B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks

In B2B SaaS, the expectations for a $10,000/mo marketing team are totally different from a $100,000/mo one.

As a Founder, CEO, COO or CMO, you need a way to know:

• How do I forecast the amount of lead gen and revenue results to expect?

• How large a marketing team do I really need?

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment.

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

Before you spend a single dollar on building a marketing team, you need to know how much is “just right.” Leaders who are tasked – directly or indirectly – with budgeting and reporting oversight for growing SaaS revenue, like CFOs and COOs (as well as their fractional counterparts) can struggle how to get this marketing function right at first.

Where to point the effort? How quick to move? How far to go? There are GTM priorities, bandwidth, competitors, frictions, multiple focuses to consider. Some things yield quick returns and others create deep trends that will need time to unfold.

If all expectations are correct, results get delivered as promised and the revenue arrives on schedule. Any needed course corrections get identified and made early. If not, you could be in for a rough journey.

Top founders and COOs in B2B SaaS inspect what they expect. This episode will help you know what to expect so you will be inspecting the right things and getting what you expect!
Resources shared in this episode:

• Kalungi - Calculate your marketing budget
• Stijn Hendrikse - A guide to sales strategy & performance management
• Stijn Hendrikse - How to coach B2B sales teams
• Stijn Hendrikse - How to present marketing reports to your board (w/ template)
• Template - Define your marketing and sales lifecycle stages
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS
Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.

The content playbook that worked in the 2010s doesn’t work anymore. Things like keyword search volume, word count, and post date/time don’t have the same impact they used to. Instead of working backward from keyword to content, good content marketing does the reverse—start with a question you think you can answer better than someone else.

Don’t worry about the keywords for now.

There are two steps to nailing good content in 2023:

1. Understand the problem. Who are you talking to? What are the questions they’re asking? Articulate the problem in terms your audience will connect with.
2. Look at existing content on the topic and ask yourself: “Can I add real value to these results?” Be critical: will your point of view make a meaningful contribution? If you can solve a problem better than others—you can probably say something about it.

Google is overflowing with content by folks who chose a keyword to rank for, then wrote content that tries to rank for it without expertise on the topic. As a result, so much B2B content is generic, basic, and long-winded.

Strong content strategy starts with a common problem or question and expert-level content. SEO considerations should only come after you’ve created content worth being consumed.

Here are four criteria that should be fulfilled before you create new content:

• There is a collection of people who share a problem
• You understand and can articulate that problem
• You can expertly solve their problem (or answer their question) better than others
• People can find your answer

Some things will make your content perform better (proper markup, strong UX, good core web vitals, backlinks, interlinking, etc.), but if you don’t start with a foundation of valuable material—it won’t get you far.

Links shared in this episode:

• Free content marketing hub from Kalungi: https://www.kalungi.com/content-playbook
• Executive SaaS marketing frameworks by Stijn and Mike: https://www.t2d3.pro/
• Instant marketing team for early-stage software startups: https://www.kalungi.com/services/full-service-b2b-saas-marketing-team

Submit and vote on questions for us to answer: https://www.kalungi.com/podcast

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B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks (BSMS) is a podcast that simplifies complex marketing topics in small bites, produced by Kalungi. Hosted by Mike Northfield, Kalungi’s Chief Evangelist, and Stijn Hendrikse, Kalungi’s co-founder.

Kalungi is a marketing agency that works with early-stage software startups. Kalungi acts as an instant marketing department that will build and deploy a company's complete go-to-market using T2D3 methodologies. Full-service clients get access to a strategic marketing leader and a team of tactical marketing specialists who can be held accountable for results.

Selling an existing current product or service into a new group of software customers can be a big challenge. Today we dive into strategies for marketing expansion for your SaaS company using the wisdom found in the upper left quadrant of the famous Ansoff Matrix.

In Episode 63 of the B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast, we talk through the indicators you should look for when considering a marketing expansion strategy and what new initiatives you can take to effectively sell into a new group of customers without changing your product or service.

The Ansoff Matrix, named after mathematician Igor Ansoff, is almost 50 years old. However, as a SaaS founder, you will find its wisdom will ring exactly true for your software company today.

Maybe you just got funded and have more capital to spend, but expectations for growth pace are now much higher too. Other signs that your current market isn’t providing what you need could be:

• Low retention from your market
• A low or slow sales cycle
• Low average contract value
• High customer acquisition costs
• Missing revenue targets

Of the four possible ways to grow a company (according to Ansoff’s Matrix), market expansion is more challenging than selling into a well-known customer type (“market penetration”). You won’t find it as easy to leverage your company's established strengths, brand awareness and market knowledge as key advantages.

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS rely on a balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key marketing asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• How to use Ansoff’s Matrix to Guide your SaaS Go-to-Market Strategy
• 10 milestones to reach product-market fit (PMF) for B2B SaaS
• The Best Product-Market-Fit Checklist for your B2B Marketing Strategy?
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS
Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

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As a SaaS founder, the pressure to move too fast can be relentless. It can be tempting to cut corners and try and gamble on your scale through quick wins and growth hacks.

More often than not, these initiatives become distractions that end up wasting time, money, and resources only to deliver subpar results.

In this episode of B2B Marketing Snacks, we detail the right foundation for a B2B software company – for both the quick wins and the long term scaling goals. Growth is much more likely to be smooth, consistent, and ROI positive, when you start off right.

It is essential to do some good up front research, audit what's working, what's not, and why, and make some early, tough decisions about prioritization and focus. Then, you can align the right resources and go to market with confidence!

Listen in as we help you with effective strategies for:

• Building a great go to market plan
• Convincing the rest of your leadership team to buy in
• Scaling your company to the next level

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  
  
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  
  

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• B2B SaaS Go-to-Market Strategy Essential Resources | Kalungi, Inc.
  
  
• Checklist for New Market Entry Go-to-Market Strategy
  
  
• [eBook] How to create a go-to-market strategy for B2B SaaS companies
  
  
• Template - Marketing ROI Forecast & Estimation
  
  
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
  
  
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Bri...

With AI now baked into nearly every software solution, how can you get the most out of it to grow your SaaS company? Used wisely, smaller teams can achieve more with less effort.

However, AI isn't a magic solution for SaaS marketing. Used unwisely, it creates generic content, adds inaccuracies, and provides a negative impact on your brand in the mind of your ideal customer.

If you're a marketer, SaaS founder, or executive wondering how to use AI effectively in your strategy, this discussion is full of practical insights whether you use ChatGPT, Perplexity or another tool.

In Episode 67 of the B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast, Brian and Stijn share both the benefits and the critical limitations you need to keep in mind to make AI a powerful tool without compromising your brand’s authenticity.

Topics discussed include:

• Everyday usage ideas to strategize in marketing successfully
• Empowering junior marketers to level up their game skills
• Turning average, generic outputs from AI into great copy
• Training AI over time to work faster for you
• Leaning into customer pain points and knowledge to get the best from AI
• Factchecking and keeping quality high

B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 CMO Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi

B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!

The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS rely on a balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key marketing asset in a hard-charging B2B world.

Resources shared in this episode:

• Unlocking the power of AI: Transform your content creation process
• How to build a content factory
• T2D3 CMO Masterclass
• Submit and vote on our podcast topics
  
  

ABOUT B2B SAAS MARKETING SNACKS

Since 2020, The B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast has offered software company founders, investors and leadership a fresh source of insights into building a complete and efficient engine for growth.

Meet our Marketing Snacks Podcast Hosts:

• Stijn Hendrikse: Author of T2D3 Masterclass & Book, Founder of Kalungi
  As a serial entrepreneur and marketing leader, Stijn has contributed to the success of 20+ startups as a C-level executive, including Chief Revenue Officer of Acumatica, CEO of MightyCall, a SaaS contact center solution, and leading the initial global Go-to-Market for Atera, a B2B SaaS Unicorn. Before focusing on startups, Stijn led global SMB Marketing and B2B Product Marketing for Microsoft’s Office platform.
• Brian Graf: CEO of Kalungi
  As CEO of Kalungi, Brian provides high-level strategy, tactical execution, and business leadership expertise to drive long-term growth for B2B SaaS. Brian has successfully led clients in all aspects of marketing growth, from positioning and messaging to event support, product announcements, and channel-spend optimizations, generating qualified leads and brand awareness for clients while prioritizing ROI. Before Kalungi, Brian worked in television advertising, specializing in business intelligence and campaign optimization, and earned his MBA at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business with a focus in finance and marketing.

Visit Kalungi.com to learn more about growing your B2B SaaS company.