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👀 What the heck is Drop Marketing
Ian Ito
December 08, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
ISSUE #254
No excuses for the Sunday drop…except – I’m running a test to see if open rates are higher (is what I would say if I had an excuse 🫥).
The good news is that I added a new section called “For Your Commute,” which features podcasts and ‘sound bites’ that you might find interesting.
In this week’s roundup, we cover:
State of VC funding: early-stage rounds are down, Series B+ are up
Drop marketing: what it is and how Beehiiv uses it to be the Supreme brand for B2B
Media-led growth: A case study on how to put this play in practice
Let's dive in!
Ian at SaaS Weekly
INDUSTRY ROUNDUP
📊 VC Funding | Series A funding tumbles 11%, while later rounds surge
Early stage is down across the board (pre-seed -5%, seed -7%) but Series B+ rounds are crushing it – up 15% to 105% from last year. Looks like VCs are saving their dry powder for later-stage AI plays. (Link)
🎯 Search SEO | Reddit sneaks into Google's top 5 traffic club
Users are now adding "Reddit" to searches to dodge marketing fluff, and those authentic discussions are outranking perfectly-optimized landing pages. (Link)
🧭 Series B | Gearing up for your next investor pitch? Numbers + narrative
Top investors say founders need both hard metrics ($5M+ ARR, over 2x growth) and a killer story about their unique expertise and ability to attract A+ talent. (Link)
🛠️ Tech Stack | 82% of buyers want their GTM tools to play nicely together
Only 30% of companies have fully integrated tech stacks, but those who got their tools to play nice in the (virtual) sandbox are seeing 80% ROI. (Link)
FOR YOUR COMMUTE
🎙Marketing Against the Grain
Alex Lieberman on Building A Personal Brand & Influencer Marketing Trends
🎙Run the Numbers
The Largest Software IPO Ever: How Snowflake Still Left Money on the Table
FROM THE TRENCHES
 | 👷 | Jacob Dietle | GTM Engineering for Hardtech Startups |
What’s one growth lesson you’ve learned recently?
“Teams assume perfect data will translate directly to pipeline and message-market fit. In reality, success comes from shipping campaigns with good enough data, testing hypotheses, and iterating through a meta-learning process.”
How did you put this lesson into practice?
“Start with minimum actionable data: Instead of mapping 99% of your ICP, get to ~75% and ship campaigns early and often – getting early feedback from the market will help to (in)validate your assumptions.”
“Embrace the meta-learning loop: Treat each campaign as a learning experiment rather than just a pipeline generator – faster you can launch and learn from campaigns, the quicker you'll find message-market fit.”
GROWTH PLAYS IN PRACTICE
🎥 Perspective | 5 min read | Ian Ito at SaaS Weekly
How to run a media-led growth strategy
In theory: As a follow-up to last week’s Original content: SaaS companies are evolving beyond traditional content marketing to build full-fledged media operations.
Instead of just blogging for SEO or running ads, they're creating standalone publications that serve their target audience first and drive pipeline second.
In practice:
Start with a clear editorial gap: Statsig's "Scaling Down" newsletter demonstrates this perfectly. They identified a specific need: Big Tech employees turned startup founders needed guidance on building without enterprise resources.
Structure it like a real publication: Create an editorial system that taps into your company's collective knowledge:
Appoint an editor to drive content direction
Create a content backlog with key stakeholders
Turn internal expertise into narrative-driven content
Keep the publication separate from product marketing
Build distribution through partnerships: Start by encouraging employees to build their own audiences through thought leadership, promoting the content they write for the publication. Then form long-term partnerships with established creators through guest posts or co-promotions.
🖼 Frameworks | 6 min read | Andrei and Vladimir, Full-Funnel B2B Marketing
Full-Funnel B2B Marketing
In theory: As B2B buying cycles become more complex, companies are shifting away from traditional marketing-to-sales handoffs based on basic engagement metrics (downloads, event signups).
Modern GTM teams are adopting intent-based frameworks like Full-Funnel ABM and Buyer-Led Growth to better align marketing actions with actual buyer needs.
In practice:
Match CTAs to buyer intent: Track engagement types to understand where buyers are in their journey. For example, content downloads indicate learning intent - so offer more resources and progressive profiling.
Build intent-based activation flows: Instead of pushing all engaged accounts to sales, develop tailored journeys. For early-stage accounts, focus on education and feedback collection.
Share intent insights cross-functionally: Set up weekly syncs where marketing shares why accounts were qualified (what signals they showed) and sales shares activation results. This creates a feedback loop to continuously refine your intent criteria.
SAVED SOCIAL POSTS
Cognism’s retargeting ads are fire. From Q2 to Q3 2024 they saw:
✦ 131% increase in BOFU conversions for demo requests and sign-ups.
Most sales reps I spoke to in 2024, told me they hate the lead handoff process from marketing. Here is why.
As one of them described:
TOP READS FROM LAST WEEK
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