Think about your next marketing hire Sometimes, when you are trying to build market share for your SaaS product you need to think about your next hire. Quite often, in the early days of a SaaS venture, marketing gets pushed down the order of priorities, because there are umpteen other things that demand attention. However, at some point you are going to need to acquire marketing capability or expand your existing efforts through hiring. Let’s call the target of your next hire Employee X. So, what does the job spec look like? Quite often the requirements of the role might depend on where you a ..read more

Marketing is a critical area of business practice. Any successful company that doesn’t actively pursue a marketing strategy and plan its promotional activities is very fortunate to be profitable without the need to market itself. But for the rest of us… So, what resource should a SaaS business use to execute its marketing? And when is a dedicated CMO required? When should you start marketing your SaaS venture? A key question that feeds into when you need a CMO is: When do you need to actively begin to market your SaaS product? It’s likely you have a launch date. When you reach that point, you ..read more

Making the marketing numbers work The Forbes Cloud 100 list features the 100 ‘hottest private tech companies in cloud computing’. Figuring that marketing was an important factor that determined their presence on the list, Drift decided to analyse what these 100 firms were doing. The report ‘Marketing Lessons From the Top 100 SaaS Companies’ studied the size of the marketing team in relation to the total number of employees. This showed that companies had ratios of total staff to marketers of between 18/1 and 23/1. This may seem quite low, especially if you are in a company of say 10 people wh ..read more

As an agency, we are unlikely to be the first to get the call or email from a client saying: “We’re excited to say we’ve employed someone to do our marketing.” Yes, we’d been prepped at the beginning of our commercial relationship that the engagement would be an interim solution, or that our services were required to power the next phase of growth and generally, it has gone well. In such a case, some of the ‘excitement’ for the client surely resides in the fact that it is firing the agency and taking marketing inhouse. But is hiring someone really the right solution? Well we would say that, wo ..read more

We have clients in all continents of the world as well as all over the UK. This means there are many clients we have never met in person and even the ones we have met work is largely undertaken remotely, rather than face to face. This blog explores the businesses that remote working works best for (and ones that don’t), how to have a productive remote working relationship and the tools we use to work remotely. When is working with a local company best? Working with a company not in your city, region or country isn’t always best when: You are marketing to a local audience and knowledge of the ..read more

So you’ve decided to outsource your marketing, chosen a partner and are excited to work together. What should you be doing as a client to get the most from this partnership? How to get the most value from your agency relationship To ensure that you get the best value from marketing, you need to give your marketing partner the best opportunity to provide it. It’s useful to remember the following points: Select an agency that is right for your business. Marketing strategy and tactics should be based on your organisation’s unique needs – not driven by your marketing agency’s specific expertise ..read more

For small or startup SaaS companies, thinking about when to engage the services of a professional marketing agency can take them round and round in circles; you need help to get your product seen in order to generate more revenue, but you need funds coming in to meet the costs of hiring the people who can make that happen. Should you invest in a marketing team before you push your product forward, or build up a DIY strategy to hand over when the business becomes more established? If you’re unsure when to call in the expertise of an agency, use our checklist to see if you’re ready to benefit f ..read more

Whether it’s convincing new visitors to sign up to a free software trial, or using a series of onboarding emails to nudge users towards a subscription, using the right copy is key in explaining the core benefits of your product to new and existing customers. In fact, professional (or not so professional!) writing can have a massive impact on how your audience perceives your brand. Words can be persuasive, and as a growing SaaS business, you need to be harnessing them correctly. With many companies of this kind being zero touch in nature, your copy may be the first, and only, direct point of co ..read more

They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but when you’re looking for coverage for your SaaS business, there are a variety of ways to ensure that the publicity you receive is only of the best kind. With Xander Marketing’s tips for creating a targeted strategy to approach the most relevant media outlets, and knowing what to do once you’ve found them, you’ll be able to make sure your business is being talked about for all the right reasons.  Trade press The quickest route to coverage can often be with publications targeted at your specific industry, whether that be software and techn ..read more

Being noticed in a competitive market Standing out from the crowd can be a challenge for any business, but in the world of SaaS it’s tougher than most. Not only is the market highly competitive, with the number of companies rivalling your organisation growing practically by the week, to the end buyer it can often seem like most SaaS businesses are fairly similar. The truth of the matter is that a lot of SaaS offerings have quite a few common features – and sometimes new market entrants will even copy the benefits of those that are well established. The only way to grow market share is to shout ..read more