoff is access and fit. High Alpha is primarily working with exceptional founders at the earliest stages of B2B SaaS company formation, and the engagement model is intensive and equity-based. If you’re not pursuing venture scale, this is probably not your path. But if you are, and if you’re building in the B2B SaaS space, they’re the benchmark. **Best for:** Founders building venture-scale B2B SaaS companies who want a studio partner with deep capital and go-to-market resources. **Website:** [highalpha.com](https://www.highalpha.com/) ## How to choose the right partner ### Assess your needs first The question to ask yourself before contacting any firm is: what do I actually need out of this engagement? If you need answers before you build, a growth consultant or research firm is probably the right starting point. If you need someone to help you build and launch, a venture studio may make more sense. If you need both and you have the budget, a studio like Transformative or NineTwoThree gives you that end-to-end partnership. Also be honest about what your biggest risk is. Are you worried that nobody actually wants what you’re building? That’s a discovery problem, and it requires rigorous qualitative research. Are you worried that you can’t build it fast enough? That’s a product problem, and it requires an engineering partner. Are you worried about finding customers? That’s a GTM problem, and it requires a growth or marketing strategy partner. Most founders have all three concerns, but usually one is the most urgent. One more question worth sitting with: have you done any discovery at all? Even basic JTBD interviews or a few unscripted customer conversations? If not, there’s value in getting some baseline before going into a full engagement. You’ll get more out of the work when you come in with some initial hypotheses to stress-test rather than zero starting point. ### Think carefully about budget This is where I’ll be direct with you: the “right” budget question isn’t “how little can I spend?” It’s “what is the cost of getting this wrong?” That founder spent months and significant budget running marketing experiments with an agency before he had the foundational clarity that discovery work would have given him in weeks. He put that product on the backburner. That’s a much bigger sunk cost than a well-scoped research engagement. ### DIY Customer Discovery If budget is tight, there are DIY resources worth investing time in. [*The Mom Test*](https://www.momtestbook.com/) by Rob Fitzpatrick is the essential starting point for conducting customer interviews without leading your respondents. [*Continuous Discovery Habits*](https://www.producttalk.org/continuous-discovery-habits/) by Teresa Torres gives you a sustainable framework for ongoing product discovery as you grow. [*User Story Mapping*](https://www.jpattonassociates.com/user-story-mapping/) by Jeff Patton is particularly useful for translating what you learn into a product roadmap that reflects real customer needs. DIY discovery is absolutely viable with the right resources, provided you can manage your own confirmation bias. The thing about founders doing their own interviews is that they’re often not great at it, not because they’re bad researchers, but because they’re emotionally attached to the outcome (and may not have access to unbiased prospects who aren’t their friends or family). An external partner dramatically reduces that bias from the equation. If you have some budget, even a small engagement with a specialized growth consultant or research firm will pay for itself many times over in clarity and reduced build risk. The goal is to know before you spend. ## The bottom line Customer discovery isn’t a box to check. It’s the difference between building something people will pay for and spending months (or years) iterating on something that never quite lands. Whether you’re validating a brand-new product idea, figuring out which segment of your market to focus on, or finally trying to understand why retention keeps lagging, the research has to come before the strategy. And the strategy has to come before the spend. So before you hire an agency, spin up paid acquisition, or double down on the roadmap, ask yourself: what do I actually know about why my best customers bought? What assumptions am I still carrying that haven’t been tested? And what’s the cost of being wrong? If you’re ready to find out, [book a free discovery call with DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/). In 45 minutes, we’ll dig into where you are, what you’re trying to figure out, and whether we’re the right fit to help. Happy growing! ✨ **Categories:** Business, Product, SaaS --- ### [Founder's guide: best SaaS GTM agencies and consultants 2026](https://demandmaven.io/best-saas-gtm-agencies-consultants/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** You’re probably not here because things are crystal-clear for your SaaS. You’re here because growth has stalled, a launch is coming up, or you’ve been burning money on tactics that aren’t converting and you need someone who actually knows SaaS to tell you why. Maybe you threw “SaaS GTM agency” into Claude and got a list of firms you’ve never heard of, with no context for which ones are worth your time and money and which ones are going to hand you a 60-slide strategy deck and disappear. This guide is an attempt to fix that. I’ve spent years working with SaaS founders on their go-to-market strategy, and I refer a lot of founders to outside help. Not because DemandMaven can’t help (we can), but because the right partner depends entirely on where you are, what you actually need, and whether you’re ready for what a specific kind of firm delivers. We’ll cover a little bit of that, too. ## What is a go-to-market strategy, and what does a GTM agency actually do? A go-to-market strategy is the plan for how you bring your product to market and generate revenue from it. That sounds simple, but it touches almost every part of your business: who you’re selling to, how you’re positioning the product, what you’re charging, and which channels you’re using to acquire customers. The best mental model I know for thinking about this comes from Brian Balfour’s Four Fits framework.¹ Balfour breaks GTM down into four interconnected quadrants: **Product:** What you’re building and the value it delivers to a specific customer. **Market:** The specific set of people who have the problem your product solves, and who are willing and able to pay for it. **Model:** How you price, package, and monetize the product, including your revenue model (subscription, usage-based, freemium, etc.). **Channel:** How you actually reach and acquire customers, from SEO and paid search to sales, partnerships, and word of mouth. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/four-fits-framework-brian-balfour.jpg) What makes this framework so useful is the word “fit.” These four things have to fit each other: your channel has to fit your model, your model has to fit your market, your market has to fit your product. When one is off, all of them suffer. And when founders think they have a “marketing problem,” they often actually have a model or market problem they haven’t diagnosed yet. GTM agencies and consultants help you figure out which quadrant is broken, define each one clearly, and execute against it. The challenge is that “GTM agency” is a term that gets used to describe wildly different things, so understanding the two main flavors before you go looking is worth a few minutes of your time. ## Two types of GTM help: execution vs strategy This is the distinction that most lists skip entirely, and it’s the one that matters most. ### Type 1: Execution agencies Execution agencies do the actual marketing work: running paid ads, building SEO content programs, managing ABM campaigns, writing emails, building demand generation engines. When founders say “I need to hire an agency,” this is usually what they mean. The thing execution agencies are not designed to do is figure out your strategy for you. They’re expecting you to show up with a clear ICP, defined positioning, and a product that’s already converting and retaining customers at a reasonable rate. If those things aren’t in place, you will spend a lot of money running efficient campaigns to the wrong people, and the agency will not always tell you that’s the problem. You’re ready for an execution agency when: - You have a clear, validated ICP and know which segments you’re targeting - Your product is converting free trials or demos to paid at a healthy rate (ideally 20%+ for trials, or a demo-to-close rate your sales team can sustain) - Your net revenue retention is at least stable, ideally growing - You have meaningful budget to invest: execution agencies typically require at least $50K per year to be effective, and some of the best firms want significantly more than that - You want speed and scale, not diagnosis ### Type 2: Strategic GTM consultants Strategic consultants are for when you’re not yet sure which execution plays to invest in. They help you answer questions like: who are my best customers, why do they buy, what’s my positioning, which channels are actually worth investing in, and is my pricing working against me? [DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/services/) sits in this category. So do Forget the Funnel and a handful of others listed below. Strategic consultants are slower and less “exciting” than an agency that’s promising you pipeline, but for founders at the wrong stage, hiring an execution agency before doing this work is one of the most expensive mistakes I see. You need a strategic consultant when: - You’re not sure who your best customers actually are - Your positioning and messaging feel off but you can’t articulate why - You’ve tried execution (ads, content, outreach) and it hasn’t worked the way you expected - Your activation or retention is low and you suspect it’s a product-market fit or messaging problem - You’re pre-revenue or early-revenue and about to make big bets on GTM - You’ve changed pricing and noticed unexpected churn - You’ve made assumptions about your market and would love to battle-test them - You’ve never actually talked to your target market and it shows ### A word of caution regarding marketing agencies It’s really *really* common for marketing agencies to claim that they do “GTM strategy”, but it’s really important that you understand that most marketing agencies will never inform your *actual* GTM strategy for your business. **What marketing agencies are *actually* doing is called “channel strategy”** which is certainly part of GTM, but not the whole story. When you talk to marketing agencies, get really clear on exactly what level of GTM strategy they’re actually contributing to. If you’re hoping for feedback on your PLG strategy, which GTM motion you should be using, your approach to pricing, or perhaps most important — what features you should prioritize and which customers to target, you’re going to be very disappointed to find most marketing agencies can’t and won’t help you refine these elements. I cannot tell you how many tells I’ve talked to founders who’ve been burned in the past and dropped way too much money on marketing execution when they weren’t actually ready, so it’s important you get super clear on what your needs are. But if you have all of those things somewhat sorted, then it makes sense to focus on channel execution. Okay, rant over. Let’s get into the list! ## Top SaaS GTM execution agencies ### 1. Kalungi **Best for:** B2B SaaS companies at early-to-mid growth stage that need a full outsourced marketing team, not just a single service [Kalungi](https://www.kalungi.com/) is one of the few execution agencies I recommend regularly because they’re genuinely full-service and exclusively focused on B2B SaaS. They’re not trying to also run campaigns for e-commerce brands or local businesses. Their entire playbook was built for software companies. Their model combines fractional CMO leadership with hands-on execution across demand generation, content, SEO, paid acquisition, ABM, marketing automation, and sales enablement. The fractional CMO sits inside your business like a real marketing leader, not a consultant who shows up for two calls a month. This is particularly useful for founders who need executive-level marketing direction but can’t yet justify a full-time CMO hire. Kalungi operates on what they call the T2D3 framework (triple, triple, double, double, double), which is a growth trajectory model designed to help SaaS companies scale toward meaningful ARR milestones. Their case studies include cutting sales cycles from six months to 45 days for one client through better ICP clarity and messaging, and driving $2M in qualified pipeline for another. Retainers start around $4,000–$15,000 per month depending on scope, with full-service engagements running higher. Kalungi is a good fit when you’re ready to invest in execution and want a team that understands SaaS metrics. ### 2. Refine Labs **Best for:** Mid-market to enterprise B2B SaaS ($20M+ ARR) that’s ready to move away from MQL-based lead generation and commit to a demand creation model I don’t know Refine Labs personally, but their reputation in the B2B SaaS demand generation space is as strong as it gets. Founded by Chris Walker, they essentially created (or at least popularized) the modern “demand creation” playbook: ungated content, dark social strategy, self-reported attribution, and a hard shift away from counting MQL volume as success. They’ve worked with 300+ mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS companies, and the consistent feedback is that they change how leadership teams think about marketing measurement, not just what they execute. The honest caveats: they’re expensive, they work best with companies that have mature marketing leadership and budget to match, and adopting their model requires genuine organizational buy-in to change how marketing is measured. Full-service management starts at $20,000 per month, and their strategy and assessment project starts at $35,000. If you’re pre-$10M ARR, you’re probably not the right fit yet. If you’re $20M+ ARR and your demand gen approach feels outdated, they’re worth a serious conversation. ### 3. 42 Agency **Best for:** Sales-led B2B SaaS companies that need ABM, demand generation, and RevOps infrastructure built at the same time [42 Agency](https://www.42agency.com/) is run by my friend Kamil Rextin, and it’s one of the firms I recommend most often when a founder is sales-led and ready to build a more systematic demand generation engine. Kamil has deep roots in tech (Uberflip, CrowdRiff), and his approach is more operator-minded than most agency founders: he experiments, he measures, and he’s skeptical of whatever is trending unless the data supports it. Their sweet spot is companies that need paid media, performance creative, SEO, direct media buys, RevOps, and ABM working as an integrated system rather than as separate vendors doing separate things. They’ve worked with companies like ProfitWell, Sprout Social, and Knak. If you’re sales-led, targeting enterprise accounts, and need account-based marketing infrastructure that your sales team will actually use, 42 Agency is one of the best places to start. They’re particularly strong for companies where sales and marketing alignment is a real problem (which is most of them, if we’re being honest). ### 4. Powered by Search **Best for:** B2B SaaS companies with high ACV, long sales cycles, and a buyer committee: specifically when search, content, and paid are the primary acquisition levers [Powered by Search](https://www.poweredbysearch.com/), founded by Dev Basu, is a B2B marketing agency I know well and recommend when founders are ready to invest in search-led and inbound customer acquisition. Dev is sharp, and the team has built genuine depth in the SaaS space over more than a decade. Their “Predictable Growth” methodology focuses on combining paid media, SEO, and demand generation into a system that compounds over time rather than treating each channel as a separate campaign. They’re particularly well-suited for companies with high ACV (think $50K to $500K+) and longer sales cycles, where the buyer journey is complex and positioning clarity matters a great deal for ad and content performance. Clients include Varonis, Fortra, and Collibra. One important note from the brief: Powered by Search is primarily a marketing agency with GTM capabilities, not a GTM strategy firm. They’re excellent when you’ve already done the strategic work (ICP, positioning, messaging) and are ready to scale acquisition through search and paid channels. If the strategy work isn’t done yet, that’s the wrong order of operations. ### 5. Conversion Factory **Best for:** Early-stage SaaS founders who need product marketing, website execution, and design without hiring a full team [Conversion Factory](https://conversionfactory.co/) is a product marketing agency with a subscription-based model that’s unusually accessible for early-stage companies. Their team covers product marketing, conversion rate optimization, Webflow development, and design: essentially the execution you need to make your website and messaging actually work. What makes them worth including here is speed and flexibility. They work like a productized service: you submit requests, they execute. One founder’s testimonial mentions that Conversion Factory overhauled their website in time for a CNN press release, capturing 10x more leads in one weekend than they had in the entire year prior. For founders who need to move fast without hiring or managing multiple vendors, that model has real appeal. They skew toward PLG and early-stage teams that ship fast and iterate quickly. If you need deep strategic positioning work, they’re not the right fit for that. But if your positioning is settled and you need execution: product marketing, messaging copy, website redesigns, they’re one of the most efficient ways to get that done. ### 6. Directive Consulting **Best for:** B2B SaaS companies at $5M+ ARR where paid media is a primary acquisition channel and CAC efficiency is the core goal I haven’t personally worked with or referred clients to [Directive Consulting](https://directiveconsulting.com/), but their reputation in the SaaS performance marketing space is strong and their positioning is worth noting. Their “Customer Generation” methodology is built around CAC and LTV rather than raw lead volume, which is the right framing for SaaS. They work exclusively with SaaS and tech companies and apply that focus throughout their measurement and strategy approach. Worth exploring if paid media is your primary channel and you want a team that thinks in SaaS metrics. ### 7. Omniscient Digital **Best for:** B2B SaaS companies where organic search is a core acquisition strategy and content needs to function as a full demand generation engine, not just a traffic play [Omniscient Digital](https://beomniscient.com/) is a content marketing and SEO agency that works specifically with B2B SaaS companies. I haven’t worked with them directly, but they’re frequently mentioned alongside the best in this category. If organic search is central to your acquisition strategy and you need a team that can build a content engine (not just produce articles), they’re worth a look. Clients include HubSpot, Jasper, and Hotjar. ### 8. Hey Digital **Best for:** PLG SaaS companies where paid media needs to support trial and self-serve conversion rather than just top-of-funnel awareness [Hey Digital](https://heydigital.co/) focuses on paid media for SaaS, primarily LinkedIn and Google. I haven’t referred clients to them personally, but their approach stands out from generalist paid agencies: they bring structured experimentation methodology to paid channels rather than just managing budgets. For PLG companies specifically, where paid media often supports trial and self-serve conversion rather than sales pipeline, their approach tends to be a better fit than firms that primarily optimize for MQLs. ## Top SaaS GTM consulting firms ### 1. DemandMaven **Best for:** SaaS founders under $10M ARR who need to figure out what their GTM strategy should be before investing in execution [DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/services/) is my firm (here’s my shameless plug). But I’m an open book about who we’re a good fit and who we don’t serve as well. We don’t do execution. We don’t run campaigns, manage ads, or write your content calendar. Our job is to help you figure out what you should actually be doing before you spend money doing it. That means understanding your best customers through research, clarifying your positioning and messaging, identifying which acquisition channels are actually worth investing in, and making sure your growth strategy is based on your actual business (your team, your budget, your retention, your product) rather than a generic SaaS playbook. We work with SaaS companies from pre-revenue through roughly $10M ARR, across both [GTM-stage engagements](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) (for early-stage founders who need to define their market and messaging) and [Growth Engagements](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) (for companies past initial traction who are trying to unlock the next level of growth). We also do [SaaS pricing strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/), [activation and onboarding strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-activation-onboarding-strategy/), and [JTBD customer research](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) as standalone engagements. The reason founders come to us before hiring an execution agency is usually one of three things: they’re not sure their positioning is right, they’re not sure which channel to invest in, or they’ve hired an agency before and it didn’t work and they want to understand why. All three are signs that the strategy work hasn’t been done yet, and that’s exactly what we exist for. ### 2. Forget the Funnel **Best for:** B2B SaaS teams that need product marketing strategy rooted in deep customer research, especially if messaging and retention are the core problem [Forget the Funnel](https://forgetthefunnel.com/) was co-founded by Gia Laudi and Claire Suellentrop, and it’s one of the firms I recommend most often when a founder’s problem is specifically product marketing: positioning, messaging, retention-linked marketing, and understanding why customers are (or aren’t) staying. Gia developed the Customer-Led Growth framework, which is rooted in a core belief that nearly every growth challenge can be solved by understanding your best customers more deeply: their jobs to be done, their decision-making process, the language they use, and the moments that made them valuable customers in the first place. She and Claire co-authored the book *Forget the Funnel*, which has sold 25,000+ copies and has a foreword from Bob Moesta, one of the co-architects of the Jobs-to-be-Done framework. That’s not a casual collaboration. Gia runs Forget the Funnel as a deliberately small boutique firm. She’s an advisor to SparkToro, Sprout Social, and MarketerHire, among others. If product marketing is your gap, specifically the kind that’s connected to retention and expansion rather than just acquisition, she’s one of the best in the space. ### 3. April Dunford (Ambient Strategy) **Best for:** B2B SaaS and tech companies that need to nail their positioning before anything else: messaging, website, sales pitch, or channel investment April is a friend, and while we haven’t had the chance to work together directly, I’ve seen her work up close and it’s excellent. She’s the author of *Obviously Awesome* and *Sales Pitch*, and the founder of [Ambient Strategy](https://www.aprildunford.com/). She has worked with over 200 companies including Google, IBM, Postman, and Epic Games, and her positioning methodology is one of the most widely cited frameworks in SaaS. Her core argument is that positioning is the foundation everything else in GTM is built on: your messaging, your sales pitch, your homepage, your channel strategy. Get it wrong and all the execution in the world won’t fix it. Get it right and the rest becomes considerably cleaner. Her consulting work is structured around facilitated workshops that align your executive team around a shared, well-tested positioning thesis and a sales pitch that flows from it. These aren’t theoretical exercises: they’re designed to produce decisions your team can act on. If your product is hard to explain, if your sales team is struggling to articulate differentiation, or if your homepage isn’t landing, positioning is almost always where the problem starts. April is one of the best people in the world to fix it. ### 4. FletchPMM **Best for:** Early-stage B2B SaaS startups that need to clarify their positioning and put it to work on their homepage [FletchPMM](https://www.fletchpmm.com/) was co-founded by Anthony Pierri and Robert Kaminski, and I know both of them. They’ve built a genuinely impressive reputation in a very specific niche: helping early-stage B2B software companies sharpen their positioning and translate it directly into a homepage that converts. They’re also particularly approachable for founders who don’t have massive budgets, which makes them a rare find in the positioning consulting space. Their whole thesis is that the homepage is where positioning theory meets practical reality. You can have a great positioning document and still have a homepage that confuses visitors, because turning a positioning thesis into clear, specific copy requires a different skill set than developing the thesis itself. They’ve helped 400+ B2B software startups work through this, and their frameworks are shared widely on LinkedIn where they’ve built a combined audience of over 130,000 followers, almost entirely through publishing useful thinking rather than ads. Their scope is narrow by design: they focus on positioning and homepage messaging, not full-stack GTM. That narrowness is a feature, not a limitation. If you’re an early-stage founder whose positioning is fuzzy and whose homepage is trying to say too many things to too many people, FletchPMM is one of the most targeted ways to fix that specific problem. ### 5. Maja Voje (GTM Strategist) **Best for:** Founders who need a structured, research-backed GTM framework and want to build the strategy themselves rather than fully outsource it [Maja Voje](https://gtmstrategist.com/) is the author of *Go-To-Market Strategist*, a comprehensive handbook for founders and growth leaders navigating GTM for the first time or resetting after a failed launch. I haven’t worked with her directly, but her book has earned serious credibility in the community: it includes 135 frameworks and 17 workshop templates, and draws on interviews with over 50 GTM practitioners from companies like HubSpot, Miro, Figma, and Amplitude. Her background spans 11 years across Google, Rocket Internet, and 350+ startups. Her consulting and bootcamp work is especially relevant for founders who want to build real GTM competency internally rather than fully rely on an outside firm. If you’re at an early stage, budget-constrained, and trying to develop your own GTM thinking rigorously rather than just hiring out, her book is one of the most useful resources available, and her GTM Bootcamp engagements extend that thinking into live, facilitated work. Her framing on product-market fit as a moving target (rather than a box you check once and move on) is particularly useful for founders who feel like they’ve found PMF but can’t figure out why growth has plateaued. ## How to compare and choose the right partner There’s no universal “best” firm here. The right one depends on where you are. A few questions to work through before you start making calls: **Have you done the strategy work?** If you’re not confident in your ICP definition, your positioning, or which channels should be your primary investment, do the strategy work first. Hiring an execution agency before that is expensive and usually disappointing. **What’s your retention and activation telling you?** If your [net revenue retention](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) is under 60% after 12 months, or your free trial to paid conversion rate is significantly below 20%, those are signals that more top-of-funnel investment will just accelerate churn. Fix the product and retention story first. **What’s your actual budget?** Good execution agencies require real investment to be effective. If you have $3,000–$5,000 per month for an agency, that will buy you a small scope of work. If you’re expecting a full-service demand generation program, you need significantly more (think like $15,000 per month not including additional spend). Be honest about this upfront. **Do you need a generalist or a specialist?** For ABM and sales-led: 42 Agency. For search-led inbound: Powered by Search. For full-stack SaaS marketing with fractional leadership: Kalungi. For demand creation at scale: Refine Labs. For product marketing and customer-led strategy: Forget the Funnel. For positioning specifically: April Dunford or FletchPMM (the latter especially for early-stage homepage clarity). For building your own GTM strategy with structure: Maja Voje’s book and bootcamps. For early-stage GTM clarity across the full picture before any of the above: DemandMaven. ## FAQs **What should I look for in a SaaS GTM agency?** Relevant SaaS experience is table stakes: you don’t want a firm learning your business model on your dime. Beyond that, look for clear thinking about which stage and problem they’re best suited for, a willingness to tell you if they’re not the right fit, and a methodology you can actually understand. Be wary of agencies that lead with case studies about their biggest clients rather than their most relevant clients. **How do I measure the effectiveness of my SaaS marketing strategy?** It depends on which part of the funnel you’re measuring. For acquisition, the most useful signal is qualified traffic and conversion rate to trial or demo, not raw impressions or clicks. For activation, track free trial to paid conversion rate and time-to-value. For retention, [net revenue retention at 12 months](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/) is the single most honest metric for how your GTM strategy is landing with the right customers. If NRR is strong, your GTM is probably working. If it’s weak, something in the customer profile, positioning, or product experience is off. **When is it too early to hire a GTM agency?** If you haven’t validated your ICP with real customer interviews, if your positioning shifts every time you talk to a new prospect, or if you’re not converting a meaningful percentage of trials or demos to paid customers, it’s too early. Agencies can’t fix product-market fit problems by running better ads. Get the [customer discovery work](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) done first. *Not sure where you actually are in this process? [Book a free 45-minute discovery call with DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and we’ll give you an honest read on your biggest growth opportunities.* ¹ Brian Balfour’s Four Fits framework: [reforge.com/essays/four-fits-growth-framework](https://www.reforge.com/essays/four-fits-growth-framework) **Categories:** GTM, Marketing, SaaS --- ### [How to measure SaaS product-market fit](https://demandmaven.io/saas-product-market-fit/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard this from founders: “We have product-market fit.” Me: “Oh awesome! How many customers do you have?” Them: “Three.” Me: “…” I’m not saying you *don’t* have product-market fit with three customers. I’m saying you can’t actually know yet. And that distinction? It matters more than you think. Here’s the thing: you could probably find three or four people to pay for almost any product out there—even a bad one. **But that doesn’t mean you have product-market fit.** Most founders are measuring product-market fit on vibes instead of metrics. They *feel* like they’re there, so they assume they are. And I get it—when you’re in the thick of building something, it’s easy to mistake early enthusiasm for true alignment between your product and market. But there are actual, quantitative ways to measure this. And understanding them can save you from making expensive mistakes that could have been avoided. ## The old-school ways (that everyone still uses) Let’s talk about the two OG methods for measuring product-market fit that most people know about. They’re not terrible, but they’re also not the whole picture. ### Method #1: Net Promoter Score (NPS) You’ve probably seen this before: “How likely are you to recommend this product to a friend?” on a scale of 0-10. Scores of 9-10 are promoters. 7-8 are passives (who you completely ignore in the calculation). Anything 6 or below are detractors. You subtract detractors from promoters, and boom—that’s your NPS. The problem? NPS measures sentiment, not behavior. It’s asking people how they *feel* about your product, not what they actually *do*. And how someone feels in one moment can be vastly different from how they feel six months later—or whether they’re still a customer at all. I’ve talked to several customer success professionals who are pretty critical of NPS because it can feel like a vanity metric. It’s nice to see high scores, but it doesn’t always correlate with actual retention or expansion. It’s a feel-good number that might not be grounded in reality. ### Method #2: The product-market fit survey This approach was popularized by Superhuman’s CEO Rahul Vohra, building on work by Sean Ellis who discovered that companies with strong growth almost always had more than 40% of users answer “very disappointed” when asked how they’d feel if they could no longer use the product. The survey typically includes three to four questions: 1. How disappointed would you be if you couldn’t use this product anymore? (Very disappointed / Somewhat disappointed / Not disappointed) 2. What type of people do you think would benefit most from this product? 3. What is the main benefit you receive from this product? 4. What would you want to see us add or improve? The goal is to filter responses by people who describe your ideal customer profile (ICP), then measure what percentage say “very disappointed.” If 40%+ of your ICP says they’d be very disappointed, you’re getting closer to product-market fit. I’ve used this survey a ton in my work with SaaS companies. It’s genuinely helpful. But here’s my issue: it’s still based on what people *imagine* they would feel, not what they actually do. Someone could say they’d be “very disappointed” to lose your product, but six months later, they’ve churned for reasons that have nothing to do with the product itself. That’s why I think these are leading indicators at best. They give you hints, but they don’t tell you the full story—especially long-term. ## The better ways to measure product-market fit If you really want to know whether you have product-market fit, you need to look at metrics that are grounded in actual customer behavior, not aspirations or feelings. ### The metric I actually like: Gross Customer Retention (GCR) Also called Gross Logo Retention (GLR), this one is simple: **out of all the customers you’ve ever had, what percentage do you still have today?** The benchmark? More than 60%. This isn’t based on vibes. It’s based on who’s actually sticking around. And unlike NPS or the PMF survey, it’s measuring real behavior over time. Now, if you’re just starting out, your GCR might look sad—like, really sad. In the first six months, you might be well below 60%. And that’s okay! That’s actually normal. You’re still figuring things out. You’re still iterating. But if you’re a year or two in and your GCR is still below 60%? You probably don’t have strong product-market fit yet. Maybe you targeted the wrong people. Maybe you had the right people but the wrong product. Maybe your product just didn’t have enough features to keep them around long-term. It would be more accurate to say “we’re working toward product-market fit” rather than “we’re there.” And here’s what I love about GCR: it compounds over time. Even if people drop off early on, as you improve your activation rates and reduce churn, you’ll see that percentage climb. You might lose some of those early customers from three years ago, but if you’re picking up more business that stays with you for multiple years, your GCR will reflect that. ### The metric you absolutely need to track: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Screenshot-2026-05-27-at-7.00.09 PM.jpg) If you’ve been following my work for a while, you know I talk about NRR constantly. It’s one of the most critical KPIs for understanding the health of your SaaS business. Here’s what it measures: of all the revenue you acquired 12 months ago, how much of it do you still have today from that specific cohort? The benchmark? **At *least* 80% average at 12 months.** If you’re above 80%, you’re going to have a much healthier, easier-to-grow business. If you’re at 60%, growth is going to feel like crawling. If you’re below 50%, you might actually see declining MRR—you’re losing money. Why is this so important for measuring product-market fit? Because NRR tells you if customers who aren’t good fits are churning. It tells you if your product strategy, go-to-market strategy, or pricing is misaligned. It tells you if people are actually getting value long-term, not just in the honeymoon phase. **Best-in-class, high-growth companies typically have revenue cohort retention of 95% or higher after 12 months.** When you get to that level, growth feels almost effortless because you’re not constantly replacing half your revenue every year. If you’re using ProfitWell, Baremetrics, or ChartMogul, you have this number available right now. Go look at it. If you have annual plans, look at your 13th and 25th month instead of the 12th month. And here’s the thing: GCR and NRR can tell different stories depending on where you are. Your net revenue retention might be strong for recent cohorts (because you just launched new pricing that’s working), but your gross customer retention might still be recovering because it’s looking at *all* customers you’ve ever had. That’s why you need both. ## The softer indicators (that still matter) There are other metrics worth watching, even if they’re not definitive on their own: **Monthly churn rate**: Ideally less than 5% month-over-month. Some experts like Ramli John say less than 3% is best. **Sales close rates**: If you’re sales-led, aim for at least 30%. This could say more about your sales process than product-market fit, but it’s still a signal that you can reliably sell this thing. **Trial or freemium conversion rates**: If you’re product-led, strong conversion rates (20%+ for free trial to paid, 3%+ for freemium to paid) suggest there’s something compelling here. But here’s what’s critical: don’t just look at these numbers in aggregate. Segment them. When Ben Chestnut—founder and CEO of Mailchimp—heard my talk at MicroConf, he called it “cheating” because he had to calculate things like NRR manually by spreadsheet, and then segment it by customer type, plan, buyer, and region. He didn’t have the tools we have today. But he knew that looking at everything in aggregate would be misleading. You need to understand which segments perform differently. Maybe one segment has terrible NRR because they go out of business (not your fault), while another segment has 112% NRR because they’re expanding like crazy. That tells you where to focus your growth efforts. ## When you don’t actually have product-market fit (and how to tell) Here’s the uncomfortable truth: if companies come to me saying “we have product-market fit” with a handful of customers, I’m going to set expectations. I’ll say: “It sounds like you have *feelings* of early product-market fit. And that’s great! But our work together might reveal that there’s more work to be done than you think.” Because here’s what I’ve seen happen: Founders assume they have PMF → They start scaling marketing and sales → Nothing flies off the shelves like they expected → They’re confused because they *felt* so sure → Turns out their GCR is below 40% and their NRR is at 55%. True product-market fit feels different. It feels like things are flying off the shelves. You hear it in sales conversations: “Where have you been all my life?” or “This was a no-brainer for me.” Now, some markets are just more reserved—you might never hear that even if your product is incredible. But in most cases, you’ll feel the pull. The danger isn’t in being optimistic. Optimism is great! Founder mojo is essential! The danger is in skipping steps because you *think* you’re further along than you are. ## The hard truth about those first few customers If you have five customers, you might have early signals. But you don’t know yet. If you’ve never charged anyone, you *definitely* don’t know. If your only “customers” are design partners getting free access in exchange for feedback? You don’t know. Until you’ve sold to strangers—people who are making real trade-offs with their money, not getting something for free—you can’t say you have product-market fit. And even when you do start charging, you won’t fully know until you’re a year or two in and can look at retention data. That doesn’t mean you don’t market. It doesn’t mean you don’t prepare. It just means you’re honest about where you are. It’s more accurate to say: “I have initial feelings of product-market fit, but I don’t know yet” than to say “We’re there” when your GCR is 35%. ## So what should you do? If you’re early-stage and trying to figure out if you have product-market fit: 1. **Start tracking GCR and NRR now.** Even if the numbers are rough at first, you need baseline data. 2. **Set proper benchmarks.** GCR above 60%. NRR above 80% at 12 months. Monthly churn below 5% (ideally below 3%). 3. **Segment your data immediately.** Don’t just look at aggregate numbers. Understand which customer segments perform differently and why. 4. **Use surveys and NPS as supplementary data**, not as your primary indicators. They’re helpful for understanding sentiment, but don’t mistake sentiment for retention. 5. **Be honest about where you are.** If you’re working toward product-market fit, say that. If your numbers suggest you’re not there yet, own it and figure out what needs to change. The good news? Once you *actually* have product-market fit—the kind backed by strong retention numbers—growth becomes so much easier. You’re not constantly replacing lost revenue. You’re not struggling to figure out why nothing’s working. You’re building on a foundation that’s actually solid. And that’s worth the wait. **Not sure where you stand with product-market fit?** We can help you dig into your numbers and figure out what’s really going on. [Book a discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and let’s take a look at your metrics together. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Top 2026 SaaS Pricing Consultants that Founders Actually Hire](https://demandmaven.io/top-saas-pricing-consultants/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Excerpt:** Discover the top SaaS pricing consultants of 2026 to enhance your pricing strategies. Learn how they can optimize your SaaS revenue today! **Content:** You finally decided to do something about pricing. Maybe churn is creeping up and you have a nagging feeling pricing played a role. Maybe you raised prices on a whim and things got quieter than you’d like. Or maybe you’ve just been staring at your plans for six months knowing they need a real overhaul — and you haven’t touched them once. Whatever got you here, you’re in the right place. Hiring a SaaS pricing consultant is one of the highest-leverage decisions you can make for your business. A small, well-researched change to pricing and packaging can unlock more growth than months of acquisition work. ProfitWell famously published research showing that a **1% improvement in monetization produces more than 3x the impact of the same improvement in acquisition**.¹ And based on what I’ve seen and experienced, this tracks. I’ve been consulting SaaS companies for over 8 years and worked with over 100 companies and advised hundreds more. Believe me when I say that acquisition is the least efficient lever and monetization is the absolute best (despite both being necessary). But not every pricing consultant is built for your stage, your budget, or the specific problem you’re trying to solve. A lot of the lists out there name firms that bootstrapped founders and early-stage CEOs have never heard of and would never actually hire. This list is different. Every firm listed here is one I’ve either worked alongside, referred clients to, or know personally. These are the people I actually recommend when someone asks me who they should talk to about pricing. But first, some context: ## What to look for in a SaaS pricing consultant Before you start booking calls, it’s worth knowing what separates a good pricing engagement from an expensive guessing game that sells a portion of your ARR to the highest bidder. Here’s what I pay attention to: **The methodology they use.** Good pricing research is grounded in validated, research-backed methodologies, not just a spreadsheet review and a few stakeholder interviews. Look for consultants who use approaches like the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter (which helps surface the range between “too cheap” and “too expensive”), Gabor-Granger (which tests specific price points and predicts revenue curves), and MaxDiff (which forces genuine trade-offs about feature value rather than letting everything seem equally important).² If someone can’t explain how they surface willingness-to-pay from actual buyers (and not just internal opinions), that’s a big red flag. **Whether they include customer interviews.** Surveys are powerful, but they can only take you so far without the full context behind the survey result. The best pricing work combines quantitative research with qualitative interviews — both with existing customers and with qualified prospects who haven’t bought yet. [Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) interviews](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) in particular are invaluable here because they help you understand *why* someone bought, not just *what* they use. That distinction matters enormously when you’re trying to set pricing that matches real perceived value. **Whether they look at more than just the number.** A pricing engagement that only focuses on the dollar amount is half the job. Packaging, perceived value, value propositions, plan structure, value metrics, expansion revenue design, and even pricing page UX all sit inside the same ecosystem. If someone helps you land on a new price point but leaves your plan structure broken or your pricing page confusing, you’ve only partially solved the problem. **Their experience with your stage.** This deserves its own callout because it matters more than most people realize. A firm that primarily works with enterprise SaaS companies with dedicated BI teams and six-figure research budgets is going to be a frustrating fit for a bootstrapped founder at $500K ARR. And vice versa. Be honest about your stage and ask directly who they typically work with. ## Top SaaS pricing consultants in 2026 ### 1. DemandMaven **Best for:** SaaS companies under $10M ARR, bootstrapped founders, PLG companies, teams that want to understand the process as they go [DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/) is my firm (full transparency!) but I’ll be straightforward about what we do and who we’re the right fit for. We specialize in early-stage SaaS companies, roughly pre-revenue through $10M ARR. Our practice revolves around solving two challenges for SaaS companies: overcoming growth plateaus and defining GTM strategy. We don’t have a massive business intelligence team or a fleet of data analysts, but that’s by design. What we produce is high-fidelity work with medium-high confidence intervals — which is exactly what a SaaS company at this stage needs to make confident decisions without over-engineering the research. Our pricing process combines three primary methods: 1. JTBD customer interviews to understand why people actually buy and what they value, 2. Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity surveys to map the acceptable price range across customer segments, and 3. Live pricing page UX interviews where we put real comps in front of qualified prospects and watch them react in real time. It’s both illuminating and terrifying, in the best way. One thing that genuinely distinguishes DemandMaven from a dedicated pricing-only firm is that we look at the whole picture. Pricing doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it’s tangled up with activation rates, retention, customer segmentation, and positioning. We’ve had clients come in thinking they had a pricing problem and discover that their real issue was attracting the wrong customer profile in the first place. We’re equipped to navigate that because pricing is one of five growth levers we work with (the others being acquisition, activation, retention, and operations), not the only one. A recent client came to us with a 40% net revenue cohort retention rate after 12 months (meaning they were replacing more than half their revenue every single year). After digging in, we found that pricing was a contributing factor, but so was poor trial-to-paid conversion rates and a lack of clear ICP focus. The pricing research helped clarify both: which customer segment was least price-sensitive *and* most likely to stick around. Our [SaaS pricing project](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/) starts at $15K, with most engagements landing around $20K–$25K. We don’t ask for a portion or percentage of future revenue like some pricing firms and we’re well under $100K. For companies under $10M ARR looking to finally get pricing right without over-investing in a big data team or a big consulting price tag, we’re a strong fit. ### 2. Pace Pricing **Best for:** More established B2B SaaS companies, teams ready for a comprehensive, high-confidence pricing overhaul [Pace Pricing](https://www.pacepricing.com/), led by Bill Wilson, is one of my favorite firms in the space. Bill is also a genuine friend whose work I admire and recommend without hesitation. What distinguishes Pace is the rigor and depth they bring to the process. They have analysts and BI capabilities, which means they can arrive at very high confidence in their recommendations. They literally analyze your product data, usage data, and payments data from customers and come away with rich, deep insights from existing data you already have. Their methodology is customer-research-first (rooted in JTBD interviews, purchase simulations, and willingness-to-pay analysis) and they hold the rare belief that your product, pricing, and positioning need to tell the same story. If they don’t, every pricing fix is just papering over a deeper misalignment. Bill’s track record is compelling. One client saw 40% revenue growth in a year driven primarily by a pricing change. Another reported that pricing improvements were worth roughly half a million dollars annually just from raising their floor… all while retention *improved* after the change, not declined. That counterintuitive outcome (charging more, retaining better) is exactly what well-researched pricing produces. Pace has a range of project options (some as high as 6 figures) and they do offer smaller advisory options for teams that need guidance without the full project scope. If you’re at a stage where you have the budget and the stakes to justify that level of rigor, Pace is an exceptional choice. ### 3. Pricing I/O **Best for:** Mid-market to enterprise SaaS, funded companies, teams dealing with AI pricing complexity or sales-side friction [Pricing I/O](https://www.pricingio.com/), founded by Marcos Rivera, shares a lot of philosophical DNA with Pace Pricing: research-grounded, SaaS-focused, and deeply invested in the connection between pricing, packaging, and go-to-market alignment. Bill and Marcos have a good relationship which tells you something about how they approach the craft. Marcos built Pricing I/O on what he calls “Street Pricing” — a no-BS, operator-minded philosophy he’s documented in a book by the same name and a podcast worth adding to your rotation. The firm has worked with over 400 SaaS companies including Calendly, Appcues, Xactly, and Docebo. One engagement with Xactly resulted in a 58% increase in unit pricing and a 13% improvement in win rates while reducing discounting by 24%. That’s pretty impressive! What sets Pricing I/O apart is their capability around AI and SaaS monetization. If you’re navigating how to price AI features, usage-based models, or the shift away from seat-based licensing, Marcos and his team are well-positioned to help. They also bring a pod model to engagements, meaning you’re not working with one consultant but a small team with senior oversight on every recommendation. Similar to Pace, Pricing I/O is best suited for companies with more established scale and budget. If you’re earlier-stage, it’s worth exploring their advisory options or community resources before committing to a full engagement. ### 4. Price Intelligently (now part of SBI Growth) **Best for:** Enterprise SaaS, larger organizations with dedicated growth or revenue ops teams Price Intelligently was founded by Patrick Campbell (who also built ProfitWell) and represented one of the most research-driven approaches to SaaS pricing ever assembled. Much of what the industry knows about pricing methodology today traces back to Patrick and his team’s work. I personally learned pricing from them, and many of the approaches we use at DemandMaven are inspired by the Price Intelligently framework. In 2022, ProfitWell was acquired by Paddle for $200M. In late 2024, Price Intelligently was divested to [SBI Growth](https://sbigrowth.com/), a GTM strategy and execution firm.³ SBI brings considerable enterprise-focused muscle to the table (they’re a large organization with broad GTM capabilities) which means Price Intelligently’s methodology now lives inside a firm that skews toward larger, more complex organizations. If you’re enterprise or scaling toward it and want access to what was once Patrick Campbell’s intellectual legacy, SBI Growth is worth exploring. For sub-$10M ARR companies, other firms on this list will likely be a better fit from a scope and investment standpoint. ### 5. ProductLed **Best for:** Sales-led SaaS companies transitioning to product-led growth, teams where pricing is entangled with GTM motion [ProductLed](https://productled.com/), founded by Wes Bush, approaches pricing from a different angle than the other firms on this list. Wes is the author of *Product-Led Growth* and *The Product-Led Playbook*, and has spent years helping companies build the systems, onboarding experiences, and monetization structures that make self-serve growth possible. ProductLed has worked with 400+ SaaS companies and documented over $1 billion in self-serve revenue generated through their methodology.⁴ Their pricing work sits inside a broader engagement around the full product-led growth transformation. If you’re a sales-led company that knows you need to add a self-serve motion (and with it, a new pricing and packaging approach that actually supports that motion) ProductLed is genuinely one of the best places to turn. Wes is thoughtful, accessible, and has built a coaching and implementation program that goes well beyond a one-time consulting deliverable. The tradeoff is that if pricing is your *only* problem, ProductLed may be more than you need. Their sweet spot is companies where pricing is one piece of a larger transformation from sales-led to product-led. --- *A note on the next three firms: I haven’t worked directly with any of them, and I can’t speak to what it’s like to be their client from personal experience. But based on what I’ve researched — their published work, methodologies, and case studies — they’re worth knowing about, and I’d rather include them here than leave you without options if the firms above aren’t the right fit.* --- ### 5. Monetizely **Best for:** SaaS companies from seed through IPO, teams navigating usage-based or AI pricing models, companies that want practitioner-level expertise from people who’ve actually built pricing at scale [Monetizely](https://www.getmonetizely.com/) is led by Ajit Ghuman, who brings over 28 years of combined SaaS pricing leadership — having led pricing at companies like Twilio, DocuSign, Squarespace, Zoom, and LogMeIn. That’s not consultant experience; that’s operator experience, which is a meaningfully different thing. Ajit also wrote *Price To Scale*, one of the most cited books on SaaS pricing strategy, and teaches a course called The Art of SaaS Pricing & Monetization. Their approach is data-driven and covers the full range of pricing needs: revamping existing plans, launching new products, transitioning to usage-based or consumption models, and navigating AI product monetization. They advertise 12–40% revenue increases and have published case studies across seed-stage B2B, Series C companies, and post-IPO firms — which tells you they’re comfortable across a wide range of scales. One thing that stands out from the outside is their focus on operationalization. They’re not just handing you a pricing model and calling it done — they’re thinking about how your sales team will sell against it and whether your team can manage pricing decisions going forward without needing to re-engage a consultant every 18 months. If you’re at an earlier stage, it’s worth exploring their pricing diagnostic or course before committing to a full engagement to get a sense of how they think. ### 6. Valueships **Best for:** SaaS teams that want rigorous, research-backed pricing work with a consultancy that has strong case studies and a proven track record across many client types [Valueships](https://www.valueships.com/) is a European-based pricing and strategy consultancy (headquartered in Wrocław, Poland) that has worked with 300+ SaaS companies and guarantees a minimum 10% revenue uplift from their pricing work which is a claim worth noting because it reflects real confidence in the process. Their case studies are compelling and unusually specific. One client, Omnisend, generated $1M in incremental ARR through pricing optimization. Brand24 saw a 23% increase in average revenue per user and 29% MRR growth with zero increase in churn despite the price increase. LiveSession saw a 30% MRR increase and an 87% upsell rate from their cheapest to a higher plan after a pricing overhaul. From what I can gather about their methodology, they lean heavily on data analysis, willingness-to-pay research, and customer segmentation — with a focus on connecting pricing directly to measurable business outcomes rather than just handing over recommendations. Several clients specifically noted their willingness to stand behind their recommendations even when the client pushed back, which is the kind of thing you only hear from consultants who actually believe in their process. The European base is worth knowing about if timezone and proximity matter to your engagement style, but they work with companies globally. ### 7. Simon-Kucher (for enterprise) **Best for:** Enterprise SaaS, VC/PE-backed companies, teams with large budgets and complex pricing challenges that require significant organizational change management If you’re building at serious scale and have the resources to match, [Simon-Kucher](https://www.simon-kucher.com/) deserves a mention. They’re widely considered the global leader in pricing consulting — pricing is not a service they offer alongside other things, it’s the core of their identity. They have deep SaaS and subscription-specific expertise and have worked across verticals ranging from B2B software to financial services to healthcare. I’ll be straight with you: Simon-Kucher is not built for the bootstrapped founder or early-stage SaaS company. Their engagements are enterprise-grade in scope and cost to match. But if you’re running a growth-stage or enterprise SaaS with a complex packaging challenge, hundreds of customers on legacy plans, or a meaningful organizational alignment problem baked into your pricing decisions, then this is the tier of firm that can handle that kind of work. For most people reading this, they’re a “know they exist and file them away for later” option rather than a “call them now” option. But they earned a spot on any honest list of the world’s top SaaS pricing consultants. ## How to choose the right consultant for your stage The firms on this list are all excellent at what they do. If you’re torn, here’s a rough way to think about it: If you’re **under $10M ARR** and want to learn the process as you go, get actionable research without over-engineering it, and look at pricing alongside your other growth levers, then DemandMaven is built for you. If you’re **more established** with a stronger budget and want extremely high-confidence research from a firm that has seen hundreds of pricing transformations — Pace Pricing is exceptional. Start with a 30-minute call with Bill. If you’re **dealing with AI pricing complexity, sales friction, or need enterprise-level packaging** work — Pricing I/O brings the right combination of research rigor and practical execution. If you’re **enterprise or scaling toward it** and want a large, full-service GTM firm — SBI Growth (Price Intelligently) deserves a look. If you’re **transitioning from sales-led to product-led** and pricing is part of a bigger transformation — ProductLed is the most thoughtful place to start. If you want **practitioner-level operator experience** from someone who has actually led pricing inside high-growth SaaS companies — Monetizely is worth a serious look, especially if you’re navigating usage-based or AI pricing. If you want a **research-heavy, data-driven engagement with published case studies** across dozens of SaaS companies — Valueships has a strong track record and notable client results. If you’re **at enterprise scale with a complex organizational pricing challenge** and have the budget to match — Simon-Kucher is the gold standard. Pricing is one of the few growth levers where a little outside expertise almost always pays for itself, and usually faster than you’d expect. The question isn’t whether to invest in it. The question is finding the right partner for where you are. *Want to see if DemandMaven is the right fit for your pricing challenges? [Book a free 45-minute discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and we’ll tell you exactly what we see and where we’d start.* ¹ ProfitWell pricing impact data, via [ProfitWell.com](https://www.profitwell.com/) ² For a deep dive on MaxDiff methodology and how it surfaces true feature preference, see: [MaxDiff: the secret to getting the truth of what people want](https://demandmaven.substack.com/) ³ [SBI Growth acquires Price Intelligently from Paddle](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/sbi-growth-acquires-price-intelligently-from-paddle-enhancing-pricing-strategy-offerings-in-a-post-inflation-economy-302302585.html), November 2024 ⁴ [ProductLed.com](https://productled.com/wes-bush) **Categories:** GTM, SaaS --- ### [The busy SaaS founder's guide to pricing](https://demandmaven.io/saas-guide-pricing-monetization/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Here’s something most founders don’t want to hear: that slow growth you’re experiencing? It might not be a marketing problem. I know, I know. You’ve been grinding on acquisition, tweaking your messaging, testing new channels. But when we troubleshoot growth with SaaS companies, pricing ends up being one of the first things we look at – and it’s often one of the biggest levers they’re not pulling. The thing is, most founders don’t think pricing is actually what’s holding them back. And that’s exactly why it stays broken. ## Why pricing gets ignored (and why that’s dangerous) Pricing doesn’t get the same love that customer acquisition does. There’s way more content about marketing tactics than there is about monetization strategy. And it makes sense – in the early days, founders are just trying to survive. They’re focused on getting customers, any customers, and pricing feels like something to figure out later. But here’s what happens: you set your pricing once by looking at competitors, make some educated guesses about your value metrics, and then… you basically never touch it again. Or worse, you tinker with it randomly based on conference advice without any real data backing your decisions. I’ve seen companies change pricing five or six times in two years with everything staying flat. I’ve also seen companies follow the “just double your prices” advice too literally for too long – and while they might not see immediate churn, six to eight months later customers start questioning why they’re paying so much and quietly leave. That long-term churn? That’s what kills you. Because by the time you notice it in your net revenue retention charts, you’ve already been hemorrhaging revenue for months. ## The three phases of pricing Most companies move through three distinct phases when it comes to pricing. Understanding where you are helps you know what to do next. ### **Phase 1: Survival pricing** This is where everyone starts. You look at competitors, figure out your value metrics (seats, usage, whatever makes sense for your product), and put something out there. And you know what? That’s fine. When you’re pre-$1M ARR, this is totally acceptable. You really don’t know if you have product-market fit until you charge for something, so whatever it takes to get pricing up there and start collecting money – do it. Just make sure you’re not creating pricing that’s unsustainable (where it costs you more to deliver than what you’re making). But beyond basic profitability, don’t overthink it. ### **Phase 2: Optimization and testing** This is where the real work happens. Phase 2 is about pulling different levers in pricing to understand your ceilings and floors – what’s the most people will pay, what’s the least that makes sense, and how can you structure things to make buying a no-brainer for your best customers. The key word there is “qualified customers.” Not everybody and their grandma. Your absolute best paying customer should feel like your pricing is obvious, seamless, effortless. No emotional, mental, or physical barriers to handing over their credit card. Most of the companies we work with are in Phase 2. They know something’s not quite right with pricing, but they’re not sure what. This is where you need a real process – which we’ll get into in a second. ### **Phase 3: Flying** This is the promised land. Your pricing is dialed in. You’ve got solid net revenue retention. Expansion revenue happens naturally through add-ons or plan upgrades. Your distribution across plans makes sense – not necessarily perfectly even, but balanced enough that you know people are finding the right fit. In Phase 3, you’re not done with pricing forever. Markets shift (hello, AI), your product evolves, new competitors enter. You’ll still need to adjust pricing as you go. But when you have a solid foundation, those adjustments are way easier. You’re not overhauling everything from scratch – you’re iterating on something that already works. Companies like Intercom and Zendesk have had to completely overhaul pricing after years of incremental tweaks made it less palatable for customers. Sometimes you do have to go back to Phase 2. But if you do the work right the first time, you can avoid those painful, public pivots. ## How to actually do pricing (the Phase 2 process) Alright, so you know you need to work on pricing. What’s the actual process? Fair warning: this is work. If you’ve never done this before, the first time will feel intense. There’s a lot of information flying around and it’s hard to know what’s signal versus noise. But it’s also learnable, and once you build the muscle, it gets easier. Here’s the three-step framework we use: ### Step 1: Pricing interviews (including UX interviews) Start by talking to 10 of your absolute best paying customers. Not just your highest LTV customers – mix in some who are very active but maybe more neutral in terms of feedback. Incentivize these interviews. Your goal is simple: get feedback on the pricing as it is. What works? What doesn’t? Where do they get stuck? Would they upgrade? Why or why not? Here’s where it gets interesting: ask Van Westendorp questions. These are four specific pricing questions that sound like: - At what price would this feel like a bargain? - At what price would this feel like a stretch but still worth it? - At what price would this feel so expensive you wouldn’t buy it? - At what price would this feel so cheap you’d question the quality? Most researchers only use Van Westendorp in surveys, but we ask it in person first. Getting people to commit to a number in real-time is psychologically revealing. Even if the exact number isn’t reliable (people overestimate or underestimate what they’d actually pay), the *why* behind the number is gold. You should also do UX pricing interviews – about five of them with customers or even strangers who’ve never seen your product. Have them review your pricing page. What makes sense? What’s confusing? What anxieties come up? What did they miss? Just doing these interviews alone—before you change a single thing – will give you 10 actionable insights. I’ve literally given this advice for free in calls and had people come back saying they increased revenue by 30% just from what they learned. ### Step 2: Willingness-to-pay survey You need more than 10 data points, so now you’re running a survey. Aim for at least 25-50 responses from a mix of customers (and maybe some qualified prospects if your customer base is small). This survey should include: **Van Westendorp questions** (the same four from the interviews, but now you’re getting volume). You can do open text boxes or ranges/sliders depending on how much you want to normalize the data. Open text gives you more color but requires cleanup. Ranges give you structured data but you need to be careful not to cap yourself too low. **MaxDiff questions** instead of Likert scales. Instead of asking people to rank each feature 1-5 on importance (which just results in everything being “very important”), use MaxDiff. Show them a set of features and ask: which is MOST important to you, which is LEAST important? This forces prioritization. When you analyze the results, you subtract the “least important” votes from the “most important” votes for each feature, and suddenly you have a clear hierarchy. You can use MaxDiff for: - Feature prioritization - Understanding which add-ons would be most valuable - Figuring out preferred value metrics (seats vs. usage vs. transactions, etc.) **Qualification questions** so you can segment responses later. Role, company size, industry, how they use the product – whatever helps you identify your best customer segments. One note on optics: if you have a large customer base, you might not want to blast this to everyone (it signals you’re changing pricing). Send it to a subset. But if you have a small base, go ahead – just make sure people understand you’re being thoughtful about this, not just randomly changing things. ### Step 3: Product analytics Now you’re diving into your product data. If you’re using Amplitude, PostHog, Mixpanel, whatever – this is where you open up the hood. The fancy pricing consultants go *hard* on this step. They’re analyzing overlap between features getting used in each plan versus how much usage is actually happening. They’re segmenting by customer type, looking at cohorts, finding patterns. What you’re looking for: which segments use which features? How does that vary by plan? By LTV? By industry? For example, you might discover that certain segments use specific types of features in a particular way, and that should actually influence how you structure your plans. Maybe Industry A barely uses Feature X but it’s prominently featured in your top plan. Maybe your mid-tier plan is perfect for one segment but completely wrong for another. Here’s the thing though: what you analyze in Step 3 depends entirely on what you learned in Steps 1 and 2. The interviews and survey tell you where to dig. Product data can’t tell you *why* something is happening – it just shows you patterns. That’s why you need both qualitative and quantitative. Used data is more reliable than what people tell you (humans overestimate and underestimate their behavior constantly), but it doesn’t tell you where to look. The combination is what creates real insights. ### Synthesizing into pricing hypotheses After those three steps, you’ll have a mountain of information. Now you need to synthesize it into 2-3 pricing hypotheses. Here’s what’s interesting about pricing: there are many wrong answers, but usually a few right ones. You’re not looking for the one perfect pricing model. You’re looking for 2-3 different structures that could work based on what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re willing to test. From there, you’re moving into Step 4: actually implementing pricing experiments. You’re testing your hypotheses, learning from them, and iterating. This is the scientific method applied to pricing – observe, hypothesize, gather data, design experiments, learn, repeat. ## Your options: DIY, assisted, or full-service Reading through that process, you might be thinking: “This sounds like a lot of work.” You’re right. It is. So what are your options? ### **Option 1: DIY** If you’re bootstrapped, profitable, and genuinely excited about learning pricing, do it yourself. I highly recommend this if the idea energizes you rather than drains you. Start by learning from the best. Follow Patrick Campbell’s content from Price Intelligently and ProfitWell – he’s basically the king of SaaS pricing and churn. Kristen Berman at [Irrational Labs](https://irrationallabs.com/pricing-resources/) has great willingness-to-pay guides. [Marcos Rivera’s](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcoslrivera/) book *Street Pricing* is solid (I agree with about 90% of it). The key is that you’re building a practice. The first time is hard, but then it becomes a muscle. And you should be reviewing pricing at least once a year anyway, so learning how to do this yourself pays dividends. ### **Option 2: Assisted/coaching (the scrappy option)** Maybe you don’t have time to figure this out on your own, but you also don’t have $100K-$200K to spend on a fancy pricing consultancy. This is where providers like us come in. [We run 4-6 week pricing projects](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/) that walk you through the entire process, show you how it’s done, and help you arrive at actionable pricing hypotheses. The goal is to teach you the process so you can do it yourself next year (maybe with light advisory support). This works best when you know you need to make progress on pricing but you’re stuck. You need someone to guide you through it once so you can internalize the practice. The data fidelity here is probably around 70% – not perfect, but way better than guessing. Price range for this type of work: typically $15K-$50K depending on complexity and provider. We also have a [list of SaaS pricing consultants](https://demandmaven.io/top-saas-pricing-consultants/) that we know and trust in case DemandMaven isn’t a fit. ### **Option 3: Full-service pricing consultancy** If you’re doing $5M+ in ARR, spending $100K-$200K on a specialized pricing consultancy starts to make sense. At that scale, that investment is nothing compared to what you’ll unlock – you could easily 10x the spend in new revenue. These firms provide extremely high data fidelity (90%+ accuracy). They’re doing deep, intense analysis across product usage, qualitative research, everything. Many have proprietary platforms that can model different pricing scenarios and predict your growth. It’s impressive and it’s pricey. Some also charge a percentage of future revenue on top of the base fee. Your mileage may vary on whether that’s worth it – for some enterprise companies it’s a drop in the bucket, for others it’s a hard pass. The key distinction: if you haven’t touched pricing in 10 years or you’ve only been tinkering without real data, you probably don’t need 99% fidelity yet. You just need to do *something* structured. Once you’re at $5M-$10M+ and you’ve already optimized once, that’s when the fancy firms make sense. ## How to roll out new pricing (without freaking everyone out) Here’s a critical tip: **when you launch new pricing, only roll it out to new customers first.** Put it on the website. Make it the default for new signups. But don’t immediately migrate your existing customer base. Why? Because if it doesn’t work, you’ll know within a few months. And if it does work, you’ll see dramatically better net revenue retention in those new cohorts. Once you’ve confirmed it’s working (usually by the 6-month mark), then you can think about how to migrate existing customers. This approach lets you run real experiments without burning your current customer base. It’s like A/B testing, but for your entire business model. And track everything. How’s distribution across plans? How’s churn compared to your old pricing? How’s NRR at 6 months, at 12 months? The data will tell you if you’re on the right track. ## The real secret: just start reviewing pricing regularly Here’s the thing – you don’t need to do a full 4-6 week pricing sprint every single year. But you do need to intentionally look at pricing every year. Pull up your distribution across plans. Check net revenue retention at 12 months for each plan. Look at churn patterns. Ask yourself: do these value metrics still make sense? Are we hearing feedback that pricing feels off? Maybe you make small tweaks. Maybe you realize you need a bigger overhaul. But the practice of reviewing keeps you from going five years without touching it and wondering why growth has stalled. And if you run an annual customer survey anyway, throw in a pricing question. Get a pulse check. If you notice sentiment dropping, that’s your signal to dig deeper. The commitment – mentally and energetically – to think about pricing and monetization regularly is the hard part. But it’s also one of the easiest levers you have to pull. Easier than trying to 3x your marketing budget or completely rebuilding your product. You just have to actually pull it. **Need help identifying your pricing opportunities?** That’s something we can help with. We run focused pricing projects that walk you through the entire process while teaching you how to do it yourself in the future. If you’re stuck or just know you’ve been ignoring this lever for too long, [let’s talk](https://demandmaven.io/contact/). **Categories:** Growth, GTM, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [Why SaaS companies experience growth stalls](https://demandmaven.io/saas-growth-plateaus/) **Published:** May 5, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  We haven’t really talked about this much despite it being one of the top things we help teams overcome. Growth stalls. A growth stall is when you’re growing extremely slowly or not growing at all. Net new MRR is basically being neutralized by the churn you’re getting every month. Maybe you’re getting 1-2% growth month over month. Some companies we’ve worked with have only grown 2% in the whole year. We’ve worked with over 100 companies at this point. We’ve seen a lot of growth stalls. And what’s really interesting is there are common patterns – where the stall is happening, why it’s happening, and what ARR number it’s happening at. ## The three breakpoints of growth plateaus The most common growth stall points in the growth journey are three specific milestones. ### $1 million ARR It’s extremely common to get to a million and then completely stall. Usually it’s because there’s an overfocus on customer acquisition but an underfocus on everything else: core ICP, go-to-market strategy, product. Sometimes this can get extended to the next milestone, three to five million. But usually at a million, you’re stuck because you’re overly focused on marketing and not enough on the other levers for growth. By a million, you should have a solid understanding of your acquisition channels. What actually gets you more customers. What activities will take you beyond. But at a million, that’s not always clear. Is it SEO? Ads? Email list building? Conferences? All of that is hyper dependent on your market and budget. A million is tricky because if you don’t have that scalable channel and you’re not thinking about the other growth levers, it’s really hard to break past a million. Getting to 2 million feels really hard. ### $3-5 million ARR This could be three, four, or five million. But there’s a break point here where you can reach a stall. If you’re stuck at three to five million, you probably have a solid understanding of marketing and customer acquisition. So we need to look elsewhere—usually it’s something internally amiss. Operationally. Team structure. Leadership. There’s a company stuck at 4 million. They’ve been here for a while. What’s preventing them? First, their team structure. They’ve got experienced marketers who are amazing. But there’s no marketing leader. The organization is very flat. If it’s the founder managing everyone, they’re not going to be able to manage everyone effectively. And that’s assuming the founder is a good manager. If you have more than one person on the marketing team, it might be time to think about who’s going to be the head of marketing. Who’s going to be responsible for the performance of the function. The same is true for product. **Are you still the right person to lead product?** Sometimes the founder is the right person because they’re the most dialed into the customer. But a lot of the time, they’re not. They’ve been running product the way they know. They’ve never seen an expert come in and do it. At three to five million, there’s usually no person in charge of UX design or product management. No one’s really using product analytics to identify sticky problems that fundamentally unlock growth. If you’re treating your product function like order taking, you’re leaving the most critical part of growth on the table. This company at 4 million also suffers from massive technical debt. The product is really hard to build new things on top of. This creates a huge ripple effect. Technical debt means analytics debt. Data debt. There’s no way for the growth team to get the data they need to understand user behavior. **This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.** They do things without information. Even if they implement certain things, they wouldn’t know if it made a positive or negative impact. You’re literally feeling your way in the dark. Is this a growth opportunity? Don’t know. But I guess we’ll try it. This team is super experienced. But they don’t have what they need to do their best work. There’s a ceiling they can see through but can’t break. ### $10 million ARR This one is more elusive. Some companies get stuck here, but a lot don’t. It’s hard to study because there are so few bootstrapped companies that reach 10 million ARR. If you’re lucky enough to get to 10 million, what needs to happen next is you need to start thinking strategically about product, market expansion, and go-to-market in a way you might not have had to before. If you’re stuck at the 10 million mark, you’re either in one camp or the other. Either you might need to do more product innovation, or you have extremely strong product-market fit but you’ve lost focus on your ICP and need to refocus. Those are two different games to play. ## The other growth levers If you’re trying to get to 10 million, you have to pull more than just the marketing lever. Not only is it one of the least efficient ways to grow, but it’s more expensive than it’s ever been. Where we start looking: **Activation:** How are we doing on the activation side? **Retention:** Not just short-term or monthly revenue retention, but long-term retention. Are we keeping customers longer than 12 months? **Pricing and monetization:** Are we refocusing on our ICP? Do we have the right pricing model for those people? **Internal operations and process:** Your product development process can be a contributing factor to slow growth. If you’re not looking at product as a growth lever, if you’re just checking boxes to reach feature parity, you’re leaving a huge thing on the table. We’ve seen many companies chase feature parity to their detriment. **Go-to-market strategy:** Who’s on the growth team? What’s the strategy? With a growth stall, it’s probably more than one thing happening. You really got to dig into each of those. This is really hard to do if you’ve never seen what a high-performing growth team looks like. You’ve got to surround yourself with people who have experienced growth stalls and come out of them. Surrounding yourself with experts is infinitely more effective than trying to kick around by yourself. ## How to know what’s causing your stall Usually at a million, you can look under the hood and see it really quickly. It’s the obvious stuff. Activation. Pricing. Sometimes poor NRR, though it’s rare to get to a million with terrible NRR. As a refresher: anything less than 80% at 12 months net revenue retention, you’re going to have a bad time. At three to five million, it’s usually more than the obvious stuff. It’s operational. Leadership-driven. Part of the job is getting really critical about: - How’s team structure? - How do they make decisions? - What are they tracking and measuring? - Who’s responsible for what? - On the product side, who decides what goes on the roadmap? - What research are you doing on the user side? Based on how those motions work, we’re asking sales performance questions. Talking to support. Talking to customer success. Talking to engineering. It won’t be shocking, but it might be surprising to find there’s a lot of conflicting perspectives. The company I was talking about—customer support is like, we’re losing people who want features. But the founder is like, we don’t need to build more features. Everyone’s happy. That’s the kind of misalignment you might see. ## The stuck loop Another pattern: companies that create anti-growth loops. Things that keep them stuck. There’s a company at 5 million with a completely flat organization. 30 or 40 individual contributors and two founders. Those two founders do all the check-ins. They have daily scrums where they have 30 meetings in a day. This is an operational nightmare. Those two founders are the bottleneck for everything. They’re responsible for making decisions across every single part of the business. That would make sense if they were experts in everything, but they’re not. And even if they were, there’s not enough time in the day. These founders are constantly in panic mode. Because they’re so stressed and busy all the time, they can’t even entertain expanding the product—which would solve a lot of their problems. Their stuck loop is how they’re structured. That’s impacting their decisions around growth, product expansion, and pricing. If they never expand the product, they’ll never be able to charge more. That will forever keep their LTVs low. That’s a problem. ## What it takes to overcome a stall If the founder is self-aware enough, they could pause everything and have conversations with everyone individually. They could unearth a lot of this. Where it’s tricky: does your team trust you enough to tell you the truth? Most leaders have bias toward what they think is the thing. It’s so easy to create self-fulfilling prophecies in your own organization. The founder of one of the companies I talked about fundamentally believes growth isn’t going to come from product. But customer support is like, we’re losing customers because we’re not growing the product. The customer support team might never feel empowered to tell the founder CEO they have a fundamental bias. But that’s easy for someone like me. My job does not depend on appeasing someone’s ego. My job is to help troubleshoot growth and overcome the growth stall. A lot of CEOs and founders forget they hold a particular spot in everyone’s minds. You might not actually ever get the reality because of how people perceive you. ## The Buffer story Buffer overcame a really big growth plateau. Their ARR dropped 20% over four years to 17 million. [Joel persisted in leading Buffer](https://joel.is/posts/1764600304/) to new all-time highs. Buffer’s ARR now sits at 22.3 million. They had a hyper-focus on churn. What that means: **pausing every project and getting every team aligned on this one problem.** I crave that type of leadership so much. I think so many leaders today just operate in status quo. I’m guilty of this too sometimes. I crave the leadership of pause everything because nothing else matters until we fix churn. A lot of teams are in free fall or in a stall. They’re like, oh well, we can just continue operating and maybe something will happen and it’ll get fixed. Or they add random projects that make everyone frenetic. You’re still not really addressing the problem. Usually what it requires is to pause every project and actually address the problem. Get hypercritical about what’s on everyone’s plates. Does this make sense? And if not, toss it. This is now the new priority. Joel and his leaders were like, what is Buffer actually good at? They did a go-to-market realignment. Who is it the best for? Let’s look at the product roadmap and clear out anything that’s not for those people. Let’s look at go-to-market and customer acquisition and clear out anything that’s not for those people. That type of refocusing and realignment is so critical. It takes a lot of guts. But it also takes exercising leadership—using the power of leadership to make a fundamental change in the business. That’s the kind of leadership you have to have about a growth stall. You can’t just sit and add more projects and hope that works. You might have to pause things. Throw certain things completely out. Refactor everyone’s brains about what needs to happen in the business. There’s a term for that no one likes: change management. Transformation. That’s the shit people don’t like to do. But it’s what’s necessary. ## The myth of “we’re too small” There’s this belief that just because you’re a small team means you won’t experience these problems. I’ve heard this from founders: well, we’re small, so we don’t really need change management. I actually take the opposite. You’ve got 10 people on your team. Those people should be pretty deeply aligned. There’s no excuse to not have people aligned on priorities, goals, and expectations. When companies get stuck, a lot of it comes down to how they’re operating, what choices they’re making, and how they’re prioritizing what’s important and what’s not. So where are you stuck? And more importantly, are you willing to pause everything to actually address the problem? This is something we help with at DemandMaven. If you’re experiencing a growth stall and you’re not sure where the blockers are, let’s talk: Subscribe to The Work by DemandMaven on Substack: **Categories:** Growth, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [How to actually measure and improve SaaS retention & churn](https://demandmaven.io/saas-churn-retention-playbook/) **Published:** July 22, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** When a $3 million ARR SaaS company reached out via RFP claiming their biggest problem was churn, it got us thinking. Most founders fixate on that monthly churn percentage—hitting that “healthy” 3-5% range and calling it a day. But here’s the uncomfortable truth: even “good” churn numbers can mask serious growth problems that are quietly sabotaging your business. In this podcast episode, we break down why churn is far more complex than a single metric and share the framework we use to diagnose and fix retention issues that are actually holding back growth. ## The problem with “healthy” churn Most B2B SaaS companies celebrate when they hit 3-5% monthly churn. It feels like a milestone—you’ve reached the promised land of “acceptable” retention. But this number alone tells you almost nothing about the health of your business. We’ve seen companies with 3% monthly churn that have terrible long-term retention. We’ve also seen businesses achieve net negative churn, where expansion revenue from existing customers outpaces losses. The difference? They understood that churn isn’t just one number—it’s a complex system that requires deeper analysis. ### Qualified vs. unqualified churn: The critical distinction Not all churn is created equal. When we work with clients, we like to separate churn into two buckets: **Qualified churn**: Customers who were a good fit for the product and should have stayed **Unqualified churn**: Customers who weren’t a great fit to begin with This distinction matters because losing qualified customers hurts. Losing unqualified customers? That might actually be healthy for your business. The key is collecting enough data during signup (2-3 qualifying questions max) to segment your churn analysis properly. If most of your churn is unqualified, you might have an acquisition problem—you’re attracting the wrong customers. But if qualified customers are leaving, that’s where you need to focus your retention efforts. ## The metric that actually matters: Net revenue retention ![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoG90c3VQAMAzaY.jpg)*Example of Stripe’s NRR report* Monthly churn gives you a snapshot. Net Revenue Retention (NRR) tells you the story of your business over time. This metric looks at cohorts of customers and tracks how much revenue you retain from each group over 6, 12, or 24 months. Here’s what the numbers mean: - **100%+ NRR**: Growth feels effortless, like guiding a boulder downhill - **80-100% NRR**: Comfortable, sustainable growth - **Below 80% NRR**: Growth feels like pushing a boulder uphill - **Below 60% NRR**: You’re replacing half your revenue every year The scary part? You can have 3% monthly churn and still have poor net revenue retention. It’s the sneaky, long-term churn that kills businesses slowly. Most SaaS founders using tools like ProfitWell already have this report available, but may not know what to do with it. ### Segmented NRR: Where the gold is hidden The aggregate NRR number is useful, but segmented NRR is where you find actionable insights. Break down your retention by: - Customer segments (teachers vs. coaches vs. trainers) - Plan types (starter vs. pro vs. enterprise) - Acquisition channels - Any other meaningful customer characteristics You might discover that one segment has amazing retention while another bleeds customers. This tells you where to double down and where to fix fundamental issues. ## The real reasons people churn (Hint: It’s not what they tell you) Those cancellation reason dropdowns? They’re cute, but they’re not telling you the real story. When we conduct churn interviews, we find that customer departure is rarely about one issue—it’s usually a combination of forces that finally tip the scale. Some of those forces are controllable: - Confusion about product capabilities - Poor support experience - Pricing or packaging issues - Missing but expected features - Activation problems Others aren’t: - Budget cuts - Job changes - Shifting business priorities - Market changes The magic happens when you understand which controllable factors are most common across your churned customers. You can do this through churn interviews. ## The churn interview framework![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/churn_interview_matrix.png) When we conduct churn research, we organize customers into a 2×2 matrix: **Qualified + Activated**: These are your dream customers who left—highest priority to understand **Qualified + Not Activated**: Good fit customers who never got value—activation problem **Unqualified + Activated**: Interesting edge case—might reveal new market opportunities **Unqualified + Not Activated**: Lowest priority We typically interview 5-10 people from each relevant bucket, offering gift cards to incentivize participation. The goal isn’t to win them back—it’s to understand the patterns that lead to churn vs. retention. **Pro tip**: Don’t do churn research until you’ve also interviewed happy, retained customers. You need the “control group” to understand what good retention looks like. ## What churn analysis actually reveals Good churn research doesn’t just tell you why people leave—it reveals opportunities across your entire business: **Acquisition issues**: Are you attracting too many wrong-fit customers because your messaging isn’t clear enough? **Product marketing gaps**: Do customers not realize your product can solve their problems? **Activation problem**s: Are there consistent hurdles preventing customers from getting initial value? **Product opportunities**: What jobs-to-be-done emerge after customers master your core use case? **Monetization issues**: Are you pricing yourself out of your best customers or leaving money on the table? ## The churn retention hierarchy When you find churn issues, here’s how to prioritize fixes: 1. **Fix obvious activation blockers**: If qualified customers can’t get initial value, fix that first 2. **Address product marketing gaps**: Make sure customers know what your product can do 3. **Improve quality-of-life features**: Small improvements that reduce friction compound over time 4. **Build for expansion**: Create natural paths for customers to get more value (and pay more) 5. **Consider new use cases**: Carefully evaluate building for adjacent jobs-to-be-done ## The bottom line Your monthly churn percentage is just the tip of the iceberg. Real retention analysis requires digging into qualified vs. unqualified churn, understanding your net revenue retention by segment, and having actual conversations with customers who left. Most importantly, remember that churn analysis should reveal growth opportunities, not just problems to fix. The goal isn’t just to stop the bleeding—it’s to build a business where customers naturally stick around and expand their usage over time. If you’re sitting at that “comfortable” 3-5% monthly churn but growth still feels hard, it might be time to dig deeper. The answers are hiding in your data—and in conversations with the customers you lost. *Ready to stop pushing that boulder uphill? Book your* [*free 45-minute growth audit*](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *today and uncover the hidden retention opportunities sabotaging your business growth.* **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [The busy SaaS founder's guide to activation and onboarding](https://demandmaven.io/saas-onboarding-activation-guide/) **Published:** May 27, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** At DemandMaven, we’re passionate about helping founders unlock revenue they’re leaving on the table. In this week’s episode of the In Demand Podcast, Asia and Kim dive deep into one of the most overlooked growth levers in SaaS: **onboarding and activation**. If you’re not paying attention to activation, you’re missing out on significant revenue and better customer experiences. ## Why SaaS activation feels like magic (but shouldn’t) Activation is one of those mysterious aspects of growth that many founders treat as if it doesn’t have a “figure-outable” process. But here’s the truth: there absolutely is a systematic approach to solving activation challenges. As Asia explains, “Anything that you don’t understand kind of seems like magic. The more that you understand activation, the less and less it feels and seems like magic.” The problem is that activation has many different inputs and factors, making it seem more complex than it actually is. **The reality:** Most organizations either don’t have activation properly defined, or they’ve picked a metric out of thin air without understanding if it actually correlates with revenue. ## Two schools of thought on activation There are two main ways to think about activation: **Traditional Approach:** Trial to conversion rate or new user to paying customer conversion rate **Leading Indicator Approach:** The percentage of new signups who hit specific behaviors or milestones that indicate they’ve achieved value and are likely to become paying customers The ideal activation metric comes *before* payment—it’s a leading indicator that someone will convert, not just the moment of conversion itself. ## The secret to discovering your real activation metric Stop trying to define your activation metric in a conference room. Instead, you need to **discover** it through data. ### The New User Retention Report Method ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/amplitude-new-user-retention.webp) This is the game-changing report Asia uses to identify real activation moments: 1. **Build the baseline:** Track what percentage of new users return to your product day-over-day (day 0, day 1, day 2, etc.) and take any action 2. **Test different behaviors:** Create variations of this report filtering for specific product actions (building reports, uploading documents, etc.) 3. **Look for the winners:** Find behaviors that have high volume AND significantly better retention than your baseline **What to look for:** - High sample size (not just 5 people) - Strong day 1, 2, 3 retention (anything above 50% is excellent) - Even a 2-3x improvement over baseline is worth pursuing As Asia notes: “Even if you’re not seeing super crazy retention numbers, anything that’s better than your baseline, especially if it’s a multiple of X, go in that direction.” ## The UX Interview: Your secret weapon Here’s where most teams go wrong: they rely on session recordings or analytics *without* understanding what users are actually thinking and feeling. ### How to Run Activation UX Interviews **You only need 3-5 interviews** to uncover the major issues. Here’s the process: 1. **Find qualified prospects** using UserInterviews.com or Respondent.io (95% of companies will find their audience here) 2. **Give them missions, not instructions:** Don’t tell them what to click—ask them how they would accomplish a goal 3. **Watch them struggle:** The magic happens when you observe where they pause, get confused, or make frustrated expressions 4. **Take notes on barriers:** Look for cognitive overload, limited attention, and unclear next steps **Critical insight:** Don’t just listen to what they say—watch what they do. People often say “it was so easy” while you literally watched them struggle for their lives. ## The three most common SaaS activation barriers ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/activation_barriers.png) From hundreds of UX interviews, these are the patterns Asia sees repeatedly: 1. **Cognitive overload:** Too much happening on screen, users don’t know what to focus on 2. **Limited attention:** Users are distracted and can’t focus on what matters 3. **Unclear next steps:** Users simply don’t know what to do next ## Your customers are survivors (and that’s the problem) Here’s the mindset shift every founder needs: **Your paying customers are survivors, not proof that your onboarding is perfect.** As Asia explains: “Just because you have customers doesn’t mean that your activation is amazing and perfect. Your customers are survivors and everyone else who does not become a customer was not a survivor, even if they were qualified.” This is survivor bias in action. You’re looking at the people who made it through your confusing onboarding and assuming everything is fine, while ignoring all the qualified prospects who said “this is too hard” and left. ## Product-Led vs. Sales-Led: Activation still matters **Product-Led Growth:** Your product experience has to do the selling since there’s no salesperson walking users through it. The first touchpoint with your brand is likely your product itself. **Sales-Led:** Even with manual onboarding, you still have an onboarding experience. When customers log in for the first time, what do they see? That impression impacts their perception of ease-of-use and their ability to activate successfully. Whether you’re selling annual deals or monthly subscriptions, poor activation will show up in your churn metrics—it just might take longer to surface in sales-led models. ## Avoiding “Compromise Land” One of the biggest threats to successful activation improvements is what Asia calls “compromise land”—when your research-backed improvements get watered down by various team opinions. **The solution:** Establish clear ownership of activation improvements and give that person or team the power to make decisions based on data, not politics. The more enterprise you go, the more likely you are to end up in compromise land, which leads to mediocre results and teams thinking “activation doesn’t work.” ## Essential resources for mastering activation - [**Ramli John’s Product-Led Onboarding**](https://www.amazon.com/Product-Led-Onboarding-Users-Lifelong-Customers/dp/1777717701) – A fast, visual read that covers the fundamentals - [**UserOnboard.com by Samuel Hulick**](http://useronboard.com) – Excellent onboarding teardowns with different perspectives - Reforge courses – Deep-dive programs on activation are available here (if you’re a voracious learner) ## Getting started: Your activation action plan 1. **Run the new user retention report** to establish your baseline and discover high-impact behaviors 2. **Conduct 3-5 UX interviews** with qualified prospects using missions, not instructions 3. **Map out every screen** in your onboarding flow and identify friction points 4. **Prioritize improvements** based on data, not opinions 5. **Establish clear ownership** to avoid compromise land Remember: Even small improvements in activation can have massive impacts on revenue. If your baseline retention is 5% and you can get it to 10%, that’s a 2x improvement that directly translates to more customers and revenue. ## The bottom line Activation isn’t magic—it’s a systematic process that can be figured out and improved. Your customers are survivors who fought through confusion and friction to find value. But imagine how many more customers you could have if you removed those barriers for everyone else. The question isn’t whether you can afford to work on activation—it’s whether you can afford not to. *Ready to uncover the hidden revenue in your SaaS business?* [*Book a free 45-minute growth audit*](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *with DemandMaven today and start turning more signups into satisfied, long-term customers.* **Categories:** Growth, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP56: The busy SaaS founder's guide to activation](https://demandmaven.io/ep56-the-busy-founders-guide-to-activation/) **Published:** February 24, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Every SaaS founder I talk to thinks they’ve handled activation. They’ve got an onboarding checklist. Maybe a welcome email sequence. A tooltip or two on the complicated screens. They’ve “done activation” and moved on to what feels more important: marketing, features, sales. But most of them haven’t done activation. They’ve done the checkbox version of activation. And the proof is in their free trial to paid conversion rates. For bootstrapped founders under $1M ARR, the average free trial to paid conversion rate is around 15%. For bootstrapped founders between $1M and $5M ARR, it ticks up to about 19%. VC-funded companies at the same stage? They’re often seeing 30, 35, even 40%. Same product categories, similar ICPs, but wildly different conversion rates. And I don’t think the gap is marketing budgets. VC-funded companies typically have the resources to hire experienced product and growth talent who know how to invest in activation. Most bootstrapped founders haven’t been exposed to the process. They don’t know there’s a repeatable way to improve it, so they guess, or they skip it entirely. That’s what we talked about on this episode. And if you’ve been ignoring activation, or if you think you’ve handled it because you added some tooltips, this one is for you. ## Activation is the middle child I love activation projects. I think it’s because activation is the middle child of growth. It sits between acquisition and retention, it doesn’t get nearly enough attention, and yet it impacts both sides. If your activation experience is great, your marketing becomes more efficient. The right people sign up, they experience value quickly, they stick around, they refer others. Everything compounds. If your activation experience is not great, it works in reverse. You pour money into acquisition, people show up, they struggle, they leave. You never know why. Your retention suffers. And you’re constantly refilling a leaky bucket. Activation is also, I would argue, the most underinvested area for bootstrapped SaaS founders specifically. And I think I know why: most founders have never been taught that there’s a process for improving activation. They think it’s guessing, or intuition, or trial and error. It’s not. It’s a highly repeatable process, and the more you build that muscle, the better you get at it. So let’s talk about what activation actually is, and then how to actually do it. ## What is activation? Activation is the journey through which a new user understands or experiences the value of the product. And the goal is for that to happen as fast as humanly possible. I want to be specific about why “as fast as possible” matters. We are an impatient, forgetful species. You do not have someone’s attention for very long. And in the PLG world, data suggests you have less than 10 minutes with the average new sign-up. Less than 10 minutes before they get distracted, close the tab, and move on with their day. And here’s the number that should make your stomach drop: about 70% of people who sign up for a PLG product will drop off within the first 24 hours and never come back. If your product experience doesn’t create a clear path to value in that window, most people won’t find it. Activation also starts earlier than most people think. It’s not just the sign-up flow. It’s every touch point that shapes a new user’s experience, including the marketing site. The expectations you set on your homepage are part of the activation experience. By the time someone hits your sign-up button, they’ve already formed an opinion. That opinion shapes how they engage with everything that follows. And activation doesn’t end when someone converts to paid. New customers are still going through activation. They’re still learning your product, building habits, figuring out whether this is actually going to work for their business. That process (what I’d call later-stage activation) is where a lot of churn happens that teams incorrectly attribute to retention. ## The misconceptions Before we get into process, let’s clear up what activation is not. Activation is not: - Just your onboarding emails - Just your sign-up flow - Just the payment screen - Just tooltips and walkthroughs I see the same pattern constantly: a team adds an onboarding checklist, configures a few popups, and calls it done. And then they’re confused when their conversion rates don’t move. Here’s my honest take on popups, tooltips, and visual walkthroughs: they are only helpful on top of an already-great product experience. They are not a substitute for great design. And in 2026, most users don’t even acknowledge popups anymore. Pop-up blindness is real. We do a lot of UX interviews (we’ll get to that in a minute) and I can tell you that most people don’t even register overlays and walkthrough prompts anymore. They’ve tuned them out. What this means is that teams who rely on these tools to explain their product are gambling. They’re depending on something that a large percentage of their users will simply ignore. And instead of fixing the underlying experience, they’re papering over it. I don’t say this to be harsh. I say this because the better path, actually improving the product experience, is more achievable than most teams realize. ## The process Here’s how you improve activation. ### Step 1: See your product through someone else’s eyes The first and most important step is UX interviews. Not session replays or heat maps. Actual conversations with real humans navigating your product for the first time. I know what you might be thinking: session replays are easier, cheaper, faster. That’s true. And they have their place (maybe 10% of the value). But here’s the problem with session replays: they don’t have context. You don’t know if that person is qualified. You don’t know what they were trying to accomplish. You can’t ask them when they’re confused. You’re just making assumptions based on where a cursor moved. UX interviews give you 80% of the value because they let you understand what’s happening inside someone’s head while they’re in your product. **Find 3-5 participants who are not your customers.** This is crucial. Not customers. Not people who’ve heard of you. Strangers, ideally within your ICP. Why strangers? Because your customers are survivors. The people who became customers are the ones who made it through whatever friction exists in your product. They navigated the broken flows, figured out the confusing UI, and stuck with it long enough to convert. They’re not representative of everyone who tried and left. If you ask customers to evaluate your onboarding experience, they’ll tell you it’s fine. Because for them, it was fine enough. You’ll develop a false sense of security. The people you want to talk to are the ones who would have left. For B2B audiences, finding qualified participants is faster than you might think. We can typically source participants in 24-48 hours using platforms like [userinterviews.com](http://userinterviews.com/) or [respondent.io](http://respondent.io/). It runs about $200 per participant ($100 for the platform and $100 for the incentive). Five interviews runs roughly $1,000. They don’t have to be perfectly qualified either. A good proxy (someone who’s close to your ICP even if not exact) will give you useful signal. Great product experiences are universal. If a proxy gets confused, your core audience probably will too. **Give them prompts tied to your value moment.** Start by having them share their screen and navigate the marketing site as if they were evaluating it for their own business. Then give them prompts designed to get them to your product’s aha moment, the one or two or three things they have to accomplish to actually experience the value. For a time-tracking platform we recently worked with, that was: add employees, configure time tracking, and actually track time. Watching strangers struggle for their lives to add employees was illuminating. And painful. But mostly illuminating. **Don’t help them.** This is the hardest part, especially if you built the product. You are going to watch someone struggle. Maybe badly. You’re going to want to point at the screen and say “it’s right there, just click that.” Don’t. Users will often blame themselves before they blame the product. You’ll hear things like “I’m so dumb, I didn’t get that” or “that’s probably just me.” It’s not them. It’s the UX. But if you jump in, you’ll never know where the actual friction is. By the third interview, you’ll have a clear picture of where people get stuck. The fourth and fifth are where you can start testing slightly different scenarios. ### Step 2: Map and annotate After the interviews, sign up for your own product on a normal screen. Not your giant developer monitor. Something closer to what your users actually use. A 13 or 15-inch laptop. Maybe even your phone if the product is primarily mobile. Take a screenshot of every single screen. Put everything in Miro and annotate. Mark where people got confused. Where they got stuck. Where they clicked something that did something unexpected. You’re building a map of the friction points. ### Step 3: Fix the right things As you look at your annotated map, you’re looking for three specific problems: **Cognitive overload.** The screen has too much happening, and it’s not clear what to do next. Maybe there are four blue buttons competing for attention and none of them are obviously the right one. Maybe there’s a lot of information and it’s hard to parse what matters. **Uncertainty.** The user doesn’t know what to do next. Not because the page is overwhelming, but because it’s not guiding them anywhere. They hover. They move the mouse around. They’re looking for a signal that isn’t there. **Limited attention.** You’re asking too much. Sign-up flows are the most common offender here. I signed up for a product recently that had ten steps. Even as someone who uses a lot of SaaS, I was thinking “when is this going to be over?” Limited attention means: are you respecting how little time and patience someone actually has? For each friction point you identify, you’re solving for one of these three things. That’s your design brief. ### Step 4: Iterate Implement changes, then do another round of five interviews. Different participants, same prompts (or adjusted prompts if you’ve made significant changes). See what moved. This is where it gets interesting. On a recent project, we finished the first batch of interviews, identified a major barrier in the employee-adding flow, the team fixed it quickly, and we ran a second batch. People were now making it past that step, which meant they were exploring parts of the product nobody had seen in an interview before. New friction points emerged. We fixed those too. Activation is iterative. It’s not a one-time sprint. The muscle you’re building is the ability to see your product through your customers’ eyes, over and over, as the product evolves. Only after you’ve done this work (the interviews, the annotations, the real UX changes) should you think about adding tooltips or onboarding checklists. They can be helpful on top of a great experience. They cannot replace one. ## The survivor bias problem There’s a concept I come back to a lot when I think about activation: survivor bias. Your customers are survivors. They made it through whatever friction exists in your product. And because they made it, they don’t represent the full picture of who showed up. Every person who got confused and left, who blamed themselves and never came back, who decided the product probably wasn’t for them. Those are the people whose perspective you’re missing if you only talk to customers. Most people who struggle with your product won’t tell you it’s the product’s fault. They’ll tell themselves it wasn’t for them. And then they leave. And you never hear from them. This is why UX interviews with strangers are so powerful. They let you observe the behavior of the people who don’t survive. The ones who get confused, get frustrated, and leave. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. ## Later-stage activation Everything I’ve described so far is about new user activation: getting someone from sign-up to value moment as fast as possible. But activation doesn’t end when someone converts to a paid customer. When I was on the board of Moz, we had a concept called qualified vs. unqualified churn. Unqualified churn was people who churned within a certain period of time after becoming a customer, even if they’d paid, they hadn’t really activated. The trial worked well enough to get a credit card. But then things fell apart. Just because someone becomes a customer doesn’t mean it’s solely retention’s problem. For new customers especially, they’re still learning the product, still building habits, still deciding if this is actually going to work for their business. That’s still activation. You can apply the same UX interview process to newer customers. Observe them completing the jobs they’re trying to do. Watch where they get stuck. You’ll find friction you didn’t expect. Friction that’s costing you retention. ## What this looks like in practice A typical activation project with DemandMaven runs 6-10 weeks, depending on the pace of implementation between rounds of interviews. In that time, teams usually go through: 1. First round of UX interviews (3-5 sessions) 2. Screenshot and annotation mapping 3. Design changes and implementation 4. Second round of UX interviews (3-5 sessions) 5. Iteration The progress teams make in those 6-10 weeks is often more than they’ve made on activation in years. Not because the process is magic, but because they’ve finally stopped guessing. They’ve actually watched their users. The moment a founder watches a stranger try to use their product and sees exactly where the confusion is, there’s nothing like it. It’s humbling. It’s a little painful. But it’s clarifying in a way that no analytics tool can replicate. ## The benchmark is the floor, not the ceiling One last thing. When bootstrapped founders hit that 20% free trial to paid conversion rate, a lot of them feel like they’ve arrived. They’re at or above the benchmark. Time to focus elsewhere. I’d push back on that. The benchmark is the floor, not the ceiling. I’ve seen products (no credit card required) convert at 60% with incredible retention to match. Getting from 20% to 25% might not sound dramatic, but that 5-point improvement compounds. Every month, you’re converting more of the people who show up. That delta builds. And as your marketing improves, as your product gets better, as your acquisition sharpens, all of it speaks to each other. Activation is the lever that makes everything else more efficient. If you’ve been treating it like a box to check, it might be the highest-leverage investment you’re not making. --- What do you think? Have you run UX interviews on your product before, and if so, what surprised you most? Or if this is something you want help with: activation research is something we do at DemandMaven. [Book a discovery call with Asia.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [How to run SaaS JTBD research in less than 3 months](https://demandmaven.io/fast-saas-jtbd-research-consultants/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Most SaaS founders and growth teams know they *should* be talking to their customers. The problem isn’t knowing — it’s the doing. “We don’t have time.” “We can’t afford to pause the roadmap.” “We did customer interviews last year.” Here’s the honest truth: every week you spend building without understanding why customers actually bought your product is a week you’re guessing. And guessing, when it comes to your product strategy, positioning, and go-to-market, is *expensive.* The good news? A well-executed JTBD research project doesn’t have to take 6 months, require a dedicated research team, or grind everything else to a halt. Done right, you can go from zero to a full set of actionable insights in under 3 months, and what you learn will inform your roadmap, your messaging, your pricing, and your retention strategy all at once. Here’s exactly how we do it. ## What is JTBD research, and which type do you actually need? “Jobs to be done” (JTBD) is a framework rooted in the idea that customers don’t buy products; they *hire* them to make progress in their lives. The theory was pioneered by Tony Ulwick and popularized by the late Clayton Christensen, then co-developed further by Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek at The Re-Wired Group.¹ There are two main flavors of JTBD research, and which one you use depends on what you’re trying to figure out: **Switch interviews (demand-side)** are what most SaaS founders need first. This approach (developed by Moesta) traces the timeline of events that led someone to seek out, evaluate, and ultimately “hire” your product. The focus is on the *context* of the purchase decision: what was happening in their life or work that created the need, what they tried before, what pushed them to finally act, and what almost made them walk away. This style is best for positioning, messaging, GTM strategy, and troubleshooting growth plateaus. **Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)** is Ulwick’s framework, and it goes deeper into the functional job steps customers are trying to complete and the metrics they use to measure success at each step.² ODI is more suited to customer discovery: understanding whether there are unmet needs in the market, and where the product can create new value. If you’re trying to figure out *what to build*, ODI-style research is your friend. For most early and mid-stage SaaS companies, switch interviews are the right starting point. They’re faster to run, easier to synthesize, and immediately applicable to real business decisions. If you’re troubleshooting stalled growth, trying to nail your ICP, or reorienting your positioning: this is where you start. ## What are the objectives of JTBD research? Before a single interview gets scheduled, it’s important to align on what you’re actually trying to learn. JTBD research without clear objectives tends to produce interesting conversations but no clear direction. Here’s what well-scoped JTBD research typically helps you understand: **The “hiring” moment.** What was happening in the customer’s life or business that triggered the search for a solution? What was the struggling moment that made the status quo no longer acceptable? **The decision criteria.** What did customers evaluate? What almost made them choose something else? What pushed them over the finish line? **The job your product is actually hired for.** Not what you *think* you built, but what customers are actually using your product to accomplish. These are often meaningfully different, and the gap between them is where positioning problems are born. **The emotional and social context.** Progress isn’t just functional. Customers also have social jobs (how they want to be perceived by others) and emotional jobs (how they want to feel). Switch interviews surface all of these. **What would make them “fire” you.** The signals and circumstances that would lead a customer to switch away, which is enormously valuable for retention strategy. ## The process: under 3 months, start to finish Here’s what the timeline looks like for a typical JTBD research project: **Weeks 1–2: Scoping, recruitment, and preparation** Start with a clear brief: who are you interviewing, and why? For most SaaS companies, this means your best existing customers: the ones with the highest LTV, longest tenure, or strongest usage patterns. You’re looking for the people who clearly “hired” your product for a specific job and kept it hired. For recruitment, we use platforms like [userinterviews.com](https://www.userinterviews.com/) and [respondent.io](https://www.respondent.io/) to source participants efficiently. These platforms handle screening, scheduling, and incentive disbursement, which removes a significant operational headache. Speaking of incentives: **offer $100 per completed interview.** This is the sweet spot for most audiences; it’s high enough to get participation rates up and low enough to fit a reasonable research budget. For highly specialized or executive-level audiences (think C-suite or highly compensated technical roles), the incentive may need to scale up or be structured differently: a gift card, a donation to a cause, access to exclusive content. For most SaaS customers, though, $100 gets the job done. In parallel, prepare your interview guide. More on what that looks like below. **Weeks 3–4: Conducting interviews** The target is 10–15 interviews, with 12 being the sweet spot in our experience. Twelve interviews is enough to start hearing clear patterns emerge (the same struggling moments, the same decision criteria, the same emotional context) without the diminishing returns of running 25+ conversations. Each interview runs 45–60 minutes and is recorded and transcribed (tools like Otter.ai or Grain make this easy). The most important rule: both the interviewer *and* at least one member of the client team should be present for every interview. Not to take over, but to listen. There’s no substitute for hearing your customers say, in their own words, why they hired your product. **Weeks 5–6: Analysis and synthesis** This is where the insights get made. The raw transcripts get organized, coded, and analyzed; we’re looking for patterns in the timeline of events, the jobs being articulated, and the emotional context behind decisions. We document discovered jobs, create artifacts that capture the patterns across interviews, and begin connecting the insights to the business decisions on the table. The synthesis phase typically produces a clear picture of: who your best customers actually are, what job they hired your product for, what messaging resonates, what the real competing alternatives are (which is almost always surprising), and what retention risks look like. **Weeks 7–10 (optional): Connecting insights to strategy** Not every project extends into this phase, but if there are strategic decisions on the table (a pricing change, a repositioning, a go-to-market pivot), the synthesis often feeds directly into a prioritized set of recommendations and next steps. ## The JTBD interview guide: a talking map, not a script A common mistake in JTBD research is treating the interview guide like a survey: a fixed list of questions to work through in order. That’s not how switch interviews work. The interview guide is a set of *talking points* and a rough arc, not a script. The actual questions vary significantly from interview to interview, because good JTBD interviewing means actively listening and following threads. If a customer mentions they almost quit the evaluation process because of a security concern, you don’t skip past that to get to your next bullet; you stay there and understand what that concern was, where it came from, and what resolved it. That said, the arc of a switch interview follows a consistent timeline of events:³ **The first thought.** When did the customer first realize they had a problem worth solving? What was happening at that moment? This is often months before they started looking at solutions. **The passive looking phase.** Before actively searching, most customers go through a period of casually noticing relevant information: a mention in a newsletter, a conversation with a peer, a passing ad. What were they noticing, and what triggered the shift to active searching? **The active looking phase.** When did they start seriously evaluating options? What criteria did they use? What did they try? What fell short? **The deciding moment.** What made them ultimately choose your product? Was there a specific conversation, a feature they discovered, a moment of clarity? What almost made them not choose you? **Early experience and onboarding.** What happened in the first days and weeks? Was there a moment where the product “clicked”? What created anxiety or doubt? **The ongoing job.** What are they using the product for now? What’s still unresolved? Across 12 interviews, the patterns in this arc become unmistakably clear, and that clarity is the foundation of everything from your homepage copy to your onboarding sequence to your pricing tiers. ## A quick note on who should be in the room One of the non-negotiables in our projects: the client team participates in the interviews, live. Not just in the debrief. Not just reviewing transcripts afterward. There’s a real difference between reading a summary of what a customer said and hearing them say it. The tone, the hesitation, the moment they light up talking about a specific outcome: these things don’t survive the translation to a synthesis doc. Teams that sit in on their own JTBD interviews come out of the process with a shared understanding and a shared language that’s almost impossible to manufacture any other way. After each interview, we run a 20–30 minute debrief with the client team. What stood out? What was surprising? What does this change about what we thought we knew? These immediate reactions are some of the most valuable inputs into the eventual synthesis. ## Don’t want to run it yourself? Top JTBD research consultants for SaaS JTBD research done well requires a specific skill set: comfort with ambiguity, active listening, the ability to follow a thread without leading the witness, and enough pattern recognition to know when a signal is meaningful. It’s learnable, but it takes practice; and if you’re trying to get high-quality insights fast, there’s a real argument for bringing in someone who has done it hundreds of times. There are a few good reasons to go the done-for-you (or done-with-you) route: you don’t have the bandwidth to run it yourself, you want to be more hands-on and build internal research capability at the same time, it’s important for the team to absorb the insights directly rather than through a summary, or you’re not yet confident in your ability to conduct non-leading interviews. Any of these is a perfectly valid reason to bring in outside help. Here are some of the best in the business: ### 1. DemandMaven *(that’s us!)* We run [done-for-you JTBD research projects](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) specifically for SaaS and software companies. Our model is 10 interviews in the style of switch interviews, all recorded, transcribed, and synthesized into a research repository and insights brief. We also offer a done-with-you model for teams who want to be more hands-on and build internal research capability at the same time. If you want to understand why your best customers hired your product (and what keeps them around), [this is a good place to start](https://demandmaven.io/). ### 2. The Re-Wired Group Founded by Bob Moesta, one of the principal architects of the JTBD framework, [The Re-Wired Group](https://therewiredgroup.com/) is one of the most rigorous places you can take a JTBD research project. They work across industries but have deep experience in tech and software. If you want the most direct line to the source of switch interview methodology, this is it. Their engagements tend to run deeper and cost accordingly.⁴ At DemandMaven, we were trained by Bob Moesta himself and take pride in how our practice has evolved since his training. ### 3. Forget the Funnel Georgiana Laudi and Claire Suellentrop run a boutique growth consultancy focused specifically on B2B SaaS. Their Customer-Led Growth™ framework is built on the same foundation of customer research: understanding why customers hire your product and using those insights to drive activation, retention, and revenue growth. They’re excellent if you’re trying to connect JTBD insights directly to messaging and go-to-market strategy.⁵ ### 4. Strategyn Founded by Tony Ulwick, the pioneer of Outcome-Driven Innovation, [Strategyn](https://strategyn.com/) is the place to go if you need the ODI variant of JTBD: rigorous quantitative validation of customer needs across a defined market. Their approach is more enterprise-oriented and more resource-intensive, but the output (a statistically validated map of underserved and overserved customer needs) is uniquely powerful for product strategy and market segmentation.⁶ ### 5. Drive Research A full-service market research firm that designs and executes JTBD research combining qualitative interviews with quantitative validation. A good option if you need both depth of insight and statistical confidence at scale, or if your team needs the scaffolding of a larger research operation.⁷ ## Why JTBD research pays off faster than you think The knock on customer research is that it takes too long and costs too much relative to what you get. But this simply isn’t true. I say to my clients all the time: “Slowness is a choice.” At DemandMaven, we deliberately choose to move fast. A focused JTBD research project (12 switch interviews, cleanly synthesized) produces insights that inform your roadmap for 12–18 months, sharpen your positioning immediately, and give your team a shared language for talking about your best customer. Compare that to six months of building based on assumptions, only to discover that the job you thought you were solving wasn’t the one your best customers actually hired you for. The fastest path to confident growth decisions is knowing why customers chose you in the first place. Everything else builds from there. *Ready to figure out why your customers actually hired your product? [Book a discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/) to talk through your research goals.* ¹ Clayton Christensen, *The Innovator’s Solution*, 2003; Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek, “Demand-Side Sales” framework, The Re-Wired Group. ² Tony Ulwick, *Jobs to be Done: Theory to Practice*, 2016. Available at [strategyn.com](https://strategyn.com/). ³ The timeline of events arc is adapted from Bob Moesta’s demand-side research methodology as outlined in *Demand-Side Sales 101*, 2020. ⁴ The Re-Wired Group: [therewiredgroup.com](https://therewiredgroup.com/) ⁵ Forget the Funnel: [forgetthefunnel.com](https://forgetthefunnel.com/) ⁶ Strategyn: [strategyn.com](https://strategyn.com/jobs-to-be-done/consulting/) ⁷ Drive Research: [driveresearch.com](https://www.driveresearch.com/market-research-company-blog/jobs-to-be-done-research/) **Categories:** SaaS --- ### [How we helped our SaaS client 4x MRR](https://demandmaven.io/how-we-helped-our-saas-client-4x-mrr/) **Published:** November 30, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I talk a lot about growth and the work we do with SaaS companies, but I don’t think I’ve ever broken down just *how* deep our projects can go. Right around Spring 2020 when the pandemonium sh\*t hit the fan, we took on a B2B SaaS client that was facing a few challenges and not entirely sure of the best way to move forward: - They talked to customers all the time, but didn’t feel like they had any real strategic insight to plan for the next phase of growth - They were going-to-market in an extremely competitive market with tons of other direct competitors - The other competitors weren’t fundamentally better products, and yet the client had a hard time standing out - They weren’t sure if anything they were doing was “working” from a growth perspective Plus, the founder primarily responsible for growth had a million other things on his plate and didn’t have the bandwidth to do the necessary deep-dive to carve the path. Originally DemandMaven was hired to help them figure out the next growth opportunity, but the pandemic forced us to get even more strategic to ensure both the short-term and long-term survival of the company. ## Our strategic process Part of our strategic growth process is to always start with customer research since customers are the lifeline for growth. **There’s four basic steps that we go through:** 1\. Interview active, paying customers with either high LTV and/or recent converts who are raving fans 2\. Turn the qualitative insights into quantitative business intelligence we can use to inform growth and strategy 3\. Align the business around these insights and customers’ JTBD 4\. Define growth experiments to run based on our findings The process we go through is consistent, but as you can imagine, our recommendations are custom to what the client actually needs. It’s custom because every client’s customers are unique and have unique needs and buying triggers, and the markets are also unique with different key players and expectations. But if there’s one thing that’s for certain: **it always susses out the information we need to get where we want to go.** ## A surprising customer journey In our client’s case, we discovered a few key patterns across our data set: > “Honestly, I wasn’t choosing \[client’s product\] first because the other competitors had shinier and prettier marketing.” No joke — customers were choosing other competitors because of how “shiny and pretty the marketing was.” This was actual voice-of-customer from a few interviews. 🤯 > “I think I tried maybe 2-3 other platforms before I finally got to \[client’s product\]. But honestly, all of those other platforms were soooo terrible. Once I saw that a platform was going to cause trouble, I’d immediately cancel and start my search for another.” They were also finding very quickly how terrible the other products in the market were (even though we knew they were bad, our prospects didn’t know any better). Customers would suffer from duplicate data that would cost them thousands of dollars to fix and issues syncing between other popular third-party channels. After these costly errors, they’d start their search for another platform — oftentimes trying 2-3 other products before finally coming to the client’s product. This was an extremely common pattern, and one we needed to get ahead of. > “Mostly I was hoping that \[client’s product\] would be something I could depend on and wouldn’t give me issues like all of the other products.” We learned that customers came to the client’s product in hopes that it would be more reliable and dependable. This gave us a hint as to what their unique selling proposition and positioning should be. > “It’s important to me that as we grow, we’re building things to scale as much as possible. I don’t want to stay small forever, and we’ll need software that can grow with us and can handle large volumes of activity. I love \[client’s product\] because I know it can do that.” Most of these customers took their businesses very seriously and trusted the client’s product because of how reliable and quality it truly was. That was from the customer research we did, but **when we analyzed the product, the onboarding experience, and reviewed analytics, we found a few other things**: 1\. A few dots hadn’t been connected on the analytics side and it was impossible to see if traffic from Google Ads and Capterra were actually generating anything meaningful. 2\. **There seemed to be a huge drop-off in terms of onboarding and activation**. Most new users would get stuck in the process of signing up because of a requirement the client’s product had to connect their account with another third-party app. For example, imagine signing up for a SaaS and you were forced to connect Quickbooks or Zoom to get started. 3\. The website performed fairly well, but we had a strong hunch that it could do even better with building credibility and explaining the value of the product than what it was currently doing. ## The work that turned the tide We translated all of this into a few core projects: **First, we needed to update the messaging on the website to focus on the core value propositions of quality and reliability**. This would resonate with the right kinds of customers (and not the lower-quality customers that didn’t actually care about reliability and just wanted something cheap). **Next, we overhauled the design and experience of the website to look and feel more modern**. (Or a more crass way of saying it: sexier.) We added case studies and told compelling stories of value on our product pages. **Then, we ran a bunch more experiments regarding onboarding**. What if we tried sending different emails? What if instead of requiring a connection to the customer’s account with the third-party application, we actually just dropped them straight into the product so we didn’t break their flow? **Finally, we ran various tests regarding Google Ads, Capterra, and the social channels that the founder spent a lot of time in**. We also tried different forms of product marketing and used Facebook Ads as a way to test content. The client also made a few investments of their own — including hiring someone to take on customer support to free up the founder’s time and investing in more word of mouth. All of this compounded into growth for the client (4x, mind you!) and we couldn’t be prouder. Was it a lot of work? Yeah. But then again, I don’t believe that life-changing growth is done overnight. ✨ **Categories:** Marketing, SaaS --- ### [EP29: Focusing vs. Niching](https://demandmaven.io/focusing_vs_niching/) **Published:** November 7, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** You may have heard the terms “focusing” and “niching” used to describe how a company can target its audience, but what do they really mean? Choosing the right marketing strategy can make or break your business, so it’s important you understand the nuances here. Focusing is about the short-term, while niching is all about the long-term. And the strategy you choose will have a profound impact on how your business grows and adapts to the market over time. In this blog post, we’ll explore the benefits, challenges, and real-world implications of focusing and niching, so you can make the best choice for your business. Let’s get started! ### The Fundamentals Focusing vs. Niching The terms “focusing” and “niching” often get used interchangeably, but they refer to distinct business strategies. Focusing is about dedicating time and resources to a specific market segment for a particular duration. Niching, on the other hand, implies tailoring a product or service specifically for a particular market segment—essentially claiming it as your “lane.” Take a CRM company as an example. If it decides to niche down by targeting trucking companies, then those become the ideal clients, and the product is specifically designed for them. If a marketing agency shows interest in this CRM, it probably won’t meet their needs, as they aren’t the intended market. In contrast, consider a CRM designed for small businesses that opt for focusing instead of niching. Over one year, it may focus its marketing efforts on agencies and in the following year, shift the focus to creative agencies. The product itself remains unchanged; only the marketing target shifts. So, if a marketing agency were to use this CRM while the focus is on creative agencies, they’d still find it helpful because the overarching target market hasn’t changed. A critical point to remember about focusing is its temporary nature. Founders sometimes misconstrue focus as a long-term commitment. In reality, a company can shift its focus as market dynamics evolve. This strategy is particularly beneficial when a business has a diverse customer base. It allows the company to tailor its offerings to a profitable segment for a specific time, thereby deepening its understanding of that segment. To identify the best segment to focus on, consider these questions: - Who are our most loyal customers? - Who is most willing to pay for our product or service? - What segment has the lowest customer acquisition cost (CAC)? - Is there any overlap in your answers to the above questions? Focusing doesn’t mean you’re abandoning other segments or closing yourself off indefinitely. Rather, it’s about targeting the most easily acquirable customers initially, then broadening your focus as needed—often over a span of five to ten years. HubSpot serves as a prime example of successful focusing. Initially an email marketing platform, it expanded into demand generation and later into the enterprise market. Recognizing further potential, HubSpot then broadened its suite to include CRM and support ticketing features, catering to various teams and market segments. As a result, they’ve evolved into a robust software platform catering to a diverse range of businesses. With a clear understanding of the differences between focusing and niching, companies can make more informed strategic choices, allowing for growth and adaptability in changing market landscapes. ### The Intricacies of Niching in Business Strategy Now, let’s talk about niching. Niching is a term that often signifies a laser-focused approach to your business: you’re “X software for Y people,” full stop. Unlike focusing, which is fluid and may change over time, niching is definitive. However, it’s not merely confined to a specific industry vertical; sometimes, it zeroes in on a unique persona or even a particular use case. But most importantly, niching isn’t a temporary strategy. It’s a commitment that shapes your business for the long term. Both focusing and niching are legitimate market entry strategies, and there’s no universally ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ approach. The critical factor is its effectiveness in moving you closer to your organizational goals. If you’re offering a product or service with versatile applications across various segments, focusing might be your best strategy. With niching, the key is to select a market or category that has more entries than exits, indicating a healthy potential for growth. Consider the example of shopping malls. The mall industry saw explosive growth in the ’80s and ’90s but has been in decline in recent years. If you were to build software specifically for malls, you’d run the risk of being stuck in a diminishing market. Niching into a declining market could spell disaster for your business unless you’re prepared to pivot or diversify your offerings. One of the most advantageous aspects of niching is that it can bring tremendous clarity to your business. For founders who are easily distracted by a plethora of opportunities, niching can be a liberating strategy that allows them to invest deeply in one sector, use case, or customer persona. However, this comes with its own set of challenges. It’s easy to become so engrossed in your niche that you overlook significant industry shifts. The cautionary tale of Blockbuster serves as an excellent example. Blockbuster dominated the physical movie rental space but failed to adapt to the rising trend of online streaming. By not paying attention to this seismic shift, Blockbuster became a victim of its own overly-niched strategy. Its lack of flexibility and failure to innovate led to its downfall. In a world where market trends shift at the speed of light—especially in the tech-savvy landscape of 2023—you have to remain agile. Even if you’re niched, it’s vital to keep an eye on macro trends that could substantially impact your industry or segment. Ignoring these trends can lead to the same fate as Blockbuster: a once-thriving business rendered obsolete by changing consumer behaviors and technological advancements. In conclusion, niching can be an incredibly potent strategy that allows you to dominate a specific market or serve a unique customer persona with unparalleled expertise. However, the risks associated with this approach necessitate a deep understanding of the market and a readiness to pivot when signs of market decline become evident. The key to successful niching lies in striking a balance: being the master of your chosen domain while still keeping a watchful eye on the evolving market landscape. ### Wrapping Up In conclusion, focusing and niching each have their unique benefits and challenges. Focusing allows you to target specific market segments for a set time, and this strategy is particularly beneficial for larger businesses with the resources to tackle multiple segments over time. Niching, however, is a long-term commitment to a particular segment or market. While it naturally offers focus, it also requires continual innovation to keep pace with the broader industry. Both approaches are valid, but the key to success lies in commitment. If you’re uncertain about which of these two strategies is for you, or contemplating a shift in strategy, consider consulting an expert. Book a [free 45-minute growth audit](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) with us today. [convertkit form=5209143] **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP28: The Top 5 Growth Drivers](https://demandmaven.io/top-growth-drivers/) **Published:** October 31, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** Every business, regardless of its size, relies on certain key factors for growth. However, identifying and mastering these factors is easier said than done. In today’s blog post, we’ll take a look at five primary growth drivers, drawing from real-world experience and examples to shed light on “what” and “how” to achieve business expansion. Let’s get started! ### 1. Growing Awareness Growing awareness is crucial for brands but often challenging to track. A common key performance indicator (KPI) for this is impressions. Another metric some companies use is social mentions. For instance, when a brand is mentioned on platforms like Twitter or Facebook, it contributes to brand awareness. Word of mouth also plays a significant role in spreading awareness. This can be measured by the number of testimonials or referrals a brand receives, either through trackable referral programs or organically. But because awareness can be qualitative or quantitative, measuring awareness isn’t always straightforward. Still, this doesn’t make qualitative methods any less valid. Qualitatively, growing awareness means more people recognize a brand, understand the problem it addresses, and know the solution it offers. In the early stages of a company, growing awareness is a priority. Yet, it typically becomes a major growth driver once a brand has scaled and achieved a significant market share. Consider companies like HubSpot and Salesforce. Both initially emphasized raising awareness, diversified their focus to other growth drivers, and later amplified their awareness efforts, even to the extent of running Super Bowl ads. ### 2. Growing Traffic The next growth driver on today’s list is growing traffic. This is the growth driver many companies turn to the most, especially in their early days. For brick-and-mortar stores, growing traffic means increasing the amount of people who walk through your doors. But in the digital age of 2023 and beyond, we’re talking about digital visitors or people who visit your website. Growing traffic can be extremely competitive, particularly when considering strategies like SEO or paid acquisition. But regardless of how you approach growing your own traffic, this step is critical. The more people to become aware of your business and visit your site, the more chances you have to turn them into a lead or a customer, which brings us to the next growth driver. ### 3. Capturing More Leads This growth driver is more complex than building awareness or driving traffic. Capturing leads requires a website experience that effectively converts visitors. And as if managing a top-tier website wasn’t complex enough, conversion can manifest in numerous ways: signing up for trials, creating accounts, making outright purchases, subscribing to newsletters, or booking demos, among others. These lead generation activities ideally target potential customers at various stages, from awareness (top of the funnel) to consideration (middle) and decision (bottom). The significance of capturing leads isn’t just about increasing their number. It also focuses on improving conversion rates. A higher conversion rate indicates that your website effectively turns visitors into leads, whether that’s through trials, demos, or other avenues. However, your website isn’t the only medium for lead generation. Campaigns, for instance, can also be instrumental. Their efficacy can be measured by the number of leads they generate and their overall performance. In essence, our aim in capturing more leads involves both boosting their volume and enhancing conversion rates. To maximize our lead generation efforts, it’s crucial to evaluate our current strategies, determine their effectiveness, and identify areas for improvement from there. ### 4. Increasing Sales When analyzing your business’s performance, your primary focus is usually on three elements: growing traffic, capturing leads, and boosting sales. Of these, increasing sales typically earns the most attention, and for obvious reasons. Sales are the closest link to revenue-generating behaviors. Increasing sales is not just about customer activation, it’s also about profitability. There are multiple ways to look at this. The go-to method is to ask, how can we close more deals? But, you can also look at things like, can you speed up the sales cycle. For example, reducing a 60-day close period to just 30 days. In addition to acceleration, you can also look at profitability. Consider opportunities like upselling, cross-selling, and more clearly communicating value so your customers are more likely to spend more money. The overall goal in increasing sales should not just be about finalizing sales, it’s about maximizing profitability from each transaction, accelerating your conversion process, or tapping into additional revenue models. ### 5. Increasing Business Capacity Finally, the last growth driver, increasing business capacity often remains an under-discussed topic because many founders don’t recognize business capacity as something that can impact growth. However, in our experience, augmenting business capacity can play a pivotal role in your growth. Reflecting on our journey with a client over the past two years highlights this. While there’s always a case to be made for growing traffic or capturing leads, for this client, the real challenge was maximizing capacity. It was clear that the CEO was spread too thin. What the company desperately needed was to delegate tasks and create new roles. Realizing this, we advised them to onboard an operations specialist, amongst others. An operations specialist could help streamline processes, allocate resources efficiently, and remove the larger projects from the CEO’s plate. When the company incorporated this change, the results were transformative. The CEO’s productivity practically tripled, with each department benefiting from specialized hires. This experience underscores a valuable lesson: growth often depends on the collective skills, bandwidth, and alignment of your team. The CEO had unintentionally restricted growth by attempting to manage everything. Many leaders struggle with this. While it’s tempting, and maybe even more comfortable, to retain control, recognizing when to delegate and harness the strengths of specialists is crucial for a company’s expansion. ## Wrapping Up There you have it, the top 5 growth drivers! Each driver plays a unique role in creating a sustainable and positive growth trajectory. By giving each driver attention, you can generate growth for your business. Ready to start your growth journey today? Book a [free 45-minute growth audit](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) with me now. In this audit, we’ll look at your current offerings and where your top growth opportunities are. I’ll see you there! \[convertkit form=5209143\] **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP62: The four levels of product consciousness](https://demandmaven.io/ep62-the-four-levels-of-product-consciousness/) **Published:** April 28, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I love UX interviews because they are so cringe. Sometimes I like the cringe, but I love the feeling you get after two to three UX interviews where it becomes crystal clear that something is confusing and you can make it better just by changing the color of a button or moving something. A lot of founders hate that feeling because it’s almost painful to watch someone fail miserably at navigating your product. But I think it’s one of the most valuable things you can do. ## The woman who was fighting demons (but didn’t know it) We were testing a time tracking product’s signup flow. We got this woman on a call, gave her a simple task—something like “add an employee” or “build a schedule.” She shared her screen and started clicking everywhere. All the wrong places. She even went back to the marketing site looking for help. It took her forever to figure it out. And then she’s done and she’s like, “Oh my god, that was so easy.” Ma’am, you were literally fighting demons. She clicked 20, maybe 40 things to complete a task that should have been two clicks. It should have been obvious, but it wasn’t. And I just remember thinking, there are people who blame themselves. They think it’s them, not the product. That’s not you, sweet baby summer child. That was us. We could do way better. ## The outcome bias trap Here’s what ends up happening. You talk to enough customers who say “I love it, everything is great, it’s so easy” and you start believing no improvements are needed. But your mileage varies a lot depending on who you’re talking to. Not every customer is created equal when it comes to product feedback. To me, there are four levels of this. I call them the four levels of product consciousness. And understanding these levels is critical because if you don’t, you might be getting a false sense of security from customers who are telling you everything is great when actually, they’re struggling and just don’t realize the product is the problem. ## Level 1: Unaware Unaware people don’t recognize issues or poor design. They blame themselves when they can’t figure something out. Like the woman in my story who clicked 20-40 things, went back to the marketing site for help, struggled through it, and then said “that was so easy.” They don’t register the friction. They think it’s not the product, it’s them. They’re great for other types of research, but if you’re hoping to get meaningful product or design feedback, you need to actually watch them. If you never get them on a UX interview, they’ll just tell you everything is easy. So if someone’s telling you how easy something is in a jobs interview or discovery call, take that with a giant grain of salt. Until you watch them do it, you don’t know if they’re actually thinking “it’s me, I just didn’t learn it yet.” When actually, it’s just a tough design to navigate and you can make it better. If you run a UX interview with unaware folks, you can see them struggling hard. But ignore what they say at the end. We watched you click 20 different things and none of it worked. That wasn’t easy. That was us not doing our best job. ## Level 2: Friction aware These people experience the friction and know something is wrong, but they can’t explain why. In a regular interview, they’ll say things like “I wish reports were better. It takes a long time. I don’t know how to fix it, I just know it’s inefficient.” They’re aware friction exists, but they don’t have the words to describe exactly what’s happening or why. In a UX interview, there’s lots of hesitations and pauses. They’re not thinking “this button is in the wrong place.” They’re thinking “I’m lost, but I don’t know why.” These folks are really valuable for pinpointing where the friction is, even if they can’t describe in product or design terms what’s wrong. ## Level 3: Friction vocal Out of 10 people you talk to, maybe one or two are like this. Friction vocal people are hyper aware of the friction and can actually describe it. They’ll screen share immediately and point things out. We’ve done interviews where they already have the product pulled up. “Let me just show you why this is bad. You see this button and this toggle and how this dropdown doesn’t make sense? That’s confusing. Here’s why.” They’re awesome because they can diagnose the situation quickly and walk you through it. You can use them for jobs research, qualitative stuff, and UX. Flag these people for future releases and design mockups. Give them high fidelity things to look at—they need more finished products to give clear feedback. What I like about them is they don’t blame themselves. They blame the product. That can be hard to listen to for product managers and founders because it feels personal. But it’s not. It’s all about efficiency and what’s intuitive. If you’re not marketing to marketers, developers, or designers (which is most SaaS companies), you want to find these people quickly and keep them close. They’re your champions panel for when you need really strong specific feedback. ## Level 4: Most aware These people are almost like amateur product and design thinkers. They might actually have that background. They can speak to you about product and design on a level others can’t. You can put a low fidelity wireframe in front of them and they can imagine it getting better. They can imagine adjustments. You can include them in any part of product discovery, ideation, or development, and they’ll get it. **The biggest risk is they’ll have very strong biased feelings about how to make the product work only for them.** They have really high product quotient, naturally. But you have to be careful because they’re usually extremely biased about how things should work. You don’t want to accidentally build something that only works for them. ## The irony of “most aware” folks Here’s what’s ironic. You’re probably thinking of specific people in each category right now. And with those most aware folks, sometimes you get really comfortable with them and kind of turn your brain off because they just seem so right in that moment. They’re proposing changes, maybe even telling you exactly how it should work. And sometimes our brains turn off and we’re like, yeah, it should be that way. But we’re not thinking about the hundreds or thousands of other users who also need to use that same thing. So it’s important to balance out the most aware people with others. Similarly, don’t just surround yourself with unaware people. Unless you plan on doing lots of UX interviews, they’re tough to extract insight from because you have to watch them do it. Balance them out with more friction vocal, friction aware, and most aware people. Those most aware folks are almost like your other product managers. That’s how close they feel to the product. Finding most aware folks can be tough. ## Product consciousness vs design consciousness This applies to both product and design. Someone can be very high awareness about product—they can talk about features, why they’re valuable, scenarios where they work or don’t. But design is its own axis. Someone can be totally unaware design wise but have high propensity for talking about features. The opposite can be true. Maybe someone isn’t good at talking about features or roadmap ideas, but they’re really good at telling you why certain screens and comps are efficient or not. Sometimes you get lucky and get someone who’s both. Great product thinker and great design thinker. And some are totally unaware on both. Those folks need to be observed. Watch them in the wild and ask questions to help trigger them being more vocal about what’s happening. ## How to use this framework If you’ve never done UX interviews, it’s time to start. You won’t know what levels people fall into until you actually interview them. The goal is to do two things: First, build your base. Figure out where everyone falls so you know who to tap when. Second, prioritize the feedback you get based on what your needs are at the time. If you’re largely hearing from unaware folks—you just did a sprint and talked to 10 totally unaware people—then you might need to optimize for a more diverse batch next time. The biggest pitfall is not doing enough UX research. This is especially true for earlier stage or bootstrap businesses. Step one is doing more interviews. Step two is making sure you’re dialed in to the quality of the feedback. Because I do think it biases teams severely. Everyone’s telling you how great and easy it is, giving you a false sense of security. You think everyone’s happy. But that’s outcome bias. Your revenue is flat, so clearly something is amiss. The purpose is to help founders dial into who they’re actually talking to, where they fall on the scale, and how much to take what they say with a grain of salt. Find those people and keep them close. ## About incentives We always incentivize research sprints for two reasons. First, it ensures your research sprint happens on time. We don’t have time for it to drag on for weeks. Second, it gives you a mix of people, almost always guaranteed. Most aware and friction vocal folks are usually invested because they want you to make the product better for them. Nine times out of 10, they’re not thinking about everyone else. You might not have to keep incentivizing them, particularly if you’re making changes based on their feedback. There’s now a feedback loop. That person learns that if they interview with you, you’ll make changes. It becomes a relationship where you might not have to incentivize every time. Maybe give them a kickback or a holiday gift. But if you’re trying to do UX research quickly and need feedback fast, always incentivize if you can. If there’s no budget, keep in mind that will likely only attract friction vocal and most aware folks. If you’re hoping to observe more unaware or friction aware folks, an incentive is better. There’s no feedback loop for them if they’re not aware of something. They can’t imagine it getting better. There’s nothing in it for them that they can reasonably see. If you don’t incentivize, you’ll probably get mostly friction vocal and most aware folks because there’s an investment they’re making. They feel if they’re vocal and tell you a lot, you’ll do it. But I do think they should get some type of thank you, because they essentially become design partners. So what do you think? Where do most of your customers fall on this spectrum? And more importantly, are you turning your brain off because everyone keeps telling you everything is easy? This is something we help with at DemandMaven. If you’re struggling to get meaningful product feedback or you’re not sure if you’re talking to the right customers, [let’s talk.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) [Subscribe to The Work by DemandMaven on Substack](https://demandmaven.substack.com/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP61: Why companies get stuck at $3-5M ARR](https://demandmaven.io/ep61-why-companies-get-stuck-at-3-5m-arr/) **Published:** April 9, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  I’ve noticed a pattern with companies that get stuck between $3M and $5M in ARR. They’re doing well enough to have real traction. They’ve found product-market fit. They’re generating meaningful revenue. But when it comes time to push through to $10M and beyond, they hit a wall. Most founders assume the problem is they need more people. More engineers, more marketers, more salespeople. Just scale the team and the revenue will follow, right? Not quite. The companies that successfully break through this stage aren’t just adding headcount. They’re making fundamental changes to how they’re structured, how they hire, and how they operate. And if you can’t or won’t make those changes, you’ll stay stuck. ## The flat org trap Here’s something I see all the time – CEOs who end up with 15, 18, sometimes 20 direct reports. It happens gradually. You hire a head of marketing. Then you hire a head of sales. Then you need someone for product, someone for engineering, someone for customer success. Before you know it, you’re managing an entire company as individual direct reports, and it’s absolutely not sustainable. I had a client who was at about $3M in ARR with 12 direct reports. Every single person was really good at their job, but every single person also needed some form of management, coaching, or guidance. The CEO was spending all their time in one-on-ones and had zero bandwidth to think strategically about where the company needed to go. This is the flat org trap. What’s missing is that middle layer. You need people who can manage managers. People who can build teams. People who have experience taking a function from scrappy startup to actual department with processes and systems. And I think this is a really hard concept for first-time CEOs and founders to wrap their minds around because when you’re small, flat feels right. But when you’re trying to scale, flat becomes your bottleneck. ## The three types of debt blocking growth When I’m diagnosing why a company is stuck, I’m usually looking for one of three types of debt: ### **1. Analytics debt** You have no idea what’s working because you don’t have the data infrastructure to tell you. You can’t see your funnel clearly. You don’t know which channels are actually driving revenue. You’re making decisions based on gut feel instead of data. This is incredibly common. Companies prioritize building features over building their analytics stack, and then they get to $3M and realize they’re flying blind. ### **2. Technical debt** Your product works, but it’s held together with duct tape. You’ve got bugs that have been sitting in the backlog for months. Your engineering team is spending all their time putting out fires instead of building new capabilities. You can’t ship fast enough to keep up with what the market needs. Technical debt isn’t just an engineering problem. It’s a growth problem. If you can’t iterate quickly, you can’t respond to what your customers are asking for. ### **3. Leadership debt** This is the big one. You don’t have the experienced talent you need to actually build the thing that will take you to the next stage. Your team is full of people who are great at execution but have never built a system before. They’ve never hired a team. They’ve never implemented processes at scale. And now you’re asking them to do all of that while also doing their day job, and it’s not working. Leadership debt is what happens when you optimize for cost instead of capability. You hire junior people because they’re cheaper, and then you wonder why you’re not moving faster. ## Experienced talent costs more, but you need it anyway Let’s talk about the thing nobody wants to hear. If you can’t afford to hire experienced talent, you’re probably not ready to grow to $10M. I know that sounds harsh. But the reality is the thing that’s actually preventing you from growing is not having people with the right experience to build what you need. Experienced people cost more because they’ve already made the mistakes. They know what good looks like. They can come in and set up systems and processes without you having to hold their hand through every step. When you hire junior people, you’re essentially paying for their education. You’re hoping they’ll figure it out as they go. And sometimes they do. But it’s slow, and it’s painful, and it often means you’re leaving growth on the table while they’re learning. I’m not saying you need to hire VPs for every function. But you do need people who have done this before. People who can look at your business and say, “Okay, here’s what we need to build, here’s the sequence we need to do it in, and here’s what the next 12 months looks like.” That’s the difference between spinning your wheels and actually breaking through. ## The founder-to-CEO transition nobody talks about One of the most uncomfortable truths about this stage is that it requires the founder to change. You can’t keep operating like you did when you were 10 people. You can’t be involved in every decision. You can’t review every piece of work. You have to start trusting other people to make decisions without you. And that’s hard. Especially if you’re the one who built the product, who found the first customers, who set the culture. Letting go feels like losing control. But if you don’t let go, you become the bottleneck. Your team can only move as fast as you can review their work. Your company can only grow as much as you can personally manage. I see this with founders all the time. They say they want to scale, but they’re not willing to actually step back and let their team run things. They want to hire experienced people, but then they micromanage them because they don’t trust anyone to do it as well as they would. But if you’ve hired the right people, they don’t need you to do their job for them. They need you to set the strategy, give them the resources, and get out of the way. That’s what it means to transition from founder to CEO. ## What it actually takes to break through So if you’re stuck at $3M or $5M and you want to get to $10M, here’s what you need to do: Build that middle layer of leadership. Hire people who can manage teams and build systems. Stop collecting direct reports and start building an actual org structure. Pay down your debt. Whether it’s analytics, technical, or leadership debt, you need to address it. You can’t just keep piling on more features or more people and hope it fixes itself. Invest in experienced talent. Yes, it costs more. But the alternative is staying stuck or growing so slowly that you miss your window. And most importantly, be honest with yourself about whether you’re actually ready to make these changes. If you want to run a lean lifestyle business, that’s 100% valid. But if you’re telling me you want to grow to $10M or beyond, then you have to be willing to operate differently. Because the playbook that got you to $3M will not get you to $10M. The structure that worked for 15 people will not work for 50. And the scrappy, do-it-yourself mentality that served you well in the early days will actively hold you back at this stage. What does your org structure look like right now? How many direct reports do you have? Are you building the leadership layer you need, or are you still trying to manage everything yourself? If you’re stuck and you’re not sure where the bottleneck is, this is something we help with at DemandMaven. Let’s talk: **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP60: From growth tactics to storytelling: building a center of excellence in Marketing](https://demandmaven.io/ep60-from-growth-tactics-to-storytelling-building-a-center-of-excellence-in-marketing/) **Published:** March 24, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’m a little more than a year into my fractional CMO role, and something’s shifted. Not in a bad way. Actually, in a really important way. But it’s the kind of shift that requires me to flex a muscle I haven’t had to use as much. And I think it’s a shift that every executive (whether you’re a CMO, CRO, CPO, or founder transitioning to CEO) eventually has to make. Here’s what I’ve been noticing. For the past year, my job has been understanding the levers in the business. What knobs can we turn? What channels work? What don’t? Where should we invest? We’ve tried the short-term bets. We’ve identified the long-term ones (SEO, brand, that sort of thing). We’ve organized and orchestrated to pull the levers effectively. And now, coming into 2026, we’re cooking on those long-term bets. They have to simmer. It’s not an Instant Pot situation. It’s more like making Vietnamese pho broth. It takes 24 hours and you can’t speed it up. But here’s the thing I’ve been feeling lately. I’ve got to step more into a storytelling CMO and not just a growth CMO. ## What “center of excellence” means We’re becoming a center of excellence for marketing. And maybe that’s the term I hadn’t quite been able to put my finger on until recently. It’s not just about executing campaigns or pulling growth levers anymore. It’s about how do we build marketing excellence into the team? How do we make sure that everyone understands what quality looks like? How do we operationalize around our positioning and messaging so that it actually shows up everywhere (not just on the homepage, but in emails, in demos, in customer success conversations, everywhere)? And that’s a different muscle. That’s not the demand gen muscle. It’s a little bit the product marketing muscle, but it goes a step deeper. It’s about leveling up the team. And by leveling up the team, we’re leveling up our marketing, which levels up everything else. To be honest, this hasn’t been a muscle I’ve had to flex much. There have been very clear strategic priorities and initiatives up until now. But this one? This isn’t something I’d make an OKR around. This is me, the executive, showing up differently. ## The two gaps I need to close When I sat down and really thought about it, I identified two main gaps. ### **Positioning and messaging** We all notice a discrepancy in how everyone describes the product. How do you clear the path so everyone is aligned on why someone would choose our product versus the dozens of other options? The first gap to close is helping people see how to tell the story. And the best way to do that is to embody it. To deliver it directly. Over and over and over again. ### **Content quality** One of the challenges we have is quality. Content quality specifically. In order to close that gap, I’m going to have to show them what quality looks like and embody that over and over again, while also taking corrective action on stuff that doesn’t pass muster. Now, there’s a difference between deciding what positioning and messaging should be, and making sure everyone understands it and embodies it in their work. The way you arrive at positioning and messaging is a separate process from ensuring that people get it. That every time they write copy or create content, they know how to execute it. It tends to be cross-functional anyway. Marketing doesn’t just decide it alone. Product has a say. Sales has a say. There’s usually some person who’s the tiebreaker. In our case, that’s CEO, CMO, and the other co-founders. But once we arrive at the final iteration, then it’s: okay, now who’s deploying this and whose job is it to ensure we operationalize around this? If it’s not an executive-level position doing that, it needs to be clearly communicated to whoever is responsible. Otherwise you end up deciding positioning and messaging in a black box and it doesn’t actually go anywhere. Sure, you changed the headline on your homepage. But does it show up in your emails? In your demos? In customer success conversations? In all the different customer touch points? I think we’re doing a better job now of making sure it’s getting executed. But we haven’t done a good enough job yet of doing that storytelling to have people internalize the meaning of it. Because there’s a difference. You can tell people what the positioning is. But do they understand it deeply enough to apply it in new contexts? That’s the gap. ## What this looks like in practice The best executives have their talking points and they say them over and over again. And they don’t just repeat themselves. They constantly demonstrate. That’s what my team needs right now, probably for the next year or two. I went through this at DemandMaven. When we had eight people on the team and quality control became an issue, I realized these skills needed to get embedded into people. The only way to do that was teaching. Internal leadership and storytelling. Using the skills I was using in speaking and podcasts, but turning them inward to the organization. If I don’t help people build this muscle, I just become the permanent bottleneck. And while some skills are unique to you, many are very teachable. Teaching them levels everyone up. ## Skills that are universal (and teachable) Storytelling. Being able to publicly speak. Being able to identify content quality. Being able to read anything and everything you’re producing and really think critically about: what is this saying? Does every sentence have a job? Does every word have a job? Is this actually enjoyable to read or watch? Those are all skills I think are very teachable. But I think it has to start with you, the leader. It’s hard to expect individual contributors to come to the table with that all the time. Certainly if people do, that’s great. But I do think it has to be more top down. It’s our duty and responsibility to do that. Now, the tricky part is this becomes an operational challenge. It’s both process and people. If people aren’t building the muscle, then we end up with the problem of everything is on my desk and I’m now the bottleneck and the team isn’t actually improving. So there’s a game I have to play. I’m going to review everything that gets publicly published. Anything that is customer-facing, I’ve got to review and give feedback. I do that, but I don’t do it to the level I think I need to be. And this is where it gets tricky. If I’m not helping people build the muscle, then I just become the permanent bottleneck. Side note – I’ve been thinking about how to use AI to make this faster. Could we analyze content before it comes to my desk? Could there be a scoring system based on our frameworks? There are things AI could certainly help with. That could be one way to add a layer of automated management that’s efficient. ## The correlation to other executive transitions This transition correlates to others I’ve talked about before: founder to CEO, head of marketing to CMO, head of product to CPO, head of sales to CRO. It’s the shift from managing tactics to overseeing strategic direction and operationalization. You start seeing your function the way the CEO sees it: as part of a larger story. How does your part contribute? What do you need from others? That’s where VPs level up to CMO. You’re not just looking at departmental efficiency anymore. You’re zooming out to see your department as part of the business and the market. And asking: where are we headed? What does my team need? Who do I need to be to support them and position us well? ## Focusing on brand One of the things I historically haven’t spent much time on has been brand. Brand isn’t just colors and fonts. It’s your mission, your values, what the company actually cares about, and how you embody that experience repeatedly and predictably so customers recognize it. You typically don’t see brand marketers hired until companies hit $10-30 million ARR. Before that, it’s usually the CEO or founder embodying brand. But I’m feeling the need for this sooner. With so many competitors, brand might be the cutting edge lever we need that others can’t compete on. It’s exciting, but also scary because it’s a different muscle to flex. Not demand gen, not just product marketing, but something deeper. ## Cultivating self-awareness To be the best leader you can possibly be, you need a certain level of self-awareness. I’ve cultivated this brick by brick over the years. It’s not just recognizing how you’re feeling or being tuned into your body and emotions. It’s seeing your story among all of the other millions of stories, neutrally and without judgment. You can see your place in this world and everyone else’s place as well. For example, in my work, there are moments where I’m feeling frustrated about something. But if I zoom out and see it from other people’s perspectives, I can recognize: this is actually quite normal. After that level of balancing, I can see the choices I can make to improve the situation. You need to know when you’re thrashing (spending a lot of energy doing a whole lot of nothing). You need to have a good dial on when your ego and feelings are getting in the way versus when it makes sense to throw your weight around. There are times where it makes sense for me to do that, and it’s not always something I’m comfortable with, but I have to be very tuned into: is this the time? Or is this not the time? You have to understand how much of this is driven by your need to be right or your need to be seen in a certain light versus what’s actually the best for the business. You have to see your story and the other stories. It can’t just be your story all the time. Now, to be fair, if you’re in a toxic environment, your level of self-awareness at best is going to help protect you and that’s about it. But if you’re not in a toxic environment, if you have autonomy or influence, then self-awareness is one of the most valuable muscles you can build as an executive leader. ## Bringing it all together So what does this transition actually look like? It’s recognizing when your role needs to shift. When the team doesn’t just need you to make strategic decisions anymore. They need you to teach them how to make strategic decisions. They need you to show them what excellence looks like. It’s about moving from “I’ll review everything and correct it” to “I’ll teach you how to see what I see so you can correct it yourself.” It’s about understanding that some bets are Instant Pot bets and some are 24-hour pho broth bets. And when you’re in the pho broth phase, you can’t just keep optimizing the same levers. You have to shift what you’re doing. For me, that shift is into storytelling. Into brand. Into building a center of excellence. And it requires self-awareness to even see that this is what’s needed. To separate your ego from what the business actually needs. To be willing to flex a muscle you haven’t had to flex before. What are the transitions you’re making as a leader? What does your team actually need from you right now (not what you’re most comfortable giving them, but what they actually need)? And are you self-aware enough to see it? **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP59: When to use AI in your SaaS](https://demandmaven.io/ep59-when-to-use-ai-in-your-saas/) **Published:** March 17, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’ll never forget the moment a founder told me, “I’ll just take these transcripts and tell ChatGPT to spit out jobs to be done.” We were in the middle of a jobs-to-be-done research project. We were mapping customer interviews, identifying patterns, understanding the functional and emotional jobs that drive purchase decisions. We’d mapped four or five interviews together. The process was working. The founder was learning things. And then ChatGPT entered. The founder fed the transcripts into ChatGPT. It spit out what it thought was jobs to be done. And it wasn’t *wrong*. It was just… kind of goofy. It was surface-level. It took things literally. It missed all the nuance, all the hesitation, all the energy that you pick up when you’re actually experienced at interpreting this kind of research. The founder looked at me like, “ChatGPT just did your job.” I looked back and said, “Actually, it didn’t. And I can show you exactly how and why.” This is the fundamental tension with AI right now. LLMs are genuinely useful tools. They can also be the ultimate tool-shaped objects—things that *feel* like they’re doing the work, but whose primary output is the sensation of productivity rather than the strategic insight you actually need. So when should you use AI in your SaaS? When should you proceed with caution? And when should you just do the work yourself? ## AI-assisted vs AI-led Here’s how I think about it. There’s AI-*assisted* work, where you’re using LLMs to speed up parts of your process (analyzing data, creating deliverables, pulling patterns from transcripts). You’re still doing the thinking. You’re still interpreting. The AI is standing on your shoulders, not the other way around. And then there’s AI-*led* or AI-outsourced work, where you’re basically handing the entire job over to the LLM and hoping it thinks for you. You’re not an expert, so you don’t know what you don’t know. The output looks smart, sounds smart, but it’s actually kind of… bad. The difference matters. A lot. At DemandMaven, we’ve spent the last couple years figuring out where AI fits into our work. We’ve taught LLMs how to create certain types of deliverables. We use them to analyze large data sets like survey responses, feature request boards, and sales call transcripts. We’ve built workflows that save us hours. But we’ve also learned exactly where LLMs break down. And it’s almost always in the places where human judgment, context, and interpretation matter most. ## When AI works great Let’s start with the good stuff. There are use cases where AI absolutely shines, and you should be using it. ### **1. Analyzing large data sets** LLMs are excellent at processing large volumes of data. Survey responses, CSV exports, feature request boards with 1,200 entries sitting in a Monday board graveyard. We recently did an analysis of a client’s feature request board. It had sat untouched for two to three years. Over 1,200 requests, all categorized, all entered through a form, all basically ignored. The client wanted help prioritizing. What’s actually in here? What patterns exist? What should we build? Claude did a great job giving us the high-level view. It surfaced themes, identified patterns, showed us what small percentages of people were asking for. That felt valuable. But here’s what’s critical: we didn’t just give Claude the data and say, “tell me what’s important.” We spent 30 minutes to an hour reviewing it ourselves first. We came away with specific questions: “I want it to tell me *these* things, and then anything else it considers important.” That’s when the analysis got good. When we gave it direction. When we used it to fill in gaps, not to do the thinking. ### **2. Creating deliverables** LLMs are fantastic at document creation once you’ve taught them your format. We use them all the time to create job insights briefs, customer research summaries, analysis documents. Here’s what works: We map the jobs ourselves. We figure out which interviews fit into which jobs. We create the debrief notes. And then we tell Claude: “These are the jobs. These are the interviews. These are our notes. Now create the document.” And it does. Excellently. We then fine tune it from there to get it to 100%. Here’s what doesn’t work: Asking Claude to interpret the interviews, figure out the jobs, and create the document. That’s too many judgment calls. Too much nuance required. The output ends up surface-level at best, misleading at worst. ### **3. Coding and prototyping for non-engineers** If you don’t have a development background (no coding experience, no engineering knowledge), AI has opened doors that were previously closed. Kim’s been using [Claude Code](https://claude.ai/download) to build task management systems, automate workflows, create tools that would have required hiring a developer. My husband, who’s a UX designer, uses Figma Make to prototype incredibly quickly. He prompts, it builds comps, and he just has to sprinkle his design fairy dust on top. The time savings are massive. But here’s the pattern – the more you know about what you’re doing, the better the AI output becomes. If you understand good UX design, Figma Make is incredible. If you understand systems and workflows, Claude Code is powerful. If you’re a complete novice, it’s a bit harder, but AI can still support as you explore. ### **4. Competitive research and data gathering** Work that would take a human hours to manually collect (pulling data from websites, analyzing competitor positioning, aggregating information from sales call recordings) is where AI does this exceptionally well. It’s good at collecting and storing for later reference. It’s good at pulling themes. It’s good at surfacing patterns you might not have noticed. What it’s not good at is telling you what to do with that information. ## When AI breaks down Now let’s talk about where you should proceed with caution – or just do the work yourself. ### **1. Jobs-to-be-done research and strategic customer insights** This is where that ChatGPT story comes in. When you’re running jobs-to-be-done interviews, you’re not just transcribing what customers say. You’re reading between the lines. You’re noticing hesitation. You’re picking up on contradictions. You’re understanding the difference between what people say they want and what they actually need. [Bob Moesta](https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobmoesta/) talks about this: you almost have to take what customers literally say with a grain of salt. You have to look back at the whole conversation and interpret based on their reactions, their pauses, their energy. LLMs can’t do that. They take things literally. They interpret text-based transcripts at face value. If you ask them to analyze jobs to be done, they’ll give you something that sounds smart (functional jobs, emotional jobs, social jobs), but it’s usually kind of goofy once you know what you’re looking at. They miss the nuance. They miss the human emotion. They miss the intuitive power that experienced researchers bring to this work. Now, we *do* use LLMs for jobs research – but only after we’ve done the human interpretation first. We map the jobs. We decide what matters. And then we tell the LLM: “Here are the jobs. Here are the quotes. Now write the brief.” That works. ### **2. Strategic decisions about marketing, positioning, and go-to-market** If you’re making strategic decisions (how do we think about our competitive differentiators? What are the primary jobs we’re solving for? What’s our positioning?), don’t just outsource that to an LLM. LLMs don’t read energy. They don’t pick up on the subcutaneous layers of customer conversations. They won’t tell you where the strategic gaps are. They’ll give you surface-level themes, consensus-driven insights, and a lot of words that sound smart but lack edge. If you’re not an expert and you’re relying solely on LLMs for this kind of work, you’re going to end up with watered-down, diluted positioning. You’ll sound like everyone else. You won’t have a clear edge. And right now, in SaaS, you need edges. You can’t afford to be diluted anymore. ### **3. Product prioritization and roadmap decisions** Same principle. LLMs will give you the on-paper themes. They’ll tell you what percentage of people said what. They’ll surface patterns. But they won’t tell you which features actually unlock growth. They won’t help you identify the strategic gaps. They won’t push back on your assumptions or help you think through trade-offs. That requires human judgment. Domain expertise. Context that goes beyond what’s written in a transcript. ## Missing the margin of error Here’s what I think is most important to understand – you have to assume there will be errors. LLMs hallucinate. They make mistakes. They randomly break and forget their rules. The question isn’t whether errors will happen. The question is: what margin of error are you willing to accept? For deliverable creation? I’m comfortable with a 5-10% error rate. I can review, catch issues, fix them quickly. For data analysis? Maybe 5-15%, depending on what I’m analyzing. For strategic interpretation of customer research? Zero. I’m not comfortable with any margin of error there. The cost of getting it wrong is too high. And this is where I see founders get into trouble. They don’t think about margin of error. They see an LLM spit out something that looks impressive, and they take it at face value because they’re not experts. They don’t know what they don’t know. If you’re new to something—jobs research, product management, strategic positioning—you’re not going to catch the errors. You’re not going to know when the output is goofy. You’re going to think it’s the word of God. And that’s dangerous. ## What I recommend – the creative process approach I never just take what Claude spits out and copy-paste it as a deliverable. I use it to trigger questions. I use it to dig deeper. I use it to fill in gaps. It’s a co-creation process, not a delegation process. Here’s how it works in practice: Claude analyzes sales call transcripts. It gives me a high-level interpretation. That triggers a question: “Oh, that’s interesting. When did people say that? Can you source this for me?” And Claude says, “Yeah, Brittany said this on call three. Masha said this on call seven.” And then I dig deeper. I validate. I look for what it might have missed. I don’t try to catch it in errors—I’m just looking for gaps. Because chances are, it absolutely missed things it wouldn’t have been able to interpret anyway. That’s the fun part. That’s where the value is. Not in the AI doing all the thinking, but in the AI helping me think better and faster. ## Raising the floor vs raising the ceiling AI raises the floor for everyone, but experts get exponentially more value out of it. If you’re already a great copywriter, AI helps you write faster and test more variations. If you’re a beginner, AI gets you to “okay” copy, but you won’t know when it’s bad. If you’re an experienced product manager, AI helps you analyze data and create documentation faster. If you’re new to product management, AI will give you outputs that sound smart but lack strategic depth. If you understand business intelligence and workflow design, you can build incredibly sophisticated systems with AI. If you’re starting from zero, you’ll build something that kind of works but has gaps you can’t see. This is the trade-off. AI is democratizing access to capabilities that used to require years of experience. But it’s not replacing expertise. It’s amplifying it. ## AI use cases worth knowing about A few tools and use cases that have caught my attention lately: [**Lennybot**](https://www.delphi.ai/lennybot): [Lenny Rachitsky](https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/) created an AI version of himself using a platform called [Delphi](https://www.delphi.ai/). You can ask Lennybot any question you’d ask Lenny, and it’ll answer in his voice, citing his podcast episodes, blog posts, and resources. It’s basically a queryable knowledge base of everything Lenny knows, packaged into a conversational interface. It’s fascinating. It’s also low-key freaky. You can turn on voice mode and it sounds like Lenny. It won’t build a PRD for you (it has parameters), but it will surface every relevant resource and give you Lenny’s perspective on any product or growth question. If you’re a thought leader who gets the same questions over and over, this is a genuinely interesting application. [**Synthetic Users**](https://www.syntheticusers.com/): This one’s controversial, but interesting. It’s a database of 10 million synthetic users (not real people, but personas based on real human data). It was designed for product managers in highly regulated industries like healthcare and finance, where access to real customers is illegal or nearly impossible. You can tell Synthetic Users, “I want to talk to five people who fit this profile and have this problem,” and you can interview them. You can ask about solutions, test positioning, understand what would give them pause. It’s not a replacement for real customer research. But if you literally cannot access customers, it’s better than nothing. The caveat: LLMs are very affirming. They want to please you. It’s hard to get them to push back or be real with you without a lot of prompting. So use this with caution. [**Granola**](https://www.granola.so/): This is one of my favorite tools. It’s a meeting note-taking tool that operates off your computer audio (no bot joining the call). It’s discreet. It transcribes. It summarizes. It supports multiple languages. I’ve been using it for my Spanish lessons. It summarizes everything in Spanish, then in English. I can query it: “What were all the words I got stuck on?” And it tells me. It’s easy to share notes with team members who can also query them. This is the kind of AI tool that just works. ## The bottom line AI is genuinely useful. It’s also easy to misuse. Use it when you’re the expert and you need to move faster. Use it when the margin of error is acceptable and you can catch mistakes. Use it for data gathering, document creation, prototyping, analysis. Don’t use it when strategic judgment matters. Don’t use it when you’re not an expert and you can’t tell when the output is bad. Don’t use it as a replacement for the hard work of thinking. And if you’re building a SaaS, think carefully about which parts of your work you’re comfortable automating and which parts need human expertise. Because the companies that win in the next few years won’t be the ones that outsource everything to AI. They’ll be the ones that figure out how to use AI to amplify their strategic advantages while keeping the hard thinking in-house. **What are you using AI for in your work? What have you learned about where it works and where it doesn’t? [Let me know](https://demandmaven.io/contact/).** **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP58: Why marketing isn't your best growth lever](https://demandmaven.io/ep58-why-marketing-isnt-your-best-growth-lever/) **Published:** March 10, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  Marketing is the most critical growth lever in the early days—sub-$1M ARR especially. But once you stabilize? It’s not your best lever anymore. And I think this is a really hard concept for especially first-time CEOs and founders of SaaS companies to wrap their minds around. Because it doesn’t seem like it should be true. But it absolutely is. It doesn’t matter how much money you put towards marketing. You can dump as much as you want. But if it’s not good, if it doesn’t solve the problem, if people don’t love it, don’t stay, don’t want to pay? None of that matters. All that money you spent on marketing? You basically just lit it on fire. This is especially true once you cross the $1M ARR threshold. Marketing becomes a player on your team. But it’s not the captain anymore. Let me break down why—and what you should be looking at instead. ## From the boiler room to the captain’s deck I want you to imagine you’re in the boiler room of a cruise ship. You’re shoveling coal, pulling levers, turning cranks. You’re sweating, you’re running between all the different stations. That’s you up until your first million in ARR. By the time you get to that first million, now you’re in the captain’s deck. You’re at the top, and you’re looking out at everything. Hopefully by now you’ve got people helping you—crew filling the boiler room, helping customers (your cruisers, so to speak), making sure the experience is what you want it to be. Some founders I think get stuck in the boiler room. They never make it out of the hustle space. They never make it out of operating purely on founder mojo and vibes—which is very highly intuitive, very gut-based. That’s what you should be doing in the early stages. But there has to be that transition moment. When that happens, you almost have to look at the boiler room as: okay, there are parts of a system here. And it’s not just going to be the one thing. It’s going to be several things to make the ship go in the direction that we want—and to provide the experience that we want. You have to have crew. You have to have staff. There are people in the kitchens. There are people cleaning the aisles, swabbing the deck, making sure everything is efficient and timely. All of those things contribute to the experience for your customers. When it comes to marketing and customer acquisition, shoveling more coal in the boiler room will certainly make you go faster. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to end up at the destination that you want—especially if no one’s driving the wheel. Especially if no one’s thinking about: great, we can put all our resources here, but your passengers are on the Lido deck asking, “where’s the entertainment? What am I here for again?” And they’re looking at the other ship across the way thinking, “man, they look like they’re having a lot of fun.” ## The seven growth levers you need to understand Once you get to that captain’s deck moment, your job is: okay, I can see all the levers. Which ones are on fire? And if they’re not on fire, what do we need to do? Which one do we pull to expand and grow the way we want to? Here are the seven growth levers in a SaaS business: ### 1. Customer Acquisition (Marketing & Sales) This is what we traditionally think of as “growth.” Getting people to buy tickets to your cruise ship. ### 2. Activation Now that they’re on the cruise ship, how do you get them to take advantage of all the really cool things you’re going to offer them—to give them the experience that they want? It’s not enough to just be like, “okay, great, you got your ticket, bye.” No. You need to get them to the bar, to the show, to see the special guest comedian. That’s what activation actually is. And here’s what’s important: Product is ultimately what you’re offering. Activation is the *process* of them experiencing the product and getting the value to start. ### 3. Retention They want to come back on your ship, or they want to stay on your ship. (Yes, there are some people who just live on cruise ships—that’s all they do.) But how do you get them to stay? You’ve got to ensure they activate, you’ve got to ensure they get the value, that it’s in alignment with them, and that it’s so great they want to keep doing it and do it again. ### 4. Monetization (Pricing) This is what you’ve charged them to gain access to your product. ### 5. Expansion Once they’ve paid, if they would like more value and that’s in alignment with them, how do we get them to pay more? You can’t force everyone to pay more. But based on that person’s needs—do their needs grow over time? And if so, how do we make sure to meet those needs and potentially have them pay more for them? ### 6. Operations How do we as a business deliver value to our customers while also ensuring that we’re staying afloat? How do we do both? This goes all the way down to: What meetings are we running? How do we run the meetings? How do we work together as a team? How do marketing, product, sales, customer success, engineering, and support work together? Who makes decisions? How do we make decisions? Who’s responsible for what? All of that’s ops. ### 7. People Who do we have doing these things to help us deliver value to our customers? There’s hiring, culture—all of those things go into your value delivery mechanism. So there are five growth levers that are SaaS PLG-specific (acquisition, activation, retention, expansion, monetization), and two others (operations, people). This is where you go from boiler room to captain’s deck. Your job now is: I can see all the levers. Which ones are on fire? And if they’re not on fire, which one do we pull to get the greatest possible outcome? ## Three reasons over-investing in marketing doesn’t work Once you understand these seven levers, here’s why you can’t just throw more money at marketing and expect it to solve everything: ### 1. The market never moves as fast as you move The market is slow—it moves in almost this spiritual way. Just because you dump a million into ads doesn’t mean people will buy and adopt as fast as you’re putting it out there. Over-investing in marketing does not net out the same result. For companies at that $1M to $5M mark, the more they spend on marketing, the more they’re just burning resources. It doesn’t actually make things go faster. The only time I find this isn’t true is when marketing was on fire for a long time. But if it’s not actively on fire, investing more probably isn’t going to get you what you want. ### 2. You have a limited addressable market Your market is limited based on product. Your product is only going to be applicable to so many people. There’s TAM, SAM, and SOM: - **TAM (Total Addressable Market):** All the people you could possibly sell to ever. That’s the ethereal, magical number we don’t really know. - **SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market):** People who could use your product out of the TAM. A little bit more applied and direct. - **SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market):** People who can literally use the product right now. That’s a fraction of SAM. Only 5% of the market is actually ready to buy right now. Slightly more could buy right now. There are only so many people who can buy right now. The only option is to expand your SOM. But SOM can’t expand unless product expands. That’s why over-investing in marketing doesn’t make sense. Where it does make sense is if marketing is on fire, customer acquisition is on fire, and that’s a clear lever to address. Then yes, invest in it. But investing more after it’s stabilized or after it’s healthy and working? That’s a TBD situation—unless your product has grown enough where you can invest even more in marketing to attract more buyers, more different types of people. ### 3. All channels have diminishing returns Literally all marketing channels have diminishing returns. Sending more emails doesn’t necessarily get you more customers—unless it’s to more *different* customers. Running more ads doesn’t necessarily work. Running more ads to the same group of people definitely doesn’t work. Sending more emails to the same group of people definitely doesn’t work. Doing more doesn’t make sense. That’s why you’ve got to look at other levers. It can’t all come from marketing. ## Marketing and product: two sides of the same coin Marketing and product are so intricately linked, they literally can’t do more without each other. Marketing can’t do more without product growing. But product can’t grow unless marketing works—unless you’re actually acquiring customers. To be fair, I think it’s a different type of weight. Marketing depends more on product than product depends on marketing. Because marketing alone is not the thing that gets people to buy. It’s also pricing. It’s also activation. And it’s inherently product. You can’t put lipstick on a pig—and that’s extremely true. The center of the universe for a SaaS company, especially a PLG SaaS company, is going to be product. There are certainly companies that have become successful with sales or engineering at the center. But for most PLG SaaS businesses, product is going to be—or should be—the center of the universe. What I mean: it’s the foundational core of how the business exists. Everything has to work together and around it to support it. The vice versa is also true. If product is not strong, then it doesn’t matter what levers you pull. It’s lipstick on a pig. And if people don’t want the pig, they’re not going to buy it. ## Where to spend your energy when you’re in the captain’s deck If you are in the captain’s deck and you’re looking out at all seven growth levers, here’s how to think about it: Sometimes when you’re in the captain’s deck, you look out and you’re like, “activation is on fire. This isn’t converting as well as it should. We know that for a fact. This isn’t working. It’s making everything else inefficient.” It’s really clear: we’ve got to go fix that. But sometimes you’re in the captain’s deck and nothing’s really on fire. And you have to ask yourself two questions: 1. **Is that because you just don’t know?** 2. **Or is it because it’s true—and it’s really more about: if you were to unlock any one of these, which one would give you the greatest possible outcome? Which one would help you move the needle the most?** The best way to understand that is through hiring and working with experienced people. It’s either a consultant (could be someone like us), it could be asking your own internal leadership, it could be asking a mentor or an advisor to help you suss out and understand. It could also be through your own education. There are plenty of resources—as CEO, especially first-time, part of your job is to learn as much as possible. As you learn more, you might realize: at first I was in the captain’s deck and none of this seemed on fire. But now that I’m learning more, actually we don’t have the right people on deck. Or actually our retention could be better. Our monthly churn is fine, but maybe net revenue retention isn’t great. That’s the process. But what I will say is that’s impossible to do if you’re still in the boiler room. You can’t do that if you’re in the boiler room, because you don’t even see the Lido deck. You’re so focused on putting out fires down below that you don’t have the bandwidth or capacity to do that. If you’re more than a million and you’re still in the boiler room, we’ve got to rethink some things. Because there’s a good chance that there are tasks and jobs you’re doing that could be someone else’s responsibility—and get you back in the captain’s deck so you can oversee the whole thing and see what’s going on. ## The bottom line Marketing is critical in the early days. You’ve got to figure out customer acquisition when you’re sub-$1M ARR. None of the other levers matter if you don’t have customers. But once you stabilize and cross that million threshold, marketing becomes a player on your team. It’s not the captain anymore. You’ve got seven growth levers to think about: acquisition, activation, retention, expansion, monetization, operations, and people. Your job as CEO is to get out of the boiler room, get into the captain’s deck, and figure out which of those levers is going to give you the greatest possible outcome when you pull it. Over-investing in marketing doesn’t work because: the market doesn’t move as fast as you do, you have a limited addressable market, and all channels have diminishing returns. Marketing and product are intricately linked—you can’t grow one without the other. So if you’re stuck and your first instinct is “we need more marketing,” pause. Look at all seven levers. Figure out what’s actually on fire. And then go fix that. **Thinking about your growth strategy and not sure which levers to pull?** [That’s something we help with at DemandMaven.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) Let’s talk. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP57: Why your SaaS product is losing value (and what to do about it)](https://demandmaven.io/ep57-why-your-saas-product-is-losing-value-and-what-to-do-about-it/) **Published:** March 3, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’m going to use a term that probably doesn’t have a formal name in any textbook: value decline. I’m calling it that because it’s the easiest way to communicate what it is. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it in almost every SaaS business that’s stuck. Here’s the concept. Users come into your product to accomplish some [jobs to be done](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/). There’s maybe an overarching job and then a bunch of smaller, more task-oriented jobs underneath it. And usually, the product is really well designed to help them accomplish that first job. But then once that job is done, other jobs pop up. And if the product doesn’t address those, the value that users get starts to shrink over time. That’s value decline. The product delivers less value over time, not because it got worse, but because it stopped expanding to meet what customers actually need next. And here’s where it shows up in the numbers: net revenue retention. If you’re [stuck at 70% NRR at 12 months](https://demandmaven.io/ep46-how-to-actually-measure-and-improve-retention-beyond-churn/), there’s a solid chance you’re experiencing value decline. If your NRR is actively getting worse, you’re definitely experiencing it. And if it’s stagnant, I would argue you’re still experiencing it for specific segments of users. It just so happens that you’re retaining enough other people that the overall number doesn’t look terrible. NRR doesn’t lie. It’s probably the single most honest metric in your business. ## The tax filing example Let me make this concrete. Imagine the overarching job is “file my taxes.” There are a bunch of functional steps inside that: get all my documents together, upload them, make sure everything’s correct, figure out itemized vs. standard deductions, prepare the forms, and then actually file them. And then there’s the back end: receive the refund, pay what you owe, handle state vs. federal. Maybe your product does 80% of that really well. But maybe it doesn’t address those last couple of steps. So the customer gets most of the way there, but then has to leave your product to finish the job. That’s normal. Every product has boundaries. But the question is: what happens when you actively choose not to address those other jobs? And what happens when time passes and those unaddressed jobs start to pile up? The value the customer gets from your product declines. Not all at once, but gradually. And then one day, they start looking. ## The forces that cause value decline There are a few different forces that can dramatically change how someone experiences your product. Not all of them are in your control. **Force 1: Choosing not to expand.** This is the most straightforward one. There are jobs your customers need done that your product doesn’t address, and you’ve decided (consciously or not) not to build for them. That’s a choice, and sometimes it’s the right choice. But over time, that gap widens. **Force 2: Market and world forces.** Think about what happened during COVID. Any platform that offered virtual community or virtual meetings saw a massive spike. Zoom, HeySummit, Vito, all the virtual events platforms. The world changed, and suddenly those products were delivering enormous value. But when the pandemic subsided, the context shifted. Those same products now had to figure out other ways to provide value, because the external force that was driving adoption had faded. AI is another example. Imagine if instead of you having to do everything in a tax product, an AI could populate all the information, pull from your forms, handle the filing. Market forces may push products like TurboTax to think about how to leverage AI to continue providing more value, reduce friction, and make it even easier to achieve the outcome. If they don’t, someone else will. **Force 3: Competitive forces.** Competitors can make strategic moves that change how your customers perceive your product’s value. Maybe a competitor ships a feature that addresses a job your product ignores. Maybe they undercut your pricing. Maybe two companies merge and suddenly offer an integrated experience you can’t match. Integration and platform risk falls in here too. Think about all the businesses that depended on Twitter’s API. When API costs 10x or an integration shuts down, the value your product delivers can drop overnight. All of these forces can change the context of how someone experiences your product and gets value from it. Some are controllable. Some are not. But understanding what’s happening is the first step. ## What you can control In the early days (and I’m talking less than $10M ARR), 99% of what happens in the market is going to be out of your control. That’s just the reality. And I would actually argue that’s true for most organizations, even larger ones. But the larger you get, the more you can make bets in more areas. Enterprise organizations have eggs in every basket because it’s too risky to have them all in one. When you’re small, you don’t have that luxury. Your smaller bets may not have the same weight as going all in on one or two things. And that’s the game you’re playing. There’s a saying at this stage: it’s better to have firmly made a decision and committed to it than to have made no decision and not committed at all. Most CEOs are operating with 60-70% of the information they actually need. They’re not waiting for 99% because that’s never coming. What is in your control is how you react. What choices do you make? What opportunities do you take? I remember when the post-COVID layoffs were happening. Tech companies laying people off left and right. And yes, it sucked. But the silver lining was that bootstrapped founders and smaller companies were going to have more opportunity to hire incredible talent than they’d had in years. That’s how I think about it. When you see other companies zigging, look for the zag. Does zigging work for you? If everyone is zigging and it’s smart to zig, then zig. But if it’s smarter for you to zag, do that. ## The three real causes of preventable value decline Here’s where this gets practical. There is always going to be some natural value decline. You’ve got limited bandwidth, limited resources, and you’re never going to be able to move as fast as your customers’ desires. Desires and wishes don’t decrease. They only expand. That’s a natural tension. But a good portion of value decline is preventable. And usually when we see it (when NRR is stuck at 70% at 12 months, or when monthly revenue churn is creeping up), it comes down to three things. **1. We don’t understand the full job.** We don’t have a clear understanding of what people want to accomplish after they’ve achieved initial value with the product. What does long-term life with your product look like? What does it look like at two years? Three years? Is it still relevant and valuable to them? A lot of conventional wisdom says you want to keep customers at least two years for the unit economics to work. If you’re losing them in the first year, you’re probably breaking even or losing money. **2. We don’t understand long-term life with the product.** This is related but different. It’s not just about the jobs. It’s about how those jobs change over time. When someone’s been using your product for a year, their needs are different than when they signed up. Maybe they have more employees. Maybe their business has shifted. Maybe they’ve outgrown the plan they’re on but don’t see a reason to upgrade because the additional tiers don’t offer things they care about. **3. We’re blocking our own success.** This is common for bootstrapped founders, especially technical founders who left big corporations. You know the ones with thousands of developers, layers of management, and fundamentally broken products. You left that behind and swore you’d never build anything that bloated. But here’s the problem. You’re comparing your small team to an organization with hundreds of employees and infinite money. That comparison doesn’t hold. You’re not at risk of building a bloated product. You can’t accidentally hire 5,000 developers. I cannot tell you how many technical founders I’ve talked to who want $10M in revenue but have a single developer, act as PM themselves, and won’t hire anyone else because they don’t want to be bloated. If that’s you, you’re blocking your own blessings. Yes, there will be friction when you bring someone new on. Yes, it’ll take six months for them to provide real value. But if the reason you’re holding back is fear of becoming the corporation you left, that’s fear of success. If you don’t want to grow, if it’s more lifestyle for you, that’s completely fine. But then we have to temper expectations about hitting $5M or $10M. The contradiction of wanting significant growth while refusing to invest in development has to be called out. ## “Customers lie” (sort of) Here’s the thing that connects all of this: customers cannot tell you what to build. I keep coming back to this because it’s crucial for understanding how to prevent value decline. They can tell you bugs. They can tell you quality of life improvements. “This filter doesn’t work when I click it.” “It would be cool if I could filter the report by date.” Great. Add that to the list. But value generators? Net new features that extend the value by tackling a new job? That’s really hard for them to articulate. 90% of customers just aren’t going to think that way. They’re not product people. They can’t conceive of you deciding to acquire a company or build an entirely new capability. If they could, they’d be VPs of product, not users. Now, there’s the vocal 10%. The loud few who know exactly what they want and will tell you nonstop. But the 90% either don’t think you’re serious about building it, or they just can’t conceive of the product evolving that dramatically. And when they can’t articulate what’s wrong, they start looking. Something feels off. They know something could be better, but they don’t have words for it. So they start evaluating alternatives. It’s rarely one reason that causes a customer to churn. Usually it’s 10. But when they cancel and select a reason from the dropdown, they give you one answer. “Missing features.” “Went with another competitor.” “Things are just different now.” And you never really know the full story. ## The process: discovery and validation So what do you actually do about it? I think about it one of two ways, and either can work depending on your team and how you operate. **Option 1: Sprint methodology.** Pick a period of time (maybe once per quarter) and go deep. Talk to customers. Watch how they use the product. Get into the details. Where are they at the two-year mark? How are they using things differently now? Watch them actually complete tasks. Not session replays. Actually get on a 15-minute call and say “show me how you build this report” or “show me how you set up your schedule.” Watching them is critical. Just asking is not enough. You have to actually see how they use the product. And if you’re really serious, I’d say get on a plane and go to their office. Watch them use your product in their world. You will be flabbergasted at how your product looks in their environment. You might cry. Because it makes sense to you, but it doesn’t make sense to anybody else. Then map the jobs. We do this in Miro. Map out the phases of the overarching job. Every step, every task the user goes through to accomplish it. And then highlight where your product fits. Get specific: this feature is being used at this step. And you’ll see gaps. Tasks where they’re not using your product at all. That’s your opportunity space. **Option 2: Continuous discovery.** This is the aspiration. Teresa Torres coined the term [continuous discovery habits](https://www.producttalk.org/2021/08/product-discovery/), and it basically means you have an ongoing process that identifies opportunities and problems, and a good process for strategically defining solutions. What we typically see is most teams have a continuous solution habit, but none of the discovery and very little of the validation. It’s “I have a whim, I’m going to build it, we’ll see how it works.” Continuous is tougher because it requires real discipline. With sprints, you can commit to a defined period and rally around it. With continuous, you need it baked into how the team operates every single week. Either way, the critical thing is: once you’ve identified opportunities, you still have to validate your ideas. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come up with designs that made total sense to me, put them in front of someone, and they didn’t get it at all. Then someone way smarter than me at UX comes along, makes a few adjustments, and suddenly people get it. Solutioning is hard. But part of the process has to be that we validate our ideas and, when they’re invalidated, we go back to the drawing board. What I don’t recommend is the status quo: making assumptions in a vacuum, building in a vacuum, and pushing code in a vacuum. No discovery. No validation. No UX research. And then being frustrated when nobody uses the feature you just shipped. ## Don’t do random acts of product Emily Kramer says [don’t do random acts of marketing](https://newsletter.mkt1.co/p/marketing-prioritization). I’d say the same thing about product. Don’t do random acts of product improvement. If you’re PLG, product-led growth implies that you expect the most growth to come from product. And if product is the messiest, least-organized function in the organization, your PLG motion will suffer. We just talked to a company recently that’s at about $5M ARR. Super small product and development team (which is honestly impressive). No product analytics. No validation process. No discovery. And the irony is, they were thinking of giving all their investment to marketing. And I’m like, yes, let’s give some to marketing. But a lot of that needs to go to product. Product needs resources. You can’t conquer the world with a couple of sticks and some mayonnaise. Incredible growth comes from balance across all of the growth levers. But what we usually find is all of the eggs are in acquisition. And so much of my job is saying: no, we need to spread these out. If you have money for more eggs, great. But if this is all we have, let’s redistribute. Because customer acquisition is probably your worst growth lever. And that’s the flag I fly the loudest. --- What about you? Are you experiencing value decline and, if so, which of the three causes resonates most? And if you’ve built a discovery process that actually works for your team, I’d love to hear how you structured it. Or if this is where you’re stuck (NRR plateauing, churn creeping up, product roadmap that feels reactive), this is exactly what we help with at DemandMaven. [Book a discovery call with Asia.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP55: DemandMaven 2025 year in review (and what’s next)](https://demandmaven.io/ep55-demandmaven-2025-year-in-review-and-whats-next/) **Published:** February 17, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** ## **Theme of 2025: Alignment** DemandMaven turned eight years old on February 4th. Eight years. I’ve been running this business longer than I’ve been at any full-time, in-house role. Almost as long as my entire career before starting it. That kind of hit me this year in a way it hasn’t before. I haven’t done a proper year in review in a while. I used to do them mid-year, which never felt right. But reflecting from the other side of a full year, with a little distance? This feels like the right time. Last year’s theme, if I’m being honest, was probably survival. 2024 broke me. No new clients for the first four to five months. The tech market was rough. It was the worst year I’ve ever had running DemandMaven. But 2025? The theme was alignment. I stopped trying to force DemandMaven into something it’s not. I stopped chasing the “20-30 person agency” version of success. And I settled into something that actually feels good. We’re making about half of what we made in 2023 (our best year). But I’m more balanced, less stressed, and more aligned with how I want to work than I’ve ever been. DemandMaven is a lifestyle business. And I’m saying that out loud now without flinching. ## **Major 2025 Wins** Honestly? It was a solid year. I really can’t complain. ### **Research Processes: Absolutely Nailed** This is the one I’m most proud of. Our entire qualitative research process now crunches into one week. Jobs to be done, UX, win-loss, competitive intelligence, pricing interviews. Doesn’t matter the type. The full project takes five to six weeks, but the research sprint itself? One week. We can spin up a UX research project in no time. We also got hyper-specific about who we talk to. We pick our panels carefully. We maximize insight potential. And I know a lot of people groan about interviews taking forever, but the way we do it now, it’s a big sprint, a big swing, and we get it done. Being slow is a choice. We choose to be fast. And watching our clients embrace that mindset and carry it forward after our projects end? That’s been really cool to see. ### **Expanded Research Methods** Jobs to be done is great. I love it. But it can’t do everything. So last year I really doubled down on adding more versatile methods. UX interviews, pricing interviews, competitive intelligence, win-loss. Each gives you something different. Competitive intelligence interviews were the surprise hit for me. Hearing how other companies run their operations, where they found success, where they didn’t. Fascinating. And yes, there are ways to do this that are perfectly legal and ethical. Win-loss is tricky (especially for purely self-serve PLG companies where nobody responds to the churn call), but when you have a sales team, it’s powerful. ### **Figured Out How to Get Me to Create Content** I’m going to say this generously, because content is still one of my top challenges. But here’s the breakthrough. With my ADHD diagnosis, I finally understood where and how I need to create. I don’t get a dopamine hit from writing blog posts or LinkedIn posts. I just don’t. I used to, but that’s gone. What I do get energy from is talking. Speaking. Having a conversation. So we figured out that the podcast is the center of DemandMaven’s marketing universe. Everything else gets repurposed from there. Kim and I published 20 episodes in 2025. And I actually enjoy delivering it, which is kind of the whole point. I’ve also gotten better at using AI for my specific process. My tripwire is to speak. So I’ll talk to Claude for 10-20 minutes, take the transcript, and have it help me write it up. The source material is always me. AI just helps me express it consistently. It’s not perfect (sometimes it does cringe stuff and I rewrite it), but it’s helped me actually ship things. ### **Repeat Clients** This was new for us. Usually clients come back after one to three years. But in 2025, a lot of them finished one project and immediately asked: what’s next? I think it’s because of how we work now. More flexible, scope-based projects that naturally lend themselves to continued engagement. ### **Embraced Flexible, Custom Projects** I leaned into fractional CMO work. Pricing projects. Activation work. Hiring projects. We branched out in ways I wouldn’t have expected. I know for a lot of consultancies, doing too many things sounds like the death toll. But I think DemandMaven makes more sense as a full-stack growth provider than as a one-trick turnkey thing. The companies that hire us have challenges across so many functions. Being flexible has worked. The tricky part is that this makes it hard to scale. But that’s kind of the point. ### **Speaking Highlights** Light year for speaking (usually I do three to five), but still had some good ones: - [**SparkTogether**](https://sparktoro.com/blog/a-marketing-conference-that-actually-changes-your-mindset/) (Sparktoro’s conference) where I told stories about big oh-shit moments and client turnarounds - [**Startup Mountain Summit**](https://startupmountainsummit.com/) in Johnson City, Tennessee, teaching early-stage founders about JTBD and customer psychology - [**User Insights podcast**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIUULRxqWME) (run by UserTesting), which was a standout conversation ## **Challenges of 2025** Because consultancies have challenges too, right? ### **Client Acquisition is Always the Thing** It’s tough for every services business. It’s especially tough for someone who hates emailing people and doesn’t want to write unless she’s genuinely excited about something. What’s wild is that 2025 was the year we brought the podcast back, and now we actually get clients from it. We also started showing up in AI searches. People talk to Perplexity and ChatGPT, ask for recommendations, and DemandMaven pops up. Kind of cool. There were two moments last year where I got a little stressed about pipeline. But something always came through. It always worked out. Which brings me to one of my biggest lessons learned (more on that below). ### **Email: Still a Dumpster Fire** My email list? I feel massive guilt about it. I’ll get motivated, send one email, get the dopamine hit, and think I’m good forever. The truth is, I don’t like email. I don’t read it. My inbox is a graveyard. So sending someone an email feels like an apology. But I know that’s how people remember you exist. And how a lot of people buy services. So this is still very much a work in progress. ### **Case Studies: The Consultant’s Dilemma** I was just talking to [April Dunford](https://ca.linkedin.com/in/aprildunford) about this. We’ve literally helped companies triple their MRR. But sometimes those clients won’t do a case study. April’s take was helpful: if you’re a good consultant, your job is to make the client look amazing. From their perspective, they made the smart choice in hiring you. Any result you help them achieve, they see as their own. And honestly, that’s fine. But here’s my PSA: if you have consultants, agencies, or providers you love, do the case study with them. It literally helps them keep going. And the SaaS economics are real. Any MRR we help you lift, you keep making forever. We get paid once. ## **Lessons Learned** ### **The Deliverable Is Not the Work** This is probably the biggest shift I’ve made. I used to put all the energy into the slide deck. The strategy doc. I wanted clients to be blown away when they opened it. Now? The real work is what happens during the project. Can we unblock the team? Can we help them make progress in real time? Including the client in the process along the way has been the single biggest change in how we deliver value. I still build the artifacts. I’m a consultant. But I’m under no illusion that a beautiful slide deck is what creates the outcome. ### **It Kind of Just Always Works Out** This sounds naive. I know it does. But here’s the pattern: every year, I think we might die. It hasn’t happened yet. 2024, I was panicking for five months. Then in July, we got four clients at once. 2025, I was waiting for the shoe to drop. It never did. I don’t think this means I can be passive. But I do think there’s something to trusting the process, showing up consistently, and not manufacturing panic. ### **Goal-Setting and I Are on a Break** 2024 broke my brain around traditional goal-setting. I set aspirational goals, and the first five months made them feel completely irrelevant. It wasn’t that I was giving away my power. It was that I didn’t have control over everything, and that realization changed how I think. I didn’t really set goals for 2025. I’m not really setting them for 2026 either. And I’m trying not to feel bad about it. ## **Theme of 2026: Explore** I’m hesitant to commit to too much. But I have intentions. ### **More Partnerships** This is the big one. We’re not a full-service marketing agency. We’re a full-stack growth consultancy. But there are parts we don’t touch: development, certain marketing execution, product design. I’d love to collaborate with niche specialists where we fill in for each other. We’re already in talks with a pricing consultant where this makes sense. I’m happy to give up the pricing work if it means collaborating on everything else. ### **Work with Design-Forward Companies** I worked with a company called [Makeswift](https://www.makeswift.com/) years ago where the CEO wouldn’t ship anything unless it looked and felt good. At first I thought it was intense. Looking back, I took that experience for granted. I want to feel that again. That mindset where brand and design matter in every part of the experience. ### **More Speaking** Last year was light. I’d like to get back to three to four conferences this year. More than five and I’m brain dead, but I miss having the excuse to travel. I’m already eyeing a few for the second half of the year. ### **Product and Design Work** I just did a project where I actually designed some activation comps and in-app product design changes. Seeing them get implemented, and then seeing users respond better? Super satisfying. I’d love to pair with actual product designers on future activation and retention projects. ### **AI Search Visibility** Nothing about DemandMaven has ever felt traditional. But people are finding us through AI search, and I think there’s something worth leaning into there. ### **Kim’s Demand Recruiting** And in exciting news: Kim is launching [Demand Recruiting](https://www.demandrecruiting.com/), a marketing recruiting service for B2B SaaS companies. It’s a natural extension of the hiring work we’ve done for clients over the years, and I couldn’t be more excited to see it become its own thing. More on that soon. ### **One More Thing: Touch Grass** On the personal side, I’m learning Spanish with an actual teacher (a darling man from Argentina). I’m somewhere between A2 and B1, which means I can read easily but get stuck expressing myself. My goal is to have a full conversation with my abuelita someday. I’m sending my teacher interview clips and Bad Bunny videos as lesson material, so at least the content is fun. And gardening season is coming. Seeds are getting ready. Backpacking trip in March. Maybe Peru at some point? My commitment levels are low right now, but I have a feeling spring will change that. Thanks for reading, for listening, and for being part of the DemandMaven journey for eight years and counting. What are you exploring in 2026? I’d love to hear. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP54: Why copying your competitors might be killing your growth](https://demandmaven.io/ep54-why-copying-your-competitors-might-be-killing-your-growth/) **Published:** December 9, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  Here’s something most founders don’t want to hear: that “winning strategy” you copied from your competitor? It might not work for you at all. I know, I know. You’ve been watching what the big players do, following their playbooks, trying to replicate their success. But when we troubleshoot growth with SaaS companies, copying competitors ends up being one of the biggest traps they fall into – and it’s often one of the hardest patterns to break. The thing is, most founders don’t realize copying is actually what’s holding them back. And that’s exactly why they stay stuck. ## Why copying feels safe (and why that’s dangerous) Copying doesn’t get questioned the same way that original strategy does. There’s way more pressure to “do what works” than there is to figure out what’s right for your unique context. And it makes sense – when you’re trying to survive and grow, looking at what successful companies are doing feels like the safest bet. But here’s what happens: you see a competitor invest heavily in community, or watch Notion crush it with brand ambassadors, or notice Intercom’s gorgeous content marketing – and you think, “We should do that too.” You make the decision quickly, based on what you can see from the outside, and then… you basically never question whether it actually makes sense for you. I’ve seen companies burn through their runway trying to replicate strategies that worked for competitors with completely different contexts. I’ve also seen founders follow the “just do what they’re doing” advice too literally for too long – and while they might not see immediate failure, six to eight months later they realize they’ve invested in the wrong things and quietly pivot away. That wasted time and money? That’s what kills you. Because by the time you notice it’s not working, you’ve already been hemorrhaging resources for months. ## What you’re copying (and when it matters) Not all copying is created equal. Some of it is harmless, expected even. Some of it will destroy your business. ### **The stuff that’s mostly fine** You look at competitors’ website design, their campaign ideas, their channel strategies. You see someone send pineapples as a direct mail campaign and think, “That’s clever, we should try direct mail too.” And you know what? That’s mostly fine. When it’s a tactical campaign, a channel experiment, or visual design inspiration, this is pretty standard operating procedure in marketing. You really don’t need to reinvent the wheel on every single tactic, and learning from what others do is how marketing evolves. Just make sure you’re not assuming their exact execution will work for you. A campaign that works for one audience might completely flop with another. But testing similar ideas? Go for it. ### **Where things get tricky** Then there’s copying positioning, messaging, and go-to-market approach. You see how a competitor talks about themselves and think, “We should position ourselves similarly.” The key here is understanding *why* their positioning works. If you’re a competitor with a similar product serving a similar audience at a similar stage – this might work. But most of the time, you’re not as similar as you think. Most of the companies we work with think they should copy positioning when really they need to find their own unique angle. Your competitor’s messaging works because of their specific context – their market position, their brand equity, their customer base. Lifting it directly usually just makes you sound like a cheaper version of them. ### **The really dangerous stuff** This is where copying becomes existential. Your competitor goes all-in on community. Or they raise a huge round and scale a sales team. Or they pivot to become an AI-first product. And you think, “We need to do that too or we’ll get left behind.” Here you’re not just copying tactics or messaging – you’re copying major strategic decisions that require significant resources, time, and organizational change. And if you make these decisions purely because someone else did? You’re probably making a mistake. Companies like Intercom can invest heavily in content marketing because they have the funding, the team, the market position, and the audience that makes it work. You might have none of those things. That doesn’t mean you can’t invest in content – it means copying their exact strategy won’t work for you. ## Why context is everything So why doesn’t copying work more often? **Context is the answer.** Context means: your stage of growth, your team structure, your funding situation, your market position, your customer base, your product maturity, your founder strengths, your competitive landscape – literally everything that makes your situation unique. Here’s the thing people forget: when you look at successful companies and what they’re doing *now*, you’re seeing the result of hundreds of strategic decisions made over years. You’re seeing them at their current scale with their current resources. Five years ago when they were your size? They were making completely different choices. I remember working with a founder who wanted to copy Notion’s community and brand ambassador program. Makes sense, right? Notion’s community is legendary. But here’s what they missed: - Notion’s core users are product managers who *love* to commune online and share tools - Product managers naturally evangelize products they use - Notion had significant funding to support a community team - Their product naturally lends itself to templates and user-generated content This founder’s product? It was for non-digital-native professionals who barely wanted to be online at all. They didn’t share software tools. They didn’t hang out in online communities. The entire strategy was doomed from the start – not because community is bad, but because the *context* was completely different. ## How to learn from competitors Reading through all this, you might be thinking: “So should I never look at what competitors do?” No – you absolutely should. But you need to do it strategically. ### **Be inspired, not a copycat** When you see something that works for a competitor, ask yourself: - What is the *principle* behind this that I’m drawn to? - What about their context makes this work for them? - What would the version of this look like that’s true to *my* context? For example: Instead of “Intercom invested in content marketing, so should we,” think “Intercom built brand awareness through thought leadership. How can we build brand awareness in a way that fits our resources and audience?” ### **Copy with constraints** If you’re going to copy something more directly (a campaign, a channel strategy), give yourself constraints: - Test it small first before going all-in - Set clear success metrics before you start - Have a kill switch – decide in advance when you’ll stop if it’s not working - Adapt it to your audience, don’t just copy-paste ### **Learn the process, not the output** Sometimes the best thing you can copy is *how* a company makes decisions, not *what* they decide. If a competitor is crushing it, study: - How do they likely prioritize initiatives? - What hypotheses are they probably testing? - What does their decision-making process probably look like? Then build your own version of that process. This is way more valuable than copying their latest product launch. ## When copying works Here’s the nuance: sometimes copying *is* the right move. It works when you have extremely similar context – same stage, same market, same customer type, same resources. This is rare, but it happens. It also works when everyone is zigging and you need to zig too. Sometimes market forces are so strong that you have to follow the wave. When everyone started adding AI features in 2023, fighting that current would have been stupid for many companies. And look, if you’re copying tactics rather than strategy, you’re usually fine. Running a similar email campaign? No problem. Copying someone’s entire go-to-market approach? That’s dangerous territory. Early-stage founders get a bit more leeway here too. Pre-product-market-fit, sometimes “good enough” is better than perfect. Copy a competitor’s pricing structure or website layout so you can focus on building product. Just know you’ll need to revisit it later. ## Translate, don’t copy Here’s what I want you to remember: The most successful founders don’t copy their competitors. They *translate* what they see into their own context. Translation means: - I see competitor X is investing heavily in community → I should figure out the best way for *my* customers to connect with each other, which might not be an online community - I see competitor Y has gorgeous brand design → I should invest in brand in a way that’s appropriate for *my* stage and budget - I see competitor Z raised $50M and is scaling fast → I should figure out the right growth pace for *my* business model You’re not avoiding learning from others. You’re being strategic about what you take and how you apply it. ## What’s next If you’re feeling inspired by competitors right now, here’s what to do: Make a list of everything you’ve copied or want to copy in the last year. For each item, ask: Did we/would we do this if our competitor wasn’t doing it? For anything that’s a “no”: What’s the version of this that fits our context? For big strategic bets, before you commit, write down: What about our context makes this likely to work? What about our context might make this fail? The commitment – mentally and energetically – to think strategically about what you copy versus what you originate is the hard part. But it’s also one of the most important things you can do for your business. Easier than wasting six months on a strategy that was never going to work for you. You just have to do it. Need help figuring out what strategies make sense for your unique context? That’s something we can help with. We help SaaS companies troubleshoot slow growth by looking at what’s happening in your business – not just what’s working for your competitors. If you’re tired of copying strategies that don’t pan out, [let’s talk.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP53: Why research projects fail (and how to prevent it)](https://demandmaven.io/ep53-why-research-projects-fail-and-how-to-prevent-it/) **Published:** December 2, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** A few weeks ago at Spark Together, I found myself in the same conversation I’ve had dozens of times with other consultants and researchers: “How do you make sure clients actually *do* something with the research?” “What do you do when they hire you, you deliver great insights, and then… nothing happens?” “How do you avoid projects that just sit in a deck somewhere gathering digital dust?” These questions come up constantly because research projects fail *all the time*. Not because the research was bad. Not because the insights weren’t valuable. But because somewhere between “here are the findings” and “let’s execute on this,” something breaks down. After eight years of running research projects—and plenty of hard-earned lessons about what works and what spectacularly doesn’t—I’ve learned that research failure comes in two flavors: **delivery failure** (you can’t deliver the research at all) and **impact failure** (you deliver it, but nothing changes afterward). Delivery failure sucks, but it’s rare. Impact failure? That’s where most of the tension lives. And it’s usually avoidable. Let me walk you through why research projects fail from both sides—the consultant perspective and the client perspective—and more importantly, how to actually prevent it. ## The two types of research failure Let’s define what we mean by “failure” because it’s not always obvious. **Delivery failure** is when you literally can’t deliver the research. Maybe you can’t get people on the phone. Maybe the analysis falls apart. Maybe the data just isn’t there. This is the worst-case scenario, but honestly? It’s not that common. **Impact failure** is far more insidious. This is when you conduct the research, deliver beautiful insights, present everything perfectly… and then nothing happens. The research sits there in no man’s land. It doesn’t unlock anything. It doesn’t change any decisions. It just exists. Impact failure is where most of the pain lives because you’ve spent resources—time, money, energy—for essentially nothing. Or worse, you got value out of it, but that value never transferred to other departments or functions. And here’s the thing: **impact failure is preventable 70% of the time**. (The other 30% likely due to reasons outside of your control). ## From the consultant’s perspective: clients aren’t buying research If you’re a consultant or agency selling research, here’s the first truth bomb you need to internalize: **Clients aren’t hiring research for the sake of research.** They’re hiring research in service of progress in whatever program or function they’re trying to improve. Clients are ultimately focused on outcomes—improving customer acquisition, increasing retention, figuring out pricing, whatever. They’re not hiring you because “knowing your customers” sounds cool. Research is a means to an end, not the end itself. The disconnect happens when consultants pitch research like it’s the product, when actually the client is buying the outcome. You’re selling the research, but they’re buying the end result. Think about it: most teams aren’t conducting research for fun. There’s always a reason. Your job as the consultant is to understand what that reason is, make sure you’re aligned with their goals, and ensure no one feels like it’s a waste because everyone knows what the ultimate objectives were. ### Screening for clients who will actually use your work I’ve heard from plenty of consultant friends about clients who hire them just to check a box. Or because “everyone’s hiring a research consultant, so we should too.” These projects almost never go anywhere. But here’s the good news: **you can screen for this upfront**. During discovery, I ask questions like: - Have you ever done a project like this before? - What happened in that project? What did you execute after? - What types of projects have you executed in the past to get the results you were looking for? If a team has no history of conducting research *and* no history of successfully troubleshooting problems and iterating, that’s a yellow flag. It doesn’t mean don’t work with them—it means you need to set expectations differently. I look for one of two things: 1. **A history of deploying research insights** (even if it’s messy) 2. **A history of problem-solving and iteration** in general Teams that know how to troubleshoot their own issues and have successfully tested, learned, and adapted—those teams will likely apply your research insights to their problem-solving process, even if they’ve never formally done “research” before. ### The person who hires you matters Who’s actually hiring you? That matters more than you think. I typically work with executive leaders, CEOs, or founders because those are the people with enough internal influence to actually move things. When someone more junior with less influence hires you, you might deliver great insights, but they may not have the power to implement anything or influence anyone. There are exceptions, of course—sometimes you’re essentially staff augmentation, working hand-in-hand with someone to create impact together. But if you’re tackling something large that requires buy-in from multiple executives, entering at the wrong level can doom the project from the start. Ask yourself: does this person have enough influence, power, and leeway to actually facilitate change with what I’m going to provide? And if not them, then who would you need to get in front of? ### Taking clients from A to B (not A to Z) My business coach Charlie once told me something that completely shifted how I approach consulting: “If your client is at point A and you’re all the way at point Z, your job is to get them from A to B first. *Then* B to C. *Then* C to D. They can’t go with you to Mars if you can’t first get them to zero gravity.” **You can’t expect clients to just “get it” if you’re not willing to lead them there.** Some founders have never thought about growth as loops versus funnels. Some teams have only ever focused on marketing and sales, not realizing that exponential growth requires investing in activation, retention, pricing, and operations too. If you see a massive opportunity—say, in pricing optimization—but the team has their eyes 100% on acquisition, you might need to educate them first. Show them the data. Walk them through case studies. Send them resources. Help them see what you see. Not every client will care, and that’s okay. But the ones who are open and willing to work with you? They deserve your time and energy in educating them. ## Getting buy-in: the make-or-break factor Let’s talk about buy-in because this is where most research projects fall apart. There are two levels of buy-in you need: ### 1. Buy-in on the work itself Your primary project sponsor needs to see that the research you’re doing is in service of an outcome they care about. And they need to understand that they probably won’t achieve that outcome efficiently (or at all) without doing this work. But here’s the thing: **it’s usually not just one person who needs to be bought in.** It’s that person’s team, their peers, possibly their boss. You have multiple levels of influence to manage. Most clients won’t think of this on their own. They won’t proactively say, “You should probably talk to my VP and a few members of my team and the head of product.” **You need to pitch this to them.** Say something like: “I’d like to talk to the people this work will eventually touch. Who else should be part of this conversation?” When you position it that way, your project lead will usually realize, “Oh, actually yes—this work is going to touch these people in these ways.” If you’re only ever presenting insights to your one project sponsor, and you’re depending on them to distribute the findings to everyone else, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Unless they’re working hand-in-hand with you through the entire process, they’re never going to position your work the same way you would. ### 2. Buy-in through the research process itself Here’s something I learned from [Bob Moesta](https://www.demandsidesales.com/), co-architect of Jobs to Be Done: **insights are not truly absorbed unless you’re part of the process**. We used to be very anti-client-on-the-call. We thought it would bias the interview. And yes, if you’re Rand Fishkin or some other highly influential person in your space, you absolutely will bias the interview. People will be too nice. They won’t give you critical feedback. But for most people? **The bias concern doesn’t impact it that much.** I won’t say it has zero impact, but it’s not big enough to change our insights. Even when we conduct research on behalf of clients, interviewees still kind of assume we’re part of the company anyway. They’ll say “your product” even though we have no idea what they’re talking about. The perceived separation isn’t as strong as we think. And here’s what we’ve learned after years of doing this both ways: **When people aren’t part of the research process, they simply don’t absorb it the same way.** You can record Zoom calls all you want. Nobody listens to them. It’s the same thing that happens when you’re standing in line at the grocery store—you just dissociate, and start doomscrolling. It’s really hard for people to be present with a recording versus being on the actual call. I had someone push back on this once: “But you can attend a call and ignore it too.” Yes. That’s why you need a debrief immediately after. ### The debrief is where the magic happens After every interview, we do a 20-30 minute debrief with whoever from the client side attended. We do this for a few reasons, but largely to create buy-in, and to create accountability so everyone is encouraged to actively listen. We break down: - What we heard - What stood out to us - The four forces (Push, Pull, Anxiety, Habit) that emerged - What Jobs to Be Done surfaced - Anything else interesting or surprising This is where buy-in actually gets created. When the client is part of this debrief process, you’re not debating what you heard—they heard it too. You’re collaborating on what it means and what to do about it. By the fifth interview, you’ve usually already started mapping out next steps together. And because they were there, you don’t have to “sell” them on the findings. They’re already convinced. Plus, they’re encouraged not to show up empty-handed to every debrief. It’s embarrassing to attend one and have nothing to say because they weren’t really listening. ### A cautionary tale: when clients aren’t part of the process We once worked with a very large enterprise SaaS company. Huge organization. They hired us to conduct research for a few of their products, specifically to help marketing better understand customers and improve activation, messaging, and conversion rates. The priorities shifted from when we first talked to them—it started as positioning and messaging work, then became more about conversion rates. Fine, that happens. But here’s where it went wrong: **We couldn’t get anyone from the client side to actually attend the interviews.** This was before we started enforcing client attendance and mandatory debriefs. We thought, “We’ll record everything, they can listen later.” We conducted over 100 interviews. I remembered almost every single conversation because I was there. I was intimately familiar with the data. I analyzed it myself. But the team? They didn’t attend. They didn’t listen to recordings (because who has time?). And when we emerged from our research “black hole” with all these insights, we had to convince them of what we heard instead of collaborating on what to do about it. Despite all our preparation, analysis, and presentations, the findings were met with skepticism. Not because the research was bad—**because they weren’t part of the process.** The team leader did their best to listen to recordings, but they don’t have endless bandwidth. And even they had a hard time really absorbing “Okay, what did we actually hear in this interview?” We provided clear insights. We showed them how to apply it to their work. But the team still struggled because they just weren’t part of it. **That’s impact failure.** ## From the client’s perspective: when to invest in research If you’re in-house and trying to figure out when research makes sense, here’s my framework: **Do research when you need to make big decisions or achieve big outcomes that have real risk or opportunity attached to them.** Research—or really, insights gathering—is critical when: - The decision dramatically impacts your growth trajectory - There’s high risk if you get it wrong - There’s high opportunity cost if you miss it - You’re troubleshooting a problem and nothing has worked For example: Can you imagine doing pricing work without conducting a single interview or running a survey? You’d just be guessing. Maybe educated guessing, but still guessing. Or trying to improve activation rates without understanding what’s actually blocking users? You’d just be throwing darts. ### Research is fast if you want it to be One of the biggest myths I hear: “Research takes too long.” **Slowness is a choice.** We recently kicked off a project and sourced research participants in 24 hours using platforms like [Respondent.io](https://www.respondent.io/) and [User Interviews](https://www.userinterviews.com/). Research can happen *fast*. Even if you don’t have budget, you can still be scrappy: - Reach out on LinkedIn - Post in relevant communities - Ask your customer success team to facilitate intros - Offer non-monetary incentives (donations to charity, swag, access to features) - Just… ask for free (we did this for years and people still said yes) Think about it like journalism. Journalists aren’t paying people for interviews—people talk because they want to be heard, because they care about the topic, because it matters to them. You don’t need hundreds of interviews either. For Jobs to Be Done work, Bob Moesta rarely does more than 10-12 per segment. By the fifth interview, you’re already seeing patterns. ### A recent example: competitive intelligence that shifted everything At my fractional CMO client, we recently did competitive intelligence research that completely changed how we thought about a particular department. We were trying to decide whether to invest more in a specific function (I’m keeping this vague on purpose). We didn’t know if we weren’t doing it right or if we just needed to pivot entirely. So we interviewed ex-department leaders from competitors—specifically people who hadn’t worked there in a while (we didn’t want them to feel like they were sharing trade secrets). We asked: - How did you structure your team? - What were your goals? Did you hit them? - What did good performance look like? - How much did you invest in this versus other areas? We learned how competitors were structuring their sales functions (we’d been struggling with SDR quotas and team size), how much they were investing in marketing (turns out, not a lot), and what they felt their differentiators were (spoiler: nobody had real differentiators). This research validated that investing in brand was a huge opportunity, that we needed to build toward a clear product differentiator, and that throwing more money at sales might not be how we “win.” **That’s insights gathering in action.** We couldn’t have made that decision well in a vacuum. ### When research leads nowhere: another cautionary tale We once worked with a company where we were hired to improve activation rates. The research was clear: new users were struggling with specific UX issues, and the signup flow made it impossible to understand pipeline quality. The software was a desktop add-on to a Microsoft product, which made tracking incredibly difficult. We identified clear solutions: - Create browser-based accounts first, *then* trigger the desktop download - Add qualification questions during signup to understand who was coming in - Improve the UX of the actual download and setup process We did UX research. We watched users struggle. The team acknowledged the problems—they didn’t disagree that issues existed. But then? **They decided not to prioritize any of it.** They took the smallest possible swings. Did the bare minimum. And ultimately, nothing really changed. Why? I think improving activation felt too daunting. Even though the scope was clearly defined, the CEO had a hard time mentally committing to making changes to the core experience. **The irony? They hired us specifically for growth.** Sometimes hiring a consultant doesn’t wave a magic wand. If you want to see growth, you have to *deploy* growth. You need a team ready to execute. That’s the harsh reality. Research can’t force you to act. It can only illuminate the path. ## How to make research actually work Whether you’re the consultant or the client, here’s what needs to be true for research to create real impact: ### For consultants: 1. **Understand what outcome the client is actually buying.** Research is in service of something. Know what that something is. 2. **Screen for clients who will act.** Look for a history of problem-solving, iteration, or previous research deployment. If they’ve never done anything like this before, set expectations accordingly. 3. **Enter at the right level.** Work with people who have influence and power to create change. 4. **Get buy-in from everyone the work will touch.** Don’t rely on your one project sponsor to distribute insights—talk to the team yourself. 5. **Make clients part of the process.** Have them attend interviews. Do debriefs after every single one. This is non-negotiable if you want impact. 6. **Don’t disappear into a black hole.** Fast, iterative research beats three-month deep dives that end with a 100-page report nobody reads. ### For clients: 1. **Do research when the stakes are high.** Big decisions, big opportunities, big risks—that’s when you need insights, not just dashboards. 2. **Participate in the research.** Attend interviews. Join debriefs. You won’t absorb it the same way from recordings. 3. **Be ready to act.** Don’t commission research unless you’re actually willing to execute on what you find. Otherwise, you’re just wasting money. 4. **Use research to make numbers talk.** Quantitative data tells you *what* is happening. Qualitative research tells you *why*. You need both. 5. **Move fast.** Research doesn’t have to take months. You can source participants in 24-48 hours. You can get meaningful insights from 5-10 interviews. 6. **Build insights gathering as a muscle.** Teams that do this well make better decisions faster. They challenge assumptions. They don’t guess when they can know. ## The bottom line Research projects fail when they’re treated as the end goal instead of a means to an end. They fail when clients aren’t part of the process. They fail when there’s no clear outcome the research is in service of. They fail when teams aren’t ready to actually do anything with the insights. But when research is done *right*—when it’s fast, collaborative, and directly tied to outcomes that matter—it becomes one of the most powerful tools in your growth toolkit. The question isn’t whether you should do research. The question is: what decision are you trying to make, and what insights do you need to make it well? Answer that, and you’re already halfway there. **Need help designing research that actually drives action?** Let’s talk. In just 45 minutes, we can identify the biggest opportunities to explore and what insights you actually need to move forward—[book a discovery call](https://www.demandmaven.io/discovery-call). *For more on research methodologies mentioned in this post, check out:* - [Teresa Torres’ Continuous Discovery Habits](https://www.producttalk.org/continuous-discovery-habits/) - [Bob Moesta’s Demand-Side Sales](https://www.demandsidesales.com/) - [Spark Toro for audience research](https://sparktoro.com/) - [Respondent.io for participant sourcing](https://www.respondent.io/) - [User Interviews for research recruitment](https://www.userinterviews.com/) **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP50: Why bootstrapped founders ignore operations (and why it's costing them growth)](https://demandmaven.io/ep50-why-bootstrapped-founders-ignore-operations-and-why-its-costing-them-growth/) **Published:** November 5, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** You know the growth levers by now. Get your activation rates up. Fix your revenue cohort retention. Stop guessing on pricing. Improve your go-to-market strategy. These are the usual suspects when founders think about unlocking growth — and for good reason. They’re critical, they’re measurable, and when you fix them, you see results. But there’s a fifth growth lever that flies completely under the radar, especially for bootstrapped founders: **operations**. And before you roll your eyes and think “operations sounds boring,” hear me out. Because I’ve watched companies 4x their revenue by fixing this one thing. I’ve seen CEOs go from constantly having their hair on fire to actually thinking strategically about their business. And I’ve watched teams go from spinning their wheels to executing with clarity and purpose. Operations isn’t sexy. It doesn’t have a clever acronym or a viral framework. But it might be the most powerful growth lever you’re not pulling. ## The growth levers you already know (and the one you’re ignoring) When I work with SaaS companies under $10M in ARR, there are typically four main reasons growth gets stuck: 1. **Value decline** — Customers hire your product for one job, but over time, new jobs emerge that your product doesn’t solve. Eventually they churn because the value declined relative to their evolving needs. 2. **Activation issues** — Everyone obsesses over acquisition, but if people don’t get activated once they sign up or start a trial, none of that marketing effort matters. 3. **Customer acquisition problems** — Misaligned messaging, wrong channels, targeting the wrong customer. You already know this one intimately. 4. **Pricing** — Most bootstrapped founders set pricing once and never touch it for 5-10 years. Meanwhile, they could probably double or triple it and keep their raving fans. These four are table stakes. But there’s a fifth that most founders completely overlook: **operations**. When I say operations, I’m not talking about “ops” in the traditional enterprise sense with its own department and fancy tools. I’m talking about something much more fundamental: **Operations is how you deliver value and how you internally structure yourself to deliver that value.** That’s it. It includes: - Who’s on your team and in what roles - How you decide what work gets done - The processes you use to execute that work - How often you meet and what you talk about in those meetings - What you measure and report against - How you communicate and make decisions You might not *think* you’re doing operations, but you absolutely are. The question is: are you doing it intentionally, or is it just… happening to you? ## Why bootstrapped founders are blind to operations Here’s the thing about being bootstrapped: you can literally do whatever you want. No board breathing down your neck. No investors demanding specific metrics. No forced structure or frameworks you have to follow. This freedom is simultaneously your greatest strength and your Achilles’ heel when it comes to operations. VC-funded companies are often *pushed* to think about operations. The board wants to see how resources are being allocated. They want to understand the org structure. They’re asking questions about how decisions get made and who’s accountable for what. But bootstrapped founders? They can coast. And many do — until operations becomes the bottleneck that’s secretly strangling their growth. I’ve seen this pattern play out dozens of times: - 30-40 direct reports, all going to one CEO - No middle management layer - Constant context-switching between one-on-ones or async check-ins - The CEO running marketing, product, engineering, and sales simultaneously - Zero time to think strategically because they’re always reacting That CEO is drowning. And the worst part? **Fixing operations late in the journey is exponentially harder than being intentional about it early.** To restructure a flat organization of 30 contractors into something with actual layers and accountability? That’s massive change management with no one to help you execute it because, well, you structured it so you’re the only one who can. ## When operations becomes your growth unlock Let me tell you about a company I worked with a couple of years ago. They had relatively junior marketing team, an engineering team, and a couple of co-founders who oversaw marketing, product, and engineering respectively. On paper, they were doing a lot of things right. They were following EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). They had weekly marketing meetings. They were trying to be strategic. But growth was stagnant. And after digging in, it became clear that their biggest problem wasn’t their go-to-market strategy or their pricing or even their product. It was operations. Here’s what was happening: The CEO was running the weekly marketing meetings, and because the team was junior (think coordinators and assistants, not directors or VPs), they couldn’t contribute at the strategic level EOS requires. The CEO would throw out ideas in meetings. The junior team would say “yes” and go execute. Then the CEO would be surprised later by what they’d committed to, and the team would realize they’d already done work that maybe wasn’t the right priority. Nobody was thriving. The CEO was frustrated. The team was spinning their wheels. **The problem wasn’t the people. It wasn’t even EOS itself. The problem was that their operational structure didn’t match their team’s actual capabilities.** So we made changes: - Restructured how the marketing team was organized - Changed the meeting cadence and what we discussed in those meetings - Put the CEO on the sidelines for certain conversations so the team could shine - Created a new system for prioritizing projects so only the best ideas made it through We also tackled go-to-market strategy, messaging, and positioning. And yes, there was some product work too — it’s never just one thing. But that operational restructuring? That was a huge piece of what unlocked growth. The company 2x’d. Then more recently, they 2x’d again. They’ve now quadrupled from where they were when we started working together. And along the way, they hired a CMO who now oversees the marketing team. The CEO and CMO liaise on strategy. The junior team has clear structure and knows what they’re doing. **That key hire — that operational change — unlocked growth.** ## You’re already doing operations (you’re just not aware of it) Here’s where this gets a bit philosophical, but stay with me. It’s kind of like politics. You may not *do* politics, but politics is doing you. You may not *think* about operations, but you are absolutely operating. You’re executing processes right now. You have a way you make decisions. You have some structure (even if it’s just “it’s all me”). The question isn’t whether you have operations. The question is: **How aware are you of your operations, and are they actually serving you?** I think about someone like Arvid Kahl, who runs The Bootstrapped Founder and Podscan. Arvid is incredibly intentional about how he operates. He knows what he’s optimizing for. He knows what trade-offs he’s making. He’s both aware *and* intentional. (He’d probably joke it’s because he’s German, but I digress.) That awareness and intention is what separates operational excellence from operational chaos. When you’re not aware of how you’re operating, you can’t improve it. You can’t see what’s working and what’s not. You’re just… going through the motions, wondering why everything feels so damn hard. ## The four-pillar operations audit framework If you’re reading this thinking “okay, maybe operations is a problem for me,” here’s where to start. I want you to audit four key areas of your operations: ### Pillar 1: The right people in the right seats First, ask yourself: **Do I actually have the right people in the right seats?** This is an EOS concept, but it’s critically important. You might have someone in the marketing seat, for example, but when you’re honest with yourself, you really wish you had a CMO or someone more senior. Or maybe you’ve got all individual contributors but you’re missing that middle management layer that would free you up to think strategically. The key here is awareness. Are you clear on who’s in what seat? Are those the right seats for your stage of growth? And are the people in those seats actually the right fit? ### Pillar 2: Resource allocation Second question: **Are the resources you have — both cash and people — getting spent in the most effective way possible?** Maybe you have budget to hire someone but you’re not pulling the trigger. Or maybe you’re spending money on tools and contractors when you’d be better served by one strategic hire. This is about examining where your money and time are going and asking if those resources are truly being allocated to create the most value. ### Pillar 3: Process clarity and efficiency Third: **Are your processes clear, effective, and as efficient as they need to be?** This one’s tricky because if you’re not aware, it’s hard to see. So the first step is simply getting aware. What are your processes? How do you currently execute things? When you think about designing a feature, creating a campaign, or making a decision, what’s the actual process? Then ask: Does this work? Could it be better? Are there more effective or efficient ways to get the same outcome for less time, money, or resources? This is probably the hardest pillar of the four. If you’re not an ops guru, consider bringing in focused consultants for specific areas. Need help with enterprise sales processes? Hire an enterprise sales consultant. Struggling with marketing project management? Work with a marketing consultant who can help you structure that function. You don’t need to figure it all out yourself. ### Pillar 4: Decision-making and communication Fourth and finally: **How do you make decisions, and how do you communicate with your team (or with yourself)?** This is the softer, more psychological side of operations, but it matters enormously. I recently asked a CEO I work with: “How do you like to disagree?” His answer was illuminating. He’s hyper data-driven. He wants proof. He wants the report in hand, the stats, the analysis. He doesn’t thrive in willy-nilly, messy decision-making environments — he needs to at least *know* what the data says, even if he ultimately goes against it. That’s a conscious choice. He’s aware of it. He’s communicated it to everyone on the team. Not all teams are like that. Some teams need you to wrap hard news in bubble wrap and tissue paper before you share it. Others (like this CEO’s team) just want the straight facts, no posturing, radical candor style. The key is knowing how *you* want to make decisions, what’s actually important to you, and how you want to communicate and show up within your team (or with yourself if it’s just you). If you’re looking for support here, this is exactly what executive coaches are for. ## The operations unlock you didn’t know you needed Operations probably isn’t the sexiest topic I’ve ever written about. It doesn’t have the immediate dopamine hit of “double your prices!” or the clear before-and-after of fixing your revenue cohort retention chart. But here’s what I know after working with dozens of companies: **Operations can be the difference between a CEO who’s constantly drowning and a CEO who actually has time to think strategically about where their business is going.** It can be the difference between a team that’s spinning their wheels and a team that executes with clarity. And it can absolutely be the difference between stagnant growth and 2x, 3x, even 4x growth. You’re already operating. You’re already making operational decisions every single day. The only question is: are you doing it intentionally, or is it just happening to you? If you’re stuck on growth and you’ve already tackled acquisition, activation, pricing, and product, it’s time to look at the fifth lever. It might just be the unlock you didn’t know you needed. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP49: Can you be too early to a marketing channel?](https://demandmaven.io/ep49-can-you-be-too-early-to-a-marketing-channel/) **Published:** October 28, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** I’ve been having this conversation a lot lately with founders: “Why isn’t this channel working for us?” And honestly? Sometimes the answer isn’t that the channel doesn’t work. It’s that you’re too early. Let me explain what I mean by that, because I think this is one of the most misunderstood concepts in early-stage SaaS marketing. ## The false positive vs. false negative problem Here’s what typically happens: A founder starts investing in a marketing channel – let’s say paid ads – and one of two things occurs. **False positive**: You get a bunch of trials or signups, and you think “Hell yeah, this is working!” But then those people don’t convert to paying customers. Or worse, they convert but churn within a few months. The channel looks like it’s performing on the surface, but when you dig into the actual trial-to-paid conversion rates or long-term retention, it’s dramatically underperforming your organic baseline. **False negative**: You spend money on ads, get minimal results, and conclude “Ads don’t work for us.” But actually, the channel could work, you’re just missing other critical pieces that would make it effective. Maybe your activation experience isn’t converting trialists well. Maybe your product isn’t retaining customers long enough to justify the CAC. Maybe your messaging is attracting the wrong audience entirely. Both scenarios are incredibly common, and both can lead you to make expensive mistakes. ## When surface-level metrics lie I see this pattern repeatedly: Companies look at their acquisition metrics at the aggregate level and make decisions based on incomplete information. For example, you might look at “cost per trial” across your entire ads program and think you’re doing great. But what if you dug into the campaign level? You might discover that some campaigns generate tons of trials that never convert, while others generate fewer trials but those people actually become long-term customers. The campaigns that look “expensive” on a cost-per-trial basis might actually be your most efficient when you measure cost-per-paying-customer or customer LTV. **The lesson**: You can’t evaluate a channel at the aggregate level. You have to get granular – campaign by campaign, segment by segment – to understand what’s actually working and why. ## So when are you “too early” to a channel? Based on working with dozens of companies at this stage, here are the signals I look for: ### 1. Your product can’t close the deal This is especially true if you’re product-led growth (PLG). If your activation rates are sitting at 15% or lower, spending money on acquisition is basically lighting cash on fire. I worked with a founder last year who was *insistent* that 15% activation was normal and couldn’t be improved. “No one else is doing better,” he told me. “It’s impossible.” Except it’s not impossible at all. After we did the work to optimize their activation experience, their conversion rate doubled. Completely doubled. And suddenly, every channel they were testing became twice as efficient. Here’s the thing: If you can imagine getting double the customers from the same number of trials, that’s infinitely more efficient growth than continuing to pour money into acquisition when half your signups are falling out of your funnel. **The question to ask**: Is the channel failing, or is your product failing to activate and retain the people the channel is bringing you? ### 2. You don’t know which customer segments convert best Early-stage founders often tell me they could target five different customer segments. And sure, maybe all five segments *could* use the product. But which one is going to stick around? Which one gets value fastest? Which one is willing to pay more? If you don’t know the answers to those questions, you’re going to waste a ton of money testing campaigns across all five segments when maybe only one is actually viable right now. ### 3. Your retention is a dumpster fire If you’re losing 50% or more of your customers within the first six months, please – *please* – don’t go spend $20K/month on an acquisition channel yet. I don’t care how much funding you have. Spending money to acquire customers you can’t retain is the fastest way to burn through cash while creating a false sense of momentum. Your MRR might go up for a few months, but then it’ll plateau or even decline as churn catches up with you. Fix retention first. Then scale acquisition. (For more on understanding your retention, check out [why revenue cohort retention is the sneakiest chart](https://demandmaven.substack.com/p/revenue-cohort-retention-the-sneakiest).) ### 4. You don’t have baseline data on what channels your customers come from I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked a founder “How do your best customers find you?” and gotten a shrug in response. Do the customer research first. Run 10-15 customer interviews. Ask them about their journey – how they realized they had a problem, what they did to solve it, how they found your product, what made them choose you over alternatives. This research doesn’t take six months. It takes a few weeks, maybe a month if you’re slow to schedule. But it will save you from spending $50K testing channels that your customers would never use anyway. ## But channels stack – they don’t work in isolation Here’s the other thing people forget: marketing channels aren’t independent systems. They work together as part of an ecosystem. Ads feed into your website, which feeds into your product, which feeds into your email nurture, which might loop back to retargeting ads. Partnerships might drive webinar registrations, which get promoted through email, which get amplified by SEO content. When you evaluate a channel in isolation, you’re missing the full picture. For example, imagine you run a partnership program. Those partnerships don’t just generate direct referrals – they might also drive webinar registrations. Those webinar attendees become email subscribers. Those email subscribers might see your retargeting ads later. Some eventually start trials. It’s all connected. So when you evaluate whether partnerships are “working,” you can’t just look at direct attribution from partner referrals. You need to understand how partnerships influence the entire journey. **The takeaway**: If you’re evaluating a channel purely on last-touch attribution, you’re probably wrong about whether it’s working. ## The right time to invest in channels So when *should* you invest in scaling acquisition channels? Here’s my checklist: - **You have strong retention –** at minimum, you’re retaining 60%+ of revenue after six months, ideally closer to 80-100%+ after 12 months - **You understand your customer segments –** you know who converts best, who pays more, who sticks around longest - **Your activation rates are healthy –** if you’re PLG, you should be converting at least 20%+ of trialists to paid (if you’re not there yet, work on activation first) - **You have qualitative data –** you’ve done customer interviews and understand the actual journey people take before they buy - **You have hypotheses about which channels make sense –** based on your research, you have educated guesses about where your customers hang out and how they make buying decisions If you’re checking most of these boxes? Then yes, it’s probably time to scale acquisition. But if you’re missing more than one or two of these? You’re too early. Invest in getting these fundamentals right first. ## When conventional wisdom doesn’t apply Here’s something that challenges the conventional playbook: lead generation. Most SaaS advice says “don’t waste money on lead generation – focus on demand generation and sales-ready leads.” And that’s solid advice for many companies. But what if your sales cycle is really long? Like, years long? In some markets, buyers take years to be ready. They need to experience certain life changes, reach certain business milestones, or develop specific pain points before they’re even in-market. In those situations, generating leads from people who aren’t ready to buy *right now* might actually be smart strategy. You’re planting seeds and staying top-of-mind so that when they *are* ready, you’re the obvious choice. **The point**: Context matters. What works for one company in one market might not work for you. Don’t blindly follow playbooks – understand your specific situation first. ## When you’re too early for different reasons There’s another way you can be too early to a channel, and it’s not about false positives or negatives. It’s about strategic timing. Some programs and channels require a certain level of maturity to work: **Partnerships and community** can be too early if you don’t have enough traction for the network effects to kick in. You need a critical mass of users, customers, or audience members for these programs to really work. **Outbound sales** can be too early if you don’t have enough validation that your product can stand on its own two feet. If you’re still figuring out your messaging and positioning, burning through a sales team’s time with a half-baked pitch is expensive. **Content marketing / SEO** can be too early if your positioning isn’t clear yet. You’ll end up creating content that misses the mark and waste months building the wrong foundation. The pattern? These programs work best when you have other fundamentals in place first. They’re not bad channels — they’re just multipliers. And multipliers don’t help much when you’re multiplying zero. ## A final word on being too early Look, I get it. When you’re an early-stage founder, you feel this pressure to “just start executing.” You see other companies running ads or building big content machines, and you think you should be doing that too. But here’s the truth: You can’t toe-dip into this. You either commit to doing it right – which means having the fundamentals in place first – or you’re going to waste a lot of money learning lessons the hard way. Some companies get lucky. They skip steps and it works out. But that’s not the norm. The norm is spending $50-100K over six months only to realize you were missing critical pieces that would have made everything more effective. Do the foundational work first. Understand your customers. Fix your retention. Optimize your activation. Build a solid baseline. *Then* pour gas on the fire. **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP48: Why spinning off a SaaS from your non-SaaS business is harder than you think](https://demandmaven.io/ep48-why-spinning-off-a-saas-from-your-non-saas-business-is-harder-than-you-think/) **Published:** October 21, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:**  # Why spinning off a SaaS from your non-SaaS business is harder than you think Every year, I have around 10 to 15 calls with non-SaaS companies that have decided to create a SaaS product. Usually it’s a consulting firm, an agency, or some kind of services business that’s built internal software to deliver their work faster and cheaper. And now they want to spin it off and sell it as a standalone product. I get why this seems appealing. You’ve already built the thing. You’re using it with clients. It works. So why not package it up, slap a price tag on it, and sell it to people who aren’t working with you? Here’s why: Because you’re not just launching a new product. You’re starting an entirely new business. And unless you understand what that actually entails, you’re going to waste a *lot* of money learning the hard way. ## How this usually starts There are a couple of common paths that lead companies down this road. ### Path #1: The efficiency play You’re a consulting firm or services business delivering high-value projects — maybe $250K to $2M contracts. To deliver those projects efficiently, you build internal tools. Maybe it’s a project management system. Maybe it’s specialized software for your industry. Maybe it’s just a better way to track time or manage deliverables. At first, this software is just part of your service offering. But then you start thinking: “What if we productized this? What if we made it its own thing?” You give it a name. You refine it a bit. Maybe you even include it as an add-on in your consulting deals. And then someone has the brilliant idea: “What if we spun this off as its own business unit and sold it outside of our consulting agreements?” ### Path #2: The siren song of software I lived this one when I worked at a consulting firm years ago. We would hear constant whispers about how software is *so much better* than services. “The margins are incredible!” “Growth is way more scalable!” “You’re not limited by headcount!” It’s true that software has different economics than services. But what people don’t tell you is that building a successful software business is *hard*. Like, really hard. Maybe even harder than building a successful consulting practice. But from the outside looking in, software seems magical. So services firms hear that siren song and start dreaming about diversifying their revenue streams with a nice, scalable SaaS business. ## Why this is harder than you think Here’s what I see happening repeatedly: Companies underestimate what it actually takes to spin off a SaaS because they’re applying their services business logic to a completely different business model. ### You’re literally starting a new company I want you to think back to the first two to five years of your organization. How messy was it? How unpredictable? How much trial and error did you go through? Now imagine doing that again, but this time you’re playing by completely different rules. When you spin off a SaaS product, you are starting from scratch in many ways — even if you have a strong parent brand. The brand equity you’ve built through consulting doesn’t translate the way you think it will. Why? Because you built that equity by solving problems *through people and services*. Now you’re asking the market to trust that your *product* can solve their problems without that services wrapper around it. That’s a completely different value proposition, and it requires completely different go-to-market motions to sell it. ### Your brand equity doesn’t transfer like you think This is the part that shocks people the most. Let’s say you’re a well-respected manufacturing consulting firm. You’ve built incredible brand equity over 15 years. Everyone in your industry knows your name. Now you spin off a SaaS product for manufacturing companies. You might assume that brand equity will carry over. That manufacturers will see your name and immediately trust the software. But here’s what actually happens: The people who would buy your software aren’t necessarily the same people who would hire you for consulting. They have different budgets, different decision-making processes, and different expectations. More importantly, you’re attracting net-new customers who *don’t* know you from your consulting work. To them, you’re just another software vendor. Your 15 years of consulting reputation? Doesn’t matter if they weren’t in your consulting pipeline. I’ve seen this happen with development consulting firms spinning off dev tools (which actually works better because it’s contextually aligned), and I’ve seen it with firms in industries like construction or commercial real estate trying to spin off software (which faces much steeper challenges because software isn’t expected in those contexts). ### The economics are completely different If you’re used to a services business, you’re used to thinking about your economics in terms of: - Hourly rates or project fees - Team utilization and efficiency - Cost to deliver vs. revenue per project SaaS economics are totally different. You’re thinking about: - Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) - Lifetime Value (LTV) - Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) - Net Revenue Retention (NRR) - Time to payback on CAC These aren’t just different metrics — they require completely different strategic thinking. For example, in consulting, you might be profitable on a project within a month or two. In SaaS, it might take 6-12 months just to recover your acquisition costs, and you won’t see meaningful profit until year two or three. That’s a fundamentally different cash flow model, and it requires a fundamentally different approach to budgeting and growth. ### You need dedicated resources (and I mean really dedicated) Here’s where I see companies shoot themselves in the foot most often: They try to run the SaaS spinoff with part-time resources. Maybe the VP of Operations spends 20% of their time on it. Maybe the CTO carves out a few hours a week. Maybe they cobble together a committee of people who meet monthly to discuss it. This doesn’t work. Starting a SaaS business requires someone who is fully dedicated — ideally full-time — to be the CEO/GM/President of that product. This person needs to own: - Product strategy and roadmap decisions - Go-to-market strategy - Budget allocation - Team building - Everything else that a founder does If you can’t afford to put a full-time owner on this, you’re playing a time game. It’s going to take you 3-5 years to see any meaningful traction, and even then, it might not materialize the way you hope. **The trade-off**: You can either fully commit with appropriate resources, or you’re going to spend way more time and money than you anticipated. ## The successful examples (and what made them work) Let me give you some examples of companies that actually pulled this off. **Moz**: Rand Fishkin started as an SEO consulting agency before building Moz. But here’s the key: he committed to the software. Eventually, Moz became the focus, and the consulting work faded away. It wasn’t a side project — it became the main business. **SearchPilot** (formerly Distilled): Will Critchlow spun off SearchPilot from Distilled, the SEO agency. But SearchPilot became its own entity with dedicated leadership. It wasn’t an agency project with part-time attention. What made these work? 1. **Dedicated leadership** — Someone owned it full-time 2. **Contextual alignment** — SEO agencies offering SEO software isn’t a huge stretch. The market expects it. 3. **Full commitment** — Eventually, they had to choose. You can’t half-ass a SaaS business. Now contrast that with a PR firm trying to spin off project management software, or a construction consulting firm trying to launch a SaaS for commercial real estate. The contextual gap is much wider, and the brand equity doesn’t transfer as easily. ## What it actually takes to do this right If you’re serious about spinning off a SaaS from your non-SaaS business, here’s what you need: ### 1. A dedicated full-time owner This person is essentially the founding CEO of the SaaS. They need to: - Own product strategy and roadmap - Understand how product management works (which is *different* from delivery management in services) - Drive go-to-market decisions - Manage the budget - Build the team This can’t be a part-time role. If everyone is juggling this alongside their “real” job in the parent company, you’re going to move at a snail’s pace. ### 2. Real budget (and double what you think) Whatever number you have in your head, double it. Minimum. If you think it’ll cost $1M to get this off the ground, budget $2-3M. Why? Because you don’t know what you don’t know. You’re applying services-business thinking to a software business, and you’re going to make expensive mistakes. Development costs alone can run $200-800K if you’re starting from scratch. If you’ve already built the product internally, you’ve already spent that — but now there’s a cost to provision it as a standalone product, which could be $100-300K. Then there’s go-to-market. And ongoing product development. And customer support infrastructure. And all the hidden costs you didn’t think about. ### 3. Product strategy expertise Here’s a critical point: Product management for SaaS is *not* the same as delivery management for services. In services, value is delivered through people and processes. You can coach your team, refine your delivery process, adjust your approach based on feedback. In SaaS, value is delivered through product. The product *is* the salesperson. The product *is* the service. If it doesn’t create value on its own, customers won’t stick around. This requires a completely different skillset and mindset. You need someone who understands: - Product discovery (how do we figure out what to build?) - Product roadmapping (what do we prioritize and why?) - Feature vs. product value (are we building the right things?) If you don’t have this expertise, you’ll end up building a bunch of features that don’t actually move the needle on retention or acquisition. ### 4. Go-to-market strategy for *strangers* This is the part that trips people up the most. Your consulting firm knows how to sell to people who are already in your ecosystem. You have relationships. You have trust built up over years of delivering great work. But now you’re trying to sell software to strangers who have never worked with you. They don’t know your brand. They don’t care about your consulting credibility. They just want to know: Does this software solve my problem? That requires completely different messaging, positioning, and channel strategy than what worked for your services business. You need to figure out: - Who is your buyer? (Might not be the same person who buys your consulting) - How do they currently solve this problem? - Why would they switch to your product? - Where do they hang out? What channels do they use? - What’s your pricing and monetization model? All of this needs to be validated *before* you go spend $100K on marketing. ### 5. Strategic clarity on your business model Here’s a question most parent companies don’t think hard enough about: **Is it actually worth it to spin off this SaaS, or should we just keep using it as a competitive differentiator in our consulting practice?** There are real trade-offs here. If you spin it off, you need to invest significantly in building a standalone brand, acquiring net-new customers, building out product infrastructure, hiring a team, and doing all the things that make a SaaS successful. If you keep it internal, you can continue using it to close consulting deals more efficiently and at higher margins. You can charge more for your services *because* you have this proprietary tech. Which path actually generates more profit over the next 5-10 years? I’m not saying the answer is always “keep it internal.” But I am saying you should do the cost-benefit analysis before you commit. ## The most common failure modes Over the past eight years, I’ve seen these same patterns repeatedly: ### 1. Underestimating the investment required “We’ll give this $200K and see what happens.” That’s not enough. You’re going to burn through that in 3-6 months and have nothing to show for it. Then you’ll go back to leadership asking for more money, and they’ll be skeptical because you didn’t deliver results. ### 2. No dedicated owner A committee of part-time people doesn’t work. Someone needs to eat, sleep, and breathe this thing. ### 3. Hiring an agency too early “We’ll just hire a big marketing agency and they’ll figure it out!” No. If you don’t have product-market fit yet, you’re going to waste a ton of money on execution before you’ve validated that anyone actually wants this thing. ### 4. Assuming your services customers will buy the software They might! But that’s not a scalable growth strategy. You need to be able to acquire customers outside your existing ecosystem. ### 5. Not validating standalone product-market fit Just because the software works well *as part of a consulting engagement* doesn’t mean it works well *on its own*. Your consulting engagement provides context, handholding, customization, and expertise. Without that wrapper, does the product still create value? You need to find out before you invest heavily. ## If you’re going to do this, do it right Look, I’m not trying to talk you out of spinning off a SaaS. It can work. We’ve seen it work. But it requires real commitment. You can’t toe-dip. You can’t half-ass it. You either commit fully — with budget, resources, and strategic focus — or you’re going to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where it fails because you didn’t give it what it needed. Here’s my advice: **Do the strategic planning first.** Really understand what this will cost, how long it will take, and what success looks like. Run the numbers. Compare the ROI of spinning off a SaaS vs. keeping it as a services differentiator. **Commit real resources.** Hire a full-time GM/president for the SaaS. Give them a real budget. Build a real team. **Validate product-market fit before you scale.** Don’t spend $100K on marketing until you’re sure people actually want this thing without the services wrapper. **Get expert help.** If you’ve never built a SaaS before, work with people who have. Hire advisors, consultants, or fractional executives who know what they’re doing. It’ll save you so much wasted time and money. And if none of that sounds appealing? That’s okay. Maybe spinning off a SaaS isn’t the right move. Maybe you keep that software internal and continue using it to make your services business more profitable and efficient. There’s no shame in that. Not every services business needs to become a software company. But if you do decide to go for it? Go all in. Because anything less is just expensive theater. --- *Thinking about spinning off a SaaS from your services business? [Book a call with us](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and let’s talk through your specific situation. We’ll help you figure out if it makes sense, what it’ll really take, and how to avoid the most common pitfalls.* **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP47: How to know if you're ready to hire a marketing agency (and what to do if you're not)](https://demandmaven.io/ep47-how-to-know-if-youre-ready-to-hire-a-marketing-agency-and-what-to-do-if-youre-not/) **Published:** October 15, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How to know if you’re ready to hire a marketing agency (and what to do if you’re not) I’ve been having a version of this conversation on repeat lately with early-stage founders: “We’re thinking about hiring an agency to help us with marketing. Does that make sense?” And my answer is almost always: “It depends.” I know, I know — that’s the most annoying answer in the world. But it’s true. Sometimes hiring an agency is the perfect move. And sometimes it’s the fastest way to light $50-100K on fire while learning absolutely nothing. So let me break down exactly when it makes sense to hire an agency, when it doesn’t, and what you should do instead if you’re too early. ## Why founders want to hire agencies (and why that makes sense) First, let’s talk about why this question comes up in the first place. If you’re in that early go-to-market stage — pre-product, pre-revenue, or just launching — you’re thinking about how to actually get customers. You probably want both strategy *and* execution, which makes total sense. An agency seems like the obvious solution. They can handle everything: ads, content, landing pages, email campaigns, the whole nine yards. You can focus on building the product while they handle growth. In theory, this is great. And for some companies, it actually works exactly like that. But for many others — especially bootstrapped founders and early-stage companies — hiring an agency too early becomes an expensive mistake. ## The risk: Spending money just to learn you don’t have product-market fit Here’s what happens all too often: You hire an agency. You spend $8-20K per month for six months. They run campaigns, build landing pages, test messaging, generate leads or trials. And then you realize: None of this is working because you don’t actually have product-market fit yet. Your product isn’t retaining customers. Your messaging isn’t resonating. Your positioning is off. You’re attracting the wrong people. Or maybe the right people are signing up, but your product isn’t converting them into paying customers. So you’ve just spent $50-100K to discover something you could have learned for a fraction of that cost through more targeted research and smaller experiments. That’s the risk. And it’s incredibly common. ## When you’re definitely too early for an agency Let me give you some clear signals that you’re too early: ### 1. You have fewer than 25-100 paying customers If you’re pre-revenue or very early revenue, you probably don’t have enough data to know what’s working yet. You don’t know: - Who your best customers are - Why they bought from you - What channels they used to find you - What messaging resonates with them - Whether they’ll actually stick around long-term Without that information, an agency is flying blind. They’ll make educated guesses, but a lot of those guesses will be wrong. And you’ll pay for every wrong guess. ### 2. Your retention is below 60% at 6 months If you’re losing half your customers within six months, please — *please* — don’t hire an agency to scale acquisition yet. You’re just going to acquire customers who will churn out. Your MRR might go up temporarily, but it’ll plateau or decline as churn catches up with you. [Fix your retention first](https://demandmaven.substack.com/p/revenue-cohort-retention-the-sneakiest) while you modestly invest in acquisition. Then scale acquisition. ### 3. Your activation rates are terrible If you’re product-led growth and converting less than 15-20% of trialists to paid customers, the problem isn’t acquisition. The problem is activation. I worked with a founder last year who was convinced that 15% activation was “normal” and couldn’t be improved. After we optimized their activation experience, that number doubled. Suddenly every acquisition channel became twice as efficient. That’s way more valuable than spending money on ads before you fix the leak in your funnel. ### 4. You don’t know your customer journey I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked a founder “How do your best customers find you?” and gotten a shrug. If you don’t know the answer to that question, an agency isn’t going to magically figure it out for you. They’ll test a bunch of stuff, waste a bunch of money, and you *still* won’t know. Do the customer research first. Run 10-15 customer interviews. Ask people about their journey — how they realized they had a problem, what they did about it, how they found your product, why they chose you over alternatives. This takes a few weeks, maybe a month. But it will save you $50K in wasted ad spend. ### 5. You’re in a new or immature software category If you’re building something truly novel, or you’re in a market where software isn’t the expected solution yet, you’re going to need more validation before you dump money into acquisition. Established software categories? Sure, you might be able to hire an agency earlier and see results. But if you’re creating a new category or entering a market that doesn’t typically buy software? You need to de-risk this as much as possible first. ## When agencies make sense Okay, so when *should* you hire an agency? Here’s my checklist: ### Strong product-market fit signals You need to see these quantitative signals: - **60%+ revenue retention at 6 months** (ideally 80-100%+ at 12 months) - **20%+ activation rate** if you’re PLG (higher is obviously better) - **Clear understanding of your best customer segments** — you know who converts, who stays, who pays more You should also have qualitative validation: - You’ve run the product-market fit survey and most people would be “very disappointed” if your product went away - You’ve done customer interviews and understand their journey - You have consistent patterns in how people find and buy from you ### You have hypotheses about channels You shouldn’t hire an agency to figure out which channels to test. You should hire them to scale channels you already have hypotheses about. This means you’ve done enough research to say: “Based on our customer interviews, we think ads + SEO + partnerships are probably the right channels because that’s how our customers say they make buying decisions.” Then the agency can help you execute and optimize those channels. ### Your pricing supports the investment If you’re charging $20/month, you need *insane* volume to justify $10-20K/month in agency fees. The math probably doesn’t work unless you have really long retention and low churn. But if you’re charging $500/month or $5K/year or $50K for enterprise deals? Then the economics of hiring an agency make way more sense. You can recover CAC faster and the LTV justifies the investment. ### You have budget to learn Even with all the right signals, there’s still a learning curve. Agencies need 3-4 months to really hit their stride — just like any new hire. So you need to be able to afford $30-60K (minimum) to give the agency time to learn your product, your customers, and your market. If you can’t afford that, you’re going to cut things off right when they’re starting to work. ## What to do instead if you’re too early So if you’re not ready for an agency yet, what should you do? ### Option 1: Build a small internal team Instead of hiring a full-service agency for $15-20K/month, consider building a scrappy internal team of contractors and freelancers. For example: - A part-time product marketer to own positioning and messaging ($3-5K/month) - A freelance copywriter for landing pages and website ($2-4K/month) - A performance marketer or ads specialist on retainer ($3-5K/month) - Maybe a designer for creative assets ($2-3K/month) You’re looking at $10-15K/month, but you have way more flexibility. If you learn something that invalidates your strategy, you can pivot quickly without the overhead of a big agency retainer. Plus, these folks can move faster on iteration because they’re working directly with you, not through an agency’s internal processes. ### Option 2: Do the strategic work first Before you spend money on execution, invest in understanding your foundation: **Customer research** — Interview 10-20 customers to understand their journey. This is the single most valuable thing you can do. We do this all the time at DemandMaven, and it consistently uncovers insights that completely change how companies approach growth. **Go-to-market strategy** — Figure out your positioning, your core customer segments, your pricing strategy, and your channel hypotheses. ([This is exactly what our GTM Engagement does](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/).) **Run small experiments** — Test your biggest assumptions with minimum viable campaigns. Can you get 10 qualified leads with $1K in ad spend? Can you drive 100 organic signups with a well-positioned landing page? Small experiments are way cheaper than hiring an agency and hoping they figure it out. ### Option 3: Hire a strategic advisor or consultant Here’s the thing about most agencies: They’re execution-focused. They’re good at running campaigns, building landing pages, managing ad accounts. But if you don’t have the strategy figured out yet, you don’t need execution help. You need strategic help. That’s where consultants and advisors come in. Someone who can: - Help you understand your product-market fit - Design customer research to validate your assumptions - Build your go-to-market strategy - Figure out which channels make sense to test - Help you avoid expensive mistakes This is usually way more cost-effective than hiring an agency to figure it out through trial and error. (Shameless plug: This is literally what we do at DemandMaven. We help early-stage companies figure out the strategic foundation *before* they start spending big money on execution.) ## Why the best agencies are strategic about who they take on Here’s something I’ve noticed: The really good agencies are cautious about taking on clients who are too early. Why? Because they know it’s not going to end well. If an agency takes on a client that doesn’t have product-market fit, they’re going to spend months testing stuff that doesn’t work. They won’t generate meaningful results. And then the client is going to say “This agency sucks” and leave a bad review. Good agencies don’t want that. They want clients they can actually help succeed. So they’re strategic about: - What stage of company they work with - What signals they look for before taking on a client - How they set expectations about what’s realistic If an agency is pushing *really* hard to take your money when you’re super early… that might be a red flag. ## Product-market fit is not what you think it is I need to address this because I hear it all the time: “We have product-market fit! We have customers!” Okay, but how many customers? How long have they been customers? What’s your retention? If you’ve had customers for three months and your 3-month NRR is 50%, you don’t have product-market fit. I’m sorry, but you don’t. Product-market fit means: - People stick around (high retention) - You can acquire them efficiently (reasonable CAC relative to LTV) - They get ongoing value (ideally expanding their usage over time) You won’t actually know if you have those things until you have at least 12 months of cohort data. I know that’s frustrating to hear. You want to move fast. You want to start spending on growth. But the truth is, if you don’t have real product-market fit, you’re going to waste money. It’s better to wait a few more months and validate it properly than to spend $50K learning the hard way. ## False positives vs. false negatives in agency relationships Here’s another thing to watch out for: **False positive**: The agency generates a bunch of leads or trials, and you think it’s working. But those people don’t convert to paying customers or they churn quickly. You’re paying for vanity metrics, not actual growth. **False negative**: The agency doesn’t generate great results, so you conclude “agencies don’t work for us.” But actually, the issue wasn’t the agency — it was your product activation, your pricing, your positioning, or something else in your funnel. Both of these scenarios are common when you hire an agency too early. You don’t have enough baseline data to know whether the issue is the agency’s execution or your fundamentals. That’s why I always recommend: Get your fundamentals right first. Then bring in execution help to scale. ## The cost of getting this wrong Let me paint a picture of what happens when you hire an agency too early: **Month 1-2**: Onboarding and learning. The agency is getting up to speed on your product, your customers, your market. Not much execution happening yet. Cost: $20-40K **Month 3-4**: They start running campaigns. Maybe you see some lead volume or traffic, but conversion rates are terrible. They start tweaking and testing. Cost: $20-40K **Month 5-6**: You realize this isn’t working. The fundamental issue is your product, your positioning, or your retention — not the campaigns. You part ways. Cost: $20-40K **Total**: $60-120K spent, and you’re back at square one. Except now you’re more skeptical about investing in growth, and you’ve burned months of runway. Compare that to: **Alternative approach**: - $15-20K on customer research and go-to-market strategy - $10-20K on small experiments with freelancers to validate your hypotheses - Now you actually know what works, and you can scale with confidence You’ve spent $25-40K instead of $60-120K, and you have *way* more useful insights. ## When you should absolutely hire an agency Let me be clear: I’m not anti-agency. I love agencies. We partner with agencies all the time. When you have the right foundation in place, agencies are incredibly valuable: - They have specialized expertise in channels you don’t know well - They can move faster than you could with internal hires - They have proven playbooks and processes - They can scale execution quickly If you have strong product-market fit, clear customer segments, validated channel hypotheses, and budget to invest? Hell yes, hire an agency. But if you’re missing those fundamentals? You’re going to waste a lot of money. ## The decision framework Here’s how to think about this: **Hire an agency if:** - You have 50+ paying customers - Your 6-month revenue retention is 60%+ (ideally 80%+) - You have validated channel hypotheses - Your activation rates are healthy (20%+ for PLG) - You have $30-60K minimum to invest in the relationship - Your pricing/LTV supports the investment **Don’t hire an agency if:** - You have fewer than 25 customers - Your retention is shaky - You don’t know your customer journey - You’re not sure which channels make sense - You can’t afford 6 months minimum to let them learn **Do this instead:** - Customer research and go-to-market strategy work - Small experiments with freelancers and contractors - Strategic consulting to help you build the foundation - Focus on fixing retention and activation first ## A final note on flexibility One thing I love about working with individual contractors and consultants (rather than big agencies) in the early stages is flexibility. When you’re early, you’re going to learn things that invalidate your strategy. That’s normal and healthy. But if you’re locked into a 6-month agency contract with a fixed scope of work, pivoting is expensive and slow. With a more flexible approach — a consultant here, a freelancer there — you can pivot quickly without blowing up your budget. Once you have more certainty about what works? *Then* you can bring in an agency to scale execution. --- *Trying to figure out if you’re ready for an agency, or what to do instead? [Book a free discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and we’ll talk through your specific situation. No sales pitch, just honest advice about what makes sense for where you are.* **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ### [EP27: Growth During an Economic Downturn](https://demandmaven.io/economic-downturn/) **Published:** October 27, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Excerpt:** In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the strategies successful companies have used to survive and grow through downturns and how to apply it to your business. TL;DL:  **Content:**  Layoffs in the tech industry have been making headlines, leading many businesses to wonder about economic stability in the near future. However, there’s more to what’s happening in 2023 and 2024 than what meets the eye. In this blog post, we’re going to look at how you can face the impending economic downturn head-on and prioritize growth even when making cuts. Let’s get started! ## Current State of the Tech Industry Layoffs are becoming increasingly common among well-regarded SaaS and tech companies worldwide. While initial reactions might lean toward concern, careful analysis and insider insights suggest otherwise. Such layoffs often don’t signify a company’s instability but may actually be a byproduct of its success. Take Zoom, for instance. The COVID-19 pandemic made remote work essential, catapulting platforms like Zoom into unprecedented growth. In response, these companies expanded their workforces to meet surging demand and anticipated that remote work would become the new standard. However, as global conditions began to improve and offline activities resumed, the demand began trending downward. This hiring surge, initially considered low-risk, led to the difficult position of needing to scale back the workforce. It’s crucial to acknowledge that these layoffs are often a recalibration due to overhiring rather than a sign of business failure. In the current economic climate, marked by high-profile layoffs in the tech sector, the prevailing sentiment suggests a recession. An interesting perspective comes from a discussion led by Patrick Campbell, arguing that the technicalities of whether or not a recession is underway are less important than the market’s perception. At present, that perception leans toward believing that an economic downturn is occurring. However, layoffs may not be the optimal strategy for fostering a growth-friendly environment, especially in a genuine economic slump. While staff reductions might sometimes be unavoidable, they primarily affect the profit base rather than facilitating growth opportunities. Understanding this nuanced difference is crucial in navigating uncertain economic times. Rather than simply making layoffs to follow a trend or simply saving money, the focus should be on understanding market sentiment, identifying the real reasons behind layoffs, and figuring out how to position your business for sustainable growth amidst economic uncertainty. ## Growth Comes from Customers Genuine growth comes from acquiring customers. Numerous growth levers can be utilized, such as increasing leads, sales activation, retaining customers, upselling, referrals, and revenue operations or growth operations. But, the key takeaway is that genuine growth is customer-centric. With that in mind, let’s look at three steps you can take to put growth first during an economic downturn. ### 1. Get “Default Alive” These steps are inspired by similar steps listed by Patrick Campbell himself. The first of which is to get “default alive.” [According to Growth Mentor](https://www.growthmentor.com/glossary/default-alive), this means a company is “predicted to make a profit with the assets that they currently have access to without any further investment or future changes.” If layoffs and cuts are necessary for your business to achieve a default alive status, that’s alright. But what we want to avoid is making cuts to follow the lead of larger businesses or because of the misconception that cuts are the best or only solution during hard times. There are alternatives like renegotiating contracts or adjusting your tech stack that can help trim the budget. Once your business is default alive, it’s time to check for gaps. ### 2. Identify Market Gaps When there are shifts in the market, this usually implies broader changes across the board—something that should prompt you to adapt as well. The core question remains: how have your customers changed? They’re either excited about new opportunities or they’re taking a closer look at their own overhead, which inevitably includes their relationship with your business. But you should also be on the lookout for gaps, specifically in terms of how your competitors have adapted. Sometimes competitors pull back from certain audiences or market segments because they need to, and perhaps you should follow suit. But at other times, they step away from certain channels or areas, leaving a gap that you can step into. So, the second step involves checking for these gaps. You really need to grasp how the market has changed, how your customers have adjusted, and how your competitors have shifted their strategies. Because in these shifts, gaps are naturally created—gaps that you can fill and opportunities to realign your business with the current market conditions. ### 3. Refocus on Growth Shifting focus back to growth is a multi-layered process bolstered by extensive research. Companies that successfully weather economic downturns adopt strategies that extend beyond mere cost-cutting. They become more frugal, emphasize leadership, prioritize long-term gains over short-term profitability, and make calculated investments in growth. [Bain and Company](https://www.bain.com/insights/beyond-the-downturn-recession-strategies-to-take-the-lead/) covers this exceptionally well. *“Think of a recession as a sharp curve on an auto racetrack—the best place to pass competitors, but requiring more skill than straightaways. The best drivers apply the brakes just ahead of the curve (they take out excess costs), turn hard toward the apex of the curve (identify the short list of projects that will form the next business model), and accelerate hard out of the curve (spend and hire before markets have rebounded).* *What specifically distinguishes eventual winners? Bain research reveals several key moves by companies that outperformed peers in four areas: early cost restructuring, plus some combination of balance sheet discipline, aggressive commercial growth plays, and proactive M&A.”* It’s clear that mere cost-cutting alone won’t suffice; strategy and action are also key components of growth and endurance. Additionally, if a SaaS business experiences a slump, it’s rarely solely due to economic downturns or pandemics. Refocusing on customers with high Lifetime Value (LTV) and identifying new opportunities to enhance this metric is crucial. This could mean making improvements in areas like customer experience and user experience (UX). It’s imperative to strike a balance between short-term and long-term strategies. While short-term plans may help weather an economic downturn, they are unlikely to offer a robust framework for enduring success. And finally, consider revisiting market segments. If current segments are underperforming, it may be wise to shift focus to those with greater purchasing power and the likelihood of upgrading or buying add-ons. Therefore, the objective should be a holistic strategy that combines fiscal responsibility with growth planning. ## Final Thoughts Navigating a volatile market requires more than knee-jerk reactions or follow-the-leader, it demands a carefully thought-out strategy, intention, and action. Here are the key takeaways: 1. Get default alive – Make the cuts you can’t avoid, but don’t make cuts without a strategy. 2. Check for gaps – When the market changes, understand who’s changed, why, and how you should too. 3. Refocus on growth – Being frugal isn’t just about cutting costs, it’s about optimizing your spending. That means strategizing and following your plan through the curve of the downturn. Understanding these three steps will help you move through economic uncertainty with confidence and agility while prioritizing growth. \[convertkit form=5209143\] **Categories:** Marketing, Podcast, SaaS --- ## Pages ### [Home](https://demandmaven.io/) **Published:** January 31, 2018 **Author:** admin **Content:** # Beat your SaaS growth plateau in just 7 weeks Whether you’re growing a SaaS business for the very first time or improving the PLG initiatives in an enterprise SaaS, life comes at you fast when you’re facing slow or stuck MRR growth. **Save yourself and your business from wasting time and money** with SaaS growth experts who can help you get unstuck. **Our promise: learn what’s blocking your growth in just 7 weeks and a plan for overcoming it.** [Let's get you unstuck](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") “DemandMaven is a secret weapon for B2B and B2C SaaS companies that want to sustainably grow. I highly recommend them!” April DunfordAuthor of Bestseller "Obviously Awesome" , Founder of Ambient Strategy ## True stories about how we helped these companies get unstuck — ranging from product strategy to activation to GTM troubleshooting [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/freshworks-case-study.png)](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-freshworks/) #### [How Freshworks leveraged messaging strategy to drive superior acquisition](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-freshworks/) A story about reconnecting with customers, finding messaging opportunities, and overhauling acquisition strategies for growth. [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/redokun-case-study-2-1.png)](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-redokun/) #### [How Redokun doubled their MRR by leveraging customer insights](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-redokun/) A client success story about really getting to know the customer, finding clear growth opportunities in the funnel, and changing how the growth team worked together. [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/sparktoro-case-study.png)](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-sparktoro/) #### [How SparkToro rebuilt their product and reduced risk with voice-of-customer research](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-sparktoro/) A story about mitigating product risk, charting a new path, and re-connecting with what customers care about. [![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/searchpilot-case-study.png)](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-searchpilot/) #### [How SearchPilot unlocked growth by leveraging customer insights](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-searchpilot/) A story about analyzing the customer experience, learning from customers, and scaling beyond founder-led sales. ## **Here’s a response from a client about their results from working with us last year on pricing and activation 👇** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/client-success-email.png "client-success-email") ## **How we help our clients get unstuck 👇** “DemandMaven exceeded our expectations, both for the outcomes that we had – because we doubled our business – and the thing that brings even more value, the change of mindset that happened with the mentorship, which will hopefully \[lead us\] to more growth.” Stefano BernardiCEO & Co-Founder, Redokun ### [Troubleshoot growth and find your best growth opportunities](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) We will analyze your customers, market, competitors, and product and define your growth strategy in this **6-week Growth Engagement.** We will help you: - bring focus to your best paying customers - refine your positioning & messaging - define your growth strategy & experiments - uncover your strategic “blindspots” - identify your highest-value growth opportunities Plus, it’s completely customized to your exact business needs, target market, and your best growth opportunities. [Click here to learn more](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) 👉 ### [Confidently go-to-market — even if it's the first time](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) Strategize, prioritize, and plan the go-to-market activities you need to claim your space in your market. With our market research and customer discovery work, you will: - get crystal clear on who your customers are and what they care about - see the patterns that make an anti-customer (aka not-best-fits) - identify early acquisition channels to invest in - understand the market’s product requirements - gather insights regarding pricing and monetization - highlight product growth opportunities currently in the market Perfect for businesses who want to enter into new markets or refine existing GTM to supercharge customer acquisition. [Click here to learn more ](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/)👉 “We hired DemandMaven to conduct market research as we started building the MVP of our product and I couldn’t be more relieved that we did. They painstakingly combed through every single interview, extracted the insights that we needed, validated what we already knew, and helped us think through what wasn’t validated to form new hypotheses instead. Based on what we gathered and the quality of the insights, I’m a huge fan.” Davin Mac AnaneyCEO & Founder, Hamilton Rock “I have been working with a mutual SaaS client on usability testing and feature/improvement roadmap so I’ve spent a lot of time in the research that DemandMaven prepared for them. You guys do amazing work – I was really impressed.” Stephanie LeatheProduct Lead, 923 Digital ### Get money-making insights from your customers using Jobs-to-be-Done In 10 detailed **Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)-style interviews**, we’ll identify how your customers found you, why they chose you over the competition, and why they buy in just 5 short weeks. You’ll be able to: - get gold-nugget insights from your actual customers - understand their real frustrations, needs, and desires - save tons of time running interviews and analyzing the data - create the foundation for consistent growth You’ll get the recordings, transcripts, and so much more. [Click here to learn more](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) 👉 ### [Got a bigger project that requires something more custom? We do that too.](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) No matter what growth challenges you're facing, we can provide insights and clear paths to accomplishing your goals at any scale. We help both small and large growth teams: - design and run custom research projects - analyze large data sets - surface insights from both qualitative and quantitative sources - translate insights into tactical growth projects for teams to execute Perfect for internal marketing leaders, strategic growth leaders, corporate development leaders, and product owners who need business intelligence and research & development support from a nimble outsourced team. Plus — all of your data actually stays yours. We don't re-sell or re-package research like some of the big research consulting firms do. [Book a call today](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) 👉 ## What's in our toolkit to help you overcome your toughest growth challenges: During a call, we'll have a discussion about what's going on. Then we'll scope out your ideal project to get unstuck on growth and confidently moving forward. U ### Customer Discovery Know for certain you're building the right product *before* you spend $200k+ building an MVP. h ### Survey Design Never send a bad survey again. We'll design the survey based on your goals and cover gaps you didn't know were there.  ### UX Research See exactly where users and customers get stuck and what propels them forward in your product.  ### Jobs Mapping Get a clear view of the various JTBD your users are hoping to accomplish (and where your product can expand).  ### JTBD Canvas See your customer's JTBD laid out in an easy-to-understand JTBD Canvas complete with struggling moments, the Four Forces, and their desired outcomes.  ### Pricing & Monetization Stop guessing on pricing. Use data-driven insights to determine pricing instead.  ### Onboarding & Activation Strategy Convert more customers without more marketing dollars.  ### Customer Journey Mapping See the full customer journey (and clear opportunities for improvement).  ### Growth Audit Get your top growth projects with a top-to-bottom growth audit by a SaaS expert. w ### Positioning & Messaging Never fall into the "meh" category again with insights-driven positioning and messaging.  ### Website Conversion Audit Customers getting lost? Not with this website conversion audit.  ### Market & Competitor Analysis Know exactly what you're up against (and where the greatest opportunities lie). Z ### Feature Preference Analysis What features actually drive value for customers? Know with a feature preference analysis.  ### Acquisition Channel Research Know exactly what channels to leverage for customer acquisition. No more guessing and seeing what sticks.  ### Paid Acquisition Audit Get your ad campaigns and landing pages audited and see your biggest opportunities for growth (and which ones to trash).  ### Win-Loss Analysis Where does your product win and where does it lose? Let customers be the judge. ## We've helped over 100+ SaaS businesses grow. Here are just a few: ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/userlist-logo-300x89.png "userlist-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/sparktoro-logo-300x69.png "sparktoro-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-1.03.18 PM-300x62.png "Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 1.03.18 PM") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/freshworks-logo.png "freshworks-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/uplisting-logo-bl-300x62.png "uplisting-logo-bl") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-1.00.53 PM.png "SearchPilot-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/audiencetap-logo.png "audiencetap-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/aurelius-logo-300x63.png "aurelius-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/toms-planner-logo-300x30.png "toms-planner-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/sessionlab-logo-300x71.png "sessionlab-logo") “DemandMaven is an exceptional marketing and growth partner for early-stage SaaS. She’s one of the few people out there who can work both on marketing strategy and also execute on the tactics.” Rob WallingCo-founder, MicroConf & TinySeed ## It’s time to *finally* get unstuck on growth **In just 45 minutes,** we’ll go over the performance of your SaaS and discuss the top levers you need to pull to unlock growth. You’ll walk away with perspective and the expert insights you need to make progress. And if we’re a good fit to help, we’ll discuss that too. Book your completely free growth call today. [Yeah, let's chat! 🚀](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [SaaS Growth Audit Tool](https://demandmaven.io/saas-growth-audit-tool/) **Published:** May 25, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Excerpt:** Answer just ~20 questions about your SaaS using DemandMaven's growth audit tool and see exactly where your greatest SaaS growth opportunities lie. **Content:** --- ### [Done-With-You SaaS Customer Discovery](https://demandmaven.io/services/customer-discovery/) **Published:** February 17, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Build what people actually want to buy Customer Discovery is a structured research engagement for founders and product teams who need to validate what they’re building — or what they’re about to build. We conduct the interviews, map the research, and surface the insights that tell you whether you’re solving the right problem, for the right people, in the right way. So that when you build (or pitch, or launch), you’re not guessing. [Let's talk Customer Discovery](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) Book a discovery call to find out if this is the right project for where you are. ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest product challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The gap between a good idea and a product people will actually use Most founders start with conviction. They’ve seen the problem firsthand, heard it from friends in the industry, or lived it themselves. That conviction is useful — it got you to build something. But conviction alone doesn’t tell you who the product is really for, what job they’re hiring it to do, or what would make them choose you over every other option (including doing nothing). The founders who skip this work tend to end up in the same place: months into building, and suddenly uncertain why the wrong people are signing up, why activation is lower than expected, or why the pitch isn’t landing. Not because the idea was bad — but because it was never pressure-tested against reality. The challenge is that by the time those signals show up, they’re expensive to fix. You’ve already built features based on assumptions that turned out to be wrong. You’ve already hired around a positioning that doesn’t resonate. You’ve already pitched investors on a market size and a buyer that doesn’t quite match who’s actually raising their hand. Customer Discovery exists to close that gap before it opens. It’s a research engagement designed to pressure-test your assumptions, validate your direction, and give you a clear, evidence-backed picture of who you’re building for and why they’ll care. **Whether you’re pre-product, pre-funding, or at a fork in the road on your product strategy, this project gives you the foundation to move with confidence.** ## Who is the Customer Discovery Project for? Customer Discovery is built for pre-product founders, venture studios, and product and UX leaders who are staring down one of these situations: R ### You're about to build something new And you want to validate the problem, the audience, and the opportunity before committing serious time or money to development R ### You're preparing for a fundraise And you need evidence from the market to support your thesis, not just a compelling narrative R ### You're not sure if you're solving the right problem You have early signal but the “why” behind the behavior isn’t clear yet R ### You're a venture studio or accelerator Building multiple products and need a repeatable, rigorous discovery process to de-risk each bet R ### You're a product or UX leader Stepping into a new role or evaluating a new market segment, and you need a fast, structured way to build your foundation ## **Words of love from a design studio we partner with 👇** “I have been working with a mutual SaaS client on usability testing and feature/improvement roadmap so I’ve spent a lot of time in the research that DemandMaven prepared for them. You guys do amazing work – I was really impressed.” Stephanie LeatheProduct Lead, 923 Digital ## How we approach Customer Discovery Most teams treat discovery as a one-time activity — a few calls in the early days, a couple of informal conversations with friendly users, and a rough hypothesis they carry forward indefinitely. That’s not discovery. That’s confirmation bias dressed up as research. **Our approach is systematic**. We design the research to answer specific questions, not general ones. And we combine what people tell us with what the available context shows us — so the output is grounded in evidence, not just anecdote.  ### Step 1: Define the research objectives Before a single interview is scheduled, we get clear on what you actually need to know. What assumptions are you trying to validate? What decisions hinge on this research? What would change if we found out the market doesn’t work the way you think it does? The research objectives shape everything that comes next — the methodology, the participant criteria, the questions we ask.  ### Step 2: Design the research strategy Not every question needs the same methodology. We’ll determine the right mix based on your goals. That might be JTBD switch-style interviews to understand the forces that drive people to seek out a solution like yours. It might be ODI-style jobs mapping to understand the full ecosystem of outcomes your customer is trying to achieve. It might be UX interviews to understand how people currently navigate the problem space. Often it’s a combination. We design the strategy first so the research actually answers the right questions. w ### Step 3: Recruit and conduct interviews We handle participant recruitment and interview execution. Depending on your product and stage, participants may come from your existing waitlist, audience, or network — or we’ll source them through research panels. Interviews are conducted by experienced researchers who know how to dig past surface-level answers and get to the actual motivations, trade-offs, and decision-making patterns that matter.  ### Step 4: Analyze and synthesize Raw interview data isn’t insights. We go through every interview, identify patterns across participants, surface contradictions, and build a structured picture of what we found. This is where we separate signals from noise and start forming the hypotheses that will drive your product and GTM decisions.  ### Step 5: Map opportunities and test assumptions Depending on your goals, we’ll translate the research into an opportunity map, a jobs map, a user story framework, or a product roadmap input — whatever format is most useful for where you’re headed. If the goal is funding, we’ll make sure the output speaks to investor questions. If the goal is product direction, we’ll make sure the output speaks to your product and design team.  ### Note on prototyping & design We don’t do prototyping or high-fidelity design work, but we work well alongside existing product and design teams. We have trusted partners we refer for design and development when it’s needed. What we can tell your designers is exactly what the user is trying to accomplish, where they’re getting stuck, and what would make the experience click. ## What you walk away with At the end of an Customer Discovery Project, you’ll have:  #### INCLUDED **Research objectives and hypothesis documentation** — a clear record of the assumptions you went in with and how the evidence confirmed, challenged, or reframed them  **Interview recordings and transcripts** — full documentation of every conversation, so nothing is lost and your team can go deep on any finding  **JTBD Brief** — a structured summary of the jobs your customers are hiring your product to do, including the functional, emotional, and social dimensions of each job  **Opportunity Map** — a prioritized view of the biggest unmet needs and underserved outcomes in your target market, with direct connections to product and GTM implications  **User story map or jobs map** (ODI-style, where applicable) — a visual framework that captures the full scope of outcomes your customer is trying to achieve at each phase of the job  **Product roadmap inputs** — synthesized research findings your product and design teams can use directly to inform what to build next and in what sequence  **Positioning and messaging recommendations** — specific guidance on how to talk about what you’re building in a way that resonates with the people you’re building it for  #### ADD-ONS **Pricing strategy** that dives deep into what your customers value about your product and how to monetize them for long-term growth  Pricing page design and composition to prototype ideas quickly  **Marketing strategy.** Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product discovery**. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more. [Let's find your customer, friend](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “We hired DemandMaven to conduct market research as we started building the MVP of our product and I couldn’t be more relieved that we did. They painstakingly combed through every single interview, extracted the insights that we needed, validated what we already knew, and helped us think through what wasn’t validated to form new hypotheses instead. Based on what we gathered and the quality of the insights, I’m a huge fan.” Davin Mac AnaneyCEO & Founder, Hamilton Rock ## Work with a **growth-obsessed SaaS customer discovery consultant** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? Great question! A typical Customer Discovery project runs **5–6 weeks** from kickoff to final workshop, but can run a little longer depending on your needs. Week 0: Onboarding, research objective setting, and participant criteria definition Week 1: Research strategy design, interview guide development, participant outreach Week 2: Data gathering, audit of any existing materials, initial interviews begin Week 3: Interviews + live de-briefs and initial pattern analysis Week 4: Overflow interviews, deeper synthesis, opportunity mapping Week 5: Final deliverables, readout, and workshop to translate findings into decisions ## How is this different from the Growth Engagement? The [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) and [GTM Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) are both designed for companies that already have a product in market. They combine qualitative research with quantitative analysis of your actual product, marketing, and subscription data. Customer Discovery is specifically for earlier-stage work — validating what you’re building before you build it, or understanding your market before you’ve defined your go-to-market. If you have a product and revenue and you’re trying to figure out why growth is slow or stalling, the [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) is the right starting point. ## How many interviews do you do? It depends on your goals and the complexity of your market. There’s no preset number. Some projects need 10–12 interviews to reach saturation on the key questions. Others need more if you’re covering multiple buyer segments or testing significantly different use cases. We’ll scope the right number based on what we’re trying to learn and finalize it during project kick-off. ## Who does the work? Asia, our fearless leader, leads every project and conducts the interviews. We don’t outsource research to junior team members or subcontractors. You’re working directly with someone who has done this across more than 100 SaaS companies. ## Do you do prototyping or design work? We don’t. Our work stops at the research and strategy layer — we’ll tell you exactly what to build and why, but traditionally we like to work with product and design teams on execution. We’ll sometimes provide low-fidelity comps to communicate specific design ideas if that’s a need, but highly dependent on the context. We work well alongside existing product and design teams, and we can connect you with trusted partners for prototyping and high-fidelity design work if you need it. ## How much does it cost? Customer Discovery starts at $15,000. The final investment depends on scope, number of interviews, and any add-ons. Many clients pay around $20-25k all-in. [Book a discovery call](https://savvycal.com/demandmaven/discovery-call) to walk through your situation and figure out the right scope. ## You ready to finally figure out how to do pricing the right way? Most SaaS companies don’t find out which one until it’s already costing them. A Pricing Project gives you the data to make confident decisions — about what to charge, how to structure your plans, and how to design for the expansion revenue your business needs to grow. [Yep, it's about time we fixed pricing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [SaaS Fractional CMO](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-fractional-cmo/) **Published:** May 19, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # The experienced marketing leader your team needs Work directly with a senior, hands-on marketing leader: someone who can set the strategy, run the team, and stay in the work until growth is actually moving. [Let's chat marketing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) See if we’re a fit in just 45 minutes ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest growth challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The gap most early-stage SaaS teams are trying to fill ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Screenshot-2026-05-19-at-10.04.49 PM.png) Gia hit the nail on the head for many SaaS CEOs when she tweeted this back in 2021. There’s a specific moment a lot of founders hit — somewhere between $1M and $5M ARR. The product is working. Customers are paying. Word-of-mouth has gotten you this far. But now you need to grow faster — and you’re realizing that what got you here isn’t enough to get you to the next level. **You need someone who can own marketing.** Someone who can look at the full picture, set a real strategy, and actually lead the team toward results. Someone who’s done this before for a company at a similar stage. But you’re not ready to commit to a $250K+ CMO hire. Or you haven’t found the right person. Or you need results now, not in 6 months after a recruiting process. That’s exactly the gap a Fractional CMO is designed to fill. ## This isn’t just a slide deck. It’s real hands-on leadership Listen — a lot of founders have been burned by “strategy consultants” who show up, build a deck, and disappear. That’s not what this is. DemandMaven’s Fractional CMO engagement is active, embedded, and ongoing. Think of it as adding an experienced marketing leader to your team — part-time, but genuinely in it with you. That means showing up to team meetings, reviewing performance with you every week, making real decisions about where to invest your marketing budget, managing service providers and freelancers, hiring the right people, and being the person who raises their hand when something’s not working and explains why. The strategy matters. But so does the execution. A Fractional CMO doesn’t just tell you what to do — they make sure it actually happens. ## Who is the Fractional CMO retainer for? The Fractional CMO engagement is built for SaaS founders and CEOs who are dealing with one or more of these situations: R ### You don't have marketing leadership in place Your team is executing tactics but nobody’s owning the strategy or the function R ### Marketing feels scattered You’re running a lot of activities without a coherent system, and you’re not sure which ones are actually driving results R ### You have a marketing team but no one to lead it There are people executing, but they need direction, prioritization, and someone to go to bat for the function at the leadership level R ### Marketing isn't your zone of genius You’d so much rather be focused on product or hell — you’d rather even code if your engineering team would let you. R ### You're not ready to hire a full-time CMO Either because of budget, bandwidth, or because you haven’t found the right person yet ## What this retainer includes The Fractional CMO engagement is a **part-time, ongoing retainer** — typically 20-25 hours per week with at least 6 months commitment — built around the specific needs of your company and team. The scope is defined together at the start of the engagement, but here’s what it typically covers: **Strategy & Direction** - Defining the marketing strategy and setting the direction for the function - Setting KPIs and clear growth targets - Identifying and prioritizing the highest-leverage opportunities across acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion **Team & Operations** - Leading weekly marketing team meetings and standups - Managing service providers, freelancers, and agencies - Supporting hiring decisions for full-time and contract marketing roles - Building marketing operations infrastructure (project management, goal-setting, reporting) **Analytics & Insights** - Reviewing performance data to surface trends, opportunities, and inefficiencies - Setting up dashboards for real-time visibility into marketing performance - Gathering qualitative and quantitative insights to keep strategy grounded in what customers are actually doing **Stakeholder Alignment** - Attending company-wide leadership meetings - Collaborating with product, sales, and engineering leaders to align marketing initiatives with company goals - Reporting to the board where applicable **Execution Support** - Reviewing and providing feedback on campaigns, content, and messaging - Guiding the execution of growth projects - Creating documentation, deliverables, and artifacts to support the team ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## What makes us different DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist and fractional CMO Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## How is this different from hiring a full-time CMO? A Fractional CMO costs a fraction of what a full-time hire would ($250K per year on average for a SaaS CMO) — and you’re not paying for 40+ hours a week when you don’t need them yet. You’re also not going through a 3–6 month recruiting process. The tradeoff is that you get a more experienced operator than you could typically afford to hire full-time at your stage, on a flexible commitment that can scale up or down. ## What's the minimum commitment? The engagement starts with a 6-month minimum, with a 90-day review point where either party can reassess. We’ve found that three months is the minimum time required to set direction, establish systems, and start seeing meaningful results — and the 90-day checkpoint creates a natural moment to recalibrate. ## What does the onboarding look like? We start with a deep-dive audit: reviewing your current marketing performance, talking to your team, getting a clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t. From there, we set priorities, define KPIs, and build the roadmap for the first 90 days. The goal is to move fast and start contributing value quickly — not spend six weeks building strategy decks before anything happens. ## Can this evolve into a different kind of engagement? Yes, absolutely! Some Fractional CMO engagements transition into project-based work once the strategy is set and the team is running. Others grow in scope as the company scales. We’re flexible and build the engagement around what actually serves your company best. ## How much does it cost? The Fractional CMO retainer is **$10,000/month with a 6-month minimum commitment**, but we do offer reduced-scope retainers for those who need fewer hours. [Book a discovery call](https://savvycal.com/demandmaven/discovery-call) to talk through scope, fit, and whether this is the right model for where you are. ## Your marketing function deserves real leadership A Fractional CMO gives you an experienced operator who’s been in this seat before — someone who can set the strategy, lead the team, and stay accountable to results. Without the full-time price tag or the six-month recruiting process. [I'm ready to give marketing some leadership](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [SaaS Product & UX Strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-product-ux-strategy/) **Published:** May 25, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Product is the best growth lever to pull and we can help you pull it DemandMaven’s Product & UX Sprint is a focused research engagement that reveals the friction moments inside your most-used features — and shows you exactly what a better experience could look like and how to prioritize your product roadmap to do it. [Let's talk product & UX](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) See if we’re a fit in just 45 minutes ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest growth challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The problem with building in the dark When you’re close to your product, it’s genuinely hard to see what real users experience when they sit down to use it. You know what every button does. You know the logic behind every workflow. You literally built it. **Your users don’t have any of that context.** They show up with a job to do, and they have to figure out how to do it using the interface you designed. And somewhere in that gap (between what you intended and what they experience) there’s friction. There are moments where they slow down, get confused, try the wrong thing, or just quietly give up. Most teams don’t know exactly where those moments are. They hear about some of them in support tickets. They infer others from product analytics. But they’ve never actually watched a real user navigate the features they’ve spent months building. A Product & UX Sprint answers that question directly: Where are users getting stuck, and what would a better experience look like? ## Who is the Product & UX Project for? R ### Have one or more high-traffic features that feel clunky You know they could be better, but you don’t have clear evidence of what specifically needs to change R ### Are planning a redesign or significant UI overhaul And want research to ground the work before the design team touches anything R ### Are hearing consistent feedback about UX but can't pinpoint the root cause Customers say it’s “confusing” or “hard to use,” but that’s too vague to act on R ### Want to add AI to the product And need to validate where it would actually help before investing engineering time in the wrong place R ### Are shipping features regularly but not seeing the engagement metrics move Which often signals a discoverability or usability problem, not a product-market fit problem R ### Need something more targeted than a full Growth Engagement You know the product is the problem; you just need a focused sprint to surface the specific issues and design better solutions ## **Here’s Rand Fishkin discussing the work he did with DemandMaven for SparkToro and how they beat their growth slump 👇** [Read the full case study](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-sparktoro/) ## How a Product & UX Sprint works  ### Step 1: Define the Focus Areas We start by aligning with you on which features or flows to focus on. These are usually the features your users spend the most time in, the ones generating the most support tickets, or the ones you’re about to redesign and want validated research for first. w ### Step 2: Recruit & run UX interviews We recruit and interview real users — typically customers, but sometimes in-market prospects or active trialists, depending on what you need — and have them walk through the features live, narrating their experience as they go. We know where to dig, what follow-up questions to ask, and how to separate surface-level feedback from root causes.  ### Step 3: Analyze the findings We analyze the interviews to identify patterns: where users consistently slow down, what they expect to happen versus what actually does, which parts of the UI are causing the most cognitive load, and what they need in order to accomplish their goal more easily.  ### Step 4: Design working compositions Unlike a pure research engagement, the Product & UX Sprint goes one step further — we produce example working compositions for improved experiences. These aren’t high-fidelity Figma comps; they’re functional mockups that visualize what a better version of the experience could look like, grounded in what we heard from users. Your design team can take these directly into their process.  ### Step 5: Implement new designs (optional) If we move quickly, often times clients can implements our design ideas if they have an on-hand designer and engineer who can deploy changes to the product. Clients who can accomplish this tend to get the most out of projects because of the real-time feedback after deploying changes.  ### Step 6: Re-test new experience (optional) After implementing product changes, we’ll run a second batch of UX interviews to see what else comes up and if our ideas were successful. ## What you walk away with At the end of a Product & UX Project, you’ll have:  #### INCLUDED **Discovery insights** — prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more.  **UX interview findings** — a synthesized analysis of what users are experiencing across the focus areas, with specific friction points documented and explained (all interviews recorded, transcribed, and parsed)  **Example working compositions** — Canva-based mockups showing improved experience concepts for each focus area, grounded in research findings  **Optional design briefs** — written briefs your UX designer can use to execute on the recommendations without starting from scratch  **AI Opportunity Map (if included)** — specific areas where AI could add meaningful value for users, with a distinction between “quality of life” improvements and genuine value generators  **Workshop** — a working session to walk through findings together and align on the projects to prioritize first  #### ADD-ONS **Pricing strategy** that dives deep into what your customers value about your product and how to monetize them for long-term growth  Pricing page design and composition to prototype ideas quickly  **Marketing strategy.** Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Activation & Onboarding**. Increase your trial-to-paid conversion rates in this quick product sprint. [Let's fix your product, friend](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed SaaS product & UX consultant** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? A UX Sprint focused on 2–3 features typically runs **6–8 weeks**. If you’re covering more ground, the timeline extends accordingly. Week 0: Onboarding + research strategy + defining focus areas Week 1: Recruiting + outreach; initial product review Week 2: UX interviews + debriefs Week 3: Overflow interviews; synthesis begins Week 4: Working compositions + findings document drafted Week 5: Review + workshop + handoff *For larger scopes (3+ focus areas), expect 9–10 weeks.* ## How is this different from standard UX research? Most UX research doesn’t take into consideration who the feedback is coming from or what would ultimately support growth from a strategic perspective. Our Product & UX Sprint goes further — we pair the research findings with working compositions that show what a better experience could look like. The deliverable isn’t just a list of problems; it’s a direction for solving them. ## Do we need to have a design team for this to be useful? No. The working compositions and design briefs are designed to be usable regardless of whether you have a dedicated design team. If you have designers, they can take the briefs directly into execution. If you don’t, the compositions give you enough clarity to bring in a contractor or work through the improvements in-house. ## How do you recruit the users for interviews? For most engagements, we work with your existing customer base — reaching out to users with relevant usage of the features we’re studying. If you need in-market prospects or users who haven’t yet purchased, we can recruit through platforms like UserInterviews or Respondent.io. ## We have a specific feature we need help with, but your normal scope is 2–3. Can we do just one? Yes. We can scope a sprint around a single feature if that’s where the focus needs to be. The timeline and investment would be adjusted accordingly. [Book a discovery call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and we’ll figure out what makes sense. ## How much does it cost? The Product & UX Sprint project starts at $20,000. [Book a discovery call](https://savvycal.com/demandmaven/discovery-call) to talk through whether the scope is right for your situation. ## You ready to finally figure out how to do pricing the right way? Most SaaS companies don’t find out which one until it’s already costing them. A Pricing Project gives you the data to make confident decisions — about what to charge, how to structure your plans, and how to design for the expansion revenue your business needs to grow. [Yep, it's about time we fixed pricing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [SaaS Due Diligence](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-due-diligence/) **Published:** May 25, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Excerpt:** Before you close on an acquisition or investment, know what you're really buying in just 6 weeks with a project that unpacks the quality of the customer base, the health of the growth engine, and the true market potential of the product. **Content:** # Due diligence from someone who knows SaaS growth Before you close on an acquisition or investment, you need to know what you’re really buying: the quality of the customer base, the health of the growth engine, and the true market potential of the product. DemandMaven delivers that picture in 6 weeks — so you can make the decision with confidence. [Book a due diligence call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) Get in touch to discuss your timeline before you sign. ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest growth challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The problem with how most due diligence gets done Most M&A firms do a credible job on the financials. They’ll look at the P&L, the cap table, the legal structure. That part is handled. What they can’t tell you (because they’ve usually never been operators) is whether the customer base is actually healthy, whether growth is real or artificially propped up, or whether the product has a genuine market opportunity underneath it or a ceiling nobody’s noticed yet. They don’t understand SaaS unit economics well enough to read churn the right way. They don’t know the difference between customers who churned because the product failed them and customers who churned because they were never a good fit to begin with. They can’t look at a company’s activation rates and know immediately what that means for long-term NRR. **That’s a different kind of expertise** — and it’s the part that tends to determine whether an acquisition actually performs. ## What you actually need to know before you acquire The financials tell you the outcomes of what happened. Due diligence with DemandMaven tells you *why* — and more importantly, what’s likely to happen next. Before you close, you need answers to questions like: - Who are the best-paying, highest-retention customers, and are there enough of them to build on? - Is growth driven by something durable (product value, word-of-mouth, strong positioning) or has it been manufactured through discounting or a single channel that could dry up? - What’s actually causing churn, and is it fixable? - Does the market opportunity support the growth projections, or is this a product that’s near its ceiling? - What’s the GTM strategy, and is it working? If not, what would need to change? - Where are the biggest growth opportunities post-acquisition — and what would it realistically take to capture them? These are the questions that determine the real value of what you’re buying. And they’re exactly what this engagement is designed to answer. ## Who this is for R ### Private equity and venture capital firms Evaluating an acquisition or investment in a SaaS company and needing a credible, growth-focused lens as part of the overall diligence process R ### Independent investors and search fund operators Who don’t have an in-house team with deep SaaS expertise and need a trusted outside perspective R ### Strategic acquirers Who want to understand the full commercial picture — customer quality, GTM health, and growth potential — before making a significant commitment R ### Founders or investors considering a secondary transaction Who want an independent view of where the business actually stands before negotiating terms ## **Here’s a response from a design studio partner on the work we did with them and the acquirer 👇** “I have been working with a mutual SaaS client on usability testing and feature/improvement roadmap so I’ve spent a lot of time in the research that DemandMaven prepared for them. You guys do amazing work – I was really impressed.” Stephanie LeatheProduct Lead, 923 Digital ## How the Due Diligence engagement works DemandMaven’s diligence process is built around the same qualitative and quantitative methodology we use in every growth engagement — applied specifically to the questions an investor needs answered.  ### Qualitative: Understand the customer base directly **We conduct structured JTBD-style interviews with a representative sample of the company’s paying customers.** The goal is to understand who they are, why they chose the product, what keeps them paying, what they’re comparing it to, and what they’d do if the product went away. This interview process surfaces things that don’t show up in the data: the nuance of why customers stay, the early signals of loyalty or fragility, the words customers use to describe the product’s value (or lack of it), and patterns that indicate whether the existing customer base is healthy and expandable or concentrated and at risk.  ### Quantitative: Audit the complete growth engine **We conduct a structured audit of the company’s growth performance:** reviewing subscription data, activation rates, new user retention curves, NRR and expansion metrics, churn patterns, and acquisition channel performance. We’re looking at the same things we’d look at in any growth diagnostic: where is growth coming from, how healthy is it, and where is it leaking? **We also review the GTM strategy:** what’s in place, what’s working, what isn’t, and what the gap is between where growth is today and where the opportunity realistically sits. ## What you walk away with At the end of a Due Diligence Project, you’ll have:  #### INCLUDED **Customer base analysis** — who the best customers are, what segments exist, how loyal they are, and what signals indicate durability or fragility in the base  **Growth engine audit** — a clear view of acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion performance, with the key metrics that tell the story of how the business actually grows  **Churn breakdown** — qualified vs. unqualified churn, root cause analysis, and what’s fixable vs. structural  **Market opportunity assessment** — a grounded view of the competitive landscape, the size of the addressable market, and how much room the product realistically has to grow  **GTM strategy review** — what’s working, what’s not, and what changes would need to happen to unlock meaningful growth post-acquisition  **Growth opportunities brief** — the highest-leverage things a new owner could do in the first 12–18 months to drive performance  **Due diligence summary brief** — a written document synthesizing all of the above, structured for stakeholder review and decision-making  #### ADD-ONS **Competitive Intelligence** — Deep analysis of the competitive landscape, including structured interviews with customers of competing products, to understand where the company sits in the market relative to alternatives and what switching risk looks like.  Pricing & monetization strategy to identify opportunities to make pricing perfect for prospects and existing customers alike  Activation & onboarding project to improve user flows, trial-to-paid conversion rates and growing revenue without spending more on marketing  **Marketing strategy.** Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product discovery**. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more. [Let's analyze your SaaS today](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed SaaS due diligence advisor** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021.Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? Great question! The Due Diligence engagement runs **4–6 weeks** from kickoff — designed to fit within a standard acquisition timeline. Week 0: Kickoff + access to company data + research strategy Week 1: Review of existing analytics + outreach to customer interview participants Week 2: Customer interviews + debriefs Week 3: Overflow interviews + quantitative audit + GTM review Week 4: Synthesis + brief draft Week 5: Findings walkthrough + Q&A + final brief delivery *Timeline can be compressed in urgent situations — get in touch to discuss.* ## How do you get access to customers for interviews? In most cases, we coordinate with the company being acquired — the seller facilitates warm outreach to a sample of their customers. We maintain confidentiality about the nature of the engagement as appropriate to the situation. In some cases, where seller involvement isn’t appropriate, we can source interview participants independently. ## Do you work with the company being acquired or only with the buyer? We work for the buyer — the investor or acquirer commissioning the diligence. The insights we produce are yours, not the seller’s. ## What types of SaaS products do you specialize in? Primarily SaaS, with deep experience in product-led growth (PLG) companies and horizontal SaaS. We have experience across a wide range of verticals including productivity, HR/workforce, finance, health, professional services, e-commerce tools, and more. If you’re not sure whether your target company fits our wheelhouse, book a call and we’ll tell you honestly. ## Can you help with post-acquisition growth strategy too? Yes. Some clients engage us for diligence and then bring us back post-close to help build the growth plan — or to run a full Growth Engagement once the deal is done. We’re happy to be a resource through both phases. ## How much does it cost? Due Diligence engagements start at $20,000. Book a discovery call to discuss your specific timeline, scope, and what you need to know before you close. ## Know exactly what you’re buying before you buy it The financials tell you what happened. DemandMaven tells you why — and what’s likely to happen next. Get the customer insights, growth analysis, and market perspective you need to make a confident acquisition decision. [Book a due diligence call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [SaaS Activation & Onboarding Strategy](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-activation-onboarding-strategy/) **Published:** May 19, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # More trials won't fix a broken onboarding experience If users are signing up but not activating (or activating but not converting to paid), the problem usually isn’t your acquisition. It’s the trial experience. Find your activation experience gaps, define the fix, and give your team a clear path to improving the metrics that matter. [Let's fix your onboarding](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) See if we’re a fit in just 45 minutes ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest growth challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The real cost of a leaky onboarding experience Every user who signs up and doesn’t activate is a cost your business absorbs with nothing to show for it. Your acquisition spend brought them in. Your infrastructure served them. Your team built the product they came to try. And then they left before they ever understood what it could do for them. That’s the quiet tax that a broken or under-optimized onboarding experience charges you — every single day. The tricky part is that most founders know something’s off, but they can’t pinpoint where. Is it the sign-up flow? The empty state? The first-run experience? The onboarding emails that nobody’s opening? The feature that’s hard to find the first time? Usually, it’s a combination. And the only way to know for sure is to actually look at the data, the experience, and at what real users are running into when they show up for the first time. That’s exactly what this project does. ## Who is the Activation Project for? R ### Trial-to-paid conversion is lower than it should be Users are signing up but not converting, and you’re not sure if it’s a messaging problem, a UX problem, or something else entirely R ### Activation rates are flat Users reach the product but they’re not completing the steps that lead to long-term retention R ### New user retention drops off fast You’re losing a significant percentage of users in the first 7–14 days, and you don’t have a clear picture of why R ### You've never formally defined your activation metric You know users need to “get value” but you don’t have a specific behavioral event you’re optimizing for R ### You have a million ideas for onboarding and activation …but you’re stuck on which ones will actually move the needle ## **Here’s a response from a real SaaS PLG client about their results from working with us last year on activation 👇** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/client-success-email.png "client-success-email") ## How we do SaaS activation & onboarding strategy *(and 2x trial-to-paid)* Most activation problems aren’t solved by adding more tooltips or sending more emails. They’re solved by understanding the actual job your user is trying to do — and then designing the onboarding experience around getting them there as directly as possible. Our approach combines qualitative research with quantitative analysis so we’re never guessing about what’s happening or why.  ### Step 1: Audit the experience We do a screen-by-screen teardown of your sign-up flow and onboarding experience — documenting barriers to progress, friction points, confusing moments, and gaps between what the experience promises and what it delivers. We come at this fresh, the way a new user would.  ### Step 2: Analyze the data We review your existing activation performance data to understand where users are dropping off, what behaviors correlate with conversion, and what your current activation rates actually look like across segments. This is the quantitative half of the picture. w ### Step 3: Talk to real prospects We conduct UX interviews with your customers and target users — getting their honest account of what it was like to sign up and get started, where they got stuck, what helped them, and what almost made them quit. This is the qualitative half. Together, they give us a complete view.  ### Step 4: Define the activation metric One of the most valuable outputs of this project is clarity on your Product Adoption Indicator (PAI) — the specific behavioral event that predicts whether a user will convert and stick. Most teams don’t have this defined. Once you do, everything from product roadmapping to email strategy gets sharper.  ### Step 5: Build the strategy We translate everything we’ve learned into a concrete onboarding strategy — including the “straight-line” path from sign-up to value, email recommendations, in-product guidance (tooltips, modals, empty states), and a prioritized list of changes to make.  ### Step 6: Design the new experience We provide low-fidelity comps and designs to show you exactly what to build, how to design it, and answer any questions you have about how to improve each screen. ## What you walk away with At the end of an Activation Project, you’ll have:  #### INCLUDED **Complete activation audit** — a screen-by-screen analysis of your sign-up flow and onboarding experience, with documented friction points and recommendations  **Analysis of existing activation performance** — a clear view of where users are dropping off and what it’s costing you  **Defined activation metric (PAI)** — the specific behavioral event your team should be optimizing for, with a hypothesis for how changes will move the needle  **Activation Map in Miro** — a visual of the recommended “straight-line” onboarding path, Product Adoption Indicators, and the logic behind them  **Onboarding Strategy** — what emails to send and when, guidance on in-product messaging (tooltips, modals, banners), and specific UX/UI recommendations based on research findings  **Product analytics configuration** — the most meaningful activation reports set up in your analytics platform (Mixpanel, Amplitude, or equivalent)  **Workshop** — a working session to walk through findings together and align on the projects to prioritize first  #### ADD-ONS **Pricing strategy** that dives deep into what your customers value about your product and how to monetize them for long-term growth  Pricing page design and composition to prototype ideas quickly  **Marketing strategy.** Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product discovery**. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more. [Let's fix your onboarding, friend](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed SaaS activation consultant** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? Great question! A typical Activation & Onboarding project runs **6–8 weeks** from kickoff to workshop. Week 0: Onboarding + research strategy Week 1: Outreach to customers; demo of product + initial audit begins Week 2: Data review + activation performance analysis Week 3: UX interviews + customer interviews + debriefs Week 4: Analysis + activation map + strategy draft Week 5: Overflow interviews if needed + workshop to prioritize next steps Week 6: Follow-up meetings + documentation of next projects ## How is this different from the Growth Engagement? The [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) is a full-system diagnostic — it looks across acquisition, activation, retention, monetization, and expansion to identify where growth is breaking down. If activation is the one specific thing you need to fix and you already have a clear picture of the rest of your funnel, the Activation & Onboarding project is more focused and cost-efficient. If you’re not sure where the problem actually lives, start with the [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/). ## We don't have Mixpanel or Amplitude. Does that matter? It’s helpful to have a product analytics platform in place, but it’s not a hard requirement to get value from this project. We can work with whatever data you have and help you build the foundation for better instrumentation as part of the engagement. We’ll give you recommendations for which platform to adopt and how to set it up. ## What if we've already done some onboarding work — tooltips, email sequences, etc.? Good — that gives us something to evaluate. The audit will tell us what’s working, what’s not, and what’s missing. Most teams have done something with onboarding; what they usually don’t have is a coherent strategy that connects each piece to a defined activation goal. ## Do you design the new onboarding experience for us? We don’t produce high-fidelity Figma comps with ready-to-go front-end code, but we can mock-up ideas using low-fidelity methods. What we do produce is a detailed strategic roadmap — specific, prioritized recommendations your product and design team can take straight into execution. Think of it as the plan your product designer executes to impact activation rates. ## How much does it cost? The Activation & Onboarding Strategy project starts at $15,000. [Book a discovery call](https://savvycal.com/demandmaven/discovery-call) to talk through whether the scope is right for your situation. ## You ready to finally figure out how to do pricing the right way? Most SaaS companies don’t find out which one until it’s already costing them. A Pricing Project gives you the data to make confident decisions — about what to charge, how to structure your plans, and how to design for the expansion revenue your business needs to grow. [Yep, it's about time we fixed pricing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) **Published:** March 25, 2021 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Stop guessing & start growing your SaaS ## **DemandMaven’s Growth Engagement uncovers the insights & action steps you need to scale** Unblock your next growth phase through customer research that clarifies your positioning and messaging, reveals the right growth strategies, and helps you prioritize next steps. [I NEED THIS](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *Get in touch to see if DemandMaven is the right fit for your established-and-growing business.* ## VC-funded or bootstrapped? B2B or B2C? Self-serve or personal demo? No matter how your software business is structured, we’ll help you identify your best-paying customers, build strategies to retain and acquire new buyers, and scale your SaaS sustainably. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## Built for successful & ambitious SaaS founders You made a product customers love. You’ve got a great team, and you’ve hit $1MM ARR. You’ve gotten this far. So where do you go from here? If you’ve got big dreams and a definite destination in mind for your business, you’re gonna need a roadmap and a system to help you get there. That’s where we come in. Our Growth Engagement service is purpose-built for founders, CEOs, and directors like you, if you… ### Are ready to amplify your impact Like many hardworking CEOs and founders, you’ve got an incredible product and a fair few paying customers already. You’re pretty sure you’ve reached the promised land of product-market fit… but when it comes to expanding your reach and growing your MRR, you’re feeling a little lost. Let’s get your product into the hands (and laptops) of more of your ideal users. ### Want a clear path to growth SaaS businesses need a strong growth foundation in order to generate repeatable, scalable results. To grow sustainably, you’ve gotta know: - Who your best customers are - Why your best customers buy over other alternatives - How your website performs (or doesn’t) - Conversion rates from trialist to paying customer - Top channels generating customers - Where your customers hang out - Objections your customers have - What they’re comparing your product to - … and so much more Our work together will help you get to know your customers better than ever before. ### Haven't figured it out on your own (yet) You’ve heard the horror stories of founders wasting precious time and money trying to run growth themselves and hemorrhaging their seed round or 6-12 months of runway with little to show for it. So the idea of figuring out your growth as you go feels less “Hey, let’s do this!” and more “Please, let’s just hire experts” at this point. You’d much rather focus your time on big-picture moves and operations to support your ultimate goal — whether that’s a rewarding exit or world domination. ### Prefer sustainable growth over hair-raising rocket rides Should you apply to that accelerator? Invest more in top-of-funnel? Hire another salesperson? You’ve probably faced a ton of questions like these, and the “unknown unknowns” just keep coming. Thankfully, there are people and partners out there who’ve been where you are, and who can help you shave a few years (and gray hairs) off the stress of uncertainty. One of those partners? DemandMaven. Our process helps you arrive at the answers you need to get moving. “DemandMaven has an incredible ability to quickly learn a company’s vision and begin executing deliverables immediately. They provided immense value to our Motivo team by diving deep into customer and industry research, and then using that data to create a strategic, step-by-step revenue-generating marketing plan.“ Rachel McCrickardCEO & Founder, Motivo ## Unlock your **next big growth phrase** DemandMaven’s Growth Engagement is how CEOs and founders achieve the answers they need to unlock growth in their organizations. Dozens of profitable SaaS companies have gotten the answers they need from their Growth Engagement — and were able to immediately start executing against their growth playbook. >> Psst, are you at an earlier stage but still looking for guidance? [Check out the Go-To-Market Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/). 5 ### Step 1: Get crystal-clear on your customers Your success thus far isn’t a fluke — and your next stage of success won’t be, either. We conduct in-depth customer research to understand not just who your customers are, but why they choose you. Next, we analyze that data alongside market & competitive research to answer important questions like “What messaging works best? What channels should we focus on? What roles should we hire for next?” 9 ### Step 2: Establish your baseline & KPIs Let’s take a top-down look at your current funnel(s) to see how they turn people from total strangers into dedicated customers. During this analysis, we’ll establish benchmarks to measure your growth by. And we’ll identify the best levers to pull to help you reach your goals faster. R ### Step 3: Start implementing your growth plan None of this “Here’s a bunch of fancy documentation, see you later” consulting malarkey. After we define your growth strategy and clearly articulate your growth options, you’ll have clear action steps that you can immediately execute. We’ll even work with you on exactly how to execute, and the system to implement to keep your growth function running. ## Our flexible process **grows with you** Every Growth Engagement covers the strategic areas that directly contribute to your growth, including customer research, positioning and messaging, channels, media spend, and more. While our process is always the same, what it reveals about your business is unique — and uniquely valuable. And if your business needs a little extra help? It’s easy to deepen the scope of your Growth Engagement. ## Choose your own growth adventure One size definitely doesn’t fit all — especially in the SaaS and startup world. That’s why the Growth Engagement comes with add-on deliverables. We’ll recommend the right ones for you, so you can walk away with everything your business needs to grow.  #### INCLUDED **Customer research and insights** — Why do they buy? Why do they buy from you? And what keeps them coming back?  **Positioning and messaging** — Discover which concepts and copy really resonate  **Market & competitor research** — Understand your place in the market, so you can get to 1st ![cool](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/themes/Divi/includes/builder/frontend-builder/assets/vendors/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)  **Marketing strategy** — Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Growth playbook** — Know exactly where you’re going, how you’ll get there, and what experiments to try first  #### ADD-ONS **Pricing Audit** — Stop guessing at how to price your product  **Onboarding & Activation strategy** — Win and activate more customers  **Website audit** — Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Content marketing audit** — Publish useful stuff your target audience loves to share  **Growth roadmapping** — Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product-market fit analysis** — discover which customers have strong PMF versus not [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief. I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” Luke Beardprev. CEO & Founder, Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed team** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and sits on the board at Moz. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of models and market segments, including freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped companies  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Reserve your Growth Engagement now & get clarity on your next steps The path to growth is different for every business, so let’s quickly get some clichés out of the way: there are no silver bullets. One size does not fit all. And the best answers lie within your existing customers and team. Here’s how we approach each of the critical practices that make up your Growth Engagement: ### Customer Research & Insights In order to grow, you need to know where and who that growth is actually coming from (hint: it might not be who you think!). That’s why the best growth ideas are actually right under your nose. They come from your customers. As part of our customer research process, we’ll interview your highest-LTV customers to get to the heart of: - Who your best customers are - Why they bought your product - What makes the product different, better, and special in their eyes - How to find more customers just like them ### Positioning & Messaging As positioning expert April Dunford says, “Positioning isn’t something you create. It’s something you discover.” We’ll **analyze the competitive market** and identify the best positioning based on what we heard from customers and what’s in the market today. Our work in positioning & messaging directly improves your: - Sales communication to warm and cold audiences - Website copy and messaging - Ad copy - Messaging for software directories like Capterra, G2 Crowd, etc. ### Growth Strategy After analyzing your customers, market, and product, we’ll **define your growth strategy.** What does that actually mean, you ask? We’ll find out: - How best to position your product in the market today - What channels to start leveraging (and which to scrap, if applicable) - How to best invest your marketing budget - What gaps your existing funnel needs to fill — such as adding to (or rewriting) your website copy - Benchmarks you’ll need to hit to reach your goals - What KPIs to track to know you’re making progress ### Pricing & Model Insights We use the Price Intelligently way of creating a pricing strategy: - Leveraging qualitative customer research - Using Price Sensitivity Analysis combined with Feature Preference Analysis to determine pricing levers - Applying data and insights to existing plans and models After working with us, you’ll have a **clear sense for what pricing structure will make the most revenue** while still creating value for customers. ### Growth Roadmapping Defining your growth strategy is great and all, but how about knowing what tactics come first? That brings us to growth roadmapping — AKA clear prioritization on what to invest first and where the dependencies lie. **Our guarantee: you’ll walk away knowing exactly what needs to be implemented, when it needs to be implemented, and how best to do it.** ### Product-Market Fit Analysis Throughout our engagement, we may discover that there’s stark differences in product-market fit for certain customer segments. We’ll use our favorite product-market fit frameworks to help you analyze your customer base and inform your growth strategy. “I needed somebody who could help us do things, execute things, and actually work towards a whole marketing effort, not just strategy.” Asia is more of a partner, a team member, and we’re working toward the same thing.” Brian FaustCEO & Co-founder, Rindle ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/confused.gif "confused") ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? That’s an excellent question. [Here’s a complete overview of the entire process](https://demandmaven.io/process/). After you complete your application and jump on an initial discovery call to see if we’re the right fit, we’ll start with a full 1-hour onboarding session. During this hour, we’ll go over your product, your customers, the existing marketing stack, and the current funnel experience. Afterward, we’ll suggest a project timeline with deadlines so we can gather everything we need to give you the most useful insights. And if you have a sales team, we’ll meet with your sales leader(s) for their perspective and experience. Throughout the entire engagement, we’ll be crafting your actionable growth strategy. ## How much does it cost? The Growth Engagement starts at $25K for a one-time project that hands you the strategic insights and recommended next projects you need to reach your growth goals. ## How long does a Growth Engagement last? The project typically lasts for about 6-8 weeks, but ultimately, the timeline depends on the schedules of your paying customers and when we can interview them. ## What are the deliverables in a Growth Engagement? We provide deliverables throughout the engagement to make our insights easy to digest, and as action-oriented as possible. All of our strategic work is documented in either a slide presentation, visual board, spreadsheet, or written document. Customer interviews are recorded, transcribed, and parsed in a database that provides data-driven insights and serves as the source of truth for your actual, honest-to-God “voice of customer”. Our roadmaps are delivered visually, and presented again in a written format once reviewed and approved. No matter what we create, it’s yours to keep. Our deliverables aim to be educational while also defining the plan and next steps. (And, of course, they’re laid out so clearly that even a trained monkey could pick up the plan and implement it.) ## This sounds like a lot of work. How much of my time will you need? You’re not wrong. It *is* a lot of work, but it’s worth doing! When we work together, we’re partners. The founders and startups that we work with — the ones that get the most value out of a Growth Engagement — are the folks who engage, provide timely feedback, and help us access the information we need to be successful. ## What happens after the Growth Engagement? Growth Engagements are designed to illuminate the clearest paths to achieving results, so after we deliver our insights and the plan for moving forward, the next step is to decide how you’ll execute it. CEOs and founders usually choose one of the following paths: - Execute the plan themselves with their existing team - Hire a full-time marketer or head of growth - Hire contractors or freelancers to execute - Hire us to implement the plan - All of these are valid options and will depend on your budget and needs. ## What if I don't have any paying customers? Can I still get value from this? Excellent question! If you have zero paying customers, you’ll want to take a look at the [GTM Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) instead. It’s designed for companies that don’t have tons of paying customers quite yet, and maybe only have a few, just active, non-paying users, or even just a few prospects. ## **Bring your product** to your people It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Growth Engagement — so that 7 weeks from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [GTM Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) **Published:** September 29, 2021 **Author:** Lauren Lavender **Content:** # Dominate your market with an insights-driven GTM plan Confidently take your product from early-stage or beta to marketplace contender with the Go-to-Market Engagement [CURIOUS? GET IN TOUCH](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *And get where you’re growing faster* ## Hardworking software startup**s, we see you — and we love you. ❤️️** ## **Let’s clarify your positioning, identify your best customers, and start scaling your SaaS sustainably.** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## Who’s the Go-to-Market (GTM) Engagement for? You know better than anyone that hitting the first $10,000 in recurring revenue is a game-changer. Maybe **you’ve already racked up a few paying customers** — but you’re not quite sure what channels to invest in or how to position in the market, and you need to avoid losing momentum. Or maybe you’re starting from ground *zero* and need someone to battle-test the assumptions you’ve made about your target market (and product). DemandMaven is here to help you predictably hit your next milestone: $1 Million in recurring or subscription revenue. Our GTM Engagement is built expressly for… R ### Early-stage Founders, CEOs, & product owners who want to fast-track go-to-market strategy You know there’s “something here” when it comes to tapping into what your market needs. You’ve created a product that solves a real problem. Now it’s time to get to know your market better, find out how they TALK about those problems, and bring your software to more of its right-fit users. R ### SaaS & software businesses aiming to reach $1M ARR Maybe you’re already growing, but things are happening slower than you’d like. Or maybe you’ve hit a plateau, and it’s time to explore new channels and opportunities. The path to $1M MRR looks different for every business — but behind every SaaS success is a commitment to leading with data. R ### Burned-out, overwhelmed, and stressed leaders looking for gut-checks & guidance Our strategy is rooted in customer research and years of experience working exclusively with software founders and creators. If the question “Now what?” is keeping you up at night, tap us to take the wheel for 6-8 weeks of in-depth strategy, prioritization, and aggressive unblocking to help you make progress. During the process, you’ll… - Get to know your customers (or potential customers) more intimately than ever before to learn what drives them, motivates them, and frustrates them - Closely examine your product’s positioning in the marketplace, identify gaps or issues, and nail down what really makes you unique (psst, it might not be what you think!) - Discover which channels, campaigns, and communities are the highest-ROI places to focus your budget and efforts ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/rachel-mccrickard-1.jpeg "rachel-mccrickard") ## **“DemandMaven has an incredible ability to quickly learn a company’s vision and begin executing deliverables immediately.”** “They provided immense value to our Motivo team by diving deep into customer and industry research, and then using that data to create a strategic, step-by-step revenue-generating marketing plan.” – Rachel McCrickard, CEO & Founder of Motivo [Read the Motivo case study ➡️](https://demandmaven.io/motivo-case-study/) ## Get to $1M ARR with confidence Our systematic approach is founded on the Jobs To Be Done method. Why JTBD? Because with this method, we keep the strategic focus on your best-fit customers and how your product serves them. After conducting in-depth customer and competitor research, we analyze the data — and use it to create a clear-cut plan for your next steps to sustainable, predictable growth. >> Psst, already bringing in $1M+ ARR? [You’re looking for the Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/). 5 ### Step 1: Get crystal-clear on your customers Your success thus far isn’t a fluke — and your next stage of success won’t be, either. We conduct in-depth customer research to understand not just who your customers are, but why they choose you. Next, we analyze that data alongside market & competitive research to answer important questions like “What messaging works best? What channels should we focus on? What roles should we hire for next?” 9 ### Step 2: Establish your baseline & KPIs Sure, the number of new subscribers walking in your digital door might be few to none (for now). But we can still make sure you’re set up to attract visitors and track the journey from Total Stranger to Delighted Customer. So when you turn on the traffic tap, you’ll know exactly where your leads are leaking out.” During this analysis, we’ll establish benchmarks to measure your growth by. And we’ll identify the best levers to pull to help you reach your goals faster. R ### Step 3: Start implementing your growth plan None of this “Here’s a bunch of fancy documentation, see you later” consulting malarkey. After we define your growth strategy and clearly articulate your growth options, you’ll have clear action steps. You can run with your strategy from there, or hire us to implement it for you. ## Our flexible process **grows with you** Every Go-to-Market (GTM) Engagement covers the strategic areas that directly contribute to your growth, including customer research, positioning and messaging, channels, media spend, and more. While our process is consistent, what it reveals about your business is unique — and uniquely valuable. And if you want to go a little deeper? We got you. Easily expand your engagement to include onboarding & activation strategy, content marketing strategy, and a whole lot more. ## Choose your own growth adventure One size definitely doesn’t fit all — especially in the SaaS and startup world. That’s why the Go-to-market Engagement comes with add-on deliverables. We’ll recommend the right ones for you, so you can walk away with everything your business needs to grow.  #### INCLUDED **Customer research and insights**. Why do they buy? Why do they buy from you? And what keeps them coming back?  **Positioning and messaging**. Discover which concepts and copy really resonate  **Market & competitor research**. Understand your place in the market, so you can get to 1st ![cool](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/themes/Divi/includes/builder/frontend-builder/assets/vendors/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)  **Marketing strategy**. Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Growth strategy**. Know exactly where you’re going and how you’ll get there  **Resource plan**. Get specific recommendations on what resources you’ll need tailored to your unique constraints.  #### ADD-ONS **Monetization strategy**. Deep-dive on what customers and prospects are willing to pay and how to structure your plans for long-term growth.  **Onboarding & activation strategy**. Win and activate more customers  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Content marketing strategy**. Publish useful stuff your target audience loves to share  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product discovery**. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more. [LET'S GO TO MARKET](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed team** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and sits on the board at Moz. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of models and market segments, including freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped companies  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Reserve your GTM Engagement now to launch *successfully*, not splashily Reaching #1 on Product Hunt is great, but you know what’s even better? Having a dedicated pool of paying customers when all the digital confetti settles. Our process is rooted in how to better serve the actual humans who need your product — whether or not they know it yet. And the results of our work together are always unique to your SaaS. Here’s how we approach each of the critical practices that make up your GTM Engagement: ### Customer Research & Insights In order to grow, you need to know where and who that growth is actually coming from (hint: it might not be who you think!). That’s why the best growth ideas are actually right under your nose. They come from your customers. As part of our customer research process, we’ll interview your highest-LTV customers to get to the heart of: - Who your best customers are - Why they bought your product - What makes the product different, better, and special in their eyes - How to find more customers just like them ### Positioning & Messaging As positioning expert April Dunford says, “Positioning isn’t something you create. It’s something you discover.” We’ll **analyze the competitive market** and identify the best positioning based on what we heard from customers and what’s in the market today. Our work in positioning & messaging directly improves your: - Sales communication to warm and cold audiences - Website copy and messaging - Ad copy - Messaging for software directories like Capterra, G2 Crowd, etc. ### Growth Strategy After analyzing your customers, market, and product, we’ll **define your growth strategy.** What does that actually mean, you ask? We’ll find out: - How best to position your product in the market today - What channels to start leveraging (and which to scrap, if applicable) - How to best invest your marketing budget - What gaps your existing funnel needs to fill — such as adding to (or rewriting) your website copy - Benchmarks you’ll need to hit to reach your goals - What KPIs to track to know you’re making progress ### Pricing & Model Insights for Marketing Not all founders and CEOs may realize this, but every time something in the business changes, it directly impacts your marketing strategy. Adding a new feature set to the product or changing the model (pricing, plans, etc.) also directly changes how you should be marketing. We’ll define your marketing strategy as it stands today and **what needs to change to help you get where you need to go**. We cover: - Positioning & messaging - Channels — both GTM channels and digital channels - Model & pricing ### Growth Roadmapping Defining your growth strategy is great and all, but how about knowing what tactics come first? That brings us to growth roadmapping — AKA clear prioritization on what to invest first and where the dependencies lie. **Our guarantee: you’ll walk away knowing exactly what needs to be implemented, when it needs to be implemented, and how best to do it.** ### Product-Market Fit Analysis Throughout our engagement, we may discover that there’s stark differences in product-market fit for certain customer segments. We’ll use our favorite product-market fit frameworks to help you analyze your customer base and inform your growth strategy. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/brian-rindle-ceo.jpeg "brian-rindle-ceo") ## **“*I needed somebody who could help us do things, execute things, and actually work towards a whole marketing effort, not just strategy*.”** “Asia is more of a partner, a team member, and we’re working toward the same thing.” – Brian Faust, CEO & Co-founder, Rindle [Read the Rindle case study ➡️](https://demandmaven.io/rindle-case-study/) ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/confused.gif "confused") ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? That’s an excellent question. [Here’s a complete overview of the entire process](https://demandmaven.io/process/). After you complete your application and jump on an initial discovery call to see if we’re the right fit, we’ll start with a full 1-hour onboarding session. During this hour, we’ll go over your product, your customers, the existing marketing stack, and the current funnel experience. Afterward, we’ll suggest a project timeline with deadlines so we can gather everything we need to give you the most useful insights. And if you have a sales team, we’ll meet with your sales leader(s) for their perspective and experience. Throughout the entire engagement, we’ll be crafting your actionable growth strategy. ## How much does it cost? The GTM Engagement starts at $15K for a one-time project that hands you the insights and action steps you need to confidently go-to-market. ## How long does a GTM Engagement last? The project typically lasts for about 6-8 weeks, but ultimately, the timeline depends on the schedules of your audience members, team, and/or paying customers and when we can interview them. ## What are the deliverables in a GTM Engagement? We provide deliverables throughout the engagement to make our insights easy to digest, and as action-oriented as possible. All of our strategic work is documented in either a slide presentation, visual board, spreadsheet, or written document. Customer interviews are recorded, transcribed, and parsed in a database that provides data-driven insights and serves as the source of truth for your actual, honest-to-God “voice of customer.” Our customer experience map is delivered visually, and presented again in a written format once reviewed and approved. No matter what we create, it’s yours to keep. Our deliverables aim to be educational while also defining the plan and next steps. (And, of course, they’re laid out so clearly that even a trained monkey could pick up the plan and implement it.) ## This sounds like a lot of work. How much of my time will you need? You’re not wrong. It *is* a lot of work, but it’s worth doing! When we work together, we’re partners. The founders and startups that we work with — the ones that get the most value out of a GTM Engagement — are the folks who engage, provide timely feedback, and help us access the information we need to be successful. ## What happens after the GTM Engagement? GTM Engagements are designed to illuminate the clearest paths to achieving results, so after we deliver our insights and the plan for moving forward, the next step is to decide how you’ll execute it. CEOs and founders usually choose one of the following paths: - Execute the plan themselves with their existing team - Hire a full-time marketer or head of growth - Hire contractors or freelancers to execute - Hire us to implement the plan through a retainer All of these are valid options and will depend on your budget and needs. ## What if I don't have any paying customers? Can I still get value from this? Absolutely! The GTM Engagement is designed for companies that don’t have paying customers yet, but it is best if they do have audience members that we can tap and talk to. This means any prospects you’ve done interviews with in the past or even team members who can provide knowledge about the problem in the market. ## **Bring your product** to your people It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Go-to-Market or Growth Engagement — so that two months from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Done-For-You JTBD Customer Research](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) **Published:** October 4, 2022 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # The customer research you know you need done & delivered ## **In 10 detailed Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)-style interviews, we’ll identify how your customers found you, why they chose you over the competition, and why they buy** [INTERVIEW MY CUSTOMERS](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *Book your JTBD Research Project now* *and get interviews & insights within 4-5 weeks* ## We’ve done customer research projects for high-growth companies like… ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) “Asia is an exceptional marketing and growth partner for early-stage SaaS. She’s one of the few people out there who can work both on marketing strategy and also execute on the tactics.” Rob WallingCo-founder, MicroConf & TinySeed ### Get gold-nugget insights from your actual customers It’s the classic conundrum of every growing SaaS: **What got you this far won’t get you where you’re going.** If it’s been a while since you did a research-based deep dive with your customers (or you’ve never done one 😱), **now is the time**. Don’t keep basing your business decisions on data that’s old enough to go to kindergarten. And definitely don’t make assumptions — because you know what they say about those. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/mind-blown.gif "mind-blown") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/schitts-its-a-gift.gif "schitts-its-a-gift") ### Interviews are hard to do right — so we talk to your customers on your behalf Even the chattiest, most empathetic teams are automatically at a disadvantage when it comes to conducting customer interviews. Why? Because your customers can’t be truly honest with you. Talking with a neutral third party (who also happen to be experienced JTBD interviewers 💅) allows your customers to **share their real thoughts, feelings, frustrations, and ideas.** Not to mention that in-house interviewers often get stuck in the product feedback loop. When you’re close to your own product, it’s too easy to miss the forest of opportunities for the feature-specific trees. Finally, interviewing well is only half the battle. It’s what you DO with your interviews that matters. **Our expert analysis turns your customer interviews into insights.** ### With a Jobs To Be Done Research Project, you’ll get useful answers to critical questions like… - What was going on in your customer’s life when they began looking for a solution like yours? - How did they find you? - How did they evaluate or compare your product with other options? - What eventually led them to choose you? - How are they using your product(s)? - What would be most useful to them in the future? These insights don’t just influence your feature set or product roadmap. What you learn from your **customer research can and should guide all areas of your business** — from identifying your unique position in the marketplace to shaping your marketing and sales outreach. Research creates the foundation for **predictable, consistent growth** **at any stage.** Why are you waiting to do it? “I have been working with a mutual SaaS client on usability testing and feature/improvement roadmap so I’ve spent a lot of time in the research you prepared for them. You guys do amazing work – I was really impressed.” Stephanie LeatheProduct Lead, 923 Digital ## **“Teams who do 10 interviews per month grow 2-3x faster than their competitors.”** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/PW-logo_whiteGreen-300x51.png "PW-logo_whiteGreen") ## **Make better strategic decisions** around marketing, product, and sales “What can I do with my JTBD Research Project results?” Or, the question you’re really asking: **“Is this worth it for my business?”** And while we normally avoid blanket statements, in this case, we can confidently say: *Yes.* The beautiful thing about qualitative customer research is that it’s valuable to businesses at any stage. - **Startups** rely on customer data to validate their product (and inform any pivots) - **Growing companies** rely on customer data to maintain a connection with their users as they scale - **Enterprises** rely on customer data to understand both their place in the market and how to effectively serve a wide range of customers Your research results will reveal — and challenge​​ — your assumptions. They’ll give you clarity on what to build next (and what to scrap). And they’ll help you **understand how to talk with your customers**. So you can keep them around, and win more users like them. Book a discovery call now to chat with us about your research goals, your product, and your customers. [BOOK MY DISCOVERY CALL](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *We’re fun friendly, and focused.* ## The **JTBD Research Project** ## Process, Deliverables, & Timeline ### THE PROCESS You buy the JTBD Research Project engagement. We interview your customers. You profit. ### THE DELIVERABLES - **10 interviews** in the style of JTBD “switch” interviews all **recorded, transcribed, and saved in Google Drive** - A **customer research repository** of all of your interviews parsed and analyzed - 1-pager of interview highlights ### THE TIMELINE 4-5 weeks from the first customer interview “DemandMaven is a secret weapon for B2B and B2C SaaS companies that want to sustainably grow. I highly recommend them!” April DunfordAuthor of Bestseller "Obviously Awesome" , Founder of Ambient Strategy ## Dig deeper with the Insights Brief Want even more useful takeaways from your JTBD Research Project? Add the optional Insights Brief to discover: - The top “jobs” that customers are hiring your product for - What triggered customers to buy - What stood out about your product - What customers are hoping to accomplish by using your product - Top habits or previous solutions that were keeping them “stuck” - Why they finally decided to switch solutions - Channel opportunities for marketing - The moment your customers went “Aha!” - Dealbreakers that keep potential customers from buying - Key areas of improvement in the product ## You don’t have to hire us to do your customer research…but please hire someone. Even if your team does carve out the time to conduct customer research (and that’s a big “if”), it’s very likely you won’t get the valuable insights you’re looking for. That’s because your customers simply won’t be as direct with you as they’ll be with someone else. They’ll spare your feelings. They’ll troubleshoot product issues. They’ll make feature requests. And you’ll leave your interviews with a scattered spreadsheet full of conflicting information that doesn’t help anyone on your team succeed. Tapping a third party to conduct your research will 1) get you more useful insights, 2) save your team from having to learn the delicate craft of interviewing, and 3) save your customers from being “practiced on.” 🥴 ## OK, here’s why you should hire us in particular. To put it simply: We live and breathe Jobs To Be Done. We conduct these interviews every day across industries as different as B2B self-serve SaaS and B2C subscription-based companies. Not to brag, but we’re pretty good. We know where to dig deeper. We know what words and phrases are “vague” and not actually helpful — and which are key points to reflect in your messaging and positioning. We structure every interview to get to the heart of what your business needs to know from your customers. Instead of dumping a pile of recordings and raw data on you, we “parse” your customer interviews. Our team combs line-by-line through every transcript to identify recurring themes and patterns, then tags those themes to slice and dice meaningful insights from. Tedious? Yes. Crucial? Also yes. [BOOK MY DISCOVERY CALL](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *We’re fun, friendly, and focused* ## If you love your research results, there’s more. ### Turn your JTBD Research Project into a growth roadmap with a full strategy engagement. DemandMaven works with both early-stage and traction-stage SaaS businesses. We can help you…  Find new growth opportunities or troubleshoot stalled growth with a [Growth Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/)  Define your go-to-market strategy with a [GTM Engagement](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/)  Solve marketing and positioning problems (or prevent them from happening) with a custom engagement ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **customer-obsessed team** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and previously sat on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of models and market segments, including freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped companies  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## **Talk to us**, and you’ll want us to talk to your customers. ### Book your no-hard-sell discovery call to learn more about what your Jobs To Be Done Research Project will include. [TALK TO MY CUSTOMERS](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) We’ll never recommend a service you don’t need — and regardless of whether you work with us or not, you’ll leave our call with useful ideas. --- ### [SaaS Pricing Consultant](https://demandmaven.io/services/saas-pricing-consultant/) **Published:** May 19, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Stop guessing what your customers will actually pay Figure out how to price your product, which features belong behind a paywall, and what’s quietly killing your expansion revenue (and your 12-month NRR — IYKYK) in just 7 weeks. [Let's fix your pricing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) See if we’re a fit in just 45 minutes ## **Trusted by over 100+ SaaS businesses with their toughest growth challenges** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) ## The problem with how most SaaS companies set pricing Most early-stage SaaS founders set pricing one of three ways: 1\. They copy a competitor. 2. They go with their gut. 3. Or they throw up a number that “feels right” and never revisit it. **None of those are strategies.** And the consequences show up in predictable places: too much churn at the low end, too little expansion revenue, plan structures nobody actually upgrades through, and a nagging sense that you’re leaving money on the table (but no idea how much or where!). Pricing is one of the highest-leverage decisions you’ll make in your business. It directly affects your conversion rate, your NRR, your LTV, and how your product is perceived in the market. And yet most founders give it less thought than their homepage headline. That’s no shade to you; **it’s just hard to price well without the right data.** Which is exactly what this project gives you. ## Who is the Pricing Project for? R ### You haven't touched pricing in 12+ months …and you have no idea where to start, how to do it right, and which pricing ideas you should prioritize. R ### Expansion revenue is flat or nonexistent Less than 40% of your MRR is coming from upgrades or expansions, and you don’t know why R ### Customers complain about pricing Or worse, they go quiet and churn without saying anything at all R ### You have a million ideas for pricing but no idea where to start You’ve got this list of ideas in your head but not exactly sure what’s worth prioritizing R ### You've tried doing pricing on your own (and it sucked) ## **Here’s a response from a real SaaS PLG client about their results from working with us last year on pricing 👇** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/client-success-email.png "client-success-email") ## How we make SaaS pricing strategy crystal-clear (and make you money) There’s a reason pricing research is easy to get wrong: customers will tell you what they think you want to hear, especially in an interview. “Would you pay more for X?” is basically a useless question. Good pricing strategy gets at willingness-to-pay indirectly — through validated methodologies that are specifically designed to surface honest reactions, not socially acceptable ones. DemandMaven uses three primary methodologies depending on what you need: w ### JTBD Interviews We conduct in-depth JTBD customer and prospect research to understand not just who your customers are, but why they choose you. Next, we analyze that data alongside the price-sensitivity research to answer important questions like “What are customers willing to pay for?” and “What features do specific types of customers value versus others?”  ### Van-Westendorp Price Sensitivity & Max-Diff Ah, yes. The nerdy pricing stuff we get into! We handcraft a pricing survey that maps the range of “too cheap,” “acceptable,” and “too expensive” while also understanding what’s most important in each plan. The insights alone from the survey are worth their weight in gold. It just so happens that they also feed into pricing strategy,  ### Live Pricing Page UX Interviews Once we have ideas for the pricing plans we want to get feedback on, we’ll run UX interviews with qualified prospects on a live comp of a real pricing page that we’ll build together. It’s both incredible and terrifying but immeasurably valuable to execute. You’ll walk away with tons of insights regarding your pricing concepts and the design of the pricing page from actual potential buyers. ## What you walk away with At the end of a Pricing Project, you’ll have:  #### INCLUDED **JTBD customer research and insights**. Why do they buy? Why do they buy from you? And what keeps them coming back?  **A clear willingness-to-pay range** for your primary customer segments, grounded in data — not assumptions  **Pricing recommendations** for your current plans and any new tiers you’re considering  **Feature value analysis** that shows which features are driving purchase decisions and which are getting ignored  Value metric recommendations based on insights from our studies and surveys  **Plan structure recommendations** — what belongs on each tier, what to gate, and what to make free to drive conversion  **Expansion revenue opportunities** — where upgrades are most likely to stick and how to design for them  #### ADD-ONS **Pricing page UX interviews** that get feedback from real-life qualified prospects  Pricing page design and composition to prototype ideas quickly  **Onboarding & activation strategy**. Win and activate more customers  **Marketing strategy.** Instead of spraying scattershot, use your budget on the channels that earn the most ROI  **Website strategy**. Site not doing your SaaS justice? You wouldn’t be the first…  **Growth roadmapping**. Understand which steps to prioritize and choose the people & tools to get you there  **Product discovery**. Prioritize features on your roadmap that don’t just keep customers but have them banging down your door for more. [Let's fix your pricing, friend](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure ## Work with a **growth-obsessed SaaS pricing consultant** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and served on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of product-led growth and sales-led models and market segments including: freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped funding environments  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Frequently Asked Questions ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/beyonce-beyonce-mood.png) ## What does the entire process look like from start to finish? Great question! A typical Pricing Research project runs **4–6 weeks** from kickoff to final recommendations — depending on how quickly we can schedule interviews with your customers. Week 0: Onboarding + research strategy Week 1: Outreach + scheduling; review of current pricing and plan structure Week 2: Customer interviews + initial analysis Week 3: Quantitative pricing analysis (WTP / Van Westendorp) Week 4: Findings synthesis + recommendations draft Week 5: Workshop + next steps Weeks 6 – 7: Overflow for additional strategy delivery or interviews ## How is this different from the Pricing Audit add-on in the Growth Engagement? The Pricing Audit add-on is a lighter-touch review of your current pricing structure as part of a broader growth project. It’s still rooted in the same fundamentals, but would include the pricing survey and 3-5 pricing page UX interviews with prospects. The Pricing Research project is a dedicated deep-dive — it uses validated research methodologies, conducts actual interviews, and produces a full pricing strategy with specific recommendations. If pricing is the primary problem you’re trying to solve, this is the right engagement. ## Do you work with B2C pricing too, or just B2B? Both. The methodologies we use are applicable across business models. The research design looks a little different depending on your buyer, but the core approach — combining qualitative and quantitative to surface honest willingness-to-pay — works for any SaaS pricing decision. ## We already ran a pricing survey last year. Is there still value here? Probably, yes. Surveys typically tell you what people say they’d pay — not what they’d actually pay. And most surveys don’t capture the contextual information you need to make good plan structure decisions. We’d want to understand what your survey revealed and what it left unanswered, and build the research design around the gaps. ## Can we use this research to inform a full pricing page redesign? Yes — and we can fold in specific messaging recommendations for how to present your pricing to different buyer segments. The research surfaces the language customers use to describe value, which is often the most useful input for pricing page copy. ## How much does it cost? The Pricing Project starts at $15,000, but most clients spend around $20,000-25,000. [Book a discovery call](https://savvycal.com/demandmaven/discovery-call) to talk through the scope and whether this is the right project for where you are. ## You ready to finally figure out how to do pricing the right way? Most SaaS companies don’t find out which one until it’s already costing them. A Pricing Project gives you the data to make confident decisions — about what to charge, how to structure your plans, and how to design for the expansion revenue your business needs to grow. [Yep, it's about time we fixed pricing](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Contact Us](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) **Published:** January 31, 2018 **Author:** admin **Content:** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/demandmaven02-small.png "demandmaven02-small") # Let's get your SaaS unstuck 👇 ## We've helped over 100+ SaaS businesses grow. Here are just a few: ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/userlist-logo-300x89.png "userlist-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/sparktoro-logo-300x69.png "sparktoro-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-1.03.18 PM-300x62.png "Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 1.03.18 PM") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/freshworks-logo.png "freshworks-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/uplisting-logo-bl-300x62.png "uplisting-logo-bl") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-1.00.53 PM.png "SearchPilot-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/audiencetap-logo.png "audiencetap-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/aurelius-logo-300x63.png "aurelius-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/toms-planner-logo-300x30.png "toms-planner-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/sessionlab-logo-300x71.png "sessionlab-logo") ## Book a discovery call today ✨ In just 45 minutes, we’ll get the full lay of the land of your product and get a sense for where your top growth opportunities lie. If DemandMaven can help, we’ll discuss our services. Otherwise, you can rest assured that you’ll be pointed in the right direction. If you want to: - Find your next best growth opportunities based on both quantitative and qualitative customer insights - Define your go-to-market strategies - Refine your positioning & messaging (or declare bankruptcy and start from scratch on positioning) - Build your growth engines - Vet the absolute best channels for finding and acquiring customers - Enable your sales team with the content, copy, and materials they need to sell - Implement a killer website experience that generates quality leads Then book a discovery call now! Just **complete the form to the right and we’ll contact you.** “I don’t just recommend \[DemandMaven\] to everyone because we’re friends. I do it because \[they’re\] really f\*cking good at this stuff.” Rand FishkinCEO & Co-Founder, SparkToro “DemandMaven is an exceptional marketing and growth partner for early-stage SaaS. She’s one of the few people out there who can work both on marketing strategy and also execute on the tactics.” Rob WallingCo-founder, MicroConf & TinySeed “DemandMaven is a secret weapon for B2B and B2C SaaS companies that want to sustainably grow. I highly recommend them!” April DunfordAuthor of Bestseller "Obviously Awesome" , Founder of Ambient Strategy ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Beat your SaaS growth slump in just 7 weeks Whether you’re figuring out your early GTM strategy or you’ve been stuck at $3M ARR and can’t figure out why, we’ve got a tried-and-true process to help you get unstuck — no matter the industry, B2B or B2C, funded or bootstrapped. **Tired of throwing things at the wall and trying to grow all by yourself? Book a call to get unstuck.** [Help me get unstuck](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: SparkToro](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-sparktoro/) **Published:** January 30, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How SparkToro rebuilt their product and reduced risk with voice-of-customer research A story about mitigating product risk, charting a new path, and re-connecting with what customers care about [Read More](#begin)[Hire Us](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ## Update: SparkToro beats their growth slump and has the best 2 months ever in the last 1.5 years 🎉 Here’s Rand discussing the work he did with DemandMaven and its impact on the business [during a podcast with the User Testing team](https://youtu.be/5lEueAPtjsE?si=fu3-9x0Xy4C70xRv) (shortened for clarity)👇 “I don’t just recommend \[DemandMaven\] to everyone because we’re friends. I do it because \[they’re\] really f\*cking good at this stuff.” Rand FishkinCEO & Co-Founder, SparkToro ## Highlights - Conducted and analyzed 19 customer interviews - Conducted and analyzed 11 UX interviews - Supported feature prioritization for the new roadmap - Collaborated on UX adjustments for improved adoption ## Services Provided - Customer research & interviews - UX research & interviews - Thematic analysis and coding of interviews - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Product-Opportunities mapping # The Company ## *Transforming audience research for agencies & marketers* Co-founders Rand Fishkin (co-founder and previous CEO of Moz, co-founder of Inbound.org, and author of [Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World](https://sparktoro.com/book)) and Casey Henry (previously Moz, Wistia, Hubspot, and Ookla) started SparkToro because they believed everyone should have access to high-quality market and audience research. Their platform, which allows marketers and strategists to discover where their audience hangs out, topics they care about, queries they search for, YouTube channels they subscribe to, etc. entered the market with a bang in 2020. Then, in 2023, things got interesting. Casey and Rand were in the unique position of having to rebuild the product from scratch. Nearly everything on the back-end had to change, and so did a lot of the features and functionality of the app thanks to a fundamental change in how SparkToro’s data was acquired. But there was a silver lining lurking beneath this technical challenge. True to his nature as a smart and empathetic leader, Rand realized this was the perfect time to dig deep and understand what SparkToro’s customers really wanted, what their ideal outcomes were, and the jobs they needed to do inside the product. From there, the team could figure out what features they could replace and what new value they could provide to users. That’s where DemandMaven came in. After undergoing a series of Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)-style interviews and analysis conducted by DemandMaven, Rand and VP of Marketing, Amanda Natividad, were able to use the insights in a variety of practical applications. One of the most important outcomes of DemandMaven’s work was using customer feedback to validate their hunches about the product direction they wanted to head in, gaining feedback from customers about some initial wireframes, and identifying both marketing and product growth opportunities. As Rand puts it, “I don’t just recommend Asia to everyone because we’re friends. I do it because she’s really f-ing good at this stuff.” # The Challenge ## *Re-building a product from the ground up, with no time to lose* SparkToro is an audience research platform that helps marketers and strategists analyze and understand the behaviors and demographics of any online audience. At the time of its inception, Twitter was one of only a few major social media networks that SparkToro pulled data from to help its users learn about their potential customers. But major changes at Twitter’s headquarters meant SparkToro – and their customers – would no longer have access to that valuable data. For Rand and Casey, this meant starting fresh, and re-envisioning a better, more powerful tool with reduced integration-dependency. “We had lost access to our core dataset, and so we needed a new system to be able to provide data. To do that, we had to really deeply understand what our customers wanted, what their outcomes were from the product, the jobs that they needed to do inside the product, the thing that they subscribed to us for. Then, \[we could\] figure out what \[features we\] could afford to lose, and what we really needed to build in this new one,” Rand said. For Rand, this opportunity felt like déjà vu. It was the chance to go back to the very inception of SparkToro, to that phase between ideation and launch when he and Casey were doing their own customer discovery. “Customer discovery for me was an 18-month process that I spent the first year and a half of SparkToro’s life doing manually. Lots of in-person, lots phone calls, lots of video calls, all that kind of stuff. But we had to go back to the drawing table as it were,” Rand added. There were obvious drawbacks to completing the process alone, especially during this critical time in the business’s trajectory. For one thing, they didn’t have eighteen months to lose. The manual work of coordinating and transcribing calls would take them away from their primary focus — which was product development. Second, conducting interviews on their own would likely produce biased results. “We really needed help because as my co-founder, Casey, often says – when people talk to me, especially because I have a presence and brand in the marketing world, a lot of our customers will not give me or us directly the answers that they would give a third party like \[DemandMaven\],” Rand said. No matter how you look at it, relaunching the product came with risk. Any changes they made to the product had the potential to alienate existing users. Hitting the right balance between keeping those customers happy and attracting a new audience would take careful consideration. Rand explained, “Because of the unique situation that we had where we had lost access to this core data and we had to rebuild the app, we were essentially in a space where if we were very successful in getting lots of people to enjoy the product as it was then, we would quickly lose that. All those people would be disappointed by a new product. Customer discovery and customer empathy and understanding the core problems of our audience surfaced as much more important, much more high value for the long term of the business.” ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-30-at-3.05.08 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 3.05.08 PM") # The Solution ## *Actionable primary insights from a third-party provider* For Rand, the choice to go with DemandMaven was an easy one. He was acutely aware how his passion for his work, and notoriety in the industry, could affect their customer’s interview responses. It was a risk he didn’t want to take. “I recognize two things are true. One is when I show people SparkToro, our features, our product, what it can do for them, I am very excited about that, and therefore it is infectious. Problem number one is me. Problem number two is everyone else and their perception of me, Amanda, and even Casey, which is that when you talk to people who work at a company on a product, you have an innate human desire to make them feel good about the thing that they put their life’s work into. It’s just how it is. There’s very few people who can have that level of directness and honesty with someone who they know worked on the thing. So, it is fantastic to hire third parties who are deeply experienced at asking the right kinds of customer research questions and talking to people in honest and truthful ways that get honest and truthful responses. That’s a superpower. It’s a superpower that you can’t have inside the company,” Rand explained. Amanda, SparkToro’s fearless marketing leader, approached the idea of bringing in an expert like Asia from a slightly different POV, ultimately arriving at the same conclusion. To not only have an extra set of hands available, but also get an inside look at that person’s finely tuned process and procedures would be an advantage, plain and simple. “Being the only employee, I think what I was looking for was also just to have another perspective from a marketing and growth expert who knows and thinks and does things that I don’t do. I actually just wanted to work with a really experienced and proven marketer, \[to\] understand how she thinks, which problems she uncovers, how she would go about fixing them.” Amanda continued, “I wanted to learn from Asia. I wanted direction, more specificity, really concrete things from the interviews…which we got.” There was one more consideration that popped up for SparkToro as they thought about hiring a customer research expert: How would they translate their findings to the work they needed to do, re-building their product for an expanded audience? Amanda explained, “It’s also being able to interpret all \[the data\] and make it actionable for us. It really is a gift to be able to take \[people’s\] answers and turn them into something that makes sense for us that we can do something with, so we’re not stuck sitting there reading, ‘Oh, I hate this, I hate that.’” For the SparkToro team, DemandMaven was their first choice for a research provider. DemandMaven is a strategic growth consulting firm that helps growing companies and startups troubleshoot their growth and find their absolute best growth opportunities. Once the decision to go with DemandMaven became clear, Rand and Amanda synced up with the DemandMaven team and created an action plan based on the unique goals of the company. In addition to conducting a series of interviews, Asia and her team put together a Growth Playbook that served as a homebase for gathered information and existing data, and laid out a strategy as well as experiments for improving the most critical growth KPIs. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-30-at-3.20.09 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 3.20.09 PM") # The Result ## *Insights-driven product updates and prioritized backlog of opportunities* With the help of DemandMaven’s research, providing the much-needed primary data SparkToro needed to reconfigure the technical back-end of their app, the company had a successful relaunch and continues to see positive results. “Now, we are two and a half months into the new version of the product, and we are essentially rebuilding our audience and customer base. We have actually gone up instead of down, which is surprising and quite a blessing. But I think it speaks to a lot of the features that we chose to prioritize and build and the data sets we chose to include. All of that insight came from the work that DemandMaven did both analyzing our customer data and usage data. And also through the surveys and interviews,” Rand explained. While it’s early days for the new and improved SparkToro app, Rand specifically cited the customer research performed by Asia and her team with helping them realize three “actionable and different” business outcomes: **1. The decision to drop a specific social media account search, saving them months of development time and enabling the app to launch three months earlier than they would have otherwise been able to go live.** The SparkToro team arrived at this conclusion with Asia after looking at historic usage data and talking to actual customers. The “aha moment” came when they realized that their most valuable customers didn’t actually care as much about social media account search as they anticipated. “That was huge,” Rand said. **2. Figuring out what features from their existing roadmap to prioritize post-launch.** One of the biggest features they prioritized was the report builder, and the second was the comparison visualization. While both features are still in development, they’re high in the stack. Rand explained, “I don’t know when or if we ever would’ve gotten to them if it hadn’t been for that prioritization. I think we would’ve focused on a tracking feature instead, which is harder to build – and from DemandMaven’s research, seems to be less impactful than \[the other two features\]. I’m excited to see how it goes.” **3. Third, the discovery of a few brand new features that they’re planning to include in the app – like search keywords and topics of interest.** SparkToro launched Search Keywords in Q2 2024 and Audience Topics in Q4. “We \[had the mindset that\] we don’t want to become an SEO product. We don’t want people to think of this as just being about search. But what we discovered from the research is that lots of people who are not in SEO or PPC still want the keywords people search for and the topics they care about to use in their content strategy. They want to have empathy for their customers, figure out what their audience is interested in, figure out topic areas to create email newsletters about or go pitch conferences about or create sponsorships around. Thank goodness we did that! I think the topics and keyword sections are now two of the most popular features in the app,” Rand added. It’s common in the customer research process for founders to test previously held assumptions about their customers and product. Without access to real users who are willing to speak honestly with a third-party like Asia and her team, they are apt to continue on instincts alone. From the marketing side of things, Amanda was able to put the DemandMaven research to use immediately, updating the website experience and re-imagining the product page. “I’m seeing that a lot of what DemandMaven did informs the website experience now, the homepage and the product page, which I love. I feel like when I show people our overview page, when I run a search and I scroll through it, it’s really easy for me to convey to them, ‘Here’s what you could do with this.’ Several of the interview sources turned out to be happy customers that SparkToro has since contacted directly. Hearing users’ stories first-hand is an incredible way for marketing teams to understand the power of their software and the tangible impact it has on their customers’ businesses. “There were at least a couple people where Asia emailed us after the interview and said, ‘Hey, I think you should talk to this person about a case study because they have a really amazing story.’ Or, ‘Hey, you should talk to this person about a testimonial because they are a raving SparkToro fan and have something that’s super relevant to a bunch of other customers like them,’” Rand said. Amanda confirmed, “There is at least one that I did do a case study with, which is a nice, ‘Yes! This thing got done.’” ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “I’m seeing that a lot of what DemandMaven did informs the website experience now, the homepage and the product page, which I love. I feel like when I show people our overview page, when I run a search and I scroll through it, it’s really easy for me to convey to them, ‘Here’s what you could do with this.’ Amanda NatividadVP of Marketing, SparkToro # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Terms of Service](https://demandmaven.io/terms-of-service/) **Published:** May 19, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Terms of Service **Last Updated: May 19, 2026** These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are a legal agreement between DemandMaven, Inc. (“DemandMaven,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) and you (“you” or “user”) regarding your access to and use of our website located at demandmaven.io (the “Site”) and any related content, resources, or communications we provide (collectively, the “Services”). By accessing or using the Site or Services, you agree to be bound by these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not access or use the Site or Services. We may update these Terms from time to time. The date of the most recent revision will appear at the top of this page. Your continued use of the Site or Services after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the revised Terms. ## 1. Who We Are DemandMaven is a growth consultancy that provides strategic advisory, research, and go-to-market consulting services to SaaS companies. Our Site is a public-facing website that provides information about our services, resources, and expertise. We do not offer a software platform, and visitors are not required to create accounts or log in to access most of the content on our Site. ## 2. Use of the Site You may access and use the Site for lawful purposes related to learning about DemandMaven’s services, accessing our publicly available content, or initiating contact with us. **You agree not to:** - Use the Site in any way that violates applicable laws or regulations - Attempt to gain unauthorized access to any portion of the Site - Transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising or promotional material - Use any automated means (bots, scrapers, crawlers) to access or collect information from the Site - Impersonate any person or entity or misrepresent your affiliation with any person or entity - Engage in any conduct that could damage, disable, or impair the Site or interfere with others’ use of it - Reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from Site content without our express written permission ## 3. 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If you engage DemandMaven for consulting services, the following will be governed exclusively by your executed SOW and engagement Terms and Conditions — not by these Site Terms: - **Scope of services and deliverables** — what DemandMaven will produce and deliver - **Fees, invoicing, and payment terms** — including payment schedules, accepted payment methods, and late payment policies - **Intellectual property ownership** — including client ownership of deliverables and DemandMaven’s retained rights in its independent methodologies, frameworks, and know-how - **Confidentiality** — including DemandMaven’s obligations to protect your business information and the mutual confidentiality of engagement terms - **Data handling** — including how client-provided customer lists and other data are used in research activities The Agreement between DemandMaven and a client takes effect when a fully executed SOW and deposit payment have been received. Nothing on this Site constitutes an offer to enter into an engagement or a binding commitment by either party. ## 7. Research Participants From time to time, DemandMaven conducts qualitative research interviews and studies on behalf of clients. Participation in these research activities is entirely voluntary and separate from your use of this Site. If you are invited to participate in a research interview or study facilitated by DemandMaven — whether through User Interviews, Respondent.io, direct outreach, or another channel — the following applies: - **Participation is voluntary.** You may decline to participate or withdraw at any time before the research findings are finalized and delivered to the client. - **Your information is used for research purposes only.** Information you share during a research session will be used solely to conduct and analyze research in connection with a specific client engagement. It will not be used to market to you or shared with unrelated third parties. - **Sessions may be recorded.** If a research session is recorded, you will be informed and asked for your consent prior to the recording beginning. Recordings and transcripts are used for internal analysis only. - **Insights are typically anonymized.** Unless you have explicitly agreed otherwise, your responses will be aggregated or anonymized before being included in any client deliverable. - **You may request deletion.** If you participated in a research session and would like your personal information deleted, you may contact us at the address in Section 14. We will honor deletion requests to the extent permitted by our obligations to the relevant client engagement. Research participant data practices are described in more detail in our Privacy Policy. If you have questions about a specific research study you were invited to participate in, please contact us directly. ## 8. Third-Party Links The Site may contain links to third-party websites or resources. These links are provided for your convenience only. We do not endorse and are not responsible for the content, products, or services of any third-party sites. Visiting third-party sites is at your own risk. ## 9. Disclaimers THE SITE AND ITS CONTENT ARE PROVIDED ON AN “AS IS” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. DEMANDMAVEN DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SITE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS. Content published on the Site — including blog posts, podcast content, and other resources — is intended for general informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute professional advice tailored to your specific business situation. Results from applying any general frameworks or concepts shared on the Site will vary. ## 10. Limitation of Liability TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, DEMANDMAVEN AND ITS OFFICERS, DIRECTORS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES ARISING FROM YOUR ACCESS TO OR USE OF THE SITE OR ITS CONTENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL DEMANDMAVEN’S TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATING TO THESE TERMS EXCEED ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100). ## 11. Indemnification You agree to indemnify and hold harmless DemandMaven, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, liabilities, damages, or expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from your use of the Site or violation of these Terms. ## 12. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Georgia, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions. Any dispute arising out of or related to these Terms shall first be subject to good-faith negotiation between the parties for at least thirty (30) days. If unresolved, disputes shall be submitted to binding arbitration in Fulton County, Georgia, administered by JAMS pursuant to its Streamlined Arbitration Rules. Judgment on the arbitration award may be entered in any court with jurisdiction. You and DemandMaven agree that any claims shall be brought in your or its individual capacity only, and not as part of a class action or representative proceeding. ## 13. Miscellaneous **Entire Agreement.** These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and DemandMaven with respect to your use of the Site. **Severability.** If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect. **No Waiver.** Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms shall not constitute a waiver of that provision. **Assignment.** You may not assign your rights under these Terms. DemandMaven may assign its rights without restriction. **Force Majeure.** DemandMaven will not be liable for any failure or delay in the performance of its obligations under these Terms caused by events outside its reasonable control, including acts of God, natural disasters, war, terrorism, government action, labor disputes, or internet or infrastructure outages. ## 14. Contact If you have questions about these Terms, please contact us at: **DemandMaven, Inc.** 2514 Fontaine Cir, Decatur GA 30032 United States asia@demandmaven.io demandmaven.io/contact/ --- ### [Privacy Policy](https://demandmaven.io/privacy-policy/) **Published:** May 19, 2026 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Privacy Policy **Last Updated: May 19th, 2026** This Privacy Policy explains how DemandMaven, Inc. (“DemandMaven,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) collects, uses, and shares information about you when you visit our website at demandmaven.io (the “Site”) or interact with us in connection with our consulting services. By using the Site, you agree to the collection and use of information as described in this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site. We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. We encourage you to review it periodically. ## 1. Who We Are DemandMaven is a growth consultancy serving SaaS companies. We are the data controller for personal information collected through our Site and in connection with our consulting engagements. ## 2. Information We Collect ### A. Information You Provide Directly We collect information you choose to share with us, including: - **Contact and inquiry information** — your name, email address, company name, website URL, and any other details you include when you fill out our contact form, book a discovery call, or otherwise reach out to us - **Email subscription information** — your name and email address when you subscribe to the DemandMaven blog or email list (managed through Kit, formerly ConvertKit) - **Communications** — any messages or content you send to us directly ### B. Information Collected Automatically When you visit the Site, we may automatically collect certain technical information, including: - IP address and approximate location - Browser type and device information - Pages visited, time on page, and referring URLs - Cookies and similar tracking technologies (see Section 5 below) We use tools like Google Analytics to understand how visitors use our Site. Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to collect anonymized usage data. You can opt out of Google Analytics by installing the [Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on](https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout). ## 3. 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We do not sell personal information. **EEA residents** have rights under the GDPR, including the right to data portability and the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority. ## 11. Security We use reasonable administrative, technical, and physical safeguards to protect personal information from unauthorized access, disclosure, or loss. However, no method of transmission over the internet is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security. ## 12. Children Our Site is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us and we will delete it promptly. ## 13. Third-Party Links Our Site may link to third-party websites. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites and encourage you to review their privacy policies before providing any personal information. ## 14. Contact Us If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, would like to exercise your privacy rights, or want to request deletion of your data, please contact us at: **DemandMaven, Inc.** 2514 Fontaine Cir, Decatur GA 30032 United States demandmaven.io/contact/ --- ### [Blog](https://demandmaven.io/blog/) **Published:** January 31, 2018 **Author:** admin **Content:** # The DemandMaven Blog Knowledge we're dropping about how and why SaaS companies get stuck and how they can beat their growth plateaus 👇 [Get DemandMaven in my inbox](#subscribe) [![How to validate product ideas without wasting money on ads](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Validate-product-ideas-400x250.png)](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-validate-product-ideas-without-wasting-money-on-ads/) # [How to validate product ideas without wasting money on ads](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-validate-product-ideas-without-wasting-money-on-ads/) Here's something most founders don't want to hear about validating product ideas. Running ads to test your idea doesn't actually validate your idea. I know. It's the playbook everyone recommends. "Build a landing page, run some Facebook ads, see if people sign up."... [read more](https://demandmaven.io/how-to-validate-product-ideas-without-wasting-money-on-ads/) --- ### [Case Study: Redokun](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-redokun/) **Published:** June 25, 2024 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How Redokun 2x'd in MRR by leveraging customer insights and growth operations A client success story about really getting to know the customer, finding clear growth opportunities in the funnel, and changing how the growth team worked together [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “DemandMaven exceeded our expectations, both for the outcomes that we had – because we doubled our business – and, the thing that brings even more value, the change of mindset that happened with the mentorship, which will hopefully \[lead us\] to more growth.” Stefano BernardiCEO & Co-Founder, Redokun ## Highlights - Conducted 10 JTBD interviews with customers - Mapped the top desired outcomes that customers and audience members had - Identified the top 3 growth opportunities for Redokun to explore - Defined the ideal paying customer based on insights gathered ## Services Provided - Growth audit across critical performance KPIs, team structure, and team processes - Thematic analysis and coding of interviews - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Growth operations retainer # The Company ## Translation management for global brands Behind every successful global business is a marketing manager, product manager, or writer tasked with the challenge of translating every document, webpage, and piece of content so that it can be consumed in any language, anywhere. Those who know know how painfully slow moving and expensive the translation process is – or was, until Redokun came along. From his home in Montebelluna, Veneto, Italy, Stefano Bernardi saw this need for a faster, easier way to translate important business documents and in 2016, launched Redokun with partner Paolo Agostinetto. Despite the small size of their team, they made a big splash with translation process management software that could actually replace tedious spreadsheets and expensive agencies. But after several months of slow, sluggish growth, Stefano found himself wondering, “*What are the most critical growth levers for us to pull to reach our goals?*” After signing on for a growth audit with DemandMaven, and through a series of conversations, analysis, and customer interviews, Stefano and Paolo walked away with priorities and plans to guide a complete overhaul of Redokun’s onboarding experience, acquisition strategy, and internal growth operations. Even better — the way Stefano thinks about his business has been completely transformed. Now that he can see what’s possible with a growth mindset, he and Paolo are ready to take Redokun to new heights. “After working with DemandMaven, of course **the number one outcome \[we saw\] was the return on our investment**. But it’s not just that – **it’s really the switch in our mindset**…. So we’re pushing and trying to do better. It’s been very cool to see that what we’re building is useful and that drives all the decisions that we’re making right now,” Stefano said. # The Challenge ## *Throwing darts at the wall without a clear ideal customer profile* Facing difficult challenges is par for the course for startup founders. Stefano had pushed through his fair share since launching Redokun in 2016, but in January of 2023 he found himself at a standstill, unsure of what direction to go next. Over the years, he and his founding team tried a bevy of silver-bullet solutions for growing the business, but their impact was short-term and unreplicable. “We built a product and then we started cold calling people. Then we started sending emails. Then I started posting online, ‘Hey, we built this. Do you want to try it?’ We invested in SEO. We grew a little bit, and when we reached a certain dimension, we started trying to do Google Ads because we had a little bit of money. We tried to do Facebook Ads… I was the classic founder that heard about something working for someone and had to try that immediately without even thinking twice about it, because I was so hungry to see this product grow. \[Eventually\] I figured out that that was not the right way to do it,” Stefano explained. What was particularly hard was knowing what initiatives and experiments to take on, especially given their small size and limited resources. “At the end of the day you can improve everything. You can improve your website. You can improve your product. You can improve the customer service. You can improve how you speak. You can improve everything, but we have limited time. We have a limited number of people. We have limited resources. So understanding where we had to grow was the most complex question that we had to solve – and the how,” Stefano said. Like many other first-time founders, Stefano also struggled with knowing which information to pay attention to versus what was ultimately a distraction. Redokun was also missing critical customer insights that could help drive future product decisions. They could grow faster, smarter, if they knew when and where to reach potential users AND they could reliably extract their desires and needs. And they had to be sure they were targeting the right people to begin with. “Even though we knew our target customer very well – because I was the target customer! – we didn’t really know who they were. I talked to everybody who subscribed to Redokun but even though I knew them by name, I never asked, ‘How did you find us? What do you think of us? How can I find more people like you?’” Stefano explained. While the Redokun team considered a wide variety of marketing strategies and solutions, they knew their best bet was to step back and go into “learning mode” by bringing on an expert like DemandMaven to troubleshoot their growth and lead them through the fog. “We needed to find a framework to decide what challenges \[made sense\] to take on. That was probably the biggest problem that we had to solve and the reason why we asked DemandMaven to help us,” Stefano went on to say. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-12.32.52 PM.png "Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 12.32.52 PM") # The Solution ## *Deep customer insights and a new strategy for growth* When it came to leveling up their business, Stefano and Paolo knew they needed help from a team who truly understood the challenges they were facing as first-time SaaS founders. In a video Paolo shared from MicroConf, Stefano heard Asia articulating his struggles in a way that no one else had been able to. “In a way, the things that Asia was saying \[in her MicroConf presentation\] really aligned with what I thought we needed to do, and then we had a conversation together, and I immediately realized that we needed DemandMaven’s help. After we had the first chat together, we were like, ‘Okay, where do we sign?’ It was one of the first few times that I was talking to someone that actually understood what I was going through,” Stefano described. DemandMaven is a strategic growth consulting firm designed to help PLG SaaS businesses like Redokun find their growth blockers and get unstuck. “At the end of the day, we didn’t want to do marketing just to look fancy. We wanted to be effective; we wanted to grow. So we had to go with someone who had the same state of mind, who is thinking 24/7 about growth,” Stefano said. First, we performed a [Growth Audit](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) to understand all of the KPIs and metrics that specifically influenced Redokun’s growth. We analyzed everything from marketing channel performance to net revenue cohort retention to activation performance. The Growth Audit also covered the team’s processes and operations when it came to growth. What we found were a few things: - Marketing was doing a great job of creating content, but there wasn’t a clear enough definition of a “marketing qualified lead” - The team was relatively new to growing SaaS companies, so there was often a lot of debate about which projects and experiments would move the needle that would end with inaction - While Redokun did a good job of generating leads, the volume of leads didn’t increase over time indicating some program and process inefficiencies - There was also activation — Redokun needed to convert trialists at a higher rate in order to create sustainable growth - Finally, long-term retention needed improvement in order to create more sustainable growth On top of this, there also seemed to be a general understanding of what made a great paying customer, but there wasn’t any definition around the key segments or personas for Marketing to leverage in their work (or for Product to prioritize). After gathering existing data and conducting the Growth Audit, our strategy was to use a [Jobs-To-Be-Done approach to interview customers](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) and get the full context of why customers “hire” certain solutions and “fire” others in their quest to translate their documents. Once the DemandMaven team identified the “jobs” that Redokun filled, we could reverse-engineer customer segments around the job along with growth opportunities and recommended messaging. During this process, we confirmed a clear gap in the customer experience: the onboarding experience was lacking. In a quest to improve this experience, Stefano and his team spent the last year improving their user interface. “We needed to fix the onboarding of our products. Last year when we started working with DemandMaven, we were only activating 40% of people. We started looking at it around May 2023. \[Ultimately\] we decided to not just fix the onboarding, but fix the entire platform. So we started building a design system and transitioning to a different infrastructure. And although it took us a year to get to the end of the project, in just one month since publishing the new interface we’ve seen double the activation rate on the onboarding. It’s pretty awesome when you see that,” Stefano exclaimed. After the initial Growth Audit and JTBD Research, DemandMaven worked with the Redokun team on a retainer-basis for about 5 months to help them refine their OKRs, facilitate discussion between Marketing and Product and the founding team about growth, and prioritize the projects that emerged every week. # The Result ## *Double the MRR just one year after working with DemandMaven* Not only was Redokun able to 2x their monthly recurring revenue, but they have watched the company grow in other ways, too. They’re bringing on a few new marketing hires and have witnessed firsthand the power of their new-and-improved in-product onboarding experience. But, according to Stefano, the most important takeaway they got from their work with DemandMaven had nothing to do with numbers. It’s all in the mind. “What happens with consultants generally is that you go in, they do the project, and then \[that’s it\], but what happened with DemandMaven was that every week I was learning something. So it was not just a growth project, but it was also mentorship along with the growth project. It was soaking in a lot of information and \[getting a better\] understanding of what I was doing. So I would say Asia exceeded our expectations, both for the outcomes that we had – because we doubled our business – and, the thing that brings even more value, the change of mindset that happened with the mentorship, which will hopefully \[lead us\] to more growth,” Stefano said. And how will they know where to grow next? Stefano now sees that Redokun’s customers hold the answers. “The most important thing that we learned, and it’s what I tell to everybody I know who has a business, is look at the database of customers that you have. Look at the ones that you want to \[target\], and go out and talk to them. Understand why they hire you as a solution, if they evaluate something else, why they like you, where they spend time online. Try to understand who they are, where to find people like them, why they want to work with you, what they like, what they don’t like, and so on. That was the key that helped us start to crack this huge puzzle that we have in front of us,” Stefano explained. Such a critical shift in his thinking couldn’t have happened without DemandMaven. “I was always learning something \[from Asia\] – not just from her mindset, but also how we analyze data, how we handle this specific problem that we have… There was always something that I could learn, so we could improve and do better,” said Stefano. Now, Stefano and his team feel more confident than ever about the direction of Redokun and the rockstar team they’re building around them. Want to find out what a growth mindset can do for your bottom-line? [Work with DemandMaven](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) and start unlocking your path to growth today. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “One year ago, it was only Asia telling us what we could do, but now because of the growth that we had, we’ve \[been able to\] hire other amazing people that are helping us understand \[what’s possible in\] each area of the business. So it’s like DemandMaven \[kicked off\] this cycle where we started thinking, ‘Okay, we can actually do that! Okay, we can actually hire someone that can help us with that!'” Stefano BernardiCEO & Co-Founder, Redokun # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: SearchPilot](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-searchpilot/) **Published:** January 30, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How SearchPilot unlocked growth by leveraging customer insights A story about analyzing the customer experience, learning from customers, and scaling beyond founder-led sales. [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “I would’ve said going into it, I knew who my customers were in terms of personas. I’d already done a bit of work around that in terms of, more like properties of the businesses, but I think what DemandMaven did was go a level deeper, and look at it as a point of contact, or a people problem rather than a business problem.” Will CritchlowCEO, SearchPilot ## Highlights - Conducted JTBD customer interviews - Thematic analysis of all interviews - Clustering of top JTBD themes - Identified messaging & acquisition opportunities per product ## Services Provided - Customer research & interviews - Thematic analysis and coding of interviews - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Messaging & positioning guides - Customer journey mapping - Growth strategy brief containing recommendations for growth # The Company SearchPilot was spun out of UK-based marketing and SEO consultancy, Distilled, in January of 2020. One month later, business as usual was immobilized by COVID a global pandemic of unprecedented proportions. But SearchPilot didn’t just make it through to the other side – there was a bright spot during that difficult time period for Will Critchlow (Founder, CEO) and Craig Bradford (Chief Operating Officer). They learned they had an SEO split-testing technology that people were genuinely excited about using. In 2021, SearchPilot’s leadership team decided they were ready to step on the gas and accelerate their growth. Will and Craig had a lot of ideas about their customers and marketing experiments they wanted to run – what they were lacking was time and the full view of their customers’ needs, wants, and decision-making process during the buyer’s journey. They quickly realized the best way to make meaningful progress and ensure they were moving in the right direction was to bring on a provider who could help them think through their growth challenges. By working with DemandMaven to get clear on their customers, priorities, and growth opportunities, Will and Craig experienced the added level of commitment that comes from having an external partner. With the guidance of Asia and her team, they were able to move faster than they could alone and walked away with the artifacts, actionable recommendations, and customer insights that changed the way they think about their business. “Sometimes you do projects and you make a presentation and then it gets archived and gathers digital dust, but already, I can see us using the words that were in those documents, talking about Jobs-to-Be-Done, and the problems that we have, and making new \[artifacts\] and new pieces of content for our customers based on the things that we’ve learned,” Craig explained. # The Challenge ## *Incomplete understanding of the customer* Although Will and Craig felt confident about the success of SearchPilot, they wanted to keep the early-mover advantage they were known for and win more and bigger customers. “We wanted more leads, more sales on the path to trying to increase our growth rate, especially coming out of COVID. In 2020 we managed to grow through the year but only a little bit. On the flip side, we felt like we got to the point where we had a product that certain people were paying for and enthusiastic about. We felt like if we could go to market, the opportunity was now,” Will said. The SearchPilot leadership team also had a clear understanding of the target market segments they were going after — large enterprise companies with extremely high-traffic websites and dedicated SEO departments — but they struggled with an understanding of the customer beyond that. “We’ve got a reasonably good grasp of the target market, but the most valuable bit is that layer above it. What do they want? What is the job to be done, and what is it that they’re missing that would be the trigger that would cause them to speak to us?” Will said. “I would’ve said going into it, I knew who my customers were in terms of personas. I’d already done a bit of work around that in terms of, more like properties of the businesses, but I think what DemandMaven did was go a level deeper, and look at it as a point of contact, or a people problem rather than a business problem. I have a spreadsheet, it was like, “Our target customer is this amount of revenue. They’ve got this type of website, they’ve got this many employees, they’ve got this many pages.” But I hadn’t done as much thinking of it from, “This SEO manager is Lauren, and she has these problems, and she’s trying to achieve these things, but she’s blocked by these other things’ “ said Craig. Another initial area the SearchPilot team was hoping to optimize was the onboarding process. Will and Craig had a hunch it needed refinement, or a different experience altogether, but weren’t sure where the disconnect was happening on the customer’s end. Ultimately, Will and Craig recognized that attempting to solve their problems on their own would be the riskiest move of all. Like many business owners, they were used to coming up with ideas that sounded good in theory but ended up falling by the wayside when new priorities and projects popped up. By summer of 2021 they had reached a turning point, and didn’t want to waste any more time. “We didn’t want to turn around in five years and say, ‘We just went too slowly. We didn’t capitalize on that opportunity,’” Will said. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-30-at-5.14.02 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 5.14.02 PM") # The Solution ## *Customer research and a deep analysis of their buyer journey* In the marketing and tech intersection where Craig and Will live, there is no shortage of growth consultants, but eventually they came to DemandMaven. “I hadn’t met Asia, but I knew of Asia through two different routes: One was her involvement with Moz on the board there, and the other was through the Founders Summit. Then we discovered a third avenue! So, I was quite excited to give DemandMaven a shot and see how it would go,” Will explained. Together with the SearchPilot team, DemandMaven scoped out a plan based on the company’s unique situation, background, and goals and then recommendations for next best steps. The clear place to start was with customer research. We started with the fundamentals: interviewing both long-time raving-fan customers, relatively newer customers, and customers that SearchPilot knew were vocally critical about the product but wanted to hear from anyways. In total, we did just 10 interviews to surface the insights needed to identify key opportunities for growth and improvements. After working with SearchPilot to target and recruit the right group of users for the interview series, DemandMaven’s team took it from there. “\[One of our favorite things about working together was\] just someone running that whole customer interview process. It’s one of those things that has been on our to-do list forever – we’ve done little bits and pieces of it – but I think there’s value to an external person doing it as well, as opposed to it being someone from SearchPilot asking questions. I think we would get different answers. The fact that it’s an external person asking the questions was really, really good,” Craig said. The interviews could then be used to inform SearchPilot’s growth strategy, positioning, messaging, and overall customer experience. DemandMaven also went on to deliver a few artifacts to help guide the SearchPilot team and support their work: - An overview of the top “jobs” that customers were hiring SearchPilot for - Also contained an overview of the top struggles customers had when considering a solution like SearchPilot and successes - A visual map of the customer journey (along with where customers got stuck) - Recommendations for how to adjust messaging to better align with customers desired outcomes ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-31-at-12.08.43 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-31 at 12.08.43 PM") # The Result ## *Unlocking new growth opportunities to execute* DemandMaven’s process of interviewing customers, analyzing metrics, and compiling findings and recommendations into several documents, including a Growth Strategy Brief, met all of SearchPilot’s expectations for their marketing partner. “The strategic project I think has definitely achieved what we set out to achieve in that we have plenty to work on: We have a roadmap, we have a strategy. We know what’s coming next. We have a whole set of actions,” Craig said. The lightbulb moment for Craig and Will came during the customer research interviews, where Asia and her team led 45-minute calls that dug deep into users’ existing SEO testing processes and the “why” behind every decision that led them to choose SearchPilot. “The most tangible immediate win is the insight into our core market wanting to self-serve, and \[them\] wanting to describe it as self-serve and wanting to go faster. \[Before the interviews\] we got sucked up into thinking that what we do is unique, that our customers can’t do it without us, which is somewhat true, but of course they’ve all got workarounds. Everybody who comes to us is doing something that approximates what we do, and seeing it on that continuum our job is to take what they’re doing and make it better, faster, more effective, more rigorous. Rather than say, ‘You’re doing nothing right now, you should be doing this.’ That came from data. It came from the research and the conversations and had to be discovered,” Will explained. And right away, the insights proved useful as they’ve sent the SearchPilot in a whole new direction with their customer experience, leading to critical optimizations and improvements in everything from the buying journey to the website to the product itself. “Straight away we’ve started using that language in the sales journey and in some of our marketing materials and just framing the way we think about it a little bit. On the next level down there’s a whole load of things that we \[are still digesting\]: recommendations for the website, recommendations for sales materials, the customer experience map. We’re working through some of those interviews, reading the transcripts and so forth and getting some of those gems out. There’s a ton of value baked into those bits,” Will went on to say. Beyond the tangible to-dos that came out of the work, Craig and Will have a new understanding and appreciation for the SearchPilot ideal customer that has transformed their perspective. “I would’ve said going into it that I knew who my customers were, but I think what DemandMaven did was go a level deeper. \[For example\] I have a spreadsheet that was like, ‘Our target customer is this amount of revenue. They’ve got this type of website. They’ve got this many employees. They’ve got this many \[web\] pages.’ But \[now I’m\] thinking of it like, ‘This SEO manager is Lauren, and she has these problems, and she’s trying to achieve these things, but she’s blocked by these other things,’” Craig said. “\[Now we feel we have\] a really solid understanding of what the pain points are of our customers, and I don’t think I can overemphasize that.” This mindset shift, plus the artifacts DemandMaven built for SearchPilot at the end of their engagement, will go a long way towards driving the growth Will and Craig have envisioned for their company. Overall, they’re happy with their DemandMaven experience, from the speed at which Asia and her team worked to the thoughtful presentation of final deliverables. “Honestly, the quality of the work has been amazing. Everything, when it was delivered, was top class,” Craig said. Will adds, “I think the organization has been impeccable. The async delivery of things has been really valuable, especially given the time zone gaps. The fact that we have been able to consume a Loom video and a slide deck, and then we get on the call just to talk about the meat of it, rather than having to schedule an hour to go through the update. I love the design of the customer experience map, \[the fact that it was in our\] brand colors. There’s quite a lot of those little touches that \[made our DemandMaven engagement a\] nice experience. It just feels like there’s care being taken.” ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “Honestly, the quality of the work has been amazing. Everything, when it was delivered, was top class.” Craig BradfordCOO, SearchPilot # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Freshworks](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-freshworks/) **Published:** January 30, 2025 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How Freshworks leveraged messaging strategy to drive superior acquisition A story about reconnecting with customers, finding messaging opportunities, and overhauling acquisition strategies for growth. [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “We needed to empower our teams with actionable insights, and that’s exactly what we were able accomplish. For me, that was a huge win.” GP AbhishekPrev. Head of Inbound Growth, Freshworks ## Highlights - Conducted 70 customer interviews - Thematic analysis of all interviews across 3 products - Clustering of top JTBD themes - Identified messaging & acquisition opportunities per product ## Services Provided - Customer research & interviews - Thematic analysis and coding of interviews - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Messaging & positioning guides - Customer journey mapping # The Company Freshworks is a publicly traded enterprise ([NASDAQ: FRSH](https://g.co/finance/FRSH:NASDAQ)) with 15 years under its belt and thousands of employees spread around the globe. Serving over 67,000 customers – including American Express, Bridgestone, Databricks, Fila, Nucor, and Sony – Freshworks is widely considered an industry leader in software solutions for customer and IT service teams. And the company has done it all thanks to a diverse suite of products and early strategic bets, backed by a team that is passionate about making work faster, easier, and more human for every client they serve. So when Freshwork’s Head of Inbound Growth, GP Abhishek, and Growth Lead, Shrivarshini Somasekhar, from the Inbound Growth team contacted DemandMaven, it was with the intent of turning “good” into “excellent.” Thanks in part to their own pivotal experiences with market research, GP and Varshini knew that the best and only way to get a deep understanding of their customers – especially across multiple products and services – was to talk directly to them. But actually conducting a large-scale research study that could provide them with the insights they needed would require seamless logistical coordination, expert guidance, and a method for turning valuable nuggets into actionable jumping-off-points. DemandMaven delivered all of that, and more. Over the course of three months, Asia and her team conducted 70 Jobs to Be Done-style interviews with Freshworks customers across three different Freshworks products, in a process to uncover the real “jobs” they are trying to accomplish by purchasing the products. The artifacts and data analysis that came out of the project are now in frequent use by members of the Freshworks growth and marketing teams, who are excited to have additional customer context to guide their decision-making – whether they’re crafting a webinar or refining ad messaging or producing a product tour for the website. “The \[customer’s\] ‘aha’ moments are interesting, but if the ‘aha’ moments are not applied, they’re not useful. They’re just interesting. So, in this case, I found that the research got used by my own team in a significant way, and by other teams as a source of input among other inputs to make larger decisions. That, to me, was sort of validation \[that our teams have\] understood the research, they accept most of the findings, and they also plan to use some of it to make those big decisions. That, to me, was the win,” said GP. # The Challenge ## *Feeling disconnected from a huge customer base* To maintain its position as an industry leader, Freshworks is in a state of constant evolution, adapting to better serve the needs of its customers. In 2023, the company had a robust set of product offerings that needed updated messaging and go-to-market strategies to ensure they were reaching the right audiences at the right time. “Freshworks had gone through a little bit of change in terms of how we were going to market with our products. Different products were starting to become our priorities and we were launching the Customer Service Suite. We were at a point where we needed to do \[some\] things differently and we needed to do things that we weren’t doing before,” Varshini explained. At the time, GP and Varshini, like every other member of the marketing team, were making decisions based on a combination of finely tuned instincts developed from years in the field and product analytics. Although scraping information from various existing sources – Gong calls, case studies, dashboard data – could tell them a lot, there was no substitute for hearing directly from the customers themselves. “Everyone generally, needed to make buyer-informed decisions as against those based on experience or intuition,” Varshini went on. GP added, “\[I felt\] there was an opportunity to be a lot more narrow and specific in terms of talking to our ICP, \[understanding\] their pain points, and getting them to a promised land. I think the premise was if we know these three things really well, there is a significant lift that we could get from improving our overall journey conversion rate.” Ultimately a better source of customer data would help them implement changes in their growth operations, across every stage of the customer journey. “Tactically speaking it would impact what we communicate via our ads, what we communicate on our landing pages, so ad engagement, improving landing page conversion, this was the initial goal that we had in mind. We also then extended that concept to improving how we message to existing clients. Eventually it also over time became an input to drive better decision-making around packaging.” GP, Varshini, and team wanted to gain a better understanding of how their customer support products were helping their customers accomplish their goals and find success in their day-to-day businesses. “So, a large part of our decisions \[up until now\] were based on what we knew, and we felt that there was a need to explore more and really understand what our customers care about. What does their journey look like? What is it that they want to accomplish with us? The initial idea was to leverage these for inputs into messaging, primarily to drive better acquisition, to drive leads that are closer to our ICP. And then, eventually once we get those leads, to drive product engagement to convert them into paying customers,” GP explained. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-30-at-3.50.58 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 3.50.58 PM") # The Solution ## *Live interviews and deep thematic analysis from an experienced insights team* When it came to narrowing down their approach for hitting their growth goals and KPIs, research was the obvious place to start. GP, in particular, was an experienced market researcher himself and personally understood the value of having that kind of outside-in perspective. “Thankfully, at that time, while we had a lot of quantitative data we saw in our dashboards, there was also internal support in terms of understanding more about the users, especially \[in particular segments\]. So, the first option was research, and to be honest, there was no other option that we had in mind,” GP explained. “As a company, we always want to learn more about the user and the customer to see what we can do better,” he went on. Rather than choose a large market research firm like Nielsen, GP wanted to work with somebody who had a unique understanding of the SaaS business. “Also, because this was important research, we wanted someone who’s really focused and who is an expert in this field. And that’s where I asked around, and one of the referrals that I got from another colleague was DemandMaven. And of course then the rest is history.” DemandMaven is a woman-owned growth consultancy founded by Asia Orangio in 2018. Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results, DemandMaven was the perfect match to help GP and Varshini execute an intensive multi-step interview plan to achieve three central objectives: - Support go-to-market acquisition programs by defining buyer segments and archetypes - Gain insights of the drivers behind why people decide, choose, and churn from Freshworks - Understanding the customer experience journey and identifying gaps to close In order to achieve these objectives, the Freshworks and DemandMaven worked together to conduct interviews in the style of JTBD for the products Freshdesk, Freshchat, and the Customer Service Suite, interviewing 70 paying customers, churned customers, and active trialists for each product across various regions such as India, North America, United Kingdom, and parts of Europe. To round out the insights gathered from the interviews, DemandMaven also conducted a series of surveys on trialists and customers for each product. After getting hundreds of responses, an analysis was conducted of both data sets: survey respondents and interviewees. They delivered their research findings in a series of presentations and tables, broken down by product category and including opportunities for content and sales enablement. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Screenshot-2025-01-30-at-3.57.20 PM.png "Screenshot 2025-01-30 at 3.57.20 PM") # The Result ## *Aligned messaging, improved CRO, and confidence* Before working with DemandMaven, there was no doubt about whether the Freshworks marketing team had a good understanding of their customers. But now, according to Varshini, the research has created a surety for people to depend on, confirming hunches they had while also opening new doors of opportunity. When questions do arise, they always have the artifacts created by DemandMaven – including the JTBD briefs, which provide a detailed summary of each customer profile, quotes, and other highlights from the interviews and corresponding analysis. “I see people going in those docs and scrolling through to see something that they can use in their copy or \[in\] webinars. When the solution engineering team comes and says, ‘Can you give us more context on how Freshdesk users think and how they want to see the product in action?’ I send them the Jobs to Be Done brief and they \[can\] look at it and say, ‘Okay, this is really helpful because now we know how to think about how to run the webinar, how to target the webinar, structure the webinar.’ All of that becomes more clear with the briefs,” Varshini explained. Both GP and Varshini have a strong conviction that research is only valuable when it is able to be understood and used. They’ve brought not only their own team but other teams from within Freshworks into the fold so they can absorb and apply the work too. “The messaging has been streamlined. In the sense that, now we can go into a meeting and \[refer to a customer profile\] and people immediately get what needs to be done. Even this morning we were talking about the difference between \[two of our product offerings\] and immediately everyone turned and looked at me and they said, ‘What did the DemandMaven research tell us?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I have answers over here,” Varshini said. Although it has only been a few months since Freshworks completed their initial consultation with DemandMaven, GP and Varshini are seeing the impact of the research in almost every facet of their growth operations. “We built a product tour specifically for \[one of the audience personas that came out of the DemandMaven research\] and specifically with the pain points that those users would have. And we see a higher engagement with those product tours. We see more people spending time on it and the click-through rates are better. It’s still early stages and we haven’t distributed them to scale but we do see early trends there.” Knowing that Freshworks is a large organization, DemandMaven coded and presented the data in a way that made it easy for every contributor to engage with. Varshini said, “I did geek out heavily and I think I got a lot of others to geek out too on the \[presentation of the data\]. That’s going to be giving us answers for many, many more quarters to come. There’s going to be new things we’re going to find as we dig into it. We were able to sift through different answers and then see what the voice of the customer is for a group within a certain topic. Especially for our organization, the size of Freshworks, I think it helps us pinpoint to what we are looking for and see bigger, dig deeper and reflect that against the voice of the customer.” Getting deep is an important part of the Jobs To Be Done methodology and it’s something Asia has instilled in every member of her own team. Clients like Freshworks appreciate the skill it takes to so deftly maneuver through customer conversations to find the “crux of the matter,” as Varshini put it. “I think I would take that as a lesson for myself to ask the right questions to keep asking questions until we get to the soul of what they’re trying to say. I think that’s just a general life skill that I’ve picked up – \[don’t\] just go with the high level answer, dig deeper to get to what they’re really trying to say,” she explained. GP agreed, “The whole team does a really, really good job. The interviewers did the best job asking questions, and it was just so interesting to listen to the questions that were asked. So I enjoyed the structure of the interviews as well.” ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “We built a product tour specifically for \[one of the audience personas that came out of the DemandMaven research\] and specifically with the pain points that those users would have. And we see a higher engagement with those product tours. We see more people spending time on it and the click-through rates are better. It’s still early stages and we haven’t distributed them to scale but we do see early trends there.” Shrivarshini SomasekharGrowth Lead, Freshworks # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Tom's Planner](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-toms-planner/) **Published:** June 10, 2024 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How Tom’s Planner shifted out of status quo and back into a growth mindset A client success story about overcoming revenue plateaus, challenging assumptions about customers, and finding market opportunities for growth [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “I was like, ‘I think I know who my customers are, so what will this research bring me in terms of actionable insights?’ But Asia convinced me, and I’m super happy that we did the interviews. It gave me a lot better visual of Tom’s Planner user.” Tom UmmelsCEO & Founder, Tom's Planner ## Highlights - Conducted 12 JTBD customer interviews - Mapped the top desired outcomes that customers had - Identified the top 3 growth opportunities for Tom’s Planner to explore - Prioritized growth projects based on order of potential and impact ## Services Provided - Growth audit of overall business performance and growth operations - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Pricing research & price sensitivity analysis # The Company ## *Bringing innovation to Gantt charts* Back in 2007, after years of working as a project manager and civil engineer, Thomas (Tom) Ummels had an itch he needed to scratch. At the time, he was writing a lot of project proposals. As a visual thinker, he knew Gantt charts were the best shortcut for creating and presenting his plans. Unfortunately the only solutions available to him then were tools like Excel and MS Project, which were complex and annoying to use, slowing him down. When Tom couldn’t ignore the itch any longer, he went to work building and programming a new and improved Gantt chart software from the ground up. In 2009, Tom’s Planner launched and found its perfect audience – people like Tom who craved a simple tool to visually plan and schedule their projects. By 2023, something else had started to eat at Tom. His business, which had reached organic success in its early days thanks to inclusion in a TechCrunch round-up that caused a spike in inbound traffic, started to plateau. “I’m an engineer at heart – I really just like to work on the product and build it. I enjoyed the freedom that it was giving me, and I wanted to stay solo. But there are so many opportunities out there, so much low hanging fruit. And the revenue had been plateauing for a couple of years… It was bugging the hell out of me. I started to dive in \[to the numbers\] and there was this one graph where I made some calculations about reinvesting part of the revenue back into the business. If I could turn this around to a five or 10% growth year over year, what would that look like?” What started as a quick calculation is on its way to becoming reality, thanks to the insights and support of DemandMaven. For the first time in a long time, Tom has a clear direction for the growth and marketing of Tom’s Planner and he’s excited about what’s coming. “It’s like this in dev, too: You want to go from one position to another position, and you have this map in front of you and you can see the position that you want to go to and you know the location where you’re at, but there’s this cover of clouds and you don’t see anything that’s in between. You don’t see the possible roads there are. And so, when you’re a developer, you start to venture out and just figure things out, and slowly the clouds fade away. And then at some point, you find the perfect route from A to B. In this case, \[working with DemandMaven\], it’s the same: the clouds have disappeared, but there are still all these different routes that are there – maybe even more than I thought of! But I think I have a better understanding of the map and can see, ‘Okay, these are three things that I should start with.’” # The Challenge ## *Too many options for growth* As a solopreneur, Tom has always taken the lead in running his business and making every decision, no matter how large or small. Because his passion naturally lies in product development, he had put marketing on the backburner for years. “I heard at MicroConf, for instance, ‘Talk to your users, talk to users.’ They also were saying: ‘Marketing, marketing, marketing.’ But I thought I knew what to do – Tom’s Planner was doing really well for a business built by one person so I could choose what I spent my time on. And I know that reaching your target audience has some value, but I like to get up to build code and make cool features. That’s what drives me.” Watching his business’s growth plateau – and fearing an inevitable decline – Tom knew he had to make a change. Despite lacking a formal background in marketing, he understood there were plenty of growth opportunities out there. He considered changing up his SEO strategy, focusing on his website conversion, even rebranding. But to really narrow down the list and reach his goal of increasing revenue 10% year over year, he would need help. That’s when he found DemandMaven. “I knew there were all these opportunities and I wanted to know which one to work on first.” To set his priorities for the coming 6-12 months, he would need a better understanding of current areas for improvement across acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion, as well as recommendations for processes, team structure, and tech stack. He would also need to get a solid picture of his full customer base – their desires, their challenges – and a feel for the way they are actually using the product across industries. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-25-at-1.54.09 PM-1024x677.png "Screenshot 2024-06-25 at 1.54.09 PM") # The Solution ## *Auditing growth for high-priority growth levers* Founded by Asia Organio in 2018, DemandMaven is a strategic growth consulting firm that helps growing companies and startups troubleshoot their growth and find their absolute best growth opportunities. When Asia’s name kept popping up at MicroConf, including in a conversation with the conference’s organizer Rob Walling, Tom felt confident that she could give him the objective outside perspective he was looking for as he figured out his growth strategy. “On the website, DemandMaven offers a couple of services and the Growth Audit seemed to really match with what I was looking for,” Tom said. During the [Growth Audit](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/), Asia and her team looked deep into Tom’s Planner’s current performance metrics to really understand how the business is operating and what areas are ripe for optimization. The final report details Asia’s thought process and takeaways based on her years of work with high-growth SaaS founders and personalized according to Tom’s goal of keeping his company small and nimble. “There were questions and angles that Asia used to approach things that I wasn’t familiar with. It was really useful for me to talk things through to get a growth mindset and to get her perspective, which highlighted a couple of things that I hadn’t considered as being important and deprioritized a couple of things that I \[previously\] thought were important,” Tom further expanded. One outcome from the process included Tom re-evaluating what actions were high priority – would yield a high impact – and which could be pushed further down the roadmap. When DemandMaven partnered with Tom to run a price sensitivity survey to a group of 100+ active users to gauge their thoughts on the current pricing structure, he was able to validate his assumption that his current pricing was right on the money. “I like to work solo and want to keep the team small but there’s a lot of opportunities \[to pursue\]. I could put five things in motion at the same time, but then I would be trying to manage it for years to come. The price sensitivity analysis was really useful in the sense that it gave me one thing less to consider because I seem to be in the \[correct\] range,” said Tom. Along the way, Tom became convinced conversations with active Tom’s Planner customers would fill in the final pieces of the puzzle. Especially since from 2009 to 2024 he had mostly only interacted with his customers in a support capacity. “I was like, ‘I think I know who my customers are, so what will \[this research\] bring me in terms of actionable insights?’ But Asia convinced me, and I’m super happy that we did \[the interviews\]. It gave me a lot better visual of the Tom’s Planner user,” said Tom. Asia and her team conducted a series of 10 [Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)-style interviews](https://demandmaven.io/services/jtbd-research/) with a carefully selected group of Tom’s Planner’s users. Not only was the team able to gather honest and objective product feedback, they were able to dig deep and get to the root of why customers were choosing Tom’s Planner over the competition using the JTBD framework. Over the course of the interviews, clear patterns and customer groups started to take shape which were tracked and updated in real-time during the process. “I knew that it was frustrating to make a Gantt chart when you just had to submit a proposal, so I built this tool. As it turns out, it’s getting used for really big teams’ projects. That makes me consider \[the product\] in a different light than before.” # The Result ## *Clear growth priorities and confidence* With DemandMaven’s guidance and support, Tom has settled on three top priorities for the year, including building out a “team plan” with more robust features and pricing to support that user group. “I have a roadmap for the next year, for sure. And there’s this list of things that probably are best to work on \[after that\], but I haven’t mapped those out because I just want to get these three things done and then I can shift my horizon further.” While it’s still early in his implementation phase, his work with DemandMaven led to a major mindset shift that will permanently change the way Tom thinks about his business: From spending all of his time improving the product for existing users, to looking for ways to attract fresh users and spread the Gantt-love to a whole new audience. Now, Tom is seeing all the possibilities in front of him and making more confident decisions about how to spend his time. “I feel more confident with having a grasp on the situation of Tom’s Planner in relation to growth and marketing and promotion. One of the biggest lightbulb moments from the process was actually hearing Tom’s Planner customers talk about the desires and struggles that led them to his software in the first place. Scratching his own itch back in 2009 helped him reach a good product-market fit, but in order to keep growing he knows he will need to consider other perspectives. “What worked before was, ‘How would I think about this? How would I like this?’ And now I have these 10 people and I look at them and wonder, ‘How would they like this?’” Through consultations with DemandMaven, Tom has also decided to implement several in-product customer feedback opportunities in an effort to reduce churn and improve the overall customer experience. “I have an AI assistant on Tom’s Planner where you can just enter a description for a project and then it makes a Gantt chart for you. It’s been a good way to catch the attention and convert people, and I’m just curious how people are using it, what they’re doing with it, if they get stuck anywhere.” Over the next few months, Tom is looking forward to experimenting and executing his strategic plan based on the results from the three initiatives DemandMaven has delivered. We can’t wait to check in with him again at the end of the year to see how his visions have come to life. If Tom’s story is striking a chord, you might be ready to bring on a growth expert like DemandMaven! Get the clear eyes and strategic action plan you need to change the trajectory of your business. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “I feel more confident with having a grasp on the situation of Tom’s Planner in relation to growth and marketing and promotion.” Tom UmmelsCEO & Founder, Tom's Planner # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Hamilton Rock](https://demandmaven.io/case-study-hamilton-rock/) **Published:** June 10, 2024 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How Hamilton Rock overhauled their product roadmap and attracted investors A story about mitigating product risk, prioritizing the roadmap, and uncovering new market opportunities [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “We hired DemandMaven to conduct market research as we started building the MVP of our product and I couldn’t be more relieved that we did. They painstakingly combed through every single interview, extracted the insights that we needed, validated what we already knew, and helped us think through what wasn’t validated to form new hypotheses instead. Based on what we gathered and the quality of the insights, I’m a huge fan.” Davin Mac AnaneyCEO & Founder, Hamilton Rock ## Highlights - Conducted and analyzed 47 customer discovery interviews - Mapped the top desired outcomes that customers and audience members had - Identified the top 3 product opportunities for Hamilton Rock to explore - Defined the ideal paying customer based on insights gathered ## Services Provided - Audience research & interviews (customer discovery) - Thematic analysis and coding of interviews - Jobs-To-Be-Done mapping based on outcomes of customers - Product discovery - Product-Opportunities mapping # The Company ## *Transforming digital banking for e-commerce* Davin Mac Ananey is a multi-exit entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of a Fintech company. He’s building a product to transform banking and accounting in the digital banking space, but struggled with prioritizing his product roadmap and validating his hunches about the main value proposition of the product. “After losing millions of dollars in previous startups and learning what not to do, I wanted to get a real sense of the problem for customers in order to validate our value proposition to overtake competition and provide true value to customers,” Davin Mac Ananey, CEO of Hamilton Rock # The Challenge ## *Building a prototype without being able to reach customers* Davin certainly had hypotheses about what Hamilton Rock should be, who it should be for, and generally what the platform should include. He had already conducted some general market research that revealed a clear gap in the banking software industry. There were just a few missing links: there wasn’t a way to reach the North American market, and there wasn’t much bandwidth or time to conduct any additional research before raising the first round. He needed insights and as fast as humanly possible from small business owners in North America. “Being based in Dublin, I felt one step removed from our American customer base. It was crucial for us to understand their needs intimately, but the distance posed a challenge,” explained Mac Ananey. As a second-time startup founder, he knew that building an international product without conducting customer research prior to product build would produce costly mistakes — ones that could endanger the future of the business. Eager to avoid these pitfalls, he searched to find a Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) expert who was not only willing to consult on the customer discovery process, but ultimately conduct the analysis with him. “Without a deep understanding of our customers, we risked developing products that didn’t resonate with them, wasting valuable resources and time. I wanted someone who would actually take the time to do the analysis. There are many high profile people who’ve written books and on podcasts but none of them, and I mean none of them, would actually do a customer discovery process with me,” Davin stressed. Without an expert to engage in rigorous customer discovery with him, Davin felt at risk of wasting precious resources on misguided product development efforts. “I wanted to get a real sense of the problem for customers. And without talking directly to them, I won’t understand them properly in order to validate our value proposition and whether it’s going to be strong enough to overtake the competition for someone to switch to our product over competitors,” Davin emphasized. Thankfully, Davin discovered DemandMaven — a growth consultancy that provides SaaS companies and startups the insights they need to confidently build and grow their businesses. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Screenshot-2024-06-07-at-3.38.45 PM.png) # The Solution ## *Leveraging voice of customer to make strategic decisions* After a discovery call with DemandMaven, Davin knew he found the solution he’d finally been looking for. “Asia gave a talk at MicroConf and I was already converted to jobs-to-be-done theory and she just made a lot of practical sense. She had a case study she was doing and it cemented in me that I’m headed in the right direction by doing customer discovery,” Davin recalled. DemandMaven provided Davin with a structured and rigorous customer discovery program involving live customer interviews directly with his prospects in order to effectively target his ideal customers’ pain points and preferences. “I like talking to customers already, so being able to do the interviews and hear directly from customers was invaluable. I loved that DemandMaven did the analysis to take the bias out of the actual findings because entrepreneurs are suckers for confirmation bias,” Davin explained. Together with the DemandMaven team, Hamilton Rock conducted a total of 47 interviews in the North American market. DemandMaven worked with Davin to determine the strategy for sourcing these prospects, qualifying them, and then created a plan for surfacing insights. “…what you guys brought to the table was a very rigorous and structured process in terms of clarifying our screener questions, clarifying the audience that we were talking to, and just having that sounding board back and forth was very helpful.” After the interviews, DemandMaven started by coding the qualitative data to find patterns between pain points, struggles, and desires from prospects regarding their existing banking experiences. Due to the sample size of the research, DemandMaven was also able to visually represent this coded data in the form of charts and graphs to show Davin visual trends across popular acquisition channels, solutions prospects have already tried, competing banks, and more. “The fact that you guys did the analysis took an awful lot of the bias out of the actual findings. …So having that capability was really, really good. Finally, DemandMaven was able to demonstrate the top JTBD that prospects had when choosing a bank for their business. This meant that Hamilton Rock could precisely understand why prospects choose banks, what triggers led them to searching for a bank, and the competitive differentiators that attracted them to certain banks over others. This intelligence would later inform the features and minimum viable product (MVP) that Hamilton Rock could prototype. # The Result ## *Unambiguous clarity and direction* After completing his first engagement with DemandMaven, Davin was thrilled to find actual evidence of what his prospects’ issues are and what product to build to provide pain-relieving solutions. “When I talked to customers prior to DemandMaven, I’d understand macro problems of the space and a generalized view. After talking to customers through DemandMaven, we got deep into feature sets and the nitty-gritty core issues that customers are wrangling with,” Davin explained. In addition, finding the ideal partner for his customer discovery work helped Davin mitigate confirmation bias and ensure the qualitative research remained consistent. “After doing the research with DemandMaven, I don’t even trust my own instincts anymore. DemandMaven allowed us to get detailed analysis in a way that informed crucial decision-making in order to prioritize our features for product development,” Davin said. This ultimately led Davin to understand the core value proposition for his target audience and commit to a refined positioning play while going to market. “We experienced a significant improvement in our understanding of customer needs, leading to the refinement of our value proposition and our product roadmap.” Davin explained. In addition, the Hamilton Rock team was able to identify previously overlooked customer segments and tailor their product offering to better meet diverse needs. “This research really confirmed a lot of new insights that I did not understand initially. It anchored our proposition in a slightly different direction as a result of the interviews and if we didn’t do that, I’d be running a hundred miles an hour in the wrong direction,” Davin emphasized. Davin was also able to get clarity on where to invest his time and resources that were limited due to funding. Plus, he was able to impress investors who needed to trust that there is a viable market and a clear vision for the product. “The data helps us further impress investors since we’ve gone the extra mile that most founders fail to do. For my own sensibility too, I like to be very rigorous in my planning and this gives us a leg up on the market landscape and a clear path moving forward,” Davin said. Overall, DemandMaven’s research helped Davin build an insights-driven prototype, prioritize the product roadmap, and improve relations with investors. ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) “The insights from the DemandMaven research not only aided in building a positively received prototype but also greatly influenced the product roadmap and garnered investor interest. This has distinguished us as a meticulously planned and customer-centric startup, and ultimately provided peace of mind that we are running in the right direction.” Davin Mac AnaneyCEO & Founder, Hamilton Rock # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Motivo](https://demandmaven.io/motivo-case-study/) **Published:** June 18, 2019 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How DemandMaven helped Motivo 3x MRR in 4 months A story about getting the first 100 customers, tripling MRR, doubling site traffic, and building the marketing foundation. [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“Asia has an incredible ability to quickly learn a company’s vision and begin executing deliverables immediately. She has provided immense value to our Motivo team by diving deep into customer and industry research, and then using that data to create a strategic, step-by-step revenue-generating marketing plan.”* Rachel McCrickardCEO & Founder, [Motivo](https://wearemotivo.com) ## Highlights - 3x MRR in 4 months - Doubled monthly website traffic (sessions) - Proved an acquisition model and CPL for B2C - Reduced onboarding time by 15 days - Launched self-service product model to existing customer base - Sourced and hired head of marketing ## Services Provided - Go-to-market strategy - Customer journey mapping - Customer research & interviews - Campaign creation & management - Website, landing page, and email copywriting - Analytics implementation in Hubspot & Google Analytics - Hiring and sourcing marketing talent # The Company ## *The world needs more therapists* Motivo is the world’s first online clinical supervision platform for pre-licensed therapists. Motivo provides a marketplace for pre-licensed therapists to find clinical supervisors in their state, and complete their supervision requirements through a HIPAA-compliant platform. Motivo is led by the fearless Rachel McCrickard, recently graduated from the TechStars Atlanta 2018 cohort, and is currently raising their seed round. # The Challenge ## *If we build it, they will come, right?* Strategically, [Motivo](https://wearemotivo.com/) is in a completely “blue ocean”. There isn’t a single product that does what Motivo does. **The competitive alternatives are painful** — pre-licensed therapists either bite the bullet and drive several hours to meet their supervisor and pay high supervision rates, or they simply don’t get supervision. No supervision means no licensure, and that means you can’t legally practice therapy in your state. The biggest challenge for Motivo? The market was primed and ready for their pain-killing solution, but there wasn’t a clearly defined marketing playbook to scoop up the market. **The Motivo team was also inundated with information on how they should be growing.** *“I was listening to all these soundbites on marketing, but what I really needed was a playbook. A real clear, ‘This is how we are going to approach marketing for Motivo.’ Before then, we did a lot of, ‘Let’s try this, let’s try this, let’s try this,’ with very little customer research into where our customers were going for their information and what they were looking for.”* On top of that, it became clear that the initial hunch of investing in branding wouldn’t yield the desired acquisition results. *“I used to think that ‘good branding’ equaled ‘marketing.’ If you just looked good, then people would come to you. And it didn’t work like that, obviously, because there wasn’t any sort of formula or playbook or approach to it. We would just put Instagram images out there or boost a Facebook post, and hoped that would bring in new customers.”* And like any fast-moving, early-stage startup, it was challenging for Rachel and the team to execute on the high-impact strategic partnerships that Motivo needed to grow. After trying a sales outbound strategy, attending a few conferences, and investing in branding, Rachel decided it was time to change her go-to-market approach and implement a marketing strategy that was going to help Motivo grow. # The Solution ## *Doubling-down on customer behavior* Rachel wanted a formulaic approach to marketing and go-to-market for Motivo, and she found it in DemandMaven — a local consultancy specializing in helping early-stage startups define their growth strategy and take their product to market. To help Motivo carve its marketing strategy, DemandMaven started with their tried-and-true customer discovery process. By interviewing Motivo’s existing customers (pre-licensed therapists across the United States), **a very clear behavioral pattern emerged in how customers found Motivo**, how they found competitive alternatives, and what they barriers to entry they were facing. After creating a customer journey map and defining a key persona for the perfect pre-licensed therapists, DemandMaven then recommended three more channels and campaigns to test based on the customer behavior. **It was clear that customers and prospects leveraged the same formula to find a solution for clinical supervision**, and it was by searching for clinical supervisors with their specific licensure in their state. DemandMaven recommended implementing landing pages for organic search, and leveraging paid search to test the effectiveness of the messaging. Together, DemandMaven and Motivo built and executed against the campaigns to identify the most lucrative channels and digital marketing investments. Part of executing these campaigns was also properly configuring analytics and Hubspot for reporting marketing results — a critical piece of the puzzle. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/motivo-clinical-supervisors-georgia.png) # The Result ## *Clear, sustainable growth* By the end of the engagement with DemandMaven, Motivo had an operating, revenue-generating marketing engine. From October 2018 to April 2019, **Motivo tripled their MRR and doubled their monthly traffic — primarily through organic search**. *“To watch the numbers go up was just incredible. This is what we had been waiting for, you know? All of this work that you put into building the platform and trying to make it all happen so it works, and then it just kind of sits there waiting for people to actually use it.* *“To start to see those numbers go up and people actually engaging with the platform that we took time to build, or resonating with an email that we sent out, that was really just very rewarding. It was also just very affirming.”* The campaigns DemandMaven designed and executed **performed up to 2x better than any previous campaigns**. Plus, Motivo was equipped with a cost per lead (CPL) and a buyback period — two metrics they can leverage to compare against other channels. Plus, both the **monthly website traffic and the customer pipeline doubled** thanks to focusing efforts on scalable, intent-driven organic traffic to bottom-of-the-funnel landing pages. Motivo was also equipped with marketing analytics and reporting through DemandMaven’s Hubspot reporting and automation configurations, and streamlined their qualification and onboarding process for new prospects and customers, **shaving off 15 days to onboard new prospects**. Finally, and perhaps most proudly, **DemandMaven helped Motivo source and hire their first rockstar head of marketing** in Atlanta, GA — proving the need for a full-time marketing department. ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“…There were actually people who didn’t know about us, came to learn about us because of something directly that DemandMaven did, and then became a customer. It was awesome. Asia has truly set us up for success.”* Rachel McCrickardCEO & Founder, [Motivo](https://wearemotivo.com) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/56168088_10109766219075530_937456713492070400_o.jpg) # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Our Approach](https://demandmaven.io/our-approach/) **Published:** May 24, 2024 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Our Approach Growing a Product-led Growth company requires a solid understanding of the basics: qualified acquisition, activation, short-term retention, and then later long-term retention. If you want to reach your goals, you’ll need a proven framework for getting there. Here’s how we consistently get results for our clients. [Read the case study](https://demandmaven.io/how-we-helped-our-saas-client-4x-mrr/)[Book a call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/April-Dunford.jpeg "April-Dunford") ## **“DemandMaven is a secret weapon for B2B and B2C SaaS companies that want to sustainably grow. I highly recommend them!“** – April Dunford, Author of Bestseller “Obviously Awesome” ### **Step 1: Let’s have a chat.** - **45-minute Discovery Call.** We’ll ask you a bunch of questions about your business, the product, your ideal paying customer, and your goals. We’ll also answer any other burning questions you might have about the process of working together. - **Right-direction guarantee**: we promise that if we’re not the right provider, we’ll at least point you in the right direction. **What you get:** Clarity about the process, and a few recommendations on what you could be doing *right now*. ### **Step 2: Scoping + Agreement** After the Discovery Call, if there’s a fit, we’ll first work together to scope out your perfect project and draft an agreement with the stated strategic objectives of our project together. Then, we determine a project start date and move into the onboarding process. - **Scoping.** We’ll ask you more questions about what data you already have available, what decisions you’re hoping to make, and what progress you want to achieve after the project. Using this information, we’ll scope out a project that will hit each of your objectives and match your budget expectations. - **Agreement and project plan.** If you like what you see, we’ll send an agreement according to the Discovery Call and any other details we gathered throughout the process. **What you get:** Crystal-clear answers on how you’ll get exactly what you need to meet your goals. ### **Step 3: Onboarding** Once the agreement is signed, we’ll begin the onboarding process based on our project plan! - **Onboarding call**. This is when we’ll get your team up to speed on how our project will run and get access to any software, data, or resources we’ll need throughout the project. **What you get:** A growth partner and clear overview of how we’ll work together. Plus, we’ll cover first projects. “We hired DemandMaven to conduct market research as we started building the MVP of our product and I couldn’t be more relieved that we did. They painstakingly combed through every single interview, extracted the insights that we needed, validated what we already knew, and helped us think through what wasn’t validated to form new hypotheses instead. Based on what we gathered and the quality of the insights, I’m a huge fan.” Davin Mac AnaneyCEO & Founder, Hamilton Rock ### **Step 4: Data-Gathering** Okay awesome. If you’re here, that means you’ve signed the contract, paid the deposit, and are ready to begin! We *always* start with some form of “data-gathering” for our work. **It’s non-negotiable.** To us, data-gathering means gathering and collecting the data that you already have that we can use to extract valuable, actionable insights. This includes but isn’t limited to: existing research (interviews, surveys, etc.), access to software or tools (product analytics, marketing analytics, etc.), product demos, feedback from key stakeholders, and more. - **Interviews and Research**. Based on what data we already have, we’ll work together to gather any net new data — such as conducting interviews or designing and running surveys. - **Analysis of existing data**. If our scope calls for it, we’ll analyze anything that would best serve us — including but not limited to product demos, analytics platforms (marketing, product, subscription, etc.), and more. **What you get**: An inventory of what data you already have and being included in the process of hearing from customers, audience members, and more. *If it isn’t obvious, this step is crucial.* [Seriously... read the case study 👉](https://demandmaven.io/how-we-helped-our-saas-client-4x-mrr/) ### **Step 5: Analysis & Insights Sharing** Finally, we’re at the part you’ve been waiting for: **getting answers to your most burning questions**. As we progress through the interviews, research, and analysis, the real magic begins. - **Actionable insights you can trust.** From the interviews and original analysis, we’ll surface the key insights from the analysis work that your team can action on. See your “blind spots” or “success gaps” that prevent customers from achieving success with the product. - Product-led Growth recommendations. Get PLG recommendations for your team to execute across the entire customer experience: acquisition, activation, adoption, retention, and even expansion opportunities. **What you get:** That “oh sh\*t” feeling, and an insanely detailed overview of how your customers find you, engage with your product, and the high-value growth opportunities that have surfaced along the way. [Alright. I'm ready to get started! Let's talk.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) # **Bring your product** to your people # It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Go-to-Market or Growth Engagement — so that two months from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [The Growth Process](https://demandmaven.io/process/) **Published:** December 7, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # The Growth Process Growth isn’t just a willy-nilly practice. If you want to reach your goals, you’ll need a proven framework for getting there. Here’s how we consistently get results for our clients. [Read the case study](https://demandmaven.io/how-we-helped-our-saas-client-4x-mrr/)[Book a call](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ### **Step 1: Let’s have a chat.** - **45-minute Discovery Call.** We’ll ask you a bunch of questions about your business, the product, the market you want to serve, and your goals. We’ll also answer any other burning questions you might have about the process of working together. **What you get:** Clarity about the process, and a few recommendations on what you could be doing *right now*. ### **Step 2: Agreement & Onboarding** After the Discovery Call, if there’s a fit, we’ll draft an agreement with the stated strategic objectives of our project together. Then, we determine a project start date and begin the onboarding process. - **Agreement and project plan.** If you like what you see, we’ll scope out an agreement according to the Discovery Call and any other details we’ll need before sending it over. - **Onboarding call**. This is when we’ll get your team up to speed on how our project will run and get access to anything we’ll need throughout the project. **What you get:** A growth partner and clear overview of how we’ll work together. Plus, we’ll cover first projects. *“We hired DemandMaven to help us with all things marketing. It was immediately apparent that they were smart, confident, and motivated. They were able to understand our business, implement strategy, and make an immediate impact. They will tell you what you need to hear, adapt when the target moves, and crack a joke with a smile. All without breaking a sweat! That’s why we’re still working with them today. They are an absolute pleasure to work with and a huge asset to our team.”* Brian FaustCEO & Co-Founder, [Rindle](https://exposure.co) ### **Step 3: Customer Interviews and Research** Okay awesome. If you’re here, that means you’ve signed the contract, paid the deposit, and are ready to begin! We *always* start with customer research and interviews. **It’s non-negotiable.** These aren’t your average “Do you think this feature would be valuable?” product-oriented interviews. Those kinds of interviews aren’t the best for making marketing and growth decisions. *I’m* talking about the powerhouse interviews that get to the knitty-gritty of exactly how your customer views your product, what they get out of it, how we find more of them, and how we convert and retain more of them. - **Interviews and Research**. We’ll focus on one specific audience — typically the best-fit, best-paying customers (or the ones you need help attracting more of). We’ll work together to secure interviews and launch these surveys, but I promise you — it’s a step you’ll never skip ever again after doing it with us. You get access to all of the recordings and transcripts of all the interviews we do. If we send surveys, you’ll have ownership over all the data. - **Customer Research Database**. After interviewing customers, we’ll take the recordings of the interviews, turn them into transcripts, and then parse all of the customer interviews in an Airtable database that you’ll have forever access to. We also analyze the data and build reports so you can see how we take qualitative data and turn it into quantitative strategic insights that will fuel the growth of the business. - **JTBD Brief.** Our research will uncover the top “jobs to be done” that your customers are hiring for and what’s blocking them from achieving their JTBD with the product. This deliverable goes deep into the psychographics, triggers, and behaviors of your customers. We’ll even break out the major differences between the top 2-3 JTBD within the customer data set. - **Messaging Guide**. Based on the top JTBD, we’ll adjust your positioning, highlight the most critical value propositions to focus on in the messaging, and provide example website copy to show how the adjustments would get applied in real-life. - **Customer Experience Mapping**. All of these insights funnel into a customer journey map — a key deliverable we’re going to need to make the best possible decisions about how to acquire more of these best-fit customers, the psychological and physical journey it took them to find your product, and the funnel we’re going to need to implement. **What you get**: That “oh *sh\*t*” feeling, and an insanely detailed overview of how your customers find you, engage with your product, and the high-value in-app behaviors they take. *If it isn’t obvious, this step is crucial.* [Seriously... read the case study 👉](https://demandmaven.io/exposure-case-study/) ### **Step 4: Marketing & Growth Strategy** You’ll need a data-driven approach to your marketing strategy, and you’ll need to know what you can implement *today* and what you need to be building for *tomorrow*. As we progress through the interviews, research, and journey-mapping exercises, the real magic begins. - **Your Completely Custom Marketing Strategy™️.** From the interviews and original analysis, we’ll be able to craft a rock-solid, data-driven marketing strategy and a concrete plan for execution against that strategy. We’ll cover the channels and campaigns we should either test or optimize first, and what long-term strategies are likely to deliver the best results over time. We’ll also define your “blind spots” or “success gaps” — the things we’ll need to be aware of and overcome. - Your Personalized Growth Experiments. In order for us to put our strategy to the test, we’ll also design a few growth experiments for your team to execute. Includes demand generation experiments, website messaging tests, onboarding optimization, landing page creation, and more. **What you get:** The most clear, in-depth marketing plan you’ve ever seen that virtually anyone could execute complete with a prioritized list of growth experiments to execute and move the needle. Plus, it’s driven by all of the data that we gathered in Step 3 — not hunches. *“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief. I finally had a better picture of what it was going to take to really get momentum in a specific direction. I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed.”* Luke BeardCEO & Co-Founder, [Exposure](https://exposure.co) ### **Step 5: Implementation (Optional)** At DemandMaven, we’re a strategy-house first and an execution partner second. We can help you execute against the plan and provide strategic guidance along the way. If it makes sense for all parties involved, we’ll move into a Growth Retainer model. Rates depend on scope of work. - **Optional: Execution on the Plan™️.** We can execute against a few core areas: - Paid Acquisition Strategy - Paid Acquisition Management - Demand Generation (Landing Pages, Copywriting, etc.) - Conversion Rate Optimization - Marketing Operations - Content Marketing Strategy - Content Creation - Ongoing Growth Strategy - **Optional: Implement Marketing Infrastructure.** This is all of the operations and data integration needs that your marketing function is going to need to be successful. We’ll work together on a plan for getting this setup, then actually do it. - **Optional: Ongoing Optimization and Exploration.** Marketing doesn’t sit still. It’s constantly enterprising. **What you get:** A massive sigh of relief that someone is taking this off your shoulders, and the beginnings of a strong asf marketing engine that brings results. ### **Step 6: Growth Dashboard & Results Reporting** If we’re working together in a Growth Retainer, we’ll also handle the reporting and quarterly benchmarking and planning. - **Ongoing analytics and results review.** Every single week, we’ll report on any results we’re seeing in addition to key observations. Every month, we’ll cover any larger scale changes in marketing and growth: - Marketing site performance through Google Analytics and Hotjar - Monthly funnel analysis through subscription metrics and product analytics (like Baremetrics, Amplitude, ChartMogul, Mixpanel, etc.) - In-app session recording review. - **Weekly and monthly reporting of growth experiments and their performance.** This is where we measure our results and outline new opportunities to test and grow. **What you get:** Weekly documentation of marketing and growth performance in addition to overall analysis of the SaaS performance. By the time we get here, there’s really no limit to what we’ll be able to accomplish. ✨ [Alright. I'm ready to get started! Let's talk.](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) # **Bring your product** to your people # It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Go-to-Market or Growth Engagement — so that two months from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Growth Audit](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-audit/) **Published:** February 20, 2023 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # Know your greatest growth opportunities without the wait ## In just 4 short weeks, you’ll walk away with clear next steps on the best money-making growth opportunities for your SaaS. [AUDIT MY GROWTH](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *Book your Growth Audit now* *and get clarity on your top growth projects within 3-4 weeks* ## We’ve helped grow SaaS companies such as… ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/logos-01.png) “DemandMaven is a secret weapon for B2B and B2C SaaS companies that want to sustainably grow. I highly recommend them!” April DunfordAuthor of Bestseller "Obviously Awesome" , Founder of Ambient Strategy ### Get clarity on your next steps for growth It happens to the best of us — as we grow, we get more ideas on what to do next. Sometimes there’s so many ideas that we’re paralyzed on which our best opportunities are. *Should we run that campaign or launch this feature or both?* *Do we optimize Google Ads or spend our energy finding new channels?* With a Growth Audit, you can **beat the analysis paralysis** and **chart a clear path for growth** by an experienced SaaS growth expert. Walk away with **a 30+ report chock full of insights covering every aspect of growth** and exact next steps you need to take to grow. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/i-can-see.gif "i-can-see") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/i-know-everything.gif "i-know-everything") ### Know what's working in the business (and what's not) It’s tough to see the forest for the trees — and that couldn’t be more true for a growing SaaS business with even busier teams. With all of the data, KPIs, and information available to us, it’s difficult to discern what to pay attention to and when. A Growth Audit will help you and your team **see exactly what areas of the business need the most attention** and enable better alignment across all departments. Plus, it’s done by an experienced SaaS growth team with years of growing product businesses under their belts. ### With a Growth Audit, you’ll get actionable answers to critical questions like… - What areas of the business need the most attention? - What are my best opportunities for growing my SaaS? - How does each area of the business perform overall? - Who are the people I need to reach my goals? - Who do I need to hire first? - Is my growth sustainable? - Is there anything really obvious that I’m missing to grow the company? As you can imagine, these insights will influence both the day-to-day and the quarter-to-quarter. What you learn from **the Growth Audit can and should influence how you think about the entire business** — from identifying the top KPIs to focus on to your hiring processes for each department. So what’s stopping you? “When you hire DemandMaven to lead your growth, you’re not just getting an extra pair of hands to manage an ad campaign or write blog posts. You’re getting a strategic partner who can help you design a more effective, full-customer-journey growth program — and, ultimately, someone who can help you run your SaaS business more efficiently.” Claire SuellentropCo-Founder, Forget The Funnel & Elevate ## Beat the analysis paralysis and start growing your SaaS A good Growth Audit done by a reputable SaaS expert should take a holistic approach and find opportunities in: - Acquisition - Activation - Retention - Expansion - People - Processes - Tools/Stack - Data Why so many areas? Because **growth is actually extremely complex and interwines with all aspects of the business.** This means if we only focus on growth opportunities related to acqusition, we risk not addressing the opportunities that will support retention and expansion — therefore creating an inefficient, expensive business. The nature of SaaS means that every aspect of growth needs to be running as well as it can possibly be to remain competitive and create value. It’s not enough to just have great acquisition or a great product. **You need the whole enchilada when it comes to growth.** The Growth Audit is designed to analyze the whole enchilada for you and produce the insights you need to take the next steps towards your goals. The 30+ page report that comes after will reveal — and challenge​​ — your assumptions about how to grow your business. They’ll give you **clarity on what to do next** (and what to save for a rainy day). Plus, it’ll help you avoid the costly mistakes in both money and time. Book a discovery call now to chat with us about your growth goals, your product, and where you feel your best opportunities lie. [BOOK MY DISCOVERY CALL](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *We’re fun, friendly, and focused.* ## The **Growth Audit** ## Process, Deliverables, & Timeline ### THE PROCESS You buy the Growth Audit engagement. We’ll analyze the business. You walk away with clear steps to take next. ### THE DELIVERABLES - 30+ page report of your top growth opportunities - Recorded discussions with team leads - **Countless “Ohhhh sh\*t!” moments** ### THE TIMELINE 4 weeks from your project start date “Asia is an exceptional marketing and growth partner for early-stage SaaS. She’s one of the few people out there who can work both on marketing strategy and also execute on the tactics.” Rob WallingCo-founder, MicroConf & TinySeed ## Work with a **customer-obsessed team** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and previously sat on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of models and market segments, including freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped companies  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") ### *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/wynter-logo.png "wynter-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/bos_logo_name_color_plain.png "bos_logo_name_color_plain") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/tiny-seed-light-bg-1-300x83.png "tiny-seed-light-bg") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/microconf-logo-300x78.png "microconf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/productled-logo-1.png "productled-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ftf-logo.png "ftf-logo") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Give us just 45 minutes and you’ll walk away with actionable next steps. ### Book your no-hard-sell discovery call to learn more about what your Growth Audit will help you unlock. [HELP ME GROW](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) We’ll never recommend a service you don’t need — and regardless of whether you work with us or not, you’ll leave our call with useful ideas. --- ### [About Us](https://demandmaven.io/about/) **Published:** January 31, 2018 **Author:** admin **Content:** # So, what is DemandMaven? DemandMaven, Inc. is a woman-owned growth consultancy that helps growing SaaS companies and startups find their absolute best growth opportunities, troubleshoot their growth, and generate their next $1M ARR. DemandMaven also works with early-stage SaaS companies on their go-to-market strategies and finding product-market fit. DemandMaven was founded in 2018 by Asia Orangio — 2x SaaS marketer for two high-growth, VC-funded startups. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/luke-beard.jpg "luke-beard") ## **“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief.”** “I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed. If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.” – Luke Beard, CEO & Founder of Exposure # *FEATURED ON* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/appcues-white2.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthmentor-logo-01.png "growthmentor-logo-01") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/moz-logo-white.png "moz-logo-white") ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/growthhackers.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/baremetrics-logo-white.png) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Stripe-logo-white_lg.png "Stripe-logo-white_lg") ## Work with a **customer-obsessed team** DemandMaven was founded by lead growth strategist Asia Orangio in 2018. Along with her work here, Asia advises SaaS companies and VC funds all over the world. She’s also a TinySeed mentor, and previously sat on the board at Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Before starting DemandMaven, Asia worked for two VC-funded, high-growth startups in Atlanta, GA as head of marketing and head of demand generation. ☝️ All that is to say that when you decide to work with DemandMaven, you’re getting a team who really gets SaaS.  Experienced in both B2B and B2C markets  Understand GTM strategies for a variety of models and market segments, including freemium, self-serve, demo, and SMB / mid-market / enterprise  Battle-tested in both VC-funded and bootstrapped companies  Deeply experienced with proven SaaS frameworks that generate results ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-full-cropped.jpg "asia-full-cropped") # **Meet the Team** ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-21-at-3.01.56-PM.png) #### Asia Orangio, Founder, CEO, CSO Our fearless leader and chief strategist. Asia manages operations, strategy, and growth opportunities. Her superpowers include identifying great SaaS growth blockers, leveraging insights from customer research, and operationalizing growth and marketing. Oh—and she’s the most organized person you’ll ever meet. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-21-at-3.52.43-PM.png) #### Kim Talarczyk, Client Services Manager Kim helps all DemandMaven clients have an excellent experience using her organizational and project management talents. When she’s not ensuring operations are running smoothly, she can be found devouring a great book. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Screen-Shot-2021-10-15-at-2.09.13-PM.png) #### Lauren Lavender, Growth Strategist When Lauren’s not building growth strategies, creating conversion worthy copy, producing ideal customer experience maps, and conducting customer research for clients, she can be found with her headphones on, podcasts rolling, and sipping a seriously delicious coffee. # A few places we’ve been Asia’s been featured on a number of podcasts and well-known SaaS blogs: **Blogs** – Baremetrics about the [importance of founder-generated content – ](https://baremetrics.com/blog/the-importance-of-founder-generated-content)Appcues about [troubleshooting the onboarding experience – ](https://www.appcues.com/blog/troubleshoot-onboarding-experience)Ryan Robinson on [how I made my first $10K in 90 days – ](https://www.ryrob.com/quit-my-job-start-freelancing/)DemandMaven on [how to read growth hacking posts like an enlightened reader](https://demandmaven.io/how-read-growth-hacking-enlightened-reader/) **Podcasts & Webinars** – Startups for the Rest of Us: [Finding Marketing Channels, Seat-Limited Trials, Building a Brand, and More Listener Questions](https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-508-finding-marketing-channels-seat-limited-trials-building-a-brand-and-more-listener-questions) – Everybody Hates Marketers: [How to create a go-to-market strategy](https://www.everyonehatesmarketers.com/go-to-market/) – GrowthTLDR: [The influencer strategy I use to help companies grow](https://www.kieranflanagan.io/podcast/the-influencer-strategy-asia-matos-uses-to-help-startups-grow/) – Learnwhy: [Why marketing is all about relationships](https://www.learnwhy.co/customer-conversations/why-marketing-is-all-about-relationships-with-demandmavens-asia-matos) – Forget the Funnel: [Leading Change in Your SaaS Organization](https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/saas-change-management-with-asia-matos-orangio)– Forget the Funnel: [How to navigate politics at work and have hard conversations](https://www.forgetthefunnel.com/resources/navigate-saas-company-politics)– SaaS District: [How to get your first 100 customers with confidence and clarity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHnKfHA3KHg) – UI Breakfast: [How to get your first 100 customers](https://uibreakfast.com/153-your-first-100-customers-with-asia-matos/) – Rogue Startups: [Marketing 201](https://roguestartups.com/rs198-marketing-201-with-asia-matos/) – Customer Intelligence Institute: [How to skyrocket your SaaS growth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--xh97julmI&t=1716s) – Growth Marketing Today: [Getting to $100K MRR the Lean Way](https://growthtoday.fm/gmt033-getting-to-100k-mrr-the-lean-way-asia-matos/) – Quuu: [Conversations with Asia Orangio](https://anchor.fm/qcast/episodes/Conversations-with-Quuu-E2-Asia-Matos-e1qvsu) – DGMG with Dave Gerhardt: First 100 Customers, Five Stages of Awareness, & Generating Sales Ready Leads – Bootstrapped with Peldi Guilizzoni: Conducting customer interviews for the reluctant – Marketing Meetup: How to acquire your first 100 customers **Conferences** – Business of Software: How to design a growth plan that works – Business of Software: Seven Horrors of Go to Market – TuringFest: Finding Growth Opportunities When Shit Hits The Fan – SaaStock: How to recession-proof your SaaS: 3 keys to surviving just about any economic downturn – MicroConf Starter: How to acquire your first 100 customers – MicroConf Remote: [5-Minute Fix — Avoiding Analytics Debt](https://microconf.com/remote) – Product-Led Growth: [How to identify your best acquisition channels](https://summit.productled.com/talks/how-to-identify-your-best-acquisition-channels/) – GrowthMentor Summit: [How to get the first $100K MRR](https://summit.growthmentor.com/talks/how-to-get-the-first-100k-mrr/) – Wynter Games 2: [Messaging Edition](https://app.livestorm.co/wynter/wynter-games-2) – Wynter Games 7:[ Strategy Edition](https://app.livestorm.co/wynter/wynter-games-7-strategy?s=900526aa-464a-4acb-ada3-e4854823b659) **Talks** – Stripe’s AMA: [How to get your first 100 customers](https://discuss.stripe.community/t/ask-me-about-getting-your-first-100-customers/4492) – Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes a Village 2020 Cohort – Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes a Village 2019 Cohort – Atlanta Tech Village’s It Takes a Village 2018 Cohort – Simply SaaS: Marketing 101 – Atlanta Tech Village: Go-to-market Strategy # **Bring your product** to your people # It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Go-to-Market or Growth Engagement — so that two months from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Services](https://demandmaven.io/services/) **Published:** January 31, 2018 **Author:** admin **Content:** # Wanna work with us? # **Our Services** ### **Growth Engagement** Not exactly sure what the growth strategy is? Have no idea who your best customers are or what the best positioning should be in order to *win* in your market? Want answers now on where to focus? In this Growth Engagement, we’ll interview your customers, parse the data into actionable insights, **define your growth strategy and show you exactly what it’s going to take to unlock your growth**. The Growth Engagement is a one-time engagement and takes around 1.5 – 2 months to complete. **NOTE: This offering is the most popular and books out 1 – 2 months in advance.** [LEARN MORE](https://demandmaven.io/services/growth-sprint/) ### **Go-to-Market Engagement** Need to pinpoint positioning? Unblock your analysis paralysis? Enter the market with confidence? This engagement is perfect for beta to early-stage founders who need to claim their space in the market. In 1-2 months you’ll get **crystal clear on who your customers are** and what they care about, **establish your baseline and KPIs**, and **start implementing your custom growth plan.** [LEARN MORE](https://demandmaven.io/services/gtm-engagement/) ### **Á La Carte Services Menu** “Á La Carte” means founders, CEOs, and marketing leaders can select from a menu of service offerings to design their ideal strategic project. Á La Carte was designed to allow founders and team to build their own custom engagements, give teams only the deliverables they actually need, and unblock progress towards their goals. **NOTE: We’re currently testing this offering. Clicking the button below will open a microsite.** [LEARN MORE](https://demandmaven.notion.site/DemandMaven-La-Carte-Service-Options-5d4fdddac6eb4bacbabd96571996cfb9) ### **Growth Retainer – $5K+ per month** A “done-for-you” Growth Retainer to help you keep costs predictable (read: stay lean!) but also get the growth help you need. From **setting up campaigns** to **managing your acquisition channels** to **building the marketing engine**, this engagement easily covers all bases. Plus, it’s *completely* customized to your exact business needs, target market, and your best growth opportunities based on what we learned in the Growth Engagement (see above). **NOTE: This engagement is only offered to clients who complete the Growth Engagement. Retainers start at $5K per month with limited availability.** # **Bring your product** to your people # It’s time for your hard work to shine. Book your Go-to-Market or Growth Engagement — so that two months from now, you and your team have the clarity and confidence you need to grow. [LET'S CHAT](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Rindle](https://demandmaven.io/rindle-case-study/) **Published:** May 22, 2020 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How DemandMaven Helped Rindle Reposition Their Product For an immediate 30% lift in MRR and 6.7x in growth. [Read More](#begin)[Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“I needed somebody who could help us do things, execute things, and actually work towards a whole marketing effort, not just strategy. Asia is more of a partner, a team member, and we’re working toward the same thing”* Brian FaustCEO & Co-founder, [Rindle](https://rindle.com) ## Highlights - 6.7x MRR throughout engagement - 30% lift in MRR after re-positioning - Tripled the total trial volume from 2018 to 2019 - Increased website conversion rate by 120% - Launched new automation features ## Services Provided - Go-to-market strategy - Positioning and messaging - Demand generation services - Website, landing page, and email copywriting - Customer research & interviews - Product marketing # The Company ## *Infinitely better than project management* Brian Faust is the CEO & Co-founder of [Rindle](https://rindle.com) — a workflow management platform for busy managers who need all of their processes and tasks in a clean, simple view. Rindle works with SMBs and enterprise companies all over the world on managing their workflows with automation and features that actually help teams save time. Imagine the top project management tools in the world and just simply make them more effective for managing processes and actually easy to use. That’s Rindle. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Rindle-old.jpg) # The Challenge ## *No time to be a marketer* This technically wasn’t Brian’s first rodeo. Before Rindle existed as it did today, Rindle was a different platform. Brian and his co-founder Tom pivoted the product after identifying a more lucrative market opportunity to build a workflow management platform with automation capabilities (but still staying true to ease and simplicity). With a completely revamped-Rindle, Brian needed to take his pivoted product to market, but his options were limited. Freelancers were historically too inconsistent, and hiring a full-time marketer simply wasn’t in the budget. *“I knew the hands on work needed to get done if we’re doing any marketing efforts. I feel like hiring freelancers is inconsistent and unstable. It’s really hard to assemble a really solid freelancer team that’s going to drive your marketing efforts. They can definitely execute things, but they kind of lack strategy side at that point I think. Hiring employees, we just weren’t ready for it at the time, so **the fact that a partner like DemandMaven could come in and be steady and concrete, and think about strategy and execution on the regular as opposed to somebody who might flake out was important to us.*** *It made us feel like, okay, we’re making a good investment, we’re making a sound investment instead of trying to cobble together a team or do it ourselves.”* Plus, Brian and his CTO needed to focus on expanding the product after releasing the initial MVP. He, like many founders, didn’t have the time (or runway) to learn marketing on his own. *“I’ve done my fair share of research, reading, and podcast-listening to get thoughts of what you should do in marketing and when. But again, not having the marketing experience is daunting to think about. It’s like, “Okay now you have to think about all these five pieces that are all working together and you have no experience with doing it, and you should just figure it out.”* *I think for me, it was always a question of how long will this take? It was like, well **I could spend my time learning marketing and becoming really good at it, but that would be my probably 100% focus for a long period of time to really be good at it. So I just felt like that wasn’t the best use of my time overall.**”* Brian needed a partner who could help him build Rindle’s marketing foundation, execute marketing priorities, keep a pulse on growth efforts, and define new growth projects. *“I don’t have a marketing background per se. I’ve worked at a creative agency and things like that, so I’ve been in touch with some marketing, but I don’t do it. It’s not easy for me to say, “Oh, I’ll just run with the marketing on my own.” I need to get some talented people, skilled people who can do it for me or along with me.”* And not just execute tasks off a list, but actually help the business grow. Finding a marketing consultant with a background building a revenue-generating marketing engine for a SaaS business was a critical requirement for Rindle. # The Solution ## *A hands-on growth partner* Rindle came in with the typical scenarios of so many of our clients: they had a product they really believed in, but the way the product sat in the market and how people thought about it wasn’t working. The SaaS industry knows this as a “positioning problem”. Rindle was originally positioned as a task and project management tool — which is one of the most competitive and inundated markets on the planet. It was pretty clear that Rindle would need help setting itself apart from the rest of the market and position itself as a real competitor in the space. On top of that, Rindle’s original model was also a point of friction for the rest of the market. In order to reduce too many unqualified users from joining the product, Rindle originally required a credit card when starting a free trial. That combined with a few missing features and a less-than-ideal onboarding experience left the business funnel with extremely high churn rates, a faulty activation rate, and low month-over-month free trial sign-ups overall. So we walked through [the DemandMaven growth process](../process/): ### **1. Focus** First, we interviewed some of Rindle’s best-paying customers. These were customers who were generated either through sales efforts or inbound. Uncoincidentally, they also happened to be the most responsive and active in the Rindle platform. By interviewing the first batch of paying customers, we discovered that the pain Rindle solved for their customers had less to do with pure “project management” and more do with workflow challenges and automation. While the customer segments varied across many markets and industries, it became clear that we should focus on prospects who wanted to solve management problems across the entire spectrum of the business’s work and also automate as much of the heavy-lifting as possible. ### **2. Align** The next step was to re-align the entire go-to-market function to cater more to “workflow automation” as part of our new positioning. Our re-positioning efforts included: 1. Completely re-writing the website’s messaging to focus more on value propositions related to workflow automation, 2. Producing new content related to workflow management and automation, and 3. Writing an open ebook about project automation to help generate organic traffic from prospects searching for ways to automate their projects and processes, and contribute to both bottom-of-the-funnel activity and top-of-the-funnel awareness Plus, we needed to remove some friction for new prospects who were considering other competitors in the project management space (of which there were easily hundreds). This included removing the credit card required to start a free trial, and smoothing the onboarding process as much as possible. DemandMaven also helped Rindle implement an email sequence that booked demos with the founders for any free trialers who wanted a complete overview of the platform. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Rindle-Webpage.jpg) ### **3. Experiment** Finally, every great growth process allows room for testing new ideas. After focusing and aligning product messaging, Rindle needed help with testing new channels and segments as the customer base expanded with new free trials and paying customers. DemandMaven started with market segments that appeared to respond well to Brian’s sales efforts and then later tested different market segments with adjusted messaging. DemandMaven also designed and launched messaging tests for the website, campaign tests, and ad copy tests. Overall, DemandMaven was the hands-on, strategic growth partner that Rindle needed, consistently brought new growth ideas to the table, and focused on generating both short-term and long-term results. ### *“The fact that a partner like DemandMaven could come in and be steady and concrete, and think about strategy and execution on the regular as opposed to somebody who might flake out was important to us.”* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Rindle-Webpage-Guide.jpg) # The Result ## *A new way to be* By working with DemandMaven, Brian was able to check off many boxes regarding business and his go-to-market needs. First, he was free to focus on building the product to compete as effectively as possible in their crowded market. Being dialed into customer feedback, support, and the overall sales process was critical for Brian and his team, and the ability to bring on a partner to own marketing saved his time and ability to focus. Plus, DemandMaven proved to be a consistent, reliable partner — providing Brian with the confidence he needed to move forward on other high-priority internal projects. Second, Rindle had a lot of ground to cover in terms of generating the first customers, identifying the best-paying customers, and positioning the product in an extremely crowded market. DemandMaven’s help repositioning the Rindle product resulted in an immediate 30% increase in monthly free trials. Third, Brian needed results. Together, **Rindle and DemandMaven grew the business by 6.7x throughout their relationship. Churn dropped from 30%+ to a very healthy 3.4%, and monthly free trial volume 3.5x within the year**. *“We certainly have a more stable marketing presence overall. Between the positioning, more consistent messaging, and strategy behind what we were doing. All those efforts did bring us forward.”* Finally, Rindle had a website that consistently converted customers with its new positioning, updated messaging, and content that drove both top-of-the-funnel awareness and bottom-of-the-funnel product consideration. Rindle’s website conversion rate into free trial also lifted 120% through DemandMaven’s work. Today, Rindle is now focused on refining their sales strategy to help land some whale, enterprise customers. They are also still 100% dedicated to providing better solutions for managing the work, and the DemandMaven team honestly couldn’t be more proud of them. ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“…DemandMaven got us thinking about the strategy of focusing on automation and targeting for SEO for the longterm… The whole revamp of the website, the introduction of the automation ebook I think were all really good things for us.”* Brian FaustCEO & Co-founder, [Rindle](https://rindle.com) # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/asia-arms-crossed-small.jpg) --- ### [Case Study: Exposure](https://demandmaven.io/exposure-case-study/) **Published:** December 7, 2018 **Author:** Asia Orangio **Content:** # How DemandMaven helped Exposure increase free trial conversion rate by 68% And lifted MRR by 2% in 30 days [Read More](#begin)[Contact Us](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“If you’re thinking about hiring DemandMaven, you should obviously do it. A weight is going to lift off your shoulders, and you’re going to do some amazing work together. Your business won’t be the same.”* Luke BeardCEO & Co-Founder, [Exposure](https://exposure.co) ## Highlights - Improved free trial conversion rate by 68% - Proved an acquisition model and CPL for B2B - Defined and prioritized features on product roadmap for each vertical - Clear visibility of the funnel and attribution - Complete view of the customer ## Services Provided - Go-to-market strategy - Customer journey mapping - Customer research & interviews - Campaign creation & management - Onboarding email copywriting - Analytics implementation - CRO # The Company ## *A stunning visual storytelling platform* Exposure is the leanest content management system in the world, enabling over 300,000 users to tell context-rich stories with stunning photographs. It caters to both businesses and photographers — including the serious travel bloggers to the occasional photo-taker. Exposure has a single founder, took on a small amount of funding to get the product started, and has remained a lean team for the past 5 years. ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-1.12.47-PM.png) # The Challenge ## *Too many markets, too little resources* Despite the odds being stacked against them, Exposure was winning. Without millions of dollars in funding or a full-scale marketing team behind them, the burgeoning CMS was taking on huge competitors like SquareSpace and Wix — and stealing market share. But with over 300,000 users and counting, Luke Beard, CEO and Founder of Exposure, was finally finding it overwhelming to try and keep revenue growth on track. **Monthly recurring revenue was at a standstill, and Luke felt buried.** Buried by the product and growth possibilities, buried by the sheer volume of data available to him, and paralyzed by what he didn’t know about taking his product to any of the markets before him. *“I never expected Exposure to get nearly as much traction as it did, but here we are,” Luke joked. “It’s an amazing, beautiful platform, but I didn’t have a plan for marketing or go-to-market. I really didn’t even know where to begin.”* From identifying best-fit customers to collecting and assessing the right data points, Luke struggled to find a clear path forward. *“We didn’t have a north star for who our best customers were or what we needed to do to keep them and attract more of them.”* Luke knew he needed a partner who could help him define Exposure’s value proposition, bring clarity to their product road map, and then take the platform to a buy-ready market. *“Exposure never really tried anything by way of marketing. We never implemented or did anything past developing the product. When you’re a product person, you never really think about marketing or sales for the most part. It’s very reactionary. But deep down, I’ve always known it’s something I should be tackling.”* # The Solution ## *A customer-driven go-to-market strategy* Luke found a capable and empathetic partner in DemandMaven — a local consultancy specializing in helping early-stage startups define their growth strategy and take their product to market. To help Exposure carve its go-to-market strategy, DemandMaven created a research plan for customer interviews and started the customer journey mapping process. By interviewing Exposure’s broad range of customers, patterns began to emerge in the way certain personas and markets found and leveraged Exposure; including the features they valued most, and their associated churn risks. DemandMaven helped Exposure identify the personas and markets who were getting the most value out of the product. Together, they explored the growth possibilities and evaluated them through a series of campaign experiments — starting with the un-earthed qualitative and quantitative data about best-fit customers. After completing the customer journey mapping process, it was clear that Exposure needed to optimize a few key landing pages, update new user onboarding, and the overall website — including refreshing the home page and the B2B case studies. Luke was relieved to finally have clarity on how to take his product to market: *“Working with DemandMaven was the biggest sense of relief. I finally had a better picture of what it was going to take to really get momentum in a specific direction. I got the clarity and confidence that I and my business needed.”* Perhaps most importantly, **it became clear how Exposure’s product roadmap would need to be adjusted to focus on a specific market** and therefore persona. *“It’s super intimidating to do this stuff by yourself, and you want to believe you can get away from doing this kind of work. Having someone walk me through the process of figuring out the overall strategy and marketing side to the business was insanely valuable.”* ![](https://demandmaven.io/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Screen-Shot-2018-11-03-at-1.13.03-PM.png) # The Result ## *From hunches to truth* **Luke doesn’t have to guess anymore.** After evaluating each market opportunity, Exposure and DemandMaven worked together to define and focus on just one key market. DemandMaven helped Luke align the brand’s positioning, messaging, copy, marketing activities, website, landing pages, upcoming product features, and in-app analytics to enable that one core audience. Plus, he received all of the strategic, actionable insight he needed to execute immediately. *“Having informed customer information is way better than hunches. You can go from making assumptions, but having actionable data is way more valuable than pretending you know. Especially with a solo founder like myself. Intrinsically, it was a lot of education and insight into what it would take to scale and really get momentum with it. I have a much better picture with what it would take.”* DemandMaven also worked with Luke to enhance and redesign the home page. **As a result, the visitor-to-free-trial conversion rate of the home page increased by 68%** — a remarkable improvement that directly translated into a **2% lift in monthly recurring revenue in less than 30 days**. Best of all, Luke feels confident, focused, and validated in who Exposure serves and the pain the platform solves for its best-fit customers. Because of DemandMaven, he and his team can prioritize the work they’re doing. ✨ [Get Started](https://demandmaven.io/contact/) *“There’s so much education that happens by working with DemandMaven — which is awesome. I think and I speak differently now.”* Luke BeardCEO & Co-Founder, [Exposure](https://exposure.co) # Ready to get started? This sh\*t ain’t easy, but that’s exactly why we built DemandMaven. We’ll help you find your absolute best growth opportunities based on the “jobs” your customers are hiring the product for. Then, we’ll show you exactly what needs to happen to achieve your goals. 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