I've run a digital agency for 10+ years

Here's what separates good clients from bad clients: 

Good clients are willing to engage in a dialogue

Bad clients want to only engage in one-directional monologues

Good clients are friendly and coachable, letting the agency lead

Bad clients act opaque and stubborn, wanting to steer the relationship

Good clients know what they want before they see it

Bad clients know what they want when they see it

Good clients know when they want a result and clearly state it

Bad clients feel their way around a result and don't share clear expectations

Good clients actively ask for help, share wins, and challenges

Bad clients cast blame, harbour wins, and wait to share challenges until they become fires

3 red flags to avoid for SaaS companies hiring a marketing agency

1. Agencies promise quick wins
2. Agencies don’t gain deep insight into the client’s business
3. Agencies don’t communicate effectively

Here’s how to get it right.

Over and over, we’ve seen that the first 100 days are predictive of success or failure

So at @poweredbysearch here’s how we set everyone up for success:

Our onboarding process looks like this:

- Day 0: Enrollment
- Days 1-30: Discovery
- Days 30-60: Test & Learn
- Days 60+: Accelerate

Day 0

Setting client delivery teams up for success with everything we’ve learned before clients sign on the dotted line

Every new client starts with a 1 page strategy doc to start their journey

Days 1-30

The first 30 days of an engagement with Powered by Search can feel a little…quiet

We tell our clients up front not to panic

This time is our “Discovery” phase, and it’s critical

Days 30-60

With discovery complete we’re ready to start testing and learning

Running our growth playbooks we’ll test our assumptions about how to grow “your” business

Day 60+

Accelerate and optimize. The biggest assumptions have been well tested and clients are typically starting to see significantly increased demand

The work doesn’t stop. Optimization is forever

Kicking off new client work requires more than surface-level insight

If you want to get to a new destination, you need a clear roadmap

With @poweredbysearch, you might not see the quickest wins. But you will get long-term results

Made it this far but want to do more research?

We documented exactly why the first 100 days with a new agency are so critical, and what we do about it for our clients: https://www.poweredbysearch.com/blog/hire-saas-marketing-agency/

The First 100 Days Working With Your New Agency

We get insights into dozens of SaaS company marketing budgets every single week

Here's what most of them get wrong:

A lot of people think that if they're at 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio then everything will be fine

But: 

a) that's magical thinking
b) it's a ratio that leaves out a lot of factors about growth

Example: 

If you're spending $100 to get a $300 you're left with $200 margin

That's infinitely scaleable right?! 

WRONG

It's scaleable to the extent that there are additional customers to acquire

The reality is if you're at a 3:1 ratio or better, then you should probably be spending as much as possible to acquire customers

Otherwise, your competitors will

And in B2B SaaS, once a customer has bought, they're locked out of the market for a long time

The downstream impact of underspending on marketing:

Marketing execs who don't get enough budget because they're nervous about spending end up needing to spend significantly more because they fall behind on the growth curve and market share

So with that in mind, how should you set the marketing budget for your SaaS?

First thing's first: know your numbers. 

Minimum viable metrics: LTV, CAC, target growth, conversion rates on funnel 

Bonus if you know your payback period

Top marks if you know these metrics for different customer tiers (but that's the subject for another thread)

Let's start with LTV

People can build surprisingly large businesses (we see some $5-10M+ ARR) without knowing LTV

There's a lot of formulas for it taking in lots of stuff but for ease, let's just use this one (98% accurate in my exp): 

LTV = MRR / Monthly Churn

Now let's talk about CAC: 

Again, lots of things you *could* factor in but we like the simple formula for people just putting budgets in place

This graphic by @patticus/@ProfitWell shows it nicely:

OK but didn't you just say I should be spending as much as I can to acquire new customers to dominate a market? 

Yes, I did 

But it's important to know your CAC so you can calculate progress and to measure against acceptable limits as you grow

If you're in SaaS, you should be setting a target for MRR growth

What's yours? 

We're going to use an example of a company who wants to add $10K MRR and work backwards to talk about their budget

Example company: 

MRR growth goal: $10K MRR
Subscription fee: $500/mo

10,000/500 = 20 new users per month

But how are they going to get them? Customers don't just appear magically

You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find the right prospect in the ICP

But first: if you're enjoying this thread, you'll love the detailed blog post that we wrote about this topic (and podcast episode too!) 

https://www.poweredbysearch.com/blog/saas-marketing-budget/

Question we ask: 

What percentage of demos/free trials/freemium signups convert to paid accounts of a value of $500/mo? 

Founders tend to overestimate: 70-80%
Reality from experience: 30-40% 

Why? They’re probably demoing too many prospects that aren’t sales-ready

Let's say that the demo-to-close rate of our example company is actually 25% 

We know that they'll need to demo to 4 times as many people as they need to hit their MRR growth goal

20 x 4 = 80 demos per month needed

But ask yourself: how many website visitors do they need?

Generally speaking, when we start working with a client, we find that they're probably converting a tiny fraction of website visitors into demos 

Usually it's ~1%

(Don't worry: it improves once we start working with them!)

Taking this into our example: 

If the website converts 1% of visitors to demo, and we need 80 demos a month:

80/0.01 = 8,000 new visitors each month needed

How does that relate to the budget though? 

Well, if you need 8K new visitors a month to get close to your MRR growth goal, you're going to need to finance the marketing somehow

Channels we see doing this time after time: 

Content/SEO (mid term with some quick wins)
PPC (quick wins!)

Content/SEO + Outreach is becoming increasingly important

Let's say you test PPC out and you find that you're getting a good conversion rate from clicks on your ads to demo bookings: 

You'd take the cost per click multiplied by the number of clicks necessary

If you want to do this for multiple channels, do a blended cost per click

The number that comes out of that should be the minimum marketing budget

Remember that we're looking at projected values. They might not turn out to be the reality

It's worth factoring some waste – just like tiling a floor – into your marketing budget 

~20% of base budget

Also factor in some experimentation budget for trying new channels/approaches (~10% of base budget – this'll really compound over time)

Eventually, the channels you're killing it on will dip in ROI and you'll be glad you invested in finding new channels early

We're almost done here. But before I quit adding new tweets to the thread, let's just say a couple words about:

Payback periods

Payback period is the interval over which a company recoups the  CAC

If you're VC funded, you can usually afford a long payback period

But not if you're bootstrapped!

Bootstrapped companies should attempt to shorten payback period as much as possible

Remember: if you can't invest in marketing to acquire customers fast enough, someone else will do it on your behalf

And this will severely impact your growth potential

On the other hand:

Often VC founders are so obsessed with their runway that they don't take advantage of the long payback period their VC funds have given them

The result is a perpetual negative feedback loop: 

Fearing that the market won’t reward them, the founder is likely to lose share in it.

In either case, you should attempt to optimise payback period for the kind of company that you are and make the most of whatever your bank balance affords you

What B2B SaaS Companies Get Wrong About Marketing Budgets

What makes a high converting SaaS landing page hero?

Here are the best templates by category [with examples]:

1. The Prop

Structure: Value prop > Benefit > Feature

Works for: almost anyone. It's a classic and should be the fallback for all cases.

2. The Bananarama (more, more, more)

Structure: more x, more y, more z

Works when: you want to quickly demonstrate that your product a}dds huge value

3. The Question

Structure: How is [product subject] doing?

Works when: you want to make a prospect panic about their pain point quickly so you can tell them how to relieve it. Works well for data driven products.

4. The Vanity

Structure: [Product category] for [adjective] [customer profile]

Works when: you want to appeal to customers who already feel innovative compared to competitors

5. The number 1

Structure: World's most loved x

Works when: a product is genuinely the category leader and the category is already well established.

BTW – if you're enjoying these, we have a whole article on high converting SaaS landing pages on our site. 

https://www.poweredbysearch.com/blog/landing-pages-vs-web-pages/

6. The Swiss Army

Structure: All in one [product type]

Works when: the value prop is about consolidating resources or data

7. The Easy Rider 

Structure: The ____est way to x

Works when: your customers are frustrated poor customer/user experience of your competitors

8. The Missionary

Structure: There is none. Just sound visionary. 

Works when: you're trying to attract large enterprises as customers. Warning: Avoid if you're looking for other types of customer too.

9. The Daft Punk (Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger)

Structure: [Benefit], [Benefit], [Benefit]

Works when: You're combining multiple functions into a single workflow. Good for complex value props where normally you'd need three separate benefit statements.

10. The Better Way

Structure: The Better Way to [Main Benefit]

Works when: people are already familiar with your brand and product. You're just trying to get them excited about signing up. 

Avoid if you're not well known yet. It's hard to differentiate (see below)

11. The X4X

Structure: The [Product] for [Customer]

Works when: You want to leave no doubt about what you do and who for. Say it straight.

If you enjoyed this thread, follow me. I tweet about B2B SaaS marketing all the time.

How to Create High Converting SaaS Landing Pages (Without the Guesswork)

A lot of companies outside B2B SaaS ask us to help them with their marketing

But here's why we chose to be a B2B SaaS agency:

Agency life is weird – you do a good job for a client

Their CMO moves to a new company

They bring you in and suddenly you have a client in a totally new niche

But agencies who just allow that to happen end up suffering

People get burned out

There's no real expertise in any sector

And the potency of the whole org gets lost

Before we started working exclusively with B2B SaaS cos, we heard the same thing frequently from founders: 

'We hired an agency. They burned us'

There is just so much low quality B2B SaaS agency work out there

Tactical problems for B2B SaaS companies: 

- Google Adwords isn’t working
- Organic search takes too long
- CPC is expensive
- Content isn’t converting
- We can't get remarketing to work
- How do you attribute demos and trials

But...

Tactics without cohesive strategy are pointless

SaaS companies too often focus on what’s urgent and important in the short term

There's no-one to tie their tactics together

And the pipeline and lead quality suffer

Stark contrast: we are able to demonstrate case studies of repeatable, consistent growth for our B2B SaaS clients. Examples:

- Grew SQLs to over 130 demos per month through Facebook Ads
- Increased ranking 70% for 21 strategic keywords
- Free trial signups up 64% month on month

We did that by creating the Predictable Growth Methodology

You can see the exact 8 steps we take clients through to grow free trials, signups, demos and revenue here:

https://www.poweredbysearch.com/the-predictable-growth-methodology/

Or alternatively, if you're a B2B SaaS with strong revenues and good product market fit, you can book a SaaS Scale Session to see how we'd do it for you:

https://www.poweredbysearch.com/assessment/

Also: follow me

I tweet about how to grow your B2B SaaS with strong marketing strategy

How We Became the World's Most Specialized B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

A list of B2B SaaS website faux-pas (thread) 👇🏾

Not having dedicated features pages.

Seriously, what's up with this? Does adding one paragraph of information per feature and sticking them all on the same page do the hard work on your product justice? 

One page for each feature, please.

Not using high-res product imagery

I don't know who came up with the idea that flat-svg based imagery would be better, but they literally don't tell the user anything about the product. 

Show off the a-ha shot for each feature.

Not having use case pages 

Prospects who aren't solution-aware but are problem-aware need to find these types of pages. A use case page demonstrates how to solve a problem.

Showcase the struggling moment that someone would type into Google to find your product.

Not having a who's it for page 

Prospects care about some features but not all features. Daily users care about speed, managers care about certainty, and check signers care about insight and ROI. 

Tag your features and copy/paste them on these pages.

Not having competitor comparison pages

Prospects who haphazardly buy products usually aren't high LTV customers. They churn because they didn't understand the product and switch to a competitor. 

If you don't control the narrative, someone else will.

Not having a "why us" page

The sum is greater than its part. Prospects don't just buy a single feature or two, they buy the transformation that the product suite offers as a whole.

Not including in-content CTA's on blog posts 

A lot of SaaS companies have blog posts with related links, end of article CTAs (which can get ignored) and don't link to the feature, use case, or trial/demo pages within their content. 

👏🏾 Make this part of your playbook now.

Not linking from their help docs (on their help desk subdomain) back to CTAs

Every technical piece of content is an opportunity to drive trials and demos by linking with a CTA within or at the book-ends of the content. 

Surprised so few SaaS co's do this.

More on this here https://www.poweredbysearch.com/blog/saas-website-best-practices/