Saas Insider

How to target and engage prospective customers? What message does your company need in order to appeal to both small businesses and enterprises? How to grow your company through content and social media marketing?  About Naomi Assaraf  -Naomi Assaraf is co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer of cloudHQ, a profitable tech startup that makes Gmail productivity tools for clients like Uber, Autodesk, and CapitalOne. In the past two years at cloudHQ, she increased user acquisition by a factor of seven. -Assaraf specificializes in growth and is especially passionate about the process of growing startups to their profitability stage.  -She has founded three companies since her first one at age 17 and mentors other startups on growth.  -Assaraf is also a global keynote speaker and blog contributor for the Huffington Post. Her most current interests revolve around artificial intelligence and mixed reality. Key Takeaways:  -One of the biggest problems marketers face is establishing their target base: Once you do this

What is growth marketing? How can you meet KPIs without compromising product quality or customer experience? What is the difference between performance marketing and experimentation? How to make the most out of your experimentation?  About Ferdinand Goetzen  Ferdinand Goetzen is the head of growth at Recruitee, which provides companies with an all in one tool for managing and streamlining their entire recruitment process. It is one of the fastest growing SaaS startups in the Netherlands and has the goal of expanding to the entire European continent. Ferdinand has been working in various forms of marketing and growth for almost a decade and is an expert in full-funnel marketing and growth experimentation. He began marketing at the age of 15 and has been dominating the industry ever since.  He is a passionate traveler and avid blogger. Ferdinand loves to blog about tech, travel, and growth. You can check his blog out at blog.ferdinandgoetzen.com Key Takeaways:  Growth Marketing requires marketers to work ful

How do you identify your target market? What tools should you be using to attract them? How to introduce a novel product in an established market? What relationships should you be making and questions should you be asking to effectively land and expand your customer base? About Whitney Sales  Whitney Sales is a business leader, venture capitalist, and the founder of Sales Method, a consultancy that helps startups grow by identifying their target markets, establishing strong sales teams, and launching their product quickly and successfully.  Sales is a fitting surname for Whitney, who has over 10 years of start up sales experience and is an expert in early stage sales and efficiently getting company’s products to the market. She specializes in building successful sales teams and has lead four companies to Inc. 500 Fastest Growing Companies list, including LoopNet, Joby, Meltwater, and SpringAhead. Whitney graduated University of California San Diego with honors and a Bbachelor’s degree in Ssociology, and cont

How do you develop a winning idea? What is the secret to making a profound impact on your customers? How to balance quantifiable data with creativity in order to predict client reaction and satisfaction? In this week’s episode of Insider SaaS, Steve Tornello shares his experiences in creative problem solving with host Shira Abel. About Steve Tornello Steve Tornello is an award winning creative director and writer who currently works at Sales Force as Director of Integrated Marketing, where he creates and relays meaningful messages through all aspects of marketing and advertising.  His extensive background includes 14 years of leading and creating huge ad campaigns for companies like Nike, EA Sports, Xbox, Visa, Youtube, Ebay, and many others. His work spans across mediums such as print, television, websites, social, and more. Whether he is writing, directing, editing, producing or managing a project, Steve strives to communicate a human truth to his audience.  Aside from his role in marketing, Steve cultivat

What is operational and customer debt? What are some challenges of going from a freemium to a paid subscription offering? How to manage your team and make sure they concentrate on the right things? Joshua Ho shares his successes and failures with the host Shira Abel in building a software company.  About Joshua Ho Joshua Ho is the founder of Referral Rock where he leads the product and marketing teams. By his own admission, it is an odd combination of responsibilities but makes use of his primary skillsets as well as providing a vision for the business throughout the customer lifecycle. His background in engineering and software architecture as well as his passion for customer experience helped him realize he could build solutions that fit a business need.  Outside of Referral Rock, Joshua is a competitive handball player who also enjoys engineering marble towers and elaborate train track systems with his two kids. Key Takeaways:  Inside sales and simply talking to your customers can bring surprising result

What is Account Based Marketing and is it right for you? How to implement lead scoring and how is it going to change going forward? How has the buyer behavior changed over the past 10 years? Andre Yee shares some great insight with the host Shira Abel on ABM, content marketing, and B2B selling.  About Andre Yee Andre Yee is the CEO of Triblio, a leading ABM platform company. Prior to Triblio, Andre was the SVP Products at Eloqua, where he played a critical role in the emergence of marketing automation platforms. He is applying his specific experience in marketing automation toward shaping and defining the account based marketing (ABM) category. Through his experience at Triblio, he has the privilege of working with some of the best B2B marketers in the world, helping them deploy over a hundred ABM campaigns. Outside of work, he is interested in eating good food, spending time with good people and investing in good causes. Key Takeaways:  • ABM is a powerful approach because the buyer behavior has changed an

Where to start with your marketing? How to build a marketing department with one person? Why having a process for everything can save you from getting overwhelmed? Carlyn Manly talks to the host Shira Abel about Account Based Marketing and staying on top of your game.  About Carlyn Manly Carlyn Manly is the Head of Marketing at Folloze, the leading ABM Engagement platform. She holds 20 years of marketing experience. She is a focused, strategic, high energy CMO who helps bring fast growing startups to the next level. She has repeatedly taken companies, from post Series A who have marketing debt and need to get their processes in place, from 0 to 60. Her superpower is creating and instilling process, growing teams, and ensuring revenue goals are exceeded through smart marketing.  Carlyn has extensive Marketing experience in the following industries: Biotherapeutics Professional Services/Consulting, Security Software, SaaS for Marketing, Automation and Supply Chain, Network Security and Electronics When not wor

How can you get companies to focus on one thing? What are some misconceptions in SaaS B2B world? Geva Perry talks to the host Shira Abel about the importance of concentrating on your target market, timing, marketing, and more in this week's episode of SaaS Insider.  About Geva Perry • Geva is an advisor and board member at B2B startups. He specializes in strategy and marketing and has worked with many leading SaaS and cloud companies. The companies he has worked with include Heroku (acquired by Salesforce), Twilio (went public this year), New Relic (went public last year), Ravello (acquired by Oracle), BlazeMeter (acquired by CA) and many more. • Geva has a special focus on business-to-developer, or B2D, companies. Key Takeaways:  • You can't be all things to everyone. Staying focused is what will help you get where you want to be.  • Successful companies have a great attention to detail, confidence, and they move fast.  • Don't try to apply all the things that worked in the past, make sure to always keep t

How can you ensure customer success? Can you re-engage a customer? Should you resign a customer and how do you know if the relationship is not working? Tal Tsfany shares with the host Shira Abel the main concepts for good customer enablement and making sure your business is growing.  About Tal Tsfany  • Tal Tsfany is an entrepreneur, investor and a business executive with extensive experience in the technology world. He is currently the VP of CS at Mulesoft and formerly the Chief Customer Officer of Base CRM. Prior to Base, Tal served as a VP in Amdocs, a multi-billion-dollar software company in the telecommunications space. • Tal has built several customer service organizations and is an expert in the evolving world of Customer Success fueled by our transformation to a subscription-based-economy. Key Takeaways:  • One of key aspects of success is thinking of your whole solution, not just enablement itself.  • Focus should be the main thing in a way you manage your customer success team. • If your customer

What are the benefits of working with a remote team from all over the world? How do you build trust in your prospects? How can you increase your conversion rate by forcing people to go to the next step? Robert Rawson talks to the host Shira Abel in this week's episode of SaaS Insider about running a software company, motivating the team, building trust and converting leads.  About Rob Rawson • Rob Rawson is a former medical doctor turned Entrepreneur. He has started several successful and failed businesses ventures. Now he is the founder and CEO for the products Time Doctor and Staff.com which is a Software-as-a-service business with 7 figure revenue and over 60% YoY growth. They have over 5000 customers, and these customers have 25,000 employees using the software. This company is completely remote with over 60 people working full time in 28 countries. Key Takeaways:  • Working with a remote team from all over the world is both challenging and rewarding. Start by building trust by making sure everyone is b

How to manage your time as an entrepreneur? How can you send customers to your site by providing value? What kind of content should you be sharing? Ian Cleary from RazorSocial shares his tips with the host Shira Abel on getting the most out of your day, your content, and your business. About Ian Cleary • Ian Cleary is the founder of RazorSocial which was listed as one of the top 10 marketing blogs globally by INC in 2016. He has a deep knowledge of social media, content marketing and technology and is considered one of the top marketing influencers in his field. • Besides his work on RazorSocial, he regularly contributes articles to Entrepreneur.com and Forbes. He’s also been featured in major industry publications including VentureBeat, New York Times, Fox News, Huffington Post, and many more. • Ian is a highly sought after conference speaker and consultant, ranking consistently among the top 50 content marketing and social media influencers in the world. He consults brands on how to develop and execute sma

Why there is a gap between early stage adopters and mainstream customers? How can you succeed in outbound sales? What to do if you have a small team to accomplish everything? Aaron “Air” Ross shares with the host Shira Abel his tips for getting the most out of your outside sales. About • Aaron “Air” Ross is the internationally best-selling author of Predictable Revenue (called “The Sales Bible of Silicon Valley”) and From Impossible To Inevitable. He created the outbound sales methodology that almost doubled Salesforce.com’s growth. He founded Predictable Revenue: The Outbound Success Company, and his team specializes in helping companies get outbound right the first time. • Aaron is married with 9 children, lives in Los Angeles, and graduated from Stanford. Key Takeaways: • With the rise of inbound sales, remember that outbound should still be a part of your strategy to find new customers. • If you're a growth company, your long term solution is to have your internal team prospecting. • The person who does

What should your business consider when it comes to SEO? How does PPC work in the B2B SaaS world? What are the most critical things you should know about PPC? Ben Childs, the founder of Digital Reach, talks to the host Shira Abel about Search Engine Optimization, PPC, and the type of content you should concentrate on for your business. About Ben Childs Ben Childs is the founder of Digital Reach Agency. He started it in 2011 by getting a handheld phone from RadioShack, plugging a MagicJack into his computer, and calling people asking to do PPC for them. His first client did scrapbooking in Bethesda Maryland - Six years later, they now work with B2B companies from enterprises like divisions of Cisco and Aon to funded start-ups here in the Valley. They specialize in doing inbound marketing for SaaS companies and are getting better every day. Key Takeaways: If you think PPC doesn't work, it's likely because you didn't do it right. Find the right people who know what they’re doing. Don’t cheap out on your websit

What’s the process for finding and reaching out to affiliates? How can content marketing help you grow your business? Why you should use quizzes as a part of your strategy? Josh Haynam talk to the host Shira Abel about how he grew his SaaS business and what he did to jump start it when it wasn’t moving forward. About Josh Haynam Josh Haynam is the co-founder of Interact Quiz Builder, a tool used by more than 30,000 businesses including The American Red Cross, Home Depot, and Forbes. He's probably seen more quizzes than any other human on earth right now. Key Takeaways: Affiliate marketing can be a great way to promote your business, if you are ready to invest your time into finding the right partners to ensure their goals align with yours. If you have to educate the whole market, don't jump straight to selling. Start with the education and bringing value to your potential customers. Please rate this podcast. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunter

Are you building your new product too soon? Why take risks when you're meeting the revenue goals and everything seems to be going great? What is the difference between demographic, psychographic, and firmographic data? Tukan Das, the Co-Founder of LeadSift, talks to the host Shira Abel in this episode of SaaS Insider about mining unstructured data to find the signals of intent. About • Tapajyoti Das (Tukan) is the co-founder of LeadSift, a platform to identify actionable business opportunities from social media. • At LeadSift, he is the hacker, hustler and the dreamer where he is working with his team to make social sales a reality. • Outside of work, he likes to play cricket, soccer and watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart! Connect with him on Twitter @tdas. Key Takeaways: • Think about monetizing your product before you build it. • Work with customers that you know you can provide value to. • If your product team is not motivated, figure out what you need to change, make sure their work is being valued,

Have you been doing sales wrong all along? Why basing sales on data and not just intuition is important? What are the challenges when working with different countries? How to get your sales team work as one unit? Dimitar Stanimiroff talks to the host Shira Abel about pushing sales teams into using a new methodology in this week’s episode of SaaS Insider. About Dimitar Stanimiroff • Dimitar is the founder and CEO of Heresy - a workflow and analytics platform that helps salespeople make data-driven decisions and allows sales teams to always stay in sync. • Before launching Heresy, Dimitar served as the MD EMEA at Stack Overflow. He was the first European employee of the company and launched Stack Overflow Careers (now Talent) in Europe, scaling the team from 0 to 75+ people across UK, Germany and France. • Dimitar also launched and served as MD for Insights - Stack Overflow's Talent Mapping, Analytics & Business Intelligence unit. Prior to joining SO, he co-founded OVIA (now WePow). Dimitar holds a bachelo

How do you make sure you’re not wasting your time in an accelerator? What are some “growth hacks” your startup can use in the early stage? How to figure out your customer segment? Max Pecherskyy, the Co-Founder of PromoRepublic, shares his experience with the host Shira Abel on raising funds through multiple accelerators and working through multiple challenges to start an international business. About Max Pecherskyy • Max is a passionate SaaS entrepreneur whose mission is to connect professionals, SaaS companies, and startup hubs to help them form long-term relationships and sustainable win-win partnerships. Max splits his time between Kiev, Helsinki, and San Francisco. • Current challenge: Connecting angel and institutional investors, co-founders, exceptional talent and partner companies across 3 countries (UA/FI/US) to make the PromoRepublic.com venture succeed at global scale. • Prior to co-founding PromoRepublic, Max worked in marketing agencies for 10 years, and was responsible for business development,

How large should your company be before you start thinking about hiring a marketing operations person? What KPIs should your SaaS marketing team have? Cristina Vetere-Saunders, the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, talks to the host Shira Abel about what a B2B company needs to succeed at marketing their own business. About Crissy Vetere-Saunders • Crissy Vetere-Saunders is the Co-Founder of CS2 Marketing, a B2B marketing agency based out of San Francisco, CA. Before starting CS2, Crissy started her career managing marketing operations at Marketo, managed Global Marketing Operations at Jive Software, and and ran revenue operations and demand generation at a security startup called Agari. • Today, Crissy helps B2B tech companies, mostly based out of the Bay Area, strategize, execute, and scale their marketing operations and demand generation efforts. • In her free time, Crissy enjoys being outdoors with her dog, cooking, or writing for her personal blog Whoandfrom.com. Key Takeaways: • Marketing Qualified Leads ar

How can you run a marketing department with 2 people and satisfy a sales team of 50? What are the 3 marketing categories you should know about? What goes into a Competitive Battlecard? In this week’s episode of SaaS Insider, Adam Stein, the founder of APS Marketing, and the host Shira Abel discuss product marketing, solving problems for customers, and getting a sales team to buy in. About Adam Stein • APS Marketing and Adam’s marketing leadership of more than 20 years both center on building underlying differentiated product messaging strategy, hands-on writing, and program development. These three ingredients scale category development and high performance content syndication. He’s undertaken marketing strategy and programs that strategically develop and deliver revenue at growth firms fortunate to expand into category leaders including MobileIron, Broadcom (Epigram), Cisco, Fortinet and Juniper. He helped build many of these award-winning marketing teams from day one by partnering with leading VCs includin

How can freemium be beneficial to your SaaS business? What is the best way to figure out pricing? Which size of business should you be selling to? Elie Khoury, the CEO of Woopra, talks to Shira Abel about starting his business in Lebanon and moving it to Silicon Valley, his challenges and successes along the way. About Elie Khoury • Elie Khoury is the co-founder and CEO of Woopra. An engineer by trade, CEO by profession, Elie built Woopra under the belief that data made accessible to everyone in the organization would empower all employees to make better-informed, data-driven decisions. • He studied computer science at the Lebanese American University where he built the first generation of Woopra in 2007. • In addition to Woopra, he co-founded YallaStartup, a non-profit organization established to foster entrepreneurship in the Middle East and North Africa. Key Takeaways: • Freemium can help you get a head start on your user base, but get ready for challenges when you’re ready to monetize. • Make sure to ha