Table of contents
- Introduction
- What will I find in this report?
- Who took the survey?
- Executive summary
- The current state of B2B SaaS
- What to look forward to in 2023
- How does it impact the way you market your venture?
- Part 1: GTM strategies
- The T2D3 framework helps define market maturity with two simple categories
- How to go-to-market
- What channel to activate?
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Introduction
At Kalungi, we've had the opportunity to work with hundreds of early-stage B2B SaaS companies, supporting GTM strategies for businesses in a multitude of industries and at all different stages of their growth. It's allowed us to test, collect, and identify B2B SaaS marketing best practices.
With this report, we've combined those learnings with real industry data, using self-reported insights from hundreds of B2B SaaS companies. Our report reveals where SaaS leaders are looking for growth, what their biggest concerns are, and what they're most excited about for the coming year. Built for CEOs, founders, and marketing leaders, our 2023 B2B SaaS Marketing Benchmark report is an essential resource for anyone looking for key insights into the state of SaaS marketing.
Our research questions were focused on understanding the following:
What are the most efficient GTM strategies for B2B SaaS?
What challenges are faced by B2B SaaS founders & CEOs?
How do you find the right B2B SaaS marketing partner?
What are the top-performing marketing channels in 2023?
We asked B2B SaaS venture what channels were performing best and which channels they were most excited about and the result show that despite the GTM strategy, organic growth is the clear winner across the board for long-term growth and accounting for 40% of the marketing channel mix. In our report, you'll find the full breakdown for each channel GTM strategy (PLG, marketing and sales led, and sales led)
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What are the top priorities for SaaS founders during the early stages of their business?
- Building a great product. The product is the foundation of any successful SaaS company, so it's important to invest time and resources into building a product that solves a real problem for your target market. You'll measure success for your Saas business with customer acquisition cost, increase in recurring revenue and overall customer churn rate.
- Finding the right customers. Once you have a great product, you need to find the right customers willing to pay for it. This can be done through a variety of channels, such as inbound marketing, outbound sales, and partnerships. You'll measure success for your Saas business with monthly churn rate, customer satisfaction and net promoter score.
- Scaling your business. Once you have a few paying customers, it's time to start scaling your business. This can be done by hiring more employees, investing in marketing and sales, and expanding into new markets. You'll measure success for your Saas business with full funel analysis & maximization. Improvements include increasing marketing qualified leads, defining a well sales funnel, reducing sales cycle length, alignment between marketing and sales efforts. Our report provides industry average for most of these metrics.
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How long should it take B2B SaaS businesses to be profitable?
It takes an average of 2-4 years for B2B SaaS Startups to become profitable.
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What is the right marketing budget?
The majority (64%) of companies surveyed allocate less than $500K towards their annual marketing budget, while 16% spend less than $1M. Interestingly, a notable 8% of companies spend over $5M, highlighting their higher investment in marketing to generate substantial revenue. According to our survey results, we believe the most successful ventures spend above 30% of their revenue in marketing.
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How often should you raise your price?
60% of the B2B SaaS ventures we surveyed shared they increase their price at least once a year. Company size and did not have an impact on the results of our survey.
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How often should marketing and sales align?
More than 60% SaaS companies maximize both teams efforts by adding recurrent meetings on a weekly basis. More than 50% SaaS companies also shared that marketing does not only meet regularly with the sales team and sales rep but also with the product team on a weekly basis too.
Contribute to next year's report here.
Executive summary
This white-paper is broken down into six parts. Each section offers an overview of the survey results (benchmarks), insights, and best practices from Kalungi's B2B SaaS marketing expertise.
Here’s a list of the main findings:
- It takes an average of 2-4 years for B2B SaaS companies to become profitable.
- SaaS companies with high ACV, such as healthcare and oil & gas SaaS software or more likely to adopt a sales-led GTM.
- Industries with overall low ACV, including L&D, productivity, and sales enablement tools are most likely to be product-led growth.
- 90% of startups that reached PMF have a clear ICP.
- Only 33% of early SaaS companies are founded.
- 75% of self-funded ventures are actually looking for external funding.
- 65% of B2B SaaS startups provide a solution in a market in which they have to carve a niche in a mature industry.
- 50% of SaaS ventures raise their price on a yearly basis.
- 60% of companies reported their biggest marketing problem is a lack of time & resources.
The current state of B2B SaaS
The B2B SaaS industry is still booming and VCs are very much on the look for SaaS and its attractive annual recurring revenue (ARR) model. It’s true that SaaS ventures experienced a serious adjustment in valuation (~5x in 2023) after an all-time high SaaS Valuation Multiples of ~17x in August 2021. Nonetheless, the global market is still expected to reach $307 billion by 2026 and there is a lot to be excited about in the upcoming years.
What to look forward to in 2023
Competition is fierce in the space and the rise of AI is disrupting the industry. Here are trends to look forward to:
- The rise of vertical SaaS: carving a niche designed for specific industries or verticals, such as healthcare, manufacturing, or retail will define the success of upcoming SaaS solutions as businesses look for software that is tailored to their specific needs.
- PLG low touch/high impact: self-service onboarding allows customers to get started with the product/solution without having to contact customer support. It reduces friction and allows customers to experience the value of the product/solution on day one.
- AI-powered tools: AI is having a positive impact on the SaaS industry. It is making SaaS applications more personalized, automated, secure, and innovative. This is leading to better experiences for users and greater opportunities for businesses.
How does it impact the way you market your venture?
VCs will continue to invest in promising SaaS businesses, but they’ll be more cautious with due diligence. They’ll be looking for the famous T2D3 as well as long term profitable growth. Investors commonly refer to the Rule of 40, which means that when you combine your compound annual growth rate with your profitability, the total should equal 40 percent. In order to help you stay attractive to VCs and continue your path to sustainable growth we’ve decided to provide you with benchmarking data you can use to evaluate the impact of your marketing efforts and help you identify how to readjust or double down on specific marketing initiatives.
We organized the data from our survey into 6 parts. Each of these provides specific benchmarks to help early-stage B2B SaaS Startups in their growth:
- GTM strategies
- Pricing section
- CEO’s priorities
- Marketing metrics
- Team dynamics
- Martech
Part 1: GTM strategies
Besides providing a solution or platform that solves an actual problem specific to customer pain points, the success of a B2B SaaS company largely depends on the quality of its GTM strategy and execution. At Kalungi, we always prioritize six key elements:
- Growth Priorities
- Defining Target Audience (ICP & Personas)
- Positioning & Messaging
- Defining the Buyer's Journey
- Branding
- Planning
Growth priorities are defined by three essential concepts:
Are you solving a customer pain point?
What is your market maturity?
What channel to activate?
All companies have a unique way of approaching these concepts and here’s what we found:
01 Companies we’ve surveyed have been around for a while:
02 Just under 65% of the companies we’ve surveyed have accomplished what we consider as PMF:
The T2D3 framework helps define market maturity with two simple categories:
Competition is fierce in the space and the rise of AI is disrupting the industry. Here are trends to look forward to:
- The market makers: SaaS that created a new market and look for early adopters and innovators.
- The market shakers: SaaS that decided to carve an underserved niche in a mature market.
Here's what we found:
How to go-to-market
At Kalungi, we use a simple animal analogy to determine which GTM strategy fits you best:
- Marketing-led ventures with an ACV below $6,000 a year
- Sales-led ventures with an ACV above $30,000 a year
- A hybrid that combines marketing and sales-led ventures with an ACV below $30,000 a year
We asked companies what was their Average Contract Value (ACV) and here’s what we found:
Current trends suggest that PLG is on the rise. Prospects and customers want to experience the value of the product without talking to anyone from support or sales. Ventures such as HubSpot, Slack, and Asana have done a great job at succeeding with outstanding results in the PLG arena.
What channel to activate?
We asked B2B SaaS venture what channels were performing best and which channels they were most excited about and the result show that despite the GTM strategy organic growth is the clear winner across the board for long-term growth and accounting for 40% of the marketing channel mix:
