Designers, these are the kind of companies you don’t want to work in

Who am I writing for? Product, UI/UX and web designers who work in software/technology companies There are two kinds of buyers of software; individual buyers and business buyers Individual Buyers Individual buying decisions for low-ticket software are frequently driven by emotions more than logic. For example, everyone around me is saying that Slack is an amazing […]

Understanding the A/B Testing Market

Zarget got acquired by Freshworks back in August 2017, and I was meaning to write about the internals of how the A/B testing market functions. Here are my thoughts and learnings: 1 – A/B testing doesn’t work for those who have low traffic. When VWO/Optimizely started out in 2010, one could survive by serving the […]

Give the “why” behind your feedback, else you’ll warp your team’s behavior

Early in my career, I was sometimes given feedback to the tune of “this isn’t good enough, change it to ….. (my manager’s opinion)”. I’ve worked in tech marketing, where this is extremely common. I’d ask why, but the reason wasn’t well articulated, or it wasn’t articulated “customer-first”. This in turn led me to change my behavior. […]

How to decide number of SDR reachout attempts

If your “conversion from marketing qualified lead to customer” is low, or the “lead volume” isn’t enough to hit your goals, then the number of SDR attempts to connect with the prospect automatically go up. 2016 industry benchmark was 8.2 attempts, do more than that.

Your SaaS product is a “nice-to-have”, so now what?

Everyone wants to build a “must-have” software product, but must-have software categories are almost always crowded, usually with large, well-entrenched incumbents. Most founders end up building “nice to have” products, and then hope that their category becomes a “must have” for the market. From personal experience, I can see A/B testing start out as a […]

Unsolicited Career Advice For Tech Marketers

TL;DR be a business person doing marketing, not a marketer doing marketing When marketers ask me for advice about what they should do to further their careers, they ask about the skills they should acquire, and the functional areas they should specialize in. Mostly, they receive advice from others that they should be a T-shaped […]

What marketers get wrong about lead scoring

Recently, a team of SaaS marketers asked me about how we implemented lead scoring at VWO, and what they should be doing to implement the same for their product. They explained the approaches they were considering, and how they wanted to orchestrate the entire thing. I asked them if the salesteam was involved, and they […]

How to decide if SDRs should report into Sales or Marketing

Who am I writing for? People who’re responsible for orchestrating Sales or Marketing processes in B2B SaaS startups. The “sales pipeline” often starts at the opportunity stage, after an SDR has spoken to the lead and confirmed that they are in the market right now, they have the budget to buy, and the size & […]

To Reduce Churn Your SaaS Needs To Be Adopted Widely And Deeply

Who am I writing for? SaaS product managers and founders. We recently had someone move on from Wingify (the company that owns VWO and Pushcrew). After they were gone, admin was doing a review of our software expenses and found a line-item for Popcorn Metrics with no clear owner. The person who had left was the only […]

Here’s When NOT To Write Benefits-Driven Marketing Copy

Who am I writing for? Marketers, copywriters, SaaS founders, and anyone else writing marketing copy. Don’t write benefits driven copy if your target buyers are experienced and already in the market for solutions similar to yours. Also, don’t write benefits-driven copy if the majority of your buyers have already used something similar to your solution […]

The Golden Rule Of Opinions In A SaaS Startup

If you can’t back up your opinions with user testing results of at least 10 of your target users/buyers, then you my friend, are probably talking out of your ass.

On Recognizing Good Engineers

Who am I writing for? Marketing, sales, product (business people) and engineers/programmers who need to work closely with each other in technology companies. What’s my key point? Find and work with engineers who are actually business people but solve their parts of the problem through code/engineering. I’ve been working with engineers for a few years […]

Bad Distribution Is Killing Your Content Marketing Efforts

Who am I writing for? SaaS startup founders and marketing folks who’re planning to, or currently engaged in, content marketing. What’s my key point? Content distribution, or the lack thereof, is the reason why your content marketing efforts aren’t giving you any real results. When creating your plan, spend a lot of time thinking about […]

Why No One Responds To Your Customer Success Managers

Who am I writing this for: people who are building or managing a Customer Success function. What’s my key point: your CSMs need to provide value, and for that it’s better they specialize based on industry (or business-type) versus round-robin or regional distribution. Our experience with the Hubspot CSM When we bought Hubspot as our marketing […]

In SaaS, the problem shifts as you move to the enterprise

Who is this for: startup founders who’re building SaaS tools. TL;DR: when you’re a ‘tool’ the problem is a tactical one that’s solved by the product, but as you start adding features, increase prices and become more than a tool, the problem you’re solving tends to move towards your customer’s ‘success’ and you solve it through services, […]

Siddharth Deswal's Blog

The personal weblog of Siddharth Deswal

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