This episode, Co-Founder of Ten Speed Nate Turner talks about the unique aspects of marketing for a SaaS company, the difference between venture-backed and bootstrapped marketing, and the different forms of online marketing. Nate Turner spent a decade scaling Sprout Social from $100k to $100m in ARR (and IPO) and held fractional leadership roles with companies like Help Scout, Zylo, Popular Pays, and Hologram. In 2019, Nate left his role at Sprout Social to focus on consulting and fractional growth roles, and in 2020 Co-Founded Ten Speed, a content optimization agency focused on helping companies accelerate their organic growth via quality content. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of The Consulting Trap:
- How marketing is different for SaaS companies.
- How margins inform marketing.
- The difference between venture-backed and bootstrapped marketing.
- How to market a freemium software model.
- The interplay between product and marketing.
- The different types of online marketing.
Resources:
Connecting with Nate Turner:
Connecting with the host:
Quotables:
- 27:13 – “A lot of marketers can get distracted with their craft or measuring specifically what they’re doing which in the past has led to well look at all the MQLs we’ve generated or look at all the social followers we’ve gained and not that those things are bad but as the end goal they’re bad so I think really understanding revenue and some of the other core company metrics and be able to speak to how your work impacts that and if you don’t know then figuring that out.”
- 27:59 – “I don’t think you can ever have too much time spent or effort around understanding your customer and your target audience and what matters to them and how your product actually helps solves their pain points or make their life easier because I think we can tend to make assumptions and Founders are great at talking to customers in the first year but then I think over time that can fade from the company culture.”