The Growth Hub Podcast

JD Prater is Evangelist at Quora. In this episode, JD takes us behind the scenes of this Silicon Valley startup, which boasts over 300 million monthly visitors, and explains how Quora is monetising its business and developing its marketing strategy. In addition, JD talks about how Quora’s marketing team are competing for a share of digital marketer’s ad spend, their positioning strategy, and some of Quora’s most effective marketing tactics and channels. JD also talks about his role as an evangelist, what it entails, and how you can embrace an evangelist mindset to grow your personal brand. Links: Quora >> https://www.quora.com The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble To Get Inside Our Heads >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28503628-the-attention-merchants Follow JD on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/jdprater --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Phil Byrne is Onboarding & Activation Lead at Intercom and in this episode we look at how you can turn your new users into long-term paying customers. Phil talks us through the Intercom playbook for onboarding & activation, including: - Why you should build multiple onboarding flows based on user intent - How Intercom productises their “aha moment” and how Phil and the team help users reach it - How to maintain communication after a trial is complete to boost free to paid conversions - The way Intercom’s onboarding team works with marketing to ensure they’re delivering right fit users Links: Intercom >> https://www.intercom.com/ Start With Why >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7108725-start-with-why Inside Intercom Blog >> https://www.intercom.com/blog/ Follow Phil on Twitter >> twitter.com/noisey_music --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Anna Shutko is Product Marketing Manager at Supermetrics, a MarTech SaaS company that lets digital marketers bring all their marketing data into one place. Supermetrics is a product-driven company and in this episode we look at the role of product marketing at Supermetrics, how to market your product to different key stakeholder groups, Anna’s framework for launching new products to market, how to do customer research and translate that into marketing messaging and collateral, as well as how to generate strong word of mouth growth around your product. Supermetrics was also recently featured in OpenView’s product-led market map, so Anna also tells us how Supermetrics has leveraged the product as a driver of user acquisition, conversion and expansion. Links: Supermetrics >> https://supermetrics.com/ Rework >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6732019-rework Influence >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28815.Influence SaaStr Podcast >> https://www.saastr.com/podcasts/ Social Media Examiner >> https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/shows/ Follow Anna on Twitter >> twitter.com/superpoweranna --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Bruno Bin joined Smarp as their Head of Marketing just under one year ago and in this episode we hear how Bruno and the Smarp marketing team were able to 10X lead gen and 2.5X pipeline during his first six months. We hear about their strategic shift to focus purely on the enterprise segment and discuss topics from positioning and narrative storytelling, right through to Bruno’s four step framework for building a pipeline engine and some of Smarp’s most effective demand gen tactics. --- Links: Smarp >> https://smarp.com/ The Sales Acceleration Formula >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24953002-the-sales-acceleration-formula --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Octave Auger is VP of Marketing and first marketing hire at Paddle, a SaaS platform for software companies to run and grow their business. Paddle has been called “The best kept secret in Europe” and it’s also the fastest growing software company in the UK, and in this episode we get a peek inside their business to figure out what they did and what we can learn from Paddle. We go from marketing strategy and building a minimum viable brand all the way to customer acquisition tactics and demand gen initiatives - we also hear about the role ice cream played in Paddle’s journey to becoming the fastest growing software company in the UK. --- Links: Paddle >> https://paddle.com/ Start With Why >>https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7108725-start-with-why --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Mikko Honkanen is the Co-founder & CEO at Vainu.io - a bootstrapped Finnish SalesTech SaaS company. In this episode Mikko shares his experience of growing Vainu, which has bootstrapped its way to +15M ARR, and Mikko talks about: - Why the founding team decided to bootstrap - How Vainu validated demand and established product market fit - Differentiation and positioning within the crowded martech & salestech space - Challenges Vainu faced with internationalisation - Scaling localised product & marketing - How Vainu pivoted their strategy when entering the US market - The impact bootstrapping had on Vainu’s go-to-market strategy & demand gen tactics - The Vainu sales and marketing playbook --- Links: Vainu >> https://vainu.io/ When Breath Become Air >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25899336-when-breath-becomes-air --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Dani Hart is the former Head of Growth at GrowthHackers. In this episode Dani gives us a behind the scenes pass to life at GrowthHackers and as she shares her experiences leading their growth team. We discuss: - their growth team’s objectives and goals - the different roles they had - the process and methodology the team used to run their operations - challenges of growing a multi-product business - how growth and marketing worked together - what it was like working with Sean Ellis, GrowthHackers CEO & Godfather of the GrowthHacking movement --- Links: GrowthHackers >> https://growthhackers.com/ Growth Gal >> https://growthgal.com/ Never Split The Difference >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26156469-never-split-the-difference Peak Performance >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31450959-peak-performance Zapier >> https://zapier.com/ --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

David Cancel knows what it takes to grow a successful SaaS company. Why? He's done it five times. After his fourth company, Performable, was acquired by HubSpot in 2011 he became Chief Product Officer. But in late 2014, with just one month to go until their IPO, David left HubSpot to set up Drift with his co-founder Elias Torres. They didn't have an idea. They didn't have a product. But what they did have, was an obsession to solve problems for their customer. With a contradictory, unconventional, and unscalable approach to growth, David and the Drift team have combined customer-centric strategies with counter-intuitive tactics to unlock hypergrowth and scale from 0-150K customers in just over four years. This episode explains how, including: - Why Drift jumped into a highly commoditised and competitive market - The evolution of SaaS and the three waves of software as a service -- The Edison Wave -- The Henry Ford Wave -- The Procter & Gamble Wave - How to find your wedge and be focused in your early stage - The importance of investing in brand from day one - Why Drift created a brand new category, conversational marketing, and how it’s changing the way marketing & sales teams operate - The unconventional and unscalable things Drift have done to grow their business --- Links Drift >> https://www.drift.com/ Conversational Marketing book >> https://www.drift.com/conversational-marketing-book/ This Won't Scale book >> https://www.drift.com/books/this-wont-scale/ Hypergrowth >> https://hypergrowth.drift.com/ Managing Oneself >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2477223.Managing_Oneself Invision >> https://www.invisionapp.com/ Follow David on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/dcancel --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

One of the great things about marketing is that it requires you to be both analytical yet creative, and perhaps there are fewer people who know as much about both sides of this coin as Allen Gannett, CSO at Skyword. Allen is Founder and former CEO of TrackMaven, a SaaS marketing analytics platform, and author of The Creative Curve, a book that breaks down the four laws of creativity. In this episode we bring these worlds together as we explore the science behind creativity to understand how we as marketers can create things that are both novel and valuable. With real life examples from J.K. Rowling and Kanye West to Ben & Jerry's and Pixar, Allen challenges stereotypes around creativity and explains the science behind achieving creative success in any field, including B2B growth marketing. This episode covers: - What creativity actually is and how we can learn to become creative - An introduction and breakdown of The Creative Curve, a step-by-step framework that explains the four laws of creativity: Consumption, Imitation, Creative Communities, and Iterations - How we as marketers can become more creative - Creative marketing initiatives Allen and the TrackMaven team have run in the past --- Links Skyword >> https://www.skyword.com/ TrackMaven >> https://trackmaven.com/ The Creative Curve >> https://www.thecreativecurve.com/ Creativity Inc. >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc Content Marketing Institute Blog >> https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/ Ann Handley's Blog & Newsletter >> https://annhandley.com/ Follow Allen on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/Allen --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/NordicEdward

If you've ever looked at Scot Brinker's MarTech 5000, then you know the B2B SaaS market is extremely crowded. The modern buyer has a vast amount of options when it comes to software that will help them be more successful in their work. And that's great for buyers, but less so for sellers. So how can you stand out and differentiate within noisy, crowded, and competitive markets? Well, the answer is positioning. And to explore this topic in more detail we caught up with April Dunford, an expert on market strategy and positioning in B2B SaaS. Having launched 16 products to market, held multiple executive roles, and secured successful exits, April explains how companies can bring products to market and get them into the hands of customers that are willing to pay for them. In this episode we explore the world of positioning and what it means for B2B SaaS companies, including: - What positioning is and the factors that impact and influence your positioning - A step by step walkthrough of a positioning framework you can use to help ensure you reach the right positioning for your product - How you can use positioning to stand out in noisy, crowded markets - The role of positioning as part of your category strategy - Some real life stories of positioning challenges April has faced throughout her career - A sneak peek into April’s upcoming book on positioning, Obviously Awesome, and what we can expect when it launches Links: April Dunford >> https://aprildunford.com/ Obviously Awesome: How to nail positioning so customers get it, buy it, love it >> https://aprildunford.com/positioning-book/ Positioning: The battle for your mind >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/760025.Positioning The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Startups That Win >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762542.The_Four_Steps_to_the_Epiphany Sampler >> https://sampler.io/ Level Jump >> https://www.leveljumpsoftware.com/ SparkToro Trending >> https://sparktoro.com/trending Follow April on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/aprildunford --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> @SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> @NordicEdward