Leading marketing at a growing startup feels like a chicken running around with its head cut off. That’s exactly what Georgiana (or Gia) Laudi felt like when she was hired as the marketing hire at Unbounce:
"We were doing e-courses in e-books and white papers and strategic partnerships and co-marketing campaigns. It was chaos because of the amount of work we were expected to do in a marketing role at a startup!"
I was in a similar situation when I joined to lead marketing at a startup many years ago. It often felt like throwing spaghetti at the wall—paid ads, social, content, blog posts, and SEO… There ws a LOT!
Luckily Gia and Claire Suellentrope (the co-founders of Forget the Funnel) came up with a solution.
After helping startups like Sprout Social, FullStory, Wistia, Appcues, SparkToro, and many dozens more, they came up with the 3-phase Customer-Led Growth framework, which gives marketing teams a systematic, repeatable method to hit ambitious revenue targets.
In this Marketing Powerups episode, you’ll learn:
- How a trip to Airbnbs’ San Francisco office gave Gia the “Aha!” moment to develop the Customer-Led Growth Framework.
- The three phases of the Customer-Led Growth Framework.
- How she helped MeetEdgar’s team increase their free-to-paid conversion rate by 40% using the Customer-Led Growth Framework.
- The one thing Gia wished she had done more early in her marketing career.
🎉 About Georgiana Laudi
Georgiana (Gia) Laudi is the co-founder and CEO of a consultancy called Forget The Funnel, where she helps SaaS companies scale and improve conversion rates through customer-led growth. She’s also a marketing and growth advisor to companies like MarketerHire, SparkToro, and Sprout Social. Previously, she was the VP of Marketing at Unbounce and has worked in growth marketing for over 20 years.
🕰️ Timestamps
- 02:32 - Why leading marketing in a startup feels like running around like a chicken with its head cutoff
- 06:15 - Why do startup marketers feel like they have to throw spaghetti at the wall?
- 11:12 - How a trip to Airbnb's San Francisco office gave Gia an “Aha!” moment about the customer-led growth framework
- 16:15 - What does an MQL even mean?
- 19:45 - The valuable things marketers can gain by getting inside their best customer’s heads
- 25:35 - How Gia and Claire applied the Customer-Led Growth framework to SparkToro and MeetEdgar
- 30:05 - A review of the MeetEdgar homepage’s messaging
- 32:15 - The Forget the Funnel book
- 33:10 - A career power-up that’s helped accelerate Gia’s marketing career
- 35:25 - Gia’s one piece of advice to her younger self
💪 The sponsor
I want to thank the sponsor of this episode, 42/Agency.
When you're in scale-up mode, and you have KPIs to hit... the pressure is on to deliver demos and signups.
And it's a lot to handle: demand gen, email sequences, revenue ops, and more! That’s where 42/Agency, founded by my friend Kamil Rextin, can help you.
They’re a strategic partner that’s helped B2B SaaS companies like ProfitWell, Teamwork, Sprout Social and Hubdoc build a predictable revenue engine.
If you’re looking for performance experts and creatives to solve your marketing problems at a fraction of the cost of in-house, look no further.
Go to https://www.42agency.com/ to talk to a strategist to learn how you can build a high-efficiency revenue engine now.
✨ Useful links
Marketing Powerups