Today on Second Growth, Matt Chanela is on with B2B Reality Check to unveil our new marketing maturity model. Today he breaks down what the maturity model is and talks through the first three domains brand to demand expand. Hope you all enjoy. Welcome everyone.
I'm Matt Chanela, VP of Innovation at Refine Labs and this is your B2B Reality Check. Okay, so today we're going to talk about our GTM maturity model. This is a great thesis that we're running with our clients at Refine Labs. I think we're really excited to bring to the market and really give teeth, I think, to what we're even more teeth to what we've done as a company over several years here.
We've always been enormous champions of running brand. We've evolved this into this brand-demand expand framework and we're extending that even more with this GTM maturity model where brand-demand expand sits underneath that. But then also there's this other concept which I'll talk about in a future podcast about insights, measurement, and outcomes. So there's a couple of different components of this.
Some are quantitative, some are qualitative, but really it involves coalescing your marketing around your organization and aligning it to outcomes that matter and drive a business impact. So today we're going to talk about brand-demand expand and we're going to really give dimension and stage to both of these things. So obviously the dimension for each of these is brand-demand and expand, but there's stages to that that kind of represent where you are in your maturity model. And those stages as we define them are as follows.
There's a reactive stage that's really when you're very early in your company journey. There's an intent-aware stage. You hit your first million, you're scaling to 10, you're getting beyond that. Revenue aligned, you have a bigger team.
There's a lot more variables at play here. You're creating more segmentation because you have to in order to grow and then market-driven. You've reached this incredible amount of scale and you have a lot of different components at play. You have different specializations within your team.
You're likely sitting at a hundred plus million dollars a year going for several hundred million more, but you have a lot more components at play in order to help drive you and get there because that's just a necessary component of that. All right. So let's talk about each of these dimensions. Let's talk about brand first.
And we'll talk about brand because it's kind of the tip of the spear for what we do at Refine. It really drives a lot of our first point of attack with a lot of companies that plus demand. And it's also the fuzziest thing I think for companies to wrap their heads around. You think about brand and a lot of companies think about logos and distinctive brand assets and in mascots and like there's all these other things.
But brand is really about how people think of you when they come and market and whether you are building preference to be on a day one short list. I just had something I posted about honestly where I got this really, really great cold email. It was a fantastic cold email. It was very distinct.
It had these three very distinct and unique kind of things they offered to build for us. It was pretty timely because we're actually looking at this internally ourselves and they offered it they wanted to take time with us to do a phone call. I was like honestly so impressed with that I screenshot a center friend of mine but I had no idea who this person or who this company was so I was just not inclined to answer it other than to tell them that it was a really, really great email but I already have someone in mind for when I come and market with this because I've already been kind of I've already had had preference before me. That's essentially what brand is.
Brand is building preference over time and if it's really done well it also builds preference quickly as well. So it's not it's not either or it actually is both. So let's talk a little bit about the dimension of brand across the stages of a company. So brand is is at the reactive point you have no ICP research you have no shared ICP definition or segmentation.
Your messaging is very product first feature driven brand marketing is very random acts the occasional event sponsorship maybe something like that the website is vague it's very company centric the number one X for Y right like that kind of messaging that buyers buyers are confused there are different there's nothing distinct and if you did the work with your messaging you could probably tell that and so to me like most of the time here you don't even have necessarily a brand to mention your entire motion is pretty much direct response the brand is the founder and not actually the company at this point the founder drives almost all of the brand right they represent the brand they are the brand maybe you have a key employee is well helping there hasn't really launched past that point yet and that's I think where a lot of companies very early in their state sit this is a pretty common to place to be your first one two three years and you know they have nothing in terms of category entry points sometimes the brand is also still defined in the category plays in it has an idea but it's not really firmly grounded all right so when you're in terms of where your ICP is defined but it's not segmented it's not operationalized across your go to market your narrative is not tied to buyer outcomes but you do at least have a narrative or thesis that you're working with against your market the content is not compelling to buyers it's a little bit of like us us me me sales you have more people in sales at this point unquestionably but you probably struggle with a struggle to explain the company in really clear language the the brand can create interest probably because the founder is that powerful of a storyteller and really understands pain points and can really drill into them but there's not a lot of trust and efficiency is kind of low there's there's a couple companies in mind I could think of that probably have this quite a bit and I won't name names but I definitely have a couple of mine when I think about this but the point of this is when you are in time to where you know at this point who your best customers are but you have you are of not come to terms with it and you've not operationalized on it a lot of not being tied to outcomes is there's just not enough ICP definition or feedback loop it it'll sit with sales but it doesn't make it the product or marketing it doesn't get it doesn't kind of happen as an ecosystem at all that creates a lot of different sales conversations that don't really coalesce around a single brand buyer narrative the next stage is being revenue line and this is this is really where you're starting to build something sustainable for yourself so it's the hardest point to get to getting from intent to where it's a revenue line that's probably the biggest jump because you're really making hard decisions for yourself and you're really getting more intentional about how you think about your your segmentation and your ICP so you have segmentation here you have clear decision making on who your buyer champions and who your buyer influencers are per segment and you want to and how you want to prioritize messaging to each of them you know the messaging for each you have buyer research consistently even if maybe it's not fully operationalized but it's there you're talking to customers you're talking to buyers you're doing message testing you have that component intentionally in motion thought leadership is at the both at the executive level but also now exists at the brand level the brand is noticed like when the brand sponsors events when they're posting on LinkedIn when they're the ones hosting an event without the executive level like they're getting response they're getting people to attend those things right like they the brand exists the brand exists attached from the founder and so that is ultimately like a really really good place that you want to be you'll also at this point you're leveraging your own data and your own insight you're informing the market your bolster your credibility your ICP is clarified it's a line you have differentiated positioning and messaging and the brand ultimately works to lower your customer acquisition cost over time and improves your pipeline quality and you can prove that not by looking at things through this direct attribution ends through source and we'll get to that when we get to the demand side but you're able to kind of look at things through like a marketing efficiency ratio or any criminal sort of lift on brand and what that does for your company and then once you apex you absolutely apex you are a unicorn this is where you're at you're at market driven and not only do you have segmentation and continuous ICP development here but it's governed governed is a big word you have decision authority executive authority they're invested in that they decide when that shifts based on the data that they see it is rapid it is fast and it's it's also done with a lot of confidence you have continuous ICP and category sensing like the shift to the current shift to AI lots of you sense that and you're capitalizing on that fast with your brand with product and with all of the components to actually operationalize that for your company you have a high velocity narrative testing normally you're looking at that with sales conversations you're talking to a few a few key customers about that really quickly and getting that immediate feedback loop and then adjusting and iterating on the fly and those brand signals from the market really inform go to market strategy you have that whole thing working it's both kind of in an automated sense and in a manual sense because you need both you need human judgment and you need sort of that that data ingestion engine happening for yourself brand exists as a strategic growth lever it can span out with products you have marketing requirement documents you have product requirement documents creating new products your brand management your category managers can take that and expand and what people know and trust about the company and it allows you to expand your category definition and the testing proves the brand impact consistently so let's go back and recap on that so brand when you're reactive you have no ICP research your messaging is product first feature driven buyers are indifferent to you in sense aware you are more defined not really segmented on the ICP side your narrative isn't necessarily tied to buyer outcomes sales has sales has productive conversations but they struggle to explain the company in clear language that's not revenue aligned you have clarity you have alignment you have segmentation you know your champions you know your influencers you have thought leadership executive level and at the brand level itself brand is actually working to lower cap over time market driven you got the whole engine working the feedback loop is continuous your ICP definition has governors with it and brand is a true strategic growth lever that helps you expand your category okay let's go to demand all right demand let's talk about the reactivy and ten aware the revenue line the market driven phases of this and I have lots of thoughts on this but this is where of course thesis against brand demand expand lie on the demand side you're reactive you're or have an over reliance on branded search or gated content especially bad gated content thin gated content your cactus volatile your attribution is weak executives don't trust it demand is captured opportunistically on the marketing side you're really dependent on demand capture there's really not much of it much of anything else going on for you you're not doing anything with segmentation there's no signals you take a really wide approach to media and targeting and you don't really get a lot of penetration or a lot of definition because of that okay let's talk in tent aware intent to where you have paid media it performs efficiency varies you have limited organic seo geo strategy there's channel risk concentration you're probably really relying on google it's probably pretty expensive the main grows it's not efficient it's not predictable progress really largely depends on product market fit sales motions and shared ownership and we'll get into that when we get in a little bit more into the insights measurement and outcomes part about product market fit and kind of how we how that gets defined and iterated on over time you have something working at this stage though I don't want to dismiss that your gated content is more dialed in and it's more relevant it does create opportunity when it's followed up on right but there's nothing really repeatable or like thought or considered about it you have an offer to that the market reacts to maybe it's a free trial maybe it's an audit maybe it's it's something that's really relevant though it's not just like take this you understand a little bit about what you actually want to audit and why and how that leads to a sales opportunity for yourself nothing's really segmented though so the product market fit evolves but there's some turbulence just because you're just in that journey as a company you have emerging sales partnership and ownership like they understand what you're doing they trust it you have some partnership going on at that point again the chasm here from going in tent aware to revenue align matters it's a big big jump here but when you're revenue aligned you have demand motions that are very distinctly segmented your messaging and hooks for email for paid they reliably perform you have a library to test you kind of know how they work you have a content program that speaks to speaks to learned buyer pain builds preference converts when combined with the right signals like ikp fits single matching all of those things right you can run gated content at this point and get opportunity from it probably not at the efficiency level that you're going to get from people coming on declared intent demo requests but at least you know you can run this and you have an understanding of how it's going to convert because it has enough so your pipeline is predictable and it's trusted by sales your cack improves over time because you understand what you're doing here the funnel leakage is visible you can actively address it revenue outcomes are explainable even if they're not necessarily predictable demand is a reliable growth lever maybe not uber uber scalable across every single segment that you have but you can see where your sources are slipping and address them like for instance when content to sales programs start to drop and then the market driven when you're really really got it humming your feedback loop between product sales and marketing is completely interwoven you have you have that full understanding because you are well segmented you are not over dependent on certain markets or certain channels when one underperforms you can press on others to make the difference up and regroup on the one that's underperforming that is when you really have demand working well for you demanded that's quickly to market and buyer behavior shifts you have no single channel that threatens your growth your investments are data backed and you can understand when you make that's how they're going to work or you have a good idea of how they're going to work within a certain range of outcome demand gets adapted it's resilient and it's scalable and then expand let's talk about expand here expand is the kind of the part of the model where marketing has very little to do really until you get to revenue aligned because when you work in marketing the only thing you really get to think about at least a lot when it comes to SaaS is new logo acquisition right in fact it's been a lot of ways cross-sell upsells get lumped into new logo acquisition just because there's not a lot of segmentation happening there and there's just not a plan for how to measure it that's like really well aligned on so we go through the expansion dimension there's the reactive the intense aware the revenue line the market driven and on expand when you're reactive growth depends entirely on new logos there is no expansion motion marketing is disengaged post customer acquisition there is no strategy for customer retention or growth there's no product development really happening you're still trying to get your current product to work and get market share at this point in time it's more about making the product relevant to different industry not even segmentation necessarily and then retention expansion is just not strategic all it just kind of comes to you it happens and that that even exists at the intent-aware stage where some life cycle marketing exists expansion is reactive or sales led net retention revenue is not a core KPI or the go-to-market team so expanded retention motion becomes opportunistic they're not tied to real goals or company KPIs one thing I would also say to this just more tactically speaking is you have life cycle marketing but there's really no plan that exists to identify your upsell or cross-sell opportunities and move them to a new product or a new pricing tier oftentimes the customer is the one asking to expand instead of the company proactively nurturing it so when that happens you have no expansion strategy largely like you should be able to identify that marketing has a little to nothing to do with driving these outcomes aside from the occasional email or event but there's no structural purpose there's nothing like driven by product analytics or anything like that that's helping sort of dictate what should we do and why and when's the right time to bring this cohort of people in and try to push something like that nothing strategic like that in expansion when your revenue line again big jump here just like demand and brand when you expand and go from Nintendo where to revenue line you're making a huge jump in your maturity model so when your revenue line you have a real role in supporting off selling cross-sell these motions are intentional marketing supports it expansion efforts are measurable retention and expansion are active levers and go to market planning and measurement you usually have something very tangible to offer to these people there is an alignment with product and a ease on who is right for expansion why and what the right expansion opportunities are marketing is also able to measure that impact usually by doing really simple things like split testing efforts across these this cohort and then determining you know what our efforts do to people who we actually marketed to very intentionally versus those who we did not that way you're able to kind of look at and measure and financialize your effort and outcome. Okay so the last thing is market driven so in expansion motion when you're market driven your growth continues without proportional acquisition spend it basically means you can expand your top line consistently without spending proportional to your new logo budget so you can spend less here and get more relative to what you're spending for new logo acquisition. Expansion testing happens with really defined cohorts repeatable programs you understand exactly who you want to move every quarter every year and how you're going to go about doing that you have repeatable programs you can run that just need slight iteration order to move people there based on when they're ready and you have signals and you have product data that kind of dictates those things for you. Your word amount does drive new logo acquisition but that also fuels really strong net retention revenue because the product meets the need so you have that strong energy revenue growth and driving new logo acquisition which helps obviously keep your expansion efforts much more much more likely to take hold because you have a strong customer base in the first place.
So let's recap real quick on the go-to-market maturity model for brand demand expand again you have brand demand and expand as your dimensions and you have reactive antenna wear revenue aligned and market driven for your four stages. Reactive you are largely founder led you are very reliant on gated content so prospecting outbound usually very simple overall and then expansion not really much existing there with marketing. On the antenna wear side you have much you have more iCP definition not super segment or operationalize. Brand creates some interest but trust and efficiency are kind of low.
Sales is having different conversations consistently with prospects and they're struggling to explain that company your company in clear language. Demand you have paid media performing efficiency can really vary not much on the SEO. Your very concentrated in a couple of channels and you can really only make them work in fits and starts. Expand some life cycle marketing exists but expansions is reactive or it's very sales light it's almost accidental.
Revenue line this is where every company makes a big jump going from intent to wear to revenue line. Brand iCP clarity and alignment you have more segmentation. Brand lowers cact demand. Pipeline is predictable trusted by sales cact improves over time you have several offers for several segments you kind of understand what's going to work there and even your lower intent efforts can help drive opportunity.
Expands much more of an intentional sort of aspect for yourself so your marketing has a role in supporting up selling cross-sell. There's alignment with product NAEs and who's right for it and you can measure that impact and then with your market driven you're at this really really great stage where you are growing you have reached nine figures you're growing consistently you're expanding the team you have a lot going for you at that point. Continuous ICP and category definition governance over ICP changes. Brand's a very strategic growth lever helps with category expansion.
On the demand side feedback loop between product and sales and marketing is in a woven you're really well segmented you're not overly dependent on certain segments or channels when one under performs you know where to press to get results elsewhere and you have messaging hooks you have the whole thing working for you content program that learns and speaks by your pain and you can see where your sources are slipping and interest them and then on expand reactive means you don't really have it you have no expansion strategies there's no product development you're just trying to get that product relevant. Intent to where lifecycle marketing exists there's no plan to identify or to identify upsell across sell and move into a new product marketing has little to do with driving these outcomes aside from the occasional events email there's not a lot of structural purpose behind it. Revenue line marketing has a role supporting cross-sell upsell there is alignment with product NAEs you can measure that impact and then a market driven you can expand that top line consistently without spending proportional to new logo acquisition expansion testing happens in defined cohorts word of mouth drives that new logo acquisition fuel strong in our because the product meets the need and you're able to kind of figure out how you're going to expand those customers year over year quarter of a quarter. So that is in a nutshell there's so many things that go into that but that is the go-to-market maturity model for brand demand expand where so many companies the biggest jump is going from Nintendo air to revenue line that's where systems break that's where needs become more acute that's where you need to be a lot more intentional and the things that were broken or not working well for you before need to get fixed and remedy before you're going to get to that revenue line ultimately to that market driven stage those are the hardest steps for sure want to talk your GTM maturity model with regard to brand demand expand think the stages or the details behind them are right wrong or need more definition want to talk how your brand demand maturity stacks up against companies like yours reach out email dme let's talk with your company is right now and happy to shout out you can get to that next stage in your GTM maturity model my name is Matt Chanelah VP innovation at Refi Labs and thanks for listening to your B2B reality