Expert insights. Personalized for you.
At this point, the critical marketing imperative is to start a conversation with a receptive buyer, and do it thousands of times per year. I met a master software marketer last week, and he shared some of his wisdom. This master marketer pointed to our language. Within in a market, competitors often use the same language to describe their products. The rest of the market described their displays in pixels (e.g., MORE
Parts of your businesses are struggling, but other parts are doing OK, and some segments are even doing well. Focusing on Segments That Are Thriving. Not enough SaaS companies have segmented their sales teams and marketing efforts into Green, Yellow and Red market segments. MORE
When writing the post Vertical SaaS Startups Require Different Go To Market Than Horizontal SaaS Companies , I realized that there is a perception on my part and perhaps more broadly that vertical SaaS companies enjoy greater sales efficiencies than horizontal SaaS companies. The marketing team concentrates their media buys to target this audience, the sales team focuses on a smaller lead list. This may be because of a greater competitive pressure within the horizontal markets. MORE
And often, if you are capital efficient, your marketing cost will be close to $0 at this point (you are barely spending anything to acquire most customers), and your sales costs are pretty predictable. Competition in core deals is the root cause of systemic high sales & marketing expenses. MORE
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Product/Market Fit for quite some time. The reason why it’s such an interesting and important concept is that getting to Product/Market Fit (PMF) marks a critical juncture in a company’s lifecycle. What is Product/Market Fit? Marc Andreessen got more precise, saying that PMF means “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market”. How can Product/Market Fit be measured? pmf product/market fit MORE
If prospecting a market segment being directly affected by crises (i.e. If prospecting a market segment being directly affected by crises (i.e. Is it wrong to “sell” in times of uncertainty or turbulence? MORE
This may sound obvious, but even the best lead generation techniques end up with leads that simply aren’t in the market for your product category. Target market segment ?—?Does Does a lead work for a company in your target market (e.g. Marketing interaction ?—?Has MORE
I believe this is an important trend to follow for SaaS founders as they have to adapt their overall strategy (from go-to-market to product decisions) to this “app store dominated” era. Observation #4: SaaS app stores seem to make more sense for the SMB and mid-market segments. MORE
When I’m not completely absorbed with my agile marketing software startup , I do a bit of SaaS consulting on the side. Future posts will examine the challenges of achieving SaaS customer alignment in customer acquisition, customer success and early product market fit. MORE
The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy. This large segment of businesses provides ample testing ground for product development, market fit validation and creation of word-of-mouth marketing. Payroll Segmentation. MORE
Then, there’s the marketing. In my own SaaS experience, be it scaling a sales and marketing team, consulting for SaaS startups or bootstrapping my agile marketing SaaS, Markodojo , I find myself returning to a common theme that always cuts through the complexity: SaaS customer alignment. MORE
Gartner’s new forecast says all market segments from enterprise software to communications service will experience a decline in 2020, with devices and data-center systems experiencing the largest drops in spending. MORE
Clay Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, asserted in a recent interview that we understand only half of the marketing puzzle: the marketing science involved in a competitive ecosystem, when consumers are buying millions of products. In these markets, concepts like Westendorp Price Sensitivity and conjoint analyses work. But to incite disruption requires a different set of marketing skills. MORE
Defining the offer, experimenting with discrete market segments, testing pricing/packaging, and solidifying the business case takes place. Sales and marketing efforts are properly aligned (i.e., By: Jeff Wissink , Navint Managing Director. MORE
Is there a way to help marketing segment customers for case studies or reference testimonials? As part of a successful B2B enterprise, you understand the importance of your customers. New customer acquisition is at the heart of most traditional business models. MORE
Discount pricing deducts a certain percentage off the original market price. While all discounts strive to take a certain percentage off an original market price, there are different discounting techniques. Improve your marketing segmentation. MORE
Whether startups should aim to dominate a niche before expanding to wider market segments. This week's episode of SaaS Open Mic features a live discussion from the Berlin edition of Mogul I/O, our event series bringing industry leaders together around the topic of sustainable growth. “I MORE
How could market dynamics change? This can lead you to change your marketing segmentation, value metrics and pricing metrics. Many of us are struggling to understand what’s happening in our communities, with our families, and to our businesses and customers. MORE
Successfully turning your e-commerce traffic into repeat customers with high LTV lies in segmentation and personalization. Jenna Ochoa is the Partner Marketing Manager at Justuno. Looking at the marketing funnel. Here, again, segmentation is crucial. MORE
Though the startup may have achieved product market fit, the company may not understand the fit. Many times, the PM builds the product as quickly as possible to establish product/market fit. In contrast, the PMM answers critical questions about the company, product and market to ensure the product sells. I found an excellent list in Kotler on Marketing that I adapted for startups. Which market segment should we pursue? MORE
I would have expected companies in the $1M or less in ARR to observe lower conversion rates because they are earlier in their go-to-market development. Jonathan asked: Can you share trial length by market segment? After publishing the survey last week, I received many questions. MORE
After last week’s post, Is There a No Man’s Land in SaaS ACVs , a founder asked me to highlight some of the go to market strategies in different segments. The story behind Fleetmatics and Geotab illustrates the way two companies pursued the SMB logistics market in radically different ways, but built roughly similar sized businesses. Geotab addresses the same market as Fleetmatics. There are approximately 22 million trucks in the US. MORE
Historically, many marketers have been in a situation where sales defines their own buying groups and practically no two salespeople define it the same. Here’s how to define your buying group: Define your total addressable market (TAM). Segment by product line. MORE
Founders often ask, when is the right time to expand geographically, add a second product or pursue another customer segment? There are now two marketing messages, two sales pitches, two press strategies, two product and engineering teams. Founders should ask whether faster growth and dominance in one market segment builds a more valuable business than smaller penetration of and slower growth in two markets. MORE
I’m pretty jaded when it comes to the financial numbers that get thrown around in start-up land—I don’t care what TechCrunch says, I don’t care what your market cap is—I think it’s clear that the world of technology start-ups is pretty screwed up when it comes to financial valuations. MORE
By that point, it was apparent that a new customer segment had emerged that wouldn’t cannibalize their existing business. The wrinkle is that Apple combines this design with superb product marketing. It’s block and tackle product marketing MORE
Best of all, the types of smart people that you run into in tech run the gamut from highly technical software engineers, to massively creative designers and marketers, to analytical data wizzes and finance experts. Your email marketing software is important, but we’re not neurosurgeons here. MORE
Those economies of scale may exist as a consequence of a strong brand, monopoly-like characteristics within their market segment, improving sales efficiency, increases in contract size, better rates of customer upsells, etc. In the past, we have benchmarked the revenue per employee of large publicly traded SaaS companies and determined that the average is about $200k of revenue per person. But, that analysis examined revenue per employee that only one point in time. MORE
The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy. MORE
Thanks to market segmentation, organizations can better understand their target audience, determine the potential value of the product for this market, and plan the customer journey for each segment of their audience. Marketing MORE
Lastly, a sales budget plan gives you a sales forecast for a given period based on factors that could impact revenue — like industry trends and entry to a new market segment. Remember, markets and customers are in a constant state of flux. True success always starts with a plan. MORE
Not only does it define your early monetization strategy, but it also heavily influences what market segments you’re likely to appeal to directly and how your product will be perceived. What’s more, it can also be a direct route to entrenched stability in your market area. MORE
Can marketing help? They should see the same metrics every month, to drive their strategy in sales and marketing. Segment your reporting. As a sales leader, you’re only as good as your team, and it starts by managing a team effectively. MORE
For 13+ years in marketing, I’ve never seen a B2B company who’d say they don’t have a B2B marketing strategy framework or that their marketing strategy is ineffective. What Is A B2B Marketing Strategy? B2b Marketing Strategy Framework. The breadth of the market. MORE
Focusing on one customer segment, the ideal customer profile, reinforces the startup’s strength. Even if you’ve researched the market ahead of building a product, developed an ideal customer profile (ICP), the challenge arrives when you take the product to market. A unexpected surge of interest from a customer type raises the question, “Should we serve that market segment too?” MORE
No one will come out of this experience unscathed, but some will come out of it stronger than they went in and better positioned to thrive in the market that emerges from the current situation. Is there an opportunity for you to: Gain market share. A market segment that’s worried. MORE
Most businesses fund new initiatives including marketing and technology projects from profits. The more profits a company generates the greater their willingness to pay for services and ultimately the larger the market size for a startup. Market Cap in $B. These dollars are pulled in many directions: covering potential losses incurred through the year, remodeling, new online marketing initiatives and ideally profits. MORE
Except with Salesloft and Outreach both are winning in the same space , each with dominant market share. When in a large space, segments alone can be huge. 2 often has a better product, at least for some market segments. #2 2 Can Go Down Market Easier. MORE
Preparing to sell your company requires a lot of work. Whether planned or unsolicited, when the time comes to ready the company for sale, you will be able to move much more quickly if your financial house is in already in order. MORE
These startups' management teams have already proven they can develop marketing and sales competencies while bringing a product to market. The takeaway from this study shouldn’t be any new insight about whether a startups should enter markets with our without competitors. MORE
Market Segmentation combined with tailored messaging. The key to achieving explosive growth is to start by identifying your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) via segmentation, reaching out to them with personalized targeted messaging while building a scalable and repeatable process. MORE
Market Segmentation Related Topics Nimble - Sales
MARCH 5, 2020
Thanks to market segmentation, organizations can better understand their target audience, determine the potential value of the product for this market, and plan the customer journey for each segment of their audience. Marketing
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 12, 2012
Most businesses fund new initiatives including marketing and technology projects from profits. The more profits a company generates the greater their willingness to pay for services and ultimately the larger the market size for a startup. Market Cap in $B. These dollars are pulled in many directions: covering potential losses incurred through the year, remodeling, new online marketing initiatives and ideally profits.
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InsightSquared
OCTOBER 4, 2019
Historically, many marketers have been in a situation where sales defines their own buying groups and practically no two salespeople define it the same. Here’s how to define your buying group: Define your total addressable market (TAM). Segment by product line.
Chart Mogul
MARCH 5, 2019
Successfully turning your e-commerce traffic into repeat customers with high LTV lies in segmentation and personalization. Jenna Ochoa is the Partner Marketing Manager at Justuno. Looking at the marketing funnel. Here, again, segmentation is crucial.
IT World
MAY 14, 2020
Gartner’s new forecast says all market segments from enterprise software to communications service will experience a decline in 2020, with devices and data-center systems experiencing the largest drops in spending.
SaaStr
MAY 19, 2020
Parts of your businesses are struggling, but other parts are doing OK, and some segments are even doing well. Focusing on Segments That Are Thriving. Not enough SaaS companies have segmented their sales teams and marketing efforts into Green, Yellow and Red market segments.
|
Sales Hacker
JULY 30, 2018
For 13+ years in marketing, I’ve never seen a B2B company who’d say they don’t have a B2B marketing strategy framework or that their marketing strategy is ineffective. What Is A B2B Marketing Strategy? B2b Marketing Strategy Framework. The breadth of the market.
OpenView Labs
MAY 5, 2020
No one will come out of this experience unscathed, but some will come out of it stronger than they went in and better positioned to thrive in the market that emerges from the current situation. Is there an opportunity for you to: Gain market share. A market segment that’s worried.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 11, 2019
I would have expected companies in the $1M or less in ARR to observe lower conversion rates because they are earlier in their go-to-market development. Jonathan asked: Can you share trial length by market segment? After publishing the survey last week, I received many questions.
SaaStr
MARCH 8, 2020
Except with Salesloft and Outreach both are winning in the same space , each with dominant market share. When in a large space, segments alone can be huge. 2 often has a better product, at least for some market segments. #2 2 Can Go Down Market Easier.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 19, 2012
The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy.
|
SaaStr
OCTOBER 6, 2019
And often, if you are capital efficient, your marketing cost will be close to $0 at this point (you are barely spending anything to acquire most customers), and your sales costs are pretty predictable. Competition in core deals is the root cause of systemic high sales & marketing expenses.
Sales Hacker
JANUARY 16, 2018
Market Segmentation combined with tailored messaging. The key to achieving explosive growth is to start by identifying your Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs) via segmentation, reaching out to them with personalized targeted messaging while building a scalable and repeatable process.
Sales Hacker
APRIL 6, 2020
If prospecting a market segment being directly affected by crises (i.e. If prospecting a market segment being directly affected by crises (i.e. Is it wrong to “sell” in times of uncertainty or turbulence?
InsightSquared
DECEMBER 11, 2017
Can marketing help? They should see the same metrics every month, to drive their strategy in sales and marketing. Segment your reporting. As a sales leader, you’re only as good as your team, and it starts by managing a team effectively.
Tom Tunguz
AUGUST 19, 2012
The first step in developing a sales strategy is to build a robust market segmentation. I’ve used data from the US Census to develop a segmentation that reveals some surprising facts about the SMB market and may help inform your startup’s sales strategy. This large segment of businesses provides ample testing ground for product development, market fit validation and creation of word-of-mouth marketing. Payroll Segmentation.
ProfitWell
JANUARY 30, 2020
Not only does it define your early monetization strategy, but it also heavily influences what market segments you’re likely to appeal to directly and how your product will be perceived. What’s more, it can also be a direct route to entrenched stability in your market area.
OpenView Labs
APRIL 7, 2020
How could market dynamics change? This can lead you to change your marketing segmentation, value metrics and pricing metrics. Many of us are struggling to understand what’s happening in our communities, with our families, and to our businesses and customers.
Cardin Partners
JUNE 19, 2017
Preparing to sell your company requires a lot of work. Whether planned or unsolicited, when the time comes to ready the company for sale, you will be able to move much more quickly if your financial house is in already in order.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 18, 2013
These startups' management teams have already proven they can develop marketing and sales competencies while bringing a product to market. The takeaway from this study shouldn’t be any new insight about whether a startups should enter markets with our without competitors.
How SaaS Works
OCTOBER 25, 2019
This may sound obvious, but even the best lead generation techniques end up with leads that simply aren’t in the market for your product category. Target market segment ?—?Does Does a lead work for a company in your target market (e.g. Marketing interaction ?—?Has
ProfitWell
FEBRUARY 24, 2020
Discount pricing deducts a certain percentage off the original market price. While all discounts strive to take a certain percentage off an original market price, there are different discounting techniques. Improve your marketing segmentation.
Chaotic Flow
APRIL 14, 2015
When I’m not completely absorbed with my agile marketing software startup , I do a bit of SaaS consulting on the side. Future posts will examine the challenges of achieving SaaS customer alignment in customer acquisition, customer success and early product market fit.
Chaotic Flow
JULY 21, 2015
Then, there’s the marketing. In my own SaaS experience, be it scaling a sales and marketing team, consulting for SaaS startups or bootstrapping my agile marketing SaaS, Markodojo , I find myself returning to a common theme that always cuts through the complexity: SaaS customer alignment.
Tom Tunguz
JULY 27, 2015
Founders often ask, when is the right time to expand geographically, add a second product or pursue another customer segment? There are now two marketing messages, two sales pitches, two press strategies, two product and engineering teams. Founders should ask whether faster growth and dominance in one market segment builds a more valuable business than smaller penetration of and slower growth in two markets.
Point Nine Land
JANUARY 2, 2019
I believe this is an important trend to follow for SaaS founders as they have to adapt their overall strategy (from go-to-market to product decisions) to this “app store dominated” era. Observation #4: SaaS app stores seem to make more sense for the SMB and mid-market segments.
Tom Tunguz
MARCH 17, 2016
Clay Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor, asserted in a recent interview that we understand only half of the marketing puzzle: the marketing science involved in a competitive ecosystem, when consumers are buying millions of products. In these markets, concepts like Westendorp Price Sensitivity and conjoint analyses work. But to incite disruption requires a different set of marketing skills.
Outseta
JANUARY 20, 2020
I’m pretty jaded when it comes to the financial numbers that get thrown around in start-up land—I don’t care what TechCrunch says, I don’t care what your market cap is—I think it’s clear that the world of technology start-ups is pretty screwed up when it comes to financial valuations.
Chart Mogul
JUNE 13, 2018
Whether startups should aim to dominate a niche before expanding to wider market segments. This week's episode of SaaS Open Mic features a live discussion from the Berlin edition of Mogul I/O, our event series bringing industry leaders together around the topic of sustainable growth. “I
Tom Tunguz
SEPTEMBER 16, 2015
When writing the post Vertical SaaS Startups Require Different Go To Market Than Horizontal SaaS Companies , I realized that there is a perception on my part and perhaps more broadly that vertical SaaS companies enjoy greater sales efficiencies than horizontal SaaS companies. The marketing team concentrates their media buys to target this audience, the sales team focuses on a smaller lead list. This may be because of a greater competitive pressure within the horizontal markets.
Sales Hacker
JUNE 21, 2019
Lastly, a sales budget plan gives you a sales forecast for a given period based on factors that could impact revenue — like industry trends and entry to a new market segment. Remember, markets and customers are in a constant state of flux. True success always starts with a plan.
Totango
DECEMBER 10, 2019
Is there a way to help marketing segment customers for case studies or reference testimonials? As part of a successful B2B enterprise, you understand the importance of your customers. New customer acquisition is at the heart of most traditional business models.
Tom Tunguz
MAY 28, 2013
By that point, it was apparent that a new customer segment had emerged that wouldn’t cannibalize their existing business. The wrinkle is that Apple combines this design with superb product marketing. It’s block and tackle product marketing
The Angel VC
JUNE 28, 2017
I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Product/Market Fit for quite some time. The reason why it’s such an interesting and important concept is that getting to Product/Market Fit (PMF) marks a critical juncture in a company’s lifecycle. What is Product/Market Fit? Marc Andreessen got more precise, saying that PMF means “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market”. How can Product/Market Fit be measured? pmf product/market fit
Navint
APRIL 3, 2019
Defining the offer, experimenting with discrete market segments, testing pricing/packaging, and solidifying the business case takes place. Sales and marketing efforts are properly aligned (i.e., By: Jeff Wissink , Navint Managing Director.
Outseta
MAY 8, 2020
Best of all, the types of smart people that you run into in tech run the gamut from highly technical software engineers, to massively creative designers and marketers, to analytical data wizzes and finance experts. Your email marketing software is important, but we’re not neurosurgeons here.
Tom Tunguz
APRIL 23, 2017
After last week’s post, Is There a No Man’s Land in SaaS ACVs , a founder asked me to highlight some of the go to market strategies in different segments. The story behind Fleetmatics and Geotab illustrates the way two companies pursued the SMB logistics market in radically different ways, but built roughly similar sized businesses. Geotab addresses the same market as Fleetmatics. There are approximately 22 million trucks in the US.
Tom Tunguz
MARCH 5, 2017
At this point, the critical marketing imperative is to start a conversation with a receptive buyer, and do it thousands of times per year. I met a master software marketer last week, and he shared some of his wisdom. This master marketer pointed to our language. Within in a market, competitors often use the same language to describe their products. The rest of the market described their displays in pixels (e.g.,
Tom Tunguz
OCTOBER 15, 2014
Those economies of scale may exist as a consequence of a strong brand, monopoly-like characteristics within their market segment, improving sales efficiency, increases in contract size, better rates of customer upsells, etc. In the past, we have benchmarked the revenue per employee of large publicly traded SaaS companies and determined that the average is about $200k of revenue per person. But, that analysis examined revenue per employee that only one point in time.
Tom Tunguz
FEBRUARY 9, 2017
Focusing on one customer segment, the ideal customer profile, reinforces the startup’s strength. Even if you’ve researched the market ahead of building a product, developed an ideal customer profile (ICP), the challenge arrives when you take the product to market. A unexpected surge of interest from a customer type raises the question, “Should we serve that market segment too?”
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