🏔️ SaaS + Media Company

boost your SaaS growth: add media

Author

Vlad Oleksiienko
April 18, 2023

Hey there,

Welcome to the SaaS Hill, a weekly newsletter that tries to predict the future of SaaS.

Let's discuss Media Companies in SaaS 🎤.

⭐️️ Intro

A few days ago, Patrick Campbell, Founder & CEO at ProfitWell, announced the launch of Paddle Studios, a media component that fuels Paddle's growth by offering unique and high-quality content such as podcasts, books, shows, teardowns, videos, and blog posts.

If we zoom out, we can see that some big names in the SaaS space such as Zapier, HubSpot, Pendo, Stripe, Mailchimp, SEMrush, Wistia, Drift, Gong, and Outreach follow the same path. They embed another GTM (go-to-market) strategy - media companies - that strengthens their primary GTM strategy such as sales, product, virality, or community. They launch podcasts, niche newsletters, build communities, run virtual events and conferences, publish books, launch courses, academies, and product certifications.

This shift means that SaaS companies are adding a new dimension to their unit economics: audience.

The main question is how to grow this audience and how to convert it into product users.

Here is what we will discuss today:

  • 10 predictions about Media Companies in SaaS

  • 20 trend examples

  • 1 deep dive into Media Companies in SaaS

  • 2 trend charts

  • 6 experts to follow

  • 4 related trend reports

  • 3 useful links

🤔 Predictions

  1. We will see a rise in non-sales go-to-market strategies. Companies will implement other GTMs like product-led, community-led, marketing-led, and viral loops, as well as media-led.

  2. Some companies will mix different GTMs, e.g., sales + product, sales + community, product + community, sales + media.

  3. Media as a part of SaaS company growth will be a hot topic in the next few years. More and more companies will buy a well-established media brand or build a media department on their own and embed it as a part of their marketing strategy (e.g. Zapier bought Makerpad, Toplyne builds Top of the Lyne).

  4. Media companies will help to battle one of the most important metrics of SaaS unit economics: Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

    1. CAC in the SaaS space is growing due to competition within each category (there are more products and new players) and GTM copy-pasting (building SDR teams, running ads, building SEO).

  5. Media company will help fix this issue by:

    1. acquiring an audience that is already interested in a specific topic. For example, Outreach (a sales engagement platform) bought Sales Hacker (a community for B2B sales professionals), Zapier (a no-code tool) bought Makerpad (a community for no-coders)

    2. offering their SaaS product as a solution to the audience's struggles (e.g., Sales Hacker will advertise Outreach as a product that can help with cold outreach to generate new opportunities and business).

  6. Marketing teams will get a new division: Media Production. They will collaborate with CMOs, VPs of Brand, VPs of Community and other teams to build company’s media strategy.

  7. SaaS companies with media will have 2 dimensions:

    1. product users > trials, freemium users, customers, MAU, DAU

    2. media audience > number of newsletter subscribers, number of LinkedIn followers, number of podcast downloads, number of community members

    3. the goal of marketing and media teams is to convert media audience into product users

  8. Media companies will work as a flywheel. The media company builds a community > Community generates new members > New members see a SaaS solution > SaaS grows.

  9. Media companies will be all about high-quality content (Check 🤿 Deep Dive section below to learn more): niche newsletters, podcasts, virtual events, meetups, and even YouTube shows will entertain and educate potential buyers. As a result, the audience will stick with SaaS because of the great content.

  10. As a result, SaaS companies will unlock cheap marketing channels like virality and word of mouth.

🏢 Trend Examples

🤿 SaaS Deep Dive

I have been following the concept of "Media Company + SaaS" for almost a year, and lots of interesting things have happened in this space since then: Paddle acquired ProfitWell, Semrush bought Traffic Think Tank, and Pendo acquired Mind the Product.

So we have enough data to see how top-performing SaaS companies view media companies as a part of their growth strategy.

Here are the most common parts of their media strategy:

Building in Public. Of course, we can say that "building in public" is a regular marketing activity, but it looks like some marketing teams use this activity as a part of their media strategy. For example, GONG employees share Gong Labs insights on LinkedIn when they publish a new issue. This effect multiplies when sales influencers and salespeople write their own LinkedIn posts about new data-backed sales findings.

Podcasts. SaaS companies start niche podcasts to educate audience who prefer audio. For example, Drift has 9 different podcasts about revenue, operations, marketing, growth. Paddle Studios launched 3 podcasts about retention, budget, SaaS growth.

Newsletters. Newsletters are one of the most popular parts of a SaaS media company. They launch topic-specific newsletters to help audiences fix a broad issue (e.g. sales) or a specific issue (e.g. cold outreach, churn, onboarding). For example, Toplyne builds Top of the Lyne ( a newsletter about PLG). Mailchimp bought Courier Media which offers their content in audio, newsletter, and print bi-monthly magazine. . Hubspot’s The Hustle has their regular daily newsletter and Trends.

Video Content. This one is getting bigger. Paddle Studios has 6 web series about SaaS pricing, monetization, churn, taxes and SaaS growth. Video interviews and podcasts are also growing.

Webinars and Virtual events. There are SaaS companies that heavily rely on webinars and virtual events, virtual conferences, and keynotes. For example, Reply runs SDR Excellence - a conference for SDRs, Vidyard runs Fast Forward, Miro runs Distributed.

In-person Events and Conferences. While COVID-19 has affected the way we consume content and network, in-person events are slowly returning to our lives. When it comes to SaaS media company, here are some examples: RoadShow by Profitwell, Outreach Unleash, Mind the Product Conferences.

Community. Community may be the most important part of a SaaS media company strategy, as a friendly community of professionals who share the same values and have the same problems will help keep the media company alive. Here are the most important parts of a SaaS community:

  • job board

  • Q&A forum

  • Slack group

  • mentorship program

  • webinars and virtual events

  • (AMA) ask me anything sessions with field experts

  • education program for community professionals

  • 1-on-1 intros and community members matching

community club, Makerpad, RevGenius and Mind the Product have implemented almost all these things.

Other. There are a bunch of other parts of SaaS media company:

📈 Trend Chart

Visible vs on CAC

B2B CAC increased by almost 70% in the past 6 years from 2013 to 2019.

👔 Services

👥 Agencies and Communities

  • AudiencePlus > Community to help every company become a media company

  • MKT1 > Helps marketing leaders build high-growth B2B companies

  • community club > The community for community

📖 Experts to Follow

  1. Patrick Campbell > Founder & CEO at ProfitWell

  2. Andrew Gazdecki > Founder at MicroAcquire

  3. Dharmesh Shah > Co-founder/CTO, HubSpot

  4. Devin Reed > Head of Content @ Clari

  5. Rahul Krishnan > Growth at Toplyne

  6. Dave Gerhardt > Building Exit Five

  7. Mac Reddin > Founder and CEO at Commsor

🔗 Useful Links

  1. Should You Buy A Media Company? > blog post by OpenView

  2. Communities are the future of growth > cofounder of @MindtheProduct on media companies

  3. Why the Next Wave of Startups Will Be Community-Led > blog post by Ritika Mehta, Founder @10x

🐦️ Twitter Thread

Devin Reed on SaaS media company

🤝 Related SaaS Trends

  1. 🏔 Product Led Growth > or how we will buy software soon

  2. 🏔 Community Led Growth > or how to strengthen your PLG

  3. 🏔 Building in Public > sharing journey leads to growth opportunities

  4. 🏔 Merch Stores > stores dedicated to your SaaS raving fans

Thanks for reading. See you next time 👋

💡 Help me get better and suggest new ideas here
📈 Suggest new SaaS trend reports here
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