Georgiana Laudi
I've been building and launching brands online since Y2K was a thing. In 2009, I started working with tech startups and SaaS companies and never looked back.
Because SaaS lives and dies by the value delivered to customers — and retention over time — marketing's impact on revenue extends far beyond the more traditional acquisition focus. In SaaS, marketing (whether you call it that or not) has a huge role to play, and a critical seat at the table. To me, that makes marketing & CX in tech one of the most innovative, interesting, and increasingly in-demand areas of specialization.
It was while leading Marketing for Unbounce (a largely marketing-led SaaS) that I discovered customer experience mapping. One where the entire relationship with customers — from experiencing the problem to engagement and expansion — is measured not based on transactional moments and business metrics, but instead on customer’s success milestones.
I realized that if I could operationalize the process of helping customers reach their goals, we'd reach ours. And we did. The following year, we grew revenue nearly 900%.
Since then, I've worked with SaaS teams like Sprout Social, Appcues and dozens more to take customer insights and turn them into revenue-generating outcomes.
Claire Suellentrop
I've always been drawn to the process of uncovering hidden stories and crafting narratives.While these skills are a pretty obvious requirement in journalism (where I assumed for years I'd build my career), it wasn't until life took a major turn — and I began leading marketing at Calendly — that I really understood how critical those skills are to business growth, as well.
It was during those years at Calendly that I first learned about Jobs To Be Done: a research process that helps uncover a customer’s motivation for buying a product.
JTBD put language around a concept that I inherently "got," but had previously lacked the vocabulary for: that people "hire" a solution to improve their own life in some way, and they "fire" that solution when it no longer serves them (then switch to something else). Your product is just one little hire-able, fire-able detail in that person's larger narrative — their life.
I realized that if a company can stop talking about its own product, and instead tie its product to customers' needs and desires, that company will win more business.
Since then, I've used the JTBD process to help dozens of companies — including Wistia, FullStory, MeetEdgar, and many others — uncover the hidden stories of their customers' experience (why customers "fire" old solutions and decide to "hire" those companies), and weave those stories into customer-focused growth strategies & marketing narratives — to the tune of record-breaking new user signup rates and trial-to-paid conversion increases.
