LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and morePete Caputa chats with Joe Sullivan to learn how he grew Gorilla 76 by offering focused, specialized services for a specific niche.Links:Follow JoeCheck out Gorilla 76

LinksTry Benchmarks ExplorerLearn More About DataboxSubscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and moreIn this episode, Mason Cosby - founder of Scrappy ABM, shares the importance of aligning marketing and sales strategies for business growth. If want to learn more about ABM or want a way to start small and run a "lean ABM program", this episode is for you.LinksFollow MasonBook a call with Scrappy ABM

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more Learn how Rachel Whitehead (VP Marketing, ChartMogul) and her team leveraged internal data to create valuable content that drove brand awareness, traffic, and signups.Links Follow Rachel Try ChartMogul

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more James Robert Lay, founder and CEO of Digital Growth Institute, shares his journey of building a successful consulting practice focused on helping banks and credit unions improve their sales and marketing efforts.Links: Follow James Robert Lay Visit Digital Growth Institute

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more Get insights from our recent survey with Karl Sakas, to learn how 200+ agencies are marketing themselves.Links: Sakas & Company Follow Karl

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more We go behind the benchmarks to learn how Lauren Ryan, owner of Coastal Consulting, transitioned from managing a team to serving as a niche solo marketing consultant who booked more than $300k in revenue this year.Links Follow Lauren on LinkedIn Visit Coastal Consulting

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more Kevin Lord Barry shares how to track leading indicators in your paid ads to more accurately know what results you'll see when the deals finally close months later.Links Follow Kevin Hire Kevin (or learn more)

Links Try Benchmarks Explorer Learn More About Databox Subscribe to our newsletter for episode summaries, benchmark data, and more Sam Kuehnle shares a 3-step plan for marketers who need to drive more growth, with less budget and resources.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Pete Caputa and Yoram Wijngaarde share lessons they learned, building companies from $1 to $10 million in ARR. If you liked the episode, share a takeaway you learned on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Pasha Irshad unpacks how he helps SaaS companies drive growth through customer-centric marketing,  data-driven RevOps, and agile demand generation.Links Hire Shape&Scale Follow Pasha If you liked the episode, share a takeaway you learned on LinkedIn!

Register for the panel discussion: "What we've learned about growing from $1M to $10M"Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Kyle Lacy shares a powerful framework to drive alignment across go-to-market team, so they aim at the same target together.Links Follow Kyle Visit Jellyfish If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Register for the panel discussion: "What we've learned about growing from $1M to $10M"Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode, Casey Hill shares a 6-step framework to help you use email to improve activations during the onboarding phase.Links: Follow Casey Try ActiveCampaign If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Jen Spencer (CEO of SmartBug) shares how they've grown by serving the right clients, with the right services, managed by the right team. Learn how this segmentation has been a huge factor in their success, and get insights you can use at your company.Links Explore Databox Benchmarks Follow Jen Learn more about SmartBug If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Blake Strozyk shares a 3-step framework you can use to test, build, and scale an efficient paid ad program for your business.Links Follow Blake Hire Blake If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode, Pete Caputa interviews Doug Davidoff, CEO of Lift Enablement, to learn how he grew revenue by 3x by going after bigger contracts from bigger companies.Links: Follow Doug Lift Enablement The HubSopt benchmark group If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.You probably have a niche group of customers who love your product or service. Mary shares how to identify who they are, and how to attract more of them, to grow your business year over year.Links Follow Mary Map My Customers If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn a better way to do marketing and sales, by partnering with your target customers.Links: Create your own private benchmark group Read the "Collaborative Growth" article If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode, Alina Vandenberghe (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Chili Piper) shares how she drives predictable growth by using a framework she calls “predictable orchestration” - the idea that GTM is not 1 motion, from 1 team, on 1 stage of the funnel, but rather, orchestrating all motions (paid, outbound, field events, etc.) at all touchpoints, for all personas involved in the buying committee.   If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn a step-by-step strategy you can use to reduce churn at your B2B company. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn steps you can take to increase revenue and grow more efficiently.  If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more. View YouTube benchmarks for B2B here Check out Ahrefs' YouTube channel If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Prashant Kaw shares three principles your company should embrace, in order to make the most of your demand gen efforts.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Prashant Kaw shares three principles your company should embrace, in order to make the most of your demand gen efforts. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how to drive more predictable demand by identifying who your best customers are. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Sean Burke shares 7 areas where companies experience revenue leaks, and how to monitor and address them. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Many B2B companies could leverage data-driven insights from their customer lifecycle journey to hone their marketing strategy, improve retention, and increase revenue. The key is to think like a Rev Ops professional, even if you don’t have one on your team. Sam Bowley, an experienced Rev Ops executive, shares how B2B leaders can do this. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Fill out the form here to let us know how we can make the podcast more valuable for you! If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Marcus Sheridan (Partner at Impact, Author of They Ask, You Answer) gives an incredible breakdown of how B2B companies can create content that answers prospective customers' objections, questions, and concerns, in order to build trust and increase sales. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode, we explore how a B2B company can grow its newsletter subscribers, and tackle issues like send frequency, list maintenance, what content you write about, and more.Links Mailchimp Benchmark data The Sauce newsletter Follow Tara If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how Amrita Mathur (VP Marketing) has helped Superside grow to $45m in 4 years, using a combination of short and long-term planning. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Our benchmark data shows that for B2B companies, the median cost per click (CPC) is $1.52, while the median cost per conversion is $65.16. At face value, most B2B companies who want to capture existing demand among high-intent prospects could see a great ROI on search ads. So I sat down with Google Ads expert Silvio Perez to ask: who are the best for? How can you know if you'll get a good ROI? And what are the factors that make them successful or unsuccessful? Links View the benchmark data Follow Silvio If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Gaetano DiNardi shares what many companies get wrong when they analyze website performance and traffic, and steps you can take to better know and serve your visitors.Gaetano is a growth advisor to top B2B companies like Gong, Cognism, Workvivo, Aura, Pipedrive, Nextiva. He has 8+ years of demand gen leadership for high-growth SaaS companies, with expertise in optimizing websites and scaling organic growth machines. He's also a musician, writer, and entrepreneur and has been published on HBR, Fast Company, NASDAQ, HubSpot, and more. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Our benchmark data shows that it’s relatively inexpensive to run impression-focused ads on LinkedIn. We explore the topic, “should more companies try this? And can they run profitable ads for just $3k/mo?”Links View the benchmark data Follow JD Hire Impactable If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Andres Glusman (CEO, DoWhatWorks) shares a simple framework to help you run more successful growth experiments, and save time and money. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how Nextiva's Mark Jung drives predictable growth by finding his brand's white space, building a media arm to communicate it, and being different - not better. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how Adam Robinson found product-market fit and bootstrapped Retention.com from $0 to $15m+ ARR. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Adam Goyette (Founder, Curdis) shares the framework he uses and recommends to identify growth and optimization opportunities from your existing marketing and sales funnel. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how Frank Rocchio implemented a new framework to help the team at Lone Fir Creative better understand how to troubleshoot and hit their growth goals. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Learn how Bob Ruffalo was able to grow IMPACT, a coaching and training company that helps businesses improve their sales, marketing, communication, and leadership, into a $12m firm that's in the top 93rd-100th percentile of his agency peers. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Learn how Ryan O'Hara uses data to validate product ideas, and double down on the marketing channels there are already working.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Do you have trouble setting goals at your company? Or that you don't have any real control over hitting them? Learn how Brandon Powell (CEO of HatchWorks) implemented a new goal-setting process to lead his team to their best quarter ever. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Benyamin Elias, VP of Marketing at Podia, shares how to have a well-informed marketing gut and how to use KPIs to inform the growth of your business.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Read the full report (here)Pete's LinkedIn Posts Most companies are still cutting and pasting into spreadsheets/slides Picking metrics is hard. Few do it correctly. Marketing is the most measured activity. Is that a good thing?  Sharing company performance transparently is not the standard, but it probably should be. Seven habits the highest performing companies implemented. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Get insights from Community-Led Founder Mike Rizzo, on how to start and grow a successful community that drives meaningful growth to your business.

Learn how Hillary Carpio (Sr. Dir. of ABM at Snowflake) uses “Process KPIs” to ensure her team can create sustainable, repeatable processes that help them hit their goals.

Learn how Camille Trent used LinkedIn to double email subscribers from 6k to 12k in just 1 month.

Learn how Peyton Walbeck increased Nectar's landing page conversion by 55% in 30 days.

Thanks for a great 2022! A few updates from the Databox team, as we wrap up this year.

Learn how Refine Labs uses their new Revenue R&D method to build new, sustainable revenue streams for clients.

Learn how Brendan Hufford (founder of Growth Sprints) grew ActiveCampaign’s traffic by 20% (in just 30 days).

Learn how Nate Turner and his team at Ten Speed were able to help their B2B SaaS Client increase monthly traffic by 313% and double free trial signups.

Learn the framework Kristina Simonson is using to structure the marketing functions, mission statements, and KPIs at Privy.

Learn how Casey Hill, Head of Growth at Bonjorno, used personalized video to 2x trial conversion signup.

Learn how Dee Acosta sourced 50% of all his deals via outbound, and his approach to differentiation, cold outreach, and more.

Learn how Nick Bennett drove 83 G2 reviews in 1 quarter, in order to drive signups, improve retention, build social proof and tons more.

Learn how Rand Fishkin and the team at SparkToro thinks about the value of so-called "vanity metrics", and uses zero-click content to build their social following and drive signups from social.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.How They Moved The Needle1. They boosted retention by offering a discount for the next year, and the ability to pause (vs cancel) a plan.When travel screeched to a halt and churn started to ramp up, the CEO and his team focused on retention. They prevented it in two ways:If things were going OK for customers, they could upgrade for another year at a discount. If they weren’t, rather than canceling and losing data, they could simply pause their account.This also showed customers that the company had there back, and would support them.2. She updated messaging and value props the client led with, based on customer research.The old messaging focused on value props around reliability and value. Asia did customer research to learn the “job” customers were hiring the product for, and what they valued most. In her research, she found that these value props didn’t resonate with customers like they did before.The market had changed, and so did the needs and beliefs of the customers. She found customers still wanted reliability, but they really valued things like: Innovative features Things they hadn’t considered before Help tackling other problems their businesses faced After she completed the customer research, Asia crafted new value props, centered around how the product would: Work with customers Help them grow Be in their corner your corner Release innovative features 3. She updated the Client’s Google ads campaigns to better reflect the new messaging and value props.4. She completely redesigned the Client’s website.In her research, she found customers weren’t choosing the Client because the “marketing wasn’t as pretty”. One respondent actually said, “you guys didn’t look as cool as the other options.” Other competitors looked newer, more professional looking, or more modern. It was also hard to tell the difference between the Client’s site with all the lookalike competitors, touting the same solution.Through research, they found they were often the last product people tried. And because users would try 2 or 3 competitors first, they’d often end up signing up with them instead. Asia wanted them to stand out, resonate, and be the first product they tried.So they overhauled the design, opting for a darker, bolder theme to stand out from the competition (who mostly did light, lookalike designs). This had a huge psychological effect on buyers. The Client stood out, and customers would remember the site and experience better.4. They updated the website with new messaging that showcased the new value props they discovered.The old messaging centered around being reliable, easy to use, and convenient to connect everything you needed. The new messaging centered around being a platform that would help you grow, innovate new features to solve ongoing problems, had flexible pricing, and would always be in your corner. This included updating the signup flow, pricing page, and messaging on the homepage.5. They hired an SEO agency to build organic traffic.Asia had helped build a foundation for content, so when the SEO agency came in, they started increasing 10% month over month.6. They overhauled the onboarding emails.They went through several versions of onboarding emails, with the goal of getting the customer to value realization as fast as possible.7. They helped the Client improve the signup flow to reduce friction and get users to value realization faster.Asia identified and changed steps in the signup process that were causing friction, and contributing to a lack of activation.ResultsThey increased MRR by 10x in just 2 years, organic traffic by 10-30% month over month, and doubled website conversions (largely due to the overhaul in their design and messaging). If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Insights Tim Shared1. If you aim at improving a metric, your strategy will be optimized to hit that metric. And that might not be in the best interest of your company.This often happens in marketing. Teams will hit their KPI, even if the work isn’t driving more important results down-funnel. For example, Tim said if he were charged with driving more leads ( = email addresses), CTAs and email signup forms would be everywhere across their content. He’d succeed in driving more leads and hit his KPI, but would compromise good user experience and brand in the process.2. Have values you won’t compromise on, even to hit the most important metrics.Revenue is one of the few metrics they do track and work to grow. But even that, they won’t compromise their values for. For example, they don’t believe in retargeting. They don’t want to invade users’ privacy and follow people around the web just because they’ve visited the site. Tim knows they’re leaving money on the table by refusing to do it, but it’s more important to maintain their values.3. When you lack clear data, use a “common sense” approach to marketing by observing human behavior.In the early days, Tim went to a conference wearing an Ahrefs t-shirt. A customer introduced himself, and then took Tim around talking up Ahrefs to their friends. Almost every time he introduced Tim to someone, he’d say: “their English isn’t the best, and their copy is a little rough… but they have the best data in the industry.” Tim realized the main message he needed to lead with: Ahrefs was the best because they had the best data. He came home, and immediately updated the messaging on the homepage to center around them having the best data in the industry.4. Understand your content has ripple effects you won’t be able to measure.A piece of content that gets traffic, talks about your product, and is helpful to readers, can’t not bring value. You often won’t see it drive immediate, direct signups. But behind the scenes, people are referencing it, sharing it, and coming back to it, and all of that is driving increased brand awareness, affinity, and trust. Most great content has “ripple effects” which are hard (or impossible) to measure, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable.5. Much of the value of brand marketing is the “Exposure Effect”.The more people see/hear you > the more they “know” you > the more they trust you.6. Use content to reduce strain on customer support.Ahrefs serves tens of thousands of paying users, and hundreds of thousands of free ones, with a handful of support staff. How? Content.Obviously, they have a great, easy-to-use product. But they’ve also invested heavily in creating educational content (via YouTube, articles, etc.). These have worked so well, they’re able to handle 100’s of thousands of users with a dozen or so support staff.7. Measure things that will help you make actionable decisions.Many teams measure things just because they can be measured. But when looking at the data, you should ask yourself: “so what?” If a number dips, or spikes, so what? What action will it drive?8. If you decided to invest time and money in creating new features or content, you should put time and money into promoting them.“If you cannot justify spending money to promote your content, how did you justify your effort to create it in the first place?” Tim says many companies invest lots of time and money in creating new content, but then never pay to extend its reach. Often, for just a fraction more than what they invested in creating it, they could amplify it to the right audience.9. Use the “Business Potential” metric to help you determine what content you should create, and prioritize.Business Potential = a score from 0 to 3, which gauges how easy it would be to promote a product, naturally & helpfully, in a piece of content. Here’s how to use it… 3 = your product is an irreplaceable solution to solve this problem (topic of “backlink research” for Ahrefs) 2 = your product helps a lot, but isn’t essential 1 = you can mention the product, but it’s not related to solving the issue 0 = no way to squeeze in a mention For every idea in your “potential content” list, grade each one from 0 to 3.10. Make sure your content creators are excited to tackle a topic.Tim doesn’t want to force topics on writers. Most anyone can tackle a given topic, but they have to be genuinely excited to write about it. This results in better content, and happier creators.11. Embrace holistic keyword research.For Ahrefs, every piece of content still starts with keyword research to ensure they’re writing about a topic people engage with. But keyword research can mean a lot more than using a tool:Holistic keyword research includes: talking to peers listening to sales calls reading questions on social scanning Reddit ResultsWhile Ahrefs may not measure a bunch of metrics or KPIs, there’s one they do measure: revenue. They just crossed $100m in annual recurring revenue (ARR). If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.At the time, Gremlin had raised a great Series B and was growing significantly. They had product-market fit, and were looking to scale. Their goal was to make the sales and marketing funnel more efficient, so they decided to test an account-based (ABM) approach.Where many companies go wrong here, is only focusing on target account engagement: blasting targeted accounts with ads, and seeing “impressions” going up. But Peter wanted a metric that would be a leading indicator that what they were doing would pay off. So he and the team designed an engagement score metric that combined quantity and quality.The metric produced a cumulative total “engagement score” based on all contacts’ lead score, impressions, and engagement. For example, they could have 1 contact at Nike who loved them (browsed the site, downloaded content, etc.) w/ a lead score of 100. So their avg. lead score per contact and total “engagement score” would be 100. But if they attracted 9 other contacts from Nike who didn’t engage with their content, and had a lower lead score, it would bring the overall engagement score down.This provided a number of benefits. If they had content that played well among other highly engaged accounts, and it wasn’t playing well for a new target, they’d know that account might be less likely to close. Or if they found an account that had lower cumulative lead scores, they might pump the brakes and serve up more top-of-funnel content and slow down their approach.And it didn’t merely serve as an early performance indicator. They could also use their cumulative engagement score to test different channels or content that might drive all target accounts higher across the board.ResultsBy using a more holistic, custom metric to measure their ABM strategy, they saw a 50% increase in engagement among targeted accounts in just 1 quarter. They also added a few points to the marketing qualified lead (MQL) to qualified opportunity rate. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.How They Improved It1. He hosts a weekly meeting with sales to review conversion and lead health.AJ hosts a weekly meeting with sales to get continual feedback on lead quality, and to learn how many marketing-driven leads are either becoming opportunities or leading to pipeline revenue.This helps him: make sure marketing and sales are rowing in the same direction refine their ICP over time understand which campaigns are most effective, in real time For example:Sales may share that prospective healthcare clients will be facing open enrollment in a few months, and need to scale their SDR team. So AJ might decide to run a special seasonal campaign to support sales efforts.2. He made a big investment in building brand trust and awareness.AJ’s goal is establishing demandDrive’s name in the outsourced sales space, growing awareness and trust through valuable content. This contributed to a 3x increase in overall inbound leads: people that have consumed their content, but haven’t said they’d like to learn more about the service/offering (yet). They’d learn about demandDrive, but weren’t ready to learn more.3. Created a marketing automation system to nurture inbound leads, and help more of them convert to MQLs.As inbound grew, AJ realized he had a big opportunity to keep these people engaged until they decided they wanted to learn more or might be a good fit for demandDrive. Since it was primarily valuable, organic content that grabbed the prospect’s attention in the first place, AJ served them up more of the same in the nurture phase.This meant that most of the messaging they’d receive from demandDrive was just valuable content. If a prospect consumed a large amount of content (e.g. read blog posts dozens of times), or raised their hand and said they wanted to learn more, they’d be moved into the MQL stage.4. He crafted more effective sales-driven emails by studying the most effective outbound messages.Once in the “nurture” stage, prospects were mostly sent valuable content. But once in a while, they’d receive a more sales-oriented message. To make the sales-oriented messaging more impactful, AJ would find messaging that was resonating well in outbound campaigns, and adapt talking points to fit his needs in marketing.5. He started manually evaluating lead quality, and handpicking the best leads to make sure they went to sales more quickly.He’ll send those directly to sales because they look like companies that have had a lot of success with demandDrive in the past.6. He started ungating most content.AJ found that the gated content just didn’t perform better than any ungated content they’d release, so they’ve been moving to ungate just about everything. This likely contributed to the 3x increase in inbound leads they’ve seen.7. He baked in more CTAs to talk to sales, or opt-in to the marketing automation system in content.If a reader wanted to learn more, they could either opt in and join the nurture campaign (marketing automation), or get in touch directly with the sales team.ResultsAs a result, they grew Inbound Lead to MQL conversion from 40% to 60%, and MQL to SAO conversion from 52% to 73%. And in May 2022, they did more business (total new logos & revenue) than all of 2020 combined. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Going All-In on OrganicIn the first year, Emilia was the only marketer at Userpilot.They tested just about every channel to try and get early traction: paid, webinars, events… they tried everything. But she was spread thin, and attribution was hard with so many experiments. The company was growing, but she needed to focus.She joined our very own John Bonini’s content marketing community, where she got advice to just focus on what she knew was working. And what was working, was organic traffic. It drove 70% of signups at the time. So in 2021, they went all-in on organic content.How They Improved ItShe set a goal of 10x’ing article output: from publishing 4 articles per month to 40. After setting the goal, it was time to define topics and the scope of the content. By this time, they had 2 years’ worth of content, so she began to identify what was working, and what wasn’t.She divided their blog topics into content clusters, and then assigned those clusters as “bottom of funnel” (BOFU), “middle of funnel” (MOFU), or “top of funnel” (TOFU) content. She also focused on what Grow And Convert calls “Pain Point SEO”: focusing their content around the pains their customers felt, and the solutions the product provided.To help identify topics, they interviewed customers, found derivative keywords, performed a content gap analysis, and identified topics that relevant Slack groups were talking about.Then came the hard part: finding writers. They initially tried to use freelancers to handle research, writing, and a tie-in to the product. But they found it incredibly difficult since the product was fairly sophisticated.So Emilia started looking for unicorn content writers: People who wanted to work in-house, were familiar with the industry, had experience working with product teams, and were amazing writers. She eventually found them and built a small team.But after a number of months, just about all of them had left, because they wanted to grow beyond the role. They were talented, smart, and ambitious, and over time – they became burned out with only writing SEO-focused articles. Emilia concluded she needed to build a better system rather than relying on better people. This meant going back to freelancers, but this time with a new system.She built a small internal team of content editors. These in-house pros would create detailed briefs, which included the outline (links, headings, subheadings, images) and talking points (what to say, in what order, goes in each paragraph), along with additional resources. This way, freelance writers could just focus on writing, and the in-house pros could focus more on high-level strategy, and lean into their product expertise. This system allowed them to increase output to 50 high-quality articles per month.Each main topic would become a “milestone” in Asana, and each blog post would become a task. When each contributor was finished with their stage of work, they’d pass each piece of content “down” to the next stakeholder, using a kanban board. She also focused on building the most high-quality links she could, until they reached a domain authority (DA) of 70.At that point, they performed tests and found that after 15~ links to any single piece of content, there were no significant increases in search engine rankings. So rather than spend more time and money on link building to the highest domain authority sites they could find, they focused more on links from domain-relevant sites. She also started measuring which keywords were driving the most conversions.She created a few dashboards. One listed all articles and was sorted by the highest conversion rate. Another showed each article and the top keywords that the article was ranking for. And another which consolidated data of “top converting keywords”. These visuals also gave them a better of why signups might be spiking or dipping any given month.Finally, she compared how BOFU content compared to TOFU content when it came to driving conversions and found something interesting. She found if a user consumed one BOFU article and converted, they didn’t retain as well as the ones who would start at TOFU content and consume multiple pieces of content. Visitors who started on 1 piece of BOFU content typically only had 1 use case or pain they wanted to solve. This meant it was harder for them to see why they should pay a premium to buy into a platform that offers a myriad of tools to solve a myriad of problems.On the flip side, if a visitor consumed multiple pieces of MOFU or TOFU content, and converted later, they had a higher retention rate. This indicated they were likely looking to solve many problems and could make full use of the entire product.ResultsAbout 18 months after making the commitment to go all-in on high-quality, organic content, they saw exponential growth. Organic visitors grew by 299%, and conversions from organic search went up by 59%. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why a Virtual Event?The event is called IG Summit. The website is beautiful (it actually won some awards) – https://igsummit.com/. But what made Anna believe this was a bet worth making? Or put differently, how could you know if a play like this would work for you?It started by analyzing their Net Revenue Retention (NRR). They found that users who signs up via educational channels or who were looking to solve problems related to Facebook or Instagram retained at a higher rate.They also stood to get the most value out of the product. So when they set a goal to drive new signups and paid accounts, they knew that using educational content around Facebook or Instagram would be successful.Besides that, they had experience with doing events in the past, though nothing to the size they were about to aim for. May 2021 they launched Instagram Automation, and were working on a go-to-market strategy to promote it. The plan was to use paid ads. But for reasons outside their control, they didn’t perform well (like the rollout for Facebook Automation had), so they needed a new plan.So Anna and the team made a quick pivot, and a big bet. The goal was to put on the biggest virtual IG summit in the world, securing 25k registrants, and 1k new paid accounts. In the end, they ended up surpassing these goals.How They Improved It1. They figured out what content resonated with their ideal customer persona (ICP) and tried to create the best content possible for that audience.They surveyed their Facebook community of existing customers, to learn what content would be the most valuable. Then they performed research to know what topics were trending, what the market was interested in learning, and what existing content was already out there.From there, they defined 3 “levels” of content the summit would include: High-level: over-arching business lessons Mid-level: more practical application Bottom level: ManyChat experts showing how to grow business with ManyChat tools Finally, they set the niche categories they thought would resonate best, and then found speakers who could best speak to those topics. Each speaker had the freedom to formulate their talk however they wanted but was asked to stay within the topic range they had been given.2. They asked all the speakers promote the event.They encouraged all the speakers to promote the event (though not all did), and every time a speaker joined they made a series of content they’d promote across various channels.3. They used existing, and new influencers to help promote.They had some influencers they worked with before the summit, who they partnered with to promote the product. But they also brought in new ones who they hired to specifically promote the event. Generally, they found that the existing influencers (who had already promoted the product to their audience) performed better. They also found that all the influencers got better engagement by promoting the educational event, over the product directly.4. They ran paid ads, and honed in one which drove $3 registrants 🤯Initially, they ran ads on Facebook, Instagram, and paid search. They quickly found FB ads that used the native lead form vastly outperformed the others.How well? $3 for every registrant.The results were so good, Anna had the team check for errors – thinking they might be spam emails. But after analyzing the emails against signups from other channels, along with the summit email open and readthrough rates, they found the results were truly that good. But these results didn’t come easily. They involved lots of great design and creative, and lots of tests.They also continually changed up the ads with new content every time they landed a new speaker.5. They heavily nurtured the list of registrants.They maintained constant communication with registrants the entire time leading up to the event. If they didn’t, Anna doesn’t think they would’ve seen the same results. Each registrant was sent a series of emails leading up to summit.And if they ended up registering with the product right away (as a result of seeing the marketing or ads), they were sent various In-app messages about the summit. And throughout the summit, they sent a regular volume of relevant messages to the attendees. This included messaging which emphasized, “here’s the content you’re about to consume, if you sign up for the product, you’ll be able to better take action on what you learn.”6. They tracked registrations all the way through to product signups.They had tracking in place (which users could opt out of) If that was the case, they had the registration email they could match to an account in signup. Influencers had their own campaign funnel, so they could track those referrals separately. They used an attribution model where they attributed 40% to the first touch, 40% to the last touch, and 20% to the channel they interacted with in betweenResults26k registrants and 3,500 actually paying accounts (not free trials) – 91% of whom were new to ManyChat. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why Scaled to Productivity?The metric she focused on is Scaled to Productivity: how fast they could get new hires to 70% utilization while feeling confident, and able to lead a successful implementation with the biggest customers.As Resolver’s product matured and they started stabilizing gross margin, they started to think about scale.Specifically, the best ways to maintain their margin while adding headcount.As a SaaS company, they were growing at 25-30% YOY in terms of revenue. They had a couple of levers to pull to achieve this: Utilization: ensuring individuals have utilization targets that they’re hitting consistently. But their philosophy wasn’t to have utilization targets in the high 80s or 90s, because they don’t want to burn people out. Plus, they want people to still have time to learn, grow, and understand what the platform does. Hire more people. But eventually, that would hurt gross margin (especially at a fast-growing, global organization). So Amanda asked, “what if we could get more team members to be effective with our customers, faster?”. In other words, what if they could get employees trained and effective in 5 months, instead of the 8-9 months it typically took?They had a strong belief that this would empower employees and increase profit. And when they looked at their services forecast model, they saw that if they improved the rate at which people hit their utilization targets, it would have an enormous impact on revenue.So they worked to improve it, in 5 main steps.How They Improved It1. They got buy-in from leadership, and hired someone to own it.Companies often make a project like this 10% of someone’s job, leading to poor results.They knew they’d need someone fully focused on it. So they got buy-in on the 5-month goal and hired someone to own it.2. They created an initial training plan, by reverse-engineering their goal result.They asked, “what would need to be true, in order to get employees to 70% utilization in 5 months?” The answer to that question helped from the initial training framework.They found there were 3 “prongs” they could focus training on: Product: knowing the product, and being able to configure it to client needs. Project: knowing how to implement a SaaS project using Revolver. Domain: understanding the domain of risk or corporate security. They already try to hire team members with domain expertise. And many come with experience implementing projects at a SaaS company. So they focused the bulk of the training on the Product side.3. They performed a “needs analysis” to learn what content was missing from the past program.After they formed their initial framework, they also talked to all the new employees and asked them what they would’ve liked to be successful in their first, or sixth month. This provided an active feedback loop and helped fill any gaps their initial plan had left out.To do this, they formed cohorts of employees to survey who had been hired within 30-60 days of each other. Then they batched them by role.They analyzed cohorts on a couple of factors: How proficient were they when they initially joined? (e.g. were they an early, mid, or seasoned contributor when they came into the training program) How quickly did they ramp up? And how quickly did they achieve success? Early employees could offer what education would’ve helped them be more successful. And the Resolver team would be able to further enhance the new training program to fill these gaps.4. They implemented a mentorship program, by incorporating seasoned employees.They took employees who had been part of the team for 12+ months and had them serve as mentors or learning coaches for new hires. These mentors would host Q&As with new team members and help them apply their new knowledge to real customer needs & situations. They also provided crucial feedback to help improve the training program based on their experience implementing successful projects with customers.5. They added a feedback feature to the training material itself.After all the feedback they received, they built the content for the training program. In it, they incorporated a feedback system so trainees could leave feedback in real-time as they were going through it.ResultsAfter the new training program was done, they ran 2 cohorts through it, and analyzed how much revenue was generated by:An employee who scaled to productivity using the old training (in 9 months), vs one who completed the new training (in 5 months).The results?A 25% improvement in revenue, in the 5-month cohort. When they applied this to all the new hires they made, they found this improvement in Scaled to Productivity drove an additional $700,000 in revenue. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Driving Inbound SAOsWe got to chat with the brilliant MJ Peters (VP of Marketing at CoLab), to hear about the 3 main levers she pulls to drive inbound SAOs. Namely: Eyeballs Messaging First Sales Call We’ll go through a summary of each of these levers below, and pull out some insights on how she’s using them to grow CoLab’s SAOs and revenue.How They Improved ItLever 1: EyeballsMJ works to get as many of the right eyes as possible to look at the brand and messaging. This means creating content for 2 categories: Demand capture (e.g. SEO & paid search) Demand creation (e.g. paid ads on social) For demand capture content, she makes sure Product Marketing and Demand Gen work in sync, so the messaging is consistent. The ad should offer a hook or summary, but the site should expound upon it.When she’s running social ads, she’s looking at engagement & CTR as a leading metric of how it’s performing. As it runs, she’ll look at profiles of who comments or likes, and adjust the audience over time to make sure it’s reaching only the most relevant job titles. For demand capture content (typically paid search or SEO), there’s less flexibility over the messaging, because the prospect is looking for a specific thing.So her goal is to respond from a positioning perspective to meet prospects where they’re already at.Lever 2: Messaging on the websiteOnce she gets eyeballs on the website, she makes sure what they’re reading resonates with them and leads them to convert. At this point, she’s used content on outside platforms to catch prospects with a hook and generate demand to learn more. And now that those prospects are on the website, she has a better opportunity to elaborate on the key value points she shared off-platform.To help her craft the best messaging, MJ has 1:1 calls with customers and listens to sales recordings on Gong. First, she identifies the use case they came to CoLab for. Then she sifts through dozens of pains/talking points and distills the top 3 or 4 that come up the most. These will become the 3-4 talking points on that specific use case page.For example, one use case may be using CoLab to lower costs, by designing costs out of their products. So MJ will identify the top 3-4 pain talking points around that, and use them on that use case page.Ultimately, this allows her to have the best chance at saying things that resonate with customers and drive the highest conversion. And as we mentioned earlier, she carefully maps this messaging in the “get eyeballs” stage, so demand gen is more effective and the prospect experiences more consistency.Lever 3: The first sales callOn the first call, MJ makes sure what the prospect hears, lines up with the marketing messaging they saw.In other words:Find the promised value that drove the prospect. Then give them a taste of that value, right away, in the first call.To help her do this, MJ uses different demo booking forms on each use case page. So when a prospect books a demo, she can dig into the CRM to let the rep know what use case the prospect is interested in, and what pages they visited.Consider the traditional experience:The prospect reads a use case page about how your product will help them reduce time and save money. They come excited to learn how you’ll help them do that. But on the first call, they get peppered with 25 discovery questions.This is a poor, unhelpful experience.Instead, marketing can dig into the deal in HubSpot and see that the Contact booked a demo on your Solutions page around “saving time”. They can relay that context to the rep, so the rep highlights exactly how the product saves time.By being involved in the first call, MJ’s team is better aligned with sales and delivers a more relevant experience for the customer. She feels many companies invest heavily in the first 2 levers, but ignore this one, which results in a leaking funnel at this stage.ResultsMJ only recently started the role, and has spent most of the time heavily investing in refining their messaging on all these levers. But it’s already starting to pay off.In all her time in marketing, she’s never seen messaging have as big of an impact as it has at CoLab. She’s also seen the quality of SQLs and SAOs in the pipeline become much higher, specifically in terms of firmographic fit and qualitative motivation for reaching out. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Reaching New Prospective CustomersSince most of WorkRamp’s ideal customers might not be ready to make a purchase decision, or even know much about the category, they set out to bring in more new potential customers to the blog. The goal was simple: deliver helpful content visitors would bookmark, share, and come back to, in order to build brand awareness and trust with WorkRamp.WorkRamp can educate these prospective customers on immediate questions or needs they have, and build familiarity with their brand and what they do. And eventually, when they’re ready, they’ll come back to signup or purchase.How They Improved It1. She focused on top-of-funnel content to reach a wider base of new prospective customers.WorkRamp wanted to bring in more *new* people to the website, and introduce them to the brand.Since most visitors wouldn’t be ready to make a purchase decision, she decided to focus heavily on top-of-funnel content to build trust & familiarity with Workramp so visitors would be more likely to come back and try the product when they’re ready.2. They performed an audit to see what topics were playing, and which weren’t.When Fara got started, there wasn’t a lot of content strategy in place. The team evaluated current performance to know what was working & what wasn’t.If an existing topic was resonating and gaining traffic, they set out to repurpose or elaborate on it. If a topic wasn’t getting much attention, they’d stop allocating resources to it. This helped them know where to invest their time and budget in the early days.3. She listened to sales calls every week, to learn what topics customers would be interested in.Fara built a habit of listening to customer calls every week to learn common customer questions. She’d create content based on these common questions, problems, or educational needs customers had. She’d pair this research with KW research, and create content that had significant search volume – and mostly importantly – resonated with their target customer.4. She set a practical “quality rule” for each piece of content.Fara wanted to create content that readers would bookmark, share, and revisit. To do that, she created a simple rule. Every piece of content needed 1 valuable thing readers could leave with.In other words, she tried to ensure that every piece of content had really valuable insight readers could leave with and put into practice. Even if they outlined “5 ways to ______”, she’d focus on the 1 thing readers could leave with – if they took nothing else away.5. She analyzed what competitors were doing, to find how they could take a different angle on their content.Even though competitors would cover the same topics, Fara wanted to make sure WorkRamp had a unique angle or take on saying the same things, to stand out from the crowd.6. They tracked the impact of their content further down the funnel.Besides organic traffic, Fara’s team keeps a close eye on contacts created via LI (from the brand account), social media engagement & traffic to the site, and ultimately, demo requests & MQL attributions.ResultsAs a result of all this, Fara and her team were able to increase Organic Traffic to the Blog from < 20% to 77% Quarter Over Quarter (and they’re still growing). If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Driving Demand for ClientsJonathan and the team at Omni Lab are focused on using paid channels to generate demand that drives pipeline for clients.The primary, lagging indicators they track are: Demos for sales led or Trials for PLG Pipeline Lead to Opp Opp to Rev CAC Payback Revenue Along with a host of other leading metrics, to know how the ads are performing. By focusing on Lead to Opportunity, they’re able to gauge how effectively they’re targeting the right audience, with the right messaging, who eventually reach out to book a call with sales and become opportunities.How They Improved It1. They helped refine targeting by analyzing where the Client had been successful in the past.They looked at case studies, social proof, quotes, and best-performing deals in the CRM.One insight this revealed was that most of the “best customers” came from employee sizes of 10-50. But the client had been targeting companies much bigger than that.This process essentially allowed them to reverse engineer who the best clients were (who gave testimonials, case studies, etc) and refine the targeting to reach more of the same.A huge benefit of starting with a niche audience in paid, is that they were able to focus their budget in one place, vs just spreading it across a wide swathe of geo, industry, company size, etc.It also allowed them to add better personalization, which drove higher conversion.For example, they could make the creative more specific: logos of companies that look like them, or case studies of peers they’d know.2. They improved the booking flow.They’ve tested every possible booking flow with clients, but have found the most success starting with a form, then going to a booking tool like Calendly or Chili Piper.When choosing a time, prospects have to go off-site to open their calendar & see what times work for them. That means there’s always a % that don’t come back. By using a simple form as a first step, you can send the booking form and remind them, to try and get them back.3. They improved messaging by studying what worked best in the past.Like many early-stage companies, this client didn’t have a dedicated product marketing team. So they got an overview of the ICP’s articulated pains, values they wanted, and overall buyer journey.How? Reviewing early outbound emails Talking with the founder Listening to sales calls Talking to sales reps This allowed them to create messaging that had the best chance of resonating, without the benefit of in-depth research. Jonathan believes that if you’re really early, this messaging may just be coming from the Founder’s brain. The key is: don’t wait for it to be perfect. Get it good enough, based on some positive input, and start testing.4. They performed “micro-tests” on that messaging.Before putting thousands of dollars of spend behind it, they did small tests with the new target audience to see how the messaging resonated well. Jonathan also said that this is where most people go wrong when testing messaging or creative: they test too many things.They change creative and visuals, messaging, and CTA, so it’s impossible to identify what change made the biggest impact or how each piece is performing.5. They optimized for the audience consuming the messaging in-channel.Rather than try and optimize for immediate conversions or website clicks, they focused on getting more consumption of the message on-platform.6. They resolved any uncertainty buyers felt in the retargeting layer.They used retargeting ads to answer common objections and questions prospects had, and to provide social proof so they felt more comfortable with the client.This meant that by the time the retargeted prospects did become leads, they converted at a much higher rate because they were already more familiar with the company and had many of fears/uncertainties answered.ResultsThese steps led to a 49% increase in the Client’s Lead to Opportunity Conversion Rate (from 25% to 74%). If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why Inbound Leads?Like many agencies, they relied for years on doing great work, delivering results, and getting referrals. They had a growing brand and a strong reputation and were growing year over year.But recently, they finally decided to invest more in marketing, for 2 reasons.First, they were structurally ready for it. They had a strong team and processes, able to handle an influx of growth. Second, they were ready to hire a dedicated person to own growth. So they brought in David Hoos (a proven B2B marketing leader) to lead marketing & growth efforts.They decided that high-quality, inbound leads coming in through the website would be the best reflection that their marketing efforts were working. So that served as their primary KPI for success.Then they took a few strategic steps to grow that number.How they moved the needle1. They took inventory of current performance.They analyzed past data to learn what had stagnated, what was trending in the wrong direction, and what was trending in the right direction. This included studying lead quantity and quality, organic traffic, and kw rankings.2. They focused on building domain authority by sharing original thought leadership.They hadn’t invested in SEO up to that point and were getting outranked by agencies with less expertise, performing worse quality work.So they set out to improve their domain authority.They had published a number of pieces of content, sharing original research, insights, and thought leadership. Some of this lived on their blog, but much was gated behind an email wall, or in white paper form. Most of the content was created to showcase their experience with clients during the sales process.Making the decision to “ungate” it, they realized they had to unapologetically see themselves as thought leaders in the space, and be proud to share what they knew with everyone. Sharing these insights has help gain them additional attention, backlinks, and publicity.They’ve shared the insights at conferences, through PR, podcasts, and more. As a result, they’ve used it to build their domain authority.3. They started speaking at events.They found that traffic would increase leading up to the event, spike the day of the event, but then go back to normal.But it was a great opportunity to make an impact, and continue building domain authority and brand awareness.4. They guested on podcasts.They’d find podcasts where listeners were their target audience, and aim to deliver as much value in the interview as possible. This drove site visits and backlinks, further advancing their SEO efforts.5. They put their people front and center.They started showcasing the actual experts and thought leaders: their team. As a services business, this helped prospective customers trust them, and feel like they knew who they’d be working with.Combined, these efforts produced a bigger cumulative effect: Someone might search for “influencer marketing agency” They’d find The Outloud Group in a list of top agencies So they ask peers if they’ve worked with them Then hear them on a podcast or at an event The resultsThey increased high-intent inbound leads, sourced through their website, by 50%. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why MQLs?If you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn, you might see any number of posts proclaiming that “the MQL is dead”. But Ollie and his marketing team at VanillaSoft don’t think so.In fact, MQLs are the primary metric Ollie works to move the needle on. They share a common metric with the sales team to ensure that they’re driving high value MQLs who have a higher likelihood of converting.To do that, they employ a number of channels, ranging from paid ads, to SEO, trade shows, and webinars. Until recently, they had never tried virtual events.How They Improved ItThe prior quarter, Ollie’s team had a big, scary MQL goal. They hit it, but only barely.Then, in the next quarter, the goal was raised significantly. Ollie knew they’d have to change their approach in order to hit it.So he decided to invest heavily into virtual events.In the prior quarter, Ollie’s team hosted an all-day virtual event. It was imperfect and exhausting, but they learned from it. He was determined to host another one (new and improved), in order to secure the new MQLs he needed.Here’s how he did it…He got great speakers, who could also help promote the event.He chose speakers who were incredibly smart and well-spoken. But more than that, they had to be able to help promote the event to a relevant audience, so the content would actually get seen.He made the event 1-month long.The first conference they ran was an 8-hour day, jam-packed with back-to-back sessions. That format was rough on both the team and attendees, so this time, they tried a new approach.They’d aim for 2 sessions a day, 30 minutes each session, for 1 month straight. That worked out to 45 total speakers, presenting 45 sessions, across 22 days.This new format took longer to plan, but provided 4 main benefits:Benefit 1: It was more relaxed.Attendees could consume events they were interested in all month, without giving up an entire day of work.Benefit 2: It provided ongoing content to market.Ollie found that with their single-day event: they promoted it, and it was done. By changing the format they were able to continually promote new material and build on the success of past sessions.Benefit 3: It provided social proof to help them secure additional speakers and sponsors.The day the conference launched with its initial lineup, Ollie was able to keep doing outreach and gain an additional 14 speakers and sponsors. Prospective speakers or sponsors were able to see what they’d be participating in. They could also opt-in late in the game, without feeling like they’d missed the opportunity.Benefit 4: It drove more attendance.With 45 speakers, if each speaker brought just a handful of their audience, Ollie knew they’d have great attendance.Ollie promoted 1 new speaker, every few days.He felt he couldn’t do justice to all 45 speakers if he tried to promote them all in 1 big announcement.So instead, he’d focus on promoting a new speaker every few days. This allowed him to properly highlight the skills, expertise, and session that each speaker was bringing to the table.They created generous, strategic sponsorships.Some of the sponsors came from ABM accounts. This gave them the ability to continue building those relationships, while offering them something of value. And some were friends of Ollie’s, who came from smaller companies.They didn’t charge these sponsors. Ollie wanted to be able to have the relationships be truly win-win. VanillaSoft would get the benefit of more promotion and attendees. And the Sponsors could gain leads and exposure without risking a huge budget.They used HeySummit to host an event website.This provided each speaker with their own landing & registration page, one place to house live and on-demand content, and a sponsors page.ResultsThe pace was exhausting but drove massive results:Ollie and his team exceeded their high quarterly goal, bringing in 1,200 new MQLs from the event. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Insights on Driving SQLs via LinkedIn Ads:1. Use benchmarks to identify competitive advantages.Look for instances where SQL rate (lead to meeting ratio) is 2-3x higher than average, and come up with a hypothesis as to what caused that growth.Then, see if you can duplicate it in another campaign.Once Remotion finds meaningful variance, they determine if the higher performance was owing to factors that can be duplicated.If so, they’ll increase the budget and spin off a new campaign where they lean into the things that made the former campaign perform so well.2. Get qualitative insights into ad performance.His team uses common sense, and deep familiarity with their clients to create a hypothesis of why a campaign saw meaningful change in performance.By talking with clients, they’re able to learn what’s happening that might be affecting performance.For example, after talking with the client they learn that John – the company’s best SDR – is on vacation.This is the cause of lower results down-funnel.And since they have access to their client’s CRMs accounts, they’re able to be proactive in looking at any other factors that impact ad results that they might not have seen by staring at performance numbers in the Ad platform.3. Remain “strategy agnostic” until you find what works for you.Gabriel has seen a lot of commonly accepted truisms fall on their face when applied to Clients in different countries or industries.4. Look at performance often enough to derive insights, but avoid knee-jerk decisions.Remotion gives each client gets their own real-time dashboard which shows: CPL Last 7-day CPL Trend over last 30 days Comparison to previous 30 days … and more.They know what a client’s current CPL is every day.But for metrics further down the funnel, they evaluate them monthly. This helps them make more informed decisions based on proven trends, and avoid knee-jerk reactions to a bad (or good) week.5. Determine your campaign goals early.Most companies run 2 types of campaigns:Direct response = promote your product, get someone to talk to youContent = promote your POV & provide valueEach generates different outcomes, so choose the one that best serves your goals. If you aren’t sure which type of campaign you want to run, Gabriel advises running both, then determining the CPL. Benchmark your performance to know if one is higher than the industry average. If it is, use that one.6. What companies get wrong about LinkedIn ads: Under-investing Being inconsistent Being unclear about their goal Not having messaging honed in Having an inactive audience on LinkedIn Not being ready (too early, no product-market fit) 7. Testing messaging through LinkedIn ads can be costly.You need a lot of data to see how it impacts SQO rate.For example, you want to run 2 tests: so you need 50 leads on each (100 total, to have enough meaningful data) > and your CPL is $100.That means 1 test costs 10k. This can be great if you have a 100k budget. But if your budget is 15k/mo, then it means you spent almost an entire month testing 1 message variant.If that’s worth it, that’s great. But Remotion finds that often, it’s not significant enough to justify the investment. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why Qualified Pipeline via Inbound?The whole team is focused on driving net new logo revenue. So Pete focuses his team on qualified pipeline to contribute to that goal, and be aligned with the rest of the team.They define “pipeline” as “total booked revenue” (= when a scheduled demo meeting takes place). Since they aim for a win rate of ≥ 20%, this allows Pete to work backward from their revenue goals, and determine how much pipeline he needs to drive to help meet it.How They Improved It:They focused on understanding their audience better.They get on sales and customer calls weekly. This gives them insights around pain points and needs prospective customers have.These insights help them continually optimize their messaging, in order to be more helpful and relevant. It also helps them learn where their target customers spend time or pay attention.This means that when they make big bets on channels to invest in, they aren’t guessing.They invested heavily into refining their messaging & positioning.In a world where features are easily copied, Pete invested in differentiating Alyce by crafting a unique point of view and go-to-market message. This positioning provides a source for the entire team to draw from when they need to craft messaging or marketing creative.They brought in Dave Gerhardt, who helped them further refine how they thought about positioning and messaging for Alyce in a new and unique way.And once they had some concepts, they tested the new messaging on their homepage using Wynter, in order to look for leading indicators that the messaging would be successful and land the right way.They focused on harvesting more existing demand.They leverage about 25% of their resources and team on capturing existing demand. This includes using intent data to trigger more targeted outreach, retargeting on social, and a mix of branded & non-branded PPC programs.They focused on creating new demand.The biggest bet they’ve made is finding ways to create new customers and generate demand. They’ve done that in 2 broad steps:1. Create relevant and insightful content2. Distribute that content everywhere their target audience isThey made big bets on: Events (micro & virtual) Social (paid & organic) Co-marketing with other brands Investing in evangelists who speak on podcasts And communities Because they’re tracking self-submitted, qualitative attribution, they’re able to see the efficacy of these channels and find the ones that are most effective.So far, it’s paying dividends. Top attributed channels are LinkedIn, Google Search, and Communities/Events.They approached communities with 2 main focuses: Bring value & education (don’t just talk about Alyce) Find ways to let members experience Alyce’s gifting For example, members might be sent gifts upon joining or completing certain milestones. This allows these marketers (= the community members they’re reaching) to experience the value of Alyce in a more natural and generous way.ResultsAlyce had great momentum from past marketing leaders. With that as the foundation, this framework helped them increase the % of inbound qualified pipeline to 70%.Full episode here. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why Free-to-Paid Conversion?Amanda had a gut sense that since “audience research” was still pretty early and search volume was relatively low, they needed to nail the onboarding experience when people did give them a try.She started working with Forget The Funnel, who helped them identify 2 big opportunities:1) Increase free-to-paid conversion.2) Improve the onboarding experience.So they focused on growing their free-to-paid conversion %, and got to work improving onboarding.How They Improved ItImproving the onboarding flow.At the time, SparkToro's onboarding flow had 15 (or so) steps and a 10% completion rate, which was above average. Despite that, they were still addressing churn and getting questions about the product, so Amanda knew there was room for improvement.So she worked with Ramli John, who helped them improve the sequence. They did this by reducing it to 8 steps, and having Rand Fishkin (founder) trim his welcome video from 5 minutes to 2.Next, they updated the onboarding messaging, making it more concise and using a more active voice.Finally, they made sure every onboarding step mapped to 1 single feature. Previously, they had introduced new users to "list creation" and "outreach" in the same onboarding step. Amanda noticed that not as many people were creating lists, so they broke these into 2 steps.These changes alone took their onboarding completion rate from 10% to 15%. And even though Amanda couldn't prove users were actually consuming the messaging more than before, she knew it was easier to understand, quicker to get through, and it drove users to complete 1 successful search so they could reach the “aha” moment faster.Creating a behavior-based email sequence.In the early days, Rand would send personalized welcome emails himself. Later, this became 1 email welcoming users to the product, with subsequent emails being sent to remind users of upcoming monthly charges.Amanda knew there was lots of room for improvement here, but she faced one major challenge: SparkToro had a very wide use case.It's used by a lot of different companies, for a lot of different things. This meant that doing "1 size fits all" onboarding emails wasn't going to cut it.So she created a "behavior-based" email sequence, with 3 main goals:1. Get people to "value realization" as quickly as possible2. Help users get into the habit of using SparkToro more often3. Get users to use more features, and realize it's powerShe worked with Casey Henry, SparkToro's co-founder, to build out workflows that would group users into logic-based cohorts. Depending on the cohort/segment they were in, they'd experience a slightly different onboarding email sequence.For example, the first action someone takes is signing up for a free account. Ideally, the 2nd action they’d take is running a search. So if someone performed a search, they'd get a welcome email that would suggest other searches they might try. But if they signed up and didn't make a search, they'd get an email suggesting first searches to try, that might be beneficial to them (based on inputs from the customer).This allowed them to provide specific help, based on prospective customers' needs and use cases.Launching "Office Hours"Amanda started a series of live sessions where anyone could ask questions and get answers in real-time on a consistent day/time every week.They'd promote this to new users in onboarding emails, but it was open to anyone. They regularly get 1,000 people watching, with as many as 1,300 on some sessions.This provided a way for curious, would-be customers to learn more about the product in a no-pressure environment. And existing customers can get answers to specific questions they faced while trying to adopt the product for their own use.ResultsIn 4-6 months, the team doubled their free-to-paid conversion, adding more revenue without any new inbound channels. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Why HIRO Pipeline?Refine Labs helps drive demand and pipeline revenue for SaaS companies from Series A through D. When they hit 30~ Clients, the team went to measure how many pipeline dollars those clients would get for every $1 they spent in ads. Chris wanted to be able to show what the growth of their pipeline was (across all clients) from the time they started working with his team, to then.But he had a problem. He realized that out of all their clients, none defined pipeline the same. Every single one had different definitions. For exome companies, “pipeline” meant that the lead booked a meeting with an SDR, and was in a stage where the deals convert at < 10%. Others defined pipeline as a deal in a stage that converted at higher than 50%.So Chris created a new pipeline revenue metric that could be easily adapted by all clients (and non-clients who wanted to), and would allow them to benchmark their performance against others.They define HIRO Pipeline as leads that come in through a high intent source (book a call, schedule a demo, etc) with win rates greater than 3% from lead-to-win, and reach a deal stage in your pipeline that converts at a 25% rate for that cohort of opportunities.These two qualifiers mean that if the deal stage starts to close below 25%, marketing needs to change the stage that HIRO is defined by (to a 25% or higher one) so they’re always aligned to sales performance.It also helps align marketing to revenue, without having to wait for the lagging metric of actual revenue to come in – because it’s based on a secure win rate.How They Improved ItUsing qualitative attributionFirst, Chris believes it’s important to understand that HIRO Pipeline’s efficacy isn’t going to be clearly shown by traditional attribution software. It requires a blend of qualitative and quantitative attribution. For most, this can be done by adding a simple open text field in the onboarding process, asking prospective clients how they heard about you.Balancing focus and budget between creating demand, and capturing demandChris believes the main key to driving HIRO Pipeline is striking the right balance between creating demand and capturing demand.Capturing demand is waiting in channels where people have demonstrated intent, are “solution-aware”, and are actively looking to buy something. For example, Google Ads or product review sites like G2.Creating demand is spending time reinforcing your messaging in channels where people are not in the market for your product or service. They may not be “solution-aware”, and don’t have intent to buy what you’re selling.Chris believes the key is to have two different strategies to reach each of those audiences.Chris believes that because companies rely so heavily on attribution software, they’re only focused on the “channels that work”, which are all demand-capturing channels.This means there are only so many buyers these companies can reach, and worse still, they have no control over how that demand was generated. Instead, companies must focus more on creating demand (vs capturing it), so they have control of the flow of new buyers entering the market.This means most companies must change the way they think about and approach demand generation. For example, if you don’t draw a distinction between “demand capture” and “demand gen” channels, you’ll end up treating the audience in each of those buckets the same. Where in reality, one audience is ready to buy and wants to consume one type of content, while the audience in the other is not going to buy and is interested in an entirely different set of content.For Refine Labs, this means using “demand gen” channels to help clients amplify messaging that educates clients about: the category the business problems that the Client solves How that Client has driven success for other customers Differentiating features the Client has, that competitors don’t etc. Chris believes marketing teams need to take those elements, say them in compelling ways, and serve that messaging up natively in demand-gen channels that prospective buyers are already in. The goal is not to convert the prospective customer in that moment, but rather to educate them and keep your company top of mind.This means that instead of driving a person on LinkedIn to download an e-book, you might run an impression-based video ad that showcases the growth you drove for a client, or a written post breaking down what people should know about the category you’re in.The idea is that you plant the seed in this person (who has consumed this messaging) in the belief that they will end up sharing your company in a Slack channel, with peers at an event, or through a LinkedIn DM. And then someone from their network or company will come directly to your site when they’re ready to buy.ResultsRefine Labs has been applying that framework for customers since Day 1.They researched a cohort of 20 customers from B2B SaaS companies that had clean, historical data for 6+ months before starting to work with them. They then compared the 6 months prior to working with Refine Labs to the 6 months after working with Refine Labs, specifically drilling down to the HIRO metric.Across those 20 clients, the median increase in pipeline was an impressive 76%. This means a series C or D company doing $2m in pipeline before Refine Labs was doing $3.5m~ after working with Chris’s team.View the full episode here. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.The metric: Sales Efficiency RatioIn this episode, we’re covering Sales Efficiency Ratio: which the Referral Rock team defines as “the ratio of salesperson sales, vs non-salesperson generated sales.”John Bonini chats with Josh Ho, founder and CEO of Referral Rock, to learn how they improved their Sales Efficiency Ratio, and as a result: Onboarded customers faster Increased user’s “speed to launch” rate Removed a bottleneck to growth And were able to do more, with less Why Sales Efficiency Ratio?There were two main reasons why Josh and the team decided to try and move the needle on this metric: Selling primarily through sales reps was successful at first, but eventually became a bottleneck for growth They wanted to lean into product-led growth and grow the self-service side of their product Before improving this metric, 90%~ of sales were closed by the sales team. This worked well for a while, but eventually became a bottleneck to growth.The problem was, as the leads increased, so did the need for trained sales reps. And for a bootstrapped company like Referral Rock, this was costly in time & money.It also made it challenging to test new channels because they didn’t have the ability to scale the sales team as fast as leads would come in. For example, if they decided to heavily invest in paid ad channels and it ended up driving lots of leads, they’d have to scramble to hire enough sales staff to help support the growth.Besides all that, they had been intrigued by PLG (product-led growth), and how much more efficient that model could be for a SaaS company like theirs.Up until that time, they were using traditional sales-led growth. The primary CTA drove users to book a demo, and 90% of their closed deals came from this sales-led method.There was a self-service option, where users could start a free trial and build their program without input or assistance from sales. But only 10% of closed deals came through that route.So they set out to improve their sales efficiency, by increasing the number of deals that were closed via non-sales methods.How They Improved ItThey made product improvements to foster more self-service.They began working on shipping more PLG-inspired features to improve their existing self-service onboarding and upgrade flow. This way, if users preferred to set up their own referral program or upgrade their account, the experience was smoother for them.They had CSMs lead group demos, then pass that group off to the product itself.Before, they’d try to get important internal stakeholders onto the call, and take a more heavy-handed sales approach via sales reps.With this “lighter touch” approach, they’d take a group of interested users, show them a demo and answer their questions, and then hand them off to the product ( = the self-service / PLG route they developed).They initially built this “group demo to product” team by stealing from their CS team.They started with one team member in particular who knew the product inside and out, and who had been on some sales calls before. He was critical in helping frame out the role, and make this new model more efficient.Once they had the process in place and a better idea of what the role looked like, they began hiring outside talent to expand the team.They promoted their two CTAs (“Book Demo” and “Start Free Trial”) equally.They updated the layout and design of their site to give equal primacy to the two main CTAs. This let users choose how they wanted to buy.They introduced intelligent routing which sent users to self-service or sales, depending on various criteria.First, they implemented various tools & workflows in the product to get a better idea of what stage the potential buyer was in, and what type of company they were.Then, based on those inputs, they’d put them in pre-set groups or buckets.From there, they could route them to either the lighter-touch sales method they had developed (which resulted in self-service), or the traditional sales method, depending on which would serve them better.In addition to that, they implemented a lead score mechanism to route the right leads to the right person.Finally, they retooled their workflows to better serve prospective customers depending on which bucket they fell into.For example, users in the CSM-led, "lighter-touch” sales group might get 1 series of emails and messaging. While users in the traditional sales bucket might get an entirely different set of messaging.ResultsIn 6~ months these efforts resulted in them changing their Sales Efficiency Ratio ratio from 90/10 to 50/50.In practical terms, this meant that: Customers were onboarding faster The team could expect the “speed to launch” rate (how fast customers get their referral programs launched) to increase significantly Hiring and training new sales reps was no longer a bottleneck to growth, or testing new channels And ultimately, they were able to do more with less.Check out the full episode here. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.CallRail is an incredibly data-driven company. They transparently share performance metrics across the entire team, to foster accountability and ownership. By looking at the metrics regularly, they’re never surprised to see a low or high number at the end of the month. And they work together to try and identify negative (or positive) trends when they see them happening in real-time.In this episode, Jason Rozenblat (VP of Strategic Accounts) shares how CallRail grew Free Trial to Customer Conversion %: the percentage of total users who begin a free trial and end up becoming paid customers.While they have other metrics they obsess over (namely MRR, ARR, and ARPU), Jason and his team are especially focused on “Free Trial to Customer Conversion %”  because it directly impacts deal size and close rate.It’s also important, in that it’s a shared metric across the team. Jason works with the Demand Gen team to grow it, and it’s shared by any teams that touch the website because those teams also care about driving traffic and improving website conversion rate. The two go hand in hand.This includes engineering, product marketing, and customer marketing. So they obsess over this metric as an entire organization.How they grew itJason and his team found a number of things that have contributed to growing this metric.Changing from monthly to weekly cohorts.By measuring cohorts weekly rather than monthly, they were able to get much more granular and ask, “what happened this week, that was different than other weeks?”. This helped them spot causes of growth or decline in real-time, as opposed to waiting until the end of the month and looking at a post-mortem. They also started tracking cohorts in 5-week intervals (from 2-week intervals). Since they have a 2-week free trial, they used to analyze cohorts in 2-week intervals. But they started to realize that there was always a long tail of trials that would close way past the 2-week mark. Users would extend their free trials, or come back after a trial had expired in order to enter payment information. So by extending the sales cycle, and measuring cohorts in 5-week intervals, they got a clearer picture of what was going on and had better data to make decisions from.They changed the way they handled lead assignments.Before, if sales reps were going to be using PTO the following week, they’d be pulled out of rotation to ensure they weren’t assigned any new free trials to manage. But what they didn’t account for was all the free trials that were set to expire on while that rep would be out of office.So they changed the way they handled lead assignments, to make sure that whenever a free trial expired, it was passed off to a rep who would be in office during that time. They also started to view expired trials as viable leads and focused more on converting them.They focused on sales training and education.On top of all of this, they continued training sales reps on how to better handle objects, close deals, etc.ResultsThe results they saw were amazing. Some months, they increased their Free Trial to Customer Conversion rate as high as 10 points.With the traffic and free trial volume, they had at the time, that change alone could add an additional 100-150 customers or $100k of ARR.And in certain cohorts, they saw trial to conversion rates of 70-80%.View the full episode here. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode John Bonini chats with Adam Goyette, VP of Marketing at Help Scout, to learn how they grew their website conversion rate, and why that metric became a priority for the team.You’ll learn… How the Help Scout executive team sets annual goals How the marketing team identifies where to invest their time and money How improving the website conversion rate became a priority Why Website Conversion Rate?Each year, the Help Scout executive team works together to identify what their annual revenue goal is, and what growth % they’re aiming to hit in the upcoming year.Once they have this number and growth %, they work backward to find how many signups and new customers they’ll need in order to hit that goal. Although the revenue goal is set annually, they’ll adjust the forecast of what they’re expecting quarter by quarter. This allows them to make smaller adjustments in real-time, as they see how things are trending.Transparently sharing their performanceEvery day, an email is delivered to the team, showing them how they’re progressing towards that month’s goal. It includes a breakdown of trials, sales opportunities, and projected MRR. On top of that, individual teams meet weekly to review their own numbers. And executive teams meet once a month, reviewing what happened in the last month and where they’re going next month. They feel that having the numbers transparently in front of the entire team, encourages everyone to be creative and offer up solutions to help improve that number. Looking for growth opportunitiesOnce they have their growth goals in place, it’s time to figure out how to achieve them. Their goal is to find the right set of “levers” to pull, in order to move the needle on traffic, free trials, demo requests, weighted pipeline, and more.And there are dozens of levers they could pull. It’s probably the same challenge you face at your company. Do you try new channels, or grow existing ones? Do you send more traffic, or improve conversion with the traffic you have? To help narrow things down, they look how each stage of their funnel is performing, and how each channel is performing. Then they ask questions like, “what channels can we reasonably expect to grow?” and “what channels might be worth investing in?”They also look for the easiest wins. For example, if paid channels are steeped in competition with deeper pockets, they’ll look for a channel where they can be more competitive. Or they might find they can get significant results just by doubling down on an existing channel.Why they chose Website Conversion RateAdam and the team found that the free trial to paid conversion rate was 20%+, which was already high for the industry. But if they looked higher up in the funnel, they found they were getting 500,000 visitors every month. They decided it would be far easier and more impactful for them to increase the website’s conversion rate (driving more free trial signups), than it would to increase an already high “trial to conversion rate” of 20%.So they set to work running experiments.How They Improved ItThey view their website content in 2 main buckets: “High-Intent Pages” and “Low-Intent Pages”.High intent pages include the homepage or product pages, where people are visiting with the intent to explore and potentially sign up for the product. Here, the call to action is “sign up” or “start free trial”. Low intent pages include content like a blog or thought leadership content, so they make the call to action something like “join the newsletter”. This encourages visitors to stay in the Help Scout ecosystem, without forcing them to take an action they have no intention of taking. When setting out to measure and improve their website conversion rate, they only looked at conversion on the “high intent pages”. This helped them get a more accurate number of how they were performing on pages that had a set call to action of conversion.Their current “website to free trial” conversion rate was 2% on those high intent pages, and their conversion rate from “free trial to active paying customer” was 20%. They assembled a “task force” of stakeholdersWebsite conversion is often “cross-functional”. In other words, it’s owned or used by multiple teams. Brand marketing might own the messaging. Product marketing might own the positioning. And growth marketing might own SEO or conversion rate.So Adam and the team put together an “optimization squad”, comprised of all the stakeholders who needed to have input on the website. This ensured that every stakeholder had seat at the table, and could work together on improving conversion without stepping on each other’s toes.They tested everythingThey experimented with just about everything. But they saw the biggest results by adding personalization. Helpscout has a wide base of customers, so by understanding who their buyers are, they’re able to present more helpful messaging tailored to those personas.For example, they found that smaller companies have to convert better by going through self-serve, while bigger companies almost always convert better when they speak with sales. The optimization squad would take an insight like this, and present a dynamic (changing) call to action, depending on the person viewing the site. Someone from a company with more than 500 employees might see “talk with sales” while someone from a small company sees “start free trial”. They’d also highlight different use cases of the product, and change the way they talked about Help Scout. For example, if a 500+ person organization read, “Help desk software for small business”, they might feel Help Scout wasn’t for them. By personalizing the team could show different customer logos (that looked like the visitor’s company), make the language more relevant, and be more helpful with use cases that visitor was interested in.In total, personalization included dynamically presenting the call to action, headlines, length of free trial, use cases and social proof.ResultsIn just 6 months, they saw a 56% increase in demo requests and a 6% increase in trials.Check out the episode summary here. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

In this episode of Metrics & Chill, KlientBoost’s founder, Jonathan Dane joins the show to talk about how identifying and improving one metric helped boost customer engagement, customer retention, productivity, employee happiness, and so much more.

In this episode of Metrics & Chill podcast, find out how Databox reduced median first response time from more than 3 hours to just 17 minutes. Learn what the team did, how they did it, and measures that have been implemented to ensure this success is long-term and sustainable.

In this episode of Metrics and Chill, Sean Henri, Founder and CEO at Pepperland marketing, shares the latest Google Page Experience update details, including how his agency prepared themselves and their clients and the changes they implemented.

In this episode of Metrics and Chill, Mark Thomas, Head of Growth at Powered by Search, walked us through how he, as the only marketing hire, drove the strategy that led to an increase in Sales Qualified Leads by 142% quarter-over-quarter.

In this episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast, Logan Lyles, VP of Customer Experience at Sweet Fish Media, talked about how they lowered revenue churn from 15% to 3% in 12 months despite the pandemic.

Jonathan Stanis, Director of User Experience, and Frank Isca, a strategist at Weidert Group, joined John Bonini on an episode of the Metrics and Chill podcast to discuss how they improved one key metric for their client: Goal conversion rate.

In this episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast, Mike Donnelly, founder and CEO at Seventh Sense, talked about the right way to measure and improve one important email marketing metric: active audience with email.

Recently, Robbie Richards, director of SEO at Virayo Marketing sat down with John Bonini for an episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast. Richards discussed how they helped a client generate quality traffic that converts--yielding an increase in trial signups by 70%.

In this episode of Metrics and Chill, Alex Boyd, CEO of RevenueZen, explained how one personal LinkedIn account contributes a huge chunk of the agency’s sales pipeline and revenue.

In this episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast, Stephanie Donily, Head of Content & Communications at Zapier, shared how they turned a successful blog into a full-funnel conversion driver.

In this episode of Metrics & Chill, Ramli John, Manager Director at ProductLed, talked about how the company took advantage of one often overlooked metric to increase MRR for clients - activation.

In this episode of Metrics & Chill, learn how Patrick Campbell, Founder & CEO of ProfitWell grows one metric that’s crucial for both them and their customers: revenue per customer.

In this episode of Metrics & Chill, Tommy Walker, founder of WalkerBots Content Studios, talked about how they approach one often overlooked metric they believe is crucial for content marketing success: Return visitors.

In this episode on Metrics & Chill podcast, Chris Strom—founder and Principal at ClearPivot—sat down with John Bonini and walked him through how ClearPivot took a strategic approach to grow organic search traffic around a pretty competitive niche: SaaS marketing.

In this episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast, John Bonini talked with Tyler Pigott of Lone Fir Creative, a digital and inbound marketing agency focused on driving conversions through copy. As founder, Tyler let John in on how the words-first agency turns brand messaging into higher conversions.

Chris Cardone, Customer Success Lead at Unstack, talked with John Bonini on an episode of the Metrics and Chill podcast. Chris shared how Unstack approaches one key metric that’s crucial for SaaS businesses: Churn.

In this episode of Metrics & Chill, John Bonini talked with Ben Sailer, Inbound Marketing Director at CoSchedule, about how the team at CoSchedule refocused their content strategy on driving trials and product signups, instead of just traffic.

In this episode of the Metrics & Chill podcast, John Bonini caught up with Jasz Joseph, founder and Digital Marketing Strategist at Jasz Rae Digital. Jasz and John talked about how Jasz’s agency has brought the inbound methodology to clients that sell big enterprise deals.

In this episode of Metrics and Chill, John Bonini sat down with Gabe Marguglio, founder and CEO at Nextiny. Gabe and John talked about how the team at Nextiny has turned video marketing into a lead generation powerhouse.

Recently, John Bonini connected with Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing at Growth Machine, for an episode of our Metrics & Chill podcast. Amanda told John all about how they’ve turned a notoriously hard to attribute marketing channel into a conversion and sales engagement producing engine.

As Head of Growth, Casey shared how Bonjoro approached one key metric in particular: trial conversions. A software app for sending personalized video emails to onboard new customers and clients, Bonjoro took a page out of their own playbook by using personalized onboarding videos to boost trial user engagement early on.

JD Sherman, HubSpot's COO for the past 8 years, joined the podcast a few weeks ahead of his announcement that he will be leaving HubSpot in July of '21. Here, he talks about his working relationship with CEO Brian Halligan, how HubSpot's leadership team approaches strategy and planning, and how that translates to various teams and departments, HubSpot's decision to go wide as a platform rather than deep and upmarket as an automation tool, and much more.

An old friend Patrick Shea joins the pod to discuss the early days of HubSpot's partner program, how they went about building a powerful and thriving partner community, his transition to enterprise and what SMB marketers can learn from the enterprise playbook (and vice versa) and much more.

Today Pete Caputa joins the podcast to talk about how Databox is leveraging live chat + email in both the sales and support functions, how the approach differs from the traditional sales approach, and why it took Databox so long to roll it out (thoughtfully) over the last year.

April Dunford joins the podcast to discuss her surprise (at least to her) hit book, Obviously Awesome. On this episode, we dig into some of the core product positioning lessons that April discusses in the book and coaches clients on, including: - How to tell if you have weak positioning - Where positioning should fall on a marketer's/executive's priority list - How the approach to positioning changes depending on the stage of your company - The 10-step process for defining your positioning, and... - The most important positioning lessons that April has learned throughout her career Enjoy.

Benji Hyam shares his experience running content marketing for a few companies in San Francisco and how that inspired him to start 2 companies––Wordable and Grow and Convert. The latter, a content marketing agency he's run for over 4 years, takes a unique approach to offering services around content marketing. Hear about their 4-step content framework for getting client's results no matter the industry.

On this episode, Casted CEO and cofounder Lindsay Tjepkema joins the show to talk about its recent public launch and round of funding, how the company is growing and what's been working so far, and why genuine and helpful conversations are the next big thing for B2B brands to leverage as a driver for growth.

Meghan Keaney Anderson, VP of Marketing at HubSpot, joins the pod to provide what is essentially an oral history of marketing at HubSpot. Anderson has been with HubSpot for 9 years, and in her words, it's like being with 3 different companies during that span due to all the different phases of growth. In this episode, Meghan provides all the details behind what makes HubSpot's marketing engine move, including: - how the team is structured - how their planning process works - how they set goals and cascade them down to the individual contributor - how they stay flexible to make adjustments, improve efficiencies, etc. - the channels they're investing more in, the ones that have evolved, etc. Enjoy!

In this episode, Wes Bush, author of Product-Led Growth, sits down with John to discuss all things PLG, including how it's different from marketing + sales-led organizations, the key levers for transitioning to product-led, how teams can get started, and much more.

Today we're joined by Devin Bramhall, VP of Marketing at Animalz and previously head of content at Help Scout. Animalz is a content marketing services company that works with some of the most well-known companies in SaaS––Intercom, Wistia, ProfitWell, Zendesk, and Clearbit just to name a few. Here, Devin takes us through her process and outlook for creating great content. Hint: It doesn't involve writing. (At least, not exclusively.)

Daniel Waas spent 10 years managing and working on the same product––GoToWebinar. First with Citrix and later, after an acquisition, with LogMeIn, Waas's strength was perfecting and marketing a product that he himself knew better than anyone after hosting more than 500 webinars over the last 10 years. Here, Waas shares lessons learned after spending more than 10 years growing with the same company.

David Rostan, former VP of Sales & Marketing at Calendly, joins the pod to talk about how freemium helped shape Calendly's go-to-market approach and how growing market competition in the effort to own your calendar only sharpened Calendly's positioning.

We’re back! In this episode, John and Pete return for some friendly banter and conversation around how Databox approaches reporting on company performance including what gets measured, the cadence of sharing and updating others on performance, individual and team responsibilities, and much more.

Vimeo's VP of Marketing, Melissa Matlins, dives deep into Vimeo's journey to become a full-service video platform and how they're repositioning the brand to support that.

ThriveHive CMO Dan Slagen joins John to discuss: - the challenges of marketing to the SMB - how to develop a marketing strategy for a high-churn, high CAC audience - how to foster a better working relationship between marketing and sales, and - how channel/partner marketing has been the key to it all

ActiveCampaign's CMO, Maria Pergolino, joins Ground Up to share: - how the company netted 80,000 customers by focusing more on product and less on marketing - why she's joined the company now and how marketing will continue to fuel growth, and - why they're leaning into brand and an already established community to grow

Ryan Bonnici, CMO at G2, checks in after 2 years at the company to share: - how they grew the team from 5 to 80 people - how he structures the marketing team into 3 pillars - how the marketing team measures success - the strategies that helped them grow monthly sessions from 500,000 to 5 million - his aggressive approach to goal-setting and planning - and more...

Andy Cook, cofounder and CEO at Tettra––a company wiki and internal knowledge base software––shares the company's journey from "Ramen profitability" to actual profitability over the course of several years. On this episode, he shares details around: - how he and his cofounder cut expenses to avoid going out of business - how a failed round of funding made profitability a necessity - how launching a freemium plan helped Tettra increase acquisition and adoption - how the team sets, prioritizes, and aligns around goals in order to stay on track

Elle Woulfe, a martech veteran with over 12 years working in SaaS for companies like Eloqua, Lattice Engines, and Path Factory shares her experiences in: - building a content marketing engine - hiring and structuring a marketing team - aligning your team around metrics/goals/plans - the most important skills a marketer needs in 2020 (and beyond) - and more...

Ellie Mirman, CMO at Crayon, shares details on the early days of building the inbound marketing playbook at HubSpot, how the channels and mediums have changed, and how she’s successfully employed that inbound playbook at 2 other early-stage SaaS companies.

Kieran Flanagan, HubSpot's VP of Marketing, talks about the early days of freemium at HubSpot, instilling a growth discipline that expanded well beyond the marketing team, managing cross-functional teams, and more.

On this episode of Ground Up, Joe Martin shares: - CloudApp's journey to becoming a thought leader in customer experience, productivity, and collaboration. - How to get the marketing right for your freemium product (leveraging organic growth and referrals) - The role of historical data in building your marketing engine from scratch - And more!

Transistor cofounder Justin Jackson shares why he and his co-founder Jon started a "boring" podcast hosting company, how they netted their first 100+ customers, and how they modeled their growth in order to grow without outside investment.

Rebecca Corliss talks about landing press coverage before you have a product or website, building a brand and content marketing engine from scratch, and marketing through survival mode.

On this episode of Ground Up, Ben Jabbawy talks about pivoting, a failed acquisition, and how a handful of loyal customers helped fund their early growth.

On this episode of Ground Up, Shane Murphy joins John to discuss consistency in messaging, moving upmarket, and how to differentiate in a crowded market.

Patrick Campbell sits down with John to share the peaks and valleys of bootstrapping ProfitWell over the last 7 years, including making $0 in year one, managing product/market fit, building a consulting model to help sell Price Intelligently, and going through 2 bouts with cancer.

On this episode, Kyle Lacy sits down with John Bonini to discuss brand-building, communicating your brand's vision, and battling imposter syndrome.

Jeanne Hopkins sits down with John to discuss building a marketing engine when you have no historical data/context, building a strong team, nurturing relationships, team accountability, and more.

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.On the very first Ground Table, Databox’s John Bonini is joined by Andrea Lechner-Becker (CMO at LeadMD), John McTigue (former EVP and cofounder at Kuno Creative) and Pete Caputa (CEO at Databox) to discuss how the website conversion has evolved. Are website forms dying? Are chatbots and/or live chat really a better experience? Should you really still be gating your content? Tune in to hear the debate. Check out the report referenced throughout the episode here: https://databox.com/website-form-conversion-rates If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Sales software savant, Doug Davidoff, joined us on Ground Up to discuss the 37 (yes, 37!) features of HubSpot Sales Enterprise. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.On this episode of Ground Up, we chat with Jimmy Daly on lessons learned growing a content agency, the library vs. publication method, the connection between sales and content, and more. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.On today's podcast, Caputa and Moseley walk through all of the sales lessons they've learned in the last 22 months of working together. Things like: - What it is like to sell to companies who are already using a free product. - How our product team helped streamline his sales process. - How our marketing team helped position our product more effectively to new users. - How our customer support team helps users adopt the product and buy on their own. ...and more! If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.On this episode of Ground Up, Wistia's co-founder and CEO, Chris Savage, shares the details of what led to the decision to raise debt and buy out investors and why they decided to spend $111,000 to film a documentary. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.James Robert Lay almost destroyed his marriage because he was working too much and stressing out everyone around him. His marketing agency was like everyone else’s: doing anything for anyone. Fast forward to today, he’s happily married, has four kids, has fewer employees, tight relationships with partner firms and a thriving business that’s helped 100s of banks and credit unions transform the way they do their marketing and sales. How did he do it? If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Jay Acunzo, author of Break the Wheel, joins us to share his experiences in the tech industry, the moment(s) that sparked his passion against mindlessly following best practices, and how you can hone your intuition and do your best work. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Scott Belsky discusses the ideas from his new book, The Messy Middle, about finding your way through the hardest and most crucial part of any bold venture. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Fresh of his announcement of joining Lola.com as CEO, Mike Volpe shares his insights on building a movement, marketing to the SMB, and the current state of inbound marketing. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.In this episode of Ground Up, Emma Brudner, the Director of the HubSpot Blog, joins Pete Caputa to chat about all things blog related, including: - The data behind the performance of the HubSpot Blog - What HubSpot's organic strategy looks like - The pillar/cluster model - How the blog team is structured, and more... If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Ryan Carson, founder and CEO at Treehouse, shares the story behind their mission and how they plan to continue changing the system. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Leads forms or website chat–which converts better? John and Pete share the findings of a recent Databox report and debate the differences in approach, pros and cons, and more. See the full report here: https://databox.com/forms-vs-chat If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.John sits down with Tettra’s Kristen Craft to talk about a new report on the challenges of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding talent. Special guest: Remington Begg, CEO at Impulse Creative. Check out the full report referenced in this episode here: https://databox.com/agency-recruiting-and-hiring If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Pete Caputa shares the story of two agencies with a shared vision that leveraged each other's strengths in order to expand their capabilities and grow. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Hiten Shah details the successful research, development, and launch of his newest tool, FYI. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.They’ve grown to 75 employees in 50+ cities, have been profitable since year 2, and have raised $12 million as a tool to further their mission–here’s the story of everything in between. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Pete Caputa joins John to talk about the goals, processes, and discipline that helped Databox surpass its first million in ARR. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Jessica Miller and Sandie Young, both long-tenured members of PR 20/20, share insights on setting goals, exceeding client expectations, and building a great marketing agency. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Ginny Mineo, formerly of HubSpot, shares what worked at HubSpot, how that playbook has evolved, and how businesses everywhere should adapt their content strategies. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.John & Pete talk about the comarketing strategies that have helped Databox significantly increase traffic and leads over the last 12 months, as well as detail ways more business can take advantage of its comarketing program. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Listen in as Russ Perry shares how Design Pickle made unlimited, subscription-based graphic design work. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.John and Pete share some background on Databox's mission, as well as some of the specific developments and activities that have helped support that mission and spur growth. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Jason Fried on Basecamp's beginnings, staying bootstrapped, and why they don't care about world dominance. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Chris Savage, founder and CEO of Wistia, shares stories of starting up, how they generated initial traction, as well as thoughts on where branded video is headed. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Nir Eyal, best-selling author of Hooked, shares how companies successfully create habits and build products people love. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Tettra was running out of money. After failing to raise seed funding in the summer of 2017, its cofounders decided to chase a more ambitious goal–profitability. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Ken Segall, former ad agency creative director for NeXT and Apple, shares the values that drove Apple’s success as well as some of the most iconic advertisements of a generation. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Prism Global Marketing Solutions has developed a reputation for keeping its clients ahead of the technology curve. Here's how that's helped spur 40% YoY revenue growth. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Drift’s VP of Customer Success shares how her team thinks about scaling conversations, relationships, and one-to-one communication in a world of automation. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Ceros' VP of Marketing on maintaining 70% year-over-year growth by empowering brands to create more interactive and engaging content. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.The former VP of Marketing at Unbounce shares 15 years of marketing experience and her inspiration for giving it all away. Check out Laudi's free weekly workshops for SaaS marketers, Forget the Funnel, here: https://forgetthefunnel.com/for-ground-up/ If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Tim Thyne on how Help Scout scaled its self-serve model and how a product-driven company gets comfortable with the idea of “sales.” If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Drawing from his experience in starting his own company, scaling HubSpot, and advising other startups, Databox CEO Pete Caputa shares his experience on the things that change after your first 100 customers, and how to evolve in order to continue scaling. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Mike Donnelly noticed it had become increasingly difficult to reach his customers through email. After noticing patterns in how and when his customers engaged with his emails, he built Seventh Sense. This is his story. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Karl Sakas has worked with hundreds of agencies across 30 countries to solve a set of common challenges with unique solutions. Hear what he’s learned and how he’s helping. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Tiffany Sauder, President of Element Three, tells the story of how she brought her agency from the brink of failure to the Inc. 5000 and $10 million in annual revenue. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Big Sea is leading with goals, not inbound deliverables. Here’s how they do it and why it’s working. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Joanna Wiebe tells the story of how, through years of writing high-converting copy for companies like Buffer, Wistia, Invision, and Shopify, she was inspired to launch software to help everyone that writes for a living create better work. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.It’s been 12 years since Paul Roetzer founded PR 20/20. Since then he’s learned a lot through personal growth, business success, developing and retaining talent, and so much more. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Databox CEO Pete Caputa has played a key role in generating the first 100 customers (and more) for 3 different startups. In this episode, we chat about lessons from each that can be applied to any business. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Ever wonder how HubSpot approaches its own growth marketing? Pamela Vaughan, who has been with the company since 2008, gives us an inside look at the things that helped grow the HubSpot Blog to >4M monthly visitors, as well as their approach to testing and optimization that continues to help them grow at scale. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!

Click here to try Databox free, or learn more.Hear how Pete Caputa, now CEO at Databox, worked through internal resistance to build HubSpot’s Partner Program (on nights and weekends) into a global community that now represents ~40% of the company’s annual revenue. If you liked the episode, let us know on LinkedIn!