Brad Batesole

Which team will win? 𝑇𝐸𝐴𝑀 1: $50M+ ARR, sales-led growth - Five sales reps + marketing team - $250k+ budget - Full ABM stack - Well-known local ABM agency runs creatives, copy and paid Program off to a smooth start. Agency creates and runs the program targeting 1200+ accounts from a selected industry with account based ads, nurtures with email + content, and the team follows up with a sales cadence. 𝑇𝐸𝐴𝑀 2: $50M+ ARR, product-led growth - New marketer + rep with little understanding of customers and their challenges, no technical background - $10k budget - First-party intent data, no ABM stack - Remote ABM consulting of the team (all excution by the team) Program off to a difficult start, struggling with bottlenecks and challenges: - Marketing and sales with no understanding of customer challenges or product knowledge (very technical product and audience) - ICP not active on social, very skeptical by nature and gives zero chance and credibility to marketers/sales - Sales difficult to engage, most of the execution fell on one marketer --- Fast-forward six months: 𝑇𝐸𝐴𝑀 1 Six months in, and multiple six-figures spent on agency fees:  - Lots of engaged accounts, but very few conversations - Only four discovery calls and two qualified opportunities booked - No closed won deals The company decides to stop the program. 𝑇𝐸𝐴𝑀 2 After several iterations and workarounds, the final version of the program is set up and run. Results after three months (ran by a single marketer, with a help from an SME):  - A couple of hundred ICP accounts with the same challenge engaged via several meaningful touchpoints  - More than a dozen discovery calls  - Several enterprise opportunities and won deals This is the first time the company proactively generated enterprise deals. They realize the potential, and want to involve more people and increase the budget. *** Lessons learned: 1. Identify and fix the key bottlenecks. Don't bury your head in the sand, and hope that everything will be fixed by hiring an agency to run a trendy program. 2. "Financial service companies in NA" ≠ ICP. Define a cluster of accounts with the same buying trigger and a job-to-be-done to make it easier to create relevant content and messaging 3. Align the CTA with the level of buying intent. Just because an account passes a Marketo score, it doesn't mean they're ready to buy. 4. Focus on the accounts in the market, but don't ignore future pipeline. Regardless of how well you select the accounts and run your program, not everyone will be ready to buy. But that doesn't mean that they won't (re)start the process in the coming quarters. P.S. Want to dive behind the scenes of the program ran by 𝑇𝐸𝐴𝑀 2? Join João Crisóstomo, the marketer in charge of the program, as we break it down during another Full-Funnel Live Case Study this Thursday: https://lnkd.in/dx68qZkv

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Here’s how to make SEO your biggest revenue driver (advice based on generating +$20 million in revenue, not pipeline): ✅ Treat it as a demand capture channel Skip top of the funnel entirely, and jump straight into JTBD middle & bottom of the funnel. There’s gonna be plenty of room later to play the awareness game. The magic of SEO lies in the ability to reach buyers who are already searching for your product. That may be only 5% of your TAM buyers (in-market buyers), but that’s more than enough to grow you to (hundreds of) millions in ARR. Plus, the bar is so low - since most SEOs are chasing vanity metrics (traffic), these low-volume, high-intent long tail money keywords are such an untapped opportunity. ✅ Spend money on content, not backlinks Backlinks don’t generate revenue, content does. You can’t rank for all these keywords where buyers are already searching for your solution until you have a page of content for that query, so building backlinks won’t help. Let’s say there are 10,000 ways (KWs) prospects are searching for you already. This is your lowest hanging fruit you should saturate first. Once you cluster those 10,000 keywords, you’ll have e.g. 2,000 pages of content to create. The faster you publish this content, the faster you’ll capture all the existing demand. So, your goal should be increasing content publishing velocity, because publishing 10 pages a month means it’ll take you 200 months (almost 20 years!) to just saturate existing demand. Publish 200/month, and you’ll do that in under a year. ✅ Natively integrate product into content Google rewards content that provides the most value to the user. That should be your first step - to create the best page of content Google can show to the user. Skip this step and jump straight into promoting your product and you just won’t rank. Once you’ve provided value and solved the user's problem, the next step is to position your product as the natural next step: as a better / cheaper / faster alternative. It’s that simple! ✅ Report on performance weekly It’s hard to hide when you’re transparently reporting on progress every week. It’s gonna push you to do better. Once the campaign hits mid stage (usually 4-6 months in), go from just reporting on leading indicators to reporting on signups & revenue. Conversions should start increasing linearly with traffic. I know that with the old SEO playbook conversions never increase linearly with traffic, but with this playbook, they do. Because, remember, we’re targeting just high-intent, revenue generating opportunities - none of those fluffy TOFU keywords that drive a ton of traffic but little-to-no signups.

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Great response from Jeremy Horowitz' full of insights on my thoughts around ecom market trends. You should check it out, but I'll wrap with some final thoughts: 1. I think there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and projections. Any time I see a chart showing a future projection I am skeptical. Secular trends I like, pure speculation I avoid. 2. On absolute vs relative: Fair point. But I mostly care about tailwinds and headwinds in relation to overall GDP growth. When growth rates align with GDP growth, I think the tailwind is gone. 3. That Abdul-Jabbar jersey on the wall 🔥🔥🔥 4. Well said and I share the same vision: The future of retail is The Great Convergence (tm) of online and offline. I see ecom technology getting wider and flatter. That is, more ubiquitous and less noticeable. 5. Finally, I completely agree: The future of ecom belongs to #shopifyplus, and I am very glad we (Third and Grove) are at the right party. It's 9 PM in ecom land and this party isn't going to peak until the wee hours of the morning 😂

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Everyone wants to run ABM with LinkedIn Ads...but should you??? Here are some basic 101 thoughts 🤔 1. First figure out if you even SHOULD run an ABM motion There are a ton of companies out there that would honestly be better off staying broad for now and don't have the right things in place to run a successful ABM motion. -Look at LTV - ABM only works for decent-sized LTVs -Audience targeting has to make sense -Do you have product market fit yet? 2. Look at crafting the right audience -Define ICP (who the heck should we go after??) -Gather data -Analyze customers (get more of the best-fit clients you have) -Start small -Compile and refine (know where to start and prioritize) -Prioritize 3. What mistakes should you avoid? -Not thinking about retargeting... -Spending too much budget on too small of an audience -Not leveraging LinkedIn's filters to help qualify and refine If you're navigating the complexities of ABM or looking to enhance your current campaigns, these tips are the culmination of hands-on experience, rigorous testing, and implementation with real ABM lists. 👉 Sharpen your targeting to effectively engage high-value accounts 👉 Balance your budget to maximize ROI, especially for smaller lists 👉 Utilize LinkedIn's powerful targeting capabilities to refine your reach What ABM tips did I miss? Comment them below! #linkedinads #startup #entreprenuership

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Before you commit $20K to some slick creative that flops… here’s the 3-Step Ad Strategy we use to launch new campaigns in ~1 week for < $250 – *And* figure out if a big project will generate meaningful ROI. Quick backstory: We created this strategy because new clients (or clients launching a new product line) come to us fired up with ad ideas all the time. (Like an animation that shows how the product’s made and zooms in on every feature.) And while we want to give their ideas a chance… If it flops, it’s on us. So this is how we approach new campaigns: / Step 1 - Static Ads They’re quick. (1 week turnaround) They’re inexpensive. ($250 for quality work) And you don’t need a Google Drive with 1TB of content to pull from. - You can start with stock images - Overlay a simple product photo - Add your text and VO and go live Then make a list of what performs best and iterate on it. This also lets you test USPs, messaging, and design so you’re not just guessing at what gets your customers' attention. // Step 2 - Paid UGC They get engagement. (4x CTR compared to ads) They build brand trust. (72% of millennials say UGC is a good indication of brand quality) - Find someone to test your product. - Take an iPhone video of them using it. - Edit it all together and add in your CTA. Pro tip: You can use your best-performing static ads to direct UGC content – give them the list of features/benefits your customers care about. (You know, the list you made when you were doing Step 1.) /// Step 3 - High production ads Once you have the data (and revenue) from Static and UGC…. You’ve mitigated the risk of jumping into a $20K+ creative project. Go ahead and create: - Complex product animations - A Hollywood-quality scripted ad with SFX - Or get professional lighting, models, and photography Just be sure you’re working with a professional. You don’t want to spend that kind of money only to realize the font or color doesn’t match the brand.

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What's the fastest way for a D2C brand to go from $500k to $1M in sales? Figure out who your ICP is and double down. Here's how I help clients do this... 1. Identify who your highest-value customers are. Look at their AOV and LTV and build your list. You can pull this right out of Shopify. 2. Email these people and ask for a quick 5-10 minute phone call (you can even do a VideoAsk interview). 3. Find out who they are, what makes them tick, what they value, how they describe their problems, how they use the internet to research and make purchase decisions, etc. 4. Revise your website copy, ad copy, creative, email copy, etc. to speak to these people. This is just as much about repelling the wrong customers (single-time buyers looking for deep discounts) as it is about bringing in the right customers. 5. Start marketing to your refined audience. 6. Watch your sales grow faster than ever.

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I’m on a mission to help 100 B2B SaaS companies build a media department inside their businesses because this is the new way of going from $0 to $1M in ARR. Don’t be surprised why your current marketing strategies aren’t working. It’s because the old way of growing a SaaS solely through outbound marketing and ads is long gone. Think about it… if all it took were to send a few hundred cold emails a day and spend a couple thousand dollars a month on ads to grow a business everyone would be a millionaire. So what are growth-stage SaaS companies in 2024 doing to fast-track their way to $1M ARR? They’re turning into media companies. To win in your SaaS category in 2024 you need to pair your outbound and ads with content marketing. Here’s why companies like Lemlist, Instantly, Ahrefs, Zapier and Beehiiv are all investing in YouTube content. 1) Massive Reach. YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine on the internet right behind its big brother Google and has nearly 5 billion monthly active users. 2) Visualization. SaaS is a visual tool that needs to be seen in action to understand how it works. Publishing videos on YouTube about how to use your software is the best way to educate customers about how your solution works. 3) Low Competition. Very few SaaS companies are posting on YouTube which allows you to easily stand out from the competition. And if your competitors are posting on YouTube it’s probably half-assed anyway allowing you to stand out through high-quality and well-thought-out content. 4) Longer Lifespan. YouTube trumps any social platform because of the way its algorithm works. You can make a video and 5 months later still generate hundreds if not thousands of views per week. This makes it more worthwhile to invest in creating great content because it'll live on forever. 5) #1 Video Resource. People don't go on TikTok, IG, FB, Threads or Twitter to learn how to make the best apple pie. They may find content about this topic on there but it wasn’t their initial intent. YouTube is a platform where people search for what they want to consume. Making every view a potential customer, partner or investor for your business. 6) Authority and Trust Building. Regularly publishing high-quality content on YouTube establishes your company as an authority in your field. Educational videos, tutorials, and customer interviews build trust with potential customers by showcasing your expertise and the value of your software. 7) Multi-Use Content. Videos created for YouTube can be repurposed across multiple platforms. You can embed them in blog posts, share them on social media, or use them in email marketing campaigns. This maximizes the value of each piece of content you create. TLDR: SaaS companies are fast-tracking growth by using YouTube for its massive reach, visual engagement, low competition, lasting impact, authority building, and repurposable content. S/o to my boys Mikaël Bérubé & Justin Lalonde

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There's one mistake I see business owners continuously make when it comes to marketing attribution (even the big companies do this). They think they can buy customers. Your Google Ads CPA is not real. Your Meta Ads ROAS is not real. Your LinkedIn CPL is not real. If you use in-platform metrics as your main KPI you indirectly believe that leads or customers see one ad and then convert/buy. They don't. Here's an actual customer journey: 1. Prospect see your LinkedIn ad and doesn't click. 2. They see your CEO's LinkedIn post and reads a few comments. 3. They see your Google Search ad when looking for a service similar to yours (because you have the braveness to use broad match). They click the ad and reads a few pages on your website. 4. They are now in your retargeting flows and they see your ad on Meta, Google Display and LinkedIn. They click an ad on Meta and subscribe to your newsletter to learn more. 5. You call them immediately (right Daniel Jensen?) and have a good chat. They think your offer is interesting but need to discuss with partners and investors first. 6. You call them next week, they haven't had time to discuss it yet. Meanwhile they've seen a bunch of ads without clicking because they were too busy and they're now out of the retargeting flow. 7. You call them a month after and they tell you that they are not able to move forward with you right now. 8. Since they're still your ICP they see your ads on LinkedIn from time to time, but they don't click since they know your offer. Half a year later they go to your website because they forgot your contact info and they call you up saying they're interested again. 9. You schedule a pitch call with them and now that they have time to tie up loose ends they unscribe to your newsletter (which didn't really provide value because your marketing is not based on branding and messaging but solely on KPI's). 10. You win the pitch. Congratulations, you just got yourself a brand new customer. In this case you would have attributed: 2 conversions on LinkedIn (view-conversions) 1 conversion on Google (90-days attribution model) 1 conversion on Meta (newsletter signup) 1 conversion through newsletter (you did move them forward in your CRM, didn't you?) But wait. You only got 1 client. When I was working a lot with e-commerce, I saw this all the time for clients focusing on ROAS. Revenue in Meta: 11,834€ Revenue in Google: 28,353€ Revenue in Klaviyo: 6,399€ Revenue in Shopify: 14,886€ Looking at the built-in reporting system from the platforms, you have earne a whopping 34,764€ in revenue. But your bank accounts says 14,886€. And it's the same in leadgen. This text was too long for LinkedIn, conclusion in comments 👋

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You should convert your sales quickly. If your price-point is between $2,000 & $10,000, It should not take 3-5 months for a client to purchase. If this is happening, You are selling to the wrong audience. You should be able to close on the first or second call. In this video, I explain exactly how.

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A $20M ARR agency does this. And you aren’t yet because..? It’s PickFu. Large agencies like My Amazon Guy understand the value of “testing before investing” when it comes to strategy for their clients. PickFu is the industry standard. Try going to McDonalds and asking for some Pepsi. I’m just saying. → PickFu is EASIER. → PickFu is FASTER. → PickFu is SCALABLE. What’s stopping you from PickFu-being today? ABT - Always Be Testing #AmazonCTR

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One common reason agencies don't make outbound work: They don't treat is a skill to be learning, like content, ads, or any other sales/marketing channel. A highlight from my recent convo with Matt Lincoln of Apollo.io 👇 check the comments for the full episode link

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97% of Amazon sellers are WASTING money on ads (...but there's a smarter way): If you're "blindly" blasting ads to the wrong audience... Bleeding cash on unprofitable campaigns... It's time to STOP. There's a smarter, laser-focused way to target your IDEAL customers. One that can double, triple, even 10X your sales... Without breaking the bank. It all comes down to understanding WHO you're selling to on a deep level. The answer: Find a way to personalize them. My secret weapon for targeting 'personalization strategy': 1. Find your top-performing products. 2. Analyze the audience → Check what they have in common. 3. 1 common denominator? → Market aggressively to that segment! 4. Bid on keywords that are relevant to those targets. You don't need a huge budget to do this. But you have to be willing to take a risk. The ones who do stand out. The ones who don't, get passed over. It's that simple. Repost this if you agree with this ♻️. What's your story with targeting? I want to hear it! - PS - Want to grow your ecommerce brand on Amazon? We've helped 500+ brands earn over $550 million on the platform. For a Free audit of your current Amazon store/brand, book a call here: https://lnkd.in/gzusgfFD

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I've sold $1m+ in B2B media campaigns If I was a B2B marketer with ~$100k-200k budget This is the exact podcast marketing playbook that I would run Sponsors 10 up-and-coming industry-specific podcasts for a full season Here's why... 1. Niche B2B Rising Podcasters Metrics to look for: - ~500-2k downloads/ep + 500-5k YT views/ep - 5-20k followers on their main social pages - 1-20k Youtube subs - Strong engagement across channels Most importantly the content actually has to be good and well produced How to find them: Search "(industry keywords) podcast" across all social platforms and Spotify Go down a rabbit hole One creator will lead you to another Make a database of potential pods and start sending emails 2. Campaign Packaging Since they are smaller podcasts, you are likely their first sponsor This gives you: - Negotiating Leverage: More value ads - Great Pricing: Increases ROAS - Upside Potential: If they go viral so do you Bonus tip: Ask for value ads, not discounts Value adds make your campaign better when discounts just make you look cheap Package Details: - Pre/Mid Rolls ads (give them full creative freedom) - Show notes hyperlink - Logo on cover art - 2-3 Licensed UGC ads - Founder as a guest on the pod Value adds to ask for: - Watermarking short form vids - @'s on social when they post pod clips - NL mentions 3. Founder Led Content Flywheel - Each pod allows your founder to share launches, founding story, vision, and mission, with a new audience - 10 podcast appearances gives you 50-100 short-form clips that your founder can post on social media 4. Conservative Outcomes - 1k downloads/ep x 100 eps = 100k downloads -1k YT views/ep x 100 eps = 100k views - 50-100 brand mentions on social media = 50k+ impressions - 20-30 UGC videos to run as ads Double down on the pods that performed Scrap the others Wrap-up notes: - Find undervalued podcasters - Recognize your leverage to do high-value, not low-price campaigns - Focus on creating founder-led content to boost your organic social presence If you like B2B media riffs like these, make sure to give me a follow 😃

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If I was a marketing agency founder stuck at $100k MRR, and wanted to reach $250k MRR by the end of the year, to copy the success of agency founders like Chase Dimond, Carl Weische & Dylan Hey...here's the method I would use. Now this method avoids all things such as: Mass cold emailing. Creating cringe Tik Toks. Waiting weeks to receive referrals. It simply does one thing… Increases your status. Which is what those 3 founders mentioned in the hook have in common. They’ve manually put the work in to increase their status. Giving them the ability to: Scale past $100k MRR. Charge higher prices. Attract more leads. Win bigger deals. Without status, you’re stuck working with whatever walks through the door. To get status, all you do is this... 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱 𝗮 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁-𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱. But not in the way you think… You can’t simply ‘post content’. Or Send connection requests on LinkedIn. You need to: 1. Study the brain of where your ICP is at right now. What's their opinion on how they're currently being pitched? What current pain points are they facing? Who do they want to buy from vs you? This will help you completely differentiate from the noise and not sound like everyone else. 2. Collect as much social proof you can possibly find. I cannot stress this enough, if you do not have photographic evidence to back up your ‘knowledge posts’, you will not get leads. I posted a recent case study last week and booked 3 inbound calls off the back of it. Only because I showed proof. The agency founders we work with that have their proof already documented, see significantly faster results. And finally content…. 3. Have a flow to build out long form content pieces every single week on topics that will actually improve your ICPs business. Don’t make it surface level. This could be in multiple mediums; Podcast appearances, internal non-aired podcasts with your team, Youtube video recordings or long google docs getting your thoughts out. This will fuel your content source for every thing you do. Chop it up. 4. Build your brand daily. Don't start and stop. Stay top of mind for so long, that when a prospect comes in to market, they book a call in with you first. That's it. Stay at these 4 things for long enough, and you’ll smash your agency MRR goals in no time.

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Here are 4 things I have learned from interviewing Jason Barnard who Google says has as much insight on their knowledge algorithms as their own insiders. 1. SEO is not the only thing, Optimize your Brand SERP: Imagine your Brand SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as your ultimate Google business card. You need to WOW them instantly. Make sure it’s the right one. 2. Stop Letting Google Guess Who You Are: Our guest stressed the importance of creating a personal website that clearly communicates who you are, what you do, and why you're credible. 3. SEO is Top of Funnel, Brand SERP will help you close deals: Instead of focusing only on getting to the top of search results, focus on people who search for your brand directly. Convert their interest into action. 4. Thinking of Rebranding? Do it Fast: Make all changes quickly and comprehensively to ensure Google captures the update correctly and boosts its confidence in your new branding.    …and many more! Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/ds7tni4E Thanks Jason for a great conversation ;) Tune in to Podcast Gurus by GHA Marketing Ltd to catch the full episode!

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Easy to implement cold email hack: 𝗣𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲. So write your template. Download your Apollo list. And add one line of “snippet” personalization in your .CSV… As part of your otherwise automated template. Even this small tweak will go a really long way. And isn’t too time intensive. 

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𝗚𝗧𝗠 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀: 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻 𝗦𝗗𝗥 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺.   But, it's not the rep you're thinking of. In fact, this rep works 24x7. But loses pipeline.  And hurts your brand. And is very expensive. (At least $266K / year). It's your 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱-𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲. 😕Aspirational headline 🎈Lifestyle imagery 🤔Vague claims Do you have this problem? Compare your home page to your top three competitors. #1  Clarity? #2 Hook? #3 Product? Check out these examples. Only one gets people to 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗰𝗿𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴. 💙𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗻 you can build your brand.

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