In Demand: How to Grow Your SaaS to $1M ARR and Beyond

Asia Orangio
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In Demand: How to Grow Your SaaS to $1M ARR and Beyond

Growing a SaaS? Yeah, that's hard. Growing a SaaS without a clue what you're doing from a marketing and growth perspective? Pretty much impossible. Especially if you want to break the $1M ARR mark. Your host Asia Orangio (previously Asia Matos) breaks down the marketing and growth myths and lays the foundation for SaaS and startup founders to grow their businesses with strategies and tactics that actually work — no matter if you're bootstrapped or VC funded. Listen, learn, subscribe, and execute. About your host: Asia Orangio is the CEO & Founder of DemandMaven. Asia helps founders of early-stage startups reach their growth goals through proven growth strategies across GTM, acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion. In early 2018, Asia founded DemandMaven — a consulting firm dedicated to helping bootstrapped and funded early-stage startups build revenue-generating marketing engines. Previously, Asia served in a number of marketing roles, but most notably as head of marketing at Hull where she helped the team 10.5x in growth, and #FlipMyFunnel / Terminus as demand generation manager. Asia also served on the board of Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021.

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    EP34: Don't Freak Out About Quantitative Results

    When you're in the early stages of building a business, you need to move quickly. But when you're testing growth channels, there is a difference between moving quickly and freaking out.   In this episode of the InDemand podcast, host Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, uncovers the pitfalls that teams can fall into when reacting to quantitative results.   She covers the mistakes that founders make when reacting to experiments and how to set yourself up for success when running tests and reacting to the results.   TL;DL 0:22 - Don't freak out about bad numbers. Early technical founders have a tendency to overreact to test data from marketing and growth campaigns. But in growth you're working with humans, not code, and you can't always trust immediate results. 4:35 - A one to two week experiment with low spend on a growth channel likely won't show you a clear result. If you react to it you might be missing a big opportunity. 8:00 - A company Asia worked with was testing out a video demo option. After one week and getting two requests for the video the team was resigned to the fact that it wasn't working, but after waiting it turned out that having the video was actually increasing the number of prospects entering the pipeline. 12:45 - You always have to remember that quantitative outputs can tell you 'what', but can't tell you 'why'. Before you react, you have to pause and dig deeper to understand what is driving the numbers. 20:07 - When you're running a test, the sample size matters. You need a large enough volume of results to be able to trust the results. There is a natural variance in the results you get and if you end an experiment early you might just be seeing variance.

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    EP33: Top Customer Research Mistakes

    Customer research is a critical part of growth. However many teams and founders make big mistakes when they do their research. What are the mistakes you need to avoid?    In this episode of the InDemand podcast, Asia Orangio, founder of DemandMaven, highlights the most common mistakes in conducting customer research and gives examples of how to avoid them.    If you haven’t already, sign up for The Work, a weekly newsletter: https://demandmaven.substack.com/   TL;DL   1:03 - Mistake one, not setting clear goals for research. You'll always have a trigger that makes you decide to do the research, but you should also have a clear goal. For example, "I want to understand who churns and why" 6:03 - Mistake two, not interviewing the right people. When you conduct your research, make sure that it's very clear who the target audiences are going to be and that it aligns with your ultimate goals and hypothesis of the research. 10:58 - Mistake three, over-talking in interviews. Too much talking makes your research subjects want to agree. You might end up with a lot of camaraderie, but you'll probably not get the most valuable information. 14:05 - Mistake four, asking leading questions. Giving a hint of the answers you want to hear makes it more likely you'll hear that answer and not an answer that may surprise you and point to an issue you're not aware of. 21:48 - Mistake five, accepting vague answers. This is the one that founders are most susceptible to. For example, "What I liked about the product was that it was easy to use". An answer like that should be followed up on to find out specifically what they mean. Terms like: it was easier, it was faster, it was better, it was stressful, it was annoying, it was confusing, it was flexible, it was seamless are triggers where you should dig deeper. 33:58 Mistake six, if you don't need to, don't incentivize people for your interviews. In some situations, you will need to have an incentive to get people. But if you're talking to your customers, don't give an incentive. It makes it more likely that you'll get people who don't really want to talk to you and just want the incentive. 34:20 - Mistake seven, not having a feedback process after interviews. After you do your research, it's key to not only have bullet point results for the founders and executives but also a detailed review of the process and learnings for the entire team.

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    EP32: What if We're Bad at Product Management?

    Product management isn’t easy. And the reality is some founders just aren’t that good at it.    In this episode, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, discusses the importance of effective product management in growth and why striving for 'quality of life improvements' - small tweaks to existing features - over 'value generators' - hurts growth.    If you haven't seen it, check out The Work, a weekly newsletter: https://demandmaven.substack.com/   Timeline:    1:33 - Product management is ultimately the process of determining and prioritizing what features to build, what value to provide and deciding how to actually get that done. It is not order taking. 5:00 - Customers are not good at telling you what to build or why they want you to build something. If you are just approaching product management as taking orders from your customers you will often be led astray. 6:40 - Customers are usually in a solution space, as a great p roduct manager you need to get in the problem space (build a car and not a faster horse). 10:30 - Asking your customers "why?" can lead you to ideas for better solutions to their problems. Instead of just building features based on a customer request, ask "What is it that you're trying to accomplish? What does that help you do?" 13:00 - When you are too focused on the solutions space you build quality of life improvements, but not value generators. 16:00 - If you only make quality of life improvements, customers will eventually leave for another product that has more impactful value generators. 23:30 - If you have a revenue cohort retention rate of 40-70% the reason is likely related to your product and it is a key signal to start thinking about your product management. 26:45 - Recomendations for product management: Reforge, Continous Discovery Habits by Teresa Torres, Escaping The Build Trap by Melissa Perry

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    EP31: Globalization and the Importance of Understanding Customer Behavior with Angeley Mullins

    In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, chats with Angeley Mullins live from SaaStock.    Angeley is a seasoned commercial and operations executive ( E-Commerce & B2B SaaS) with leadership roles across the US, EMEA, & APAC including: Amazon, Intuit, and GoDaddy. She is currently Chief Commercial Officer at Resourcify. Angeley focuses on both growing scale- ups including Seed / Series A - Series C , as well as larger corporations and NGOs.   They discuss Angeley's experience in the tech industry, the importance of having a global perspective, and the need for diversity in leadership.    Angeley shares insights on how to tackle globalization, the importance of understanding customer behavior in different markets, and shares her personal experiences as a woman in the tech industry.   Timestamps:    2:55 - Interview starts 4:30 - Angeley's role at Resourcify and understanding Circularity and Sustainability 7:37 - Angeley's career journey starting in finance and then her experience working with tech companies like GoDaddy, Quickbooks, and others 9:45 - How European and American companies tend to have different views on the global market. American companies naturally think of themselves as global from day one, whereas European companies are often focused on their own country or just Europe as a market for too long. 15:30 - How Resourcify is growing and helping clients track and manage CO2 and Waste 17:41 - Women in Leadership, being the only woman in the room and how data shows that female leadership helps comanies succeed 25:30 -  How companies can focus on improving diversity by doing things like screening applicants without knowing gender. 28:59 - How to connect with Angeley on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/angeleymullins/)

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    EP30: Qualitative vs. Quantitative

    Description: As we approach the end of the year, we rely on the information we have to make decisions and plans for future growth. In order to have a full picture, it is critical to have been capturing high-quality qualitative as well as quantitative information.  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down why both types of information are important and examples of how to incorporate qualitative information to understand the ‘why’ behind your numbers. TL;DL  Timestamps: 4:50 - Quantitative insights are things like conversion rates, retention rates, daily active users, and most founders tend to be better about collecting these. But they are not super valuable on their own.  5:50 - When you combine qualitative and quantitative insights, you start to see patterns emerge about where gaps and opportunities exist. 6:25 - Qualitative allows you to understand the 'whys' that are driving the quantitative data you're seeing 8:02 - Sometimes your qualitative and quantitative insights are contradictory. This brings up a lot of questions and creates moments when you can learn a lot about how your business is working. Often a contradictory qualitative insight comes up because of who you are talking to.  11:30 - Customer research is just one example of qualitative information. There are things like the stories that filter through your organization, and information that you get from audience members, thought leaders, and marketing leaders in your industry. 13:10 - Customers can't tell you what's not working in your business, but they can tell you about their experience and their needs. 14:05 - It's not about one or the other, to build a business you should prioritize collecting high-quality quantitative and qualitative information. 15:35 - Retrospectives, done by team members at the end of projects, can be a precious qualitative resource to incorporate into your operations. 19:10 - If you're not doing both, then long-term planning is going to be way more difficult than it needs to be. As we close the year it is a great time to make sure you're collecting high-quality information on both sides.

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    EP29: Focusing vs. Niching

    When it comes to building a business there is a big difference between focusing and niching. In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down how you can achieve focus by niching, but why you don't have niche to achieve focus.  TL;DL:  2:00 - When we talk about focusing, it is a founder really dedicating for a period of time to a specific part of the market. Niching is going to market saying that you only serve a specific segment. An example of a niched product is a CRM that is for trucking companies. An example of focus could be a CRM for small businesses that is investing over 12 months in focusing on marketing agencies and then the next 12 months focused on design firms. 5:00 - If you're focusing, you probably wouldn't turn away a customer that is outside of your focus. If you're in niche, you would turn away a customer that is outside of the niche. 9:10 - Focusing is not necessarily a forever thing, but it is important as you think about go to market. Start by thinking about who your raving fans are and who will get the most value out of the product. That is how you identify who to focus on first. 11:00- Hubspot is a great example of a company that focused, but did not niche.    12:30 - When you are niching, what's important is targeting a niche that has enough market turnover to create opportunity over the long-term. Then it is critical to have a plan for identifying  when to expand or pivot out of that niche. 20:00 - When you are niching, you want to make sure that you are focusing on long-term macro trends and not short-term micro trends. For example, Blockbuster was niched, but missed the macro trend towards streaming. 24:00 - As a recap, focusing is a temporary effort focused on specific segments. For example a small business CRM where you are focusing your product and marketing efforts for 6 months on marketing agencies. Niching is a defining your product as being for a specific segment. For example defining your product as the CRM for marketing agencies and turning away other customers.

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    EP28: The Top 5 Growth Drivers

    What are the best areas to focus on when you’re trying to drive growth in your company?  In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the top five growth drivers for SaaS businesses.  Growing Awareness Growing Traffic Capturing More Leads Increasing Sales Increasing Business Capacity TL;DL 1:00 - What are the top 5 growth drivers? 1:55 - Growing awareness simply means more people knowing about your brand. This is tough to measure, but usually you can look at behaviors like testimonials or referrals. 4:15 - Growing traffic to your website is huge and easy to track, but it is very competitive in 2023 using traditional channels to grow traffic. 5:20 - Capturing more leads means increasing the number of leads, but also increasing your conversion rate, so that you are getting a bigger percentage out of all your traffic converting. 7:05 - Increasing sales. This is about improving the conversion rate, but also accelerating the sales cycle and increasing profitability. 9:45 - Increasing business capacity is where you are making hires and removing bottlenecks from your business that are slowing growth. Most of the time, growth is a function of how well your team is functioning. 17:30 - In early stage companies, you will often find it most valuable to focus on growing traffic, capturing more leads, and increasing sales. In more mature companies, all 5 are important to focus on. 19:00 - If you think through these five growth factors as it relates to your business, what are the top 2 most important for your business? And then within those 2 what are the 3–5 projects that you can do to make an impact on those growth factors?  Check out Katelyn Bourgoin on twitter at https://twitter.com/KateBour

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    EP27: Growth During an Economic Downturn

    In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the strategies successful companies have used to survive and grow through downturns and how to apply it to your business. TL;DL:   1:00 - A lot of companies simply over-hired during the past couple years of growth and the layoffs now are correcting for that as opposed to a greater market downturn. 5:30 - In a true economic downturn, layoffs and cuts might not be your best strategy for future survival. 6:45 - There are lots of different levers that can lead to growth. Increasing leads and traffic, increasing in sales, increasing retained customers, increasing in upsells or cross sales, and increasing revenue by optimizing pricing. 8:05 - In an economic downturn the first step to take is to get default alive, meaning that you get to a position of not needing future investment to continue operating. 9:34 - The second step is checking for gaps. That means looking at your business from a product, market, model, and channel perspective. In an economic downturn big changes are happening in the market and that likely means your business needs to change. 13:15 - Step number three is refocusing on growth. The companies that succeed during a downturn are companies that tighten their belts, focus on leadership, and then refocus on growth before the market at large. 17:00 - If you're experiencing slowness with growth right now, there are likely root causes beyond just the economic downturn. You should be looking at and focusing on your highest LTV customers and identifying opportunities that create higher LTV long-term.

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Growing a SaaS? Yeah, that's hard. Growing a SaaS without a clue what you're doing from a marketing and growth perspective? Pretty much impossible. Especially if you want to break the $1M ARR mark. Your host Asia Orangio (previously Asia Matos) breaks down the marketing and growth myths and lays the foundation for SaaS and startup founders to grow their businesses with strategies and tactics that actually work — no matter if you're bootstrapped or VC funded. Listen, learn, subscribe, and execute. About your host: Asia Orangio is the CEO & Founder of DemandMaven. Asia helps founders of early-stage startups reach their growth goals through proven growth strategies across GTM, acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion. In early 2018, Asia founded DemandMaven — a consulting firm dedicated to helping bootstrapped and funded early-stage startups build revenue-generating marketing engines. Previously, Asia served in a number of marketing roles, but most notably as head of marketing at Hull where she helped the team 10.5x in growth, and #FlipMyFunnel / Terminus as demand generation manager. Asia also served on the board of Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021.

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