building your revenue engine as your startup evolves

HOW TO BUILD Your REVENUE ENGINE as your startup evolves

HANA ABAZAVP MARKETING, UBERFLIP@hanaabaza

Self Serve > High-Touch

Full funnel visibility > Complex buying process

19 Employees > 73 Employees

Channel problems > Process problems

Big Customer Churn > Negative Revenue Churn

The last 27 months

you need more than A great product to scale

An effective system for improving process and operations

can be a competitive advantage.

PEOPLE PROCESS TOOLS

(In that order!)

3 Phases of Evolution

The Wizard of Oz PhaseYou’re fol lowing the yellow brick road, things are happening, but…

Don’t look behind the curtain cause it’s a f@!&ing s*#%show.

The Scooby Doo PhaseYou sort of know what you’re doing. You usually solve the mystery. But mostly, you’re sti l l a

bunch of bumbling idiots.

The Oceans 11 PhaseA team of special ized people with defined roles. You’re focused, coordinated and executing

based on a strategic plan.

Where are you?

Wizard of Oz Scooby Doo Oceans 11

Different parts of your business may be at different stages.

Marketing

SalesCustomer Success

Sales & marketing are on the same spectrum

Sales Sales Sales Demand Marketing + Sales Brand & Demand + Sales

*It doesn’t mean brand doesn’t matter early on – but your area of focus is different.

Customer Success is the heart of your growth

Support (reactive) Support & Success Support, Success, Advocacy

Control Churn

Boost Revenue

Create Advocates

Feed Marketing

Customer success

You need to understand the

operational mechanisms at play.

how do you scale all the “other stuff”

#1

Focus on a specific persona

Who is YOUR BREAD AND BUTTER

Everyone! More focused Other growth layers



Nope. It’s not. Figure out P/M fit. It isn’t always super clear.



Who is your bread and butter? Can you create a scalable and

repeatable process with predictable revenue growth?



Everyone! More focused

If your bread & butter segment is scalable and repeatable, it might make sense to to explore other

opportunities.

Other growth layers

Who is your bread and butter? Can you create a scalable and

repeatable process with predictable revenue growth?


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Customer

Lead

Marketing Qualified Lead

Sales Qualified Lead

Opportunity

CustomerNikki Mary, Jenn & David

Self-serve/low touch funnel

Marketing & sales engine

It’s hard to optimize for both

You need to FOCUS

The problem with most startups isn’t a lack of ideas.

It’s the lack of clarity and focus.

Lead



Opportunity

Customer

What happened when we

picked one?

ü More focused

ü Better process

ü Higher Value (ARPC & LTV)

ü Negative Churn

Lead



Opportunity

Customer

3 things that had to happen:

ü Revamp analytics set up

ü Shift in growth tactics

ü Define process and criteria

for handing leads to sales

(this needs ongoing refinement

and will change as you scale)

You might make a different decision but remember…

“It’s hard to build a big business

out of small deals.”

Resource: mattermark.com

How DO you know which PERSONA?*Product/Market fit

Unit Economics

Opportunity

What do you want?

This gets more complex as you go upmarket.

How DO you know which PERSONA?

If you’re focused on mid-market and enterprise companies with a

complex buying process, you may have a handful of “personas” that

you need to learn about.

@Uberflip

These are the ones most likely to be your first point of contact. They will either reach out to you themselves or will be the ones you will most frequently contact.

Marketing Mary Demand Jenn Do-it-all David Strategic Samantha

@Uberflip

Champion25-39

Purchase Process

Research: Events, peers, Google

Events:INBOUND, CM World, other content-specific events

Blogs & Influencers:HubSpot blog, MarketingProfs, CMI, LinkedIn Pulse

Social Media:

Preferred Content: Want specific, actionable pieces of content. Short format (blog or video). Things that will make them better at their job.

Watering Holes

Marketing Mary Customers

Adriane Holter, ImpinjFlora Cheung, LoblawCassandra Jowett, Influitive

Victoria Hoffman

Kelly O’Hara

Uberflip’s Marketing Marys

@Uberflip

Job Role

Years Experience: 3-10

Essential Duties:Creates content. May be in charge of strategy, sometimes also in charge of social.

Tools:Google Docs, CMS, Marketing Automation

Common Titles:Marketing Coordinator, Specialist, Manager, sometimes Director. May have content or similar specialization in title. In some cases, Product Marketing Manager.

Goals & Initiatives:Want to write more and be creative. Looking to learn as much as possible, especially around SEO, analytics, and strategy. Want to move up in company.

Challenges:Creating engaging B2B content that attracts views. Proving that long-term strategy is valuable and not everything has immediately measurable ROI. Demand to create and edit content for entire marketing team/entire buyer journey.

Room for Growth:Wants to learn more about analytics, SEO, creating a long-term strategy.

@Uberflip

Focus on engagement, shareability, awareness, and content creation / experience audiences love.If reaching out by email, try to stand out. She can see through automated emails -- use personality.

Ideal Messaging

Creative types, usually interested in writing or have a writing background

Find it difficult to find time to be creative due to execution of tasks

HATE being reached out to — they need to GSD!

Title worth calling out: Product Marketing

Notable Learnings

“By not deciding on one of these personas, we paid a gigantic, invisible ‘optionality’ tax.”

- Brian Halligan, CEO of HubSpot

From startup to scale up

Resource: readthink.com

It’s not just the people. It’s the process.

(their internal process)

Initial Touch (Champion)

Influencers &Decision Makers

Budget Approval(YAY!)

Verbal Yes (YAY!)

Procurement (SHIT)

EVERYONE needs to understand the buying process.

#2Your Funnel Isn’t Linear

Your Funnel

Lead

Customer

Your Funnel

Lead

Customer

Lead

Qualified Lead

Customer

Your Funnel

Lead

Customer

Lead

Qualified Lead

Customer

Lead


Sales Accepted Lead


Opportunity

Customer

Your FunnelLead > MQL > SAL > SQL > OPP > Customer

Opportunity Stages

1. Evaluating

2. Recommended

3. Verbal Yes

4. Procurement

5. Closed (Won/Lost)Opportunity

Customer

Sales Qualified Leads

Sales Accepted Leads

Marketing Qualified Leads

Leads

Your FunnelA linear funnel is overly simplistic. It’s dynamic and bi-directional.

Opportunity

Customer




Leads 1. People may move up and

down your funnel

2. Sales & marketing functions

overlap at every stage of the

funnel

Your FunnelA linear funnel is overly simplistic. It’s dynamic and bi-directional.

Opportunity

Customer




Leads 1. Feedback mechanisms to

enhance quality

2. Coordinated campaigns at

every stage

3. Process for re-engaging lost

leads & accounts

Your Funnel vs. their journey

Awareness Interest Evaluation Purchase Decision Advocacy Repeat

marketing sales

marketing sales

marketing marketing

marketing and sales

sales marketing and sales

Your Funnel vs. their journey

Awareness Interest Evaluation Purchase Decision Advocacy Repeat

blog

email

social

PPC

SEO

webinars eBooks

whitepapers

retargeting demo

nurture

sales customer board

customer webinar

expansion referral campaign

#3Building the engine

Marketing

SalesCustomer Success

ü Product

ü Process

ü Reporting

Opportunity

Customer

Lead ManagementNurture, Scoring, Data Enrichment, Lead

Recycling

Sales EnablementMessaging, Positioning, Collateral


Bi-‐directional FunnelMechanisms in place to

facilitate feedback loop

between marketing and

sales to enhance lead

quality and re-‐engage

lost opportunities.



LeadsCampaigns & ProgramsGrade My Stack, The Uberflip Experience, Content

Events & Partner Marketing, Content Syndication,

Publishers, PPC, ABM, Outbound Lead Engine

Customer Marketing

Marketing engine

Opportunity

Customer

Lead ManagementNurture, Scoring, Data Enrichment, Lead

Recycling

Sales EnablementMessaging, Positioning, Collateral


Demand

Generation



LeadsCampaigns & ProgramsGrade My Stack, The Uberflip Experience, Content

Events & Partner Marketing, Content Syndication,

Publishers, PPC, ABM, Outbound Lead Engine

Customer Marketing

Marketing engine

WTF is demand gen?

Demand generation is the engine that generates leads, identifies and nurtures qualified prospects, and

optimizes conversion throughout the sales cycle.

(psst… demand gen is marketing)

Opportunity

Customer

Nurture campaigns, data

enrichment, lead management

processes

Sales collateral, sales training,

messaging & persona, reporting


Core Operations



LeadsMessaging, design , asset creation

content marketing, optimization,

campaign management.

Lead capture, source tracking, lead scoring.

Usage data, account health, advocacy & referral

Strategies & Tactics• Content (syndication), webinars, partner marketing.Lead Generation

• PPC (Social & Search), RetargetingOnline Advertising

• Large niche publishers with a substantial reader basePublishers

• Highly targeted, niche topic and audienceConferences

• Partner marketing (webinars, ebooks, events etc.)Partners

• Content, SEO , social etc.Organic Leads

What fuels demand gen?

Content Marketing (people need to be nurtured)

Direct Channels (are people ready to buy)

Event marketing (volume vs. deal size)

Account based marketing (ABM)

Structure your marketing team

One or two generalists More focused roles Highly specialized

CORE MARKETING FUNCTIONSContent Marketing

Audience Growth

Lead Generation

Awareness

Demand Generation

Lead Generation

Lead Nurture

Operations & Insights

EventsMarketing

Lead Gen / Nurture

Customer Nurture

Awareness

Product Marketing

Sales Enablement

Product Feedback

Product Positioning

Communic-ations

Sales Enablement

Field Marketing

Advocate Marketing

Brand Marketing

Other possible functions

Ops & Analytics

Team structure & growth

How you build and structure your team depends on where

you need to focus your marketing and growth efforts.

Identifying key signals for lead quality, outreach

indicators and intent to purchase is one of the

most important demand gen functions.

Quality, indicators & intent

How do we know?

fit engagement intent?

Lead Scoring

Predictive Analytics

*But we also need to understand the pre-purchase

indicators where you can prompt action

How do we know intent?

Site re-design

Fiscal yearend

Ramp up in content strategy

Investment in technology

Change in role

Industry growth

Outreach indicators

It’s all about relationships

#smarketing

MQLs

Leads

SALs

SQLs

OPPs

A respondent to a marketing campaign who doesn’t yet meet our minimum qualification and behaviour

criteria

A lead who makes the minimum fit criteria and has displayed enough interest to be handed off to sales. MQLS are scored and categorized as cold, warm,

or hot leads

An MQL that has been accepted by the BDR for further qualification to determine pipeline-readiness

An SAL that has been identified as pipeline-ready but needs further qualification to determine the

probability of converting to an opportunity

An SQL that has progressed to an opportunity and is now committed to pipeline

DEFINITION ACTIVITY

Lead gets entered into the appropriate segmented nurture program

Lead has achieved a score of 35 or higher and is entered into a new MQL nurture program

BDR is identifying prospects requirements and probing to understand the context for buyers’ decision

AE is actively engaged in meaningful dialogue to validate the use case, identify the champion, and schedule a demo

Uberflip has been introduced to a wide audience and there is general team consensus around solution need, value and fit

LEAD RECYCLING: the handoff to sales took place but the prospect doesn’t respond, doesn’t have budget or some other roadblock. Sales believes there is potential for the future. The lead gets placed back into the funnel for further nurturing with the goal of re-engagement at a later time.

LEAD LIFECYCLE

EXAMPLE

MQLs

Leads

SALs

SQLs

OPPs


criteria


or hot leads





DEFINITION ACTIVITY







LEAD LIFECYCLE

MQLs

Leads

SALs

SQLs

OPPs


criteria


or hot leads





DEFINITION ACTIVITY







LEAD LIFECYCLE

Sales and Marketing Need to Agree On EVERYTHING

MQLs

Leads

SALs

SQLs

OPPs


criteria


or hot leads





DEFINITION ACTIVITY







LEAD LIFECYCLE

Set Expectations -- SLA

Smarketing challenges

Selling Implementing Process Scaling Process

#4Unit economics

Unit economics

Do we have PM Fit? Does the math work? Does the math scale?

Can you make more money than it costs to get a customer?

CAC

Unit economics

LTV

Cost of Sales & Marketing/ #of new customers

Avg. MRR x Customer Lifetime

CustomerLifetime

1 / Churn Rate(months or years)

Resource: forentrepreneurs.com

CAC

problems

LTV

Are you calculating “fully loaded” CAC?

Do you really know LTV?

CustomerLifetime

Is churn even accurate?

Resource: forentrepreneurs.com

CAC RATIO

Unit economics

PAYBACKLTV to CAC Ratio

Guideline = 3+

Efficiency/Scalability

Months to recover CAC

Guideline = <12 months

Cashflow/Profitability

Source: forentrepreneurs.com

Optimizing for growth and optimizing for efficiency isn’t necessarily the

same thing.

We have a cac problem.

Now what?

Decreasing CAC vs. CAC Efficiency

Company A Company B

CAC $1000 $1000

MRR $100 $100

ACV (MRR*12) $1200 $1200

Payback 10 months 10 months

Churn 2.5% 2.5%

LTV (MRR / Churn) $4000 $4000

CAC Ratio 4 4

Adapted from: sixteenventures.com

Company A

Focus on decreasing CAC

Pay less per customer

Find cheaper channels

Increasing Tofu cconversion

Focus on TOFU metrics

Company B

Focuses on CAC efficiency

Better marketing/sales process

Evaluate pricing

Shorten payback period

Increase customer value

Decreasing CAC vs. CAC Efficiency


*Increasing ACV and moving to annual payments will allow for increasing spend to drive faster / more growth and outspend competitors.

Company A Company B

CAC $800 (-20%) $1000

MRR $100 $167

ACV (MRR*12) $1200 $2000

Payback 8 months 6 months

Churn 2.5% 2.5%

LTV (MRR / Churn) $4000 (no change) $6680 (+67%)

CAC Ratio 5 (+25%) 6.68 (+67%)


Yes, these are totally made up.

But they do illustrate the potential of focusing on efficiency. While in some

cases, focusing only on decreasing costs might be warranted, it may also

decrease lead quality, lowering your customer conversion rate (and

subsequently effecting CAC negatively).

#3What’s your stack?

PEOPLE PROCESS TOOLS

(In that order!)

What’s your stack?

Email marketing

CRM

Analytics

Optimization

Marketing Automation

Campaign Management

Data enrichment

Sales automation

Predictive Analytics

Multi-touch attribution

Programmatic

Personalization

Automating bad marketing is still

bad marketing.

Automating bad marketing is still

bad marketing.

Don’t jump to the tech too soon. You need the foundational elements

in place first – good people, good process and good marketing.

Uberflip’smarketing

stack(you can see it here)