Growth Science for B2B SaaS Companies from Mosaic Growth Solutions

Mosaic Growth Solutions
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Lessons on how to grow your B2B SaaS business from executives, investors and marketing leaders from leading companies.

  1. 11/13/2024

    Is Your Pricing Strategy Holding Back Growth?

    Is Your Pricing Strategy Holding Back Growth?  Let’s address a hidden growth lever in B2B SaaS: pricing strategy. Across the many companies we’ve worked with, the most common pricing “strategy” is to price a bit lower than the industry leader. But here’s the reality—this shortcut approach can hurt long-term profitability, brand perception, and customer loyalty. A thoughtful pricing strategy, however, can boost all three.  To highlight how little thought goes into B2B SaaS pricing, Paddle found “that companies only spend 6 hours on their pricing strategy in the entire history of their business.” Here’s why “a little cheaper” isn’t a winning approach and why CEOs should rethink their pricing model: It misses the mark on prospect needs.Prospects may share similar goals, but their specific needs and priorities differ. Some value integration, others prioritize ease of use, and some want customization. When pricing doesn’t reflect these distinctions, it can turn prospects away or attract the wrong customers. It erases your differentiation.If your only advantage is being slightly cheaper, you’re not giving prospects a reason to choose you. Pricing should reflect your product’s unique strengths, not just its position relative to a competitor. It devalues your product.You’ve invested in building a valuable product; pricing it as “the discount option” downplays that value. Discounted pricing signals to the market that your product is second-rate, undermining your efforts to establish a premium or differentiated brand. It insures prospects will choose the market leaderIf prospects see you only as “a cheaper alternative,” they will go with the leader unless savings are substantial. Real differentiation is about adding value, not shaving off dollars. It ignores switching costs and perceived risk.Challenger brands face significant barriers with switching costs and perceived risk. Simply mirroring the leader’s price doesn’t address these concerns. Pricing strategies that consider these barriers can help gain customer trust and convert more effectively. To build a more effective pricing strategy, involve your marketing, finance, product, and sales teams in the conversation. As part of the process, make sure to address these three areas: Customer Needs: Use insights from marketing to understand what each customer segment values most and build pricing tiers or options that cater to those specific needs. Differentiation: Highlight your unique strengths and position your pricing as a reflection of that value. Your pricing should tell a story about your brand and stand out against competitors. Brand Integrity: Maintain consistent pricing that supports your brand image. A well-respected brand builds trust, and price integrity is essential for sustaining that reputation over time. Action Step for CEOs If you haven’t revisited your pricing strategy in the past year, consider holding a cross-functional pricing audit with finance, marketing, product, and sales. This audit can help you identify where your pricing may be misaligned with customer value and where opportunities exist to communicate your differentiation and reinforce your brand. Pricing is more than a number—it’s a strategic reflection of your brand and product value. Bring in marketing, shape your pricing around value, and avoid the trap of “a little cheaper.”  Your customers, brand, and bottom line will thank you.

    3 min

  2. 11/12/2024

    The Demand Gen Death Spiral

    The Demand Gen Death SpiralWe were recently brought in to do an assessment for a B2B SaaS company, when we looked at their data we quickly realized then were in what I call the "demand gen death spiral." Sounds ominous, doesn’t it? It should—this is a place no company wants to be, yet many end up there.When we recognize this spiral during an assessment, it’s like watching a horror movie where the characters make the choice to go down into the basement. You can see the disaster coming and wonder: why head in this direction?So, what exactly is the demand gen death spiral?The demand gen death spiral happens when companies divert resources from effective strategies to double down on ineffective demand generation tactics. This reallocation causes performance to decline even faster, while marketing teams and agencies cherry-pick positive data points to justify the increased spend. This selective view hides the bigger picture of overall performance decline.Warning Signs You’re in the Demand Gen Death Spiral:- Missing revenue targets- Decline in branded search impressions year over year- Drop in direct traffic year over year- A high percentage of paid search revenue tied to branded search terms- Rising cost per click and overreliance on PMax campaigns- Spending across multiple channels that generates high volumes of low-quality leadsUnfortunately, many B2B SaaS companies are caught in this cycle.How to Escape the Demand Gen Death Spiral:Stop, reassess, and return to marketing fundamentals. Shift your focus to understanding core performance metrics and building a strategy grounded in your brand and true value creation.

    3 min

  3. 10/24/2024

    The Counterintuitive Way to Build Your B2B Brand

    The Counterintuitive Way to Build Your B2B Brand When most marketers think about driving growth, they often believe the key steps are to:- Narrowly target prospects- Focus on promoting product features- Gate content to generate leads- Constantly introduce new creative to grab attention- Keep communicating until the prospect convertsThis approach is popular because it feels intuitive. If we believe we know the segment of people most likely to buy our product, the logical next step seems to be finding those ready-to-buy prospects, capturing their information, showcasing how great our product is, and then continuing to communicate with them until they’re convinced.Sounds reasonable.While this approach sounds intuitive, the research shows it’s actually wrong.Here’s the real way to build your brand:- Don’t target too narrowly. Despite the promises of intent data and martech, we often know very little about a prospect’s readiness—whether they’re in-market, familiar with your brand, or past buyers. This makes it largely ineffective to try to target based on readiness. Also, research shows your best audience for outreach is anyone who buys the category; it's not limited to the narrow criteria you define. Instead of hyper-targeting, focus on broad outreach to build awareness. - Build emotional connections. Don’t start with boring creative about what your product does, instead start by creating emotional resonance through storytelling, visuals, and messaging that your audience can connect with.- Offer value upfront—for free. Give potential customers a chance to experience your value with a useful tool, resource, or insight at no cost (including gating). It has to be genuinely valuable, not just interesting, and it must demonstrate your expertise. When you provide value first, you’re not just showing off your expertise—you’re building trust. - Make your brand distinct. Whether through visuals, messaging, or positioning, your brand needs to stand out and be memorable. Find those distinctive elements and stick with them - forever.- Don’t chase uninterested prospects. If your message resonates, your value is clear, and your brand is memorable, you’ve done all you can. If a prospect doesn’t engage, it’s either the wrong time or they don’t see you as the right fit. Don’t waste time chasing them. Focus on continuing to build your brand presence and let it do the work over time.

    5 min

  4. 10/22/2024

    Ever seen a small B2B brand take on industry giants and win? We did. But here’s why it didn’t last…

    Four years ago, we conducted a marketing assessment for a B2B SaaS company. As always, we started with a competitive analysis. The results were predictable—big brands were dominating the market. But one smaller brand that was a competitor to our client stood out. Founded by industry veterans, they had built a brand and product that resonated deeply with their niche audience. They used their expertise to solve real problems, and it worked. They were growing and taking on industry leaders.Fast forward to today. We were brought back for another assessment. Once again, the big brands were growing. But that smaller brand that had been growing? They were now in decline.What changed?Since our last assessment, they had received private equity funding and they likely felt pressure to grow. Reading their press releases and looking at their marketing it is apparent they chose to dramatically expand the audience they were selling to and rebranded to appeal to that wider audience. In the process, they lost the things that made them differentiated and distinct.The results? Since their pivot and brand update, their share of search has fallen by 47% and they had to lay off almost 20% of their employees. The key takeaways?1. Brand “refreshes” can go terribly wrong - It is always tempting to pull the rebrand lever to drive growth, but is it really necessary?  Building a distinctive brand takes years and you can wipe out your investment in an instant by rebranding. 2. As a B2B challenger brand, it is better to be loved by a smaller audience than just liked by many - When you are a big brand, you can offer an OK product and still grow. But as a smaller brand, you need to realize that buyers are risk averse and won't choose you unless they have a very compelling reason.  Trying to appeal to many can cause a company to lose the aspects of their brand and product that provided that compelling reason to switch.3. Don’t change who you are to open new markets - Opening new markets can drive growth, but not at the expense of your identity. Growth strategies should build on your brand's strengths, not dilute them.

    3 min

  5. 10/11/2024

    Why Your Data Might Be Leading You Astray: Simpson’s Paradox and the Danger of Misleading Results

    Here’s a story that should be a wake-up call for B2B SaaS CEOs. Even when you think you’re doing everything right, your data might be leading you toward decisions that could undermine your growth.You’re the CEO of a B2B SaaS company focused on driving growth. Your CMO proposes shifting from your traditional inbound sales motion to a product-led growth (PLG) strategy. Being cautious, you decide to run a test rather than jump straight in.Here’s what happened:Q1 Results:Inbound: 582 opportunities, 183 deals, CVR = 31.44%PLG: 140 opportunities, 45 deals, CVR = 32.14%Encouraged by the results, you expand the PLG test in Q2.Q2 Results:Inbound: 48 opportunities, 12 deals, CVR = 25%PLG: 411 opportunities, 104 deals, CVR = 25.30%After two quarters, it seems like a no-brainer: PLG is outperforming inbound. The higher conversion rates suggest PLG is the future, right?Not so fast.When you combine the results from both quarters, the data tells a different story:Combined Results:Inbound (Q1 + Q2): 630 opportunities, 195 deals, CVR = 31%PLG (Q1 + Q2): 551 opportunities, 149 deals, CVR = 27%Suddenly, your traditional inbound motion is performing 15% better than PLG. How can that be?This is Simpson’s Paradox—a statistical phenomenon where trends that appear in separate data sets reverse when you combine them. Though I used a test of PLG to highlight the challenge, Simpson’s Paradox can occur in many areas:- College admissions- Medical treatments- Income distributions- Sports- A/B testing- And many more...In fact, in this example, the data comes from a real-life instance from baseball. In 1995 and 1996, David Justice had a higher batting average than Derek Jeter. But when you combine the two years, Jeter comes out on top. The data flips when looked at holistically.I’ve been hearing lately about how easy it is to use data to guide marketing decisions, but the truth is, even simple tests can lead you astray if you’re not careful. This example might seem straightforward, but that’s the point—even the simplest decisions can be wrong for reasons most people would overlook.The Lesson: What looks like straightforward data can be deceptively misleading. Before making any decisions, ask yourself:- Are we analyzing the data in the right way?- Are we weighing results properly across different cohorts and time periods?- Are we sure that short-term trends won’t reverse when looked at over time?Making the wrong call based on faulty interpretation of data can be costly. Making the right decision might not be easy. Always dig deeper—your growth depends on it.

    4 min

  6. 10/10/2024

    Product-Market Fit to Scale: A Key to Creating a Growth Engine

    As a B2B SaaS CEO, just acquiring a few more customers is not the goal —you’re building something that solves a pain so well that it drives its own growth. That’s where product-market fit to scale comes into play. So, what is product-market fit really?Product-market fit (PMF) occurs when a company's product successfully satisfies a strong market demand. Marc Andreessen, who coined the term, describes it as "being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market." But here’s the next level: Product-market fit to scale means your product is so strong that growth starts to happen organically. This is the inflection point where customer acquisition costs (CAC) drop, word of mouth accelerates, and the business grows without an over-reliance on aggressive marketing. We always hear about scaling stories from giants like Apple, Amazon, or Tesla, but product-market fit to scale often happens much earlier. Notion: It started out as a tool for small teams and startups. As users saw how flexible it was and how it could transform their workflows, Notion’s growth took off through word of mouth. They didn’t need to pour money into advertising early on—users did that for them by sharing how useful it was. Loom: This video messaging platform was initially used by teams looking for quicker ways to communicate. Once they nailed down product-market fit, it spread organically within organizations. Users themselves helped Loom grow from the bottom up, driving adoption into larger enterprises without needing big ad campaigns. Airtable: Airtable didn’t just sell a product—it gave users the power to create custom applications that solved their own business problems. Once people experienced its flexibility, they naturally shared it with others, fueling organic growth that scaled the company. Here’s how to evaluate your readiness to scale: Measure engagement: Are your top customers increasing their usage of key features? If people aren’t using your product they aren’t going to be talking about it. You want to have heavy users, those are the ones who are finding the real value.   Track word of mouth: Audit the acquisition paths on your deals. What percentage of new customers are arriving through referrals and word of mouth?  Look for evangelists: Look to see if you have people writing about your product on social media, speaking about it at events and including it in articles.  Having evangelists is a key indicator that you have found PMF to scale. The key to product-market to scale is maintaining customer focus. Understand their needs, why they love your product, focus on those use cases, and give them reasons to talk about it. Start small, nail the solution for a targeted audience, and let their love for your product drive organic growth. Scaling without excessive spend on customer acquisition? That’s the goal.

    3 min

  7. 10/09/2024

    Challenger brands can grow by doing something incredible.

    Think about brands like:- ChatGPT- Google - Zapier- Trader Joe’s- Costco- Zara- ZapposThese are large brands today, but they started by doing something so remarkable that word spread organically. Whether it was exceptional customer service, incredible value, unique experiences, or standout product features, they each found their "something incredible."We’ve worked with companies who did the same:Netcraft - They focused on being the best in the world at website takedowns. Offensive Security - They built a passionate community by offering training and certifications so intense customers were excited to share they passed the certification. Highway.ai - They built a product on mortgage industry knowledge and guidance that was unmatched. PenFed - Offered rates so low that the word spread organically from the military community they served to the broader world. What enabled this wasn't unique talent or massive resources. What they had was a vision to do something incredible.Yet, very few companies tap into this powerful growth lever. Why?They focus too much on their own idea. Founders and CEOs often believe their vision is the ‘incredible thing,’ but this mindset can stop them from identifying smaller, quicker wins that can still be transformative.They get stuck on what customers say they need. Gathering customer insights is crucial, but those insights should focus on identifying the problem, not dictating how to solve it. Companies can miss the chance to deliver something exceptional by just following customer instructions rather than addressing their real needs.They’re too distracted by what the competition is doing. Feature parity is the arch-nemesis of doing something incredible. Too many companies become preoccupied with matching competitors, instead of finding what they can be the best at and standing out.So, how do you find that "something incredible"?Set out to do something amazing - Understand that your company is capable of doing something incredible and move away from the “good enough” mindset.Narrow your focus - Identify a specific area where competitors are failing to meet a need or where you can over-deliver value and focus there. Build what customers actually need—not just what they say they need.Leverage your strengths - Assess what your team or product does/can do better than anyone else and double down on it.Doing something incredible is a growth strategy almost any company can use. It just takes the will to make it happen.

    3 min

  8. 10/03/2024

    How to Build a Distinctive B2B Brand (And the Popular Advice That Keeps You From Doing It)

    Building a distinctive brand is crucial for being easily identifiable to customers and prospects. But there's some misguided advice out there about how to do it. The common advice is that we need distinctive brand assets (DBAs). But our goal shouldn't be to build distinctive assets - it should be to build a distinctive brand. Here's the reality: B2B brands rarely achieve individual distinctive brand assets. Research from the B2B Institute shows that in the CRM category, only Microsoft's logo qualifies as a distinctive brand asset. Not even Salesforce or HubSpot have managed this feat. In their research, the only B2B brands that have created truly distinctive individual assets are Google, Microsoft, and Amazon - giants that are also consumer brands. Research: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/brand-assets-are-important-in-b2b-marketing/? The Truth About Brand Distinctiveness As Nick Liddell points out in his terrific LinkedIn article: "...it’s much more helpful and realistic to think about how your brand elements work collectively to create fame and uniqueness, rather than obsessing about wringing as much fame or uniqueness as possible from each individual element." Article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/brand-strategists-toolkit-25-distinctive-assets-grid-nick-liddell/ Despite this reality, thinking about distinctive brand assets remains valuable. B2B brands often suffer from being too safe and similar. Approaching asset development with the idea that we want to create assets that could be famous and unique will push you to be bolder and more distinct. Start today - Every day that passes is a missed opportunity Select 3-4 elements to focus on - The combination matters, but too many muddle the impact  Include unexpected elements like: Characters/Mascots Patterns Unique illustration styles Design individual assets as if they could become famous Use your combination consistently, everywhere, forever A distinct color  A mascot Standardized fonts A consistent illustration style One final note (and a piece of constructive feedback for Haris): always include your brand name. Distinctiveness makes your brand recognizable, but if people don’t associate it with your company, it won’t drive business. When I went to write this post, I remembered Haris's brand but not his name—it took effort to find him. Prospects won't do that. The Challenge of Individual Distinctive Assets Thinking About DBAs Is Still ValuableHow to Build a Distinctive B2B BrandA Real-World ExampleThe best B2B distinctiveness example isn't from a company, but an individual. Haris Spahić is known on LinkedIn for his distinctive brand which includes:One Final, Important Note

    6 min
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Lessons on how to grow your B2B SaaS business from executives, investors and marketing leaders from leading companies.

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