When you're in the early stages of building a business, you need to move quickly. But when you're testing growth channels, there is a difference between moving quickly and freaking out.   In this episode of the InDemand podcast, host Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, uncovers the pitfalls that teams can fall into when reacting to quantitative results.   She covers the mistakes that founders make when reacting to experiments and how to set yourself up for success when running tests and reacting to the results.   TL;DL 0:22 - Don't freak out about bad numbers. Early technical founders have a tendency to overreact to test data from marketing and growth campaigns. But in growth you're working with humans, not code, and you can't always trust immediate results. 4:35 - A one to two week experiment with low spend on a growth channel likely won't show you a clear result. If you react to it you might be missing a big opportunity. 8:00 - A company Asia worked with was testing out a video demo option. After one week and getting two requests for the video the team was resigned to the fact that it wasn't working, but after waiting it turned out that having the video was actually increasing the number of prospects entering the pipeline. 12:45 - You always have to remember that quantitative outputs can tell you 'what', but can't tell you 'why'. Before you react, you have to pause and dig deeper to understand what is driving the numbers. 20:07 - When you're running a test, the sample size matters. You need a large enough volume of results to be able to trust the results. There is a natural variance in the results you get and if you end an experiment early you might just be seeing variance. 

Customer research is a critical part of growth. However many teams and founders make big mistakes when they do their research. What are the mistakes you need to avoid?    In this episode of the InDemand podcast, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, highlights the most common mistakes in conducting customer research and gives examples of how to avoid them.    If you haven’t already, sign up for The Work, a weekly newsletter: https://demandmaven.substack.com/   TL;DL   1:03 - Mistake one, not setting clear goals for research. You'll always have a trigger that makes you decide to do the research, but you should also have a clear goal. For example, "I want to understand who churns and why" 6:03 - Mistake two, not interviewing the right people. When you conduct your research, make sure that it's very clear who the target audiences are going to be and that it aligns with your ultimate goals and hypothesis of the research. 10:58 - Mistake three, over-talking in interviews. Too much talking makes your research subjects want to agree. You might end up with a lot of camaraderie, but you'll probably not get the most valuable information. 14:05 - Mistake four, asking leading questions. Giving a hint of the answers you want to hear makes it more likely you'll hear that answer and not an answer that may surprise you and point to an issue you're not aware of. 21:48 - Mistake five, accepting vague answers. This is the one that founders are most susceptible to. For example, "What I liked about the product was that it was easy to use". An answer like that should be followed up on to find out specifically what they mean. Terms like: it was easier, it was faster, it was better, it was stressful, it was annoying, it was confusing, it was flexible, it was seamless are triggers where you should dig deeper. 33:58 Mistake six, if you don't need to, don't incentivize people for your interviews. In some situations, you will need to have an incentive to get people. But if you're talking to your customers, don't give an incentive. It makes it more likely that you'll get people who don't really want to talk to you and just want the incentive. 34:20 - Mistake seven, not having a feedback process after interviews. After you do your research, it's key to not only have bullet point results for the founders and executives but also a detailed review of the process and learnings for the entire team.

Product management isn’t easy. And the reality is some founders just aren’t that good at it.    In this episode, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, discusses the importance of effective product management in growth and why striving for 'quality of life improvements' - small tweaks to existing features - over 'value generators' - hurts growth.    If you haven't seen it, check out The Work, a weekly newsletter: https://demandmaven.substack.com/   Timeline:    1:33 - Product management is ultimately the process of determining and prioritizing what features to build, what value to provide and deciding how to actually get that done. It is not order taking. 5:00 - Customers are not good at telling you what to build or why they want you to build something. If you are just approaching product management as taking orders from your customers you will often be led astray. 6:40 - Customers are usually in a solution space, as a great p roduct manager you need to get in the problem space (build a car and not a faster horse). 10:30 - Asking your customers "why?" can lead you to ideas for better solutions to their problems. Instead of just building features based on a customer request, ask "What is it that you're trying to accomplish? What does that help you do?" 13:00 - When you are too focused on the solutions space you build quality of life improvements, but not value generators. 16:00 - If you only make quality of life improvements, customers will eventually leave for another product that has more impactful value generators. 23:30 - If you have a revenue cohort retention rate of 40-70% the reason is likely related to your product and it is a key signal to start thinking about your product management. 26:45 - Recomendations for product management: Reforge, Continous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres, Escaping The Build Trap by Melissa Perry  

In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, chats with Angeley Mullins live from SaaStock.    Angeley is a seasoned commercial and operations executive ( E-Commerce & B2B SaaS) with leadership roles across the US, EMEA, & APAC including: Amazon, Intuit, and GoDaddy. She is currently Chief Commercial Officer at Resourcify. Angeley focuses on both growing scale- ups including Seed / Series A - Series C , as well as larger corporations and NGOs.   They discuss Angeley's experience in the tech industry, the importance of having a global perspective, and the need for diversity in leadership.    Angeley shares insights on how to tackle globalization, the importance of understanding customer behavior in different markets, and shares her personal experiences as a woman in the tech industry.   Timestamps:    2:55 - Interview starts 4:30 - Angeley's role at Resourcify and understanding Circularity and Sustainability 7:37 - Angeley's career journey starting in finance and then her experience working with tech companies like GoDaddy, Quickbooks, and others 9:45 - How European and American companies tend to have different views on the global market. American companies naturally think of themselves as global from day one, whereas European companies are often focused on their own country or just Europe as a market for too long. 15:30 - How Resourcify is growing and helping clients track and manage CO2 and Waste 17:41 - Women in Leadership, being the only woman in the room and how data shows that female leadership helps comanies succeed 25:30 -  How companies can focus on improving diversity by doing things like screening applicants without knowing gender. 28:59 - How to connect with Angeley on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeleymullins/)

Description: As we approach the end of the year, we rely on the information we have to make decisions and plans for future growth. In order to have a full picture, it is critical to have been capturing high-quality qualitative as well as quantitative information.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down why both types of information are important and examples of how to incorporate qualitative information to understand the ‘why’ behind your numbers. TL;DL  Timestamps: 4:50 - Quantitative insights are things like conversion rates, retention rates, daily active users, and most founders tend to be better about collecting these. But they are not super valuable on their own.  5:50 - When you combine qualitative and quantitative insights, you start to see patterns emerge about where gaps and opportunities exist. 6:25 - Qualitative allows you to understand the 'whys' that are driving the quantitative data you're seeing 8:02 - Sometimes your qualitative and quantitative insights are contradictory. This brings up a lot of questions and creates moments when you can learn a lot about how your business is working. Often a contradictory qualitative insight comes up because of who you are talking to.  11:30 - Customer research is just one example of qualitative information. There are things like the stories that filter through your organization, and information that you get from audience members, thought leaders, and marketing leaders in your industry. 13:10 - Customers can't tell you what's not working in your business, but they can tell you about their experience and their needs. 14:05 - It's not about one or the other, to build a business you should prioritize collecting high-quality quantitative and qualitative information. 15:35 - Retrospectives, done by team members at the end of projects, can be a precious qualitative resource to incorporate into your operations. 19:10 - If you're not doing both, then long-term planning is going to be way more difficult than it needs to be. As we close the year it is a great time to make sure you're collecting high-quality information on both sides. 

When it comes to building a business there is a big difference between focusing and niching. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down how you can achieve focus by niching, but why you don't have niche to achieve focus.  TL;DL:  2:00 - When we talk about focusing, it is a founder really dedicating for a period of time to a specific part of the market. Niching is going to market saying that you only serve a specific segment. An example of a niched product is a CRM that is for trucking companies. An example of focus could be a CRM for small businesses that is investing over 12 months in focusing on marketing agencies and then the next 12 months focused on design firms. 5:00 - If you're focusing, you probably wouldn't turn away a customer that is outside of your focus. If you're in niche, you would turn away a customer that is outside of the niche. 9:10 - Focusing is not necessarily a forever thing, but it is important as you think about go to market. Start by thinking about who your raving fans are and who will get the most value out of the product. That is how you identify who to focus on first. 11:00- Hubspot is a great example of a company that focused, but did not niche.    12:30 - When you are niching, what's important is targeting a niche that has enough market turnover to create opportunity over the long-term. Then it is critical to have a plan for identifying  when to expand or pivot out of that niche. 20:00 - When you are niching, you want to make sure that you are focusing on long-term macro trends and not short-term micro trends. For example, Blockbuster was niched, but missed the macro trend towards streaming. 24:00 - As a recap, focusing is a temporary effort focused on specific segments. For example a small business CRM where you are focusing your product and marketing efforts for 6 months on marketing agencies. Niching is a defining your product as being for a specific segment. For example defining your product as the CRM for marketing agencies and turning away other customers. 

What are the best areas to focus on when you’re trying to drive growth in your company?  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the top five growth drivers for SaaS businesses.  Growing Awareness Growing Traffic Capturing More Leads Increasing Sales Increasing Business Capacity TL;DL 1:00 - What are the top 5 growth drivers? 1:55 - Growing awareness simply means more people knowing about your brand. This is tough to measure, but usually you can look at behaviors like testimonials or referrals. 4:15 - Growing traffic to your website is huge and easy to track, but it is very competitive in 2023 using traditional channels to grow traffic. 5:20 - Capturing more leads means increasing the number of leads, but also increasing your conversion rate, so that you are getting a bigger percentage out of all your traffic converting. 7:05 - Increasing sales. This is about improving the conversion rate, but also accelerating the sales cycle and increasing profitability. 9:45 - Increasing business capacity is where you are making hires and removing bottlenecks from your business that are slowing growth. Most of the time, growth is a function of how well your team is functioning. 17:30 - In early stage companies, you will often find it most valuable to focus on growing traffic, capturing more leads, and increasing sales. In more mature companies, all 5 are important to focus on. 19:00 - If you think through these five growth factors as it relates to your business, what are the top 2 most important for your business? And then within those 2 what are the 3–5 projects that you can do to make an impact on those growth factors?  Check out Katelyn Bourgoin on twitter at https://twitter.com/KateBour

In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the strategies successful companies have used to survive and grow through downturns and how to apply it to your business. TL;DL:   1:00 - A lot of companies simply over-hired during the past couple years of growth and the layoffs now are correcting for that as opposed to a greater market downturn. 5:30 - In a true economic downturn, layoffs and cuts might not be your best strategy for future survival. 6:45 - There are lots of different levers that can lead to growth. Increasing leads and traffic, increasing in sales, increasing retained customers, increasing in upsells or cross sales, and increasing revenue by optimizing pricing. 8:05 - In an economic downturn the first step to take is to get default alive, meaning that you get to a position of not needing future investment to continue operating. 9:34 - The second step is checking for gaps. That means looking at your business from a product, market, model, and channel perspective. In an economic downturn big changes are happening in the market and that likely means your business needs to change. 13:15 - Step number three is refocusing on growth. The companies that succeed during a downturn are companies that tighten their belts, focus on leadership, and then refocus on growth before the market at large. 17:00 - If you're experiencing slowness with growth right now, there are likely root causes beyond just the economic downturn. You should be looking at and focusing on your highest LTV customers and identifying opportunities that create higher LTV long-term. 

Are you building a SaaS product but have not yet got your first paying customers? You might be in or about to go into the SaaS Black Hole.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the SaaS black hole and covers how to think about pivoting, building your team, and bringing in outside help when you’re in this phase of building your company.  TL;DR: 3:40 - The SaaS black hole is the time when you are going from having trial users to charging for your product and working on getting your first 10 paying customers.  8:30 - The black hole phase looks different for every company. Sometimes, in rare cases, you nail the product and people want to sign up and pay right away. More often a few people convert, but there is real hesitation about paying and the value of the product. Depending on what happens in the black hole, you might need to go all the way back to customer discovery and really make sure you understand your audience and problem. 14:20 - The black hole can lead you to decide you need to totally pivot your product, to change focus to a new audience, or to realize that there is a problem or audience you didn't plan for, but that loves your product. 17:30 - It is very difficult to build a team while you're in the black hole because you don't know the answers to a lot of fundamental questions about your business. 20:45 - Most bootstrap founders don't plan big launches and instead choose to just go live. You don't need to feel like something big needs to happen when you start asking for your users to pay for the product. 24:30 - It makes sense to have a small team in this phase because you want to be able to make decisions quickly and take fast action when you need to pivot. When you have someone in marketing at this stage, they are going to have whiplash and struggle with the change of direction. 26:30 - From a growth consulting perspective, it makes sense to work with a company in the planning and preparation phase, pre-black hole or once a company is out of the black hole and has their first 10 paying customers. 

Are you investing in marketing, but not seeing the growth you were aiming for? It might be because you’re overlooking another key growth area. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the top five areas to look at first when it comes to growth.  You’ll learn why marketing might not be the best lever to pull in your business right now and how focusing on operations, retention, and activation can drive your growth.  TL;DR 0:45 - Putting more dollars into marketing won't be the best growth investment if you haven't taken care of the core areas of the business yet. 1:50 - Area #1 is the activation and onboarding part of the customer experience. The benchmarks to look at depending on your model are below and if you're not reaching these benchmarks it's likely there is a lot of space for you to improve activation. Demo to paying customer, aim for 30% Free trial to paying customer, aim for 30 to 50% Freemium free account to paying customer, aim for 2 to 3% 7:45 - Area # 2 is retention. If you don't have any or don't have an efficient process for retaining customers who would otherwise churn it is likely a big opportunity for growth. 11:02 - Area # 3 is expansion. Upselling or cross-selling into existing plans you have or creating add ons. To do expansion well you need to have a strong product innovation process and good customer marketing to sell the value of expanded plans or add ons. 13:40 - Area # 4 is looking at your L.T.V./Average Revenue per User. If these aren't increasing over time it points to an issue with customer retention or a lack of expansion revenue. LTV will also vary between markets and you might be able to target a higher LTV market. 16:35 - Area # 5 is operations. If you are stuck on growth, but don't have good systems and processes in place for operations, then plans and strategies for marketing aren't going to create results. If you recognize this as an issue in your business it likely makes sense to invest in operations first by making a hire or improving processes. 

Are you building a painkiller or a vitamin?  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the two categories of products and how you can use the concept in marketing your SAAS business.  You’ll learn why most successful SAAS businesses are pain killers, examples of both types of business, and how your messaging and positioning should adapt to the product your building.  TL;DR 0:48 - Breking down the concept of painkiller vs. vitamin as it applies to your product. 1:51 - What is a painkiller solution? It is a product that is solving a very specific problem directly. For example, Loom is a painkiller product for giving feedback and training to your team. A good test is if your product is relieving frustration or annoyance for your customers. 3:37- What is a vitamin solution? It is a product that fulfills a desire and aims for a better version of your customers organization. 4:45 - When it comes to building a SAAS business, you almost always want to focus on building a painkiller, solving a direct pain point for your customers. 7:08 - Why you can think of Zoom and Notion as examples of painkiller SAAS products. Zoom solved the pain point of friction and reliability with other video conferencing tools. Notion did what you formally needed multiple tools to do. 9:30 - A SAAS vitamin is rare because what motivates people and be willing to more money is experiencing a pain point 14:30 - Security and insurance products can be a painkiller for those who have already experienced the problem and a vitamin for those who haven't yet. 15:20 - The reason why understanding if you're building a painkiller or a vitamin matters is that it informs your messaging. 

Every long-term customer your business has went through a series of decision and said yes at each step along the way.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the 8 customer yeses and how you can create an environment that makes it easier to get a yes each step of the way.  TL;DR 2:30 - There is a series of 8 yeses that a prospect needs to go through to become and stay a customer. 3:10 - #1 Yes, I have a problem. A the start comes an initial recognition of the problem. 3:40 - #2 Yes, I want to solve that problem. Realizing you have a problem doesn't mean you are ready to take action to solve it. A customer needs to be motivated or ready to take action and often only a customer can take this step. 5:13 - #3 Yes, I want to try your solution. Out of all the solutions that exist, a customer needs to be aware of your solution and view it at the top of their possible options. 6:10 - #4 Yes, I understand why this is valuable. Typically in SAAS this will happen through a free trial or an initial round of research. 6:50 - #5 Yes, I want to become a customer. The prospect is ready to pay and use the product. 8:10 - #6 Yes, I want to renew. Every month, quarter, or year your customer needs to continue paying and not churn. 10:15 - #7 Yes, I think that new plan or add on will be valuable for me. 12:45 - #8 Yes, I recommend this product. Ultimately you want any customer to be happy enough that they would recommend the product to someone who asks about it. 14:00 - There is an also a bonus 9th yes. Yes, I'm okay paying more. You want most of your customers to be so happy with the product that they would stay if you raised the price. 15:45 - It is worth going through the different yeses so that you can put yourself in the mindset of a prospect or a customer and all the steps they need to go through for your to have a thriving business. 20:30 - When you only focus on KPI's you can lose focus on creating an environment that makes it easy to say yes at each of these steps. A no at any of these steps means you are losing money. 21:30 - Ask yourself and tune in to your intuition about where your customers today stop saying yes? 

Your business growth feels like it’s plateauing and so you’re thinking about focusing on a less aware audience is that a bad idea?  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down 5 levels of audience awareness and where it makes sense to place your marketing attention and budget.  TL;DR 3:00 - Going after unaware audiences is the last thing you should plan to do when you're growing your company, but there are lots of marketing agencies that will recommend you do just that. 6:20 - Going through an example of why a founder might get to a place where they want to go after unaware audiences. 7:30 - "Unaware audience" comes form Eugene Schwartz's idea on 5 levels of awareness: Unaware - people don't even think they have a problem or a pain point. Problem Aware - people who experience the pain, but don't know there is a solution to it. Solution Aware - people who have decided that they want to find a solution to the problem they've faced or pain they're experiencing and are beginning a search. Product Aware - people that have become specifically aware of your product and have likely started engaging with your marketing. Most Aware - people that have done their research, watch reviews and tutorials, downloaded a guide, attended a webinar, etc. 13:45 - You should not focus on an unaware audience because convincing someone they have a problem, when they don't care is an incredibly difficult and costly challenge. 18:00 - If you get to a position where you are a market leader and feel that the marketed is capped, it may make sense to allocate resources to unaware audiences, but is likely a better strategy to look at other problems and paint points you could solve for a different problem aware audience. Hubspot starting in marketing automation and expanding into sales and customer success is a great example of this. 

Now that you know the basics of how to get started with building out a marketing team it’s time to diving into how and when to hire your first marketing leader.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down types of marketers that makes since as a first hire, where to sources them from, and how to set them up for success in the first 90 days.  TL;DR 1:36 - Who is the best type of marketing to hire? If you are in the software space, you should really only be looking at a generalist who is well versed on demand generation or content marketing. If you are a self-serve, low LTV business, then content marketing makes the most sense. If you have a high LTV and a longer buying cycle, then demand generation is more important. 6:40 - The single most important thing when making this hire though is finding someone who has worked in a similar stage of growth for a similar company. 9:00 - When you are creating your job description you want to focus on what stage of growth you're in and after that, what type of tech experience do you want them to have. 9:55 - There are a few different places that you can focus on for sourcing talent: Your own personal network LinkedIn Recruiting sites like Indeed, Monster, etc. Recruiting and headhunting firms 12:45 - What is important for your hire to know after you've hired them? The vision of your company The specific goals for the company Clearly outlined expectations for the role Existing marketing strategies and plans 21:25 - Defining the first projects for your first hire Creating a 90 day plan for what you want to accomplish over the first 3 months is a great way to get started. Right from the start talking to customers and listening to any recorded customer interviews that exist

One of the questions most founders have is, "How do I start building a marketing team?" In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the options that exist for founders starting to build out their marketing teams and what is the best fit for companies depending on the budget and time constraints they are facing. TL;DR:  1:20 - The four options for building your marketing team are: Generalist or specialist contractors Agencies or consultancies Full-time or part-time employees Learning marketing and growth yourself as a founder 2:36 - The best option for you will depend on your budget, what the business needs, and what you need as a founder. 5:00 - There is no perfect formula for who to hire, but there are patterns. When you have less than $10K in MRR, usually contractors and limited consulting are the best options for you. If you are above $10K in MRR, then you could start thinking about hiring an employee to focus on marketing. Some say wait to $50K in MRR, but when it makes sense for you will depend on your growth track. 7:00 - Contractors work in some different ways: Sometimes they charge a flat rate and sometimes will work as per hour or per project. You can find jack-of-all-trades type contractors up to hyper-specialized contractors. Typically it is easier to find talent and it is pretty low risk to hire contractors. The potential downside to contractors and freelancers is that you end up taking on more management work as a founder. 11:15 - Agencies and consultancies Agencies tend to be more expensive. At the lower end from $5,000 to $7,000 and at the high range $10,000 to $30,000 a month. Agencies specialize in execution. They can usually work fast and deliver quickly. Typically with consultancies, they are not actually doing the work but helping you bring clarity and perspective on how to overcome the challenges facing your businesses. The range for consultancies is also very large all the way from $6,000 or $7,000 up to close to six figures. Not all agencies are great at e

What are the four traits that separate the highest performing CEOs from their peers? In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the decision-making and approaches great CEOs use to consistently generate results.  Here’s the link to the article discussed in todays episode: https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart TL;DR:  2:24 - What set's successful CEOs apart from their counterparts? Deciding with speed and conviction Engaging for impact Adapting proactively Delivering reliably 3:08 - Deciding with speed and conviction, for a CEO it is more important to make good decisions fast than to make great, but slow, decisions. You almost never have perfect information, so you will always be making a decision with uncertainty Wrong decisions are usually better than making no decision at all 10:30 - When you are struggling to make decisions in a team, a CEO needs to be able to make decisions with conviction and be able to get their team onboard. 12:00 - Two good questions to ask yourself in the decision-making process are: What is the impact if I get it wrong? How much will it hold up other things if I don't move forward on this? 13:50 - It's also important for a CEO to know when a decision should be made by someone else. A CEO doesn't have infinite energy, so they can't be responsible for all decisions. Often it is better for the CEO to guide and coach others on making the decision. 19:59 - Engaging for impact is about how do you align your resources and how to you ultimately plan and create paths to execute. It means that you as CEO are aware of the challenges you are facing and that you've got the right people on board to address those challenges. 25:00 - CEOs that engage for impact are not afraid of conflict. They dive head first into solving contentious problems if it will affect the company. 27:55 - Adapting proactively may be a lot more important for a large company, but even at the early stages of a SaaS business, it is important for a CEO to understand the changes that are taking place in the company and marketplace. A way to think about this is how are you filling the time you have with thought-provoking information or insights that you can use to act in new or different ways

As a founder it can be hard to pull back and step into the role of CEO, but usually that is the most important move you need to make for the long term success of your company.  In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down how to think about making the transition from being a great founder to being a great CEO! Timestamps for TLDR: 0:35 - Welcome back to the In Demand podcast! 1:25 - The focus for this upcoming season of the show is on being and becoming a better CEO. 3:22 - What does it mean to be a CEO? Making great decisions, being a therapist, being the coach for the team, creating vision, framing the firms business challenge, 8:30 - It is important to understand the role of CEO no matter the business because when founders start taking themselves seriously as CEOs they make better decisions, build better teams, and help evolve the business. 11:15 - Being a better marketer boils down having a better sense of psychology and awareness about your target audience on top of having a really good understanding of the landscape that is available to you. 15:00 - When it comes to founders who don't transition to CEO, they often get bogged down in tasks because they haven't figured out how to delegate and then spend time in roles that don't fit the zone of genius of the founder. 17:45 - How do you make the transition from founder to CEO? You start by taking a step back and looking objectively at where things in your business are getting stuck because you don't have enough room on your plate 19:00 - When a founder is not acting like a CEO they struggle to see challenges within the organization from an objective perspective 22:10 - Finally when founders don't transition to CEO they usually move slower than the rest of the market

Is your marketing great, good, or non-existent? No matter where it is today, it’s important to recognize where you are and what your next steps should be. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down the three stages of marketing, how to know which stage you're in, and what to do to level up from one stage to the next! The three stages of marketing are: From No Marketing to Some Marketing From Some (or bad) Marketing to Good Marketing From Good Marketing to Great Marketing

Is your growth strategy working? There are few questions as important. In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, walks through the three stages of growth, and the key actions for assessing and planning for improvement from each stage.  Understanding where we are at when it comes to growth will help you know where to focus and what next steps make the most sense on your growth journey.

As a founder, you probably think of new growth ideas everyday. But how many of the ideas do you follow through on? Deciding how to prioritize your growth ideas is the critical first step to implementing them.  In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, walks through the different frameworks you can use to evaluate your growth ideas and decide which you will prioritize.

How do you know if you have product-market fit? You measure it! In this episode of InDemand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down the different ways to think about measuring product-market fit and how to apply it in your SaaS business.

Does your business have product-market fit? Are you sure? There can be a lot of grey area when it comes to understanding your business's product-market fit, but with a bit of examination, we can bring clarity to the topic and plot a course for strengthening your products fit with the market. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, breaks down product-market fit and how to think about measuring and improving your own product-market fit as you bring to market and grow your product.

When it comes to measuring marketing nuance is key. For every market, product, and business, the results of marketing have their own specific context. To understand when you should be expecting results from your marketing efforts, you need to understand the context of that work.

We all start our businesses for different reasons. For some, it is a personal pain point--a problem that we want to solve for ourselves. For others, it is a person or group that we want to help. No matter how you start as a founder, it is crucial that you find the big why for your business--the reason your business exists.

In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, shares the principles for growing a SaaS company when you are competing in an overcrowded market.  At DemandMaven, we just wrapped up a project for a client that was in one of the most competitive markets. While we had some incredible wins, we also had many lessons learned. We distilled those lessons into 6 principles for founders to apply when they are entering a highly competitive market.    Dive deeper by reading the full article that inspired the episode: https://demandmaven.io/lessons-learned-from-competing-in-an-overcrowded-market/ TLDL:  You’re going to need a clear, competitive differentiator. This differentiator is what makes you different, better, and special. It sets you apart from everyone else. Maybe you’re tackling a specific pain for a specific audience better than the other guys. It’s going to have to actually be better than all of the other competitors. “Better” is also not as cognitively clear because to almost every founder, their product already is “better”. But it has to be recognizably “better” to the customers as well. They’ve got to feel that “betterness”. If it’s not better, it’s going to have to be a little cheaper, although some would argue this would need to be the case regardless as a new player in a highly-competitive market. Have zero friction to signing up and becoming a paying customer. It needs to be pretty easy to make a decision about the product and actually sign-up. Some would argue that adding barriers to entry would increase demand, but that totally depends on how many competitors there are and how frictionless they appear to be. Time to value is also a critical component when weighing how to approach this. The longer time to value, the less friction you’ll need to have. Find a channel with the most opportunity. If you’re in an extremely crowded market, then it’s likely that most acquisition channels will be tapped (and maybe maxed out with extremely high CPLs). You’ll need to follow basic rules on ARPU and adjust CAC accordingly, but after that, prioritize the channels you can either beat the competition at, are totally untapped, or both! Lean into your strengths skill-wise and resource-wise. This one’s a tough one because they’re not always obvious and it seems like a weird thing to list. But knowing the competitive landscape, you’ll need to identify what you can provide that’s better and different from a marketing perspective. So if you’re good at speaking, networking, writing, building, whatever — leverage that because it (usually) can’t be copied. All of that, of course, within the context of what your buyers are most likely to do, consume, and care about. These 6 basic principles are really just the start. To stay competitive in a cr

Product market fit is often talked about like it is a specific destination. A place you arrive at once and know that you’ve arrived. But the reality of growing a SaaS company is that you may not know if you have product-market fit or if you have it, you may not know how good the fit really is. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the seven best indicators for when you’ve found product-market fit and how to take action if you haven’t reached them yet.  TLDL:  It feels like you are guiding a boulder down a mountain, not pushing it up the mountain.  When customers are signing up despite some product issues and every new lead or customer doesn’t feel like a lot of work, that is an indicator that you’ve found product-market fit.  Prospects are willing to pay right now and they don’t bat an eye about the price When you have customers finding you and signing up right away, that is a great sign of product-market fit. Retention and active users improve with every new cohort of paying customers  If you look back 12 months (or 6 in case of being a new venture) and you have retained at least 50% of your customers and that rate is growing over time, that is a great sign of product-market fit.  Running a product-market fit survey and getting 40% of your customers saying they would be very disappointed if your product disappeared Using the SuperHuman fit survey (https://firstround.com/review/how-superhuman-built-an-engine-to-find-product-market-fit/) and finding that at least 40% of your customers are every invested in your product shows that you have found product-market fit.  To quickly recap the survey, ask “How would feel if you could no longer use the product?” With three options:  Very Disappointed  Somewhat disappointed  Not disappointed at all When one new customer generates two or more customers When a customer generates two new customer without you having to do anything, you have a great indicator of product-market fit.  Having this viral growth from word of mouth dramatically decreases your cost of acquisition and is a sign that you have a great segment and fit.  Cost to acquire a customer is under a third of the lifetime value of a customer If the lifetime value of a customer

Some lessons in marketing are easy to learn. You pick them up from a book, take a class, or hear a talk and get it immediately. Other lessons are harder to come by. They are the ones learned over time and through experience. The ones that we look back on and think about the head start we could have got from applying them earlier.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the four biggest lessons that she learned the hard way. From customer journey’s to funnels and go to market strategy, you’ll learn growth lessons you can implement today to avoid learning them the hard way yourself in the future.

Understanding your acquisition channels is key to growing your business, but convoluted terminology, different strategies, and numerous channels it can be hard to know where to focus your efforts. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down the basics of acquisition channels, from overviewing different types of channels to general and specific strategy for maximizing your use of acquisition channels to grow your business!

Customer research can be an absolute game changer. It gives you insight into not only what your current customers think of your product, but also who they are, what they want, and how you can better serve them and others in the future. But not every type of customer research is right. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down 8 ways that you might be doing your customer research wrong and how you can update your research to upgrade your results.  TLDR;  [1:20] - #1  You’re not doing customer research at all  If you’re not doing research, you can be sure what you’re customers think about your product and business. You’re not only missing out on improving your product now, but you’re liking missing the big picture on where you should go in the future.   [4:42] - #2 - You’re asking the wrong questions  There are lots of resources outlining customer research questions to ask, but asking general questions won’t get you the information you need to solve your specific challenges. [7:26] - #3 You’re not digging deep enough  In a research interview, you will often get vague answers like “It made my life easier”, as a founder you need to know the specifics of what you’re customers are thinking, so don’t be afraid to follow up and don’t just accept the first response you get if you don’t fully understand. [10:18] - #4 You’re answering questions for your customers  When you’re doing a customer interview, it’s natural that some awkward moments come up. And it’s human nature to fill awkward moments with words. But when we do that in a customer interview we influence the responses we get back.  [14:21] - #5 You’re not taking the feedback objectively If you built the product yourself, it’s easy to critical feedback personally. Instead, once you have the feedback you need to take a step back and put it into context. What are the patterns? Who are the outliers? Don’t let your prior viewpoint influence the answers you get back from customers. [ 21:14] - #6 - You’re the only one doing the interviewing At the end of the day a customer interview is a conversation, and the interviewer is one half of the conversation. So if you have one person doing all of the interviewers they will likely be missing information because they have the same blinds spots. A strong customer research process allows for this by having more than one person interviewing. [24:31] - #7 - You’re not recording or sharing your interviews  When we recount an interview we filter out information. And when you do that you miss crucial details. If you have a tea

Funnels are a great thinking tool for founders. They help us clarify the journey our customers take and help us plan the steps needed to scale. But thinking in funnels can narrow our vision if we don’t truly understand the reality behind the tool.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven breaks down the basics of funnels. From the different types of funnels to common misconceptions and how marketers and founders can use them to maximize them to grow their business.  TLDR;  [1min] What actually is a funnel? It’s a simple way to visualize how a prospect becomes a customer. From the top were prospects/leads learn about a product, down to where they consider it, and finally become a customer.  [2:50] The two funnels Sometimes talking about funnels can get confusing because there is an overall business funnel and then there is the marketing funnel.  [6:00] The marketing funnel At the top of the marketing funnel are activities that help build awareness of your brand and product. As you move down the funnel, marketing focuses in on consideration -- teaching about the problem and your potential solution. Finally, at the bottom of the funnel, you get very specific about your product as the solution to the problem to help prospects make the decision to buy.  [16:20] How to think about funnels in your business (and common misconceptions) The funnel isn’t a linear experience for your prospects and it isn’t the only experience. While you think of a customer moving from step to step and stage to stage they are often hopping around or doing things you can’t measure (like exploring competitors or chatting with friends). It is important to remember that a real customer journey is much more detailed and harder to track. [29:50] When you change the customer, you change the journey, and you change the funnel As your business grows and you start to focus on new segments, you always have to come back to your campaigns and think about if your funnel still matches your customer journey. Sometimes it will, but often it won’t and you will need to adjust, adapt, and expand your marketing. --------------------------  Times and Unedited draft notes for reference  What actually is a funnel  A simple way to visualize how a prospect becomes a customer A the top of the funnel we have people who are just aware of your product  Lower down people who are considering it  Lower yet is people who are considering it, maybe

In our personal lives we&rsquo;ve learned that assumptions will often lead us astray. When it comes to an early stage SAAS startup, they can be the difference between success and failure.&nbsp; In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio of DemandMaven shares the six worst assumptions that you can make as a SAAS founder and how to reframe them for success. Extra Resources: Check out the Baremetrics blog post on SAAS milestones: https://baremetrics.com/blog/how-fast-saas-companies-hit-arr-milestones TLDR; The Worst Assumptions You Can Makes as a SAAS Founder 1. [1:29] &ldquo;If you build it they will pay&rdquo; It&rsquo;s not &ldquo;If you build it they will pay&rdquo; it is much more like &ldquo;If you build it, test it out, validate it, then they are much more likely to pay.&rdquo; Most founders don&rsquo;t believe the old idea &ldquo;if you build it they will come.&rdquo; They know they need to market their product, but today more than ever, many assume that when the time comes the paying customers will be there.&nbsp; If you expect to charge for the product in the future, it is crucial that you don&rsquo;t just assume that customers will be willing to pay when you ask. &ldquo;The best way to know if someone will pay for your product is to actually try and charge them for it.&rdquo;&nbsp; If you&rsquo;re early on and don&rsquo;t have paying customers yet there are two directions you can go: You can create a group of beta users who get free access&nbsp; You can focus on finding your first ten paying customers&nbsp; 2. [16:00] &ldquo;If it worked for them, it&rsquo;s gonna work for me&rdquo; It&rsquo;s not really &ldquo;if it worked for them, it will work for me&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s much more like &ldquo;if it worked for them, in this market, in this industry, for these kinds of people, for this kind of software category, then it will probably work for me." It is great to listen to the stories of other founders, to learn from what they did, but the context for your business will always be different. If you find yourself doing research on others companies journeys, always remember that there is a specific context in which this strategy worked and compare it to the context you are operating in. 3. [24:00] &ldquo;The first 100 customers is fast&rdquo; It&rsquo;s not &ldquo;the first 100 customers is fast&rdquo; or that it should be fast, if anything it is exactly correlated to you, your market, and your product.&nbsp; No matter the milestone, never assume that it will be fast or easy. As the saying goes, your first $100k will be much harder than the second $100K <li style="font-weight: 400

Growth suddenly going stagnant? Here's the top 3 strategic questions you need to answer in order to unpack and troubleshoot your stagnant growth.&nbsp;

When it comes to early-stage SaaS founders trying to grow their businesses, there's a perfect time for marketing and there's less ideal times for marketing. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to time your marketing efforts for maximum impact and efficient investment. Asia Orangio of DemandMaven digs deep into what scenarios make sense for founders to invest in marketing, and what scenarios would warrant more customer discovery instead.