Community building is an essential accelerator for the demand-gen flywheel.
A great example is Kong Inc., an API management platform. The company used three community tactics to capture the attention and engage with the developer community (not an easy segment to build rapport with).
đ Highlight top contributors on your community page and through social media shout-outs
đ Regularly host events such as technical webinars, workshops, local meetups, and hackathons
đ Gather feedback from your community through forums, surveys, and direct customer calls
The short answer is â Yes, buyers still respond to great emails. However, itâs true that the traditional playbook where dedicated SDRs send mass generic emails doesnât work today.
Instead, sales teams need to revisit the primary reason we send outbound emails â to add value to the reader. Hereâs a tip, subscribe to your companyâs outbound emails. Would you find them valuable or do they read like spam?
Traditional GTM motions started by buying target account lists, adding them to your CRM, and sequencing them. The accounts are cold and the messaging is the same. Generic.
However, thereâs a new way to sell into markets today. Start by prioritizing companies that have expressed some signal that they could be a customer. There are two types of intent signals.
- First-party signals â the company takes actions directly on your website, blog, or free tier
- Third-party signals â the company has a recent event or announcement that's related to your value-prop (e.g., hiring for a new role, launching a new product, posting about a topic)
Once an intent signal takes place, the account is immediately sequenced in an outbound campaign.
The modern outbound tech stack has these three layers.
- Intent Signal Provider/ Account builder (e.g., Koala OR Keyplay)
- Data Orchestrator (e.g., Clay)
- Email Sequencer (e.g., Outreach)
With these three tools, your sales team can scale outbound emails â all without an SDR team. This is exactly what Thenam, an AI-powered customer success platform, did to revamp its GTM motion.
Hereâs a quick rundown.
đ Thena used a tool like Keyplay to continuously refresh and prioritize account lists for the sales team
đ Then, with a data orchestrator like Clay, the company sent targeted outbound emails on behalf of AEs (replacing SDRs)
đ At the same time, the AEs would send custom personalized emails to high-priority accounts
A successful growth motion extends beyond just PLG plays but relies on the right culture and team setup to enable it.
Hereâs a breakdown of the Growth team at Dropbox and the metrics they track.
- Acquisition â total sign-ups
- Activation â number of sign-ups that reach set up/ reach the first habit loop
- Monetization â conversions from free to paid + retention + sales-handoff
- Engagement â weekly active users + 12 month retention
The multi-channel playbook that helped AppsFlyer, a marketing analytics platform, scale. Hereâs the rundown of the different channels.
- LinkedIn â the main channel, posts slideshows, and frequent long-form text
- Facebook/Meta â not a priority channel, posts infrequent videos
- Instagram â multiple handles, posts images and short videos multiple times a week
- Twitter/X â cross-promotion posts from LinkedIn, emphasizes comments and replies
- YouTube â saw some success with commercial-type videos
- Medium â caters to a technical audience, the main channel for DevRel
Every SaaS founder eventually asks this question â when is the right time to hire a marketer? While there is no silver bullet to timing, there are some common mistakes you can avoid.
đ One piece of advice is to align the timing of your marketing hire with your companyâs growth stage. For B2B SaaS companies, that means waiting until you have a repeatable sales model before amplifying your messaging.
Once youâve decided to hire your first marketer, the next step is to define the right profile. Someone who has a mix of product, content, and growth marketing experience would be the perfect candidate. However, unicorns do exist (at least in tech) but they are hard to find.
đ Instead, look for someone who has strategy and execution skills at a minimum, with a blend of product and growth marketing experience.
What are the next steps after hiring a marketer? Aligning an action plan early into onboarding is one way to set them up for success.
Aside from familiarizing themselves with the current tech stack, observing the company culture is an important step that's often overlooked. This article covers what the first 7, 30, and 90 days should look like.
The short answer is âYes, SaaS startups are still SEO-ing.â However, with the rise of AI content and chatbots for quick question-and-answer interactions, multi-touch media is becoming increasingly important for discovery.
đ For instance, consider diversifying your marketing efforts across various channelsâsuch as email, social media, and partnershipsâto help maximize visibility and engagement.
As marketing teams increasingly adopt LLMs for content creation, startups should shift their focus from 'should we use AI?' to 'where should we use AI?'
đ Use GenAI to write top-of-funnel content, adding to your keyword profile and building topical authority. At the same time, allocate more effort and (human) expertise to crafting engaging content for high-intent keywords.
So far we explored wether SEO is still an important channel (it is) and we dove into why we should use AI (top-of-funnel ranking), now we dive into the How.
đ I came across this well outlined guide on using AI for SEO content. While the article covers a lot of ground, the important part is to focus on how you would structure your SEO initiative for your SaaS company.
Here's one take on why you should. By building a community, your customers become your advocates and your brand becomes the common ground for discussion. But if youâre still on the fence, this article debunks some myths about community-led growth. Here are two that stood out to me.
đ Community-led growth is only a long-term play. While itâs true that building a community takes time, even a small, engaged audience can impact brand awareness and visibility.
đ Customers will use the community to complain about the product. A community is not a Slack support channel â these should be kept separate. A community channel should instead facilitate discussion and encourage customers to share resources and ask questions amongst each other.
Have you ever wondered how some of the largest communities grew their audience? For ProductHunt, it took the company two weeks to grow to 1,000 members, for LinkedIn, it took them one day. Crazy! Here are a few plays they ran.
đ Tap into your existing networks to start the growth flywheel (LinkedIn).
đ Engage with existing communities to coattail off of their audience (Strava and GitLab).
đ Leverage influencers and get press coverage (Product Hunt).
A master class on community-led growth! Ben Lang, the former Head of Community at Notion walks through the flywheel he used to scale Notionâs community efforts.
đ Community Programs. Notion launched an ambassador program and hosted local groups and events to drive awareness to more influencers.
đ Influencer Partnerships. Every month, new influencers started creating content about Notion and promoting it to their audience base (most notably on YouTube).
đ Evergreen Signups. As creators started referring new users to Notion, the cost per acquisition decreased, allowing the company to invest more in the Community Program.
