The Growth Hub Podcast

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah launched HubSpot in 2006 and since then the company has grown to a team of over 2000 people across 8 offices around the world, filed for an IPO in 2014, and achieved revenue of $375M in 2017. HubSpot Co-Founder & CEO Brian Halligan was recently in Helsinki and he stopped by the Advance B2B office for a fireside talk where he shared several lessons from his 12+ years in SaaS and building HubSpot, including: - A typical week in the life of HubSpot’s CEO - The 5 growth chapters of HubSpot and the evolution of B2B marketing & sales - The importance of building a gorgeous end to end customer experience and why SaaS is now a platform game - Challenges, mistakes and learnings from building HubSpot and things Brian would do differently now - How HubSpot has shifted from funnel thinking to flywheel thinking - The evolution of marketers and the importance of investing in your people Links HubSpot >> https://www.hubspot.com/ Blitzscaling >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38398157-blitzscaling Platform Leadership >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/323472.Platform_Leadership?from_search=true Shoe Dog >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27220736-shoe-dog?from_search=true Follow Brian on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/bhalligan --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> @SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> @NordicEdward

There are few people who know the worlds of B2B SaaS and B2B marketing as well as Rand Fishkin. Rand has worked in the field for over 15 years and throughout the course of his career he's founded two SaaS companies, Moz & SparkToro, co-founded inbound.org with HubSpot’s Dharmesh Shah, published his book "Lost & Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World", is a renowned keynote speaker, and you might also know him as the star of Moz's ever so popular Whiteboard Friday video series. In this episode we draw on all those years of experience as Rand shares his field guide to B2B SaaS Marketing where we discuss: - The actual purpose of marketing and what it should achieve - The evolution of the SaaS space from 2003 to 2018 and what it means for marketers today - How to balance between long-term growth strategies and short-term growth tactics - How to develop your content marketing strategy and factors you need to consider - The importance for marketers and SaaS companies to be behaviour-driven and not goal-driven - Why Rand started SparkToro and some of the important lessons he learned from building Moz that he’s applied to SparkToro - How Rand’s developing the marketing strategy for SparkToro - The marketing strategies that worked for Rand back in 2003 and that still hold true today Links: SparkToro >> https://sparktoro.com/ Moz >> https://moz.com/ SparkToro Trending >> https://sparktoro.com/trending The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs >> https://andrewchen.co/the-law-of-shitty-clickthroughs/ Lost & Founder >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35957156-lost-and-founder The Billionaire Who Wasn't >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2842145-the-billionaire-who-wasn-t Indie Hackers >> https://www.indiehackers.com/ Typeform >> https://www.typeform.com/ Follow Rand on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/randfish --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> @SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> @NordicEdward

Tanja Törnroos is Brand Manager at Zervant, a Helsinki-based SaaS company where she joined as employee number three over five years ago. A central theme on this podcast is growth and growth should be the true north for every SaaS company and every SaaS marketer. In this episode we look at growth from a personal perspective and explore how you can adopt a growth mindset, including: - Why we need to adopt a growth mindset - The importance of having a growth mindset in marketing - Tanja's three-step framework to adopt a growth mindset 1. Think like an entrepreneur 2. Explore like a pioneer 3. Grow on your own terms - Examples from Tanja's professional and personal life - The Magic 20 Framework, an exercise to help you adopt a true growth mindset Links: Zervant >> https://www.zervant.com/en/ Marie Forleo >> https://www.marieforleo.com/ Marie Forleo: How to get anything you want >> https://www.marieforleo.com/how-to-get-anything-you-want/y/ Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24453082-big-magic Teachable >> https://teachable.com/ Connect with Tanja on LinkedIn >> https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanjatornroos/ --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

When Gia Laudi joined Unbounce she was the first hire in the marketing team. From the early startup days where she dug into all areas of marketing right through to becoming VP where she led a team of 35 marketers, Gia has seen first hand what it takes to build a high-performing marketing team in B2B SaaS. In this episode Gia shares the story of how the Unbounce marketing team grew, including: - what kind of person founders should look for in their first marketing hire - how to evangelise the role of marketing in product and tech led SaaS companies - skills and core-competencies marketing teams need as they scale - the benefits of hiring generalists and specialists and when to look for them - how your skill set and mentality needs to adapt as you transition from a marketing ops role to a marketing leadership role - key reasons why the Unbounce marketing team performed at such a high-level and achieved the results they did - the future skills B2B SaaS marketers and marketing teams will need Links: Unbounce >> https://unbounce.com/ Forget The Funnel >> https://forgetthefunnel.com/ A Better CX >> https://abettercx.com/ April Dunford's book, Obviously Awesome: How to nail product positioning so customers get it, buy it, love it >> https://aprildunford.com/positioning-book/ Gia's recommended resources >> http://www.valgeisler.com/ https://nicholeelizabethdemere.com/ https://aprildunford.com/ https://getuplift.co/ https://copyhackers.com/ https://www.reforge.com/brief/ Follow Gia on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/ggiiaa --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Marketing Mary. Developer Dave. Consultant Carol... We've all built "buyer personas", but can we truly say that we understand our customers? Claire Suellentrop of userlist.io and Forget The Funnel is super passionate about this topic, so I caught up with her to explore the world of customer research and uncover how marketers can better understand their customers. In this episode we hear about: - what it really means to be customer-centric - how you should go about building buyer personas - the jobs-to-be-done framework and how marketers can use it to conduct customer research - questions to ask in customer interviews - how to apply your findings in your marketing Links: User List >> https://userlist.io/ Forget The Funnel >> https://forgetthefunnel.com/ Claire's JTBD Interview template >> https://docs.google.com/document/d/183PzYjQi2vsIRlPMUrtzRwZF1VdnZWNDAZsrJ4MRT4Q/edit When Coffee & Kale Compete >> http://www.whencoffeeandkalecompete.com/ Alan Klement's post on Copy Hackers about jobs to be done >> https://copyhackers.com/2014/11/jobs-to-be-done-copywriting/ Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard >> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6570502-switch Claire's recommended resources >> https://sixteenventures.com/ https://copyhackers.com/ http://www.valgeisler.com/blog/ Follow Claire on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/ClaireSuellen --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Sangram Vajre, Co-founder & Chief Evangelist at Terminus, shares the story of the #FlipMyFunnel movement and discusses topics such as account-based marketing, building communities instead of commodities, and dominating existing categories. Learn how to start a movement in marketing and market like a category leader.

Blake Bartlett is Partner at OpenView and this episode is all about product-led growth. This is a term that the OpenView team developed and Blake stopped by the podcast to introduce us to the concept, explain what it actually is, and discuss how companies can start developing a product-driven growth culture within their DNA, including: - how cross-functional teams can leverage a product’s inherent virality as an acquisition channel - how you can build in virality into your product - the implications of product-led growth on pricing and packaging - the role of marketing and sales teams as part of a product-led growth strategy - some examples of good product-led growth companies --- OpenView >> https://openviewpartners.com/ Product-led growth resources from OpenView >> https://openviewpartners.com/product-led-growth/ --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

John Bonini is Director of Marketing at Databox and by the end of this episode you’ll know how to set goals, track KPIs and measure the performance of your marketing. With so much data available to us as marketers, that's often siloed across multiple tools, it’s easy to get overwhelmed with where to start, and in this episode John discusses: - How to simplify everything to focus on tracking the right numbers to improve performance - The evolution of data in marketing and how marketers can follow progress in real time - What data you should be reporting to various levels of the organisation whether that’s the board, the C-level, or marketing teams - How the Databox marketing team sets goals and tracks KPIs as a way to measure and improve performance --- Databox >> https://databox.com/ Influence >> https://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-Cialdini/dp/006124189X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1529935378&sr=1-1&keywords=infleunce Positioning >> https://www.amazon.com/Positioning-Battle-Your-Al-Ries/dp/0071373586/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1529935349&sr=8-1&keywords=positioningasecamp.com First Round Review >> http://firstround.com/review/ Wistia Blog >> https://wistia.com/blog Baremetrics Blog >> https://baremetrics.com/blog Price Intelligently Blog >> https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog Seeking Wisdom >> https://www.drift.com/seeking-wisdom/ Follow John on Twitter >> twitter.com/Bonini84 --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Nicola Anderson is VP of Marketing at GoCardless and she joined us on The Growth Hub Podcast to explore the topics of innovation, diversity, coaching, and personal development in SaaS. This is one of the rawest interviews we’ve had on The Growth Hub Podcast and this episode all comes back to development on multiple levels, including as a SaaS company, as a marketing team, and as an individual. In this episode we discuss: - The ingredients needed for innovation, how it’s impacted teams at GoCardless, and the building blocks needed to start building a culture of innovation - The importance of diversity in SaaS and what we can do to address the issue and get more women in tech - Imposter syndrome and how to overcome mental barriers that may be blocking your self-development - The differences between coaching & mentoring as well as how to develop yourself and those around you --- GoCardless >> https://gocardless.com/en-eu/ Brené Brown on vulnerability >> https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability Play Bigger >> https://www.amazon.com/Play-Bigger-Dreamers-Innovators-Dominate/dp/0062407619/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1528121181&sr=1-1&keywords=play+bigger Slaughterhouse Five >> https://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Five-Novel-Modern-Library-Novels/dp/0385333846 ChartMogul Blog >> https://blog.chartmogul.com/ Occam's Razor >> https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/ Follow Nicola on Twitter >> https://twitter.com/nic365 --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward

Ben Cotton is Principal Marketing Manager of Sales Enablement at HubSpot and this episode of The Growth Hub Podcast is all about how marketers can help their sales team to sell more. We hear about some of the things Ben has done at HubSpot including the roll out of an on-demand service for sales reps called Deal Support that’s influenced over $1.5 Million in revenue, the launch of a sales bootcamp that helped sales reps who were struggling to hit quota, and how Ben has scaled up sales enablement with chatbots. In addition we hear: - Ben’s view on the similarities between football and sales as he talks about weak-link and strong-link thinking - How sales and marketing teams can better work together What the best marketers are doing to enable their sales team to succeed - How SaaS companies can get started with Sales Enablement -- HubSpot >> https://www.hubspot.com/ Ben's Blog >> https://www.ben-cotton.com/blog/ Ogilvy on Advertising >> https://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1526393906&sr=1-1&keywords=ogilvy+on+advertising The Numbers Game: Why Everything You Know About Soccer Is Wrong >> https://www.amazon.com/Numbers-Game-Everything-About-Soccer/dp/0143124560?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0 Follow Ben on Twitter >> twitter.com/bencotton --- Advance B2B >> www.advanceb2b.com Follow The Growth Hub on Twitter >> twitter.com/SaaSGrowthHub Follow Edward on Twitter >> twitter.com/NordicEdward