It’s that time of year when we launch our Serious about SaaS Marketing Capability Report. This is our third year publishing the report, which allows Kiwi SaaS organisations to benchmark themselves against their peers and gives insight into areas where more investment in capability is needed.
The survey is built around ten marketing pillars. They represent different areas of SaaS marketing, from strategic alignment to customer acquisition, to website performance. To complete the survey, CEOs and marketers in SaaS businesses were invited to rank themselves on a scale of one (being poor) to six (being great) based on an assessment of their own capability.
Following are key highlights from our 2022 survey. You can explore the in-depth results in the full SaaS Marketing Capability Report.
In short, the results show SaaS businesses’ confidence in their own marketing capability has dropped.
Overall Ranking
This year we have seen some changes, but like in 2021, the top marketing pillar is ‘How well do you understand your target customer’. These pillars are ranked on the percentage of respondents that scored themselves a five or six (highly capable) in these areas.
Top and Lowest Performers
As mentioned above, Kiwi SaaS businesses feel confident they know their customers. But this confidence hasn’t turned into creating an effective acquisition engine, which is the lowest ranked pillar for the second consecutive year.
So, the big challenge for 2023 is turning market understanding into gaining new customers.
Needs Improvement
Looking at the significant changes in 2022, it appears having well-defined marketing fundamentals and customer retention – looking after and nurturing customers after you’ve won them are the two pillars whose ranks have dropped the most.
Having well-defined marketing fundamentals such as purpose, vision, values and brand guidelines are foundational elements to great marketing and are key to set SaaS marketers up for success. And without real clarity on mission and purpose, it’s really hard to hire and retain the right marketing talent.
Having a strong customer retention strategy was the other big mover. Getting this area working well is essential to winning in SaaS – decreasing churn will help reduce the pressure on your acquisition engine. With the looming recession everyone’s expecting, customer retention is more crucial than ever.
Who took part?
While the overall profile of the respondent sample was similar to 2021, there was a larger proportion of VC-funded (27%) and angel-investor (22%) funded organisations.
There were also a lower proportion of CEOs who took part, but there was a 23-point increase in the number of marketers who responded.
Get the Detail
In the 2022 Serious about SaaS marketing Capability Report, you’ll find more insights and our best practice recommendations to help you rock your SaaS marketing. We encourage every Kiwi SaaS company to benchmark how they’re rating against each pillar. It’s a great opportunity to review your own marketing capability and identify the levers you can pull to power up for 2023.
