10 Issues That At all times Work in Advertising with SaaStr Founder and CEO Jason Lemkin: Half 1 (Pod 652 + Video)
In the event you’re searching for a advertising and marketing technique to develop your SaaS enterprise, SaaStr’s very personal Jason Lemkin has 5 issues you are able to do as we speak, this week, or this month that all the time work.
And the nice information is that just about all the things prices little to no cash.
Most SaaS corporations must spend extra on advertising and marketing. To save cash, many freeze advertising and marketing spend, which is cool for a couple of months, but when it turns into the norm, they gained’t have sufficient pipeline for the remainder of the yr.
It doesn’t matter what, you should do extra advertising and marketing within the again half of this yr. In the event you don’t, your groups are going to starve. Because the saying goes, “You may’t minimize your method to development.”
Whereas many of those concepts appear primary, they aren’t completed sufficient. As a substitute of tackling all 5 methods concurrently, do only one factor higher, and also you’ll get extra leads.
Technique #1: Maintain a buyer convention.
It’s okay to begin small, however the bottom line is to begin — even when you solely get 30 individuals collectively for 3 hours in a resort room. There’s magic in getting prospects and prospects collectively.
Why are buyer conferences profitable? As a result of solely two kinds of individuals will come.
- Those that are all in favour of what you’re providing.
- Those that already love your choices otherwise you’re vital to their enterprise.
When prospects get right into a room with prospects, they’ll promote you. Prospects will hear and transfer by means of the funnel sooner, plus have the chance to work together with you and your staff.
An ancillary advantage of holding a convention is the nice content material you may repurpose. File your classes, submit them to YouTube, create social posts, and write useful weblog posts in your web site.
How To Host Your First Convention
Internet hosting a convention might sound daunting, but it surely doesn’t must be. You are able to do it your self with no Head of Advertising.
Step 1 — Hire a resort or ballroom for the afternoon. The smallest ballroom at a Marriott prices lower than 5 grand, and when you’re actually searching for a deal, you could find someplace for lower than $2k.
Step 2 — Give 90 days’ discover and put together two or three items of content material, possibly two displays on the way to use your product, after which have a cocktail celebration. Let individuals combine and mingle. You’ll get good at it and begin to construct on it annually.
Step 3 — In the event you’re frightened about worth, accomplice with somebody who desires entry to your buyer base.
Technique #2: Host A Weekly Webinar (You MUST Do It Each Week)
Lemkin has this dialog with VPs of Advertising and founders each single week, and it’s a method that all the time, all the time works. Even for SaaStr!
Host a weekly webinar. The key sauce to creating it work? It must be each single week on the identical time. In the event you attempt it for a few weeks and stop saying it didn’t work, then you definately fail the mission of taking part in the lengthy recreation.
Every week, increasingly individuals will come. When you have a database of prospects, invite them.
It’s just like the buyer convention, though not pretty much as good, however it’s 52 weeks per yr. Prospects can come and ask questions, see a demo, and share tales with different prospects and prospects.
Constant weekly webinars are the primary performing technique individuals can do.
What are the advantages of a weekly webinar?
- A refined profit is individuals invite different individuals. In the event you’re right here each week, somebody you didn’t anticipate will present up, and typically that particular person is essential.
- You’ll shut extra offers. In the event you’re ACV is fairly excessive, one deal is value it. If three individuals come they usually all make a deal, that’s way more environment friendly than a one-on-one demo.
How To Set Up A Weekly Webinar
You may have demo webinars or one with invaluable, academic content material like SaaStr.
One factor to prioritize is preserving the scripted content material as succinct as attainable. Ebook it for an hour, add 15-20 minutes of worth, and save the final 30-40 minutes for chatting.
The questions that’ll come up are magical as a result of they inform the remainder of your base and promote you to different prospects and prospects.
Technique #3: Write Superb Weblog Content material
This one is so primary, but it surely’s completed with such poor execution. Companies are sometimes content material farms pushing out low-quality weblog posts that nobody will learn in an try to spice up search engine optimisation and visibility.
However the important thing to visibility is creating worth. In fact, don’t take this recommendation you probably have a unbelievable content material advertising and marketing engine like Notion, Gitlab, or Hubspot with tens of millions of month-to-month guests. Hold doing what you’re doing. But when that’s not you, hear up.
If you wish to get a small however always-growing quantity of high-quality leads, you should write two superb items of content material month-to-month.
You don’t need something that appears like ChatGPT or a low-quality author wrote it. You need a permanent piece of content material.
For instance, SaaStr launched in 2012 and wrote a few of our greatest content material on the time on the way to rent a VP of Gross sales. Lots of people might write that higher as we speak, however 11 years later, these items are 20% of our site visitors.
So two iconic items of content material a month are magical.
In the event you gradual it down, write about no matter you’re an professional in (and when you’ve hit 1M or 2M in income, you’re an professional in one thing), and solely get two nice leads a month, that’s superior!
Technique #4: Ebook Some Steak Dinners
Actually. Reserving a steak dinner and doing a metropolis tour wherever your prospects are is big. We’ve talked about buyer occasions and webinars each week, and this one is correct up there with all the time working.
The steak dinner is sort of a mini occasion and a basic discipline exercise.
How do you do it?
Go to a brand new metropolis every month and attempt to meet with not less than ten prospects. After which invite your prospects to dinner as properly, and also you’re prospects will do the promoting.
The stakes are low at a steak dinner, and the ROI is actual. You simply must hold doing them, ideally as soon as monthly.
How To Manage A Steak Dinner With Clients and Prospects
Hold issues easy. To host one among these mini-scalable occasions, all you should do is name a restaurant, discover out if it has a personal room, and e book it.
If it’s at an Olive Backyard, that’s okay. It doesn’t all the time must be a Ruth’s Chris or someplace fancy. And typically, being too fancy generally is a turnoff relying in your prospects.
The important thing to creating this work is rather like the webinars. Do it recurrently, and the momentum snowballs.
Technique #5: Go to Your Largest Clients
In as we speak’s distant working world, assembly individuals in particular person is already a win. You construct a deeper relationship with prospects once you see them face-to-face.
For this technique, you’ll need to schedule a time to go to your largest prospects, these in your high 10-15% of income.
It’s so easy, but many founders don’t do it.
Right here’s the trick, and it really works particularly properly for founders and heads of buyer success. Do a roadmap presentation.
Whenever you go to your largest prospects, you already know you’re strolling right into a room the place individuals are closely investing in you. They’re not solely investing in your organization, however they’re additionally investing their careers and livelihood in you.
So take them on a journey of what’s coming over the following 12 months. They’ll take the assembly.
Whenever you evaluate the roadmap, ask for his or her suggestions. They’ll respect being included and feeling heard.
And the most effective half? Many instances, you’ll stroll right into a room, and 20 individuals will likely be there — your champions and their bosses. Getting 20 stakeholders in a room for a gross sales pitch is big. And this isn’t even a gross sales pitch. But it surely might hold them with you for the lengthy haul.
You solely must do a roadmap twice a yr, and you possibly can pair it up with one among your steak dinner adventures.
Typically the most effective factor you are able to do for your enterprise is to return to the fundamentals, present up, and supply worth in your prospects and prospects.
Printed on April 19, 2023
