Why do some minimum viable SaaS products catch fire immediately, while others struggle to gain traction, even with solid execution? This is a challenge that keeps many early stage founders up at night.
Building a great product is just the beginning. You've probably heard people say… “just turn on marketing and revenue will flow.” For some, it can be that simple, but often it isn't.
In Episode 74 of the B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks Podcast, our hosts Brian and Stijn dive deep into the hows and whys of finding your true customers and nailing your ideal customer profile. This is absolutely crucial before you can hit the gas on growth.
Topics discussed include:
B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks is one of the most respected voices in the SaaS industry. It is hosted by two leading marketing and revenue growth experts for software:
B2B SaaS companies move through predictable stages of marketing focus, cost and size (as described in the popular T2D3 book). With people cost being a majority of the cost involved, every hire needs to be well worth the investment!
The best founders, CFOs and COOs in B2B SaaS work at getting the best balance of marketing leadership, strategy and execution to produce the customer and revenue growth they require. Staying flexible and nimble is a key asset in a hard-charging B2B world.
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Brian Graf: Hi there, and welcome to episode 74 of B2B SaaS Marketing Snacks.
I'm Brian Graf, I'm the CEO of Kalungi, and I'm back with Kalungi's co founder, Stijn Hendrikse, who's a serial SaaS marketing executive and ex Microsoft product marketing leader. Today, we're tackling a challenge that keeps many early stage founders up at night.
How do you actually get traction with a minimum viable product? Let's face it, building the product is just the beginning. You've probably heard people say, just turn on marketing and revenue will flow. Well, sometimes, and with the right preparation, it can be that simple, but often it isn't. We're diving into finding your true ICP, your ideal customer profile, and why it's absolutely crucial before you can hit the gas on growth.
We'll explore why some minimum viable products catch fire immediately, while others struggle to gain traction. Even with solid execution. We'll talk through what the most important questions are that you need to answer in the market to gain that traction. Let's get into it.
All right, Stijn. Thank you so much for joining me again. Today's topic is how to get traction from a marketing perspective with an MVP product. A lot of it hinges on finding the right ICP, but I think there's a few different ways that we can attack it.
Just to give a little bit of background from my train of thought here is, obviously you wrote the book T2D3 and you have that baseball analogy on before you can become a unicorn, you have to first get to minimum viable product, and then you have to reach product market fit, and then you can start to scale from there.
You cannot cut corners. But many executives that I will talk to when they come in our doors will say something to the effect of. Hey, so we built the product and we got a little funding. So now we're ready to turn on marketing and get the revenue dollars flown in the door.
Which is true and accurate, but often it's not, depending on where the product is, it's not that simple. If the product is set up really well and you built the product with one true ICP in mind and you've solved the problem really, really well, then yes, you, you can turn on the marketing faucet and, and dollars will start pouring in.
But often, from my perspective, where you start out when you're building a product is not where you will finish. So you start building a product that solves a particular problem that you came up with. But along the way you talk with people you explore different markets. And what ends up really hitting for your company or that product is not what you started building for at all.
It becomes much greater because there was just something that you hadn't even thought of and in those scenarios. It does require a bit more from marketing and product marketing in order to really get the product to catch. That's my background on it. I do want to just pick your brain basically on this key phase in a product's lifestyle.
It's post MVP… you're ready to go to market and maybe you've had a little bit of traction. With a few different different types of markets. But you don't have really strong inroads anywhere and you might have funding, but you need to start showing growth. So I guess I'll start with… when you're in a situation like that, what strategies do you typically prioritize?
What's your main priority in order to move the product forward and move it towards product market fit?
Stijn Hendrikse: It's a really important step to confirm the inside voices of a founder, of an innovator, someone who came up with an idea and they think it's a great idea and they're now convinced that the market loves it.
To just validate that. That's where the word the V viable comes from. Minimum viable product. So how do you test for viability? And how you make sure that there's not your opinion repackaged, but actually an honest market evaluation. So you're testing the value proposition.
Is there actual value in my proposition? What's the real value? And there are many ways to do that, but common terms include things like job, what's the job to be done. Do we understand how the value gets created by doing this and isn't that, that's what my solution actually does. And which then also often immediately answers the question, what pain is there that we're solving for?
Is my solution an aspirin versus a vitamin? Is it solving a real need, a real pain point, or is it solving for maybe a desire or nice to have, which both can be a viable business, by the way, but it's good to be able to differentiate. And that's really answering the question, what's it for.
When you get to product market fit, you really have answered both questions. Like what's it for and who's it for? Now I have confirmed not only what the product is and the value proposition, but also what part of the market it fits best with. That's PMF product market fit. That's the next step.
But in MVP, you're really focused on that initial product part. What's the value of my value proposition? What pain does it solve? What's the job to be done? What's it for? And ultimately also… is it useful. Is it useful as in value. You start also to explore a little bit what the ICP, the ideal customer profit could look like.
You get some of that feedback during an MVP, but even if you test the value property, the audience, it's a little different from what ends up maybe becoming your ICP in the future. That's okay. You can still get your MVP done. You could answer the question. This is at least valuable for someone for a small part of the market.
When you get more to product market fit, you're also going to answer the question, is it usable? Not only useful, but also usable. And that's only, you can only do it if you actually know what audience you're specifically testing. So that's my way of thinking about MVP, Brian.
Brian Graf: Yeah, I like it.
We're almost taking a step back and you're almost removing ICP from the equation for a second. In terms of that you're really just going out into the market with what you think is the most valuable messaging and positioning and value that your product brings, and then you're letting the market dictate.
Who's it for, for you? Is that what you're saying?
Stijn Hendrikse: Yes, when we do our strategy workshop, I've done it many times as well, but when I was still with Kalungi and your team has these three points where you can start. It's either you start with what should our growth strategy be for this year?
The T2D3 growth strategy had a combination of multiplying your demand gen capabilities. Diversifying demand gen, improving conversion rate and speed, improving deal size. Reducing churn and all these things that go into T2D3 growth. You do that for companies that have really reached product market fit because they will know both what their value prop is, the positioning, and they will know the ICP.
If they don't know those two correctly yet, you're still getting, Oh, how do we get to product market fit. How do we confirm the ICP? Okay. And then the step before that is how do you confirm the positioning. So you kind of, depending on where you are, you refer to the baseball triangle, are you still getting to MVP or you're between MVP and PMF or you're between PMF and getting to high scale growth?
You started with one of these three questions. If you're not at MVP yet, you still want to answer the question, what's it for? If you've answered that you're at MVP, to go to product market fit, you're not going to answer the question, who's it for in addition to what's it for. And then once you've done that, You can start answering the question, how do we grow exponentially?
Now that we know who's it for and what's it for. So that's how the framework works.
Brian Graf: Let's use that analogy. So you have a company that has rounded first base. They've cleared minimum viable product and they are searching for product market fit. They're trying to answer. Talk to me through, I guess, how you, how you have that strategic conversation, either how you implement it or how you have that strategic conversation with executives in terms of how to establish that.
We can always go in and interview customers and interview prospects, but I think that there's a balance that needs to be reached with the resources that marketing has, obviously. But with how. How many different markets you test and how deeply you test them to get some results. And some feedback as quickly as you can.
So that you can really know where to double down and where to cut bait. After a certain period of time.
Stijn Hendrikse: I'm not going to answer your question in exactly the way you're asking it, but I do believe you have to be very clear on what questions are you trying to get answers for.
Try to test too many things at the same time. But part of testing the value prop would also be testing the core of what you're trying to do and not trying to maybe test 20,000 different features. Get a relatively crisp understanding of what the core of the value prop is by confirming the four or five core things it does.
Doing that with the part of the market that is representative of people, companies, and prospects that could get value out of your solution is good enough at MVP level. I don't know if it has to be, always the specific industry or you have to start testing that. That's more figuring out the ICP, which we will do a little bit later.
Just getting people who you think have the problem that you're trying to solve for. Letting them tell you, hey, this is what the product is still missing. These are the capabilities that I really like. These are the things that are less relevant for me. This is what would make it even better. I think that's what you want to get to.
Brian Graf: You're almost focusing more on jobs to be done and psychographics than firmographics.
Stijn Hendrikse: And you're recruiting your early audience, I guess, mostly from people who tend to be early adopters, innovators who like to help you finish the product who don't mind it being incomplete.
They almost get pride in that. They might never buy it. That's by the way, part of the problem of the crossing the chasm model from Jeffrey Moore is that when you're getting to MVP. The people that help get you there are not necessarily economic buyers. They might not be the people who will give you a certain amount of dollars to solve this problem.
They may just vote with their time. They give you their time because they're excited about you solving this problem. They care. So they're not necessarily the best references later on, although you still want to have them as that also, because you need a couple of references, you need a couple of early testimonials, but they're not necessarily the best for economic references.
That's actually why the chasm exists. It's hard to get over that, to get from… People who are really excited about your product because they were partly helping you build it. First people who love it because it helps them reach their economic goals. Different, different set of audience.
Brian Graf: Yeah, the audience that gets you to the chasm will not be the one that gets you across it.
Stijn Hendrikse: Yes, exactly.
Brian Graf: It makes a lot of sense and we need to be solving who's it for and literally who's it for and right not necessarily the type of company that it's for in this Scenario. It's important to note that you probably shouldn't be focused on ad spend efficiency yet.
Like there's no, we're trying to solve this, who's it for problem. And we're not going to do it by hyper focusing on things like ad ad spend efficiency, or even click through rate. You're more trying to answer a question.
Then you are trying to prove out like really efficient ad spend or something like that. Do you see it that way? Or is it, is it different in your mind?
Stijn Hendrikse: It's really, what is the core of what I'm trying to do here? And is that worth doing? And also it helps you get ready for when you do invest more time in finishing it, you're not building out the wrong thing. You're focused on the capabilities that seem to have resonated. And you can focus whatever features you invest in and you can focus to the product market fit stage. To go after the right part of the market, et cetera.
Brian Graf: That is a great point. And we've seen this where It doesn't matter how good the strategy is, or how good the execution is, or how good the channels are. But if the core questions of who's it for, what's it for, are not answered correctly. All of the rest will struggle.
And we have seen clients who come in, they've been at or around product market fit. We've gone in with their ICP and pushed everything against it. And it just hasn't worked. And then we've seen that we've pivoted to a different ICP and it actually has worked.
Similar tactics, similar effort. And so it is really important to, to answer those questions, but you, you brought up investment in. In what you just, you just said, and that was actually going to be my next question. So thank you for the segue. How do you look at investment at this phase in a company's journey for marketing?
You probably can't, unless you're funded, can't spend a ton, a ton of money to answer these questions, but you also can't starve the marketing muscle. So that you do answer these questions and can double down in the right areas. How do you typically think about that? With the companies that you work with?
Stijn Hendrikse: In the current world of. You know, constant communication, everybody being very very hard to get a hold of, the days of doing market research with things like surveys, et cetera… it's hard to do that. That's why it's also the M we've talked about in viable product, but the M is minimal.
The best way of thinking about the investment is that it should be the individual who's really behind the company or the individuals. If you're with a couple of partners, spending a lot of real quality time with a small group of people, and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money.
And it's really because you do it so focused that you get results relatively quickly. You're really contesting it and iterating. That's very important. You will, by definition, find things that either prove, but also some that will disprove your assumptions and that you then learn from that. You'll change your plan and that shouldn't cost a lot of money.
So I think if you're really an MVP, it's not the time to talk about investing like capital. It's about investing your time. And, and especially the people who are the thought leaders behind the company, the founders, et cetera, spending time themselves, talking with the people there, asking to use the product.
To get really immediate feedback, not have things getting lost in translation. That's really important. And what you really want to find and look for is what's called engaged advocates. People who are not only saying it's a great idea, but they're actually, they're voting with their time by using it.
Engaging with it. Either engaging it by, by using it to do the thing that it's supposed to do, or engaging with it by telling you that it's not complete, or it should be a little bit different. Because that means they care about the problem. And they may help you finish the product. And the advocacy part, I think that's how you test whether they really get value.
It doesn't mean they have to become immediate, like talking to the whole world about how great your product is. But, be a positive advocate to whoever else they talk to about it, about your solution. This could work. There's a problem that's important to solve for and these guys seem to be on the right track, et cetera, et cetera.
Brian Graf: That makes sense. Once MVP has been achieved, you basically have the, what's it for? And you have some inclination of who's it for. You've seen some traction. You've had those conversations with beta users in a few different areas.
Then I would say that it's a marketing and sales job to go start to explore those areas at a little bit more scale. You can't expect a full, fully fledged go to market, right, against each one, because it would just be wasteful, but you can and should run hyper-specific tests that are iterative, to your point, and this is why I went back on what I was saying about ad spend efficiency.
You should be looking very closely at the performance of everything that you're putting out there with each messaging point and with each target audience. Because that's in a world where it's harder to talk with everyone. But there's more analytics than ever.
That's your shortcut to getting those insights. Have you ever had to have a conversation with an executive that wants to move super fast. They're at MVP and they feel really bullish about their product and they're ready for revenue. But you're taking a look and you're seeing that the ‘who's it for’ has not been answered, for example.
What advice do you have for them or how would you handle that conversation?
Stijn Hendrikse: I think being comfortable asking the question, who's it for? What's it for? And following up with the why and the how ladder is a, is a good format. So you ask, so who's it for? And then you ask why. Why being a form of why would they care.
Why is that important for them? And you do a couple of whys. Until you get to, because they like to solve world hunger, then you probably have gotten to the ultimate. And then you also do a little bit of laddering. You step down the ladder. You say, hey, and how is it that you think your solution will do this that's going to be unique, that's special?
That's a good way to just do some litmus testing on whether the founder or the person driving the MVP has thought it through enough.
Brian Graf: That's great and that, that does get to the core. , It is just that simple, the core of who's it for, what's it for? That then really scales.
And if those answers are compelling enough and you can validate those with the customers that you talk with and the market that you go into, then yeah, it is probably time to double down and start to pour more gas on the fire. Okay. Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate it. Awesome.
Thank you to Adriano Valerio for producing this episode and the Kalungi team for helping us make this whole thing work. And of course you for choosing to spend your time with us.
As a reminder, all the links we mentioned in this episode can be found in the show notes. And if you want to submit or vote on a question you'd like us to answer, you can do that at Kalungi.com/podcast. Every time we record, we take one of the top three topics and jam on it. Thanks again.
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