April 30, 2025 • 32 mins
I am always looking for ways to improve. Send me a text and let me know your thoughts! - Kevin
Want to know the real secret behind high-growth SaaS companies? It's not what most marketers think.
When Omar Akhtar, founder of Benchmarker, surveyed 250+ B2B SaaS companies about their marketing spending patterns, he discovered something counterintuitive: the highest-performing companies split their marketing budgets almost equally between brand and demand generation activities (48% brand, 52% demand). Meanwhile, underperforming organizations were dramatically overinvesting in demand gen (65-70%) while neglecting brand (30-35%).
This revelation challenges the prevailing wisdom in tech marketing, where demand generation frequently dominates budget conversations and brand activities are often seen as "nice to have" luxuries. As Omar explains in our conversation, "Brand is the foundation upon which demand generation succeeds... it might be difficult to measure what it's doing when it's there, but look at what happens when it's not there."
Our discussion dives deep into how company size, funding structure (VC vs PE), and target market (enterprise vs SMB) affect marketing budget allocation. We explore why private-equity-backed companies tend to slash brand spending first, how enterprise-selling organizations allocate resources differently, and the surprising volatility of product-led growth models compared to sales-led approaches.
Perhaps most provocatively, Omar suggests that marketing attribution systems—the dashboards and software many CMOs rely on to justify their existence—might be among the least valuable tools in the marketing arsenal. Instead, focusing on straightforward activity metrics and competitive benchmarks could provide more actionable intelligence with less overhead.
Whether you're a tech CMO trying to justify brand investments to your CFO, a startup founder balancing growth priorities, or a marketer wondering if your budget allocations are aligned with market leaders, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about marketing investment strategies.
Follow Omar on LinkedIn to contribute questions to his upcoming research on channel performance metrics, or visit benchmarkerdata.com to explore his latest research.
🎧 Tech Marketing Rewired is hosted by Kevin Kerner, founder of Mighty & True.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin Kerner (00:00):
Hey guys, this is Kevin Kerner and I'm the host of
Tech Marketing Rewired.
In this episode, I sat downwith Omar Akhtar, the founder of
Benchmarker and one of thesharpest minds in B2B research
that I've met.
We dug into his latest researchon how SaaS companies are
really spending their marketingbudgets, and the patterns he
uncovered actually mightsurprise you.
We talked about the hidden costof brand, the myth of perfect
attribution and what trulyseparates high growth companies
(00:23):
from the rest.
I promise his latest researchon how 250 SaaS companies are
investing their marketingdollars right now is going to
change your mind about a lot ofthings, regardless of the
industry that you're in.
So I'm really excited about it.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
All right, Omar, welcome to theshow.
(00:45):
Great to have you, Thank you.
Omar Akhtar (00:47):
Brad.
Kevin Kerner (00:48):
I am super excited to talk to you today.
As you know, I have beenfollowing your research a bunch
and we've had severalconversations back and forth
about the brand-to-demand thinghere, so I'm very glad you
joined us.
Omar Akhtar (01:01):
I really appreciate it, Kevin.
I'm excited to get into theconversation today.
Kevin Kerner (01:04):
Yeah, awesome.
I thought we'd start.
Not many people maybe somepeople don't know you I thought
you'd start with a little bit ofyour background and then a bit
about Benchmarker and the typeof work that you do.
Omar Akhtar (01:13):
Yeah, absolutely so .
I'm the founder and principalanalyst of Benchmarker, which is
a research service thatprovides marketing spending and
performance benchmarks to B2BSaaS companies.
So I try to get as specific aspossible, and my background is
as a journalist and a techwriter.
And then I was an analyst ofthe head of research at
Altimeter Group, which is kindof like this mini Forrester out
(01:34):
here in the Bay Area, for almosta decade.
And then I was an associatepartner at Profit, where I was
helping consult companies onmarketing excellence and content
marketing, and really thisbusiness just came out of
fulfilling my own need.
Every time I'd go in andevaluate a company, they'd all
ask me the same thing, which isjust give us the numbers, what
does a good conversion rate looklike for a company of our size
and our industry?
How many emails would I besending every month?
(01:55):
And that number changeddepending on the kind of company
you were.
So I decided to go out,foolishly or wisely, and decided
to solve the problem on my own.
Kevin Kerner (02:04):
Yeah, that's great creds for what we're going to
talk about today and, as youknow, I'm kind of jazzed about
the whole brand to demand thing.
So I really want to dig intosome of that research you've
done recently.
I know that your latestresearch really really talks
about, I guess, how companiesare investing in both brand and
demand and, as we know, in thetech space where I play, demand
(02:24):
generation seems to get all thedollars.
But you're finding researchthat really nuances that out a
bit more.
So I wonder if you could talkabout that research.
Just give us an intro to thatresearch, what you're finding,
and then we'll dig into it some.
Omar Akhtar (02:35):
Yeah, absolutely so .
What I do with my research is Isurvey about 250 plus B2B SaaS
companies on a number ofdifferent topics and I tend to
do six surveys in the year.
The first and most really thebiggest one is the one on
budgets and spending, and then Isort of asked them questions on
following up on performance,marketing and events and all
that stuff.
But budgets and spending is thebig one, and what I found was
when I asked companies to, whenI asked marketing leaders to
(02:58):
tell me how they allocated theirbudgets across kind of really
the funnel, if you look at it.
So, brand awareness,performance marketing, demand
generation, sales enablement,post-purchase marketing and even
sort of account-based marketingand customer success One clear
pattern emerged and I kind ofdid this last year, I did this
again this year and the resultswere strikingly consistent which
was that the companies thatwere performing better than
(03:19):
everybody else, that wereexceeding their revenue and
their growth targets, wereinvesting almost equal amounts
of their marketing budget inbrand as they were in demand.
It was about 48% to 52% in favorof demand, so fairly close,
which was different from what Ifound overall when I surveyed
BBSS companies.
Overall I found that they wereinvesting 60% in demand and 40%
(03:43):
brand.
But here's the kicker the lowperforming companies were
over-indexing on demand by apretty decent amount.
Now they're getting into therange of 65% demand and maybe 35
, 30% in brand.
And that was really eye-openingto me, which was, you know, a
lot of people talk about like,how do you measure brand and how
do you see the effects of brand?
And there's a lot of ways youcan do it, but the big stark
(04:05):
difference was look at whathappens when you cut brand.
That was sort of the biggestthing is like, you know, it
might be difficult for you tomeasure what it's doing when
it's there, but look at whathappens when it's not there.
And really what it said to mewas that brand is the foundation
upon which demand generationsucceeds, and that's the way to
think about it.
And you can take it away andyou might survive for a couple
(04:26):
of months, but in the long termyou take away that brand
spending.
It has a very outsized impacton your conversion rates, on
your awareness rates and yourgrowth, and so that was really
eye-opening to me and I washappy to put that research out
there.
Kevin Kerner (04:38):
Yeah, that's why I was so excited about it,
because you can kind of feelthat you know, just as a
consumer, a business consumer,if someone's not on the day one
list you're probably not goingto look at, they're not even
going to enter in your mind, andif they show up in search or
you know, you may try to findsomeone, a brand name, and if
another other brand names thatshow up that you don't know,
you're not even going to look atthem.
So it's really incredible thatyou put into research what I
(05:00):
think everyone feels but mostmarketers don't necessarily
really want to wrestle with,because the term brand comes up,
which can be really tricky.
Did you do when you did theresearch?
Did you do any?
Did you define what you saidwas brand and what was demand
marketing?
Omar Akhtar (05:16):
Yeah, absolutely no .
That's a great question.
It comes up all the time.
The simplest way that I couldget people to categorize their
activities in brand versusdemand was to say that brand is
marketing activities that areraising awareness about what the
company and what the companydoes, and not asking for any
follow-up action afterwards.
So no clicks, no shares, noconversions, it's purely really
(05:37):
just eyeballs.
And so all digital activitiesthat they would blanket under
that would be considered brand.
And then demand would beactivities that increase
awareness but consideration butfollow up with a direct action.
So whether that's attendingevent or converting, opening
something, doing something,that's kind of a measurable
activity, and so that's the onlykind of to make it sort of easy
for people to bucket thosethings, because there's a lot of
(05:58):
debates about what's brandversus demand.
That was the way I ran thesurvey.
Kevin Kerner (06:03):
Yeah, I find the terms are.
The term brand is kind of aloaded loaded term because
people think billboards and youknow, tv ads and those types of
things.
But it can be, um, you know,it's any sort of branded media.
It's this type of stuff we'redoing here for brand.
You know, it's video, um, it'sthose types of things.
Did you find that there was any?
I would guess.
Let me just take a guess.
I don't know if this would showin the research.
(06:23):
I would guess that biggercompanies are better at
investing in brand marketingthan smaller companies.
Is that true?
Omar Akhtar (06:30):
Absolutely, absolutely, and there's a couple
of things that are in play overthere is the bigger the company
, the more likely that peoplealready know about them, so
their effort is less about thosequick capture conversions and
they're also not as focused onhigh growth anymore.
Once companies get above the250 million ARR mark, their
(06:52):
growth rates are prettyconservative, and so I would say
anything between like 11 to 20%is on the low end, but that's
decent for a company of thatsize.
But when you're high growth,the problem that I think a lot
of B2B SaaS founders and CMOsdon't realize is that if you are
chasing growth, if that's thebiggest metric that you're
looking after, you have to spendon brand, because that is what
(07:13):
feeds growth.
You can't grow by kind ofcapturing the people that are
just in market.
That's a tiny percentage.
Kevin Kerner (07:20):
Yeah, like 5%.
I think the research says like5% of people are marketer at any
one time.
Omar Akhtar (07:25):
Absolutely, and so that's kind of the big fallacy.
There is that when people thinkof brand, they think of stuff
that's nice to have but doesnother way.
In focusing on stuff that getsmeasured and measured sort of in
(07:47):
this very conservative manner,that's kind of bean counting
rather than actually seeing aholistic effect.
Kevin Kerner (07:53):
Yeah.
Do you capture any or do youhave an opinion on any
qualitative data as to why thesmaller brands, let's say
mid-sized to smaller brands,aren't invest in brand?
Is it just a misunderstood termaround brand?
Is it pressure from sales?
Is it the experience ofmarketing leadership?
What is it?
Omar Akhtar (08:13):
Two things I think that we saw it play over here.
One, when we see there's a biginfluence in private equity
investment which is differentfrom VC investment.
So that's where we see a bigdifference, right?
So if you have VC money, you'retold to grow and grow fast, and
when you have VC money, you canspend on stuff that isn't you
(08:36):
know.
It's not that you're not goingto get questioned on it, but
it's more understood that youcan spend on stuff like a
billboard or spend on stuff likeads that just kind of show your
logo and your name and what youdo.
And you got to spend a lot, yougot to get awareness, you got
to capture the market'sattention.
But when you're PE funded, theemphasis is growth is there, but
(08:56):
there's a big emphasis onefficiency.
So if we were to go into PEcompanies, you'd see a lot of
demands of saying that, yes, weunderstand you need to grow, but
we need you to be profitable.
What can you cut?
And that's where the mistakethat happens is that the brand
stuff because people strugglewith proving the impact of it is
the first one that gets cut,rightly or wrongly.
And so it's like, okay, wedon't need to put out that many
(09:18):
ads.
Maybe we can make it up withemail and content marketing,
which is what a lot of companiesdo.
We found that low growthcompanies were.
If you look at how we segmentedtheir budgets across channels.
Low growth companies arespending more of their budgets
on email and content marketing,so they're trying to make up for
that with just organic.
Kevin Kerner (09:35):
Wow, that's crazy.
Omar Akhtar (09:37):
And the high growth are spending on paid search and
paid social.
No two ways about it.
You got to pay to play.
Events was an interesting one,though it's almost like when PE
funded companies were the onlycohort that didn't want to spend
on events, so everybody elsekind of spending a lot on events
, but except for PE fundedcompanies, and so it's one of
those things where it's like, ifyou are not allowed to spend on
(09:58):
advertising and kind of yourtraditional brand awareness
activities, you try to make itup through content marketing,
organic content.
You try to make it up throughjust you know, events, showing
up at events, doing what you canthere.
Or you try to make it up withemail marketing, your
newsletters and your dripcampaigns, whatever it is, and
that's really, really difficult.
Kevin Kerner (10:17):
Golly, that is so fascinating and counterintuitive
to so many marketers that arethinking about content marketing
and email and nurture and allthese things.
It just is crazy you shouldmarket this research to PE
companies so you can help outall those smaller brands.
Omar Akhtar (10:34):
Absolutely.
And again, you know, I think toan extent PE companies get
demonized a lot in the marketingworld and it's one of those
things where, like you, have tounderstand their goals.
Their goals are fundamentallydifferent from venture capital
goals.
Their goals are to haveprofitable companies, companies
that where they can easily saythat, look, this is a
money-making machine and we canresell it because we've, you
know, put it into shape, andthat can look kind of overly
(10:56):
stifling for marketing.
But I also think that you knowthe days of kind of free VC
money is kind of ending as well,right, and so you're going.
It's not that you're not goingto be given money to grow, but
you're going to have to be veryconvincing about how to do that.
And again, this is kind of aparticular affliction of B2B
(11:17):
SaaS marketing.
If you talk to marketers thatare on kind of everywhere else
in the world and in the country,they intrinsically know brand
awareness.
It's the demand gen side thatthey struggle with.
They don't know how to capturethe demand with some of the
digital ways they understandbrand awareness really well.
In B2B SaaS it's kind of theopposite, where they're very
good at capturing in demand andthey're very good at converting
and having digital experiencesand all that, all those tactics
(11:39):
but building a brand andsustaining it is something
that's kind of a fundamentalscience that they need to get
behind.
Kevin Kerner (11:45):
Yeah, it's a kind of a speed to outcome play that
you need to live within, andbrand is not a speed, typically
a speed play.
It's more of a longer term play.
Maybe it's getting shorter withsome more authentic marketing,
(12:05):
personality led marketing, butit still takes a lot longer to
get to that outcome.
So that means that some ofthese smaller well, let's say,
mid-size SaaS companies tosmaller SaaS companies they must
have a catalyst, they must havea person internally that's
helping, that has that sort ofmindset.
I wonder how they?
Do you have any insight intohow they're messaging this
effort in their own companies toactually be successful, to get
the, to be able to get theleeway to spend some money on
(12:26):
brand?
Omar Akhtar (12:27):
Yeah, you know, and I feel for marketing leaders at
those sizes of companies istypically they've been brought
up in the world of demand gen,right Like that's where they
come from.
It's very rare that you seefolks that have been on the
agency side and have builtbrands and then they come into
sort of like SaaS.
The folks that are here aremostly coming up from the demand
gen side of things, so theylive quarter to quarter and that
which has kind of been the SaaSway of doing things is like
(12:49):
quarterly growth, quarterlynumbers.
When you live quarter toquarter it's really difficult to
talk about brand because thatdoesn't happen.
The best thing I can do formarketers at that stage is kind
of give them good analogies.
Right, if you go to the gym andyou work out, you know, yes,
you can see maybe a little bitof a difference, but you're not
going to lose weight overnight.
You're not going to buildmuscles overnight.
You're not going to see a bigdifference day to day.
(13:11):
But once you see a difference,maybe six months a year from now
, not only do you see adifference, but that difference,
the benefits, compoundcontinuously.
So once you get fit, like youstay fit for a long time it has
so many benefits that go on andthat's.
Those are the kinds of storiesthat we have to kind of tell
marketers and this is ironiccoming from a data guy, it's
like I can show you all the datayou want, but I don't think
(13:31):
marketers have good stories andgood analogies to educate their
investors, to educate their CEOsto say that, look, this is how
marketing works.
It's a long-term effect, thisthing feeds into this thing.
It's not two separate leversthat we have to pull.
One feeds into the other and ifwe take one out, then the other
one won't work.
Those kinds of analogies, Iwould imagine, do a much better
(13:52):
job than any data that I cangive you, but you should look
into it.
Kevin Kerner (13:59):
Yeah, I had can give you, but you should look.
Yeah, I had one um cmo that Iwas talking to you probably a
month or two ago, who was who Iwas talking, having the same
discussion with and, um, she wastelling me that she really
doesn't mention the term brandwhen she presents to the elt
because she's just worried.
So she'll do, she'll, um, shehas brand tactics going on but
she'll try to, um, basicallylike keep them under the covers
and that's that's the one waythat she could get it across.
Yeah, but there must be um,someone asked you about
(14:22):
measurement, because you canmeasure brand and you can
measure demand.
Those two things separately.
Maybe a couple questions one,have you seen any successful
efforts on measuring brand?
That's not a bigger brand study, because there's a lot of
pushback against doing those andthey're typically long-term.
And secondly, have you seen anysuccess in measuring brands'
(14:43):
effect on demand?
So, what metrics would equal?
Hey, we're doing this brandeffort that's actually having a
positive effect on the demandgeneration that we're running.
Omar Akhtar (14:54):
Yeah, I can give you kind of the small micro
example of myself and then Igive you the companies I speak
to.
The key word is incrementality.
Are we doing?
Are we getting?
Are we you know and I hate touse sports analogies but are we
just getting more chances at bat?
If you start thinking aboutmarketing as a numbers game and
here's the funny part is like weunderstand that sales is a
(15:14):
numbers game, right, say,everybody knows that, like look,
you're gonna, and it's likebaseball that you get like 30%
of the time if you convertpeople you're a hall of famer
and that's kind of sales.
But we don't extend that samesort of mentality to marketing.
Everybody expects marketing tobe like that one viral moment or
everybody the Steve Jobsiankind of way of getting things
done.
Where you're just this giantmarketing machine.
(15:35):
That's magical.
Marketing is a numbers game.
The more you do of everymarketing activity, the more
people that it touches, the morepositive effects you're going
to see.
And I can kind of give you theidea that we were talking about.
Some of the stuff that I've donefor my own business is when I
write more blog posts, when Isend more emails, when I just
(15:55):
kind of show up more.
Now I can't tell unlesssomebody specifically tells me,
and I don't expect this tohappen.
Where someone says I read thatLinkedIn post of yours, I am
ready to buy that was awesome.
It's never going to happen.
But I do know that people thatread my LinkedIn post six months
ago they followed me onLinkedIn.
They look at everything thatI'm reading and then one day
(16:16):
they're like you know what?
I want to take a call with themand find out a bit more about
this kind of stuff.
Now again, the ROI on that isastronomical.
It doesn't cost me a lot to putit out there, but I can't say
that my LinkedIn converted thismany people.
All I can say is, when I putout more LinkedIn posts, when I
do more of it, it reaches morepeople.
And when I reach more people,more of them visit my website,
(16:39):
more of them follow me, more ofthem respond to my emails.
Good things happen all around,and I went from this world of
trying to figure out attributionmodels and checking out
measurement software and today Ireally am kind of on the other
side of it, which is to say that, look, it's kind of a fool's
errand to focus so much onattribution.
Are good things happening?
Are more good things happening?
(17:00):
Are you getting more chances atbat when you spend on brand?
And if you are, then you'redoing something right.
And if you aren't, you know ifall that's been on brand is
having a minimal effect on atbat.
That's when you know that theactivity within that is not
working.
Your creative is not working.
Your creative is not working.
Your messaging is muddled,you're targeting the wrong
audience.
Those are the kinds of thingsyou start to figure out.
Kevin Kerner (17:20):
But as a whole, if you do it right, it should work
.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think the LinkedIn analyticsthe LinkedIn measurement and
analytics is actuallyunderutilized from a brand
perspective and maybe if therewas more employee-led branding,
so when an employee becomes theactual part of the brand and
they get to speak and you couldlook at their analytics on, you
know how they're, how manyfollowers they have, how how
(17:42):
many people are commenting ontheir posts, that is seems like
one of the new marketingbenchmarks that sometimes
sometimes really getting to lookat it because it's all.
It's all about click toconversion.
But there's a whole, there's awhole host of engagement that
happens before that conversion.
That's trackable on LinkedIn.
You can see it on LinkedIn.
You can see what's happening.
It's just, and that convertsback to the site and you can
track it on your site.
(18:03):
I was telling you before we gotstarted about our YouTube
journey and we really didn't domuch on YouTube till the podcast
started and the last few monthshere and I got a third of all
of the traffic we've ever hadand we didn't have much traffic.
We got a third of our trafficin the first month of launching
the YouTube channel.
So it's just and what'sincredible is the shorts.
(18:26):
It's primarily the shorts thatwork and it's the weirdest
topics on the shorts, like I did, one topic on a white paper,
why white papers may not be thebest piece of content to put out
in those days.
Then that got more than youknow, talking to Scott Brinker
or someone on that one week.
It was just so.
There are new marketing metricsthat you can go after that
(18:46):
maybe aren't as wonky as some ofthe demand gen metrics that you
would have normally put outthere, but they're.
They may be more valuable intoday's economy.
Omar Akhtar (18:56):
Yeah, absolutely, and that's great to hear.
By the way, like I think youknow the fact that you're
because it's hard work rightPutting yourself out there, but
you put it out there I thinkit's fantastic that you're
getting great results and sortof immediate impact.
That's got to be reallyvalidating.
Kevin Kerner (19:08):
Yeah, it hasn't converted Like it's not
converting to, it's convertingto traffic on the site, I
believe and this is somethingJacob Banks said in the last
podcast.
But you got to as anentrepreneur, you can even as a
business owner or marketingperson.
You got to.
You got to go for the channelsthat you believe in and you just
take some bets and it justseems so logical these days that
you would have more peopleignoring emails and ignoring ads
(19:32):
and going more towardsinfluencer led, slash, person,
authentic voices in the space,and so that's what we're trying.
It seems to be working.
Were there any other surprisingelements of the research that
you found that we haven't talkedabout?
Omar Akhtar (19:46):
One thing that I thought was particularly
interesting and I wasn't tryingto find this out, but the
difference between well, twothings I'll tell you.
But there's a big difference incompanies that are selling to
the enterprise versus companiesthat are not Selling to the
enterprise is its own beast andeverybody is trying to do it.
Everybody's trying to move upmarket.
But you can't sell to theenterprise with the setup of
(20:07):
someone that's selling to SMBsor mid-market.
Everything in my research showthat companies that are selling
to the enterprise, they spendmore on sales versus marketing.
They have more of a headcount.
More of their marketing budgetis invested in people rather
than tools or programs.
So it's very much kind of thisfairly complex selling motion
(20:28):
that takes a long time, it's notvery rewarding and the
benchmarks are completely out ofwhack for someone to sell into
the enterprise.
So if you're going to do theenterprise, be prepared for a
whole new level of pain andcomplication.
So that's one thing that wasinteresting to me.
The second one how much?
Kevin Kerner (20:45):
before you get into the second one, how much
more do they spend on sales?
The sales organization versusmarketing in selling to the
enterprise Makes sense to me.
Omar Akhtar (20:54):
Yeah.
Kevin Kerner (20:54):
That they would.
Omar Akhtar (20:55):
Typically, if we see kind of a typical split it's
about in a smaller company,it's about 60-40 in favor of
sales.
When you get to sort of midcompanies like 50 to 100, it's
about 35% marketing and 65.
But if you're selling to theenterprise, the low end of that
(21:15):
is 25% marketing and everythingelse sales.
Enterprise, it goes all the way.
The low end of that is 25%marketing and everything else
sales.
That's something that you kindof see is like a couple of
things are probably happening atplay there, which is that those
companies are bigger and sothey're going after bigger
targets and when you're biggeryou just spend more on sales.
That's kind of the way it is.
Because you're marketing, youknow law of diminishing returns
and all that doesn't mean thatyour budgets are smaller, it
just means that you know salesis just yeah, and it's solution
(21:40):
selling and you have accountteams and all the larger sales
organizations.
Kevin Kerner (21:44):
That makes sense.
I'm sorry I interrupted you forthe second.
What was the second one?
Omar Akhtar (22:03):
more on their website.
Those are all things that wecan expect to see, but their
growth rates are much morevolatile than if you're
sales-led growth, which isanother way of saying that
product-led growth is excitingbut it's risky.
Sales-led growth is boring, butit's a bit more dependable and
so you can control the outcomesa little bit better.
With sales-led growth it's likeif you've got enough of a
decent sales team, you canpredict your growth by the kind
of activities that you're doing.
(22:24):
Product-led growth depends alot on just kind of immediate
product market fit, virality,word of mouth, having you know,
unlocking that perfect featureon your website that causes
people to convert and buyimmediately.
There's a lot more tinkering todo with product-led growth, so
they have their floor of growthrates.
There's a lot lower, but theirhigh of growth rates is a lot
(22:46):
higher, so there's a very bigdynamic range in product-led
growth companies.
Kevin Kerner (22:49):
Wow, this is so valuable.
I can't.
I mean, I gotta imagine peoplewill want this research because
product-led growth gets such abig.
You know it's getting arenaissance, let's say there's a
lot of people interested in it.
It's kind of attractive.
But I wouldn't have known howto quantify sales impact like
actual revenue impact.
One versus the other.
That's just fascinating to meand I wonder if it's the
(23:12):
maturity of the sales modelsversus PLG models.
But yeah, it's really.
Do you have a take on why onewould be better, why PLG would
be riskier?
Omar Akhtar (23:24):
I think it's because the sales motion is kind
of a tried and tested motion.
Right, you make enough calls, acertain number of those people
will return your calls or emailsand a certain number of them
will buy your product.
Run through a demo.
People are used to buying thatway, people are used to selling
that way.
But in order for you to sellyour product without a sales
team like just hope that they'llfind you it depends on them
(23:46):
searching for the right keywords.
It depends on them.
It depends on you showcasingthe product that's immediately
attractive.
There's so many differentvariables to get right.
With product-led growth, so youget it right.
There's high growth, but mostcompanies take a lot of time to
get it right, and so there's alot more tinkering.
Kevin Kerner (24:02):
Yeah, a really, really good answer, and I
wouldn't have thought of that.
But you're exactly right.
That's exactly the reason.
Where does this go?
Like, what are you going to dowith the research now that
you've done it a couple of times, right, and now you can see the
trend Like what's the next stepin this?
Omar Akhtar (24:19):
I know you'll keep think there's still in the next
round that I do.
The next survey that I'm goingto do is more on like
performance-based metrics.
So this means like cost ofcustomer acquisition, cost per
leads on different channels, andso this is more around.
I'll get better answers to saythat if you are spending on
brand, which channels areworking for you?
And if you're spending on brand, what is the benchmark for what
(24:40):
good looks like Versus.
If you're not spending on brand, what's the benchmark for what
good looks like?
Those are the kinds of thingsthat this survey, which is
purely about how companies spend, the next survey, will answer a
bit more about how they performwhen they spend in this pattern
, and I think that's importantbecause it shows that.
Look in B2B, saas even thoughit's all SaaS, your goals are
different and the matrix ofgoals are very different.
(25:03):
You can be a midsize companythat's chasing high growth.
You can be a large company thatjust wants to consolidate its
market share and it's notlooking for high growth.
You can be an incumbent.
That's like $10 million and youneed to grow like a bajillion
percent in the next two years,depending on what your goals are
.
How should you think aboutinvesting in your channels and
(25:24):
what channels are working versusnot, and I think you know us
talking about video.
That's going to be a big playwhere we start asking about,
like, what tactics are working.
So there's video that exists onits own.
There's video that lives insocial media.
That's now.
There's now video that isembedded in your email marketing
.
So how well is that performingcompared to all the static
emails that you sent before?
That's going to be reallyeye-opening and I'm excited for
(25:45):
that.
Kevin Kerner (25:46):
Oh, that's going to be so cool.
I mean, that is the question,because, let's say, you could
convince your leadership teamthat you need to spend more Like
.
Then it's like, what do you do?
What's actually going to work,and by company size, and that
cool.
And when you put that together,it'd be really interesting to
look at tactics, newer tactics,because video is a is kind of a
(26:07):
format, but that's.
You know, how are you usingvideo?
Is it podcast, is it shorts, isit?
You know all these other thingsbecause, because within each
one of those tactics there'sapproaches, let's say, for, um,
marketing.
I just think marketing is goingto change pretty significantly
in terms of what works for brandand, and you just wonder if
brand media is going to work asa primary tactic.
(26:30):
Maybe it's a secondary, overlaytactic versus other things like
what we're doing here.
That will be a superinteresting study.
When will that come out?
Omar Akhtar (26:41):
That's going to come out in June.
So if you follow me, know andthis is if you, if you follow me
on LinkedIn, just this is thetime to message me and say, hey,
this is what I want to find outin my next survey that you do,
because I'm just about ready tolaunch that survey.
I've got kind of the basicquestions ready, but you know,
this is the time to ask me whatyou want to find out.
Kevin Kerner (26:58):
Oh, that's going to be.
That will be very interesting.
I should have you back on whenwe, when we talk to you.
That that'd be super cool.
Omar Akhtar (27:04):
Absolutely.
Kevin Kerner (27:05):
Okay, I wanted to do one thing with you before I
let you go here.
I do a thing I've been doing,this thing called AI roulette,
where I load your profile intoperplexity, I give it the
information we're talking, we'retalking about today, and then I
basically ask it to tell, toask me a question.
That's, you know, provocative,slash, disrupting, and so let me
let me push send here and seewhat it says here and hopefully
(27:27):
it will come back without toomuch.
Okay, this is good.
Okay, based on all your dataand experience researching sass
brands, what's the one thingsass marketers consistently
obsess over that your researchsuggests doesn't actually matter
?
Omar Akhtar (27:41):
oh, that's a really good one.
Gosh, gosh, they obsess over somuch.
But yeah, I would go back toattribution.
I think it's just if you wokeup tomorrow and you said, and
you were given permission to saythat we're not gonna do any
attribution, I suspect that yourmarketing wouldn't.
The success of your marketingwouldn't change much at all, I
would hypothesize very stronglythat if you ripped out whatever
(28:04):
attribution software, whateverattribution dashboard, whatever
it is that you have in yourcompany, you ripped it out, you
wouldn't lose much, Because thetruth is you're already spending
on certain activities.
You should track how thoseactivities are performing.
So, for example and not to tootmy own horn but if you're, if
you're, if you're getting lessvisits to your website, then a
(28:25):
company that's of the same sizehas been around as long as you,
probably not doing as well asyou should be.
If you're spending way more onyour LinkedIn to acquire a lead
than another company is, you'reprobably not doing as well as
you should be.
But having said that, if youare trying to attribute your
success to a single channel,multiple channels, trying to
(28:45):
track the journey across allthose different things, I would
say that that's the ultimategoal of marketing, which is to
make more people aware of whoyou are, what you do, and to get
them to your own properties totake some sort of quantifiable
action.
You would still probably bejust as good as that as you were
with attribution software.
Kevin Kerner (29:03):
Wow, to the dismay of attribution software
providers everywhere, I don'tknow about you.
Omar Akhtar (29:09):
Have you seen one that's really been like yep, I
believe this one.
Kevin Kerner (29:12):
And you don't-, no , no, no, no, and they're
usually Omar.
They're usually a reaction tosomeone downstream, like sales,
asking for or taking credit fora lead and needing to then work
it back up.
So if you take that equationout of the mix the defense of
like not defense, but workingwith sales to try to tell, hey,
we gave you this then reallyit's just.
(29:33):
It's just, it could be.
I totally agree.
It could just be activity based.
It could be more visits to yoursite, less spending on ads,
more followers on socialchannels.
It doesn't need to be somecomplex system going downstream,
but there's always the.
You know, I feel the pain of myfriends that are CMOs needing
to try to justify when salessays we don't get any leads for
(29:54):
marketing.
They have to somehow justify it.
But that's a great answer.
I'm always amazed how so I'vedone this like four times and
perplexity does much betterquestions than I do every single
time.
It is quite impressive and it'sa fun.
Eventually I'll just do thepodcast by, just like you, and
I'll just be answering questionson perplexity, ai questions.
I am super happy to have hadyou here.
(30:15):
The research is just.
You know, I love geeking outover this particular topic and
you've put a voice to, I think,something that is unknown.
You've made known what has beenunknown in the past, which is
really cool, and I'm veryexcited to see the next round of
this.
I'm going to urge everyone tofollow you on LinkedIn.
Go to your site, but I wantedto give you a chance.
(30:39):
Is there anything that youwould want people to do after
watching this?
How do they stay in touch withyou other than those things?
What's the best way?
Omar Akhtar (30:46):
Yeah well, first of all, thank you so much for
having me up here.
I can talk about this stuff allday long and it's a wonderful
conversation to have with you,so I was excited when you sent
me over the topics.
I'm like, oh, this is gonna bea good one.
So I really appreciate it and Ienjoyed my hour with you.
For realists, if you want tofollow me on LinkedIn, that's
probably the easiest way.
You know I'm perpetually online, more than I should be, and you
(31:09):
know if you want to check outthe website benchmarkerdatacom,
we do it on a subscription basedmodel.
So if you want to just sign upand get the data and you want to
cut the data, anybody you wantwe have a database.
You don't have to talk to me oranybody you want.
You can just come to thewebsite and do it.
You know I'm trying product-ledgrowth as well as sales-led
growth.
Let's see how that goes.
My goal really is to be theCMO's best friend in the
boardroom so that they don'tmake decisions in the dark, and
(31:32):
if I can do that, then I'mpretty happy about it.
Kevin Kerner (31:34):
Yeah, I think it's great.
Like for me, it's a greatquarterly planning tool.
Right, you're just kind ofredoing the plan or you're
you're making, giving evidencefor the plan that you're in
maybe tweaking some stuff basedon the data, but it's really
fantastic.
Omar, that's been awesome.
I'll include all the socialsand everything in the
description here, but thank youso much for joining me and we'll
(31:55):
.
I hope we talk again soon.
I'm counting on it.
Thank you, kevin.
Take care, okay, man, I'll seeyou.
Hey guys, this is Kevin Kerner and I'm the host of
Tech Marketing Rewired.
In this episode, I sat downwith Omar Akhtar, the founder of
Benchmarker and one of thesharpest minds in B2B research
that I've met.
We dug into his latest researchon how SaaS companies are
really spending their marketingbudgets, and the patterns he
uncovered actually mightsurprise you.
We talked about the hidden costof brand, the myth of perfect
attribution and what trulyseparates high growth companies
(00:23):
from the rest.
I promise his latest researchon how 250 SaaS companies are
investing their marketingdollars right now is going to
change your mind about a lot ofthings, regardless of the
industry that you're in.
So I'm really excited about it.
Let's get to it.
This is Tech Marketing Rewired.
All right, Omar, welcome to theshow.
(00:45):
Great to have you, Thank you.
Omar Akhtar (00:47):
Brad.
Kevin Kerner (00:48):
I am super excited to talk to you today.
As you know, I have beenfollowing your research a bunch
and we've had severalconversations back and forth
about the brand-to-demand thinghere, so I'm very glad you
joined us.
Omar Akhtar (01:01):
I really appreciate it, Kevin.
I'm excited to get into theconversation today.
Kevin Kerner (01:04):
Yeah, awesome.
I thought we'd start.
Not many people maybe somepeople don't know you I thought
you'd start with a little bit ofyour background and then a bit
about Benchmarker and the typeof work that you do.
Omar Akhtar (01:13):
Yeah, absolutely so .
I'm the founder and principalanalyst of Benchmarker, which is
a research service thatprovides marketing spending and
performance benchmarks to B2BSaaS companies.
So I try to get as specific aspossible, and my background is
as a journalist and a techwriter.
And then I was an analyst ofthe head of research at
Altimeter Group, which is kindof like this mini Forrester out
(01:34):
here in the Bay Area, for almosta decade.
And then I was an associatepartner at Profit, where I was
helping consult companies onmarketing excellence and content
marketing, and really thisbusiness just came out of
fulfilling my own need.
Every time I'd go in andevaluate a company, they'd all
ask me the same thing, which isjust give us the numbers, what
does a good conversion rate looklike for a company of our size
and our industry?
How many emails would I besending every month?
(01:55):
And that number changeddepending on the kind of company
you were.
So I decided to go out,foolishly or wisely, and decided
to solve the problem on my own.
Kevin Kerner (02:04):
Yeah, that's great creds for what we're going to
talk about today and, as youknow, I'm kind of jazzed about
the whole brand to demand thing.
So I really want to dig intosome of that research you've
done recently.
I know that your latestresearch really really talks
about, I guess, how companiesare investing in both brand and
demand and, as we know, in thetech space where I play, demand
(02:24):
generation seems to get all thedollars.
But you're finding researchthat really nuances that out a
bit more.
So I wonder if you could talkabout that research.
Just give us an intro to thatresearch, what you're finding,
and then we'll dig into it some.
Omar Akhtar (02:35):
Yeah, absolutely so .
What I do with my research is Isurvey about 250 plus B2B SaaS
companies on a number ofdifferent topics and I tend to
do six surveys in the year.
The first and most really thebiggest one is the one on
budgets and spending, and then Isort of asked them questions on
following up on performance,marketing and events and all
that stuff.
But budgets and spending is thebig one, and what I found was
when I asked companies to, whenI asked marketing leaders to
(02:58):
tell me how they allocated theirbudgets across kind of really
the funnel, if you look at it.
So, brand awareness,performance marketing, demand
generation, sales enablement,post-purchase marketing and even
sort of account-based marketingand customer success One clear
pattern emerged and I kind ofdid this last year, I did this
again this year and the resultswere strikingly consistent which
was that the companies thatwere performing better than
(03:19):
everybody else, that wereexceeding their revenue and
their growth targets, wereinvesting almost equal amounts
of their marketing budget inbrand as they were in demand.
It was about 48% to 52% in favorof demand, so fairly close,
which was different from what Ifound overall when I surveyed
BBSS companies.
Overall I found that they wereinvesting 60% in demand and 40%
(03:43):
brand.
But here's the kicker the lowperforming companies were
over-indexing on demand by apretty decent amount.
Now they're getting into therange of 65% demand and maybe 35
, 30% in brand.
And that was really eye-openingto me, which was, you know, a
lot of people talk about like,how do you measure brand and how
do you see the effects of brand?
And there's a lot of ways youcan do it, but the big stark
(04:05):
difference was look at whathappens when you cut brand.
That was sort of the biggestthing is like, you know, it
might be difficult for you tomeasure what it's doing when
it's there, but look at whathappens when it's not there.
And really what it said to mewas that brand is the foundation
upon which demand generationsucceeds, and that's the way to
think about it.
And you can take it away andyou might survive for a couple
(04:26):
of months, but in the long termyou take away that brand
spending.
It has a very outsized impacton your conversion rates, on
your awareness rates and yourgrowth, and so that was really
eye-opening to me and I washappy to put that research out
there.
Kevin Kerner (04:38):
Yeah, that's why I was so excited about it,
because you can kind of feelthat you know, just as a
consumer, a business consumer,if someone's not on the day one
list you're probably not goingto look at, they're not even
going to enter in your mind, andif they show up in search or
you know, you may try to findsomeone, a brand name, and if
another other brand names thatshow up that you don't know,
you're not even going to look atthem.
So it's really incredible thatyou put into research what I
(05:00):
think everyone feels but mostmarketers don't necessarily
really want to wrestle with,because the term brand comes up,
which can be really tricky.
Did you do when you did theresearch?
Did you do any?
Did you define what you saidwas brand and what was demand
marketing?
Omar Akhtar (05:16):
Yeah, absolutely no .
That's a great question.
It comes up all the time.
The simplest way that I couldget people to categorize their
activities in brand versusdemand was to say that brand is
marketing activities that areraising awareness about what the
company and what the companydoes, and not asking for any
follow-up action afterwards.
So no clicks, no shares, noconversions, it's purely really
(05:37):
just eyeballs.
And so all digital activitiesthat they would blanket under
that would be considered brand.
And then demand would beactivities that increase
awareness but consideration butfollow up with a direct action.
So whether that's attendingevent or converting, opening
something, doing something,that's kind of a measurable
activity, and so that's the onlykind of to make it sort of easy
for people to bucket thosethings, because there's a lot of
(05:58):
debates about what's brandversus demand.
That was the way I ran thesurvey.
Kevin Kerner (06:03):
Yeah, I find the terms are.
The term brand is kind of aloaded loaded term because
people think billboards and youknow, tv ads and those types of
things.
But it can be, um, you know,it's any sort of branded media.
It's this type of stuff we'redoing here for brand.
You know, it's video, um, it'sthose types of things.
Did you find that there was any?
I would guess.
Let me just take a guess.
I don't know if this would showin the research.
(06:23):
I would guess that biggercompanies are better at
investing in brand marketingthan smaller companies.
Is that true?
Omar Akhtar (06:30):
Absolutely, absolutely, and there's a couple
of things that are in play overthere is the bigger the company
, the more likely that peoplealready know about them, so
their effort is less about thosequick capture conversions and
they're also not as focused onhigh growth anymore.
Once companies get above the250 million ARR mark, their
(06:52):
growth rates are prettyconservative, and so I would say
anything between like 11 to 20%is on the low end, but that's
decent for a company of thatsize.
But when you're high growth,the problem that I think a lot
of B2B SaaS founders and CMOsdon't realize is that if you are
chasing growth, if that's thebiggest metric that you're
looking after, you have to spendon brand, because that is what
(07:13):
feeds growth.
You can't grow by kind ofcapturing the people that are
just in market.
That's a tiny percentage.
Kevin Kerner (07:20):
Yeah, like 5%.
I think the research says like5% of people are marketer at any
one time.
Omar Akhtar (07:25):
Absolutely, and so that's kind of the big fallacy.
There is that when people thinkof brand, they think of stuff
that's nice to have but doesnother way.
In focusing on stuff that getsmeasured and measured sort of in
(07:47):
this very conservative manner,that's kind of bean counting
rather than actually seeing aholistic effect.
Kevin Kerner (07:53):
Yeah.
Do you capture any or do youhave an opinion on any
qualitative data as to why thesmaller brands, let's say
mid-sized to smaller brands,aren't invest in brand?
Is it just a misunderstood termaround brand?
Is it pressure from sales?
Is it the experience ofmarketing leadership?
What is it?
Omar Akhtar (08:13):
Two things I think that we saw it play over here.
One, when we see there's a biginfluence in private equity
investment which is differentfrom VC investment.
So that's where we see a bigdifference, right?
So if you have VC money, you'retold to grow and grow fast, and
when you have VC money, you canspend on stuff that isn't you
(08:36):
know.
It's not that you're not goingto get questioned on it, but
it's more understood that youcan spend on stuff like a
billboard or spend on stuff likeads that just kind of show your
logo and your name and what youdo.
And you got to spend a lot, yougot to get awareness, you got
to capture the market'sattention.
But when you're PE funded, theemphasis is growth is there, but
(08:56):
there's a big emphasis onefficiency.
So if we were to go into PEcompanies, you'd see a lot of
demands of saying that, yes, weunderstand you need to grow, but
we need you to be profitable.
What can you cut?
And that's where the mistakethat happens is that the brand
stuff because people strugglewith proving the impact of it is
the first one that gets cut,rightly or wrongly.
And so it's like, okay, wedon't need to put out that many
(09:18):
ads.
Maybe we can make it up withemail and content marketing,
which is what a lot of companiesdo.
We found that low growthcompanies were.
If you look at how we segmentedtheir budgets across channels.
Low growth companies arespending more of their budgets
on email and content marketing,so they're trying to make up for
that with just organic.
Kevin Kerner (09:35):
Wow, that's crazy.
Omar Akhtar (09:37):
And the high growth are spending on paid search and
paid social.
No two ways about it.
You got to pay to play.
Events was an interesting one,though it's almost like when PE
funded companies were the onlycohort that didn't want to spend
on events, so everybody elsekind of spending a lot on events
, but except for PE fundedcompanies, and so it's one of
those things where it's like, ifyou are not allowed to spend on
(09:58):
advertising and kind of yourtraditional brand awareness
activities, you try to make itup through content marketing,
organic content.
You try to make it up throughjust you know, events, showing
up at events, doing what you canthere.
Or you try to make it up withemail marketing, your
newsletters and your dripcampaigns, whatever it is, and
that's really, really difficult.
Kevin Kerner (10:17):
Golly, that is so fascinating and counterintuitive
to so many marketers that arethinking about content marketing
and email and nurture and allthese things.
It just is crazy you shouldmarket this research to PE
companies so you can help outall those smaller brands.
Omar Akhtar (10:34):
Absolutely.
And again, you know, I think toan extent PE companies get
demonized a lot in the marketingworld and it's one of those
things where, like you, have tounderstand their goals.
Their goals are fundamentallydifferent from venture capital
goals.
Their goals are to haveprofitable companies, companies
that where they can easily saythat, look, this is a
money-making machine and we canresell it because we've, you
know, put it into shape, andthat can look kind of overly
(10:56):
stifling for marketing.
But I also think that you knowthe days of kind of free VC
money is kind of ending as well,right, and so you're going.
It's not that you're not goingto be given money to grow, but
you're going to have to be veryconvincing about how to do that.
And again, this is kind of aparticular affliction of B2B
(11:17):
SaaS marketing.
If you talk to marketers thatare on kind of everywhere else
in the world and in the country,they intrinsically know brand
awareness.
It's the demand gen side thatthey struggle with.
They don't know how to capturethe demand with some of the
digital ways they understandbrand awareness really well.
In B2B SaaS it's kind of theopposite, where they're very
good at capturing in demand andthey're very good at converting
and having digital experiencesand all that, all those tactics
(11:39):
but building a brand andsustaining it is something
that's kind of a fundamentalscience that they need to get
behind.
Kevin Kerner (11:45):
Yeah, it's a kind of a speed to outcome play that
you need to live within, andbrand is not a speed, typically
a speed play.
It's more of a longer term play.
Maybe it's getting shorter withsome more authentic marketing,
(12:05):
personality led marketing, butit still takes a lot longer to
get to that outcome.
So that means that some ofthese smaller well, let's say,
mid-size SaaS companies tosmaller SaaS companies they must
have a catalyst, they must havea person internally that's
helping, that has that sort ofmindset.
I wonder how they?
Do you have any insight intohow they're messaging this
effort in their own companies toactually be successful, to get
the, to be able to get theleeway to spend some money on
(12:26):
brand?
Omar Akhtar (12:27):
Yeah, you know, and I feel for marketing leaders at
those sizes of companies istypically they've been brought
up in the world of demand gen,right Like that's where they
come from.
It's very rare that you seefolks that have been on the
agency side and have builtbrands and then they come into
sort of like SaaS.
The folks that are here aremostly coming up from the demand
gen side of things, so theylive quarter to quarter and that
which has kind of been the SaaSway of doing things is like
(12:49):
quarterly growth, quarterlynumbers.
When you live quarter toquarter it's really difficult to
talk about brand because thatdoesn't happen.
The best thing I can do formarketers at that stage is kind
of give them good analogies.
Right, if you go to the gym andyou work out, you know, yes,
you can see maybe a little bitof a difference, but you're not
going to lose weight overnight.
You're not going to buildmuscles overnight.
You're not going to see a bigdifference day to day.
(13:11):
But once you see a difference,maybe six months a year from now
, not only do you see adifference, but that difference,
the benefits, compoundcontinuously.
So once you get fit, like youstay fit for a long time it has
so many benefits that go on andthat's.
Those are the kinds of storiesthat we have to kind of tell
marketers and this is ironiccoming from a data guy, it's
like I can show you all the datayou want, but I don't think
(13:31):
marketers have good stories andgood analogies to educate their
investors, to educate their CEOsto say that, look, this is how
marketing works.
It's a long-term effect, thisthing feeds into this thing.
It's not two separate leversthat we have to pull.
One feeds into the other and ifwe take one out, then the other
one won't work.
Those kinds of analogies, Iwould imagine, do a much better
(13:52):
job than any data that I cangive you, but you should look
into it.
Kevin Kerner (13:59):
Yeah, I had can give you, but you should look.
Yeah, I had one um cmo that Iwas talking to you probably a
month or two ago, who was who Iwas talking, having the same
discussion with and, um, she wastelling me that she really
doesn't mention the term brandwhen she presents to the elt
because she's just worried.
So she'll do, she'll, um, shehas brand tactics going on but
she'll try to, um, basicallylike keep them under the covers
and that's that's the one waythat she could get it across.
Yeah, but there must be um,someone asked you about
(14:22):
measurement, because you canmeasure brand and you can
measure demand.
Those two things separately.
Maybe a couple questions one,have you seen any successful
efforts on measuring brand?
That's not a bigger brand study, because there's a lot of
pushback against doing those andthey're typically long-term.
And secondly, have you seen anysuccess in measuring brands'
(14:43):
effect on demand?
So, what metrics would equal?
Hey, we're doing this brandeffort that's actually having a
positive effect on the demandgeneration that we're running.
Omar Akhtar (14:54):
Yeah, I can give you kind of the small micro
example of myself and then Igive you the companies I speak
to.
The key word is incrementality.
Are we doing?
Are we getting?
Are we you know and I hate touse sports analogies but are we
just getting more chances at bat?
If you start thinking aboutmarketing as a numbers game and
here's the funny part is like weunderstand that sales is a
(15:14):
numbers game, right, say,everybody knows that, like look,
you're gonna, and it's likebaseball that you get like 30%
of the time if you convertpeople you're a hall of famer
and that's kind of sales.
But we don't extend that samesort of mentality to marketing.
Everybody expects marketing tobe like that one viral moment or
everybody the Steve Jobsiankind of way of getting things
done.
Where you're just this giantmarketing machine.
(15:35):
That's magical.
Marketing is a numbers game.
The more you do of everymarketing activity, the more
people that it touches, the morepositive effects you're going
to see.
And I can kind of give you theidea that we were talking about.
Some of the stuff that I've donefor my own business is when I
write more blog posts, when Isend more emails, when I just
(15:55):
kind of show up more.
Now I can't tell unlesssomebody specifically tells me,
and I don't expect this tohappen.
Where someone says I read thatLinkedIn post of yours, I am
ready to buy that was awesome.
It's never going to happen.
But I do know that people thatread my LinkedIn post six months
ago they followed me onLinkedIn.
They look at everything thatI'm reading and then one day
(16:16):
they're like you know what?
I want to take a call with themand find out a bit more about
this kind of stuff.
Now again, the ROI on that isastronomical.
It doesn't cost me a lot to putit out there, but I can't say
that my LinkedIn converted thismany people.
All I can say is, when I putout more LinkedIn posts, when I
do more of it, it reaches morepeople.
And when I reach more people,more of them visit my website,
(16:39):
more of them follow me, more ofthem respond to my emails.
Good things happen all around,and I went from this world of
trying to figure out attributionmodels and checking out
measurement software and today Ireally am kind of on the other
side of it, which is to say that, look, it's kind of a fool's
errand to focus so much onattribution.
Are good things happening?
Are more good things happening?
(17:00):
Are you getting more chances atbat when you spend on brand?
And if you are, then you'redoing something right.
And if you aren't, you know ifall that's been on brand is
having a minimal effect on atbat.
That's when you know that theactivity within that is not
working.
Your creative is not working.
Your creative is not working.
Your messaging is muddled,you're targeting the wrong
audience.
Those are the kinds of thingsyou start to figure out.
Kevin Kerner (17:20):
But as a whole, if you do it right, it should work
.
Yeah, I totally agree.
I think the LinkedIn analyticsthe LinkedIn measurement and
analytics is actuallyunderutilized from a brand
perspective and maybe if therewas more employee-led branding,
so when an employee becomes theactual part of the brand and
they get to speak and you couldlook at their analytics on, you
know how they're, how manyfollowers they have, how how
(17:42):
many people are commenting ontheir posts, that is seems like
one of the new marketingbenchmarks that sometimes
sometimes really getting to lookat it because it's all.
It's all about click toconversion.
But there's a whole, there's awhole host of engagement that
happens before that conversion.
That's trackable on LinkedIn.
You can see it on LinkedIn.
You can see what's happening.
It's just, and that convertsback to the site and you can
track it on your site.
(18:03):
I was telling you before we gotstarted about our YouTube
journey and we really didn't domuch on YouTube till the podcast
started and the last few monthshere and I got a third of all
of the traffic we've ever hadand we didn't have much traffic.
We got a third of our trafficin the first month of launching
the YouTube channel.
So it's just and what'sincredible is the shorts.
(18:26):
It's primarily the shorts thatwork and it's the weirdest
topics on the shorts, like I did, one topic on a white paper,
why white papers may not be thebest piece of content to put out
in those days.
Then that got more than youknow, talking to Scott Brinker
or someone on that one week.
It was just so.
There are new marketing metricsthat you can go after that
(18:46):
maybe aren't as wonky as some ofthe demand gen metrics that you
would have normally put outthere, but they're.
They may be more valuable intoday's economy.
Omar Akhtar (18:56):
Yeah, absolutely, and that's great to hear.
By the way, like I think youknow the fact that you're
because it's hard work rightPutting yourself out there, but
you put it out there I thinkit's fantastic that you're
getting great results and sortof immediate impact.
That's got to be reallyvalidating.
Kevin Kerner (19:08):
Yeah, it hasn't converted Like it's not
converting to, it's convertingto traffic on the site, I
believe and this is somethingJacob Banks said in the last
podcast.
But you got to as anentrepreneur, you can even as a
business owner or marketingperson.
You got to.
You got to go for the channelsthat you believe in and you just
take some bets and it justseems so logical these days that
you would have more peopleignoring emails and ignoring ads
(19:32):
and going more towardsinfluencer led, slash, person,
authentic voices in the space,and so that's what we're trying.
It seems to be working.
Were there any other surprisingelements of the research that
you found that we haven't talkedabout?
Omar Akhtar (19:46):
One thing that I thought was particularly
interesting and I wasn't tryingto find this out, but the
difference between well, twothings I'll tell you.
But there's a big difference incompanies that are selling to
the enterprise versus companiesthat are not Selling to the
enterprise is its own beast andeverybody is trying to do it.
Everybody's trying to move upmarket.
But you can't sell to theenterprise with the setup of
(20:07):
someone that's selling to SMBsor mid-market.
Everything in my research showthat companies that are selling
to the enterprise, they spendmore on sales versus marketing.
They have more of a headcount.
More of their marketing budgetis invested in people rather
than tools or programs.
So it's very much kind of thisfairly complex selling motion
(20:28):
that takes a long time, it's notvery rewarding and the
benchmarks are completely out ofwhack for someone to sell into
the enterprise.
So if you're going to do theenterprise, be prepared for a
whole new level of pain andcomplication.
So that's one thing that wasinteresting to me.
The second one how much?
Kevin Kerner (20:45):
before you get into the second one, how much
more do they spend on sales?
The sales organization versusmarketing in selling to the
enterprise Makes sense to me.
Omar Akhtar (20:54):
Yeah.
Kevin Kerner (20:54):
That they would.
Omar Akhtar (20:55):
Typically, if we see kind of a typical split it's
about in a smaller company,it's about 60-40 in favor of
sales.
When you get to sort of midcompanies like 50 to 100, it's
about 35% marketing and 65.
But if you're selling to theenterprise, the low end of that
(21:15):
is 25% marketing and everythingelse sales.
Enterprise, it goes all the way.
The low end of that is 25%marketing and everything else
sales.
That's something that you kindof see is like a couple of
things are probably happening atplay there, which is that those
companies are bigger and sothey're going after bigger
targets and when you're biggeryou just spend more on sales.
That's kind of the way it is.
Because you're marketing, youknow law of diminishing returns
and all that doesn't mean thatyour budgets are smaller, it
just means that you know salesis just yeah, and it's solution
(21:40):
selling and you have accountteams and all the larger sales
organizations.
Kevin Kerner (21:44):
That makes sense.
I'm sorry I interrupted you forthe second.
What was the second one?
Omar Akhtar (22:03):
more on their website.
Those are all things that wecan expect to see, but their
growth rates are much morevolatile than if you're
sales-led growth, which isanother way of saying that
product-led growth is excitingbut it's risky.
Sales-led growth is boring, butit's a bit more dependable and
so you can control the outcomesa little bit better.
With sales-led growth it's likeif you've got enough of a
decent sales team, you canpredict your growth by the kind
of activities that you're doing.
(22:24):
Product-led growth depends alot on just kind of immediate
product market fit, virality,word of mouth, having you know,
unlocking that perfect featureon your website that causes
people to convert and buyimmediately.
There's a lot more tinkering todo with product-led growth, so
they have their floor of growthrates.
There's a lot lower, but theirhigh of growth rates is a lot
(22:46):
higher, so there's a very bigdynamic range in product-led
growth companies.
Kevin Kerner (22:49):
Wow, this is so valuable.
I can't.
I mean, I gotta imagine peoplewill want this research because
product-led growth gets such abig.
You know it's getting arenaissance, let's say there's a
lot of people interested in it.
It's kind of attractive.
But I wouldn't have known howto quantify sales impact like
actual revenue impact.
One versus the other.
That's just fascinating to meand I wonder if it's the
(23:12):
maturity of the sales modelsversus PLG models.
But yeah, it's really.
Do you have a take on why onewould be better, why PLG would
be riskier?
Omar Akhtar (23:24):
I think it's because the sales motion is kind
of a tried and tested motion.
Right, you make enough calls, acertain number of those people
will return your calls or emailsand a certain number of them
will buy your product.
Run through a demo.
People are used to buying thatway, people are used to selling
that way.
But in order for you to sellyour product without a sales
team like just hope that they'llfind you it depends on them
(23:46):
searching for the right keywords.
It depends on them.
It depends on you showcasingthe product that's immediately
attractive.
There's so many differentvariables to get right.
With product-led growth, so youget it right.
There's high growth, but mostcompanies take a lot of time to
get it right, and so there's alot more tinkering.
Kevin Kerner (24:02):
Yeah, a really, really good answer, and I
wouldn't have thought of that.
But you're exactly right.
That's exactly the reason.
Where does this go?
Like, what are you going to dowith the research now that
you've done it a couple of times, right, and now you can see the
trend Like what's the next stepin this?
Omar Akhtar (24:19):
I know you'll keep think there's still in the next
round that I do.
The next survey that I'm goingto do is more on like
performance-based metrics.
So this means like cost ofcustomer acquisition, cost per
leads on different channels, andso this is more around.
I'll get better answers to saythat if you are spending on
brand, which channels areworking for you?
And if you're spending on brand, what is the benchmark for what
(24:40):
good looks like Versus.
If you're not spending on brand, what's the benchmark for what
good looks like?
Those are the kinds of thingsthat this survey, which is
purely about how companies spend, the next survey, will answer a
bit more about how they performwhen they spend in this pattern
, and I think that's importantbecause it shows that.
Look in B2B, saas even thoughit's all SaaS, your goals are
different and the matrix ofgoals are very different.
(25:03):
You can be a midsize companythat's chasing high growth.
You can be a large company thatjust wants to consolidate its
market share and it's notlooking for high growth.
You can be an incumbent.
That's like $10 million and youneed to grow like a bajillion
percent in the next two years,depending on what your goals are
.
How should you think aboutinvesting in your channels and
(25:24):
what channels are working versusnot, and I think you know us
talking about video.
That's going to be a big playwhere we start asking about,
like, what tactics are working.
So there's video that exists onits own.
There's video that lives insocial media.
That's now.
There's now video that isembedded in your email marketing
.
So how well is that performingcompared to all the static
emails that you sent before?
That's going to be reallyeye-opening and I'm excited for
(25:45):
that.
Kevin Kerner (25:46):
Oh, that's going to be so cool.
I mean, that is the question,because, let's say, you could
convince your leadership teamthat you need to spend more Like
.
Then it's like, what do you do?
What's actually going to work,and by company size, and that
cool.
And when you put that together,it'd be really interesting to
look at tactics, newer tactics,because video is a is kind of a
(26:07):
format, but that's.
You know, how are you usingvideo?
Is it podcast, is it shorts, isit?
You know all these other thingsbecause, because within each
one of those tactics there'sapproaches, let's say, for, um,
marketing.
I just think marketing is goingto change pretty significantly
in terms of what works for brandand, and you just wonder if
brand media is going to work asa primary tactic.
(26:30):
Maybe it's a secondary, overlaytactic versus other things like
what we're doing here.
That will be a superinteresting study.
When will that come out?
Omar Akhtar (26:41):
That's going to come out in June.
So if you follow me, know andthis is if you, if you follow me
on LinkedIn, just this is thetime to message me and say, hey,
this is what I want to find outin my next survey that you do,
because I'm just about ready tolaunch that survey.
I've got kind of the basicquestions ready, but you know,
this is the time to ask me whatyou want to find out.
Kevin Kerner (26:58):
Oh, that's going to be.
That will be very interesting.
I should have you back on whenwe, when we talk to you.
That that'd be super cool.
Omar Akhtar (27:04):
Absolutely.
Kevin Kerner (27:05):
Okay, I wanted to do one thing with you before I
let you go here.
I do a thing I've been doing,this thing called AI roulette,
where I load your profile intoperplexity, I give it the
information we're talking, we'retalking about today, and then I
basically ask it to tell, toask me a question.
That's, you know, provocative,slash, disrupting, and so let me
let me push send here and seewhat it says here and hopefully
(27:27):
it will come back without toomuch.
Okay, this is good.
Okay, based on all your dataand experience researching sass
brands, what's the one thingsass marketers consistently
obsess over that your researchsuggests doesn't actually matter
?
Omar Akhtar (27:41):
oh, that's a really good one.
Gosh, gosh, they obsess over somuch.
But yeah, I would go back toattribution.
I think it's just if you wokeup tomorrow and you said, and
you were given permission to saythat we're not gonna do any
attribution, I suspect that yourmarketing wouldn't.
The success of your marketingwouldn't change much at all, I
would hypothesize very stronglythat if you ripped out whatever
(28:04):
attribution software, whateverattribution dashboard, whatever
it is that you have in yourcompany, you ripped it out, you
wouldn't lose much, Because thetruth is you're already spending
on certain activities.
You should track how thoseactivities are performing.
So, for example and not to tootmy own horn but if you're, if
you're, if you're getting lessvisits to your website, then a
(28:25):
company that's of the same sizehas been around as long as you,
probably not doing as well asyou should be.
If you're spending way more onyour LinkedIn to acquire a lead
than another company is, you'reprobably not doing as well as
you should be.
But having said that, if youare trying to attribute your
success to a single channel,multiple channels, trying to
(28:45):
track the journey across allthose different things, I would
say that that's the ultimategoal of marketing, which is to
make more people aware of whoyou are, what you do, and to get
them to your own properties totake some sort of quantifiable
action.
You would still probably bejust as good as that as you were
with attribution software.
Kevin Kerner (29:03):
Wow, to the dismay of attribution software
providers everywhere, I don'tknow about you.
Omar Akhtar (29:09):
Have you seen one that's really been like yep, I
believe this one.
Kevin Kerner (29:12):
And you don't-, no , no, no, no, and they're
usually Omar.
They're usually a reaction tosomeone downstream, like sales,
asking for or taking credit fora lead and needing to then work
it back up.
So if you take that equationout of the mix the defense of
like not defense, but workingwith sales to try to tell, hey,
we gave you this then reallyit's just.
(29:33):
It's just, it could be.
I totally agree.
It could just be activity based.
It could be more visits to yoursite, less spending on ads,
more followers on socialchannels.
It doesn't need to be somecomplex system going downstream,
but there's always the.
You know, I feel the pain of myfriends that are CMOs needing
to try to justify when salessays we don't get any leads for
(29:54):
marketing.
They have to somehow justify it.
But that's a great answer.
I'm always amazed how so I'vedone this like four times and
perplexity does much betterquestions than I do every single
time.
It is quite impressive and it'sa fun.
Eventually I'll just do thepodcast by, just like you, and
I'll just be answering questionson perplexity, ai questions.
I am super happy to have hadyou here.
(30:15):
The research is just.
You know, I love geeking outover this particular topic and
you've put a voice to, I think,something that is unknown.
You've made known what has beenunknown in the past, which is
really cool, and I'm veryexcited to see the next round of
this.
I'm going to urge everyone tofollow you on LinkedIn.
Go to your site, but I wantedto give you a chance.
(30:39):
Is there anything that youwould want people to do after
watching this?
How do they stay in touch withyou other than those things?
What's the best way?
Omar Akhtar (30:46):
Yeah well, first of all, thank you so much for
having me up here.
I can talk about this stuff allday long and it's a wonderful
conversation to have with you,so I was excited when you sent
me over the topics.
I'm like, oh, this is gonna bea good one.
So I really appreciate it and Ienjoyed my hour with you.
For realists, if you want tofollow me on LinkedIn, that's
probably the easiest way.
You know I'm perpetually online, more than I should be, and you
(31:09):
know if you want to check outthe website benchmarkerdatacom,
we do it on a subscription basedmodel.
So if you want to just sign upand get the data and you want to
cut the data, anybody you wantwe have a database.
You don't have to talk to me oranybody you want.
You can just come to thewebsite and do it.
You know I'm trying product-ledgrowth as well as sales-led
growth.
Let's see how that goes.
My goal really is to be theCMO's best friend in the
boardroom so that they don'tmake decisions in the dark, and
(31:32):
if I can do that, then I'mpretty happy about it.
Kevin Kerner (31:34):
Yeah, I think it's great.
Like for me, it's a greatquarterly planning tool.
Right, you're just kind ofredoing the plan or you're
you're making, giving evidencefor the plan that you're in
maybe tweaking some stuff basedon the data, but it's really
fantastic.
Omar, that's been awesome.
I'll include all the socialsand everything in the
description here, but thank youso much for joining me and we'll
(31:55):
.
I hope we talk again soon.
I'm counting on it.
Thank you, kevin.
Take care, okay, man, I'll seeyou.
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