In partnership with |
|
|
|
|
Turing's TOFU: AI-Driven SaaS Growth Curated by Andrew Mounier |
|
Welcome to this week's edition of Turing's TOFU, where we explore the latest in AI and SaaS to keep you ahead in today's fast-evolving tech landscape. |
π This week, we're delving into controversies in AI content usage, new AI features from Apple at WWDC, and key executive hires at OpenAI. |
π In "Marketing Moments with Mounier," I break down effective strategies for gaining internal support for marketing initiatives, drawing insights from my latest podcast appearance. Plus, don't miss our teardown of Darwinbox, highlighting how this HR platform excels and where it can improve. |
Discover tools that enhance your marketing, and gain insights that refine your strategiesβall in this weekβs newsletter. |
|
Free SOC 2 Compliance Checklist from Vanta |
|
Are you building a business? Achieving SOC 2 compliance can help you win bigger deals, enter new markets, and deepen trust with your customers β but it can also cost you real time and money. |
Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for SOC 2 (along with other in-demand frameworks like ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR), getting you audit-ready in weeks instead of months and saving you up to 85% of associated costs. |
Download the free checklist to learn more about the SOC 2 compliance process and the road ahead. |
|
Table of Contents |
|
π° This Week in AI & SaaS π° |
AI search engine start-upβPerplexityβhas been slammed by news publications and journalists (including those from Forbes) for using their content in search summaries but with minimal attribution. Read more.
Apple has finally unveiled its new AI features, at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), which includes updates to Siri, partnerships with OpenAI (and potentially others), and details about AI-powered features for iOS 18. Read more.
OpenAI has hired Kevin Weil (former Product VP at Instagram and Twitter) as its new VP of Product, and Sarah Friar (who previously worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey) as its new CFO, to βscale operations and set a strategy for the next phase of growthβ. Read more.
|
|
|
|
|
πTuringβs Top Picks π |
FEATURED TOOLS |
Lately: Lately curates and ranks top highlights of existing blogs, podcasts, and videos into social posts. Our neuroscience-driven AIβ’ nails your unique voice and adapts for peak performance, ensuring your content shines across all platforms. Create Radically Effective Social Content π£ Try it.
|
Platen: Platen is an AI-powered content marketing platform designed to streamline the process of creating and distributing SEO-optimized content to drive traffic and conversions. Try it.
Plannit: Plannit is an AI tool for entrepreneurs, business owners, students, and startups that uses business goals and objectives to streamline the creation of professional business plans. Try it.
PageGPT: PageGPT is an AI chatbot that, once installed as a Chrome extension, can understand and summarize the content of webpages, so users get a snapshot outline of what the page is about, saving time and effort. Try it.
|
Read of the Week: LIVE from SaaStr Europa 2024 |
β |
|
Typically, the go-to-market team doesnβt have a relationship with the R&D team. They donβt respect each other, at all: An average person in a go-to-market team wants to sell features customers want. Every person on the R&D team wants to keep R&D at the core of what they do. We donβt have that tension at Grafana Labs because we get our R&D team involved with the whole sales cycle: We donβt hide our engineers away from customers, and this keeps the relationships between R&D and go-to-market productive |
|
|
Another one for your ears this week: Listen to Raj DuttβCo-founder of Grafana Labs (which builds open-source analytics and interactive visualization dashboards)--talk about βscaling to $150M ARR and beyondβ at the SaaStr Europa 2024 event, last week. |
Listen to it |
|
|
|
|
π‘ Marketing Moments with Mounier π‘ |
In the latest Content Amplified Podcast, by Ben Ard, I had the opportunity to join and tackle a pivotal aspect of marketing often overlooked by many organizations: gaining internal buy-in. Hereβs an essential breakdown of the discussion, aiming to empower you with strategies to foster support across your organization for your marketing initiatives. |
Getting Internal Buy-In for Marketing |
Challenge: One of the main hurdles is convincing other departments of the value and impact of marketing.
-
Key Strategy: Emphasizes the importance of consistent and clear communication about marketing activities and their impact by sending a weekly email update to internal stakeholders.
-
Weekly Emails:
Northstar Metric: Begin with the key metric the team is focusing on, such as revenue, marketing-qualified leads (MQLs), or pipeline metrics. This helps align the team and other departments on the primary goal.
Key Achievements: Highlight three to five major wins in bullet points to ensure the information is easily digestible.
Team Shout-Outs: Recognize and appreciate the contributions of team members, which helps build morale and fosters interdepartmental relationships.
Challenges and Learnings: Be transparent about obstacles and what the team has learned from failed tests or setbacks.
Upcoming Focus: Outline the priorities and goals for the upcoming week, providing a roadmap for what the team will be working on next.
Inclusivity: Encourage direct reports to send brief weekly updates on their contributions. This not only keeps leaders informed but also provides material for them to share in broader communications.
Accessibility: Make oneself available for questions and discussions through email or communication platforms like Slack, fostering an open and collaborative environment.
|
Securing Budget for Content Marketing |
|
Leveraging AI in Content Creation |
|
Conclusion: Embrace Transparency and Strategic Planning |
Effective marketing requires more than just great content; it demands clear communication, strategic planning, and proper resource allocation. By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that your marketing efforts not only reaches its audience but also resonates within your own organization, securing the necessary buy-in for successful campaigns. |
To gain more insights into effective strategies for internal buy-in and hear my full conversation with Ben, I invite you to listen to the entire episode. Itβs packed with actionable advice that can transform your approach to content marketing. |
ποΈ Listen to the full episode here |
|
|
|
|
πΎ TOFU Quick Bytes: Darwinbox Teardown πΎ |
Darwinbox teardown |
Founded in 2015, Darwinbox is a cloud-based platform that provides a full suite of HR management solutions that covers the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment and onboarding to payroll, performance management, and employee engagement. |
Strategy overview: Darwinbox mainly targets mid-to-large-scale enterprise customers to maintain a healthy gross margin while offering customized, innovative solutions that can be scaled across different clients. Innovation is at its core, and Darwinbox continuously adapts its features to expand into new countries and target a broad range of industries, from manufacturing and finance to pharma and retail. |
Performance Analysis: |
Their revenue last year was $31.1M
Theyβre currently valued at $945M
They have secured a total of $140M in funding
They're trusted by over 850+ leading brands across 110+ countries
|
How have they achieved this? |
Critical Teardown: |
What does Darwinbox do well? |
Innovation and product development: Darwinbox continuously invests in product development, launching new, innovative features like WhatsApp functionality, facial recognition, and AI-driven insights to stay ahead of industry trends and meet evolving HR needs. |
|
Implementation of performance marketing strategies: Darwinbox uses performance marketing strategiesβlike testing different keyword bidding strategies, ad formats, and targeting optionsβto generate Marketing Qualified Leads MQLs, increase visibility, and optimize their marketing efforts and spending. As a result, 76% of their website traffic comes from direct sources, and 17% comes from Google searches. They also regularly look at CRO to boost campaign performance, which involves adding tracking across different platforms, analyzing user behavior, and making data-driven adjustments to landing pages and ad creatives to increase conversion rates. |
Alignment of organic and paid search campaigns: By aligning their organic and paid search initiatives, Darwinbox ensures they cover all potential touchpoints where their target audience might be searching for HR solutions which helps them capture a bigger share of search traffic and improves overall campaign performanceβ. |
Localized adaptations: Darwinbox is expanding its global reach, with a focus on regions like the Middle East and North Africa, so they continuously adapt their products to meet local needsβsuch as launching an Arabic mobile appβwhich demonstrates their commitment to localizing their solutions for different markets.β |
|
What doesnβt Darwinbox do well? |
Customer support: Despite having a chatbot on the site to help with standard customer queries, customers have left scathing reviews about the quality and responsiveness of Darwinboxβs customer support, claiming the team is slow to respond and slow to resolve issues, which can lead to huge problems and will eventually lead to churn. |
|
|
Scalability for smaller businesses: While Darwinbox is highly effective for mid-to-large enterprises, smaller businesses find it too big, complex, and costly to use, so they might want to consider creating a scaled-back version for these, smaller companies. |
Mobile app limitations: Despite Darwinboxβs emphasis on building out mobile functionality, there have been reports of limitations and issues with the mobile app. Users have experienced bugs and a lack of features compared with the desktop version, which hinders usability for those who are on the go. |
|
|
AI integration |
Predictive analytics for lead scoring: Darwinbox has an AI algorithm that analyzes historical sales and customer data and predicts the likelihood of leads converting into customers, helping them prioritize ββhotββ leads, and allowing the sales and marketing teams to focus their efforts on the most promising prospectsβ. |
Customer insights and segmentation: Darwinbox leverages AI to analyze demographic data, purchase history, and online behavior so they can segment their audience and implement more targeted marketing strategies and messagesβthrough emails, ads, and social mediaβthat resonate better, therefore increasing engagement and conversion rates.β |
Website chatbots: As previously mentioned, Darwinbox employs an AI-powered website chatbot that answers queries, provides product information, and guides users through the sales process which improves the customer experience and increases the likelihood of conversion.β |
|
Voice and facial recognition: Darwinbox has integrated voice and facial recognition capabilities into its platform which enhance security and streamline processes like attendance tracking and employee verification. For example, employees can use facial recognition to clock in and out of shifts, reducing the need for manual attendance systems. |
Key takeaways: |
|
Test different performance marketing strategies, like keyword bidding, ad formats, and targeting options, and add tracking across your platforms and campaigns so you can make data-driven adjustments that increase performance.
|
|
|
|
Donβt forget about smaller businesses, theyβre still a worthwhile segment to target, and (perhaps with your help) could scale to become bigger enterprises, so donβt neglect their needs and try offering a scaled-back version of your product or service.
|
|
|
|
What campaign or content marketing strategy would you like to see torn apart, next? Let me know! |
|
|
|
|
π’Spread the Wordπ’
|
If you found value in today's insights, share Turing's TOFU with your network. Let's grow this community of AI-driven SaaS professionals together! |
|
|
|
What did you think of today's edition? |
|
|
|
|
|