At Wynter Games 18 (Wynter’s virtual event series), we were joined by 12 B2B SaaS marketing leaders who all shared three go-to-market bets they are making for 2024.
The bets ranged from investing more in demand generation to focusing more on intimate small, real-life events.
Let’s go over all of the bets, person by person.
Bet 1: Website optimization and A/B testing
Focusing on improving the website and converting more leads by optimizing key pages such as the demo request and pricing pages.
Bet 2: Branding and demand generation to get into the initial consideration set for CRM buyers.
Allocating 30-40% of the marketing budget to enhance brand awareness and make it into the initial consideration set for companies seeking a CRM solution to compete effectively in a crowded market alongside larger competitors.
Bet 3: Ensuring the voice of their customers and social proof is brought to the forefront
Closing the loop on how customers use their product and incorporating their language and experiences into marketing materials to demonstrate the value and ease-of-use of their CRM platform.
Bet 1: Focus on personalized, intimate events
Shifting from traditional booth-style event activations to more engaging and targeted event formats that can better gauge interest and build connections
Bet 2: Programmatic, highly personalized outbound marketing
Using AI-enabled tools like Sendoso and Clay to automate and scale outbound efforts, increasing booking rates for high-quality meetings with potential clients.
Bet 3: Investing in LinkedIn as an inbound channel.
Leveraging both organic and paid strategies on LinkedIn to reach and engage a wider, but still targeted, audience, with a focus on improving attribution and tracking metrics.
Bet 1: What matters most
Focusing on customers and prospects by understanding their needs and preferences. Implementing webinars, training, courses, and personalized email marketing.
Measuring success through engagement, customer feedback, retention rate, and NPS.
Bet 2: Get out of the funnel
Balancing both organic and paid marketing efforts by understanding the different channels and their impact on the business, while also recognizing that people don't buy in a funnel.
Measuring success with both brand awareness and high intent channels.
Bet 3: Betting on people
Investing in the team's professional development and utilizing AI for individual and organizational growth.
Ensuring team members are more efficient, productive, and happy. Emphasizing the importance of mental health and adopting AI on a smaller, individual scale.
Bet 1: Account-Based Engagement (ABE)
Penetration strategy focused on warm accounts with basic intent signals, utilizing LinkedIn thought leadership ads, and prioritizing sales and marketing alignment.
Bet 2: Product-Led Sales (PLS)
Creating a starter level version of their product with a free trial to enable different purchasing behaviors and improve deal velocity.
Bet 3: Customer Marketing
Investing in a customer referral program and customer-focused content, while also harnessing the customer voice with reviews and testimonials to drive revenue.
Bet 1: $0 CAC Strategy
Flywheel of content creation, demand creation, and demand capture through sales conversations, AI-generated blog posts, and SEO work to increase genuine interest and demand.
Bet 2: Manufacturing Word of Mouth
Collaborating with key opinion leaders who genuinely use and believe in the product to create organic and genuine conversations and recommendations.
Bet 3: Experimentation
Constantly testing new strategies, language, and marketing tactics to find the most effective ways to reach the target audience and grow in the evolving B2B SaaS market.
Bet 1: Investment in LinkedIn Live sessions
Weekly live events inviting experts or influencers as guests to generate content, helping build relationships with prospects and create a soft touch in sales.
Bet 2: Use case alignment process
Defining and aligning 15 use cases across Dreamdata’s product, marketing, sales, and customer success teams, improving pipeline velocity, win rate, churn reduction, and upselling opportunities.
Bet 3: Creating marketing moments that become stories.
Developing unique and eye-catching campaigns that strive to be different and memorable, effectively competing against the increasing digital ad platform pricing and making an impactful presence in the market.
Bet 1: Be bold
Get attention and cut through the noise by taking risks and having a strong brand and messaging. Measure metrics such as share of search, share of earned media, engagement, customer acquisition costs, and pipeline business velocity.
Bet 2: Have focus
Prioritize the right channels, campaigns, and activities. Align resources and targets with a realistic understanding of the budget, and make sure goals are achievable. Work closely with other commercial teams, such as Sales and Customer Success.
Bet 3: Work with partners
Collaborate with agency and tech partners to expand reach, increase chances of success, and share the risk. Set specific targets for growing the partner channel and track its effects on customer acquisition costs and pipeline velocity.
Bet 1: People will default to making the safe choice.
To capitalize on this, the company is creating more market density within their niche, becoming the go-to choice for a specific industry, thus speeding up the sales cycle and increasing average customer value.
Bet 2: If it's easier to buy something, people will buy more of it.
The company is focusing on mapping the customer journey to create frictionless buying experiences, such as search ads, website improvements, and ease of contact, and measuring success through non-demo sales and marketing cost to acquire.
Bet 3: People would rather do more of an existing thing than try something new.
The company is working on product releases, upsells, customer education, and account expansion to encourage customers to continue using their service and bundling more features, thereby increasing revenue.
They measure success based on feature adoption and upgrades.
Bet 1: Owned media
Increasing investment in owned media channels, creating premium content streams for subscribers, becoming their own distribution channel, and striving for cost efficiency, better ROI, and trust and credibility.
Bet 2: Events
Focusing on quality events and unique experiences for in-market prospects and customers, nurturing a heavy ABM approach, leaning into small, virtual event experiences, and offering valuable face-to-face interactions to build strong relationships.
Bet 3: Customer marketing
Shifting more budget from new logo acquisition to customer retention, personalizing experiences and messaging, and analyzing/responding to customer data in real-time, ultimately turning customers into advocates for organic promotion.
Bet 1: Leveraging Gen AI.
Using AI for targeted and personalized outreach strategies, content creation, messaging consistency, and targeting key use cases effectively.
Bet 2: Focus on increasing customer engagement and highlighting success
Building a strong community, proactively reaching out to customers, and resonating customers' pain points with the platform's offerings.
Bet 3: Expanding across market segments
Allocate marketing efforts to both upmarket and downmarket businesses by enhancing self-service capabilities while maintaining targeted outreach.
Bet 1: Focus on communities.
Deeply support customers' communities through event exhibitions, micro-events, public speaking, and active participation.
Bet 2: Improve free trial process
Optimize free trial process both in product and marketing automation. Improve usability and decrease friction in the trial experience.
Bet 3: Expand internationally
Push beyond boundaries by expanding international presence, exploring new customer segments, and leveraging their B2B roadmap.
Bet 1: Integrated campaigns
Creating bold and cohesive marketing efforts that combine brand and demand generation, leading to improved consistency, impact, and customer understanding.
Bet 2: Multimedia content
Developing various types of engaging content, including videos, podcasts, and virtual events, which puts customers at the center, while catering to specific audience segments.
Bet 3: Employee advocacy and using employees as brand influencers
Empowering employees to act as brand ambassadors, sharing their knowledge, expertise, and creating content that further builds trust in the brand.
As the Wynter Games 18 concluded, it's evident that B2B SaaS marketing leaders are prioritizing customer-centric strategies, focusing on personalization, engagement, and understanding the customer journey.
