Nash Haywood

Incorporating experimentation and A/B testing into growth marketing strategies is key for driving sustained growth. Without it, marketing results often plateau quickly. Here’s a 6-step process I’ve used in the past to structure a conversion rate optimization program around. Step 1 - Hypothesis Formation In this initial step, pinpoint crucial variables that influence user engagement and construct hypotheses regarding potential changes and their outcomes. * Identify Key Variables: Recognize the key variables (like webpage layout, email subject lines, ad creatives) that you think have a significant impact on user engagement or conversion. * Develop Hypotheses: Formulate hypotheses based on your observations, analytics data, or customer feedback, predicting how changes in these variables might affect the outcomes. Step 2 - Designing Experiments Here, the focus is on developing different variants based on the formed hypotheses, establishing a control group, and setting up appropriate analytics tools to track the performance metrics accurately. * Creating & Develop Variants: Create different variants of the webpage, email, or ad, incorporating the changes as per your hypotheses. * Control Group: Maintain a control group where no changes are made, to compare the results with the variants. * Define Key Metrics: Set up key metrics (like click-through rate, conversion rate, etc.) that will help you evaluate the performance of each variant. * Setting Up Analytics: Ensure that analytics tools are set up correctly to accurately track the performance metrics. Step 3 - Conducting Experiments During this phase, conduct the experiments by segregating the audience into different groups and launching all variants simultaneously to avoid time-based biases, ensuring a fair test. * Randomized Split Testing: Divide the audience randomly into different groups, each group being exposed to one variant. * Simultaneous Launch: Launch all the variants simultaneously to prevent any time-based biases from affecting the results. Step 4 - Data Collection and Analysis This step entails meticulous data collection and analysis to discern the most effective variant, followed by deriving insights to comprehend customer preferences and documenting the findings for future reference. * Collect Data: Gather data on how each variant performed based on the defined metrics. * Analyze Results: Analyze the data to find out which variant performed the best and if the differences are statistically significant. * Draw Insights: Draw insights from the experiment results, understanding customer preferences and behaviors. * Document Learnings: Document the learnings from each experiment to build a knowledge base for future reference. Step 5 - Implementation and Optimization At this point, your focus is implement any successful test, engage in continuous optimization based on the learnings, and accelerate growth by repeating the testing process with new hypotheses. * Implement Changes: Implement the changes based on the winning variant to optimize your marketing strategies. * Continuous Optimization: Use the learnings to continuously optimize and improve your marketing strategies. * Scale Successful Experiments: Scale up the successful experiments to a larger audience to maximize the benefits. * Iterative Process: Make experimentation an iterative process, continuously testing new hypotheses to foster growth. Step 6 - Knowledge Sharing Lastly, foster a data-driven culture within the organization by sharing the learnings with the team, encouraging collaboration, innovation, and developing a flexible marketing strategy adaptable based on the insights gathered from the experiments. * Share Learnings: Share the learnings with your team to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making. * Collaborative Approach: Encourage a collaborative approach where team members can propose new hypotheses for testing. * Fostering Innovation: Foster a culture of experimentation within the organization, encouraging innovation and agility. * Adaptability: Develop an adaptable marketing strategy that can pivot based on the insights from the experiments. By following this structured approach to experimentation and A/B testing, you can effectively incorporate them into your growth marketing strategies, driving improved results and fostering sustainable growth.

Growth marketing and demand generation are both essential facets of a comprehensive marketing strategy an while there are some similarities, they focus on different areas, utilize unique tactics and are measured differently. Here’s how I think about it and would break down the differences: Scope and Focus * Growth Marketing: It is a broader strategy that encompasses a wide range of tactics and channels to not only attract customers but also retain them, aiming to increase the lifetime value (net retention rate) of customers and foster brand advocacy. It involves a data-driven approach to all aspects of the customer lifecycle — a combination of customer acquisition, expansion and retention with a focus on revenue at all stages. * Demand Generation: This is more focused on generating interest and awareness about the company's products or services. The primary goal is to create a demand for the product in the market, targeting potential customers at the top and middle of the sales funnel. Tactics and Strategies * Growth Marketing: Utilizes a mix of content marketing, SEO, social media marketing, email marketing, A/B testing, and more, aiming to grow the business sustainably through iterative improvements and experiments. * Demand Generation: Involves tactics like inbound marketing, content creation, paid advertising, webinars, and events to stir interest and create buzz around the product or service in the market. Metrics and KPIs * Growth Marketing: Measures success using a variety of metrics including Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), retention rate, churn rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS), focusing on long-term growth. * Demand Generation: Focuses on short-term metrics such as lead generation, conversion rates, and the number of new opportunities created, tracking the immediate impact of campaigns on generating interest and demand. Target Audience * Growth Marketing: Targets a broader audience, including prospects, existing customers, and even past customers, aiming to nurture relationships and build a community around the brand. * Demand Generation: Primarily targets potential customers, focusing on attracting quality leads that can be nurtured into customers, usually working at the top of the sales funnel. Customer Journey * Growth Marketing: Engages customers at every stage of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy, focusing on providing value and building long-term relationships. * Demand Generation: Focuses mainly on the early stages of the customer journey, aiming to create awareness and generate interest to move potential customers through the sales funnel. In summary, while there is an overlap between growth marketing and demand generation, growth marketing has a broader scope, focusing on long-term sustainable growth through customer acquisition, expansion and retention, while demand generation is more centered on generating interest and creating a demand for the products or services in the market.

Building a successful growth marketing team involves a number of key roles which vary based on team size, product and growth strategy. Here are some essential roles to consider: * Head of Growth: Responsible for developing and executing the comprehensive growth marketing strategy. This individual should be data-driven, analytical, and proficient in identifying growth opportunities across various marketing channels. * Product Manager: Collaborates closely with the growth marketer to manage the product or services promoted by the marketing team, ensuring it meets the needs of the target audience and holds a strong market position. * Data Analyst: Analyzes data from diverse sources to identify trends and areas needing improvement, thereby aiding in the formulation of informed marketing strategies. * Content Marketer: Creates engaging content that attracts and retains customers across various platforms such as blogs, social media, and email. * User Acquisition Specialist: This person is a do-er. Drives traffic and user acquisition through channels like paid advertising, SEO, and social media, with a focus on targeting the right audience for the product or service. * Conversion Rate Optimization Specialist: Optimizes websites or landing pages to enhance the conversion rate, using methods like A/B testing to improve user experience and increase customer conversions. * Marketing Automation Specialist: Automation is key for efficient growth. This role builds and manages automation tools to streamline marketing processes and enhance efficiency. * Developer: Ensures the flawless execution of the technical aspects of the growth strategy, working closely with other team members to implement technical solutions effectively. * UX Designer: Focuses on aligning the strategy with the needs and behaviors of the target audience, playing a crucial role in optimizing user experiences and customer journeys. * Integrated Campaign Marketer: Focuses on creating and executing integrated marketing campaigns that align with the overall growth strategy, leveraging various channels and touchpoints to drive engagement and conversions. To build the right team, here’s a few other things I would keep in mind: * Prioritize culture fit and work ethic when hiring: Hire people who align with the company's values and can work well with the existing team. Good skills are important, but the right attitude and values are the most critical. A-players with bad attitudes bring down the whole team. * Foster a growth mentality: Create a culture where experimentation and learning are the norms. Your team doesn’t always have to be right. Failure should be seen as an opportunity to learn, not something to avoid. * Create opportunities for collaboration and co-creation: Encourage team members to work together to develop solutions. Open communication and active listening should be standard practice. Build informal pairings within the team to maximize speed and impact of key projects. * Invest in professional development and shared learning systems: Encourage team members to improve their skills through relevant training, workshops, and mentorship programs. Make resources available for self-guided learning while also asking the team to contribute to a centralized platform where everyone shares their learnings. * Be extremely clear around goals and ownership: Set up clear systems for tracking performance and providing feedback. Your teams’ job is to grow the business so make it clear what is expected and put systems in place to monitor attainment of goals.

I've found that using a double-funnel approach to be one of the best ways to balance -- it helps align your team on goals, outcomes and other critical components to growth. The Double Funnel approach focuses on both high-value accounts and always-on marketing channels, and the combination helps improve overall sales and marketing performance. Aligning to key performance metrics with this approach is key as there are significant changes in outputs when transitioning from a lead-gen focus to an account-based approach in terms of volume (goes down) and pipeline conversion rates (goes up). However, because these buyers have more intent to engage with you and are the key personas at your predetermined target accounts, you end up having stronger revenue performance and overall sales. This post from Metadata breaks down the math behind the double funnel very well. The last critical piece is the alignment of the rest of the revenue team to support an account-based approach across the rest of the GTM team -- this includes key B2B functions like sales development, sales, growth marketing and campaigns. If the rest of the team is not aligned to the goals and how the team will work together, it will be difficult to get adoption across the rest of your organization. If you want to focus on getting something started, I'd recommend launching a program pilot for 1-2 quarters with a small list of initial accounts you work with sales to create and a marketing investment strategy to reach those accounts. Measure performance based on success at your target account list and adjust the approach as you learn more. Shift budget and investment decisions as your strategy and execution improves.

Absolutely, there are several tactics from demand generation strategies that can be repurposed effectively to focus on retention and expansion with minimal effort. In fact, many SaaS marketing teams are now finding themselves handling both acquisition and expansion efforts, tasked with repurposing various demand generation strategies to not only draw in new customers but also retain and grow their existing customer base. Here are a few strategies that easily transfer between acquisition and expansion along with a few thoughts on how to make them work for your team: 1. Content Marketing: Creating educational webinars, tutorials, and workshops can help in educating existing customers about advanced features, updates, or new product lines, encouraging them to explore and use your SaaS product more extensively. 2. Marketing Automation: Utilize automated marketing campaigns - behavioral and drip-based campaigns are not just for nurturing leads but also for onboarding new customers, providing them with valuable resources and tips, and keeping them engaged with regular updates and news. 3. Personalized and Highly Segmented Campaigns: Segment your customer base based on usage patterns, preferences, or industries and create personalized marketing campaigns targeting each segment, offering them relevant solutions and opportunities for upgrades or cross-sells. 4. User Conferences and Workshop Events: Organize user conferences, webinars, and workshops to foster a community of users where they can learn, network, and share their experiences, thereby fostering loyalty and encouraging expansions. 5. Customer Success Consultation - Similar to consultive selling, account executives and customer success teams can proactively engage with customers, understanding their needs and goals, and offering them solutions and strategies to achieve goals. Improve this process by offering 6. Feedback Loops: Create feedback loops to regularly collect customer insights and suggestions, and involve them in the product development process, making them feel valued and encouraging them to stay with your brand. 7. Case Studies, Testimonials and Customer Stories: Share success stories and testimonials from existing customers to not only attract new customers but also to showcase the value your product brings, encouraging existing customers to explore further. 8. Community Building & Online Communities: Foster online communities where customers can interact with each other, share knowledge and best practices, thus encouraging peer-to-peer learning and fostering a loyal customer base. 9. Paid Acquisition For Cross-Selling and Up-Selling: Utilize retargeting ads to cross-sell or up-sell to existing customers, showcasing related products or features that they might be interested in.

Planning for and setting channel-specific goals in B2B is complex due to most channels being used at multiple stages of the funnel, creating a complexity in planning how to invest and evaluate performance. I’ve found these things to be most helpful when setting channel-specific goals across different types of teams, funnel stages and business models: * Only set goals that align teams cross-functionally and tie to the true key business objectives - Before setting channel-specific goals, it's essential to align on revenue generating outcomes in terms of pipeline and recurring revenue. These could be to increase the overall pipeline by 30% or drive growth of $1MM ARR a new industry or international market you might be entering. Ensuring your goals are aligned means you’re all working towards the right outcome and there are no gaps in the overall plan. Now, your job is to create the right mix of marketing channels to contribute directly to these broader goals in a measured way. * Define channel role in your full-funnel media mix: Next, identify the role each channel plays in your marketing strategy. For example, paid social may be more focused on specific account list awareness and engagement, while email marketing might be a key driver of growth marketing metrics like pipeline and inbound lead flow. Every company is very different for what actually works most effectively. This is to be expected and as you learn more about what works you have to adjust quickly. I’ve found it extremely helpful to whiteboard all of your marketing programs and identify where your next investment priorities might be. * Use attribution to support analysis of marketing programs at different stages of the funnel - Now that you know exactly what your full-funnel investments strategy looks like, you can use attribution to analyze performance. One powerful approach here is to use different models at each stage of the funnel to understand the true impact. Almost all B2B marketing teams are too caught up in what channel and campaign is driving a fractional part of growth that they miss the big picture. Set attribution goals of first touch (FT) for brand awareness efforts, lead creation (LC) for engagement focused campaigns and opportunity creation (OC) across your marketing investments. Each channel can function in multiple ways and this full-funnel view of performance helps identify big areas for improvement. * Adjust your marketing strategy to reflect the goals of each stage and commit to measure that way - Now that you’ve allocated your marketing programs in those three areas, you can focus on the actual goals of your marketing -- building awareness, driving engagement or creating pipeline. You should work to build a bottoms-up plan with your team that creates a data-driven model for contribution from each marketing program and stage of the funnel to hit your overall goal. Your channel marketing and campaign leaders should tell you that they should be able to hit the goal and how. If not, they’ll need to be adjusted and accounted for quickly until all of the “math” works. * Set specific KPIs and channel goals as part of employee compensation: Your revenue, demand gen or performance marketing team’s KPIs should be linked directly to a revenue outcome, ideally qualified pipeline / product signups, that overlaps with other areas of the business that are supported by those metrics. Your team’s compensation should involve being aligned directly to the goals set “top-down” from the executive leaders/board within your organization. * Benchmark your performance with internal and external sources: Use historical data to define your internal benchmarks and 3rd-party sources like industry studies, other marketers you network with and a benchmarking tool to inform your goal-setting process. A marketing benchmark product like Varos can also be helpful for reviewing industry-specific acquisition metrics to ensure your funnel is performing comparable to the market. * Constantly measure and optimize channel performance to drive growth: Be prepared to adjust your goals as you start executing your strategy and collecting data on your performance. Use revenue analytics tools (Adobe Measure, Google Analytics, HockeyStack, etc) to regularly track and measure your performance against the goals you've set for each channel and your overall marketing program. If a channel is underperforming, analyze why that might be and adjust your strategy accordingly. On the other hand, if a channel is performing particularly well, consider whether there are ways to further optimize your efforts or whether similar strategies could be applied to your other channels. * Analyze investments by marketing program and not channel-level -- When looking at investment in each area, you should adjust expectations for the time frame to get accurate data (brand awareness efforts can take 6 to 12 months to really show up in your data) to support your decision making. Try to avoid getting too caught up in the details of marketing attribution as B2B buyers often interact with many different channels during the buying cycle -- in fact, this means your marketing is working. Tuning your overall marketing program is like balancing an investment portfolio -- it’s really the sum of all parts and you need to focus on net-gain over specific periods of time. Your channels help guide the way, but are not the way to measure growth. Remember, each channel is part of the larger demand gen program and all of the associated goals. It's important not just to set and achieve goals for individual channels, but also to have these channels work together to achieve your overall revenue target. No one will be happy that your digital marketing team hit it's goal, but marketing missed it's broader goals. 

Switching from a sales-led to a product-led go-to-market (GTM) motion is a significant transition that necessitates adjustments across various facets of your marketing strategy. Here's how different components might change: * Content and Messaging - While sales-led strategies prioritize sales presentations and case studies emphasizing the value proposition, product-led approaches focus on developing product tutorials and walkthroughs to showcase specific features and functionalities. * Lead qualification - The sales-led approach primarily nurtures Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) through a structured and linear sales funnel, whereas the product-led approach shifts to identifying Product Qualified Leads (PQLs) based on genuine product interaction and engagement. * Customer journey mapping - In a sales-led approach, the customer journey is often linear and facilitated by the sales team, contrasting with the product-led approach where the journey is more flexible, allowing prospects to explore and engage with the product at their own pace. With a product-led go-to-market strategy, it’s critical you leverage user-based analytics to identify the behaviors that occur within the product to help personalize how your team markets to multiple cohorts of accounts and users. * Sales and marketing alignment - Sales and marketing alignment in sales-led strategies involve distinct roles with a focus on lead handover, while product-led strategies blur the boundaries between the two, necessitating integrated efforts to encourage product adoption and user growth. * Customer engagement - Customer engagement in a sales-led environment is generally formal and structured with communications spearheaded by the sales team; on the other hand, product-led strategies foster organic, product-centric engagement, nurturing community building and customer advocacy. * Marketing metrics and KPIs - While sales-led strategies focus on metrics revolving around leads, opportunities, and conversions, product-led approaches shift the emphasis towards user-centric Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like product usage, engagement, and customer satisfaction. * Budget allocation - In terms of budget allocation, sales-led strategies allocate a significant portion to sales team operations and activities, in contrast to product-led strategies which direct more resources towards product development and enhancing the user experience. * Feedback and iteration - Feedback and iteration in sales-led strategies are generally collected through sales interactions for incremental improvements, whereas product-led strategies involve continuous feedback from actual product usage, which is swiftly integrated into product enhancements and developments. Overall, transitioning to a product-led GTM motion involves fostering a culture of customer-centricity, where the product itself becomes the primary driver of growth, and marketing strategies are realigned to support and enhance user experiences. It's about shifting from "selling" to "serving," where the product value is demonstrated through actual usage rather than the sales process.

Offline channels are a good way to standout and diversify your marketing mix. I've found that direct mail is a great way to get started and can be core to an effective and personalized 1:1 or 1:few ABM strategy, especially if you have an interesting direct mail piece. Here's a blog post from Sendoso with a few dozen examples for direct mail ideas to add into your campaigns. Direct mail is much easier to tie to revenue within a typical demand gen organization. For OOH like billboards or street signage, this is a bit harder to execute against a typical B2B target persona however, if you can find short-term placement around a venue of a major conference your team or industry attends, this is a great way to ensure your market will see you. Many times, using the billboard as a focal point of an integrated campaign will provide extra impact from a brand investment. While OOH is harder to measure and tie to revenue, it does provide a good option for teams with larger budgets or scrappy startups that can get extra mileage from it.

Most teams should do this regularly and I’d recommend quarterly. This allows for adjustments based on the performance of the previous quarter and alignment with the sales team to ensure the leads are indeed qualified over a large enough sample size. Goals are typically set quarterly, so this also allows for adjustment there as well. It’s important to note that your criteria for marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and marketing qualified accounts (MSAs) should be separate. Here’s a few other considerations for when to make adjustments * After Major Campaigns: Every big campaign creates new data and insights that can be used to fine-tune the criteria for MQLs and MQAs. For example, your campaign may be effective and more prospects are moving directly to consideration stage — you don’t want to have a lead scoring rule for multiple engagements blocking them from proceeding to your sales team. * Product Launches: You will see increases in demand and lead flow around major product launches. You might see an increase from different or new customer segments, which may push your team to make adjustments to the definitions. * Sales Feedback: Constant feedback from the sales team is crucial. If the sales team notices a a decrease in the quality of leads or accounts, it might be time to revisit and possibly refine your definitions to align better with the sales targets and needs. * Changes in Marketing Strategy: If you make adjustments in how your team is going to market, investing more in other areas, you’ll want to review lead scoring to ensure that you are meeting the goals to provide your sales team with enough coverage to * Market Shifts: If you see a significant shift in your market, it’s likely a good time to revisit your criteria. Let’s see recently legislation has either increased or decreased demand… you will want to adjust to ensure the sales team is working * Annual Review: Whenever you are setting goals or readjusting budgets, you should review your qualification criteria. Remember, the goal is to have a definition that helps in identifying leads or accounts that have a higher probability of becoming customers, facilitating a smoother and more productive sales process. It's about maintaining a balance between frequency and necessity, ensuring that you revisit the definitions as often as needed to keep them relevant and effective, without causing disruption or inconsistency in your marketing strategies.

Generally, adding as much spend to the lower portion of the marketing funnel (aka demand capture) will typically result in high ROI on paper but sacrifices the upside effective brand marketing provides. Typically I recommend maximizing paid and organic search budget to capture all in-market buyers (product interest searches) and building a marketing funnel to convert it. Understanding the total number of search impressions (demand) and your ideal customer profile (unique companies and people with these job titles that would buy your product) to estimate your potential share of voice for your market. Allocating as much of your budget as possible to these programs is likely to result in the highest short-term ROI. Combining this effort with brand marketing (demand creation) will typically result in the strongest ROI, so definitely do both as soon as your budget allows!