Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: What's up, founders? And welcome to the In Demand podcast, where we talk all about how to troubleshoot growth for your PLG SaaS. I'm your co host, Asia Arangio, the CEO and founder of DemandMaven.
[00:00:15] Speaker B: And I'm Kim Talarczyk, client services manager at Demand Maven, where we help SaaS companies reach their toughest growth milestones.
[00:00:22] Speaker A: All right, Kim, let's get into it.
So I actually have a sports psychologist. This is the irony. I have a sports psychologist who's amazing, and I love her. I love her so much, but she's a sports psychologist, so she's like, I don't really do, you know, like, regular therapy services. And I'm just like, but why? Because you're so, like, you're, like, literally perfect for my brain.
But my favorite thing that she does is she's like. And, like, her tone and everything is, like, so therapy. But she's like, that's so interesting, Asia. So when you can't serve and you're having those thoughts, where do you feel that in your body? And I'm always like, damn, that's a really good question. Well, and I'm. And I'm thinking about it, and I'm like, okay, well, like, when I'm having, like, those thoughts, I'm.
I definitely feel it. Like. Like, I feel it in my chest. And sometimes. No, I'm like, no, it's my chest. It's my chest. Because then she's like, okay, so we're gonna, like. We're gonna do a process where we release that emotion from that area. And I'm like.
And then. And then, like, we go through. She does, like, narrative therapy and, like, a couple of other things, and she does what's called brain spotting. And, like, literally, like, by the end of the session, I'm like, oh, my God. I don't. Like, I don't. I'm like a new person. Like, who is she? Anyway, we have a fun topic today.
It's a. I say fun. It's a topic that I'm extremely passionate about. We'll use passion as the. As the describing term.
I was just telling Kim earlier, before hitting record, that this question both is extremely frustrating to me, not because of the person asking, but because of the extremely prevalent ideas, preconceived notions, or myths about this particular topic. It drives me absolutely crazy because it's still.
It's. There are still victims of this myth, and as a SaaS market grows and there are more founders and more CEOs, this myth pervades it's like a disease and it's extremely frustrating. But we're gonna talk about it. Okay. So basically it all centers around how to pick the right marketing channels for your SaaS.
That's the topic for today.
And it's either gonna be a two part episode where first like, you know, I unpack the process and kind of like the anti patterns or like the things that don't work.
And then the second part will be we're going to go through channels. We're actually going to go through channels and talk about them.
And I can already feel this is going to be two episodes.
I'm going to try to keep it to a reasonable time frame because I know y' all are busy, but I think it's important that we actually talk through this.
I, I can actually. And speaking of like emotions and like feeling them in my chest, like I could feel my anger now rising.
But what, what makes me angry is again, it's never the asker because you know, the asker is always a founder who's new.
You know, they, they likely aren't coming from a marketing background. They're not, they're usually coming from a technical background. I would never expect a new founder, a first time founder, or even in some cases a second time founder to just like have mastered these concepts.
But I think what frustrates me is it really is like a viral plague and like I'm mad at the plague, not the person asking.
Hopefully that makes sense.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: So what. Okay, okay, okay.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: The question, I mentioned the topic but I got this question on Blue sky and it was, it was from a founder and I remember I had posted, it was when we did the episode around how like marketing is actually the least efficient growth lever and all the other growth levers are actually way more important.
So a founder replied very innocently, I will say and was like, okay, yeah, that's great. But like, but what are the best marketing strategies?
And I feel like I like some, like I sometimes I just like, I don't even see red, I see white. Like my mind like goes completely blank because it's the, the pervasive thinking behind that question is, well, there, there has to be a subset of things that just work for everybody.
It's almost like out of all the things that you could do, there has to just be like the 1, 2, 3 things. It's silver bullet thinking. That's what it is.
It's silver bullet thinking.
And silver bullet thinking will literally kill your company. And I think that is why it frustrates me so much because I'm like, no, we have to, we have to rewire our brain to think, to think differently if we want to be successful.
And the question itself is frustrating, but the person asking is not. I don't, you know, can't remember the person's name, but like, let's just call them Mike.
Mike, this isn't your fault. You know what I mean? Like, you're fine, you're good. I'm not mad at you.
I'm frustrated though at the ecosystem that SaaS has created that makes us believe that there's a one size fits all or that there's like a secret that people have and they're not letting us know what the secret is. And like, the secret is highly tactical. It's like a, there's like, oh, there's a, there's a thing that they're executing. Like there's a secret LinkedIn strategy playbook that they're running that no one else has. And it's gonna work, you know, for me, if only they would just open the doors and, you know, show me what that was. Or like someone has the secret mission playbook thing.
It's like, no, that's not at all what it is. What it is is the companies that figure it out, one of two things happened. First, they got extremely lucky. Sometimes blind luck just happens.
Sometimes it's not anything you can really precedent for. You can set a precedent for.
The other way is they're actually really, really, really freaking smart about how they strategically approach things. Even if they're not great growth geniuses, it's one or the other. They either get extremely lucky and, or early, like they're just the first, or they actually have a really good process for how they decide what to invest in, when to invest in it, etc.
There's a third component which is like you just have like a super kick ass team, but sometimes you can have a kick ass team in the wrong market, in the wrong like working on the wrong product, working on the wrong problems. And it kind of doesn't matter if you have a kick ass team because maybe you don't have the right processes. Actually I've actually seen this in companies before where like the, like the marketing team is super kick ass, the growth team super kick ass. But like the way that the CEO is managing or running the company, or the way that the processes are, or even the culture of the company. Maybe there's no real data driven culture, maybe there's no real strategic culture or even like, you know, fast execution culture. All those Things can be what slows a company down. But all that to say, I get where it's coming from. So, Mike, not. You're not the problem.
I need to work through my feelings anyway, so I want to unpack this, because what's actually happening again, like, it's one of those three things.
And really, it's probably one of the first two. Either, like, you're just really lucky. Like, the company just got lucky.
There's.
There's a story.
There's this company called Moments. They're like a studio management platform, like, in the wellness and fitness space.
And some of the very early stories of them acquiring their very first customers, they had a very. And still, I think, have a very aggressive sales team.
So Direct Outbound. Cold Outbound was like, Cold Outreach was their very first channel that they, like, really doubled down on.
They grew and scaled a sales team from like, zero to, like, 40 or 50 in a very short amount of time. And they literally just, like, sent pineapples to their customers.
They.
What was it? Insta. They instacarted pineapples to their prospects and to their studios.
And, like, Kim is smiling right now for people listening because she's like, yep, goofy as hell. But. But it worked. They got lucky. They got super lucky. They scaled. I mean, eventually, like, they kind of had to pivot away to something different because the people, you know, kind of heard about the pineapples, and they were like, that's weird. Don't send me a pineapple. And I also think, too, like, the cost kind of was, like, not that it wasn't justifiable. It's actually, like, a relatively cheap form of direct marketing, if you think about it. But I think, like, eventually, like, someone did the numbers, and they were like, okay, actually, we should do something different and not continue to instacart pineapples to people. But also, like, I think they were just literally, like, buying up pineapples. They'd hit up all these groceries. Like, I think they ran out of places to buy and send pineapples from.
I digress, though. So sometimes you just get lucky. That's a. That's an. That's a story of luck. That was luck right there.
Now, they were smart, I think, to invest in the cold outreach, but their execution was what made the. Was made it work.
That's where they got lucky. They could have done it dumb and they. They. They figured out a playbook to execute, but it didn't. It wasn't just, like, a shot in the dark. They were committed to investing in cold Outreach. And they iterated and tested on it for months and months and months. And also too, they iterated and tested the team.
So for better or for worse, it was kind of a turn and burn environment. If you didn't hit your numbers, if you didn't make it, you're out. You got replaced by someone else. They hired new SDRs. There was a lot of churn, probably on like the sales team for a long time.
And who knows if it stabilized? No idea.
But from what we've studied, they were committed to the channel and it was really just a matter of like, okay, how do, like, what do we do to like, make it work? And then they, they stumbled upon, they had this idea, they did it, it worked until it didn't. Then they had to figure out a new way. And then other companies have a really good process and they don't waste their time and they'd rather measure twice and cut once.
And that's the process that I want to talk through because you, you can go the other route for sure. You can hope and pray that you get lucky or you can take a more methodical approach. And the methodical approach I find if you want to compete against luck, which is the name of a very famous book, but if you want to compete against luck, I recommend taking a process.
Okay, so here's how we talk. How, here's how we think about picking the best marketing channels for your SaaS in 2026. You may or may not love hearing this, but the fundamentals are still true.
AI hasn't changed this AI, if anything has changed how we execute, but it hasn't changed how you strategically make decisions about what marketing channels to pick.
So the fundamentals are still true. The fundamentals are understanding your target market.
Now that sounds really obvious and basic, but knowing your target market like the back of your hand, understanding their awareness of the problem that your product solves.
Or if you're not selling a painkiller, but you're selling a vitamin, it would be. Or you appeal to their higher desires or their deep desires. Maybe it's not a problem that you're solving, but it's like a lack of a presence of, based on a desire that they have. But most of us are in the business of painkillers. I would say selling a vitamin is kind of rare because like the beauty industry, for example, lots of vitamins.
Vitamins are vitamins. Beauty's vitamins when it comes to SaaS. Like, it's kind of rare that you're selling a vitamin, but if you are Then like, growth is gonna, is gonna be slow.
Some would argue that if you are in the gosh, what's the security space? If you're in the cybersecurity space, until someone has a breach, it's a vitamin. If someone has a breach, it's a painkiller. But until you have your first breach in the cybersecurity world and you're selling cybersecurity software or whatever, what you're really selling is a vitamin actually. Like it's the thing, it's the preventative versus your pain killing. But I digress.
Do you understand your target market's awareness of that? Go ahead.
[00:12:26] Speaker B: And so that also means you have to understand the key core problem that you're solving for these folks.
[00:12:33] Speaker A: Exactly. And ideally with as few assumptions as possible, because that's where people get in trouble. They make a lot of assumptions.
They think, oh, the market's going to view my product this way and they're going to prioritize it in this way and they're going to react in this way. And they often, a lot of times don't, at least in the early days.
And then you kind of get used to it. But, but if you don't deeply understand that, that's where things can go awry.
The next fundamental is once you deeply understand your target market, the next is identifying channels that they use are engaged in from either research, behavioral studies, or your own research. Like, you know, research can mean talking to them specifically, but it can also mean observing them from the outside, like looking in. So think about, like when you do keyword research, for example, you're not talking to a person about what keywords they use. You're using a platform to identify what keywords have the highest search volume and, and what has Google like figured out, you know, to prioritize in the search results of that keyword. Like, so you can do that type of research too. So like channel research is what I call it. But like, you can do different types of research to kind of understand a little bit about how the user thinks.
You won't really know though, until you actually talk to them. And I find nine times out of 10, most markets, most industries, it's really, really easy actually to talk to prospects and to talk to customers.
If you already have customers, great, start there. Particularly customers who don't churn and like, stay for a long time if you don't have customers. If you're very, very early, you can, who you built the product for, you can often source those folks from platforms like userinterviews.com, respondent IO I just discovered another one recently that looked kind of cool and I can't remember the name of, but I.
Oh yes.
Oh no, yeah, you're right. It's Lisna. Lisna. I. I'm interested in that one. I think I'm going to add that to my. Haven't done like a UX turn on in a while or like a, you know, it's like an activation turnout in a while. So I think I'm going to do one for Listna.
But there are platforms where you can source prospects and you can source people who fit your profile and nine times out of 10, like you're going to find that person.
We've been running Demand Maven now I've been running Demand Maven now for a long time. We've been conducting pro projects for a long time and we've worked with, with SaaS from all shapes and sizes and different industries and there's been only like one or two times where we haven't been able to source audience members like prospects. One of them was for a dev platform because the requirements were extremely specific and like the team would just have a better time evaluating, like doing their own outreach. And then the other time was like extremely affluent people.
Like, there's extremely high net worth with like liquid assets and like that was also really specific. But also like those people aren't going to participate in research. Like you kind of have to know them.
It's all about to say, though it's extremely rare that you can't source your ideal customer. Extremely rare. Cannot tell you how many times we've, we've shocked founders with qualified prospects, you know, right in front of them, talking about how they think about buying products like theirs. So anyway, identify channels though, that they use when it comes to choosing software.
So when they have the aha moment of oh, I need a solution, where do they go?
Now the most common thing is to Google search, but there are some products and markets where people don't think to Google search because they don't think, oh, there's a solution for that.
So for example, this actually happened to me recently. I'm trying to think of like, I should have written this down. I actually had this experience where I remember like thinking like, oh, I have this problem. This is annoying, this is frustrating.
But I never once thought to look for it as a software. It didn't register for to me that like software could fix this problem. I wish I could remember exactly what it was.
I think I was Looking for like, I think it was like garden bed planting or like a planner for like a garden bed.
And then I saw an ad for something from a company that I like a lot called Epic Gardening. They have like a, like a software, like that's like a garden planner thing. Then you use it to like plan your garden every year or whatever. And I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think that I could look for software for that. That's smart. Yeah, let me go do that. And then actually it triggered me to do some research.
And there are some industries where that is extremely common. And people don't think that there's software that can solve their problem.
This. Actually, there's a. There is an example that comes to mind. It's not a perfect example because people, some people did actually search. But there was a company that we worked with a long time ago, several years ago now. They were in the coffee roasting, like production management software business.
So if you're like a coffee roaster, you have, you have to acquire what they call like green, like your, your green product, that's the unroasted coffee beans. And then that gets turned into.
I can't remember what they call it, but I think it's just like, like your roasted product and the process of applying a recipe. So making the bean takes a certain way based on like the sourcing and the roasting. And also like, if you blend it with other things, you want to as a roaster, create a consistent product every single time because that's what customers like. That's what they come to rely you for.
You might need a software to help you manage how much green product that you need to source and from where, when is it coming? And then also what are you running out of that you need to replace and replenish? And then also like, what are all the recipes so that you can create a consistent product every single time.
Roasters, when we. I remember this was years ago, so it's probably a little different now because markets change, they evolve. But I remember at the time, this was like five or six years ago. I remember talking to customers and some of them had like, they, they never even once considered that software could solve the problem. They were problem aware, but they weren't software aware. And they weren't aware that like they could look for a solution. But when they did look for a solution, one of two things happened. They either asked a roaster friend and hey, what are you using?
Or like, how are like. And really wasn't even like, what Are you using? Because that would imply that they were aware of software. But like it was more like, hey, how are you managing or solving this problem? And they're like, oh, I use this solution. And they're like, oh. And sometimes it wouldn't be the client's product. Like it wouldn't be them. Sometimes it would be a competitor. And, but then they'd, but then they'd be like, okay, well I can't afford that competitor. So then that would trigger research and they'd be like, okay, let me go look up coffee roasting software or like roasting management software or roaster management software. That's. Then that would trigger Google searches. That's an example of like someone might not be aware. And if that's the case, what you have to then do is identify, well, what are the problems? Are they problem aware? If so what are the problems that they might try to solve that would indicate that they are, you know, that they, that they might consider software and potentially be like a more qualified prospect.
Now the flip side is if they had never searched, if that was more common, then you might be looking at more like outbound type channels. You know, the first way is more inbound. That person is suddenly aware of a problem, they want to solve that problem, it's painful enough for them to solve it, and so now they're going to go look for solutions. Okay, well, maybe they Google search, maybe they ask for a friend, maybe they see ads in, you know, in a, in a. Technically, some people are considered that to be outbound, but maybe they see something or something triggers for them that they can like go and search for this thing that's, that creates a searching process. We would consider that to be more inbound. Outbound would be like you call them, you send them mail, you show up on their front door that, that you think about like direct sales and, and you know, door knockers. Like that's what outbound is.
It could also be you. I mentioned cold calling already. But there's also, you can send them an email. There's things like that.
But what's important is that you understand and identify where do they hang out and or how to reach them, whether
[00:21:05] Speaker B: or not they're looking for a solution.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Right.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Like they could be, but they could also coffee roasters could go to a certain conference every year.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: Right, exactly.
And there actually were a few conferences. I remember we looked at that, there were a few conferences, but I think, I think it was cost prohibitive at the time.
It didn't fit that person's budget. At the time, but that might be different now. Tbd.
So, yes, whether they're looking for a solution or not, where do they hang out? And then if and when they do look for solutions, where do they look for solutions? Because those are two different buckets. Right? So.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: And how, like, what are they typing?
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Or that's like the keyword and all that, right?
There are two ways that you can understand this. The first is you can. There are ways to do channel research where you don't have to talk to anybody. I mentioned, like, you know, you can do keyword research, you can do ads research. So you can identify, like, is this a group on Facebook ads? Or LinkedIn ads or whatever. There are ways to do, you know, back of the house channel research also. You can also just ask people, hey, where do you hang out? Do you use TikTok? Are you on Instagram? Do you use Facebook?
Some audiences will be like, I'm literally never online.
And those are the people that, okay, so you're gonna probably have to think about offline stuff. And then when they are online, what are they doing?
And again, this is kind of where we get into, like, you. You are really understanding your target market and how and where and why they do things.
And a lot of the times they'll literally just tell you. But you'll also hear people who are like, super online. So, like, SaaS marketers, chronically online.
As you know, my original, you know, my background was in SaaS marketing, and I am chronically online all the time. Like, it's kind of hard to not find me. My inbox is super full of chronic cold D, you know, cold messages all the time. My LinkedIn inbox is full of DMS. I'm starting to get them on WhatsApp, and I'm kind of like, ew, go away.
I'm starting to get them on WhatsApp. I haven't gotten them, like, on Facebook or Insta yet, but I'm sure it's a matter of time in threads. But, like, I'm online. Like, it's, you know, I'm. I am there. You can find me. It's pretty easy, actually. If you Google me, you will find stuff. I get emails actually, like, all the time. Like, I saw your talk at blah, blah, blah. And then it. And then it's like, would you like to buy my thing? And it's like, no, go away.
So, yeah, like, and then there are some again, like, you know, who just aren't online at all. Or, like, maybe they're kind of online, but they only go online when they want to search for things or whatever like it. And people are going to give you anecdotal information, but it's still useful because it helps you prioritize.
Okay, so that was the second prompt or the second step I should say. After that we're going to have a long list of channels or maybe it's a short list.
And then we're going to have to get creative in two ways. If you have an audience again, who's, who's online, great. Online channels are going to be pretty available to you.
If you have an audience that's not really online, some of the online channels are still going to be available to you.
It's not, it might not be exhaustive, but you might have to consider maybe more like offline or like people based channels, things like conferences, partnerships. You could look at cold outreach. That's an easy one in theory at least to. That's an obvious one I should say. You know that a lot of people think of.
But think about these almost like distribution channels. Like what are the things that maybe aren't online necessarily but do get in front of the right person?
If you have the budget tv, billboards, like there, like there's a whole world of channels out there which actually I'm thinking, looking at the list we probably need to add that because we don't have traditional media on this, on this list that I'm looking at right now.
Let me go ahead. And it's just so rare that a SaaS company can afford traditional media. But all that to say those are the types of things that you gotta be thinking about. But if you really understand behavior, then ideas will naturally come to you. I'll give an example about a company that we just worked with in the.
Oh gosh, they are in the manufacturing space and Woodman Wood Products manufacturing very, very specifically, they're in the wood products manufacturing space.
Their buyers are not online.
I can very confidently say these are like some of the smartest manufacturing engineers in the world.
The way that they buy solutions is a hundred percent of the time, usually word of mouth. That's number one. They go and they ask their other manufacturing buddies because manufacturing is an old industry. It doesn't change very fast or very often.
And so because of that there are people who have spent decades in their careers in manufacturing and certain tools and like software and platforms and equipment that they use are just like extremely pervasive.
Has a chokehold like on the industry. Excuse me. And it's, it's really hard for like new Entrants into the market to kind of come in without having like a deep relationship.
Like you kind of have to already have like a brand, so to speak, in this market, in this industry. Okay. So word of mouth is how they find like other solutions and tools. They literally, they go ask their buddy, they go for beers or they visit the plant or the site or the facility and they're like, hey, like that's cool, like what are you using? Or oh, I have this problem. What are you doing? Doing like to solve that problem. That's how this kind of, that's how like software and things get moved around. The other way that they discover stuff are conferences, associations and conferences and publications. There are a few, like trade magazines and like trade conferences and things that they attend. A lot of the time that's like an excuse to go and drink with the buddies. Like, but that's like part of the culture of being in manufacturing and if you can afford to invest in those things, great. Know what I mean? This, this is related to the, to the next thing that we're going to talk about here.
Okay, so those are the things that are, that are surface level obvious. So if you do enough research talking to that audience, they would tell you those things. So those are the things that they told us. Okay. Yep. I'm never online. I avoid it like the plague, which I, I, you know, I kind of debate because a lot of people actually do use Instagram and TikTok, but they don't like to admit it. And I think that's, you know, part of the, the secrecy, I guess, of, of behavior. That's the risk of asking someone what their behavior is. They might not tell you everything.
They might not be actually truly honest. Like, I would bet money that a lot of those dudes probably scroll through YouTube all the time because it's like manufacture, like manufacturing videos are kind of cool and that's like an easy way to share them and like watch them. But anyway, they're probably not thinking of it in that way, but surface level, like what they're able to tell us behaviorally. Yep. I ask my buddy and then I go to conferences and I maybe like read a few magazines about trade stuff. But beyond that I don't really do much. I don't Google search. I don't. And that's a lot of that's true. The Google search volumes for certain queries very low comparatively speaking to like other industries.
Here's the channel though that we uncovered that is an opportunity for this company, but wasn't obvious until we had like, talked about it, thought about it and observed it.
And one of them was, yes, they might ask their buddy, what do you use?
But what was also very common was plant visits and facility visits from other plants and other facilities, you know, outside of the same organization will visit each other's plants and facilities. It's actually very common. So there was this one story that one of the customers told us about how they had just come back from visiting a friend's plant in Germany. Not the same company at all. Totally different plant, totally different company, totally different org. But it's just like really common for like manufacturers and like wood products manufacturers and metal manufacturers to visit each other's sites because they're all like, it is kind of buddy, buddy. It's also I, I've heard it described as a very incestuous industry where everybody's worked for everybody and worked with everybody. So there's almost like, no, yes. Like you compete, but you don't compete necessarily in terms of ops. Like that for whatever reason is very transparent and very.
Like, people like brag about how good their operations are and they want to show others and they want to show like how cool their facilities are. And so people will visit each other's facilities and those facilities, whether it's equipment or software or whatever it is that they have, there's branding everywhere. So you walk through these facilities and you see brands for all, like, brand names everywhere. And you might even see like, like posters and like signage and like, like, you know, like stuff shellacked to the floor. This is the. I don't even know what the brand names are now, but I'm just gonna pick random. This is the Nikon floor. Like, this is the Sony floor.
This is not. This is a terrible example. I'm not, clearly, I'm not a manufacturer, but I, I remember listening to this and I was like, I was like, oh, that's so interesting. Do they have like signage and brand stuff? Like when you like, do you know what these brands are like when you visit these facilities? And they're like, oh yeah, they plaster them everywhere. And then it triggers us to ask questions about who this person is or like, or who this brand is and like how they're using it, blah, blah. And I'm like, that is an opportunity. So this software, when they get every new client, there should be like a. Okay, by the way, we'd love for you to be like our flagship client and we're going to give you all the brand stuff. So we're going to. We're Going to post our brand over here and we're going to give you like some signage and if you could put this poster up and if you could have this sign here, obviously still meeting safety requirements because we want to be safe. But I was like, that's an opportunity because every time someone visits their facility they're going to be like, who's this? That's cool. What's that?
And it was so funny because like in the project they were like, oh, that is a great idea, we're ordering stuff right now. I was like, hell yeah. Anyway, so like that's the kind of thing that you have to observe and that's the kind of thing that you wouldn't, maybe you could do some deep thinking and reflecting and come up with on your own, but I think it's really difficult if you're not actually talking to a customer. So that's a very long winded example of how you can identify channels based on how you observe like what they're doing in their day to day, how they're doing it. And also too, you can come up with other ways to create visibility by paying attention to how they're using the channels that they are currently using. And also, what's a channel that might not seem like it's a channel because they don't think of it as a channel. So when you ask them how do you look for software, how do you find those solutions? No one's probably thinking, oh yeah, I guess I did ask a question about that one particular software because I saw the logo like in the thing, like in the window, like that might not, your customer might not think of that. So that's why you have to do a good job as a researcher coming up with making those observations, jotting it down and kind of, you know, reflecting and thinking about, oh, is that something that we can use or is that relevant?
[00:32:21] Speaker B: Okay, that makes, so that's three fundamentals.
[00:32:25] Speaker A: The next is going to be okay, so I mentioned earlier, like you have this long list of channels.
The next is going to be like, now you have to prioritize them based on your average revenue per user and your budget.
And this is kind of where it, like this is part of the frustration too of the question of well, what are the best marketing strategies? And it's like how much money do you have?
Because if you're like a super highly funded like VC SaaS, you don't care about ROI efficiency, right? You will eventually because the assumption, the assumption is obviously like you're going to hopefully hit profitability most Funded companies don't. But ideally you're going to hit profitability at some point and then, you know, really grow your EBITDA and make it amazing and then get acquired. That's like the hope for VC funded companies.
But if you're not, which is the vast majority of SaaS companies is that they're not funded, they're bootstrapped or they're, you know, friend and family funded or whatever, they're. They could also be indie funded. The vast majority of folks have to think about CAC efficiency, ROI efficiency when it comes to channels. So cac, meaning the cost to acquire a customer has to be somewhat efficient and your first one to two years of life not going to be efficient, it just won't.
There's no way to make that efficient. And the reason why is because you're new and also like the market's not used to you yet. Customers are taking a risk by being your customer in many cases, especially in the B2B world. Because if you've only been around for one to two years, who's to say you won't die next year? They don't know. So you are perceived as risky in that first one to two years. So any customers you do get survivor bias, they're survivors again.
And the reason why, again it won't be CAC efficient is because you don't have infinite money to be everywhere all at once.
You have to. You're going to take things slow because you have to if you want to be sustainable. But the thing about CAC efficiency and ROI is we tend to not even see CAC efficiency or Roi until six to 12 months later after consistently investing in marketing no matter what the channel is. And that's assuming that you have great nrr, that you have incredible pricing and the pricing makes sense and you have really good activation if you're plg, if you're sales led, you have a great conversion rate and your six month net revenue retention is great. And also your 12 month net revenue retention is great. So unless those things are true, your marketing is not going to be efficient for a while because those things have to be true. If you're churning 20% month over month, marketing's not going to be efficient. No matter what you do, you're not getting enough money back to pay it off.
And it's a losing game basically until you fix churn, until you fix business efficiency across like the rest of the product. That's why I have a whole episode that's like marketing is your least efficient growth lever because all of those things have to be true if you want marketing to be like 5x10x, whatever the ROI or whatever it is.
But chances are it's not going to be for the first one to two, sometimes even three, sometimes even five years. And the reason why is because the rest of the business is not efficient yet.
So what has to happen if that's the case, if that's our context, so then what we do next is we say, okay, then when it comes to marketing, I have to prioritize channels based on what we can spend for at least 612 months in a consistent basis, assuming we get very little return back. And the reason why I say that is because unless the rest of your business is efficient, which if you're just starting out, it won't be, then you're like, you're going to have to do something to get customers, so you're going to have to spend something or invest something. If you don't have money, do you have time?
And this is of course, where the ultimate conundrum is of how a bootstrap technical founder, like, what they invest in and how I can say, you know, from what I've seen folks do, and again, this is where, like, it just might be a bit slower.
But can you learn SEO? Can you learn, like what can you learn and execute either yourself? AI has changed how we execute things, not necessarily what we execute in, but can you invest in like agents to help you scale something, create anything, move fast.
It's not going to be perfect, but it'll be something. It's probably better than nothing to some degree at least. And then from there, as you get more customers, you increase your budget of what you can invest in. And that again helps you create more customers. And assuming that you're also creating an incredible product, again, this is a hard balance to thread, don't get me wrong. But if you're also creating an incredible product that creates its own growth loop, bringing people back to the product, because if your absolute best channel is going to be word of mouth, if you can create word of mouth of people just loving the shit out of what you've built for them and telling others, that's going to create more customers for free.
So what you paid to acquire one customer has now expanded to create more customers. That's like the best growth loop ever. And what everyone should be like, obsessive over, because that is the most efficient, that's the most CAC efficient channel ever on the planet ever, ever, ever.
Someone else recommending your product to someone else Whether personally or indirectly, through case studies, testimonials, whatever it is.
So the lower your arpu, the smaller your budget, the less you're going to be able to invest in. And also that has an impact on how much reach you're going to be able to have within that channel.
So if you have a really low average revenue per user, let's say, and actually I'll use LTV to keep it simple. Let's say like the most a customer ever spends with you, ever, in the whole year of becoming a customer is like a hundred bucks. That's small. That's probably like what's a hundred divided by 12? You're, you're spending less than $10, right? Yeah, okay, sorry. It's less than 10. Yeah, but it's more than 5.
So we did it, Matt.
[00:38:20] Speaker B: We did it.
[00:38:21] Speaker A: When?
If your LTV is like a hundred bucks in the whole year, you know, eight bucks a month, whatever it is. Oh yeah, that. Right, that's right. Because a million ARR is like $88,000 in MRR. So that, that tracks.
Then you aren't going to be able to afford to hire like a sales team, for example.
So like someone's spending eight bucks a month. Okay, sales team is out for you. Cold outreach, potentially out. Like definitely out. Actually super out. Like maybe you can afford to send like a postcard, but that's compared like eight for eight bucks a month. Like that's like a high, it's a pretty high ratio. I don't know.
[00:38:56] Speaker B: Stamps these days are.
[00:38:58] Speaker A: So what you might look at instead, depending on what you're selling, you're going to look at channels that have a very high network effect. But for relatively low cost, I would say even ads would be really difficult. At a hundred dollars ltv, eight bucks a month, you're probably looking at something like organic search and, or depending on the product, you know, like if you're like an app that charges like eight bucks a month, like you're looking at marketplaces. Like you're looking for places that give you the maximum amount of distribution for as little of a cost as possible and also is where your audience is, because if they're not there and then it doesn't really matter. But if you, if the most someone is spending with you is like $3,000, you have a bit more budget to like, you have a bit more wiggle room. So now you can like start looking at channels like you probably still necessarily wouldn't look at outbound unless it was like super highly efficient cold outreach, like sales Outbound. But you, you could look at things like ads. You could look at things like, gosh, what's it called? You could look at like, you know, both social ads, organic search. Of course, you could look at paid search ads. There are all kinds of things that you can look at now. You might even be able to afford to spend on like conferences and certain types of partnerships. Not all partnerships, but certain kinds. Like it opens up the world a bit. Like you have a bit more breathing room.
We're going to talk in potentially part two what that actually looks like because we're 43 minutes in, but all that to say that's kind of what we're looking at next.
And there are going to be some that right off the bat are going to be very obvious for you to invest in. And then there are going to be others that are like, if you do end up growing fast, you can add as you go. But I would actually even say even adding more channels as you go isn't necessarily what I would recommend because I think until like you're at a million and you have enough to invest in a team of people who can help you manage all these things, I think it's really hard for like if you're a solo founder with a very small team to manage like more than three channels at a time.
Find the one to three and heavily invest in them until you get to that million. When you get to a million, you can afford to invest in more. But I would even still say that if those first three are working or whatever the number is, continue to invest in those because it only gets more complicated. And there are channel ceilings.
Channels do hit ceilings and it may not be worth the investment to get the payoff that it has.
So ARPU and Budget, what I recommend for Budget is I like to think of IT as like 20% of the revenue that you're making. Even if it's a small number. If you're making a thousand dollars a month, 20% of that goes to a marketing budget of some kind.
And if you don't have a whole lot of money, do you have time? Because that's kind of, that's another way that you can invest and again get those early customers. And I would say once you're at the like 10 to 15k MRR mark, you can afford in theory to spend a little bit more. It depends on your finances, obviously and it also depends on your average revenue per user and your LTVs. You know, if you're selling a very low cost product, then you need a big Market you need like a lot of people coming in for you to make ends meet. If you're selling a higher cost product, then five customers could make your whole year. You what I mean, like, that's the kind of math that you have to play. And also thinking about the channels that you, that you can invest in. So the last is you campaign accordingly once you have your channel list campaign. And what I mean by that is what messages do you promote through those channels that get you the customer? So this is where I want to talk about the five levels of awareness. And the five levels of awareness. This is by Eugene Schwartz. It's a, it's an iconic awareness map.
There are, there are five levels. The first is unaware. Then there's problem aware, solution aware, product aware, and then some consider someone consider the last to be most aware, unaware.
These are people who have no real concept of the problem that you solve or the desire that you fulfill.
So people who are unaware may never consider like, they may never even be like, oh yeah, that's a problem for me. That's never a thing that they're thinking.
And it's funny because like I, you know, truly unaware people, they are people again, who just, they have no concept for like what it is that you do or that you solve. There's a product that we worked with where it's like operations management software for like massage therapists or clinic management software.
There are massage therapists primarily that they target. And the massage therapist, if they're getting like less than 15 or so appointments a week, they usually just manage it by pen and paper. And they don't ever really think about the problem because to them it's not a problem at all.
And sometimes like they're aware of the problem. Like they know that if they were to get 20 more or like double the amount of clients, like it'd be really hard for them to manage. They probably would need something to like help them fix it.
But there are some therapists that are just like, why would I need software? What? And those are the people who are like, they're truly unaware, but sometimes they're aware, they're problem aware, but they don't actually feel the problem and they're not motivated to fix it. So that's different. So that those, they're not technically unaware in my opinion. They're just not motivated to find a solution, which is different.
But those are people that you do want to kind of keep in your ecosystem and in your sphere because eventually they, they might get to a certain threshold where they do have a problem, and now they feel it, and now they want to solve it. So unaware people, these are people who, as the Caribbean say, are God bless the dead. And they are like, it just. It has not even entered into their mind that this could be something that they fix or that it even is something to fix, and that that is different. Again, these people, you don't want to waste any of your time on.
They're not. They're not.
The thing about unaware people is that you have to spend a lot of energy trying to convince them that they have a problem. And most people don't feel like that's a thing. This is a bad example because most people are aware of therapy, but it's like convincing someone that they should go to therapy when they are 100 convinced that they shouldn't and that they don't need to. I don't. I don't have a problem. It's like my mom, she's like, I don't really think I need a therapist. I don't have problems. I'm like, okay, mom, everybody's a therapist, but okay. So you're never going to convince them that they should go or that they should do it.
The same thing with, like, unaware people for product.
You're never going to convince them that they need this product. They have to kind of come to that on their own terms.
Then there's problem aware. Problem aware people are our favorite. They're our second favorite. Problem aware people are people who are like, dang, it really sucks doing this by myself or doing it in this way or not doing this.
There are a number of different problems that you can. That your product can solve, but these are people who are like, oh, man, this actually is kind of painful. I was lamenting earlier about finding a therapist. It's really freaking hard to find a therapist. Actually being serious. It's super hard. There are platforms and, like, marketplaces, but, like, as a patient, as a potential patient, it's actually really hard for me to do the work, to find someone.
It's, like, really difficult, actually.
Uh, and a lot of these platforms, like, have very big promises, but they don't actually deliver at the end because, like, actually that person doesn't accept your insurance. Like, it's really frustrating. And it's like, but I told you what my insurance was, and you put these people in front of me as, like, therapists to talk to. And I'm finding out now that, like, actually they don't accept your insurance. That was a lie. The cake is a lie. So anyway, it's actually really difficult sometimes to solve the problem. But I'm very problem aware. I'm like damn, I, I really would love someone to talk to but like I'm having a hard time finding a solution or the solutions I have tried haven't worked. Problem aware people, they feel the pain and they are motivated to solve it. I think that's the most important part is that they're actually motivated to solve it. Sometimes you get problem aware people who are not motivated to solve it. Those are people you're not going to be able to sell to even though they're problem aware, they don't care about solutions at the end of the day. Then there's solution aware. People who are like, I knew I had a problem and I looked for solutions and they may have tried a number of things. So like pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets are the most common things that people start with in a lot of different software. Like a lot of software is actually competing with Excel, more pen and paper.
And then they start looking for solutions and tools and sometimes they find things that kind of work or are close.
In my therapy use case for example, I found Alma and I found of course I'm already aware of Psychology today and like using that as like directory to find people I know of betterhelp. Like there are tons of solutions that I'm aware of, but only probably like one or two are actually going to solve my problem for me. And so people who are solution aware know what's out there.
People who are product aware are aware specifically of your product specifically.
And then people who are most aware are people who have probably tried your product. Like they're actually like, like they've gone through maybe your help, documentation your onboarding experience.
They've gotten into your product, they are most aware. But product aware is now they're aware of you specifically. So problem to solution to product, that's the journey that most people go through in terms of awareness. This is important because the channels that you use are likely going to be a little different based on the levels of awareness.
Unaware people, we don't care about them, but not yet at least.
And to be fair, that's the majority of the market. So 99 of your market is going to be unaware. You're focused on the 1% or the 5%, whatever it is. And the 5%, they're either already problem aware, solution aware, product aware. And a lot of people are in that solution aware space where like maybe they're with a competitor right now, but they don't know about you and that you're actually a better fit.
People who are problem aware, the most common channels we see for this are going to be organic search, organic search and paid search because. And also, you know, AI search because those people are actually searching for solutions.
Sorry, that's actually not necessarily true. They're solution aware. They're doing that in solution aware. But if they're problem aware, they're probably searching the problem is what they're doing solution aware. Now they're looking for solutions. So this is where like know directories of testimonials and things come up and also like other things can kind of pop up for them too.
And this is, this is more from like a their behavior perspective.
This doesn't exclude things that we can do in their direction. That's more like outbound. So like we could run ads on people in this particular stage of their journey. You can do outreach on people in this particular stage of their journey. There's a lot of like ways that you can leverage levels awareness and the channels that you put in front of them in that way.
So anyway, so when I say campaign accordingly, you're designing campaigns around these levels of awareness within your specific market context.
So that's why I get so frustrated when people are like, Asia, what's the. But what is the best marketing strategy? Like, what are the best marketing strategies? And I'm like, it's the one that your customers care about. And like according to like the five levels of awareness, like, that's what, like, that's what goes in my head. Because I'm like, there is no one size fits all. Like the marketing mix that my company that I'm using or sorry, the company that I'm working with, like from a fractional CMO perspective, that exact marketing mix and channel strategy and campaign strategy isn't going to work perfectly for another SaaS company. It's a different audience who care about different things in a different market context, in a different software context and with a completely different type of like levels of awareness context, like unaware looks different for them than it does for another company in another industry. It just does.
So see, when I say campaign accordingly, you align your channels to those levels of awareness.
You get really clear on what it sounds like for your audience and you design campaigns. It could be ads, campaigns about successful to you based on your arpu, because don't forget about the ARPU part, you know, the LTV part. But based on those levels of awareness and like what's actually happening in your customer's head as they go through those levels of awareness. Now you're going to design campaigns. It could be, it could be as straightforward as, like an SEO organic search sprint. It could also be as straightforward as a cold outreach sprint. It could be as straightforward as a partnership sprint. There are ways to design things that fit and align that journey, but you have to understand the journey. If you don't, you kind of just, you're shooting in the dark now. If you have infinite money, then don't listen to me. Spend your money and do your thing. But my, my, my guess is you don't.
And, like, this has to be sustainable. And if it's going to be sustainable, like, we have to be strategic if, or you get lucky.
But like I said, we want to compete against luck. That's kind of the whole point, so. Oh, good.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Well, I think going back to what you said at the beginning, it can sometimes feel hard to do that first fundamental, which is understand your target market because that's really what it's based on. So when that person asked, like, what's the best strategy? It's, well, did you do the hard.
Did you think through who your target buyer is?
[00:52:24] Speaker A: Right. And where they hang out and how they make decisions and how they make ops? Yeah, totally.
Yeah. And I, and I, I do feel like there are enough folks out there who maybe don't take that part of the process as seriously because they think maybe it's universal and it's just so not. There are just so many different types of buyers and markets, and humans are just so complex. And I think it's wild to assume that, like, your batch of humans, like, your ideal batch of humans is going to be the same as this other dude's batch of humans.
I. And even amongst competitors, like, even the competitors, like, if you have, like, direct competitors, like, you're both scheduling apps for massage therapists, even, like, your audience is still going to be a little different than theirs. And I know that's so wild and hard to believe, but I can just tell you from experience of having interviewed customers of competitors from our clients, of, like, actually, I can see why they're the buyer of this product because of, like, their context is actually different than, than, like our ideal buyer.
And, you know, you got to decide, like, if you want to open up your product to attract, you know, those people better or, like, adjust something in your business to attract those people better. But, you know, I digress. Like, it's just, it's a wild assumption to make. And I, and I think it's just so pervasive and that's like the disease that I think I wanna, I would like to eliminate this, please. It's so frustrating because the reality is, is like, you know, there are people who do get lucky and they do just kind of do like, you know, drops in the hat or they like, they commit to something very early and they're like, I'm gonna make this work no matter what. And then it does. And but for the rest of us, probably are gonna have to be strategic. So I'll go quickly through what doesn't work and then I'll recap.
Okay. What doesn't work? Just running ads. I would get this so often. So my early days of demand maven, I would work with a few SaaS companies and I remember they'd be like, we just want you to run our ads and like get our very first customers that way.
And don't get me wrong, ads, out of all the channels, ads are definitely the fastest. Like, well, word of mouth would be faster if your market does that often.
But if your market doesn't do that often, you know, ad search, search ad ads specifically. And then also for some businesses, social, social ads, one of the fastest channels that you can execute ever. You can run a campaign in like minutes. Now like you don't even with, especially with like with AI, you can have Claude draft a full blown like campaign, create the graphics for you. Like there's almost no excuse to not.
But I will say this doesn't always work for everybody. One, because of the ARPU part of the conversation. So if you can't afford to run ads, it's not gonna work for you. I usually what I tell a lot of my clients is like, you're gonna spend at least 30 to 50k just knowing if that channel works for you. And that's from like optimizing. Cause chances are you're not gonna get it right the first time.
You're gonna have to test a lot of different types of graphics, different funnels, different landing pages, the copy on those landing pages, the copy of the ads, all of that takes a lot of time and money. And you really don't actually see the algorithm work well for you unless you're spending at least 5, 10k per.
You add a contractor on top of that managing it and then you add six months and you're probably in for 30 to 50k right there.
And that's assuming you do it all right. If you don't do it right, you could be doing it for a year. And oh, and then I forgot about the attribution part, then you have to get the attribution right. And if you don't have that dialed in, then you actually don't even know if it works for you or not.
So that's why I say ads. I know it's so appealing because you can literally just like start a campaign and like get it running in two seconds.
But it's not always say like seven times out of ten it doesn't work.
30% of the time it does for certain companies. Like some of my, some of my favorite client projects I ever worked on. That's exactly what happened. Like remember like we ran a few ad campaigns, we were like damn, this works. Actually like we got our very first customers and like next thing you know we're 4 million ARR.
It does work for some companies, but the vast majority, it won't it or at least not yet.
So that's the other caveat is if you increase your prices, if you go after a higher paying audience, ads might work for them or work for that particular segment, but it might not work day one. And I, and I think the thing about that is like you do have to invest quite a bit for a while before it like matures. And, and also that's assuming that the rest of you the, your funnel is on point.
So you're going to spend 30 to 50k probably to like really test that channel. And what also has to be true is your activation is on point, your retention's on point and your pricing is on point. If all those things kind of suck or like aren't really dialed in, you're gonna, you're gonna light that money on fire. So what I often recommend is, I mean you can try this but be wary of spending this amount of money without, and committing to this maybe without realizing it and not doing any of the hard work of optimizing the rest of the funnel.
And I think that's kind of where like ads kind of become like a, they're like a thorn in my side a little bit because they are cool. You can spin it up like in two seconds. But is it gonna work for you? Tbd, you might get lucky, but you chances are aren't so do I think it's worth testing and trying? Sure.
But again I would only say yes if you know for a fact that your audience is researching something.
Solution aware.
You could do problem aware type searches and do ads on those. But I find like you it, it's like you instead of paying money for that, you could instead do organic search. And I think like ranking for keywords that are like problem related keywords. And I would say now it's going to be AI SEO because Google is kind of eating up a lot of those informational keywords with Google search overviews. So even then I would say like you're investing in something organic and it's slower but it's way more cost effective and it's a little bit less risky because again like you're not going to spend 50k on accident on search, especially if it's something that you can do yourself. That's kind of what I have to say about that.
There's also like asking around online for channels.
And again, I, I, I wouldn't, I would never shoot the messenger but the, the pervasive question to me is like yeah, it, yes, founders want quick and easy things to execute. They want the silver bullet, they want the fast answer.
But I, I just very strongly believe and I, and mostly because I've heard this from founders, I know a lot of my clients have complained to me about this.
But just asking around online like, hey, like what are you guys doing for this? I cannot tell you how many times like founders have told me that they've asked their peers and friends and audiences and networks, hey, what channels should we consider? And they come back with ideas and they're like, great, I'm gonna go execute that right now. And then they do and it never, it never pans out. I can't tell you how many times like, you know, founders have been advised just to do LinkedIn or just to do, just run some meta ad campaigns or like just do cold outreach and it fails miserably because there wasn't any actual work done to validate that channel. And then also to really understand from the customer and prospect side how should that channel be executed from the perspective of this company in this market context.
That's why that, that doesn't usually work. The same thing is true for going to conferences, attending talks, especially those like, I'm going to give you five tactics to implement right now in your LinkedIn campaigns or I'm going to give you five things to execute marketing wise and your blah, blah, blah.
We love a tactical talk. Don't get me wrong, don't get me wrong. Like, and I think I understand and realize how biased I am saying this because my background was in marketing and is, I would say it's more growth now generally, but which is a different function technically. But I get where folks are coming from. Especially if you are like in deep need of tactical ideas. There's comfort in tactics.
There's a lot of comfort in tactics and there's a lot of discomfort in strategy.
But tactical talks are comforting. Especially when you go to a conference and you're like, yes, I want action items. It's like, okay, yes, I want, want steps to do. And it's like, I get that some of it is extremely valuable. The bulk of it is not going to work for you. And I'm saying this, hearing from my clients, yeah, I did that shit. Or yeah, I went, I remember that talk I did that. It didn't work for me. Like, I cannot tell you how many times I've heard that and how many, how many precious hours of energy have been wasted and money have been wasted because you get super hopped up and inspired by the tactical thing, the silver bullet, the like, just do these things. It's going to 10x your whole life and then like you get home and you do it and then you're like, oh, did I know what it did?
And a lot of times you can't even measure it because you don't actually have like any, you know, real like analytics implemented or whatever. That's all I have to say. Like I, you know, you. And this is kind of where the survivor bias pops up because there are people who will do it, they'll do the thing and they'll get lucky. They'll just get lucky. It just so happens, yes, that talk was specifically for you, but for the rest of the thousand people in the room, not going to work. And you know, and that's kind of where you have to be discerning. You have to use discernment very intimately.
I think the smart founders are very discerning and strategic and when they hear about a channel in their, in its application, they don't immediately think, I'm going to, I'm going to execute the playbook exactly how this person recommended it.
They think, how can I apply or modify this to fit my audience and the problem that we solve within the context that we're in. That's what a smart founder does.
A first time founder or someone who maybe is like new, who've never done it before, they're gonna implement the playbook exactly. But I think the smart founder doesn't implement it exactly unless they do feel like that's the best application. They do their research, they think about it a bit more. They are highly intentional. But again that would require being strategic and not just go heads down and execute because that, there's comfort in that. And I think that's Part of why there's like this pervasive myth of like, oh, there's like a set of strategies that I should be executing that would work for me no matter what. It's like, well, no, like that. You've got to build that for you. You've got to build your own playbook. You're looking for a secret master playbook that, you know, other companies who have made it have, like executed and it doesn't exist. I'm telling you right now, like, there are smart and strategic decisions that businesses have made that work for them and now you've got to find yours.
Okay, I will.
I'll leave it at that. The simple framework.
At the end of the day, you're asking these questions and you're answering them based on the work that you're going to do to really understand this. Because if you don't want to waste 50k, if you don't want to waste 6 to 12 months, if you want this to go smoothly and not super painfully, if you don't want to be lulled by silver bullets and, you know, quick tactic execution thinking. If you want to learn how to be more comfortable with strategic thinking, I want you to think about these questions first.
Who are you actually trying to acquire? And get very tightly specific, as tightly as you possibly can.
Small businesses. I'm targeting small businesses.
Way too general. You've got to get super specific. I am targeting lawn, you know, landscaping companies in the south, in the United States that are making at least this much money and have at least this many staff. That specific.
Don't care about all the other million bajillion small businesses. Or like, I'm targeting mom and pop shops. Too generic.
I'm targeting nail salons in major cities on the east coast that have at least 10 staff members. That specific. Get specific.
I'm targeting SaaS, marketers who have budgets of at least a million that are PLG in the United States or uk, Canada in the US or APAC region or whatever. Get specific. Who are you actually trying to acquire? And get real dogged about that.
Too generic. If you say, you know, United States therapists. No specific.
So who are you actually trying to acquire?
What do their five levels of awareness sound like when looking for your product?
What does it sound like when they're problem aware? What does it sound like when they're solution aware? And what does it sound like when it's product aware? So when they're aware of your product and then what campaigns would you need to build to attract those people across those Levels of awareness.
Where do those people hang out?
So again, I gave those really specific examples. I'm targeting, you know, therapists.
I'm, I'm specifically targeting LMFTs in the United States in, in, in these specific states. Because maybe, like, I don't know, your product has like a thing that like, makes me, like, look at specific types of therapists who specialize like in trauma or adhd.
Super specific. Right? Where do those people hang out?
How do they decide to buy software? Specifically your software? You're selling a SaaS. How do they decide to do that? Do they ask friends? Do they look up reviews? Do they Google search? Do they, like, what do they do? Do they go on TikTok and like, ask all of their followers what, what happens about, like, how does that actually look?
And then you're gonna get ideas for what to do. If you, if you just answer those questions, you're already gonna get ideas, especially if you do the work to answer them. Well, like, to them, if you actually, like, do the research, you're going to have ideas. You're not going to not have ideas. You absolutely will.
The last question to answer is, now, what can I afford to invest in consistently?
Not like, drop in the hat, do it in two seconds, see what works. But you consistently invest in this thing for at least. This is going to scare you, but at least 12 months.
If it's as small as you. You write and post a blog post, and I say, you don't have to be rude, you could be AI, but like, maybe you publish a blog post two times a month, every month for 12 months. That would cost nothing except for your time.
So what you can afford to invest. It could be time, it could be money, it could be human capital, which I, which would kind of be money, but still, it could be human capital. Maybe you hire a contractor and they do it, or a consultant or, you know, an agency, if you can afford it.
But what can you afford to consistently invest in for at least 12 months? And the reason why I say 12 is because a lot of founders take the approach of, well, I'll invest in it if I see return. But I mentioned earlier, you probably won't see return because you're early. Like you, you won't see CAC efficiency.
If anything, you'll break even. Like, what you invest, you get back. That's very common for businesses one to two years in or, you know, businesses less than a million.
If you're like, if you've been in the game for longer, I don't believe the Market just doesn't move fast enough for like you to execute something for two weeks and then drop it.
You're not going to see return on that anyway. Who saw it? Nobody. Like your reach is probably small, so commit to 12 months mentally.
But maybe you start seeing signs in the first three to four months of executing something and that's a, that's a positive sign.
Some teams see results in as little as a month, but your mileage may vary. It depends on how far fast your market moves. If you have a slow ass market, guess what? Marketing is going to be a little slow. And there are ways to accelerate it, but chances are you won't until like you're like mature in your industry.
But you really have to be mentally prepared for investing in something consistently understanding that you probably are going to break even until everything becomes CAC efficient, until you have longevity in your industry, until people can like trust that you're going to be around here for like a while. Because I mentioned earlier a lot of why marketing and acquisition is slow in the early days is because you're, you're new, you're the risk. You know, I'm saying like you and your product, you're actually the risky one. You're new in town and people are like, I don't know who that is and I don't know if I can trust them and I don't know anybody else who knows them. That's why it's slow.
Until you build that brand equity in your industry, in your market, things are going to be slow and you're probably not going to see like you know, CAC ROI or CAC efficiency. That's why I like every time a founder says that to me, I kind of lie, chuckle a little bit because I'm like, there's like you're not like maybe you get lucky, but you probably won't. You'll probably break even the first one to two years until everything matures, improves, gets better.
And that's assuming the rest of your business is efficient. We didn't even talk about activation or net revenue retention or any of the other things that make acquisition actually extremely inefficient.
So, so those the questions that you have to ask and then actually commit to answering for real.
And when you commit to answering those questions strategically and for real, you will come away with two to three very clear ideas that strategically make sense that you likely can invest in.
And now you've got to go heads down and do it and try it and you might need to make adjustments. You absolutely will need to make adjustments. I take that back. You will have to iterate like there's no, you know, I wish there were shortcuts, but there really aren't. And the growth hacking days, I think are, are.
They're not long gone, unfortunately, but it's just not. It's just not the same environment as it was. We have saturated our markets. There are far more competitors now than there ever were.
And new markets certainly are emerging. But SaaS isn't necessarily jumping on those like, you know, as quickly as they are, like the AI market, for example.
So that's what needs to get answered.
And now if I can convince Kim to record a Part two.
Let's do it. We're here. Talk about channels. Okay, stay tuned for part two. Thanks again for listening. Part two, we're gonna talk about the channels specifically because I know that's what everyone wants to hear. And they're like, just, just give me all the channels. And it's like, okay, sure, but like, your mileage may vary according to your context. What's going to work for some people? It's not going to work for everybody. But. All right, thanks again for listening and yeah, we'll, we'll catch you on the next one.
[01:11:21] Speaker B: Thanks, everyone.
