Customer Success Team Structure: Four Best Practices
Properly structuring the post-sales team (Customer Success team) is the first step to reducing churn, this article breaks out the common roles and the best practices for hiring.
Outgoing Links: Are They Beneficial For Your Site Or Not?
There is an ongoing debate on whether outgoing links are beneficial for the ranking of a website, a research study suggests it is, with a few caveats.
Tadeusz @ Search Engine Land seo
How To Embrace Lean Methodology - 5 Tips For Small Businesses
The Lean Methodology is a great way to increase efficiency and remove unnecessary costs, this article walks through how to implement it for your business.
Holly @ AppSumo business
Inside Hotjar’s Bootstrapped PLG Strategy
The first customer channel in a Product-led strategy must have little to no cost to ramp up future revenue. For Hotjar, that meant focusing on organic reach through word-of-mouth referrals and high-ranking SEO pages. Acquiring customers at no cost allowed the company to invest in more expensive channels to accelerate growth.
One of those channels was sales-driven. Hotjar paired their sales team with their self-service motion to expand their ACV. For this strategy to work, the company had half of the sales team focused on converting inbound customers (brought in by their primary channel) and the other half hunting larger clients.
Kyle @ Openview Labs product
Conversation Series: Figma’s Early Team - How Patience & Discipline Fostered A Killer Product
Creating a culture of patience is essential to building a great product and a successful PLG strategy. For Figma, that meant spending a vast amount of time just understanding the problem. Not only from the customer’s perspective but also from a technical requirement view.
In addition, the company’s culture of patience was woven into the monetization strategy. Figma would wait several years before generating any revenue. The company leveraged a freemium model to drive brand awareness and used discounts on its premium products as an incentive to get user feedback. This was critical in building a highly engaged audience base and a feature-ready product to drive conversions.
Sean @ Craft Ventures founders
How To Get Buy-In From Some Of The Top Marketing Leaders: 3 Execs Discuss What KPIs Matter To Them
Selecting the right KPIs for a campaign is essential for marketing teams to receive executive buy-in. Not only do KPIs measure the success of a strategy, but they also help to identify which campaign will have the most impact on a company's overall goal.
For HubSpot, this means focusing on two KPIs, content reach and new inbound leads, which align with the company's goal of growing top-of-the-funnel awareness. However, for G2, focusing on MQLs and conversion rates helps the company measure the impact marketing teams have on pipeline quality.
Caroline @ HubSpot marketing
Key Takeaways From The 2022 KeyBanc SaaS Metrics Survey
Lower growth rates and higher churn, plus more metrics from KeyBanc's annual private SaaS company survey (you can find the link to the report.
Dave @ Kellblog finance
32 Saas KPIs Every Company Should Track
More, more, more KPIs! But which KPIs should you be tracking for each department?
Chargebee business
11 Dos And Don’ts Of Content Strategies & Writing For SaaS
Content strategy is not just about having a calendar, but balancing between what type of content to create and what metric it influences.
Jordan @ Kalungi Blog content
User Feedback: The Best Ways To Ask For It (& Why You Should)
There are a number of ways to ask for feedback (seven are listed here), but not all of them are great at answering the questions you have (trust me I just tried).
Paige @ HubSpot customers
How Customer Success And Product Teams Can Lock Arms To Fuel Durable Growth
Customer Success teams (CSMs) play a large part in driving efficient growth for SaaS companies. Not only do they ensure customers are receiving the most value from the product, but they also bring in new revenue through contract expansions. Companies should adopt a cross-functional framework between the CS and Product teams to ensure CSMs can be efficient growth enablers.
The starting point is to install a neutral leader who advocates for both teams. The leader should prioritize a limited number of joint projects that meet the needs of all stakeholders. These projects should streamline the collaboration between the two teams and ultimately should drive additional value to customers.
Kellie @ Gainsight Software product
Why You Need New Roles And Skills For Product-Led Growth
Product-led growth companies need to have a different go-to-market motion than sales-led growth companies. In sales-led, revenue is generated through a linear process where different roles navigate a customer through the buying journey. Marketing gets inbound interest, sales then closes the opportunity, and the post-sales team onboards the customer.
In product-led, it’s natural for the buying journey activities to happen in tandem. This upshift in process requires new roles and skills to be filled. Instead of focusing on filling job titles, companies should focus on finding talent that covers a diverse number of skills. Often, members in product-led growth companies play multiple roles across functions, and their roles are not strictly defined by their job.
Steven @ Openview Labs product
AI Content Platform Jasper Raises $125M At A $1.5B Valuation
Jasper, an AI-based content creation platform, has become the poster child of silicon valley’s new craze - generative AI applications. The sector has received a lot of media buzz recently, fueled by a number of startups announcing funding rounds.
The question is, do generative AI platforms live up to the hype? Jasper, which only launched a year ago, has seen meaningful traction. The company has over 70,000 customers and is poised to reach $75 million in revenue by the end of the year. The platform is used by companies and creatives to help produce marketing copy and even generate images for design inspiration or for their website.
Kyle @ TechCrunch tech
How Similarweb Grew To $190M Revenue Run Rate And Beyond
Offering free products built with a marketing intent is at the heart of Similarweb’s growth strategy. The company uses ungated free tools as both branding and SEO plays to drive new top-of-funnel activity. In addition, the goal is to understand who the users are and what they’re looking to solve; this helps to better route them to specific offerings.
Similarweb personalizes the onboarding journey and automatically opts users into a seven-day free trial to drive customer conversions. Once a user signs up, they are prompted with specific product features based on the information they provide. They are also hooked on advanced capabilities that are removed if they don’t convert after the trial period.
Kyle @ Openview Labs growth
How To Create A High-Converting SaaS Sales Demo—A Step-By-Step Guide
The best SaaS demos balance between diagnosing a prospect’s pain and prescribing a solution. During the call, a sales rep should speak less than 45% of the time and should adapt their dialogue to the prospect’s situation. Researching the prospect beforehand is the best way to tailor the conversation and avoid asking easy to find questions.
There are two types of questions to ask during the demo 1) those to understand how the prospect operates and 2) those that uncover their dissatisfaction. Sales reps can then present the product in a way that addresses their pains. The last step is to have the prospect commit to next steps that they own to ensure no momentum is lost after the demo.