What I Learned About Software Marketing and Growth After 2 Years in Venture Capital

What I Learned After
2 Years in Venture Capital
Kyle Lacy / @kyleplacy

@KYLEPLACY@KYLEPLACY
LINKS
Get the deck > http://bit.ly/HighAlpha17
Get the content > http://labs.openviewpartners.com

I learned that there are 4 Ps to
building sustainable growth in
any software company…

PROGRAMS
PEOPLE
PROCESS
PERFORMANCE

Do you have the right people?
Hire for aptitude, attitude and agility.
PEOPLE

Is your team organized to win
in the digital environment?

Acquisition Conversion Brand
The Modern Marketing Org

Acquisition Conversion Brand
The Modern Marketing Org
Public Relations
Brand Enablement
Creative
Events
Advertising
Marketing Ops
Field Managers
Content / Search
Automation
Sales Enablement
Customer Success
Product Marketing
Customer Retention

The marketing team of the future…

…controls every aspect of the
customer experience.

How does your team operate and optimize
for the customer journey?
PROCESS

Obsess over your personas
and experiences
PROCESS TIP #1

Quantitative Qualitative+

Quantitative Qualitative+
• Churn Analysis
• Sales & Marketing KPIs
• Win/Loss Reviews
• Customer Surveys
• Product Usage

@KYLEPLACY
Marketing Persona Development
Name
Job Title
• Age
• Gender
• Salary
• Location
Goals & Challenges
Values & Fears
Demographics
• How do you help achieve their goals?
• How do you help solve their problems?
• Why wouldn’t they buy?
• How do you help alleviate their fears?
• How do you support their values?
• Education
• Family

Experiences first.
Tactics second.
We have the tendency to start with
channels and tactics. It’s the wrong
way.

1. Pick your most important target persona first.
Experiences first.

2. Build your target persona journey stages.
Experiences first.
AWARENESS CONSIDERATION PURCHASE USAGE REPURCHASE

3. List all experiences within each stage.
Experiences first.
The CEO gains social proof by being referred to ABC’s
content or website by someone they trust.

4. Pick the top 3-4 experiences for each stage.
Experiences first.

4. Pick the top 3-4 experiences for each stage.
5. Apply tactics to each of the experiences.
6. Apply KPIs to each of the tactics.
Experiences first.

STAGE EXPERIENCE TACTIC KPIs
Awareness Gains social proof – is referred to content or
website by someone they trust
Influencer
Marketing
X times featured on
influencer blog
X times features in
top SaaS resource
Reads and finds value from tactical content Website X new users
X conversion rate
X net new leads
Experiences first.

PROGRAMS
How do you create leverage that uncovers
new sources of revenue growth and
increases marketing production efficiency at
scale?

It’s not content marketing
It’s thought leadership
PROGRAMS TIP #1

Thought leadership is not about
you. It starts and ends with your
customer.

Great thought leadership content
should contribute to over 50% of
your company’s press mentions.

• Your content should be “pitchable” to journalists.
• Most of your press mentions should be attributable to content campaigns.
• Every sales deck should incorporate some aspect of your content (a stat or
quote for example).
• Your content should support a 60 minute keynote and presentation deck.
• Your content should be relevant at every stage of the funnel, not just the top.
• Your content should be directly tied to closed ACV or another metric that
points to closed business.
Great Content Characteristics

There are four content strategies
that appeal to each and every
potential buyer.

EXPERIENTIAL
CONSUMER RESEARCH
PEER RESEARCH
PRODUCT USAGE

Experiential thought leadership is
about understanding your
customer’s customer journey.

Shopped in 100 retail stores
Tracked 80 different marketing
touch points over 90 days
Delivered tailored report cards
and competitive analysis
Experiential

Consumer Research is about
understanding and discovering
trends in your customer’s
customer behavior.

Consumer Research
Surveying consumers on
mobile, social and email
consumption patterns.
Used for geo launches and
TOFU demand generation

Peer thought leadership is about
understanding your customer and
helping them understand their
peers.

Peer Research

http://www.typeform.com

Peer Research
Interview the top
influencers in the field.
• Create a target list of top influencers
• Skype / Call Recorder / Voice Recorder
• Speechpad.com for transcription
• Publish interviews over the year
• Roll up into fun end of year deliverable

Product usage is about collecting,
analyzing and publishing internal
data.

Your data is your only
differentiator.

Product Usage

the sales pitch.

the sales pitch. It should
supplement the sale.

Don’t forget internal activation
of content
PROGRAMS TIP #2

Meet baby Kyle.

Why is our
conversion
rate so low?

Shared Vocabulary
Shared Voice
Shared Mission

ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT
ENABLEMENT

Who owns enablement?

Leadership first.

Content Enablement Kit
• PowerPoint deck of relevant data points
• Call script for BDR team
• Product data sheets corresponding to content
• PDF of content
• Single page snapshot of top learnings

PERFORMANCE
Do you have the systems in place to track
and evolve?

“We must move from numbers
keeping score to numbers that
drive better actions.”
David Walmsley

Continuous and rapid improvement

Better goal tracking leads to
better results
PERFORMANCE TIP #1

@KYLEPLACY
Data /
Automation
CRM
My Primary Stack
Goal / Project
Management

Data health is more important
than any trend
PERFORMANCE TIP #2

First… a Rorschach test

EXAMPLE OF AN
IMPACT SLIDE TEXT
Example of supporting information or
sourcing information goes here

How do you feel?

One more…

Source: Forrester Research
70% of technology
implementations fail because
of bad data.

How does marketing efficiently
manage data?
• Sales & product alignment is critical
• Database cleansing should be top priority
• Do you have someone focused on data
management?
• Get your team off spreadsheets
• One system of record for the entire company

Engagement metrics are
secondary to growth metrics
PERFORMANCE TIP #3

You should understand the unit
economics of the business better
than the CEO or CFO.

LTV the lifetime value of a typical customer
CAC
the cost to acquire a typical customer & months
to recover CAC
Churn existing customers that cancelled their
subscription

Final Thoughts

Your PEOPLE should develop
and re-develop your
PROCESSES and PROGRAMS
to improve PERFORMANCE.

The creation and management of
the customer experience is the only
thing that makes you relevant.

THANK YOU!
Get the deck > http://bit.ly/HighAlpha17
Get the content > http://labs.openviewpartners.com

What I Learned About Software Marketing and Growth After 2 Years in Venture Capital

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