The Ask
Design a marketing plan to acquire 100,000 B2B SaaS professionals located in the US over the next year. The marketing budget is $10K per month and the desired CPA is not more than $10.
My Approach: Marketing Efforts and Assumptions
I selected 3 top marketing channels and built a high-level conversion funnel for each of them. My goal was to identify the most efficient channel and aggressively invest in it while leaving some room to allocate to experimental channels.
Here are the channels I recommended and the assumptions behind the model:
- LinkedIn Sponsored InMail: This channel offers the highest conversion potential as we can precisely target our audience by job titles and industry. The completion rate in this channel can be higher if we manage to prepopulate some of the form fields based on their LinkedIn profiles. Assuming a $7 CPC, this channel can contribute around 40,000 qualified leads.
- Newsletter Sponsorships: Partnering with niche B2B SaaS newsletters that have a highly engaged audience is a cost-effective way to reach our target demographic. These sponsorships will be billed based on the newsletter’s email list size. To calculate the impressions on this channel, I assumed that a newsletter with 50,000 readers would charge $1,000 (that is a reach of 1,000 readers per every $50 we invest), and an open rate of 50%. The completion rate in this channel is conservative as the form has many fields. The approval rate is lower than LinkedIn Sponsored InMail because these leads are not prequalified, however is higher than the YouTube sponsorships because is targeted by niche.
- YouTube Sponsorships: Collaborating with mid-sized YouTube creators in the B2B SaaS space can help us leverage their influence and tap into a broader audience. I assumed the CTR in this channel would be lower as there are extra steps to go to the form. The completion rate remains the same as with the newsletter sponsorships, but the lead approval rate is lower as the audience is going to be broader.
Additional Strategies: Organic Marketing
In addition to the paid channels, I suggested leveraging the existing pool of participants for referral opportunities as they are the biggest ambassadors to the program. For their target demographic, monetary compensation is likely not a prime driver. Instead, I recommended focusing on network opportunities and industry recognition as incentives.
Finally, I suggested keep working on organic content marketing, such as podcasts, blogs, and social media presence. These strategies can take time to pay off but in the long term, they can become their cheapest acquisition channels.