Hey, Toni from Growblocks here! Welcome to another Revenue Letter! I've spent the last decade growing B2B SaaS startups successfully as a CRO, leading to two exits.
This weekly email is my way to share knowledge and build a community of people who love to learn more about growing revenue in a data-driven and scientific way.
Anything in particular you want to hear my thoughts on? Drop me an email, and I might use it in my next article.
“I think my marketing team is crappy.”
“But I’m not entirely sure, because I don’t really understand marketing.”
That was something a SaaS leader told me recently.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard the sentiment.
And I’m willing to bet a lot of you might have said something similar recently.
In this digital world, many of us still live in the mirage that you can actually track everything.
And therefore, marketing should be able to track each and every dollar of their spend back to revenue.
And if they do stuff that they can't attribute back to revenue … well then whatever they did didn't produce any revenue.
And hence: it needs to be cut.
Those idiots, right?
I mean, look at them doing fancy events.
Making pretty videos and podcasts.
Where are my leads? When are those things converting to revenue?
But then… for all you know, they might be doing exactly the right things.
So how can you find out if your marketing team is shit?
Understand the funnel
What helped me to square this circle was looking at the marketing funnel like I am a buyer.
If I go to Google to look for shoes or software, I’m ready to buy.
My credit cards sits over there ot the table. I’m just looking for the check-out or sign-in button.
And Google made it its life’s purpose to tell every marketer that you found their website through their service.
Ping. Perfect attribution.
But wait, how did I hear about this new shoe brand or this new software app?
Well, this is where it gets complicated.
Did you watch a TV ad?
Did you see a post on LinkedIn?
Did someone mention this in a Slack Community?
Or did you even listen to a Podcast on your way to work where this was discussed?
Exactly.
Can you attribute all this back to revenue? Nope.
Back to your crappy marketing team.
You don’t actually need to understand all of the above.
Well, you might now - but anyhow.
The trick is simply to ask your marketing team what channel or what initiative is supposed to drive what outcome.
Google Ads: Demo Requests.
LinkedIn Ads: Impressions for awareness,
Podcast: Audience and Trust building.
Fancy Events: Relationship building (and closing deals).
And then judge those initiatives by what Marketing wants to achieve with them.
Not everything is about closing a deal tomorrow.
And chances are, your marketing team isn’t that crappy.
P.S. It’s not just your marketing team contributing to your revenue engine. If you want to stay on top of your entire funnel, we’ve built the platform purpose-built for RevOps teams. Feel free to request a demo on Growblocks.com or send me an email.