Marketing your SaaS product as a “new category” can be an effective tactic to capture early adopters in the market... or not.

Hi friend! 👋 

We're super excited to say that we can finally see some light at the end of the tunnel. 

Light meaning literal sunlight and the tunnel meaning this never-ending darkness (sometimes also referred to as Winter in Finland.) 😎

So, with all this new-found energy,  let’s get down to business and talk about growth! 

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Tactics that work ≠ growth strategy

What do we mean by that?☝️

We recently started seeing a lot of SaaS marketers dabbling with a new thing called the ‘let’s create a new category’ playbook to change the way they position themselves. 

Okay, maybe it’s not that recent but it has been gaining its own popularity in the world of SaaS. Once again, what exactly is it? ☝️

Marketing your SaaS product as a “new category” can be an effective tactic to capture early adopters in the market. But hold your horses! 🐎 

It's still a tactic, and not a strategy.

It’s true that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of the digital world thanks to the interconnectedness of things (metaverse, say what?) 

And when things don’t make sense, our brain relies on mental frameworks—like categories—to help us understand the world around us. 

If this was a play, this is the moment the spotlight would land on this marketing tactic known as ‘let’s create a new category’ and the audience would be mesmerized by its appeal.

However, marketing your SaaS product as a new category only works with micro markets. That’s as far as this tactic takes you. Then it becomes difficult to scale in larger markets with longer sales cycles. And that means your growth will slow down significantly or even come to a halt in the long run. 

No growth = you’re heading for the SaaS graveyard. 

The moral of this story? 

The secret to growth (yes, even in an established category) is not to try out every tactic that ever existed. Rather, to understand your customers and the problems they’re trying to solve, and be there along their customer lifecycle to provide insights and solutions when they need them. Now, that’s what we call strategy. 

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Speaking of growth, we’re growing, too! 🌱

We’re looking for more people to join the Advance B2B gang (we’re a fun bunch! 🔥). Consider joining us if you’re looking for your next adventure as one of the following: 

• Digital marketer; or
• Head of sales; or
• Martech sales rep; or
• Growth technology strategist; or
• Growth marketing strategist; or
• SaaS content marketing strategist.

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Some golden nuggets for you to read through 🧠🔥

It seems that Finland won something at the Olympics, so we’ll continue with the theme of gold here too.🥇

Here’s a collection of some best online reads to indulge in:

• Why you should kill more content: Quality over quantity. What would your own  content program look like if you kill 30% of the pieces you started and focus on making the remaining 70% as great as they can be?
• Oyster HR’s core messaging framework template: Oyster HR’s CMO shared the core messaging framework they used when they were getting ready to build new campaigns or think about go-to-marketing strategies for a new product release.
• How building a community can drive growth: Co-founder and president of Boast.AI, Lloyed Lobo, weighs in on community-led growth and the value of making an impact.
• A new way to think about product-market fit: As difficult as finding a product-market fit (PMF) is, don’t be tempted to oversimplify it or you may end up wasting years of hard work — and snuffing your startup out before you had the chance to see any growth. PMF is a landscape with three different areas you need to understand: PMF Desert (you’re too far off from PMF), PMF Mountain (something’s working, but not entirely), PMF Mountain Peak (Time to build a real company and hit the gas).
• How ConvertKit scaled with “non-scalable” direct sales: A Twitter thread by Nathan Barry, ConvertKit founder, who tried everything from content marketing to partnerships to save his business from stalling at $2k/month after the initial traction. But nothing worked. Until…he discovered the key to scaling and created a process around it — direct sales. Remember: do what matters for your goals, not what everyone else is doing. 

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What's happening at Advance B2B? 🎥 🎙 📝

A lot of things are happening, and it’s amazing. 

First of all, we’re eating a lot of “laskiaispulla” (a sweet pastry with whipped cream & jam OR almond paste in it.)

Second, we’re working as per usual. One cool thing to highlight is our new podcast team: We recently made a tiny switch and we now have new hosts and a brand-new episode coming out next week. 

Our new hosts Reeta and Seija are long-time Advancers and seasoned marketing experts who can’t wait for you to hear all the cool things they discuss with our awesome guests.  

Stay tuned: The first episode is coming out on Thursday March 3rd.  

Using Google Analytics? You go to jail. ✅ 👮🏻‍♂️

Also, we just recently hired a new Data & Analytics Strategist Mia, who started strong by writing this awesome piece on what it means when someone is now telling you that Google Analytics is illegal in Europe. 

Aaaaand here’s some more cool stuff for you to check out: 

• B2B SaaS website: the pathway to your sales funnel, written by our very own Juho Mattila.
• The top 5 B2B SaaS marketing principles, written by our customer Miira Leinonen, CMO at TalentAdore.
• Hubspot essentials for growth marketers II: Lead nurturing, written by our growth marketing strategist, Wiebke Arendt.
• How to build a billion-dollar SaaS company, by Bill Macaitis, former SVP of Marketing & CMO at Salesforce, Zendesk & Slack, on The Growth Hub Podcast.
• 🇫🇮  SaaS-tuotteen hinnoittelu: kasvua kuukausilaskutuksella, written by our Otto Antikainen. 
• 🇫🇮  Case Mediamaisteri: Kasvumarkkinointi käytännössä, a webinar on growth marketing by Advance B2B and Arttu Kotakorpi from Mediamaisteri.
• 🇫🇮  Product Led Growth ja markkinointi – miten tuotevetoinen markkinointi toimii?, written by our content marketing strategist, Hanna Isohanni-Nikula.

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It’s almost spring 🌸

Yeah, we know, we just had a bunch of new snow (at least here in Southern Finland…) but once spring comes around, growth is all the rage.

While you watch and wait around for flowers and trees to bloom around you, you should also focus on other kinds of growth. 

Even if it’s tempting to dabble with every growth tactic that ever existed, it’s best to focus on only doing things that will take you towards your goals.

What are you looking forward to this spring? Just reply to this email to let us know!

In case you didn't know it yet, we also really appreciate all your replies — greetings, ideas, thoughts, feedback. So, go ahead and hit that reply button! 💌