Reasons Conventional SaaS Growth Channels Don't Work (and what makes them land)

[didyousaysomething]

Here are the reasons I have found different conventional B2B SaaS marketing channels typically fail…

• Podcast guesting - When it doesn’t work it's typically because: A) the podcasts are focused more on the founder or story and less on valuable insights or real data/experience B) They do 3-4 podcasts and look at GA4 and conclude podcasts don’t work. They often don’t even have direct attribution set up on intake. I have found you need to commit to at LEAST 20-30 podcasts if you want to try this channel C) They lack industry focus. If you do 20 podcasts but they cover 10 different industries, you don’t get the density effect that has folks hearing about you multiple times on the shows they listen to. I don’t know that I have ever seen a brand do 30+ podcasts in an industry (like say SaaS or eCom) that are topically focused, not see a revenue impact.

• Email marketing - Most folks who are failing to drive revenue from email are doing the following: A) The newsletter is an amalgamation of ten different objectives. They send out product updates, and promos, and company news, and use cases, and best resources of the week and on and on. There is no clear expectation that when someone hears from them, it will be about topic X. B) Their goals are mismatched to the type of content they send. If you want to drive more conversions, leverage bottom-of-funnel content. A promo, a comparison article, a relevant usecase, a link to a good third party article that positions you well. If you want to build pipeline, have content that builds trust and has topical relevance, good B2B examples are the breakdowns from Scaling SaaS or Growth Unhinged. C) Tell folks exactly when you will contact them and about what on intake “Each Friday at 8AM PST I will send you a use case about a SaaS brand’s GTM between 0-1m ARR” is a good example.

• Partner Co-promotions - This is a powerful lever that often falls apart for the following reasons: A) Teams try a one-and-done. This almost never works. Brands that effectively co-promote show up consistently in front of each other’s audiences with a combination of email, blogs, social and owned assets. It’s the consistent attachment that builds trust and drives action from each side's base. B) Teams get tied up in minutiae and move slow. The best partners take initiative, and get some wins on the board fast. For example, you could spend 30 min on Reddit and answer a dozen industry relevant questions by inserting a partner brand or drop a social post highlighting your favorite tech and why tomorrow. C) They lack creativity/storytelling. Your audience doesn’t like to be “sold to” and if you have a segment of your newsletter that just says “Check out our friends at [Company x], they do great stuff” it will almost assuredly drive zero trials.

• Influencers - Influencer marketing is the hot thing in 2024 and yet most folks do a dismal job here A) You need a way to track it. If you just pay for impressions, have no direct attribution and try a few one-off influencer campaigns, you almost always will burn five figures and walk away with a shrug when asked if it worked. Instead, use direct attribution, try and get folks to use affiliate links were possible, or do a bunch of your influencer work in a focused industry, and have the posts go up during a specific time window, then you can check any aggregate changes for say “B2B SaaS trials during this week” when 10 influencers posted about us. B) Work with folks that actually use the product. The difference in advocacy from folks who use and understand the product vs those who are just paid to hawk it is huge. C) Commit to a quarter or longer. Contracts that have an influencer put up one video or one post about you are highly unlikely to lead to a noticeable traffic surge.

What B2B marketing channels do you want to expand but currently aren’t quite landing?

 

[przemek]

@didyousaysomething In my opinion, organic inbound marketing is the most practical way of growing from 0 to 100 customers.

Two key things that you should do here is,

Post content about the pain point of your ICP(Ideal Customer Profile)

Engage with your ICP through comments & DMs

The funnel would look like the following:

ICP reads your content or sees your comment on the platform

Check out your profile (Banner, headline etc)

Finds out what you do/how you do

Visits your website with curiosity

Sees how your tool works

Signs up/DMs you

For only 2 hours/day you should be able to book at least 5 meetings every week after a couple of months.

Consistency is the key here.

And the best part is, this is almost FREE.

 

[matheushorta]

@didyousaysomething Shared this with team. Helpful.

 

[amirbekhit]

@didyousaysomething This is great! We are currently trying to onboard our first beta testers and finding it hard. We have doubled down on searching forums for discussion threads talking about the problems we solve, agency collaborations (leverage their network of clients and give them our tool for free), and cold email. Any tips here?

 

[didyousaysomething]

@amirbekhit Attending industry relevant events can be helpful for beta testers. That and community and network plays are typically what I see folks do