Promoting stuff really works eh. I managed to hit 60 subscribers through a combo of LinkedIn & Twitter posts!

Onwards to our regularly scheduled programming.

Completely agree with Ruth & one reason I lean towards the ‘BDRs/SDRs’ should report into Marketing, not the Sales side of the equation (and maybe call them Market Development Reps?)

Ada (support tool) started off as Volley (Q&A tool) incredible how they left that behind to become a support tool that’s used by enterprise customers.

So which side of the fence do you sit on? Here’s one thing that rubs me - Inbound takes time to get right. When you first start your shouting into the void. Over time as you start repeating yourself till you have no more voice left, people start listening & the inbound engine kicks in. Till then you have to do some of the outbound stuff - marketers have this notion that outbound is ugly & turn their nose up at it. It really doesn’t have to be when done right. Ignore those LinkedIn posts about BDRs hitting up prospects 50 times & those annoying ‘did you get eaten by a lion’ emails. You can add value by going outbound.

Inbound can be a mixed bag of different folks with different intent so you have to treat them separately in different ways & you can’t drive em all to the coveted demo page. Most of all you need to invest in it & give it time. Hubspot’s Inbound marketing took years to build (the term + their own inbound marketing') but you already knew that.

Where I disagree with Ruth though - High-Value Accounts won’t just pop by your site through pure inbound that’s leaving it up to chance.. You have to do the ABM stuff parallel with an outbound play & align both on messaging, frequency & timing.

David Sacks @DavidSacks

Inter-company network effects are the holy grail for B2B SaaS apps. Once business partners are connected, it’s impossible to get ripped out. First make sure your customer’s employees are happy but then figure out how to connect their business partners.

Stewart Butterfield @stewart

I wrote a blog post for the first time in many years and I titled it “Why Shared Channels are So Cool” https://t.co/PQjVEe3eGm [Note: I am a professional businessman]

January 7th 2020

24 Retweets259 Likes

I doubt any company (in tech) doesn’t use Slack but here’s an interesting take - Shared Channels (think about inviting customers to a closed slack channel for support or me being added to clients slack channels for easier albeit annoying at times communications) is almost like the ‘Sent by Hotmail’ back in the day or Powered by Intercom on web chats. Slack’s customers are driving WOM & adoption through shared channels - and once a person who doesn’t use slack experiences it, they can take it back to their own company. Same for Trello & other PM tools & referral programs that drove growth for Airbnb etc.

I am waiting for Jason from Basecamp’s take on this.

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

The magic that's made Canva successful is surprisingly simple, but commonly overlooked by startups. Basic goal-related keywords:

January 7th 2020

128 Retweets928 Likes

SEO is incredibly hard but incredibly scalable. I remember doing an SEO strategy + execution for Organimi back in the day (Org Charts) and one day I woke up - 13 months later to find Organimi outranking Visio (biggest competitor circa 2010) and it was a glorious moment. It’s gotten way more competitive now with LucidChart / Pingboard & the likes so like all marketing - its not a set it & forget it thing.

No we didn’t write 11 ways to build an org chart type articles - neither did I do any active link building by spamming people. We just re-organized our entire website around Org Charts & Creating Org Charts which propelled the home/product page to the coveted #1 spot in the search results.

Ironically now it’s at #4 for Org Chart Tool with Canva right above Organimi!

Brianne Kimmel @briannekimmel

In the 2010s, SaaS companies aimed to be as self-serve as possible. Today, technology is easily commoditized. SaaS companies need to invest in community and professional development for customers. Relationships drive retention.

January 7th 2020

29 Retweets209 Likes

I wrote about this a little. The manual / human touch becomes more important in the age of more automation & putting SME’s front and center to solve customer problems & consultative selling/success. Here’s where I wrote more.

One of my 2020 predictions is a Vidyard acquisition. In the meantime here’s a podcast on GoVideo which I believe Wes worked on during his time there <?>

Georgiana Laudi @ggiiaa

To stand out from those competing for your customer's budget (7000+ in #martech alone), removing the barrier to entry can be the difference maker. It also future-proofs you for how more and more in B2B are buying software. intercom.com/blog/podcasts/… 👏👏👏 @michaellittHow Vidyard uncovered a multimillion-dollar growth lever by moving downmarketVidyard CEO Michael Litt joins Intercom’s Ciaran Nolan to discuss how flipping the freemium model on its head became their answer to accelerated growth.intercom.com

January 7th 2020

1 Retweet7 Likes

Other interesting reads (s):

Not a fan of adding more buzzwords or made up JT’s but interesting POV on Cheif Marketing Technology Officers.

Is Superhuman the most hyped VC focused product? It reminds me of Allbirds sometimes.

I read this about how they engineered product-market fit & it’s brilliant but then can they cross the chasm into the mainstream market. There’s alot of mixed reviews in the wild. I was an ex-customer, till I told my wife I pay $40 (CAD)/mo for an email client & she thought I lost my mind. She was right of course.

Coming to Year 3 in March. This resonated heavily:

Elizabeth Allen @elizallen_

OK. SO. Nobody wants to do any actual work today, so here's a thread about what it was like to run my UX research consultancy (@brazenUX) in 2019. I'll talk about... 1⃣ Funnel 2⃣ Hours 3⃣ Financials 4⃣ Goals

January 6th 2020

20 Retweets224 Likes

The soundtrack was Monsters & Men.

Till next week.

Kamil

P.s Have you seen the new 42/Agency site?