Growth Unhinged

There are only 4 months left in 2024. Today’s newsletter gets specific about how to build the pipeline you need to close the year strong 💪

Today's newsletter unpacks how to *actually* go account-based, courtesy of the ABX 🐐 Shari Johnston. Check it out 👇

Want to stay ahead of the startup curve? Subscribe to these 10 AMAZING newsletters. Today. We curated for you the BEST newsletters out there that can help any founder succeed. By Maja Voje & yours truly. ♻️ Re-share to your network if you found this relevant. --- Here are the top 10 newsletters every founder should subscribe to, covering strategy, product, growth, and analytics: STRATEGY 1. Andrew Chen’s Substack 2. Focused Chaos by Ben Yoskovitz 3. Category Pirates by Ben Williams PRODUCT 4. Product Growth by Aakash Gupta 5. Lenny’s Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky GROWTH 6. Growth Unhinged by Kyle Poyar 7. GTM Strategist by Maja Voje 8. Leah’s ProducTea by Leah Tharin 9. Elena’s Growth Scoop by Elena Verna ANALYTICS 10. Mostly Metrics by CJ Gustafson Subscribe to these newsletters to fuel your startup journey to success. What is your favorite newsletter that everyone should know about? Let us know in the comments! — 👉 Repost if you found this content useful 👉 Follow me for daily advice on building a great startup 👉 Subscribe to my newsletter for a weekly actionable strategy for founders

There might have been a time when marketing generated pipeline and sales closed it. But that’s not the world we live in now. These days anything that could build pipeline is fair game. We’re running social, BDR/SDR campaigns, automated outbound, SEO, lead magnets, free trials, influencer campaigns, field marketing, ABM... heck, we might even be piloting an AI SDR. A ton of calories go into figuring out precise attribution at a campaign and channel level. And most of those calories are ultimately wasted as attribution becomes a game of *who gets credit* rather than *what’s the best way to influence target accounts* to ultimately buy from us. At a fundamental level, our foundational GTM metrics — like traffic, marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales accepted leads (SALs) — make it nearly impossible to understand where we stand with our target accounts and what influences those accounts to ultimately buy. If we’re ever going to find out what works, we need a unified view of go-to-market (GTM) effectiveness. It would look something like this: - We'd have a defined universe of target accounts in our ICP - We'd know how many we've *identified* - We'd know how many are *aware* of us (when asked, they know who we are) - We'd know how many are *interested* in us (they're self-educating on our value prop or opting into ongoing communication) - We'd know how many are *considering* a purchase - We'd know how many are *selecting* a vendor - We'd know how many are *choosing* our solution Shifting to a unified view of GTM drives actual alignment across teams (no more fighting over lead quality). It uncovers hidden opportunities to accelerate pipe creation. And the best news: getting to a unified view should be more attainable than ever due to the explosion of next-gen GTM tools. I tackled this in today's Growth Unhinged newsletter: https://lnkd.in/epMfYgER Can't wait to hear what you think 🙏 #marketing #gtm #pipeline #saas

Look, I’ve been hesitant to dive much into content marketing here. It’s not exactly *unexpected*. But what seems to be unexpected is *actually good content* from software companies. Good content means original content that (a) is unique, (b) demonstrates out-of-the-box thinking, and (c) provides additional value, whether through new information, a different perspective, a detailed analysis, or something else entirely. And it’s not just for lead gen… it’s the foundation for all of your marketing goals. Here are the 9 different types according to expert George Chasiotis (full post here: https://lnkd.in/gbr2E2tG): 1️⃣ Surveys - They can take 1-6 months - They cost about $5-$20k - Inspo: Asana’s Anatomy of Work 2️⃣ Data studies - These also can take 1-6 months - They cost less ($2-$10k) since they usually leverage your proprietary data 3️⃣ Invented concepts - These don’t take long (or cost much), but they’re *hard* to do - Inspo: Ahrefs’ “Middleman Method” 4️⃣ Creative analogies - These spark curiosity and drive surprisingly high engagement — and they’re underutilized in SaaS 5️⃣ First-person narratives - These are especially great for early stage companies / founders building a brand and are highly distributable (social, Reddit, etc) - Inspo: VEED.IO on growing to 50k customers 6️⃣ Third-person narratives - These are fairly common and easy to write; the trick is to pick your interviewees wisely 7️⃣ Contrarian content - Everyone loves a good ‘hot take’ or contrarian opinion - The trick is to make it an actually hot take — not a lukewarm one 8️⃣ Network-based content - Similar to a third-person narrative, but tied to folks in your network (customers, partners, etc) - Make sure to repurpose these interviews across multiple formats! 9️⃣ Trends and events - If you want to ride the wave of a trend that involves your brand, you need to prepare for it & move very fast (or you’ll miss it) - Inspo: Loom on how Rippling raised $250M with a Loom video This is a story you’ll want to bookmark for later! Super actionable and specific. #marketing #content #startup

Imagine spending 7 years to grow from zero to 50,000 users. And then surging from 50,000 to 1,000,000 users (20x growth) in only 12 months 🚀🤯 This is the true story of Rows.com, the Accel-backed next-gen spreadsheet. How Rows *finally* struck gold via head of growth Henrique Cruz: 1️⃣ Kept a waitlist & 1:1 onboarding for 3 years before going self-serve Learnings: - Start wide, then go narrow; this process helped Rows hone their ICP and north star metrics before scaling user acquisition - Emails get stale fast; use a verifier, don't try to convert folks who've waited >6 months 2️⃣ Rapidly tested channels, running 10+ experiments across 4 channels in 8 weeks Learnings: - Going direct to their audience worked better than paying for PR agencies - Community efforts (like templates) helped both acquisition and engagement - One of their best campaigns was putting billboards outside of Google & MSFT (and then using them in a social media campaign) 3️⃣ Found their 'exploding market' to breakout Learnings: - For Rows, this was their AI analyst; the announcement alone attracted 30 million views and 50k new users - Henrique attributes this to (a) a great demo video, (b) outreach to AI content creators to amplify the launch 4️⃣ Removed their homepage and went 'loginless' Learnings: - Bringing new users straight into the product actually tripled conversions to signup (from 11% to 27%) - This quintupled the number of new activated users per week, too, since it lower the barrier to using Rows - It's no wonder that ChatGPT recently moved to loginless, too Don't miss the full story in Growth Unhinged: https://lnkd.in/ebji6Y69 Thanks for sharing, Henrique & team! 🙏🙏 #plg #ai #startup

99% of SaaS companies say they’re focused on their ideal customer profile (ICP). But only a *select few* could show me this chart 👇 What it means to be focused on your ICP: 1️⃣ You know exactly how many accounts are in your ICP. 2️⃣ You've *identified* the exact buyers and can market to them. (This is easier than ever with tools like Clay, Keyplay, etc.) 3️⃣ You know how many are *aware* of you. They're consistently opening your emails, engaging with your ads, visiting your website, etc. 4️⃣ You know how many are *interested*. These prospects are self-educating through interactive demos, signing up for a free account, attending a webinar, or viewing high-intent website pages. (Ideally these become high-intent leads for warm outbound with tools like Unify, Warmly,, etc.) 5️⃣ You know how many are *considering* a purchase. You can think of these are SQLs, but they could be PQLs/PQAs as well. 6️⃣ You know how many are *selecting*, meaning they're engaged in a buying process. 7️⃣ You know how many have chosen you, becoming an enterprise customer. If you look at GTM effectiveness this way, it doesn't matter whether you invest more in PLG, automated outbound, SEO, paid ads, BDRs/SDRs, or something else entirely. What matters is that you ultimately reach the right people and turn them into customers. Now the hard part: figuring out what to call this. ABX? Marketing? ABM? 🎁 For more tactical growth insights, subscribe to Growth Unhinged — my free weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/exTbjKaM #marketing #sales #saas #abm

Anyone else remember when this was the “state of the art” GTM tech stack? 🙋♂️ Things have, well, changed. And not always for the better. The sad reality is that our dated and bloated GTM tech stacks hold us back from executing GTM plays with confidence. GTM tech is acutely painful for modern software businesses combining PLG, sales-assist, and scaled/AI-enabled outbound motions. But I probably don’t need to tell YOU that… Thankfully there are folks like Austin Hay (Ramp, Runway, mParticle, Branch, Clarify) who teaches THE MarTech course at Reforge. Austin joined Growth Unhinged to share his framework on how to build a stage appropriate tech stack that lasts. Full post: https://lnkd.in/eweGNcuU PS - don’t miss the stack diagrams from companies like Thena, Postmates, and Ramp 👌 #marketing #martech

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