What Your New SaaS CMO Should Focus on During Their First 100 Days

Learn What Your New SaaS CMO Should Focus on During Their First 100 Days - SaaS Marketing

Chief Marketing Officer SaaS

Hiring a new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is an exciting time for a SaaS Startup as it usually signifies that Product-Market fit has been established and that either cash flows are strong enough to support a senior hire, or you’ve raised cash to support growth ambitions.

So as a CEO or Founder what should you expect from this CMO in their first 100 days? This blog outlines some of the key areas a CMO should focus on while recognising that they can’t fit everything in so some of these areas will get deprioritized.

Start Building Relationships

Firstly they need to start building relationships (both internally and externally) so as to establish clarity as to who does what, to communicate what they plan to do, and how the marketing function will work with other areas.

Meet with Senior Management and agree on the key goals and deliverables.

Meet with all Stakeholders (multiple times) incl:

The CMO should then agree a “plan” with these various stakeholders in terms of working together, communication (regular meetings or not), key deliverables etc

The CMO should also spend time with the customer support team (learning what language the customer’s use and the nature of their calls), as well as sales (to learn what benefits customers are interested in, and which objections they have). This first-hand data will help shape how the company markets its services to the target market.

They should also meet a number of existing customers (ideally, face to face) incl the newest, and also the most active again to obtain clarity in terms of product use, features and the jobs users are hiring [your SaaS application] to do for them.

Undertake An Audit

The CMO should undertake an audit of existing processes looking for opportunities to improve. This can range from an assessment of the quality of leads being generated through the various marketing channels to an analysis the tech stack in place, as well as what data is being tracked and measured (KPI’s).

When SaaS applications exist they should create accounts, on board themselves, and use key features (if possible) feeding back any issues they encounter.
They should use this audit to then inform their plans as to what areas to focus on (assuming resource constraints).

For example, if a site has modest traffic levels then the focus might need to be more on acquisition than conversion initially.

Unlike traditional marketing (which was focused primarily on brand awareness and lead generation), SaaS/ tech marketing needs to deliver on three areas:

  1. Acquisition / Lead Generation

  2. Conversion (with Sales and Product)

  3. Retention (with Customer Success and Product)

Ensuring a robust process is then in place to manage/ and to prioritise tasks is vital - otherwise, they will struggle with the sheer volume of ‘things to do’.

Agree on a Marketing Budget

It is important to have clarity as to the available budget and expectations about growth ambitions. This will impact team size, as well as how aggressive marketing spend should be. Some companies want careful growth, others want to pursue a land grab where managing customer acquisition costs are secondary. Having clarity as to where the company sits in terms of immediate requirements is important in shaping how and where they will concentrate their efforts.

For example, SEO / inbound marketing (content led) revolves around the creation of content pieces i.e. blogs and articles which bring a number of benefits (many of them medium / long term). While not free (someone has to write it), inbound marketing does bring down the cost of customer acquisition and is extremely effective in terms of search engine optimisation (SEO) but the payoff is not instantaneous. Similarly, a site refresh/revamp married to visual identity and brand improvements is usually an important focus for those SaaS companies looking to scale but it is not going to move the needle in the short term.

Faster growth can be more easily achieved by focusing on paid acquisition methods like pay per click, paid Linkedin sponsorships etc.

In practice, a blend is likely, but discussions still need to happen to ensure that marketing remains aligned with corporate goals. For some companies, a £50K outlay for an event stand at a key industry exhibition could be important for brand building and wider awareness, whereas when viewed through an ROI driven lens attendance would not be even entertained at other companies.

Set KPI’s

With any SaaS business, the amount of data created is significant. Legacy datasheets can exist, but it is preferable that the CMO builds their own so that they can ensure they are managing the KPI’s and agreeing on them in advance with senior management. Ideally, the key data points are easily accessible from applications being used internally, and reports are not time-consuming to produce. Again it is preferable if someone from finance produces the reports, so as to help ensure its accuracy, and that it is easy to then access via the likes of Geckoboard and Chartmogul.

It is easy to fall into a number of traps here:

In most instances, it is appropriate to assign one metric to different elements and to use this as the focal point.

See the Digital Marketing and Measurement Model by Avinash Kaushik

Create a Strategic Marketing Plan and Share It

Marketing represents one of the most visible functions in any business, as the output is invariably public facing. The CMO needs to set a plan as to how they plan to allocate resources, what their goals are, and then they need to communicate this to management and the wider team. They must also be confident to push back, as they are often the key focal point for growth ambitions, and need to avoid knee jerk reactions sticking to their initial plan. Marketing can be very tactical and reactive, and the CMO needs to step back and have a clear plan.

The plan needs to be SMART with a focus on clear goals and a loop of Planning / Executing/ Measuring.

Finally, creating some buyer persona’s is also important as these represent ideal customer segments based on segmentation of existing users. The more detailed these personas are the better as they help everyone have clarity as to who they are building for and how these personas can be accessed.

Manage Their Team

Initially, there needs to be a strong focus on the delivery arm, so assessing the skill set of existing members and their respective strengths and weaknesses is paramount. Delivery must not be output based, but performance-based where possible, so activity aligns with the target KPI’s.

For example, a traditional approach for a content marketing manager may measure it as crudely as simply producing 1 blog a week. In a data rich B2B marketing environment, the performance measurement for content should include everything from; unique visitor numbers, to conversions from the article, through to session time (how long the user read the content).

Amplification is more important than content production i.e. marketing the article, and again this element is often neglected in an output orientated approach.

It is also important for the CMO to manage head count carefully, and to leverage external expertise on an as needs basis as invariably agencies will need to support some of the diverse activities a marketing team need to action. Invariably they will often have inherited a team and thus need to ensure that the respective members contain the right skill-set and attitude to support the company’s growth ambitions.

[Learn More: Building Marketing Capability at your B2B SaaS Startup]

Influence Product

Given marketings remit needs to include the retention of customers, they need to have an ability to ensure the customer’s voice is heard at the top table when it comes to the product roadmap. Marketing can often bring in a wide range of insights from knowledge of the competitive landscape, to in depth customer knowledge, through to design experience (UI & UX) and thus need to actively contribute to not only the strategic direction of the solution but also discussions as to the more immediate product roadmap.

Act as a Domain Expert / Authority

In a fast moving world, that is changing quickly the CMO also has an important external role to play. Ideally, they will aspire to be a domain authority in their space and will be able to communicate the company’s vision and capability externally. This can range from; the creation of thought leadership white papers, through to speaking at events, or blogging for the site.

In terms of content, they definitely need to position themselves as an authoritative source and thus content needs to be pitched at a more senior strategic level than may be the case when it comes to blog content pitched at core personas.

Summary

There is no doubt that a CMO role is a demanding one. However, for those with a passion for marketing the sheer breadth of challenges is extremely attractive. The data rich nature of the work also helps ensure that decisions can be made, based on an interpretation of data and tests can be run which help to move the company forward.

Finally, the following are other issues that need to be dealt with in the First 100 days (as if you did not have enough on your plate already):

Are you up for the challenge?