Startup Acquisition 101 – Simply SaaS University

“ASIA! Would be you open to giving a talk about marketing and acquisition for Simply SaaS University?”

Hell yeah.

via GIPHY

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 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 (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‘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 (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:

Enjoy!

– Asia