B2B SaaS marketing is notoriously difficult with more to contend with now than ever. 

An impactful marketing strategy needs to consider: how you’ll stand out in an increasingly crowded market, how you’ll feed your sales pipeline amongst changing buyer preferences, and how you’ll cut through the noise and reach the right audiences in the AI era.

Through turbulent markets, and changing demands,, in person events have remained a staple B2B SaaS marketing channel that helps businesses of all stages reach their goals. 

In this post, we’ll explore why events continue to be a core channel for B2B marketing leaders and how they’ll help you make an impact in 2024. 

What do we mean by event marketing? 

Event marketing is the process of using events to amplify your brand, generate new business, and make new connections. It’s a broad term that encompasses ways to both host and attend events, including: 

• Hosting in-person events, from conferences (like Salesforce’s Dreamforce or Xero’s Xerocon) to smaller meetups and socials.
• Hosting virtual or hybrid events, like online webinars and product launches that are hosted either solely online or in person and streamed at the same time. 
• Sponsoring or partnering with industry events, like conferences and trade shows, meetups, or social events. 
• Speaking either as a keynote or part of a panel or hosting content sessions like workshops and roundtables. 
• Attending an event and using the opportunity to showcase your brand by networking with prospects, customers, peers, and industry experts. 

Events are a popular B2B SaaS marketing channel because of the range of ways they allow companies to engage with their ideal customer profile (ICP) – from raising brand awareness, right through to closing deals and developing advocates.  

For the purpose of the rest of this post, we’re going to discuss the impact event marketing can have when you attend industry events as a partner or sponsor.

5 reasons why events are a powerful marketing channel for B2B SaaS

Sponsoring events involves things like having a booth on the show floor, and increasing brand visibility by sponsoring activations, or hosting a networking or social event. Depending on the event, there’s usually a range of packages to suit different budgets and goals.

This range of options gives you lots of opportunities to get in front of your ICP and make other powerful connections in the community. Here are six ways those opportunities can propel you towards meeting your marketing goals in 2024.

1. Pipeline expansion and revenue: 

With your ICP in one room, events provide opportunities to collect accurate and valuable information including preferences, behaviours, and contact details. The opportunity to collect this first-party data is invaluable to marketing leaders looking to build their sales pipeline and streamline GTM processes. 

Interactive booths & activations on the show floor are a great way to get people engaging in conversations with your team. You can also look at what networking opportunities are available through the event and book meetings with key prospects, customers, peers, and industry leaders in advance. 

At SaaStock, we’ve had companies like Paddle scan over 1000 badges at our Dublin event, generating quality leads that gave them a 3x ROI from their sponsorship.

2. Brand awareness and thought leadership

Meeting face to face at events creates a space for you to connect with prospects and customers on a level it’s hard to reach on Zoom – 77% of event attendees say they trust brands more after interacting face-to-face with them at events. 

Depending on the event, there’ll be a range of ways to increase your brand visibility onsite. Examples include: a booth and activations, fringe events, and your branding on event signage and collateral. 

You should prepare your team to represent your brand at events not only with things like staff t-shirts but also by encouraging them to network and create their own connections to increase reach and build that trust. 

3. Customer relationships and feedback

As well as connecting with prospects, you can use events to meet with your existing customers. Speak to them and ask for feedback about what they value in your product and where they’d like to see improvement. 

This will help you build lasting relationships with them, plus these conversations give you a chance to address any issues and identify cross or upselling opportunities. Getting this right can help customers stay with you for longer (increasing your customer LTV) and boost expansion revenue, lessening your reliance on acquiring new customers.

4. Networking and making new connections

Whether it’s peers, new talent to join the business, potential partners or the lead investor of your next funding round – the power of networking shouldn’t be underestimated. 

It’s an increasingly important part of events for attendees and sponsors alike and such is becoming a more structured part of conferences and trade shows. At SaaStock, for example, we’re introducing a networking programme that runs alongside the event content and expo hall to make it easier for you to make the connections that will change your business’ trajectory. 

“The whole acquisition process started at SaaStock and it’s not the first time we’ve made those sorts of connections. At prior SaaStock’s I also met people that we ended up partnering closely with. In this world where we are very much working remotely, it’s great to have conferences to go to meet people and [make] connections,” Esben Friis-Jensen, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow

Check out more about Esben’s story here.

5. Product feedback and market intelligence

Events are an opportunity to get live feedback on your product and messaging–both from customers and people completely new to you. Use it to understand what’s valuable, what resonates, and what isn’t so clear. Collect the feedback, share it with your team, and use it to make decisions about where to focus going forward. 

You can also use events to gather market intelligence. Walk the floor and speak to other exhibitors and attendees. This will help you understand what competitors are doing and see more broadly where SaaS companies are innovating and what’s driving their growth.

Measuring event marketing success

Amist budget constraints, being able to prove the ROI of your marketing efforts is more important than ever. Depending on what you want to achieve with your event marketing, there are a number of ways to measure success. Here are some of the most common: 

• Pipeline and revenue generation: Using metrics like leads generated, cost per lead, and event attributable revenue to understand how much money you made versus the cost of sponsorship. 
• Brand awareness and engagement: Tracking your website visits and social following during and after the event. In the weeks and months that follow, review engagement with follow up marketing activity including emails, content marketing, and social posts. 

• Customer engagement: Looking at the number of conversations you had against the number of cross or upsell opportunities and the amount of revenue generation from those opps. 

We’ve got a more detailed guide to measuring the ROI of event sponsorship here.

Kick start your event marketing with SaaStock 

At SaaStock, we’ve spent eight years working with SaaS companies of all sizes to make sure that our events drive impactful results against marketing and business goals.

Our conference in Dublin this October will bring together 4,500 SaaS decision makers and see a new networking programme running alongside our event content. We’re also launching a number of new partner initiatives that make it easier for you to build your pipeline, generate brand awareness, and grow your revenue, including: 

• Distinct meeting experiences that serve as a focal point for arranging impactful meetings, with the right people. 

• Tailored opportunities to engage with a focused audience, with exciting new formats including: boardrooms for CFOs/CROs/CMOs/CPOs, SaaStock Sponsor Stage, workshop opportunities for your ICP, and more.
• Our VIP meeting service, SaaS.Concierge, to pair you with your ideal customer, optimising your time at the event for maximum efficiency and impact.

Find out more about our partnership opportunities or download the prospectus. 

We look forward to hearing from you!

The post Why events should be part of your B2B marketing strategy in 2024 appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Despite tightening marketing budgets, in-person events continue to be a core marketing channel for B2B SaaS companies. 

According to Sagefrog, in person trade shows and events are the leading area of marketing spend for 2024, with 38% percent of respondents saying that exhibiting or sponsoring in-person conferences will be a tactic they employ. 

It’s clear marketers understand the value but with budget pressures and a move towards efficient and sustainable growth, 41% say the pressure to prove the value of their marketing efforts is high.

For events in particular, justifying the spend and proving the ROI is more important than ever.

In this post, we look at the different ways to sponsor events, why events remain a core B2B SaaS marketing channel, and run through three ways to measure the ROI of your event marketing efforts.

What do we mean by event sponsorship?

Event sponsorship is a way for businesses to promote their brand, meet new and existing customers, establish market presence, and make powerful connections by partnering with and actively participating in industry events. 

In B2B SaaS, there are sponsorship opportunities at different types of events including but not limited to trade shows, conferences, networking meetups, social events, and webinars. 

Most events will have a range of sponsorship options that you can evaluate based on your budget and business goals. Some examples are: 

• Having a booth on a show floor at a conference or trade show.
• Hosting a networking event or content workshop.
• Sponsoring an engaging activation. Some we’ve had at SaaStock include barista coffee stands, VR headsets, and lock boxes with incredible prizes.  
• Hosting unique experiences or social events. Think lunches and dinners, 5k runs, yoga, and happy hours. 
• Large scale brand visibility opportunities across event signage, welcome packs, and registration desks.
• Speaking at an event as a keynote speaker, panel member, or moderator.

Why do B2B SaaS companies sponsor events?

B2B SaaS companies sponsor events for a number of reasons. The ones that matter most will depend on your company, business goals, and the opportunities at the event you’re working with. 

Broadly speaking, event sponsorship outcomes falls into these categories:

• Pipeline expansion and revenue: Events offer a number of ways to get in front of and collect important data about decision makers from your ideal customer profile (ICP). This type of first-party data is crucial to marketing leaders and through in-person meetings, interactive booths & activations, and real time feedback, events provide opportunities to collect accurate and valuable information including preferences, behaviours, and contact details.
• Brand awareness and thought leadership: Being present at events, showcasing your product and brand identity is a great way to increase awareness and build trust in the market. A survey by global events company Freeman, found that 77% of event attendees trusted brands more after interacting face-to-face with them at events. 
• Customer relationships and feedback: As well as connecting with prospects, use events to connect with your existing customers. Speak to them and ask for feedback. You can then use these conversations to address any issues and identify cross selling opportunities. 
• Networking and making new connections: Events are an unrivalled opportunity to make connections. This could be sharing challenges and learning from peers, meeting with founders who go on to become partners, or finding the lead investor for your next funding round. 
• Product feedback and market intelligence: Events are an opportunity to get live feedback on your product. You can also use them to gather market intelligence, whether understanding what competitors are doing or seeing more broadly where SaaS companies are innovating and what’s driving their growth.

Why is measuring the ROI of event sponsorship difficult?

Despite the numerous benefits, without preparation, measuring the impact of events can be a challenge in the B2B space. For reasons including: 

• Lack of clear goals for the event: To accurately track the ROI of an event, you need a clear goal.
• Long sales cycles: B2B sales cycles can be long and include multiple touch points and contacts. Particularly with enterprise sales, closing a deal can take months or even years, making it hard to attribute event success directly. 
• On and offline touch points: Some aspects of event marketing are difficult to attribute. For example, there could be an adhoc conversation or an attendee might read your flyer–neither of which would be tracked but that person might then search for your company later on when they are ready to buy.

How to measure ROI of event sponsorship

Successfully measuring the ROI of your event sponsorship starts with having specific goals for what you want to achieve. From there, you can choose the KPIs, quantitative, and qualitative data that will give you the clearest picture of whether or not you achieved them.

3 ways to measure conference ROI

In its simplest form, the ROI of any event is the revenue or pipeline generated, compared to the overall sponsorship cost. 

But there are multiple other ways to measure the business impact of event sponsorship. Here a some of the most common: 

1. Pipeline expansion and revenue

• Meetings booked: Calculate how many meaningful meetings were booked because of the event. This can include meetings booked in advance, during, or after the event. 
• Leads generated: The number of contacts you have to follow up with at the end of the event. Depending on your approach to gathering these leads, there may be work to do to qualify the leads post event.
• Cost per lead: The total cost of the event, divided by the number of leads generated. You can compare this with the cost per lead of other marketing activities to see which channels are most effective.
• Lead to opportunity conversion rate: Measure the quality of the leads you generate by looking at the percentage that go on to become opportunities. For product-led companies, this could be how many go on to sign up, either to a free trial or as paying customers.
• Event attributable revenue: How much revenue was generated as a result of the event sponsorship. Depending on your attribution model, it can be difficult to see how much the event was involved in the deal getting closed but the important thing is to understand where the event was part of the sales journey.  

2. Brand awareness and engagement 

• Website visits:  Track your website visits during and after the event. If you have collateral at the event or are running an offer or discount, use QR codes and tracking links so you can easily attribute visitors to your event activity. 
• Social engagement and following: Particularly useful if you’re running an activation or experience, make it easy for people to share on it social and track your engagement metrics. 
• Follow-up engagement: Tracking the open and click through rates of any follow up comms you do can be a good indicator of how well your brand has stuck with people. This also goes for performance of post event content marketing and social posts. 
• Talent acquisition: Events can be a great way to attract talent to your business, track the number of applications to your open roles in the weeks following the event.
• Marketing attribution: Ask how people discovered your brand at points of conversion in your marketing, and include the event on the list. This can help you uncover some of those ad hoc, untracked interactions mentioned earlier.

3. Customer engagement

• Number of conversations: Look at the number of customers you engaged with at the event. 
• Cross-sell and upsell opportunities: The number of expansion revenue opportunities identified from those conversations.
• Expansion revenue: Report on how many of those opportunities become closed won deals. From here, you can see how much expansion revenue can you attribute to the event.
• Feedback: Analyse the feedback you received and use it to make decisions about where to focus your efforts going forward.

How to maximise event sponsorship ROI

Being in the room with your ICP, your brand on display, and a demo at hand is a great start but there are other things you can do to get the most out of your sponsorship. 

Here are our top tips: 

1. Do some of the work up front: Take a look at who’s attending, who’s speaking, or even which companies are local to the event and reach out to get meetings booked in advance. This could be prospects, opportunities in the pipeline, customers or investors.
2. Brief your team and align on the goal: Make sure everyone attending is clear on the goal. Train them on your lead generation practices, encourage them to network and approach people, rather than waiting for people to approach them.
3. Follow up after the event: Whether it’s booking a meeting, nurturing leads with relevant content, or getting a coffee in with one of your peers, don’t let those connections go cold.

Kick start your event marketing with SaaStock 

At SaaStock, we’ve spent eight years working with partners to make sure our events deliver impactful return on investment. 

This year, we’ve launched a number of new partner initiatives for our Dublin conference that take this a step further – making it easier for you to build your pipeline, generate brand awareness, and grow your revenue. 

• SaaStock Saloon: A content space for curated discussions and keynotes to help you find practical solutions to your challenges.
• SaaStock Concierge: Facilitated meetings, coordinated by SaaStock, focused on bringing together Partners and key decision makers.
• SaaStock Boardroom: A closed-door boardroom for C-Suite leaders centred around peer-to-peer conversations, lessons learnt, and insights for addressing business challenges.

Find out more about our partnership opportunities or download the prospectus. 

We look forward to hearing from you!

The post How to measure and increase the ROI of event sponsorship appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Live from the SaaStock USA 2024 Scale Stage, Kyle Lacy (CMO, Jellyfish) tells marketing leaders the five ways to not get fired.

“I believe marketing should have a seat at the table for all four of these to force alignment, because you are the hub and spoke of the go to market model – in my opinion. So that’s why it’s important that you at least help own, or at least help report, on these things.”

The average tenure of a marketing and sales leader at a high-growth startup is short, and it’s short for a reason. How do you build staying power at any company as a marketing leader? It’s important to build specific strategies to gain a seat at the proverbial table. Join Kyle as he walks you through the five ways to position yourself as a marketing leader, from revenue alignment to owning a pipeline/revenue number.

Listen to the full episode, watch the video below and subscribe to the SaaS Revolution Show podcast today.

Watch now, or listen to the audio-only version below:


Listen to the audio now:

If you want similar tips and are looking to achieve success all year round, check out the SaaStock Founder Membership:

A private community of ambitious SaaS founders scaling to $10MM ARR. Get a support network of peers, connect with likeminded founders around the globe, and learn proven strategies from industry experts. Apply now to scale up your SaaS.

Want to join the pioneers at the forefront of The SaaS revolution? Subscribe to our newsletter today to get exclusive content, receive actionable value-based insights and create your Rocketship SaaS.

Plus – follow us on social! Check out our profiles on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

And if you can’t wait another week for our next podcast, listen to our previous two here:

The post Marketing Leaders: 5 Ways to Not Get Fired, with Kyle Lacy, CMO at Jellyfish appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Sometimes, in the run up to an event, you confirm parts of it that you just know are going to be special. Whether seeing a new concept come to life, working with different partners, or adding to the agenda, these moments build the excitement for me because I know we’re adding more value for those who attend. 

That’s what happened when we booked 37signals CEO Jason Fried to speak at SaaStock USA. It was nine years in the making, so a conversation I was looking forward to but also one I knew would bring a valuable, different perspective for our attendees. 

A founder of 24 years, Jason is known for contrarian views on how to build a business. In the chat, we covered decision making, goal setting, bootstrapping to financial freedom, and more. You can watch the whole thing below or read on for my key takeaways.

On goal setting

“Goals are made up numbers that you aim for and then you either hit them or you don’t. That’s just not that interesting to me.”

Not many founders stay in the same business, with the same co-founder, for more than twenty years. But Jason has. When asked, he put this down to the fact that he thinks year to year, rather and long term. 

And this is a theme that bled into how he thinks about goals setting – or rather, not goal setting. 

At 37 Signals, there is just one, simple goal – to be profitable. He said: 

“As long as we make more than we spend, we’re good. Everything else, it doesn’t matter to me. And I don’t care if we make more profit this year than last year. I just want to make more than we spend, and I’m happy with that.”

As a founder myself, we set annual, quarterly, and even longer term goals but his reasoning behind not doing this was interesting – and based on personal experience with running rather than a business lesson.

He’d been trying to run a six minute mile, and was disappointed with himself if he didn’t hit. But soon realised, he was looking at it the wrong way: 

“I was asking myself the wrong questions…It should have been, did I enjoy it, did I get good exercise, did I get fresh air, and do I want to do it again. Those are the questions to ask and it’s not about a goal, it’s about a general feeling.”

Outside of remaining profitable, he brought this mentality into the business and instead focuses on doing the best work they can and “letting the chips fall where they may”.

Without goals, I wanted to know how he sets the business direction. Internally, it’s through ideas about what they want to build or improve. And again, the measure of it is based on that gut feeling and qualitative feedback. Whether they’re proud of it, whether they feel good about what they’re doing, and whether they’re hearing good things from their customers.

On bootstrapping

“The bootstrappers who work now to try and figure out how to make money are practising the skill that they’re going to need forever.”

Jason has bootstrapped his way to financial freedom, something every entrepreneur aspires to but for most it’s at exit. So for me, the question was simple, how do you do it?

Unsurprisingly, it starts with keeping costs as low as possible. Something that sounds obvious but, in Jason’s view, isn’t how a lot of founders think.

“You should be incredibly frugal when you’re getting going. The smallest possible team, don’t waste money on over-branding things…Keep it cheap, simple.”

He also advises doing as much yourself as you can because once you start outsourcing to contractors or consultants, the bills “just go flying”. 

Ultimately, you need to get good at learning how to make money and doing these things from the start helps you settle into that mindset.

“If you have an abundance of something early on, you don’t have to get good at that. So, a lot of entrepreneurs who raised money early, never got good at making money. And then, right now when money isn’t available, they’re screwed. The bootstrappers who work their asses off and try to figure out how to make money now are practising the skill that they’re going to need forever.”

As well as getting good at making money, he advocates for pulling money out of the business along the way, rather than always reinvesting back in. He said: 

“Pull out money along the way so you have something to show for your work because there’s a very good chance it isn’t going to work.” 

On customer acquisition

“It’s not a quantity game. The way you cut through is by saying something interesting from a unique point of view.”

As a company, 37signals develops products that they want first but it’s built on the knowledge that there are a lot of people and companies just like them that want the same thing. 

Over time, 37signals and its project management tool Basecamp has garnered a big, loyal following of small business owners, entrepreneurs, and design firms. 

“What’s great about an audience is that they’re there for you and they’re waiting for you to tell them something. So, we know what we’re building stuff for small businesses, we are a small business, we know what small businesses need – and it’s not watered down versions of bigger products.”

To grow the audience, Jason and business partner David Heinemeier Hansson, share a lot with them – both on social media, on their blog, and in their books. They also ask them for input on new products, email platform Hey and chat solution Campfire. It’s a go-to-market (GTM) strategy that’s led to powerful organic growth.

“We get [the word] out on Twitter, LinkedIn, the word spreads, and we grow organically that way. We don’t buy any ads. We’ve experimented with that here and there but mostly it’s organic growth and word of mouth.” 

With a GTM built on content marketing (though he doesn’t like the term), Jason gave us his tips for cutting through the noise in a saturated market.

“It’s not a quantity game. The way you cut through is by saying something interesting. By saying something from a unique point of view. Being consistent or changing your mind but being open about that.” 

The overarching message here was “write when you have something to say”. For Jason, it means regular posting on X/Twitter and roughly weekly posting elsewhere – though this isn’t tied to an editorial schedule. 

Get more from SaaStock USA

Nine years in the making, and this conversation didn’t disappoint. At a difficult time for many, it was great to hear his fresh perspective on things we get stuck in the weeds with. We covered a lot more ground than I’ve mentioned here, so really recommend checking out the full session if you get a chance. 

We’re also adding other sessions from the likes of April Dunford (Ambient Strategy), Steve Rowland (Klaviyo), and Ashley Grech (Xero) over on our YouTube – subscribe to stay up to date.

This post was first published in our SaaStock Blueprint newsletter. Subscribe now to get insights like this, straight to your inbox. 

The post Goal setting, bootstrapping, and customer acquisition: A conversation with with 37signals CEO Jason Fried appeared first on ProdSens.live.

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined live at SaaStock USA 2024 by Kyle Hanslovan, co-founder & CEO at Huntress.

“That nuance of finding the green field, the niche, is probably the single biggest differentiator that will help you escape and go, you know, you can sell to finds at one million or make five million in revenue, but to escape ten you have to have a process and you have to have a real market that is differentiated and that niche will get you there if you can just really ask yourself ‘am I differentiated’ and again, I didn’t respect that.”

Kyle shares:

• The journey to $1M and then $10M ARR
• His process of finding and engaging channel partners
• His biggest challenge over the next year, and how he plans to solve it
• The reality of ‘hire slow, fire fast’, incl. open communication and employee churn
• When work life balance meets sacrifice – is it one you’re truly willing to make?

and more!

Listen to the full episode, watch the video below and subscribe to the SaaS Revolution Show podcast today.

Watch now, or listen to the audio-only version below:


Listen to the audio now:

If you want similar tips and are looking to achieve success all year round, check out the SaaStock Founder Membership:

A private community of ambitious SaaS founders scaling to $10MM ARR. Get a support network of peers, connect with likeminded founders around the globe, and learn proven strategies from industry experts. Apply now to scale up your SaaS.

Want to join the pioneers at the forefront of The SaaS revolution? Subscribe to our newsletter today to get exclusive content, receive actionable value-based insights and create your Rocketship SaaS.

Plus – follow us on social! Check out our profiles on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

And if you can’t wait another week for our next podcast, listen to our previous two here:

The post Live from SaaStock USA 2024: Kyle Hanslovan, Co-founder & CEO at Huntress appeared first on ProdSens.live.

Our CEO Alex recently asked our community of SaaS, founders, operators, and investors about the biggest growth challenges they’re facing. 

The most common? Fundraising, navigating market conditions, and go-to-market strategies that reach prospects and tackle lengthening sales cycles. 

We put these challenges to SaaS experts Alison Murdock (Trusted CMO), Jake Dunlap (Skaled Consulting), and Okan Inaltay (GP Bullhound) to get their take and understand how they’re working with founders and leaders to overcome them. 

Watch the full session below or read on for key takeaways.

1. Creating scalable outbound

“Scalable does not equal automated,” Jake Dunlap, Founder at Skaled. 

One of the key challenges for SaaS is building a scalable outbound sales motion that drives efficient growth. Skaled Founder Jake Dunlap has helped thousands of SaaS businesses develop repeatable sales operations, with clients including Adobe, Chargebee, and Appify.  

He assured us that outbound isn’t dead – rather, B2B sales processes have stayed the same, while buying habits have changed dramatically. Too many SaaS businesses are still pressing send all on mass, templated emails and expecting to hit their numbers. It’s a tactic that attempts to build scalable processes but the problem is that it assumes  scalable means automated – and, according to Jake, this couldn’t be further from the truth. He said: 

“We’ve got to start to create more dynamic customer journeys because more and more people are going to demand it.” 

And he shared a couple of stats to show how this is already happening: 

• 90% of the buyer journey is now done before you speak to a sales person (Forrester).
• 44% of millennials say they’d prefer a salesperson-less buying experience (Gartner). 

To create effective outbound sales motions, Jake advises SaaS companies to create differentiated journeys. 

To achieve this as scale, use tools like Chat GPT to provide insights and value specific to personas and prospects. This allows your sales reps to add nuance and value to your comms, without adding hours more work researching for outbound messaging and discovery calls. 

2. Streamlining GTM processes

GP Bullhound Investment Banking Director Okan Inaltay spoke about SaaS GTM strategies in relation to the increasing demand for efficiencies and profitability in the funding sector. He said:

“When you look at a [profit and loss] of a SaaS business, 30-40% of the revenue is typically spent on sales and marketing. Any improvements you can make that will hit your bottom line is a key focus these days.”

He advocates going through every line item on your P&L and looking for opportunities where AI and other tools can increase efficiency 10-20%. You can start with sales and marketing but it also applies to other costs like HR and recruiting, research and development (R&D), and general and administrative expenses (GNA).

On efficiencies, Trusted CMO Founder Alison Murdock spoke about the importance of aligning marketing activity to pipeline. For leaders, this means going beyond pushing sales and marketing alignment to finding the activity anchors and KPIs that ultimately tie all company activity back to revenue.

3. Fundraising in the current climate

“The bar for a Series A has definitely increased from less than a million of ARR to say two or 3 million,” Okan Inaltay, Direct, Investment Banking, GP Bullhound. 

Okan echoed reports that the fundraising landscape in 2024 has so far been a mixed bag. In general, uncertainty, rising interest rates, inflation, and geopolitical tensions are making investors more cautious. 

He explained how the impact is being felt in the VC space:

“I saw a stat somewhere that said less than 1% of the companies who applied for VC funding recently ended up receiving it – less than 1%. The bar for a Series A, for example, has definitely increased from less than a million of ARR to say two or 3 million of ARR – and investors are demanding better terms.”

To combat this, Okan recommends looking at alternative funding options, like debt financing and revenue based financing, to gain traction and bridge that gap.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Okan said he receives calls and emails every day from investors looking to deploy capital into high quality SaaS companies. So better times are coming. Here’s Okan’s advice for founders looking to prepare: 

• Be data driven: Know your SaaS metrics and unit economics, and how you track against competition. The market is rewarding companies that have growth and profitability at the same time at about 60% more premium in terms of valuation – making metrics like ARR per employee and the rule of 40 key.
• Know your ICP: Identify and focus your efforts around a core ICP. Finding ways to deliver long term value will lead to higher average contract value (ACV) and net dollar retention (NDR).
• Explore strategic partnerships: Start using strategic partnerships as a revenue channel early on rather than relying on direct sales.

4. Harnessing generative AI to power growth

Unsurprisingly, how to use generative AI to drive efficiencies and growth was a hot topic in this discussion. 

For Jake, the mistake people make is thinking that Chat GPT and others are new sales and marketing tools but they’re not. In his words, they’re “a foundational shift in how humans solve problems”. 

For GTM operations, AI can transform preparation and research processes. Jake advocates for using AI to provide insights, synthesise information, and package it up. 

For example, rather than asking ChatGPT to write you an email, ask it to give you industry insights or trends relevant to a specific persona. Then, get your sales team to QA and edit it to the point where it’s differentiated and adds real value to your audience.

To truly find where AI can transform your business – Jake recommends effectively “firing” yourself for a few days while you deep dive into its capabilities and use cases.

Explore these topics with our experts at SaaStock USA

Alison, Jake, and Okan are all taking to the stage at SaaStock USA this May 13-15  – alongside 60+ other speakers. They’ll be joined by 1500 SaaS decision makers rady to transform their businesses. It’s your chance to learns from the best minds in SaaS, network with your peers, and connect with investors to help overcome your SaaS growth challenges. 

Tickets are selling fast, so get in quick.

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