Scaling SaaS: When to Hire a Specialized Marketing Agency

Your SaaS startup’s growth is dependent upon strong foundations and dependable execution by a marketing team that knows how to perform. 

If your pipeline isn’t growing as it should, and your company is struggling with a complex sales cycle, it may be time to partner with a marketing agency. B2B SaaS marketing agencies can drive lead generation, customer acquisition, and revenue growth. 

Discover when and how you should consider working with an agency and how to build a successful relationship.

Building The Basis of Your B2B SaaS Marketing 

Implementing essential marketing foundations is necessary to generate demand, revenue, and build your sales pipeline. 

Firstly, you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Your ICP includes your target audience's pain points, challenges, and goals. You also need to identify key decision-makers and influencers. Having your ICP well-documented helps you target the right people and write in the correct tone for each ICP.

Next, you should build your value proposition. This includes defining what you’re best at, better than, and the only one:

• Best - why customers choose you, 
• Better - compared to your competitors, 
• Only - what only your company does.

Your value proposition articulates your company’s unique benefits and how it provides value to your ICP.

Lastly, you need to create your marketing goals. These can include increasing website traffic, revenue, lead goals, brand awareness, and/or conversion users. You need a varied marketing team to create and manage your marketing goals effectively. 

An experienced CMO can create a strategy that will boost your growth. SEO and content marketers can create a website and blogs to ensure you’re ranking at the top of search results, bringing in leads. At the same time, growth experts can run paid media campaigns that bring many leads and MQLs.

Many founders try to run their businesses and manage marketing all by themselves, leading to burnout, frustration, and stalled growth. Delegating to specialists will help your company grow much faster and more efficiently.

When to Consider a B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

As a SaaS startup, growing your business quickly and consistently is key. A marketing agency can support you in that goal. There are a few signs that mean that it’s the right time to consider hiring a B2B SaaS marketing agency:

• Complex Sales Cycles:
  • When your sales cycle is long and complicated, a marketing agency can create personalized strategies to nurture your leads. Using account-based marketing, the right nurture sequences can shorten your sales cycle.
• Scalability Challenges:
  • A common marketing mistake is to market across many different channels with limited resources. One marketing professional can’t effectively manage social media, emails, paid media, and organic growth. A marketing agency has specialists who can focus on one channel each and run targeted campaigns to help your company scale.
• Limited Marketing Expertise:
  • As a startup with a limited budget, you may lack in-house resources or specialized skills to grow your marketing, slowing your sales engine down. A marketing agency brings that knowledge to the table.
• Plateauing Growth:
  • Lastly, it may be time to pivot to new strategies when facing a stalling pipeline and decreasing conversion rates. Working with a marketing agency, you can analyze what is happening and execute new strategies to boost your growth.

How to Choose the Right B2B SaaS Marketing Agency

Marketing agencies aren’t one-size-fits-all. You need to search for an agency that meets your requirements and knows your niche.

• B2B SaaS Expertise:
  • Marketing for B2B SaaS companies is entirely different from B2C marketing. You should search for an agency that has a proven track record in B2B SaaS. They should understand how it works and have previously worked with complex sales cycles and buyer journeys. 
  • Talk to other SaaS startups to see which marketing agencies they recommend. 
• Data-Driven Approach:
  • Agencies need to leverage data insights to make strategic decisions and drive effective marketing campaigns. They should constantly use analytics and optimize campaigns based on that data.
  • Set up a call with recommended agencies and ask how they use data and what reports they will provide you.
• Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Capabilities:
  • ABM is useful for driving growth, generating new leads, and nurturing current prospects. It targets specific accounts, creates lists based on your ICP, and tailors marketing efforts to your persona. 
  • Ask your prospective agencies whether they have specialized ABM professionals and provide examples of successful ABM campaigns they’ve run.
• Strong Communication and Collaboration:
  • To have a successful relationship with your marketing agency, you must communicate effectively with them. They must also be aligned with your sales and product teams to ensure everyone works together towards the same goal.
  • Ask the agencies that you’re considering how they manage communication, how often they have meetings with their clients, and whether they provide regular reports and performance updates. You could ask for a sample report to see what they provide.

Kalungi is a full-service B2B SaaS marketing agency. We have a complete team of marketing experts ready to improve your marketing, and we provide a Fractional CMO to deliver a complete, data-driven strategy. Our ABM team works closely with clients to build lists based on their ICP and impact your audience with messaging that matters.

Successful Partnerships with B2B SaaS Marketing Agencies

There are three key aspects to having a successful partnership with your new B2B SaaS marketing agency.

First of all, you need to have clear goals and KPIs. Your startup needs to be clear about what you want to achieve working with an agency. Then, you and the agency need to work together to define measurable objectives and track them in a shared sheet or dashboard. The marketing strategy that the agency makes should be aligned with your company’s goals to ensure success.

All decisions made around marketing by the agency or the startup should be data-driven. New channels, campaign optimizations, and strategy adjustments should be made based on the data that you’ve collected. For instance, you talk to your clients and discover they all use Reddit, so you begin advertising there. All marketing campaigns and tactics should continuously be tested and refined.

Finally, clear, honest communication between the startup and the agency is essential. Regular, productive meetings and open communication channels are also necessary. To facilitate communication and promote collaboration, a few points of contact should be included in the company’s Slack or Teams. If a mistake is made, the person responsible should own and fix it. To have a successful partnership, you must be open and honest with each other.

Scaling Your Startup With The Right SaaS Marketing Agency

Working with a B2B SaaS marketing agency can help your company grow demand and revenue by creating new strategies made by SaaS marketing specialists driven by data. If your marketing is plateauing or having issues scaling, you should evaluate your current marketing efforts and consider partnering with an agency.

Kalungi is a B2B SaaS marketing agency that provides you with a fractional CMO with years of experience in B2B marketing. The CMO works with a complete team that includes SEO, content, automation, paid, design, and more. The whole team uses our T2D3 methodology to boost your growth. 

Get in touch with Kalungi today to learn how we can kickstart your marketing.