Are you trying these five growth hacks? 👀

Link Roundups

• What I learned as the Head of Marketing at a Vertical SaaS Company: Link

• How to use AI to automate segmentation analysis: Link

• New template: Hire best-fit salespeople to scale your GTM: Link

• What happens to the SDR role in the AI era?: Link

News Roundups

• Techstars Seattle is shutting down as accelerator shifts focus to cities with more VC activity: Link

• Finpilot Raises $4 million for Finance Specific AI Model that Reimagines the Financial Analyst's Journey: Link

• Salesforce Tableau looks beyond business intelligence dashboards with AI-powered Pulse: Link

• Nvidia shows how the AI boom is broadening: Link

SaaS Weekly Reads

The Power of Partnership: How Humanly.io Builds a Product Moat in a Crowded Market

The common theme in today’s economic environment is doing more with less.

As a result, efficiency is top of mind for founders. From producing positioning to partnerships, finding efficient ways to scale new pipeline creation is the key to growth.

Here are three quick tips.

1) Frame your product messaging through the lens of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

2) Use your product’s data and analytics to establish your company as a thought leader in your industry

3) Build a partnership channel to help scale pipeline generation and improve your product’s stickiness

Ian Ito @ SaaS Weekly [saas]

Growth Reads

5 Real Growth Hacking Strategies for SaaS Companies

Haters gonna hate and hackers gonna hack. (I think those are TSwift lyrics, but don’t quote me on that.)

Regardless if you hate growth hacks or not, there’s no denying this one truth: scaling comes from achieving outsized impact relative to cost and effort.

What’s important is the principle behind growth hacking: using low-cost, scrappy strategies to gain traction. It’s the small, consistent steps that form the building blocks for exponential growth.

Here are five growth hacks to try today.

1. Engage in the right communities (think Subreddits)

2. Give away a ton of value for free (think reverse trials/ self-service motion)

3. Add comments on videos and social posts (leverage other people's audience)

4. Provide in-depth supportive content (be seen as the go-to guide for resources)

5. Scale your SEO content engines with AI (leverage ChatGPT to help draft SEO articles)

Ethan Crump @ Foundation [growth]

Leah's Product & Growth Team Guide

Team structure is an overlooked growth lever that can drive business outcomes.

When it comes to GTM motions, strategies and tactics get most of the attention, but it’s the players and the formation on the field that get products to the goal line.

Take Growth teams as an example. Leah suggests building tight “tiger teams” where product managers, engineers, and designers work closely together in a pod. This formation ensures all aspects of product development are aligned and efficient.

Then, add product marketing into the mix to create a seamless launch motion.

Leah Tharin @ Leah’s ProducTea [growth]

Marketing Reads

Should We Replace BDRs with Product Advocates?

Here’s a hot take that’s sure to get your sales team heated.

Instead of building a traditional BDR and SDR team, hire technical people as Product Advocates and have them nurture prospects

Inspired by the RevOps lead at Vercel, junior developers can be great pipeline generators. Here’s why.

Your prospects are not looking for another sales email; they are looking to solve their problem.

Product Advocates are in a great position to guide your buyers. This team speaks the same language and at the same technical level. They can also provide resources, qualify prospects, and route them to the right CTA (self-serve or sales).

Carilu Dietrich @ Hypergrowth Leadership [sales]

How To Build An Effective B2B Enterprise SaaS Marketing Strategy For Extended Buying Cycles

An effective marketing strategy caters to every stage of the buying journey.

At any given point, your buyers fall under one of these categories.
• Problem Unaware
• Problem Aware
• Solution Aware
• Product Aware

And different marketing plays are better suited to help guide each bucket of buyers. For example, webinars and templates cater to buyers who are problem-aware, while scorecards and comparison pages benefit the solution-aware.

Here’s a tip, create a multi-media strategy that uses different content assets and information topics to help your audience progress through the buying journey.

Mike Smith @ Powered By Search [marketing]

Lessons From A Founder

Five avoidable growth mistakes founders miss:

It’s no surprise that gaining traction comes with growth pains. Like a child learning to walk, face plants are commonplace. While there are always lessons in the stumble and fall, there are pitfalls you can avoid in the early days.

Here are five mistakes to watch out for.

1. Pushing more than one Go-to-Market model at the same time

2. Not aligning your onboarding flow with your GTM model

3. Not aligning your prospecting motion with your GTM model

4. Focusing on the wrong metrics (aka vanity versus outcome metrics)

5. Not having alignment between your entire GTM team (playing towards different motions)

Hema Padhu @ First Impression

Podcasts I'm listening to

• Hubspot's SVP RevOps Sid Kumar Goes DEEP on Revenue Operations: Link

• Dave Kellog – My Most Recent Appearance on 20VC with Harry Stebbings: Link

SaaS Weekly Resources

1) The SaaS Weekly Database: Search Thousands of the Best SaaS Articles and Resources

2) Generative AI Tracker: B2B SaaS Companies Adding GenAI Capabilities

3) Chat with SaaS Weekly: Ask Questions Across All Our Articles

SaaSy Social Posts

Last issue’s open rate: 42.2% 🔥

Last issue’s click rate: 3.3%

***

Last issue’s most clicked link

Your favorite ads + Figma = ad templates you can use forever