I'm excited to finally launch my new course:

🎥 Marketing Like A Media Company

You've probably heard that "the best marketing looks like building media company"

Well, I spent the last few months studying what that *actually* looks like and how to do it.

"Marketing like a media company" represents a paradigm shift in the way we earn attention.

The goal is to OWN the means of distribution.

Similar to Web 1.0/2.0/3.0 eras, marketing strategies evolve as content creation and distribution get democratized.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1264359909702787072

Old way:
• Pay to get featured in media outlets
• Pay to interrupt in feeds
• Pay to get shoutouts from influencers

New way:
• Build/buy media outlets
• Produce the content that dominates feeds
• Develop influencers and media personalities in-house

The shift is happening NOW.

Adapt or get left behind.

https://twitter.com/dickiebush/status/1462783206906900491

I've been doing a deep dive on this just in the last few months, but the pieces have been coming together for years.

And I'm definitely not the first to bring this concept to life.

Exhibit A from @davegerhardt:

https://twitter.com/davegerhardt/status/1255162927251968001

Exhibit B from @peeplaja:

https://twitter.com/peeplaja/status/1313002036116549633

Exhibit C from @mwurst:

https://twitter.com/mwurst/status/1136292895718367232

Exhibit D from @mrsharma:

https://twitter.com/mrsharma/status/1017229817987493888

Exhibit E from @csavage:

https://twitter.com/csavage/status/1176515065153036296

Exhibit F from @balajis:

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1313587476015935488

Exhibit G from @asanwal:

https://twitter.com/asanwal/status/1475878706056994824

Exhibit H from @agazdecki:

https://twitter.com/agazdecki/status/1475951609603493888

Exhibit I from @jayacunzo:

https://twitter.com/jayacunzo/status/1453031667677937664

Exhibit J from @balajis:

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1313587476015935488

Exhibit K from @balajis:

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1374363031417753609

What's behind this movement?

The bar for quality content raises every day. 

Whether that content is delivered through an ad, video, blog post, podcast, etc, doesn't matter.

Customers demand BETTER.

The lowest form of marketing looks and smells exactly like marketing.

This movement doesn't represent a challenge, but rather an opportunity.

An opportunity to entertain, to invent, to educate.

To be more *creative* rather than *exploitative.*

Marketing like a media company is aligning yourself even more tightly with the interests of customers.

And that's why I went through all the trouble to create an in-depth course on what marketing like a media company looks like and how you can adopt the practices.

If this concept resonates with you, it's available for @SwipeFilesco members.

Here's a link to the membership to access the course:

https://www.swipefiles.com/membership

I'll be sharing a lot more on this in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned. 😉

Announcing: Marketing Like A Media Company

Really stoked to be partnering with @TheJuiceHQ to bring @SwipeFilesco to their platform!

Think of it as ✨ Spotify for sales & marketing content ✨

Here's what we'll be doing...

1. Content hub for Swipe Files members

If you're a Swipe Files member already, you can enjoy all the premium content in one easy-to-access platform.

Courses, podcasts, workshops, articles, Office Hours.

2. Find cutting edge SaaS marketing content

If you're anything like me you can't get enough blog posts, podcasts, case studies, videos, etc on marketing.

The current way of discovering great B2B content is broken. Spend 5 minutes browsing The Juice and you'll see it's better.

3. Join the likes of HubSpot, Drift, and Gong to promote your content

I have three(ish) words for you: built-in distribution.

I'm extremely bullish on The Juice as a major driver of traffic for B2B companies going forward.

Sign up for The Juice here → https://app.thejuicehq.com/registration/new

Learn more about bringing your content to The Juice → https://www.thejuicehq.com/brands

If you're planning on launching on @producthunt, you need to watch this first:

https://community.swipefiles.com/c/workshops/how-to-get-1-product-of-the-day-on-product-hunt-4ae7aa7a-47b5-43f6-a906-e71c6528bc17

Free workshop if you're doing 2022 planning...

✨ How to create a SaaS marketing plan in 6 steps ✨

I take you through my exact process:
1. Goal setting
2. Budgeting
3. Choosing a target market
4. Customer research
5. Product roadmap
6. Key projects

https://community.swipefiles.com/c/workshops/how-to-create-a-marketing-plan-in-6-steps-1cb3cdaf-241d-4ae7-b0a6-67d035cede28

Some news: I reacquired heymarketers.com! 🎉

After selling it in November of 2020, it's now back in my hands again and I couldn't be more excited.

It's now the Swipe Files Job Board — the best marketing jobs in tech.

Here's the story and what's next...

Hey Marketers started as a side project in May of 2019.

I launched it on @producthunt and immediately gained traction.

All the graphs for traffic, subscribers, and revenue were up and to the right.

But it took a LOT of hours and manpower.

More here: https://makermag.com/no-code-job-board/

Fast forward to late-2020. 

I had left Baremetrics and was in the middle of getting Swipe Files off the ground.

It was overwhelming and I just couldn't give Hey Marketers the time and attention it needed.

So I sold the majority stake to a great buyer.

https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco/status/1366761913753853960

Fast forward again to late 2021 and the buyer asked if I was interested in buying it back for a fraction of the price I originally sold it.

They were getting out of tech and simplifying life.

How could I say no? 🤷‍♂️

The only problem?

I really didn't want to have to build another job board from scratch with no-code tools. 😅

And I can't afford to spend a significant amount of time on admin tasks every week.

That's where @Pallet_HQ comes in. 🙌

Pallet provides an amazing platform that also opens up the opportunity go beyond just job postings.

Coming soon: 

✨ The Swipe Files Talent Collective ✨

A matchmaking service to make intros between top marketing talent and companies hiring.

It's FREE to post a job on the job board.

I absolutely love helping marketers find their next gig and helping companies hire great marketers.

I never really *stopped* after selling Hey Marketers. And I suspect I'll never be able to fully get out of it either. 🤣

If you're a marketer open to new opportunities, make sure to subscribe to get updates on new openings.

jobs.swipefiles.com

If you're a company hiring a marketer, post your job ad (free option available).

For a more white-glove experience, consider the Talent Collective.

https://jobs.swipefiles.com/hire

I'm still in the transition period so if you see anything broken / confusing / suboptimal, do let me know!

I'm happy to go into more details. Ask any question if you've got one. 😁

Reacquiring HeyMarketers.com

Looking for some inspiration to market your SaaS?

Get a daily drip of tiny marketing ideas 👇

swipefiles.com/tiny

Finally published my user manual publicly.

Have you created one?

https://www.coreyhaines.co/blog/manual

Do you have a bucket list?

https://www.coreyhaines.co/blog/bucket-list

I'm tired of hearing about LTV:CAC being a useful metric for SaaS/subscription

I think it should be EXTINGUISHED from our vocabulary.

Why?
1. LTV is a shoddy way to measure value capture
2. You need piles of VC $$$
3. There's a superior metric you should use instead

↓

LTV:CAC is fundamentally trying to answer two questions:

1. How quickly can I recoup the cost to acquire a customer?

2. How much can I reasonably afford to pay to acquire a customer?

We'll get back to these at the end.

Here's why LTV does a terrible job at answering those questions...

(and this is coming from someone who used to work at Baremetrics... I've quite literally seen thousands of companies' metrics)

Baremetrics' definition:

"LTV is an educated guess at how much you can expect to make from the average customer before they churn."

This definition essentially assumes that most/all customers eventually churn.

It also assumes that revenue per customer stays relatively static.

This is far from the truth. 

In fact, in a healthy SaaS business, it's the exact opposite.

(1) Customers stick around for quite a long time and (2) revenue per customer increases over time.

Colin shows Customer.io's cohort retention. The bottom orange part shows steady revenue all the way back from the 2013 cohort.

In fact, Customer.io has exceptional expansion revenue with most cohorts GROWING in revenue over time.

https://twitter.com/alphacolin/status/1349121874488279040?s=20

LTV just isn't meant for SaaS.

When one-time sales were the norm (including physical products, software, and services) LTV was super easy to calculate:

The total $ amount customers have spent with you is divided by the number of customers.

LTV:CAC makes a lot of sense there.

That standard calculation of LTV works well when there's a very small standard deviation from the mean.

e.g. LTV per customer looks like: $100, $90, $110, $95, $120.

LTV = (100+90+110+95+120) / 5 = $103

If CAC is $20, you've got a 5:1 LTV:CAC and "profitable" on each customer.

SaaS usually has large standard deviations from the mean because (1) subscriptions take time to accrue revenue and (2) price points can vary largely.

E.g. LTV per customer looks like $20, $100, $500, $5000, $30.

(20+100+500+5000+30) / 5 = $1,130

If CAC is $200, you've got ~5:1 LTV:CAC... right?

Not exactly. You're not profitable on each customer — only 2/5 customers.

What if the vast majority of the customers you acquire are on the lower plan? What if your first 3 months retention is only 50%?

You're in deep trouble.

If you use that formula, you're making way too many assumptions and not accounting for the dynamics of the subscription business model.

That's why you don't see people using that formula of LTV for SaaS anymore.

So we made a NEW formula that attempts to adjust for the subscription model:

Average Monthly Recurring Revenue Per Customer ÷ User Churn Rate = LTV

Simplified: ARPC/Churn

But there are still fundamental flaws. 🤦‍♂️

It's a classic case of the danger of working with averages.

Averages don't tell the whole story. They're skewed by the range and outliers.

And if you're not careful, it can bankrupt your business.

Let me illustrate with some hypothetical numbers...

First: ARPC still fails to account for the different pricing tiers you may offer.

For example, maybe you offer $50, $100, and $500/mo plans, but your ARPC is $60.

$60 ARPC isn't an accurate representation of the revenue you're generating from each customer.

Second: Churn can be deceiving.

A seemingly innocent 5% monthly churn rate results in… a 46% annual churn rate! 🤯

That means you have to replace half of your customers after a year.

Using the ARPC/Churn = LTV formula, if:
• ARPC = $60
• Monthly churn = 5%

Then LTV = $1,200

If CAC = $200, it might seem like you're in the clear with 6:1 LTV:CAC.

However, this means that you technically won't be profitable until month 4 on average.

And by month 12, half of them will likely be gone.

How much profit is left after that? 😅

You'll be completely out of cash before you can find out.

The good news is that you can get away with this if you have piles of VC money to (1) afford to wait until month 4 and (2) pay for everything else on top of the cost to acquire customers at scale.

But LTV:CAC is just a proxy for another, far superior metric you can track.

Payback Period is what you REALLY want to know and should completely replace LTV:CAC for SaaS companies.

LTV:CAC hates that you have to wait to accrue revenue.

Payback Period is totally fine with it. 😆

To calculate Payback Period, simply divide the average cost to acquire a customer by the average first month's revenue:

CAC/ARPC = Payback Period

To avoid the same delusions of working with averages, you can break it out by dividing CAC by each monthly price point you offer.

To use some of the same numbers from earlier, that might look like:

Plan A Payback Period = $200/$50 = 4 months

Plan B Payback Period = $200/$100 = 2 months

Plan C Payback Period = $200/$500 = ~2 weeks

> 1. How quickly can I recoup the cost to acquire a customer?

Payback Period answers the first fundamental question directly so you know how much cash you need to have to float acquisition costs.

We can check that box ✅

>  2. How much can I reasonably afford to pay to acquire a customer?

Payback Period helps you answer the second fundamental question by giving you a basis for understanding *when* a customer becomes profitable.

We can also check that box ✅

Personally, I don't believe you should spend any more than the first year's revenue to acquire a customer.

For example:

Plan A = $50/mo = $600 max CAC

Plan B = $100/mo = $1200 max CAC

Plan C = $500/mo = $6000 max CAC

If you know that larger ARPC customers are going to require different and more expensive marketing strategies, you can justify a larger CAC for them.

At a baseline though, you use your lowest plan to establish a conservative maximum CAC that you can use across the board.

Spending more than the average first year's revenue to acquire a customer is risky business.

Again, you can make it work with piles of VC money. 

But unless you have amazing retention (<=1% monthly churn), you're doomed to fail.

Especially if your goal is to be profitable, you want to reduce your payback period as much as possible.

Ideally, your payback period would be 1 month or less. 

That way, you're not running on a deficit and scale up and down depending on your needs and goals.

Plus, the question should never be "What's the maximum I can pay to acquire a customer?"

You should be asking "How can I pay the bare minimum to acquire a customer?"

To sum up:

LTV:CAC makes it easy to justify insane acquisition costs.

Payback Period is a much better representation of reality. 😉

LTV is useless for SaaS

Study B2B SaaS companies and you'll find that they do these parts of marketing better than anyone else:
• Onboarding
• Content marketing
• Conferences
• Engineering as marketing
• Partner & reseller programs

Steal these lessons ↓

ONBOARDING

Onboarding is the crux of making a SaaS business work.

You can have the best marketing in the world. But if you can't successfully onboard users into your product, they'll churn out.

This is why SaaS companies are world-class at onboarding: THEY HAVE TO BE.

Want to see what amazing SaaS onboarding looks like?

Check out these user flow recordings from @PageFlows 

https://pageflows.com/user-flow/user-onboarding/

I'll never forget how @Superhuman individually onboards new users to maximize product adoption and retention.

Check out this interactive case study: https://growth.design/case-studies/superhuman-user-onboarding/

My friend @ramlijohn points out 3 of the most common onboarding killers in SaaS:
1. Email verification wall
2. Unnecessary steps
3. Describing "what," not "why" 

https://twitter.com/RamliJohn/status/1401950036997537792

More amazing content from @ramlijohn (the product-led onboarding king! 👑)

You know I'm all about mental models and frameworks so this is like catnip to me. 🤩

https://twitter.com/RamliJohn/status/1405620055623274503

When you think of SaaS onboarding, you probably think of low-touch / self-serve onboarding.

But high-touch onboarding is a whole other beast and just as important.

I love this guide: https://arrows.to/resources/onboarding-101/

Arrows.to is dedicated software for high-touch onboarding

There are so many takeaways from SaaS onboarding that you can apply to:
• Communities
• DTC/e-commerce
• Services
• Social apps
• Local groups, gatherings, and associations

CONTENT MARKETING

There are two factors that have forced SaaS companies to get creative with how they drive traffic to their site:

1. A limited number of keywords directly related to software products

2. Scarcity of search demand for all keywords related to a niche/industry

See, SEO is a zero-sum game.

There can only be one #1 search result. There are only so many on the first page.

And if you (1) can't get to your desired keyword rank or (2) have already achieved all your desired keyword ranks...

...then you have to get traffic elsewhere.

This constraint has forced SaaS companies to innovate and creative with their content.

@growandconvert, @AnimalzCo, @superpathco, and @Bonini84's Some Good Content patreon are my go-to resources for content marketing.

The @AnimalzCo team outlines these 8 content types for SaaS companies:

🔬 Teardowns
✂️ Cross-Cutting
📚 Template Library
📝 Meta Content
💻 Use-Case Content
💡 Thought Leadership
🔗 Hub and Spoke
📊 Data

They've also created this master guide for content marketing:

https://www.animalz.co/blog/content-marketing-strategy/

Specifically what SaaS companies do better than anyone else in content marketing is create content that maps to different stages of a funnel, which each serve a different purpose.

Here's a great explanation: https://www.poweredbysearch.com/blog/b2b-saas-content-strategy/

SaaS companies (or rather the genius agencies that create content for them) have figured out how to make lemonade out of lemons.

Even with super low search volume, you can get great results.

Case in point: https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/seo-content-conversions/

The Grow & Convert team were one of the first to figure out ways to promote content in ways beyond just SEO.

They grew their blog to 32,977 unique visitors in 5 months using only content promotion via communities.

https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/community-content-promotion/

Since then, they've adjusted their strategy to include a mix of short-term and long-term promotion strategies.

This includes:
• Paid distribution through Facebook ads
• Link-building

https://growandconvert.com/content-marketing/content-distribution-strategy/

Zapier programmatically generates 25,000+ pages to get millions of visitors to their site.

I haven't seen any other type of company do this.

https://ryanberg.co/how-zapier-reached-35m-arr-with-this-saas-seo-strategy/

Shopify has created full-blown courses with influencers and celebrities like Tim Ferriss, Daymond John, and Ezra Firestone.

https://www.shopify.com/learn

Close has been killing with ebooks and downloadable content.

https://close.com/resources/

Groove centered their blog around their startup journey and grew to $5M+ ARR through this type of content marketing.

https://www.groovehq.com/blog/how-we-built-a-5m-business-with-content-marketing

The @ahrefs team is one of the first and most successful case studies for using YouTube.

244k subs 🤯

This video has over 1M views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvwS7cV9GmQ

Mailchimp has gone full media-compan-mode with Mailchimp Presents.

Films, documentaries, series, and podcasts.

https://mailchimp.com/presents/

And we can't forget about @davegerhardt with @Drift's Seeking Wisdom podcast.

One of the first breakout branded podcasts.

https://www.drift.com/blog/introducing-seeking-wisdom-a-podcast-from-drift/

CONFERENCES

Dreamforce by Salesforce attracted 170,000+ attendees pre-covid 🤯

Recognize any of these past speakers? They're not messing around!

Inbound by HubSpot this year is featuring Oprah Winfrey.

The first one was held all the way back in 2012.

https://www.inbound.com/

Drift was ambitious enough to start their own conference just a couple years after founding.

@dcancel was kind enough to fly me and my wife out to attend! One of my all-time favorite experiences.

https://youtu.be/gL2YSBXY5Rg?t=68

Even though @ConvertKit isn't small anymore, they were hosting conferences even when they were a fraction of the size called Craft + Commerce.

(p.s. @nathanbarry can you guys come back to San Diego for 2022? 🙏)

https://conference.convertkit.com/

What do you take away from this if you're not a SaaS company?

Conferences are a great way to gather like-minded people.

It's also a fantastic way to build a deeper relationship with your audience.

The legend @PatFlynn hosted a conference for the @teamspi community here in San Diego.

Creators can host conferences too!

https://flynncon.com/

I've heard amazing things about Laracon, which is based on a common love for the popular programming framework Laravel.

https://laracon.net/

ENGINEERING AS MARKETING

B2B SaaS companies are masters of creating free tools and sites that generate exposure to their products.

Here's a ton of examples:
https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco/status/1217998287719911424

Love this post by @hnshah 

https://producthabits.com/why-your-saas-business-needs-free-tools/

These are some of the best tangible examples:

https://twitter.com/coreyhainesco/status/1218005295693099008?s=20

Since 2008, HubSpot's website grader has generated millions of leads for them.

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/website-grader

Within about six months of launching HubSpot's email signature generator, they were generating 75,000+ visitors to the free tool per month. And those visitors were converting into approximately 50,000+ net-new leads per month.

https://learn.g2.com/the-worlds-most-effective-b2b-marketing-campaign

What do you take away from this if you're not a SaaS company?

Well, you don't have to be a SaaS company to create free tools.

Anyone can.

Here's a couple examples ↓

Bryan Harris had his team create a bunch of free tools that led to his coaching/training program.

https://twitter.com/boaticus/status/1218047088333918208?s=20

Ryan Bonnici created a self-assessment quiz that generates leads for his content/community site.

https://www.executiv.co/resources/five-dysfunctions-of-a-team-self-assessment

PARTNER & RESELLER PROGRAMS

Here's one that's truly unique to SaaS.

Rev share and whitelabeling aren't all that common in other industries.

But there are huge implications.

With yet another HubSpot case study, @pc4media grew their partner program (AKA channel sales) past $100M+ in attributable annual recurring revenue.

They recruited marketing agencies to sell HubSpot on their behalf and take a cut of the revenue for HUGE results.

Win-win.

I can't give away who they are, but I know a SaaS company who exclusively sold whitelabel licenses where the end customer wouldn't even know it was them.

They grew to multi-millions in revenue from that "channel" alone.

HighLevel sells an all-in-one platform that marketing agencies can use to build out bespoke SaaS products for clients to use.

This way, the agency can charge for the service AND the software.

The agencies do all the work to sell the software.

gohighlevel.com

How can other industries adopt this?

Here are a few examples ↓

@donaldmiller and his @storybrand team very smartly packaged up everything they know into a certification program that consultants can use to sell services to clients.

https://storybrand.com/guide/

Sharyn Sheldon creates white label courses for companies through her business contentsparks.com

Listen to this podcast episode: https://onlinecoursecoach.com/how-to-create-white-label-online-courses-for-companies-with-sharyn-sheldon/

I think there's a huge opportunity for anyone with specialized knowledge to repackage their content for other's to use and resell.

In fact, SaaS companies should be looking to partner with course creators in their niche to resell at a discounted price or even for free.

Or think about DTC companies that haven't reached mass distribution.

Big retailers like Costco, Walmart, and other stores are always looking for private label opportunities.

This applies to CPG companies as well.

There are even partner/reseller opportunities for services.

Many agencies and service companies (1) don't have the bandwidth to take on certain projects or (2) don't have the in-house expertise to take on certain projects.

Subcontract and you've got built-in distribution.

There ya have it.

I think this is really where SaaS marketing excels:
• Onboarding
• Content marketing
• Conferences
• Engineering as marketing
• Partner & reseller programs

Agree? Disagree?