The Forget The Funnel Podcast

The numbers are in: SaaS growth is flat or down. Cost to acquire customers is up.Global startup investment over the last twelve months reached $285 billion — a 38% decline year over year, according to Crunchbase*.  Gone are the days of ‘move fast and break things’. SaaS leaders are being forced to think about efficiency or risk running out of runway.And we think this is a really good thing.Why?Finally, rather than spending more on the ‘top of the funnel’, founders are looking more closely at their positioning, messaging, onboarding and early product experience as the powerful growth levers they are. Also, more than ever before, it’s not just mature SaaS companies leveraging customer marketing for post-acquisition expansion strategies.In this episode, Georgiana Laudi & Claire Suellentrop dig into building resilience to the top of funnel challenges facing SaaS right now - from tactics to help lower the cost of acquiring new customers, to growing revenue by focusing on expanding your existing customers. Discussed:Why it’s now more complicated than ever to acquire new customers in SaaS - and the missed opportunity in successfully finding ways to expand revenue from existing ones.How to lower CAC and increase efficiency across the ‘funnel’ - from getting ridiculously close to the customer through research to building scalable customer experiences and programmatic communications. Key Moments: [4:44] Georgiana and Claire outline the reality facing many SaaS companies right now - a focus on profitability, slowed growth, and diminishing returns on once-reliable growth tactics. [8:20] The pair discuss why the evolution of customer expectations has led to the skillsets of SaaS teams becoming outdated in an era where net dollar retention is down across the board YoY - and the role leaders play in exacerbating this problem. [12:44] Georgiana unpacks how investing in an existing customer base by expanding on the value you already provide can unlock new opportunities for growth - and some of the ways you can practically do this. [19:01] The pair share their recommendations on how to address lowering the cost of acquisition and increasing efficiency across the board, from optimizing the customer experience for new sign-ups to getting ahead of customer attrition and expanding your existing customer base. [26:40] Georgiana covers the importance of focusing on the buyer champion across marketing and messaging and the danger of trying to talk to too many personas simultaneously - especially in enterprise sales. [30:50] The pair shares practical tips on how to better program reactive and proactive email marketing campaigns to attract new customers and retain/expand old ones. --*Source: https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/global-funding-data-analysis-ai-eoy-2023/As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

On this episode, Georgiana and Claire are joined by Steve De Jong and Diego Richards, the CEO and CCO of Stillio, who started working with Forget The Funnel earlier this year. Steve and Diego share their journey from blindly experimenting with marketing tactics and dangerously slow growth to a renewed sense of optimism for the future. With a new understanding of their amazing customers, they learned that growth doesn’t have to come from spending more on top-of-funnel marketing. We unpack the importance of understanding the use cases for your product, honing in on the ones that matter most – in this case, gaining Steve and Diego the clarity they needed for positioning & messaging their niche product inside a nearly limitless, horizontal market.Discussed:Problems with copying the marketing that works for other SaaS companies and relying on guesswork without clearly understanding the unique value you provide to a unique set of customers.How effective research allowed Stillio to quickly uncover its best customers and develop a more focused, effective messaging strategy with clear, practical outputs. Being open to seeking out external expertise to help guide you to a more customer-centric approach quicker - especially when the skillset is missing internally. Key Moments: [2:57] Steve and Diego explain the problem Stillio solves, their roles within the company and how they came to work with Forget The Funnel. [6:51] Georgiana, Diego, and Claire discuss the dangers of copying what seems to work for other SaaS companies and running marketing for marketing’s sake. [10:52] Steve talks about the product marketing challenges of building a product for so many potential customers with many potential use cases. [13:26] Diego shares some unique insights they discovered about their best customers through their research efforts - from understanding which segments were signing up for the long haul and others to set up and forget. [15:47] The group discusses the different types of Jobs the Stillio team identified from the research and how this impacted practical decision-making across how they present themselves through their marketing. [20:46] Georgiana explains the huge short-term opportunity in identifying the customers who implicitly understand the value of your product. [23:03] Diego and Steve share practical ways customer research influences their priorities, from reconsidering their overall messaging to updating the company homepage and emails. [27:07] Diego talks about the value the Stillio team found in working with an objective, external partner that could provide focus to their research efforts. Check out StillioConnect with Steve and Diego on LinkedInAs always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

In this episode of the Forget The Funnel Podcast, Georgiana and Claire discuss what happens when SaaS businesses prioritize customer research but screw it up, and how this can lead to perpetuating the vicious cycle of resistance to research in the first place. They dig into why this happens, from misaligned goals between teams, wasting time with research that isn’t actionable, and why looking to win/loss analysis, big quantitative surveys or even UX research to guide product and marketing decisions can leave teams feeling stuck.Georgiana and Claire also share an outline of what good customer research looks like - research that gives SaaS leaders the clarity and confidence needed to turn insight into revenue growth. Discussed:What bad research looks like - and what causes it in the first place. Why not all research methods will get you the answers you need, especially when teams lack a foundational understanding of customers.Why it can be problematic to rely on internal resources to run homegrown research projects - even if the leads have the word ‘research’ in their job title. What good research looks like (it should be obvious what to do next after it’s done) and how to make it super actionable for your team. Key Moments:[1:58] Claire shares a story of a Product Manager who fell back into bad habits by working on assumptions. [7:25] Georgiana and Claire talk about botched customer surveys. [11:33] Georgiana unpacks why not all research is equal, and assigning the wrong kind of research to a project can leave you with more questions than answers. [13:38] Claire shares an example of a team Forget The Funnel worked where a  UX researcher led a customer research project - and how the end result didn’t give the team the insights they needed. [16:46] Georgiana and Claire discuss how research done well should feel immediately actionable - and this starts with setting a clear goal at the start of the project.[18:32] Georgiana breaks down the importance of having an internal sponsor and stakeholder in any customer research project who can help champion the work.[20:10] Both discuss what good research looks like - from setting the right expectations, staying focussed on the best customers, clear segmentation, and asking the right questions. As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

On this episode of the Forget The Funnel Podcast, Georgiana & Claire are joined by Dan Stuart, President of EverCommerce companies Invoice Simple & Joist. Dan shares the moment he realized that the data his team relied on to make growth decisions about their 400,000 customers wasn't helping them make real progress, the importance of continually validating core beliefs about your product, and the advice he would give to other SaaS leaders to get out of their own way and capture business critical insights.Discussed:Dan shares how overreliance on assumptions stacks over time and how critical it is to re-evaluate and retest the customer experience you’re building continually.How Invoice Simple drastically improved their GTM experiments by transitioning from being a ‘data factory’ to incorporating real-world customer insight. How Invoice Simple measures success across key metrics like user acquisition to customer churn.Dan’s advice to other business leaders for how to support their cross-functional teams by providing them with the time, capability and expertise, not just for short-term success but to help them level-up overall.The importance of integrated planning within functional areas of your business and strategic pillars, and how an external team is often better equipped to handle internal competing assumptions and priorities. Key Moments:[3:51] The Invoice Simple product and the broad range of customers they’re targeting.[5:15] Dan talks about his growth from product and engineering to President and the ever-evolving need to adapt to new customers while keeping their long-standing customers happy. [7:59] Invoice Simple was a data factory whose early success was primarily due to being data-driven and making experimentation-based decisions.[13:33] Why Dan decided data wasn’t enough, his desire for more specific roles around research, and his belief that customer research has so much value.[17:31] Finding cross-functional alignment within teams and across strategic pillars.[21:15] Dan explains how his internal team decided which customer segment to go after, shifting, reorienting, and aligning teams towards this new segment. [24:47] Dan talks about uncovering this new customer understanding and what it meant for onboarding new customers to Invoice Simple. [27:21] Dan shares an example of customer messaging that he and his team prioritize now, thanks to customer research. [32:40] What Dan thinks are the most significant results from using customer insights. ---Check out Invoice SimpleConnect with Daniel Stuart on LinkedInAs always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

In this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast, Georgiana and Claire sit down to discuss the consequences of not understanding what really matters to your customers and how product and marketing teams find themselves in this situation way too often. They talk about the signals that show your team has less insight than they need to make good decisions and how you, as a team leader or founder, may be making the problem worse. Finally, they share a real-world story of a customer who went into the market with one understanding of their ideal customer - only for shifts in the market to force their hand and reevaluate everything they thought they knew about their customers, marketing and messaging. Key takeaways: Signs you and your team don’t know who your best customers are (or enough about them), including slowed and inconsistent growth or trying new tactics that aren’t moving the needle. Why A/B testing and experimentation is valuable, but only if it comes after building a solid foundational understanding of what matters to your best customers with research.A great example of a team with an early mover advantage who was suddenly in a saturated market and needed to go from one understanding of their customers to another quickly. Highlights:[3:48] The typical a-ha moment for founders to know they need customer research. [6:13] The consequences of companies not understanding their best customers. [9:25] An example of the failure of not knowing your target customer[12:02] Why these failures bubble up due to legacy knowledge, poor documentation, and resistance to research (even if you know it’s critical to your success). [17:45] An example of a company whose business was negatively impacted during COVID, new companies entering their category, and how Gia and Claire helped them navigate back to success. Tune in and get your notepad ready. Enjoy the show!As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

On this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast, Gia and Claire dive deep into Bitly’s journey from a point-solution to a $100m ARR multi-product platform with CMO Tara Robertson. Tara shares how her team leverages customer research to supercharge the SaaS company’s product-led growth.Discussed:Using Jobs-to-be-Done research at a SaaS that serves nearly limitless use-cases for customers ranging from B2C and micro-business to a Fortune 100 enterprise. The differences between your customer’s “Jobs”, ICP (ideal customer profile), personas, and target audience - and how Bitly develops a nuanced view of its different customer journies to guide its strategy.Building internal alignment at a leadership level through active listening, communication, and setting shared goals. The story behind Tara’s cross-functional collaboration with Product to get both teams aligned in their understanding of customers and speaking the same customer-centric language.Key Moments: [3:10] Bit.ly’s growth story is evolving beyond the virality of link shortening into the world’s leading connections platform, doing over 100 million in ARR.[5:00] Moving from a traditional sales model to building a product-led business and how Tara’s marketing team works cross-functionally with Product, Sales, and Customer Success.[7:00] The CEO tells Tara it’s time to rethink the way they do marketing. They needed a highly strategic team working in partnership with the Product team to create positioning and shared language, and that required a lot of research.[11:00] Marketing is using personas, Sales are leveraging ICPs, and the Product team is doing user research—how do you get everyone aligned to make the most significant impact across the organization, and what does it mean for the bottom line?[16:00] Finding alignment in the differences between Jobs-to-be-Done and ICP around goals for different teams.[19:26] You don’t have to be pro-jobs and anti-persona or vice versa. Tara shares how the partnership between her and the Chief Product Officer was critical to ensuring the teams understood each other to avoid missing out on some “distinguished but niche audiences.[23:00] Tara shares an example of a small customer base that equates to significant revenue, how to find those niche use cases, and the need to create different journeys for different customer jobs.[25:46] The value of being a good communicator, collaborator, and listener as a CMO and how to do that work.[28:30] Tara talks about leveraging the language from the Jobs-to-be-Done research for use on their product pages (and the SEO value). —Check out Bit.lyConnect with Tara Robertson on LinkedInAs always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website

Every B2B SaaS leader knows the frustration of poor decision-making. Despite your team working hard to build and market a great product, revenue growth is often inconsistent and unpredictable. In this show, Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi, co-founders of Forget the Funnel, break down how to evolve beyond guesswork by adopting the Customer-Led Growth framework - a systematic approach to help businesses understand their best customers, map & measure their experience, and unlock their best levers for growth.So, if you’re a SaaS leader looking to help your marketing and product teams make smarter decisions that drive predictable revenue - this show is for you.As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here: Read the Forget The Funnel Book Check out Forget the Funnel’s website