Agencies, Media Businesses and SaaS
There's a rise in SaaS businesses building or acquiring Media Businesses. Agencies have a head start.
I regularly explain how agency/consultancy founders have superpowers that give them an edge over others when it comes to building products. And something that I’ve been observing makes me wonder whether there is something else coming down the line that reasserts this.
When you don’t control your marketing distribution channels
My hobby is painting (or to be more precise ‘urban sketching’). I’ve been doing it since lockdown and I think I’m slowly getting better at it. But on my Instagram account, I’m seeing the ‘likes’ for my artwork going down. A year ago, some of my posts got almost 1,000 likes. Today I’m lucky if I even get 100. Everyone says that impressions are down massively across social media. For me, as an amateur artist it kinda sucks, but as a business, if you’d relied on LinkedIn to drive a steady flow of leads and you’re powerless against their algorithm decisions, that’s a problem. And so, we’re seeing SaaS companies take matters into their hands and creating their own media brands.
Blog Posts to Podcasts; White Papers to Video Series; QBRs to Annual Conferences
Traditionally, marketing has used content to drive leads into a funnel: a blog post that is really a sales pitch; or a white paper that concludes that the author’s product is the best in the industry. Whereas media companies have used content to provide entertainment, to attract more consumers of their content, to create communities.
And we’ve all become sophisticated.
This newsletter isn’t primarily about driving people to a funnel, it’s about trying to deliver content that is of genuine value to agencies and consultancies looking to productize what they know. If all I did each week was post a sales pitch then nobody would read it. But in turn I get great feedback from you lovely lot about what I’m writing and it helps me get an even better understanding and I get word of mouth which, yes, ultimately will turn into paid work.
SaaS companies have woken up to the fact that in an ideal world they would both control the distribution channel and provide content that has genuine value to the consumers of it. In recent years we have seen:
Hubspot acquired The Hustle which is a daily newsletter covering business and tech.
Pendo acquired Mind The Product, a product management community.
Paddle launched Paddle Studios, which feels almost like a TV station for all things SaaS using terms like ‘Trailer’, ‘Series’ snd ‘Episodes’ on their website, as you would expect to see on Netflix.
It doesn’t have to be all about content, either. Clio, the legal SaaS platform created an annual conference for the industry, ClioCon.
And there are many, many more examples.
Why is this relevant to agencies?
I’m not saying that everyone has to build media companies now, but think about the direction this is going. More thought-through offerings, series, creator-led content that serves the customer, not the funnel. Producing professional content is in many cases what agencies have done on behalf of their clients forever. Creating this stuff well is something you could do in your sleep. Think about other product founders who don’t have your experience. Imagine being fresh out of Business School, having previously worked in Banking and trying to figure this stuff out. It would be like an episode of The Apprentice.
But for you ... it’s a walk in the park.
Instead of writing blog posts about your latest feature as if it’s somehow newsworthy, what about if you produced a series of interviews with customers talking about how they overcame problems related to your offering? Give the series a name. Add some production values around it. Ask people to sign up to watch. Chances are you know the vertical better than those working in it since you talk to these people all the time, they only sit within one organisation.
Instead of relying on Quarterly Business Reviews to encourage retention, create an industry conference that has a separate identity and value proposition that celebrates your customers and showcases their successes. Start small and build it up. That’s what Clio did.
Instead of posting the occasional LinkedIn post about the challenges your customers have, create a community for those people. Maybe you already have. If so, you’re ahead of the game as this stuff is going to become more mainstream and if you don’t do it, chances are your competitors will.
What about if you have data in a sector that nobody else has? Is there data that you can afford to give away to the community regularly in order to have a greater share of voice? Profitwell (who were acquired by Paddle) had a whole business model around giving away limited benchmarking data and data-measuring functionality. It helped them grow their brand and their CEO, Patrick Campbell, was seen as a leading authority of all things around metrics and pricing in the SaaS world. And the ‘SaaS world’ was also their customers.
It’s not just media companies, it’s influencers, too. I know of at least one SaaS company who is contemplating hiring someone at a price that you would normally spend on an ‘aqui-hire’ just because he is the industry’s leading commentator. It’s not that they want that commentator to go around plugging their company - that would be a surefire way to kill the influencer’s credibility. It’s more to do with being an integral part of the community and having access to all his followers. Followers that would cost $$$$$s to reach traditionally.
And if you’re a company who has built its business around being a trusted provider of content or community, then congratulations.. I think you’re going to be acquisition targets of product companies in the not-too-distant future.