Simply SaaS University: Marketing 101 - Asia Matos

SaaS Marketing 101
How to build a marketing engine
that gets you to $100k MRR

You need a
marketing strategy.
@asiamatos http://bit.ly/SSUQuestions demandmaven.io

And no, I don’t mean
#growthhacks
#growthhaxxorz
#broetry

I mean the
foundational stuff.
The stuff you can measure, the stuff that builds an audience,
and ultimately an acquisition engine that
stands the test of time.

A little about me.
● Asia Matos. Founder of DemandMaven - marketing and
growth specialist; help startups get to their first $100K MRR
● Previously:
○ Head of Marketing at Hull
○ Demand Generation Manager at #FlipMyFunnel @
Terminus
○ Marketing Manager at Arke
● I play the ukulele. I do the occasional stand up comedy. I
love period pieces. I do a bunch of hiking.
● Most importantly, I’ve helped startups 3x their traffic, go
from $0 - $3000 MRR in 3 months, go from 14% to 40% free
trial conversion rate, and meet MoM free trial sign-up goals.

First off: forget
everything you’ve heard
about marketing

(Technically, all of
these are marketing.)
For SaaS, the secret is understanding which of these
works the absolute best for your company, your
product, and your target market.

PRODUCT TARGET
MARKET
(aka Customers)
FEEDBACK &
RESEARCH
SaaS Cycle

Target Market =
Ideal Customer Profile, Personas, Target Audience, The
Absolute Best Customers, Profitable Customers

But here’s the thing.
You’re SaaS. Software.
That’s digital.
Which means you probably fall into one of two categories:
● Self-service software
● Software + customization

But here’s the thing.
You’re SaaS. Software.
That’s digital.

Acquisition = 2 formulas

More Trials

More Trials
More Demos

More Trials = More Traffic.
The secret to more free trials sign-ups is actually very simple.
You need more traffic to your website. (Don’t we all.)

More Trials = More Traffic.
The secret to more free trials sign-ups is actually very simple.
You need more traffic to your website. (Don’t we all.)
But the formula isn’t really a secret. It’s just:
TRAFFIC = [ CONTENT + DISTRIBUTION ]

Wait. What kind
of content?
Content can really be anything.
✏ Website
✏ eBooks
✏ Blog posts
✏ Courses
✏ Podcasts
✏ Templates, tools, checklists
✏ Landing pages
✏ Videos
✏ Webinars
✏ … the list goes on...

High-Quality
Content =
But it can’t just be any kind of content.
It has to be:
✅ Extremely valuable
✅ Highly relevant
✅ Exactly what your target audience
wants to read
✅ Exactly what your target audience
needs to buy

Distribution =
Audience-building 101
Distribution is building an audience through
channels, and this is where most startups
completely fail.
They never bother building an audience or they
overcomplicate it — which means growth is linear
and doesn’t compound over time.

75% of blog posts
don’t get more
than 300 views.
Because most businesses create
content, and forget about it after a
week.
80% of your time should be spent
distributing content. 20% should be
creating it.

Marketing Channels
We distribute through marketing channels. There’s a lot
out there….
● Organic search traffic - SEO, Google, etc.
● Paid Search traffic - AdWords
● Paid Advertising - Facebook, Twitter, AdRoll
● Video & Audio - YouTube, Spotify, Podcasts
● Social Media - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
● Communities - Reddit, Facebook Groups, Slack
● Partnerships
● Referrals and Word of Mouth
● Events and Conferences
● Review sites - G2 Crowd, Trust Radius, Capterra
● Publications - Medium
● … etc...

Marketing Strategy
But there’s really just three ways I want you to think about it:
● Owned Media: Channels and media that you own
○ Website traffic, brand social media channels,
landing pages, etc.
● Earned Media: Channels and media that you’ve earned
from others
○ Referrals, people sharing your content, reviews
● Paid Media: Channels and media that you’ve paid for
○ AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Linkedin,
Capterra, etc.
It’s old-school, but it’s the best way to think about marketing
(for right now).

This is how traffic
happens.
Remember the formula?
This is how we get it. Through distributing
highly-engaged, relevant content, we get
highly-engaged, relevant traffic.
Out of highly qualified, relevant traffic, we
get free trials.

What about more
booked demos?

More Demos = More
Qualified Meetings.
The secret to more qualified demos is also actually very simple.
You need more qualified meetings. (Don’t we all.)

More Demos = More
Qualified Meetings.
The secret to more qualified demos is actually very simple. You
need more qualified meetings. (Don’t we all.)
DEMOS BOOKED = [ OUTREACH + VOLUME + RELEVANCY ] +
[ TRAFFIC ]

What if we need both?

So we have the formulas.
How do we get there?

Step 1:
Research

Research: So sexy.
Great research is the difference between
companies who build winning products and
companies who don’t and figure it out way too
late.
1. Market research
2. Competitive research - website analysis,
product analysis, customer analysis
3. Prospect research - specifically people
who haven’t purchased (yet)
4. User research - specifically people who
have purchased or signed up
*Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) Framework

But why research?
We conduct interviews with prospects and
customers at every stage with the JTBD
framework.
Through user and prospect research, we’re able
to determine:
✅ Preferred distribution channels
✅ Partnerships opportunities
✅ Content ideas
✅ Knowledge gaps
✅ The “jobs” they “hire” your product and
content for (aka JTBD)

JTBD: Your Cheat Code
If there were a cheat code to creating and defining
your marketing strategy or your product, JTBD
would be the cheat code.
Ask your customers questions about:
What they were doing before they searched for your
product
Where they looked; how they found you
How much time they spend in other channels
Favorite sources of information / content
Who they compared you to
What would have prevented them from signing up
How do they feel when using your product
…. And so much more...

Bottomline:
Your customers will TELL YOU
how to market to them.
(You just gotta ask)

You can start NOW.
Book at least 7 meetings with your best customers and
ask them some JTBD questions. Record it. Document it.
Install Hotjar, FullStory, and Heap analytics on your
website. (Don’t worry — these are free.)
For Hotjar, start running a heatmap on your homepage.
Start looking for focused, concentrated activity. Also, start
running a poll and ask the question: “What prevented you
from signing up today?”
For FullStory, start watching in-app activity. Pop some
popcorn. Start watching sessions. You’ll be amazed at
what trips people up.
With Heap, use the in-app event visualizer to build an
acquisition funnel. This is your new BFF.

Myth:
“I don’t want to bother my
customers.”

Step 2:
Analysis

Remember these formulas?
[ TRAFFIC ]

Analysis: What’s
really going on?
1. Current state of the acquisition funnel
a. How many demos / free trials to turn
into customers?
b. How much traffic to turn into a free
trial?
c. How much churn?
2. Best prospect and customer behaviors
a. What are the behaviors of a great
customer when in-app?
b. Does your current onboarding process
facilitate that?

Rindle: An Overview
All paying, non-churning customers take these
actions within the first week of signing up:
1. Create their own board(s); not just the demo
board
2. Create their own workflow through lists; they
don’t use the demo lists
3. Invite at least 5 people — contractors, team
4. Start using Automations - key feature for
paying customers; perhaps the top feature
We use this information for activation purposes
and acquisition. We understand the “job” they hire
Rindle for: control of day-to-day operations.

But why is this important
to know?
Because you need to understand what people out of it.
This will inform your content strategy, your marketing strategy, your
product marketing, and pretty much everything else.

Step 3:
Your Product’s
“North Star”

Growth: The North
Star Metric
In growth and marketing, we talk a lot about the
North Star metric. It’s the single metric that
best captures the core value that your
product delivers to customers.
● Could be MRR or $
● Free trials or demos
● # of [ value-based action ]
○ Example:
■ Breather - # of hours used
■ Hull - # of integrations or # of
events
■ Airbnb - # nights booked

Breather: # of booked
hours
I remember sitting in a bar, on December
26th over a beer, with another CEO giving
me advice.
“Just pick a number and grow it 8% a week,”
he said.
“Really? But then how do I actually grow the
number?” I asked.
“You’ll figure it out.”

Step 4:
Defining Your
Strategy

Your Marketing
Strategy
By this point, you should have a pretty great
understanding of the intersection between:
PRODUCT, CUSTOMER, and MARKETING.
We can finally start to put the pieces into place into
your marketing strategy:
✅ You know who you want to target
✅ You know why you want to target them
✅ You have a rough idea of where you want to
target them (i.e. what channels to use)
✅ You understand how you want to do it
✅ You’re capable of translating into real,
actionable items
PRODUCT TARGET
MARKET
(aka
Customers)
FEEDBACK &
RESEARCH
SaaS
Cycle

The Yellow Cards:
Just making sure you’re not selling yourself too
short:
♀ You’ve got conflicting strategies. What
you’ve defined either compete with each other or pit
teams against each other.
♀ Not enough resources to dedicate in any
one direction. If every person on the growth team
is focused on something different, you might not
move in any direction.
♀ Nothing really adds up. You should definitely
have goals, but you should also acknowledge the
current funnel conversion rates.

The Red Cards:
♀ You need MRR yesterday. If you truly need a
quick fix, start doing a lot more selling (HINT HINT
WINK WINK Morgan Ingram’s SDR 101).
♀ Don’t have any clear action items. A good
strategy will clue you in to what you need to do,
where you need to invest, the people you’ll need,
and what you might want to pause for the future.
♀ You couldn’t get any customers on the
phone. Your marketing strategy shouldn’t be based
on theories. They should be based on actual, real
feedback from your customers. If you can’t get
anyone on the phone, then you haven’t even
started.

Step 5:
Executing that
Strategy

Smart Execution:
Your #1 Threat
You have a strategy. Now it’s time to put this
into action.
● Identify the opportunities. What’s the
first few opportunities you see in your
business that you can execute on?
● Create a plan. Bake this into whatever
project management tool or roadmapping
tool you have. Trello. Whatever. 3 months is
fine. 6 months is fine.
● Actually f*cking do it. Commit. Set
deadlines. Stop dreaming about it.

Step 6:
Constant Iteration
& Feedback

Feedback: More than
just “results”
Immediate results really isn’t the goal here (and
also isn’t realistic).
● Prioritize learning & iteration. It’s not going
to be perfect when you first start, but in 2 - 3
years, you’ll be on a solid foundation because
you got answers faster.
● Prioritize momentum. To me, this is most
important. When you have momentum with
an audience you’ve won, it’s impossible not to
see growth.
● Acknowledge the lag. MRR, revenue, etc. are
really lagging indicators of what you were
doing the previous months.

The Top 2
Marketing Strategies

Remember these formulas?
FREE TRIALS = TRAFFIC = [ CONTENT + DISTRIBUTION ]
[ TRAFFIC ]

Account-Based
Marketing

ABM: The shortcut for
larger ACVs
Let’s say your ACV is > $15,000. You might want to
consider ABM. Full answer on Quora.
● Your market size is relatively defined
● You’re targeting either enterprise or larger,
medium-sized businesses
● You have a premium product / service
● You don’t have a free trial model; mostly custom
implementations
● There’s a larger number of decision-makers in the
sales process.
● You source >70% of revenue from referrals or the
sales’ team’s network.
● You can afford a great data tool.

Demand
Generation

Demand Gen: Building
an audience
Demand generation means investing and
incorporating the right marketing strategies to
attract the right audience and win them.
This could include:
● Content marketing or inbound marketing
strategies
● Product marketing
● Brand-building
● Personal brand-building
● Partnerships
● PR & Awards
● Events and conferences

The Number One Rule:
Give your people
what they want.

Thank You!

Simply SaaS University: Marketing 101 - Asia Matos

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Simply SaaS University: Marketing 101 - Asia Matos