All B2B SaaS Startups need three things for their marketing plan: Speed, Skills & Scale. The influx of profits or growth capital for fast growing software companies creates a common challenge — marketing and sales capabilities with rapidly changing needs must ramp up quickly to keep up.
Initially, the team needs to implement new positioning, great branding, and build a marketing automation foundation. After that, the attention needs to shift to funnel growth, content leadership, SEO improvements and product marketing. Finally, the marketing team needs to support a growing sales team, optimize funnel conversion, and implement advanced referral and up-sell campaigns.
The challenges can be summarized as scaling up fast, building up a diverse set of skills, and doing all at rapid speed.
Speed
When a startup gets funded or turns its first customers into recurring sustainable revenue flows, the clock starts ticking. New shareholders expect immediate returns. While they typically do not expect profits anytime soon, the expectations for customer logo growth, churn reduction and driving brand awareness are high. As the CEO or Marketing Leader, you will feel as if you’re teetering on the edge of a cliff (usually in the form of your quarterly Board of Directors meeting) where you’re expected to show ever increasing momentum every three months.
Skills
As you get ready to hire your first dedicated Marketing Leader, the type of experience you are looking for initially will change dramatically compared to what you will need a year from now. A company with $1M ARR looks vastly different from a $10M ARR company that is trying to retain its customers or a $50M ARR company that is ready to go global. The T2D3 playbook, and this blog series, will show you what roles you need on your team and when, how to hire for these roles, how to manage them with the right OKRs, and what to budget for these resources.
Scale
Some of the skills you need can be best built up as part of your own in-house team. Others are one-time needs for an outside expert, like your initial company branding or building your first website. Distinguishing between what is strategic enough to bring in-house versus finding the right vendors for tactical, sometimes one-time projects is key as you build your marketing capability. These blogs will help you not only understand what you need and when, it will also help you manage the work you outsource toward clear outcomes, as it’s always tricky to outsource something that you have not yet mastered yourself. These blogs will help you hold that SEO Agency accountable for results or manage the impact of a senior copywriter to make sure you get value from their work.