And… it works!

That’s why pricing hacks are dangerous.

They become addictive.

In this newsletter, I will be talking about one of my most proud moments that I ended to regret…

The Discount Trap - How LearnWorlds Almost Became A Discount Brand

At LearnWorlds, we were running shy discounts.

10% off (monthly).

Sometimes 20% off (monthly).

They didn’t work well.

The yearly plan came with a 20% discount baked in.

That worked.

But the buying decision was heavy.

You’re asking someone mid-trial to commit 12 months upfront based on a feeling.

The Hack

I pitched Panos, our CEO, on a different test.

Take the monthly plan:

Slash it 50% for 3 months.

The customer pays less upfront than two months at full price.

We collect 50% revenue for 3 months, it’s a lower discount than 20% yearly, but looks much bigger.

Emotionally the barrier to entry dropped.

It worked. VERY WELL.

So we ran it again. And again.

Every time the numbers dipped, we ran the promo.

Every other month, like clockwork.

The dashboard looked beautiful. Stable, growing MRR. Investors happy. The board happy. The team happy.

The Downside

What changed was how customers perceived the brand. Users became educated to the lower price, and looked to purchase when the discount was there.

LearnWorlds became, in the eyes of a meaningful chunk of new customers, a discount brand (kind of). In reality, this kept us from increasing the price.

Value for money, is often a discount brand positioning.

Would you do it again?

Yes! Discounts are part of marketing tactics.

But, they should be done carefully, feel special and rare.

A recurring discount becomes your SaaS’ real price into the eyes of the customers, and blocks you from increasing prices over time.

Freemium

Freemium is the most PLG motion you can have.

Most SaaS categories come with Freemium, the loss-maker to create an addiction to the buyer.

But, if you can’t convert those free users into paid, then you are burned 🔥

For a $0M to $10M ARR company copying that playbook without those underlying engines, freemium is a support tax with a vague payoff.

When freemium works:

Freemium works when you:

• have low costs and need to attract huge crowds.

• can build funnels and conversion mechanisms.

• can lock users for the long-term.

• can burn money to grow

Lifetime Deals

The AppSumo-style lifetime deal is the most efficient cash injection in early-stage SaaS.

Run a campaign.

Collect $200k in a week.

Book six figures of “revenue” without a single sales call.

The danger

Then live with the consequences:

• Every LTD customer is on your platform forever.

• Support costs.

• Server costs.

• Gross margin on that cohort approaches zero by year three.

The upside

LTDs can bring money in, but you need to be smart with it and include hard limits.

You need to study your costs and what platforms like AppSumo will ask.

You need to consider how this virality will pay off.

You need to promote well…

Lifetime deals are great to get a quick cash injection and increase customer base to grow faster, but come with many traps along the way.

The Annual Prepay Lock-In

The holy grail of SaaS may be yearly and multi-year deals.

Most SaaS offer a 20%-30% discount for annual prepayments.

The upseides

It’s a value for money for both you and your customers.

• Better retention.

• Better forecasting.

• Better planning.

The downside

Your whole revenue depends on yearly renewals.

And, you have less engaged users that are more likely to churn on renewal.

Price increases after the first year are harder.

Grandfathering, Done Right

Grandfathering is the one pricing hack on this list I love.

Loyalty pays off, both ways

When you raise prices, your loyal customers shouldn’t get hit with a 20% increase the next morning.

They bought the product at a price.

They built a business on it.

They might be loyal, or got the promise of the price.

You have to give users at least one year since they bought for grandfathering.

I recommend up to two years for your first / loyal customers is enough to show some loyalty back.

The challenge

Most SaaS teams make is treating grandfathering as a permanent shield or upgrade everyone regardless.

Both practices are destructive.

On permanent grandfathering, you are potentially losing money.

On upgrading everyone shows lack of loyalty to early customers, and that might create negative word of mouth and high churn.

What to do instead

The clean version of grandfathering looks like this:

• Hold the old price for 12 to 24 months after a price change.

• Tell the customer at the moment of the change, in writing, that the protection has an end date.

• Stage the migration so by month 24 they’re on current pricing without a renegotiation circus.

You’re offering more now.

The pricing should reflect it.

What This Is Really About

When you try to “hack” pricing, you are opening yourself to big challenges.

The question isn’t whether a pricing hack moves the metrics.

It can also backfire wonderfully.

Pricing is positioning.

Every hack repositions you in the market, whether you intended it or not.

A discount once is a test.

A discount every other month is a brand positioning.

The teams that win the pricing game aren’t the ones who never run hacks. They’re the ones who know when to stop.

Final Words: A/B Test

And, remember…

Pricing is fluid not stable.

You should change prices and A/B test them every now and then.

It might sound dangerous, and you are “locked” by competitors.

It’s also essential.

If you test, you might lose some revenue.

If you don’t test, you leave money on the table.

Choose your poison!

This was not a marketing call. I booked time on his calendar to evaluate Slate as a potential buyer.

The conversation that follows is what a senior practitioner sounds like trying to figure out whether a piece of software

• actually solves a real problem at scale,

• what it costs, and

• who it’s actually built for (ok, this is more professional curiosity).

About Shiyam & Slate

Shiyam runs TripleDart, a growth marketing agency for B2B SaaS, and built Slate (slatehq.com) on the back of the content automation problems his agency was already solving for clients.

The product solves problems content teams actually have, first for the team at TripleDart.

It is an automation tool with pre-built workflows on content automation, updates, and content management at scale, with a human-in-the-middle approach to AI.

In this episode, you will hear us discuss:

• What Slate actually is (and what it isn’t)

• The live demo

• The differentiator from tools like N8N and Make

• The credit pricing model, what $500 actually buys, and how Slate set its prices

• Who Slate is built for (Spoiler: 1,000-page minimum sites)

What Slate Actually Is (and What It Isn’t)

The first thing Shiyam wanted to clarify on the call was the positioning, because it gets confused often. Slate is not an AI search tool.

It is not Profound, Peec, or Athena.

It is a content automation platform built around composable AI actions, what Shiyam calls “nodes.”

You build agents.

The agents run sequences of nodes.

• The nodes generate images,

• pull keyword data from Ahrefs and Semrush,

• take screenshots of brand pages,

• write articles,

• do internal linking,

• do external linking, and

• publish to your CMS.

It’s like Clay, but for SEO and content workflows. You build a workflow once, then call that workflow as a single block inside another, bigger workflow.

The Live Demo: From Brief to Published Article

Shiyam walked through a real workflow built for Guideflow, a European SaaS company. The chain runs like this:

• Take an input brief

• Generate a hero image with GPT-image

• Run a fact-checker node to find fresh statistics on the topic

• Extract brand URLs from the brief

• Take screenshots of those brand homepages

• Map screenshots to brand mentions inside the article

• Write the full article

• Convert to clean HTML, flatten to a single file, generate a slug

• Publish directly to Webflow under a new section of the blog

The end output is a published article with original images, embedded screenshots of competitor products and internal links.

How is this different from N8N or Make.

First, the blocks themselves.

Slate has SEO-native nodes that don’t exist in N8N like Ahrefs, Semrush, citation formatting, web search with AI overviews, schema generation, internal linking, external linking, content humanizer, Reddit scraper, G2 reviews scraper.

The general-purpose tools can technically do this, but you’re building it from scratch. Slate already has the functionality built-in.

Second, every block is structured to take a prompt for both the AI agent and the end user. Slate’s blocks have a dual prompt by design with instructions for the system, and instructions for the human reviewer.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. I tend to prefer workflows with the human-in-the-middle-loop.

Bulk Content Refresh and Internal Analysis

The use case that turns Slate from “interesting” into “I would actually buy this” is bulk content refresh.

If you have 10,000 pages and traffic is declining on 800 of them, the manual job is unbearable. Slate’s content refresh agent ingests an existing article, runs the analysis, and produces a refreshed version with modifications highlighted.

1. Yellow for sections it changed.

2. Green for sections it added.

3. You review, approve, and publish.

Razorpay, an Indian fintech directly competing with Stripe, has roughly 10,000 pieces of content and uses Slate to refresh 25 to 30 per week.

Atlas, a global payroll company, uses it to monitor every country’s official visa site and update their content every time visa rules change.

SentinelOne uses it to maintain a daily-updated repository of new cyber attacks.

Agentic Workflow Building

The internal analysis side is where Slate gets ambitious. Shiyam asked the platform a single question on the call: “Where am I losing to competitors on listicles in the last 30 days?”

The system pulled brand-level SEO metrics, gathered competitor listicle pages, ran a diagnosis on why specific pages were underperforming, and recommended refresh-or-rebuild for each one. Then he asked it to fix the problem. It built the refresh workflow on its own.

Pricing, Credits, and Who Slate Is Built For

This is where I pushed hardest, because Slate’s pricing isn’t on their site in a useful way and I wanted the practitioner answer.

Slate uses a credit model.

Pricing

Workflows and agents (the main product)

• Solo: $500 for 50,000 credits → roughly 30 to 40 content creation or refresh tasks, including image generation

• Pro: $1,000 for 100,000 credits → more credits, more users, plus access to Sanity, Contentful, and additional CMSs (Solo only covers WordPress and Webflow)

• Scaling up from there: $2,000 for 200,000 credits, $3,000 for 300,000

Prompt tracking (separate product, for AI search visibility monitoring)

• 100 prompts × 4 platforms × 4 weeks = roughly $199 to $299

I asked Shiyam how they set the price. The answer was unusually direct.

“Purely on our margins.”

Slate isn’t priced based on competitor benchmarks or willingness-to-pay testing. It’s priced as cost-plus on the underlying API and data fetching costs.

Not a Self-Service SaaS

There is no self-service.

I tried to use Slate before the call.

It does not work without setup.

The white-glove model is built-in to the system.

The company sets up your workspace, configures your CMS connections, and helps you build your first agents.

The Target Market: Enterprise

The target customer is mid-market or enterprise, with a minimum of 1,000 pages on their site.

Average ticket size: $10,000 to $25,000 a year. He has roughly 78 independent customers plus 20 from TripleDart’s agency book.

If you have 200 blog posts and traffic is fine, this is not for you. If you have 5,000 product pages and a content refresh problem nobody on the team has time to solve, this is exactly for you.

Takeaways

Three things stayed with me from this conversation.

Slate solves a real problem for the agency.

Pre-built AI workflows to create and refresh content at scale.

This is for big websites.

This is enterprise SEO automation, sold to teams that already have a content engine, and thousands of pages.

The pricing methodology is going to change.

Cost-plus margin is a good way to start, but I expect the pricing to change as it moves forward. Already, the credit limits have been expanded.

I prefer gaming on the couch after a long day at work, which includes reading, writing, and communicating.

That’s why most books I “read” are Audiobooks - rarely physical, sometimes ebooks.

Audiobooks & podcasts are my preferred company while driving, walking, or cycling. Adding on the empty space, and reducing unwanted sounds with sometimes fun, sometimes educational vibes.

Today, I decided to share my favourite marketing & business books which I read over the past 10 years.

1. Alchemy — Rory Sutherland

I love , sometimes I feel like a fan boy listening to his interviews and while listening to this audiobook.

He comes from more traditional marketing, and truly thinks out of the box.

His book changed opened my mind to possibilities I never thought.

It’s about why logic is a terrible way to understand human behavior. It broke my strong belief in economics as a science, and my love for that kind of content.

Rory’s whole point: the opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. Reducing the price of something can make people want it less. Adding friction to a process can make people trust it more.

The “right” answer and the answer that works are almost never the same thing.

If you need to break the patterns, Alchemy is the book I recommend.

2. This Is Marketing — Seth Godin

Marketing has been around forever. With AI disrupting everything, I strongly believe we should get back to the basics.

This is the book that brings you there.

Seth argues you don’t need everyone, you need the smallest viable audience. You don’t need attention and permission.

When you need to rethink the foundamentals, that’s your guide.

3. Purple Cow — Seth Godin

For some reason, I read Purple Cow last year.

Maybe I should have done it earlier.

Average products marketed to average people fail.

Today, every channel is saturated and you can’t out-spend the noise (ppc is so expensive nowadays).

You can only be remarkable, or invisible.

Purple cow is about how your differ as an act of marketing. (I think I need to re-listen to it after my current book)

4. Growth Hacker Marketing — Ryan Holiday

The growth hackers bible.

I can guarantee you, that every hack in this book has been saturated, overused, and utterly useless today.

But, from the point of view of those being “new”, this is an incredible look into how guerilla marketing strategies are born.

The mindset you get from this one, is gold.

Holiday’s framing of growth marketing is what got me to where I am today: it’s not a separate discipline. It’s just great marketing, executed by people willing to find opportunities where others don’t look.

That’s it. That’s the whole game.

5. Product-Led SEO — Eli Schwartz

Today, with 15 years of experience, I disagree with most of what Eli Schwartz says.

A few years back, his product-led SEO book was my bible, and is still a gold-mine for this kind of activity.

When you listen about programmatic SEO failures, it’s because of bad implementations. Product-led programmatic SEO is still a winner.

The best SEO strategies are built into the product itself.

6. From Connections to Conversions — Vasileios Mylonas

It took me a year to finish this book, because Vasilis doesn’t offer it as an audiobook. I finished it on my last trip to Greece, while on the airport going to visit him (he still owes me a signed copy) - and I gave the physical print to another friend.

LinkedIn is becoming the main way to market B2B, leaders are silently lurking there and connecting with peers.

Vasili’s book is a beginner’s book and I still got a lot of insights from it.

Easy read.

Good, evergreen tips.

You don’t always need the most complex strategy, simple things are pretty effective!

7. Buy Back Your Time — Dan Martell

I read this after a mentor recommended it while building own agency & consulting business 2 years ago (and then moved back to in-house).

Whether you are a manager or a business owner, you need to learn to delegate.

As a practitioner, I still find it hard.

But, that’s the skill you will find most useful as a leader.

Buying back my time was one of the most important advice I had, and the book actually gives you frameworks and rules to help do so.

WHEN to delegate and WHAT are the most important questions a founder should ask themselves.

8. Lost and Founder — Rand Fishkin (currently reading)

The one I’m reading right now (or listening).

Most founder books are sanitized reads, media perspectives.

Rand wrote took the honest approach.

It talks about the pain.

The difficulties.

The real decisions and mistakes.

You can feel.

It doesn’t give you “the answer” but rather the choice.

The best advice is not a catch-all answer, it’s the one that fits your needs.

Bonus Literature Series

This will be short of fluff, but it’s a long list, and I promise… I will forget a lot of great ones :)

• Lord of the Rings - Tolkien is the king of high fantasy.

• The Spellmonger - I am addicted, and we are on book 18 now (I think)

• Dune - Praised may be our lord emperor Leto II

• The HitchHiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Pure fun

• World of Warcraft - Love lore tie-ins

• A natural history of dragons - if you are looking for a female protagonist

• Dragonlance (that’s probably my next one)

There are many other solo books, or series but it will take us all day to discuss. And, I want to throw a few solo that actually cover the socio-economic & geo-political climate of the day:

• iRobot - Isaac Asimov

• 1984 - George Orwell

• Brave New World - Orson Wells

Haven’t read but probably relevant: Fahrenheit 451.

Looking for the Next One(s)

I am nearing my end of the marketing & business books.

Rand’s is the last one I accidentally caught while scrolling on LinkedIn. I don’t really actively look for this kind of books, I get them by recommendations.

What do you think I should read next?

Mostly because I followed them, and my friend talked so well about them, I wanted to meet them.

They invited me on to talk SEO, growth, in-house politics, attribution, and AI.

We went long. Close to an hour.

And, enjoyed a chill talk between long-time professionals.

About the Hosts

Sara Taher is an in-house SEO lead, newsletter writer, and course creator. She teaches Python for SEO and runs her own newsletter where she writes because she wants to, not because she’s trying to sell something.

Nick Vujic runs a growth agency focused on organic marketing for early-stage B2B startups (zero to ten million ARR is his sweet spot). He’s the agency voice in most of our exchanges.

Two of us are in-house. One is agency.

In This Episode, You Will Hear

• Why I moved from SEO to Head of Demand (and why it never was just about SEO)

• How to survive in-house politics when your 30-page audit gets 3% accepted

• Why technical founders are the hardest founders to sell SEO to

• The case for email marketing over almost every other channel for early-stage B2B

• Why I think attribution is dying and why that’s fine

• The side project rule: why in-house marketers need something with no limitations

• An honest AI take from a skeptic (and the Claude moment that changed my mind)

Why I Chose Growth Over SEO

I get bored.

If I’m forced to do one thing, I lose interest. Always, my role was about growth… people knew me because I talked about SEO.

At LearnWorlds, even when my title said Head of SEO, SEO was only about 30% to 50% of my actual job.

I was opening channels. Facebook and remarketing in 2017 before most B2B companies were spending that much there. Affiliates. PPC. Email. I was doing inbound sales with the CEO until we hired for it.

» Then I moved on to the next channel.

Channel agnostic is the right frame.

SEO was a massive lever for me, but it was one lever. If the channel that works for your business this year is paid social, do paid social.

If it’s email, do email. The goal is pipeline. Not proving SEO is the best channel.

🏆 Author’s note: Email marketing is still my favorite. Almost every early-stage B2B SaaS I’ve consulted for never emailed their database once. A basic newsletter activates a base you already paid to acquire.

The Survival Guide for In-House Politics

In-house marketing is 60% doing the work and 40% defending it. I am lucky in my current role that’s less the case, but it’s still part of the job. While, I heard horror cases with marketers spending 90% of their time defending their work.

If you want to survive long enough to ship anything, you have to play with the politics, it’s unavoidable as companies grow.

Pick your fights

I don’t fight the brand team for the homepage H1.

That’s their baby. I ask for one or two dedicated SEO pages where I have full control. They keep their brand positioning. I get my traffic. Everyone wins.

Learn the language of the person in front of you

CFOs want revenue numbers.

Developers want clear, concise instructions.

If you tell a developer “make the site fast,” they’ll ship you a JavaScript-heavy site that’s technically fast but Googlebot can’t crawl. Be specific.

Find the gap

I waited one and a half years for a simple WordPress checkbox fix. I caught a developer on a Friday when he had some downtime. He fixed it in 4 hours.

Rapport, patience, and building relationships with the right people wins battles.

Author’s note: Sara made a great point here that I want to reinforce. When a stakeholder blocks a small thing today, your next suggestion gets harder. Technical SEO debt compounds. So does political debt. Get the small wins early. Earn the capital. Then spend it on the bigger fights.

Why Most Founders Shouldn’t Start with SEO

There are three kinds of founders.

The technical one, who only thinks about product and numbers.

The seller, who goes out and closes deals.

And the promoter, who understands marketing.

The third one is rare in tech. When you find one, they usually grow their companies fast.

Technical founders love numbers. But SEO gives them uncertainty in the short term, and they don’t like uncertainty.

So they default to product.

Features over pipeline.

Every time.

If I’m walking into an early-stage B2B SaaS cold, I usually tell the founder don’t start with SEO.

• Start with direct sales.

• Hit doors.

• Go to events.

• Send LinkedIn messages.

• Build an email list.

• Run a newsletter.

Get ten customers who can tell you what they actually want. Then think about scaling a channel.

Nik Vujik said his agency has built attribution models around SEO that tie back to pipeline, and for B2C and small B2B that absolutely works. But for enterprise B2B with 50 to 150 touches per deal, trying to attribute a sale to one SEO page is a fool’s errand.

Which leads to the next point.

The Death of Attribution

Here’s my controversial take.

Attribution is dying, and I’m fine with it.

Between GDPR, cookie blocking, the messy middle of the buyer journey, and enterprise sales cycles that hit 150 touches, pinning a closed-won deal to one channel is a fiction you sell to a CFO so you don’t get your budget cut.

The reality:

• Self-attributed data is honest. When we surveyed Cyberbit customers, most said “I found you on the internet” or “I googled you.” Not helpful for a dashboard. Very helpful for understanding reality.

• Multi-touch attribution models are a defense mechanism. If 95% of your energy goes to defending every dollar you spend, 5% goes to actual marketing. That’s not growth. That’s survival.

• Fundamentals work. Write good content. Send good emails. Show up at the right events. Talk to customers. The basics outperform most attribution dashboards.

Do the work. Trust the fundamentals. Stop trying to prove every click.

Executing fast will get you the wins needed to grow.

Author’s note: There’s nuance here. If you’re in B2C or small B2B with short cycles and few touchpoints, attribution is doable and useful. Nick’s Zapier-based touchpoint tracking for his ten-to-twenty-thousand-visits-per-month clients sounds genuinely useful. I’m not anti-measurement. I’m anti-wasting-your-life measuring the unmeasurable.

The Side Project Rule

Every in-house marketer needs a side project with no limitations.

In corporate, product says no. The CEO says no.

You can’t get budget for link building.

You can’t test that tool.

You can’t publish that piece.

You stop learning because someone upstream decided you shouldn’t.

A side project fixes this.

Newsletter — Help grow this one ;) it’s my side-project.

Personal website.

Chrome extension.

Whatever. It forces you to stay sharp and keeps you learning at a pace the corporate job can’t.

My side projects are the newsletter you’re reading right now, my LinkedIn presence, marketingexpertshub.com, and LibrarIn (a Chrome extension for saving and categorizing LinkedIn posts, currently in review for the next version).

Sara has her courses and her own newsletter.

Nick has his agency and is pushing into building his own product.

The pattern is the same. In-house gives you the real-world problem set. The side project gives you the sandbox to figure out how to solve it.

An AI Take from a Skeptic

I’m an AI skeptic. I’m also a Claude user.

These two things aren’t contradictory.

I don’t think AI is replacing marketers.

I think it’s Zapier on steroids.

A productivity tool that saves me a few hours a week.

I use it to write regex for Search Console, fix code snippets, draft first versions of emails, and build small tools with Lovable.

For months I stayed on Gemini because I was already paying for Google. Then I went to Greece, talked to a bunch of people who wouldn’t shut up about Claude, and finally tested it.

Four hours in, Claude fixed a Chrome extension I’d been fighting with Lovable on for two weeks.

Author’s note: Sara made the right cautionary point here. AI is great until you stop checking its output. I’ve seen people ship work with obvious hallucinations because they trusted the first draft. AI is a productivity tool. It is not a replacement for thinking. Treat it like a very fast, very confident junior.

The Takeaway

Three things stuck with me from this conversation.

In-house politics

If you work in-house, you’re going to lose fights. Pick the ones worth winning. Drop the rest. Build enough rapport and wins that when the important one comes, you have the political capital to take it.

No attribution is perfect

Stop waiting for perfect attribution. Do the work. Trust the fundamentals. Measure what you can, ignore what you can’t, and spend your energy on marketing instead of defending marketing.

Side-projects are the best learning experiences

Have a side project. One with no limitations. It’s the only way to keep learning when the corporate world says no.

What’s one fight you’ve decided to stop picking with your product team to save your sanity?

Let me know in the comments.

Generative AI raised the floor on content. It also raised the bar.

Most content fails now. Everywhere.

Google, AI search, LinkedIn — the same posts, the same takes, the same recycled frameworks rewritten by the same tools.

And the people still winning all have one thing in common: they’re doing the work nobody else wants to do.

The Winners

Look at who’s actually breaking through right now.

Everyone who invests time, money, and effort to produce something above and beyond.

Surveys

Peep Laja runs CMO surveys, a real data collection moat.

These research require high-level human input and budget to pay both the surveyed, analysts, and designers…

Original Research

at publishes original research on AI Overviews.

Kevin is producing research on AI Search like a machine-gun, speed and great depth at incredible speeds!

Meta-Analysis & First Party Data

through built a research section into his newsletter where he posts both Minuttia’s own research and a meta-analysis of others.

Three different people.

Three different formats.

Same pattern underneath.

They’re not winning because they’re louder. They’re winning because what they publish costs real EFFORT to make.

The bar moved. Here’s what that actually means.

For ten years, content was a volume game.

Publish more, rank more, get more reach. The teams that produced the most won the most.

Sounds like simple math.

But, so many AI Slop programmatic sites have risen and died in a matter of months…

AI is good enough at:

• Writing

• Summarizing

• Rewriting

• Producing

Not great, many mistakes.

But, it can easily product a medium level posts, article, newsletter from scratch.

When everyone has access to AI, it stops being a differentiator.

The bar moved from volume to quality to effort.

• AI Search likes first party data.

• LinkedIn rewards information, templates, and playbooks.

• Google rewards dwell time - people actually reading the pages.

• Google also rewards real products - people who actually built something useful.

The 3 Most Powerful Moats

Building the next moat of marketing and product is hard, because the previous moat has been democratized.

Effort-led moats coming from experience, great ideas, and great implementations are what comes next!

1. Original ideas

A Point-of-View (POV) nobody else has:

• An opinionated take.

• A contrarian angle you actually believe.

• A vulnerable take.

• A deep truth.

AI can regurgitate existing opinions.

It can’t form new ones.

Original ideas are uncomfortable. They are also brandable.

Most teams don’t publish strong opinions because strong opinions are risky, and corporations like safety above else. You can’t build a brand on safe (in most occassions).

When a position is 100% safe and agreeable, it is also indistinguishable from all others.

2. First-Party Data

The thing AI literally cannot generate.

• Your customer interviews.

• Your funnel numbers.

• Your churn cohort.

• Your surveys of 200 subject-matter-experts.

• Your experiment results from last quarter.

AI cannot create, but can fake real-world experiences.

I am often writing about SaaS and Tech, those are my deep expertise.

Companies, especially in tech sit on a treasure-trove of data and knowledge, but refuse to give it away as it’s “dangerous”.

Their competitors will copy.

Their competitors will steal.

Their competitors will keep up.

I am sorry to disappoint you, but there is a ton of ways to get competitive data and protectionism only works when you are a monopoly leader.

For anyone smaller, you are giving away your advantage.

Data is hard to get.

3. Real Experiments - Storytelling

“Here is what I tried and…”

…failed

…found out

…grew by X%

Build-in-public works because people buy-in the story.

You can of course fake it… but people thirst for these stories.

People who, as I said before, don’t take risk that easily.

They might not be in a position to take risks,

or don’t have the budget,

or don’t have the budget/capacity/resources.

(yes, sometimes they are also lazy or lack focus)

Those are thirsty for your experiences to use in their work.

A-Players VS B-Players

A-players run experiments, take risks, and publish. They are leaders in their niche and create a following.

B-players wait, follow, and read the experiments of A-players, implementing what works, after it has already worked and became public knowledge.

The New Moat: Why Effort Wins

Effort is a signal.

It’s the signal that you are a leader and an A-player.

Effort is how systems recognize a winner amongst a raised bar.

Effort scales the expensive way with

• humans,

• budget,

• time,

• thinking.

AI can help, you can run agents, automations, and templated reports. You can build tools and vibe code.

The moat is building an automation that works.

The moat is building a tool that doesn’t break.

The moat is building something that requires deliberation & thinking.

Most teams won’t pay that cost.

They’ll keep optimizing for output, keep racing AI to the bottom, keep wondering why their organic is flatlining and their LinkedIn reach is softer every month.

Effort is Rare

The moat isn’t that effort is rare.

The moat is that effort is expensive, deliberate, and human.

...and almost no one actually fixes.

For this episode, I sat down with Antonis Askianakis, Head of Sales at LearnWorlds, and a former colleague of seven years. We worked together at LearnWorlds, had real disagreements, and came out of it as friends. That’s the only kind of relationship where this honest conversation is even possible.

It’s what the conversation actually sounds like between two revenue people who trust each other enough to be honest.

In this episode, you will hear us discuss:

• What sales actually wants from marketing (and why “more leads” is never the full answer)

• Why misalignment is almost always a leadership failure before it’s a team failure

• The MQL/SQL debate — and why shared definitions matter more than the labels

• Why marketing’s responsibility doesn’t end when the lead is handed off

• The dual-pipeline target fix that forces both teams into accountability

• When and why reducing marketing touches mid-deal is the right call

The Real Ask: Alignment, Not Just Leads

We started where most of these conversations should start — what does sales actually need from marketing?

Both teams share the same goal, even if they sit at different parts of the funnel. What sales is asking by “more leads”, “better quality” might be better alignment.

The funnel feels linear, but it isn’t. And when marketing’s North Star metric diverges from sales’, you’ve already lost.

The fix sounds simple:

• agree on definitions,

• set common goals,

• write it down.

Alignment is a Leadership Problem

We spent a lot of time here, and it’s worth spending time on.

When two teams are fighting over lead quality, pipeline ownership, or CRM hygiene, the instinct is to fix the process. The problem is around accountability and leadership.

When leadership doesn’t take a clear position on who owns what it creates a blaming circle.

Marketing blames sales for not following up.

Sales blames marketing for bad leads.

Nobody fixes anything because nobody has to.

The only sustainable fix is a shared revenue goal with clear ownership of each stage. Whether that comes from a CRO, a combined commercial team, or two directors who decide to align themselves, somebody has to draw the line.

Author’s note: At Cyberbit, the first thing I did was sit down with sales and agree on definitions. Not to be bureaucratic about it, just to have something written that both sides owned. It didn’t solve everything. But it removed the most common arguments.

The ICP and Lead Quality Problem

Experienced AEs have a warm network, a preferred industry vertical, and leads they can close with high certainty. When marketing brings in leads from a different profile, the easiest thing to do is ignore them.

That’s not a sales problem — it’s a trust and data problem. If an AE consistently ignores a lead type, there’s a reason. Either the leads genuinely aren’t converting, or the AE hasn’t been given a reason to trust the process.

The right response isn’t to complain about it in a marketing meeting. It’s to ask:

“Can you walk me through why these three leads didn’t go anywhere?”

That conversation usually reveals more about your ICP than six months of analytics.

The Pipeline Target Fix

The most practical takeaway from the episode.

Marketing tracks pipeline. Sales tracks pipeline and revenue. When the only metric marketing owns is top-of-funnel, the incentive to stay involved after handoff disappears.

Antonis’ suggestion: give marketing a pipeline target that extends deeper into the funnel. When marketing has a stake in whether those leads convert, not just whether they arrived. Then, the dynamic changes.

Marketing starts asking why BDRs aren’t converting the leads.

Sales starts explaining what’s actually happening in the conversations.

Both teams start working on the same problem instead of arguing about whose fault it is.

When Marketing Should Pull Back

Not everything calls for more marketing involvement.

In complex enterprise deals — where buying committees are large, relationships are fragile, and timing is everything — an unsolicited marketing email to the wrong stakeholder can derail a deal in progress.

Antonis’ approach: reduce direct touches at the deal level, but don’t disappear.

• Brand awareness,

• retargeting, and

• content still run in the background.

The distinction matters.

Marketing that stays visible at the brand level creates the familiarity that makes future deals easier to close.

Marketing that steps on an active deal creates friction.

Wrapping Up

The closing line from Adonis landed the clearest:

That’s it. That’s the whole job.

Not leads for the sake of leads. Not MQLs to hit a target. Bring marketing and sales close enough to their total addressable market that the right conversations happen with the right people at the right time.

Everything else — the definitions, the targets, the processes — is just scaffolding around that one idea.

Growth marketing is nothing more than great marketing being done well.

Take what works, experimenting, and moving fast in an opportunistic way to grow a company.

Growing a start-up to a scale-up is a hard job, and the first few paid customer is the most difficult part. Scaling up to a multi-million ARR company (usually) takes years of persistence, consistency, and pivoting.

This is my topic for SaaStock Local Athens on March 26th 2026.

And, this newsletter is an extension of this presentation.

Access the presentation by subscribing to the newsletter.

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You will get a welcome email with a link to the presentation.

Existing subscribers will get it through the chat feature of Substack.

What Playbooks Work for SaaS in 2026?

This is a collection of playbooks I see working well for some companies, as well as my experiences over the past 2 years.

It is by no means an exhaustive list.

First, let’s break-down the playbooks into categories:

• Brand

• Product-Led-Growth (PLG)

• Performance

• Social & Community

Brand

Brand is the ultimate moat.

The ONE thing none can replicate.

Consistency

Showing up consistently builds a brand. Choosing a niche, a specialty, and an expertise around it. I was reading this post by Peter Rota the other day about showing up for 15 years to build his now 80k social media followership

While, my journey to 15k took 3 years of persistent work, as I describe in a previous article.

Positioning

Being the “X to the Y” is more important today.

Niching down, being explicit and specific to your offering is more important than ever.

AI works with fan-out queries, additional searches specialized to your conversation, personal history, and detailed questions (long-tail). Explicitly positioning for a niche is important to capture that audience, over going for an “all-use-case” startup.

Don’t drown yourself in the ocean, become the biggest fish in a small puddle first, then scale accordingly.

Newsletters

Own your audience, and combine it with consistency.

Repetition builds relationships. A potential client who finds you through your website will not become a repeat visitor that easily.

Having a newsletter both captures a user’s email and keeps the relationship alive…

…as long as you keep offering value in a consistent cadence.

See how Lenny grew his newsletter into 1 Million Subscribers over 5 years, and now promotes tools.

I grew LearnWorlds’ newsletter to 300k and kept selling the product there for years. Consistency, value, offers, and product updates are important, while not caring about social algorithms.

PLG (Product-Led Growth)

The holy grail of SaaS, Product Led Growth.

Great product feel like they should be growing with PLG… the reality? PLG is being built into the products intentionally, and whether it’s a smart technical founder, or a marketing mind behind it… it’s great marketing at work here!

User Activation

Users share stories of your product and see the value if they adopt the features. Many founders build features that are never used, because they were not communicated correctly.

You can market your product features by jacking up user activation.

Engaged users stay longer, and pay more == Bigger LTV (lifetime value).

Amplemarket’s Case Study

Usage-Based Pricing

Many companies are going into “survival mode”, and locked contracts do not work for them.

This, along with AI credits, have educated the market to seek Usage Based Pricing.

Positioning your SaaS into value-for-money and pay-as-you-use can be an advantage into uncertain markets.

Note: While this is not great for enterprise accounts who like predictability and quarterly budget planning, it’s great if your customers are Solopreneurs and SMEs.

Accessible Product (Freemium, Mini-tool)

Your product is your biggest driver.

If your audience can’t test parts of your tool, then how can they commit to a long 12-month contract?

One option is Freemium…

My favorite option is mini-tools and un-gating parts of your product.

Ahrefs does this incredibly well with Free SEO tools, which are limited pieces of their main software.

Case Studies / Use Cases

Modern buyers want to know more about your product and tools.

Same as Google.

Same as AI Search Tools.

Explicitly having use cases, industries, and product pages on your website makes it more discoverable, and helps discovery channel awareness… in layman’s terms, both Google and AI tools know about your product’s capabilities and suggest it to the right people.

Never forget the human factor.

Case studies are important to showcase logos, results, and numbers. Positioning your product as the right tool and reducing resistance.

What buyers want to know from case studies?

• Do you serve clients in their industry?

• What is the ROI of your tool?

• How can they pitch your tool to their manager / CEO / CFO / board?

P.S.: Great example on how Clay uses case studies.

Performance

Going deeper into more performance oriented growth tactics.

These are more aggressive, direct, and can bring faster, short-term results.

ABM (Account-Based Marketing)

Most marketing teams (especially enterprise) talk about ABM/ABX for years… the reality?

The higher in the B2B scale your product, the more “touches” your target account needs:

• Multiple people in buying committee

• LinkedIn messages

• Dinners

• Gifts

• Events

• Ads

• Billboards

• De-anonymization

• CFO enablement

• Acceleration

• Presentations

• Demos…

It’s a pretty complex process, for a complex buying journey.

Workflows

Publicly sharing workflows of successful implementations of your software, or in this case an agency workflow from in a LinkedIn post can generate a lot of attention.

People trust the result if they get access to see “behind the scenes” and understand how you work.

This builds trust.

This builds the wow factor (virality).

This shows expertise.

Social & Community

Our world is more interconnected than ever, this creates the two paradoxes:

• Digital, instant communication increases (volume)

• The need for in-person communication increases (quality)

Social media, WhatsApp & Telegram groups, and video conferencing creates big amounts of noise, but private high-value communities both online and offline break through the noise.

Most of the following plays overlap at multiple points. For example a founder brand is both a social selling play and a micro-influencer, while in-person events might lead to more introductions in the event.

Ecosystem Platforms & Integrations

Shopify is not a simple software, it acts on both sides of the spectrum.

Platform Apps

You can easily grow a SaaS by building for a platform ecosystem like:

• Shopify

• WordPress

• HubSpot

• Salesforce

• Slack…

Expanding your software to serve these markets, expands the surface area you are covering up.

Integrations

In the same way, integrating with popular tools allows you to expand functionality and quickly get their audience to play well with you.

Both OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Anthropic (Claude) are integrating with other businesses to increase their surface area, usability, and accessibility.

This is an old product-led playbook that works like a charm. Both AI tool & software integration vendor win from this collaboration.

Ecosystem

The best SaaS create and own the ecosystem.

As the image above shows, Claude is the marketplace of integrations, and most other apps in that catalogue own a catalogue of 3rd party integrations as well.

Being THE ecosystem platform, where others build integrations for you enables your community to build for you.

Social Selling (Trust)

Building trust in public, and then selling your solutions is more important now than ever.

You are not competing in a busy street with people, but in the internet with competitors from every corner of the globe.

Trust is the most important coin today.

People buy from who they trust.

• Showing up on their feed

• Sharing interesting & valuable content

• Talking in DMs

• Being part of the community, long-term

Introductions

Let this be our little secret…

One of the best ways to grow is ASKING for introductions. Notice the “asking” being bold, notice me repeating it. It’s that important.

People will recommend your product. But, you can actually activate them to do so.

Make it into a process, ask for recommendations. it WORKS.

• Happy clients will recommend you to their network,

• they will CC you in their emails, and

• will know when a peer is in-market for you.

In-Person

I have worked with technical founders for most of the last decade.

If you are a SaaS founder, being social, and shaking hands is not your strong point. However, business is often made in handshakes, especially B2B.

The higher the price of your product, the more you need to go out and talk to people.

Building up familiarity through in-person meetings, physical events, meet-ups, and even coffee or dinner events.

Micro-Influencers

Micro-influencers may have a smaller following but outsized impact to their communities. An “army” of micro-influencers may be worth as much or more than bigger ones.

And, it’s a cheaper way to start.

Especially if you are selling at a niche community, micro-influencers may offer access and help you open the market.

Micro-influencers though can overlap with other strategies in this list:

• Sharing your frameworks

• Creating their own frameworks/templates for your Software

• Your employees as micro-influencers (especially sales)

Founder Brand

Your Founder Brand is connected to the building in public tactic, but may also be closely related (e.g. talking about the industry, not the company).

These founder brands are usually attracting other business people who want to follow your example or learn from you.

If your target audience is businesses, CEOs, or founders, then this is a great way to go.

My social media of choice is LinkedIn, but founder brands can be on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X (Twitter) or other social.

You, as a founder, need to be comfortable writing and speaking in public.

And, while AI can help clean up your writing and write more. You need to be able to understand what it means to write or speak as a delegate of your brand. You don’t need to be perfect, that comes with practice.

Here are a few examples I follow:

Building in Public

The main difference of building in public with a founder’s brand and social selling is that you position as a founder, and talk about:

• building your product,

• sharing your numbers,

• celebrating wins,

• talking about failure.

People love looking “under-the-hood” of rare examples of honest founders showing what it really takes to succeed.

It’s the rag-to-riches story that attracts people.

It’s the grit and struggle.

It’s the secret no one else likes to share.

Even, myself, as not a product founder build a plugin and that was one of my most successful posts last month:

Scaling a SaaS Might Require Unscalable Actions

Each stage of the company might require a different playbook.

Many of these tactics can get a company from $0 to $10M ARR.

Some companies may require a combination of playbooks, or a single one might be enough. It depends.

And, scaling, does not always mean automating…

B2C SaaS requires volume.

B2B SaaS requires relationships.

How you built each one, it depends by industry, product, and your “super powers”.

Before you go…

These newsletters take a long time, effort, and it’s my little startup :)

If you found value, subscribe to the newsletter and follow me on LinkedIn.

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And, feel free to DM me.

I enjoy conversations on marketing, business, and growing, and scaling SaaS.

Technical founders (especially) are obsessed with spreadsheet numbers. And, they have been the drivers behind the wheel for many of the past three decade’s top companies.

The internet, helped measure everything:

• clicks,

• impressions,

• view time,

• scrolls, etc…

What it does not measure, gets cut from the budget.

Proving Revenue vs The Reality

The biggest ask from the boards, the CEOs, and CFOs is proving the ROI of each activity.

The hard reality is that some of the best actions will not have measurable results.

Quoting (roughly) Rory Sutherland here, “us, marketers are opportunists, while CFOs care about performance optimization”.

We are diametrical opposites, who need to work together

P.S.: The above interview with Rory Sutherland is incredible, and I quoted a part of his interview, it’s worth listening to the full one.

Marketing ROI

Marketing ROI may be realized 1-2 years after the actions taken.

Similarly, blind budget cuts will hurt your brand months after they took place.

Measuring Brand Performance - Realistically

There are multiple ways to measure brand.

To choose a method, you need to ask a few questions:

• How do you define brand?

• What are you looking to achieve?

In the following examples, I will be going through a few methods with their actual usage. Most examples will be focused on Software as a Service (SaaS) companies, as they differ from industry to industry.

Software tends to measure results in sign-ups, demos, trials, and online purchases. While retail would measure results in foot traffic, store purchases, online orders etc.

Important Note

All ways of measuring brand are using owned and third party data, but measure brand effects in an indirect way.

The proper way to measure brand would be to survey a large number of your audience.

Brand Spikes

A brand spike is related to increased searches, online chatter, and visits to a website which is unusually high for the time-period.

Questions they answer

Was a short-term activity successful?

What did we get from attending XYZ event?

How to measure

Website Analytics: Organic visits to the home page or total direct traffic increased for a short period of time i.e. 1 day or a few days, then dropped near to normal.

Google Trends / Google Search Console: Google trends is a few days behind in data, but shows a relative increase in searches of the brand name on Google. Similarly, increases of the brand name in Google Search Console. I prefer using Google Trends as it can be compared with competitors’ changes at the same time period.

Social Listening Tools: Your brand and hashtags are being used more than usual. People are talking about your activity, using your hashtag, or talking about you online.

CRM Performance

Looking at your own data is the best way to prove direct ROI impact, especially if you are trying to prove revenue or lead generation impact!

Questions they answer

What was the revenue impact from XYZ activity?

What was the trial/demo/leads impact from XYZ activity?

How to measure

You can simplify the measurement by counting only leads coming from the Direct Channel to your CRM.

Activities without any UTMs/tracking like an offline event, banner ads, or radio ads will need to measured indirectly.

Measuring the differences of direct inbound leads/revenue compared to the average of the period.

Example:

Your average is 10 leads per day, but for Tuesday and Wednesday you have 15 leads per day, then Thursday drops to 12 and Friday to 10 again.

The brand activity brought 12 additional leads 5 on Tuesday, 5 on Wednesday, 2 on Thursday.

Sentiment Analysis

One of the goals of brand activities is to change the sentiment of the users, usually positively, but you may have a different goal like associating the brand with a feeling, action, or vague positioning.

Questions they answer

Does our audience view our brand more positively?

Did our message resonates with the audience?

How to measure

Sentiment analysis can either be measured by social listening tools or by running surveys.

• A polling software in your platform to ask questions (i.e. user pilot).

• Having feedback surveys with users.

• Running surveys using a specializing polling company (for B2C).

• Analyzing support tickets.

• Monitoring social media and running sentiment analysis using social listening software.

A user at their started plan will pay $10.99 per user, per month.

That would mean…

• A small team of 5 would pay: $54.95 / month

• A medium company of 20 would pay: $219.80 / month

• A big company of 1000 would pay: $10,990 / month

Costs rises with the company, becoming a non-insignificant cost to have your whole team or a multi-team company on it.

While, many of your employees might barely use the tool.

You still pay just to add the summer intern, a collaborator, or a secretary that only views the manager’s tasks…

Add to that companies raising their prices over 2025.

Price Conscious Businesses

Businesses become price conscious in 2026.

Market uncertainty, volatility, and cut budgets over the past 2 years are making buyers question vendor pricing.

Anyone who is not locked into long-term contracts or business processes rethinks their budgeting:

• Removing vendors

• Vibe-coding their mini-solutions

• Moving to cheaper alternatives

Buyers want to pay a fairer price (that is not always cheaper).

The Rise of AI Credits

The move to usage based pricing is increasing speed due to AI.

Sounds weird that AI is everywhere these days…

Major AI companies offer either their APIs or Software usage in a UBP (usage based pricing).

An example is Lovable, where you pay $50 for 200 credits.

What you do with those 200 credits is on. I build a plugin to save my LinkedIn posts with 150-200 credits worth of Lovable … it essentially cost me $50 to build it:

And, using OpenAI to create a chatbot, write SEO posts, or call your N8N workflows is using credits.

It may cost a few cents of the dollar to write an article.

It may cost a few more cents to automate your email workflow.

All those are credit-based systems where you either pre-pay for credits or pay-as-you-go.

Traditional Usage Based Pricing

You know, usage based pricing has been common for a long time before SaaS took over and made subscriptions so popular (again).

• Telecommunications - Charging for how much you called

• Utilities - Charging for electricity / water consumption

• Taxis - Charging for how many kilometers / miles they drove you

Is that a Trend?

Buyers are trying to control budgets, and cannot do that if big software vendors lock them in $50k contracts for a year they barely use.

Trying to identify how much “real” usage they get out of product and what they can shave off the pricing is the real trick here.

However, usage-based pricing if the client is trying to be budget conscious, does not work for businesses either.

Reality Check-In

Incumbents will be using usage-based-pricing to position themselves as alternatives to legacy SaaS.

But, UBP is only going to last so long.

When incumbents move to enterprise, they will be trying a different approach, which is usually seat-based to get the big fish in a more profitable way.

Going into 2026, most teams have tested AI to write content and writers have either added it to their workflows or position themselves as 100% human writers.

For this episode, I sat down with Pawel Tatarek, an experienced B2B Content Writer & Editor to discuss how content marketing has changed.

In this conversation, you will listen to

• Attribution for content (and how to sell it internally),

• Human vs AI,

• Key trends for content in 2026,

• SEO vs multi-channel content, and

• Data-driven, thought leadership content.

AI search is changing the game.

Minuttia helps B2B companies dominate search—not just traditional SEO, but AI-driven discovery too.

• Develop AI + Google search strategies

• Create high-quality human and AI content

• Amplify visibility through Digital PR

• Continuously improve with agent analytics & reporting93% of our clients stick around.

If you want to win on AI search before it’s table stakes, talk to Minuttia.

Get in Touch

The Attribution Nightmare & Value of Content

Content has always had SEO and Social Media traffic to help assign attribution to content efforts. Today, proving the value of content is becoming much more difficult.

CMOs, CFOs, CEOs, and the Board are asking the ROI of content.

How do you prove a content writer’s worth with performance metrics, if visits to the website from organic channels declines?

Author’s Note: In my opinion, we are going deep down in a low attribution world, where every channel struggles to attribute results.

Here are a few ways to prove attribution:

• Self-attribution - adding a step for users to self-attribute where they found you.

• Assign value to other metrics - for example impressions, shares, mentions, etc.

• Leads - lead magnets can still provide value through the numbers of leads attracted, or leads that came from other content pieces.

Author’s Note 2: The best CMOs are not the ones who measure performance at every turn, they are the ones who follow their guts and take risks to non-attributable channels they know will work, but able to defend their work to CFOs with overall business performance.

Human vs. AI Writer

Through the conversation, we both agreed AI has a place in the content writing process.

• Supporting on research

• Drafting

• Spinning, or rewriting

Even some top-of-funnel content can be mostly written with AI, but would need a human editor to ensure quality.

But, the lower you go into the funnel, the more SMEs are important.

Writing convincing copy with industry expertise is something AI cannot be trusted to do. Being 90% accurate does not cut it, especially in specialized businesses where the client expects industry knowledge.

But… there are two “armies” the pro-AI and the anti-AI. Pro AI business owners will always prefer to not pay for human writers, no matter the cost or arguments.

If you are a B2B Writer, go towards the route of least resistance. Work with people who believe, trust, and support your craft!

2026 Content Trends

We also discussed a few trends we see emerging around content:

• Shift to Data-Driven & Thought Leadership: The demand is moving away from generic SEO posts toward “Data-Driven Content” (original research studies) and deep thought leadership. This is the only way to stand out in a sea of commoditized AI content.

• Repurposing is the New Standard: You can no longer write just for Google. Content must be repurposed for newsletters, social media, Reddit, and YouTube to be effective.

• Personal Brands: The founder’s brand, employee advocacy, and thought-leadership from the company on social media is the way to go. Especially today, where user generated content (UGC) is more important to get beyond the AI hype.

• Visuals & video: With AI overviews (like Google SGE) citing images and videos more frequently, visual assets are becoming critical for SEO. Content marketing has to evolved and adapt fresh new formats that artificial intelligence has more trouble creating.

As we look toward 2026, the hype cycle is breaking.

Trust becomes the expensive currency for marketers, brand is how you grow that currency.

As every channel is saturated and AI content has commoditized even professionally created content, we (marketers) need to find better ways to distribute our work.

High competition and AI-generated noise can only be bypassed by breaking the cycle, and producing clarity of message.

Why am I writing predictions?

Predictions are thought-exercises into the future, helping expect both opportunities and threats, both bets into the future and protecting from possible troubles.

What you will read:

• The Value of Trust: Back to Basics

• Where is Growth in B2B Marketing

• The Future of Search - SEO Vs GEO

• The Tech & Business Landscape

Bonus, a commentary of last year’s predictions, and a message from the sponsor of this newsletter.

AI search is changing the game.

Minuttia helps B2B companies dominate search—not just traditional SEO, but AI-driven discovery too.

- Develop AI + Google search strategies

- Create high-quality human and AI content

- Amplify visibility through Digital PR

- Continuously improve with agent analytics & reporting93% of our clients stick around.

If you want to win on AI search before it’s table stakes, talk to Minuttia.

Get in Touch

1. The Value of Trust: Back to Basics

Marketing has always been a way to influence people.

In it’s purest, ethical form, marketing is communicating the value of products and services for buyers to find the right ones.

In it’s darkest, it’s manipulating psychology, maximizing profits, and “hacking” the system to promote them.

I view marketing as a communication mechanism, a way to match product and people, and the process of marketing utilizes a combination of psychology, technology, and media.

A) Positioning, Pricing, and Trust

Companies who focus on strong positioning will be the winners in 2026. The only way to differentiate in a busy world will be re-focusing on the basics.

Positioning and pricing will be the main differentiators.

Building trust with human-led content will be at the foremost.

B) Trust Channels

Companies will focus on these activities:

• employees,

• re-branding,

• niching down,

• experimenting with pricing,

And, across channels will choose to do more:

• authentic video (human-led),

• niche newsletters

• micro-influencers, and

• smaller events (dinners, unconferences, VIP events, etc.)

2. Where is Growth in B2B Marketing

The hunt for a non-saturated channel will continue, while BlueSky is an alternative to X/Twitter, and Reddit had a resurgence, they are not ideal for most companies.

Where will companies go to invest in growth?

Personal Brands

Founder-led content and employee personal brands. Elena Verna talks about the build-in-public motion of Lovable, it’s a true and tested system for high-velocity startups.

If your company does not lead with the founder, then the solution is internal subject-matter-experts and long-time employees and leaders being public about their work.

Ecosystems & Social Selling

LinkedIn is perfect for B2B and building an ecosystem of cheerleaders for your product is a great way to grow in 2026.

Airtable, AirOps, Lovable, Clay, and Attio are using social selling and ecosystems to grow their businesses.

Read my post on this.

LinkedIn Saturation

LinkedIn will also reach a saturation point, already impressions are down and bad automation is killing outreach. It’s very much alive, still, but it will become more difficult and more expensive.

3. The Future of Search - SEO Vs GEO

SEO is not dying, but probably moving from performance to brand.

With less attribution, but being essential to defend to boards and CFOs, SEO for many companies will start moving under the Brand department. Tech SEOs might be safe in engineering (still), but most of SEO & GEO work right now is taking place in Digital PR and Content.

Social Listening for SEO/GEO 🥊 Big Bet

Social listening (citations in social) will become a common feature for AIO tools. Brand monitoring is essential for LLM optimization, as SEO is going under brand, AIO tools will add social listening tools.

I expect to see a few companies restructuring under that, but they may not announce it.

4. The Tech & Business Landscape

I always love to follow business, startup, and funding news. After a 2020-2022 boom in funding, levels are falling down.

VCs were betting on AI, which kept funding there, but in a more turbulent market, there will be changes.

VC Shifts Away from AI

There will be more AI investments in the first half (H1) of 2026, but AI funding will be reduced by the second half (H2).

Money lending is becoming more expensive, and funds will prefer safer investments like bonds rather than big unicorns with unreal valuations.

Kill, Raise, & Acquisition

Let’s go big with this one, I do expect a small reckoning next year, a bigger in 2027.

Kill: Many smaller AI companies, and especially AIO Reporting tools will close, as their model is not profitable. I expect one medium to big AI company to fail spectacularly, the economy cannot support all of the foundational models & AI companies.

Raise: We will see a few big AI companies raising record amounts. Lovable’s $330 million funding is just the start. Either Anthropic or Bolt.new will raise big bucks soon.

Acquisition or Merger of OpenAI by Microsoft

OpenAI is bleeding money, and will need a very big cash infusion. Will Sam Altman may prefer an investment, I expect a bid by Microsoft to fully acquire.

It’s more probably to be a kind of merger with stocks as payments, when OpenAI will run out of money.

🥊 BIG BET: The Rise of EU Tech

As US investors grow wary of domestic risk and saturation, capital will flow across the Atlantic. We will see the emergence of big EU startups fueled by US money.

Earlier in 2025, investments were moved from the US to the EU due to uncertainty. The trend seems to be reversing, but an uncertain climate in the US and the EU investing in defense & trade (28th state) might be enough to attract more investments.

EU will be seen at the stable super-power, as long as it manages to fix some long-standing internal issues like burreacracy.

Tech will probably focus on defense rather than software. But, I expect to see some big investments in European companies.

🥊 BIG BET: Consolidations and M&As (SaaS, Agencies, and Cybersecurity)

Expect a wave of rebrands, redesigns, and redirections as companies merge. The market has become too distributed, and always after a niching down circle, we see again a wave of consolidation. This will probably last for 2-3 years and has already started.

Agencies started consolidating in 2024, and we will see more small agencies being merged or acquired by bigger ones. The market has become saturated with freelancers and new agencies after the wave of layoffs, this will be resolved by big ones acquiring the smaller ones to get either expertise or new clients.

SaaS are showing some early signs of acquisitions in 2025, but that will increase in 2026. The SaaS market has become too fragmented, and with vibe coding tools allowing people to make micro-tools, many single-feature-tools will need a new home.

Cybersecurity had a growing wave of consolidations over the past year, even the company I work at Cyberbit acquired RangeForce, one of the main competitors. Bigger companies like Google buying Wiz, Palo Alto buying Cyberark, and many more took place this year. The trend will continue as the whole industry is changing and is very fragmented.

The Job Market: Fractionals and Freelancers

Layoffs have been a theme for 2-3 years. AI and RTO (return to the office) have been the greatest excuses to fire people, while re-hiring cheaper staff to fill in.

We will see many more people adopting the title of “Fractional” as long-time full-time employees move to freelancing.

Fractional CMOs, CFOs, and CTOs are on the rise.

Looking Back to 2025’s Predictions

Taking a look back at my 2025 predictions, I was more or less on target. This year, I am going a big more vague on what is happening.

Read my evaluation:

Evaluating my predictions here.

Full predictions from 2025.

Usually, because of fear. As the company grows and ownership, regulations, and the email list all grows together.

But, that’s essential to keep being top-of-mind for your audience.

Why Tech and B2B Fail in Email

Over the past year, I have worked with multiple companies underutilizing email marketing.

Sitting on lists from 1k to 100k emails without any communications.

Tech

Especially tech founders, see email as a transactional feature to add to their database.

They don’t see themselves as “writers” or great communicators. And, may even block marketing from communicating because they might “not understand” their audience.

This creates communication silence.

From the fear of not saying something wrong you end up not saying anything.

B2B / Enterprise

Looking at companies selling to other companies, especially bigger, complex organizations, there are other issues:

• Ownership complexity (who owns the list/user)

• Complex lists (micro-segmentations)

• Messy CRMs

• Not-a-priority for mass-communications

• Business email owners leave the company

Here, it’s a freeze on action due to indecisions of corporate structures.

At a minimum, a monthly newsletter with simple updates of the company can do wonders.

Case #1: New Features = Demos

One case, the company were collecting newsletter registrations, lead magnet downloads, and demo requests to a small 4-figure email list.

It doesn’t sound like a big list to make an impact.

But, questioning the founders, they released dozen of features and went from near-stealth mode to public since then.

Not once communicating with that list.

First email in a year, and 24 hours later 10 excited responses around the features.

6 were direct requests for features.

4 were general questions around the product.

Case #2: Fragmented Comms to a Newsletter

Another case, the company had a large email list they never “cleaned”.

The sales team complained on deliverability.

And, the marketing team was only emailing arbitrary segmented lists.

We prepared a process:

• Email newsletter cadence

• Email template / categories

• List clean-up after every newsletter (bounced, inactive, auto-replies)

• Nurturing emails set

Direct ROI

In this case, there is no direct ROI.

No new demos are attached to email.

Indirect ROI

After every email blast, demo requests spiked.

Direct, organic (branded) channels mostly.

Other results

The months after starting a newsletter deliverability slowly improved by removing bad emails.

Email is Direct Communication

There are only 3 direct communication options to your Ideal Customer Personas (ICP):

• Face to Face

• Phone (calls, messages)

• Email

All are important to create familiarity and trust.

Why is it important?

Email is the main communication channel you own:

• Not impacted by social algorithms

• Direct to the inbox (and phone notifications) of your prospects

• Grows in value over time

Of course, it requires maintenance.

The downsides

A bad email list can affect your whole company’s communications and hurt the brand.

But, product updates, sharing valuable resources, and announcing upcoming events you participate never harmed any company.

An honest, bare truth moment.

These are the good, the bad, and the tactics you can use to do it too.

The secret?

• Consistently giving value,

• engaging, and

• connecting with people … emotionally, in posts/comments, and DMs

It took me ~3 years to reach this stage, it could have been ~2 years if, one times, I did not stop posting for 1-3 months at a time. Burnout is real, especially if you also want to deliver on your day-job!

P.S.: I talk about burnout & mental health in my post here and taking care of mental health here.

Positioning

Choose well your positioning. It’s very hard to re-positiong yourself later.

Be sure to be very clear:

• Who is your ICP - ideal reader/client

• What you write about - where you are the expert

• Niche down - specialize in something, and keep repeating it

The simplest, hard advice I have seen incredible results from is consistency in posting & positioning.

My original goal is to learn, and I tend to write for topics I am:

• Passionate about

• Want to learn more (writing helps me research)

• Handling at work or through personal projects

Re-positioning is hard

I am trying to escape my positioning in SEO, and my reach has gown down, HARD.

Decide your niche as it’s pretty hard to “grow out” or “reposition”.

Your followers that know you e.g. for SEO will not care that much about Growth Marketing topics.

SSI Score

If you like gamification, your Social Selling Index helps you understand where LinkedIn sees value in you and how.

Since my repositioning I fell from score 72 to 64.

Still, I don’t think it’s an important metric to obsess, it’s a cool tool to check once every few months.

Check your SSI Rank here.

Profile Optimization

There are so many thing to consider:

• Job title

• Profile image

• Cover image

• Experience

• Description

Optimizing your profile to show up on potential readers, clients, or recruiters is important.

If you don’t know how, I wholeheartedly recommend Vasileios Mylonas 🤘 to help figure it out.

Content Posts & Topics

There is so much advice on posting, it’s confusing.

My top advice is be consistent and show up often. Yeah, clear and actionable you say…

It’s not a one-size fits everyone, unfortunately.

Frequency

I try to post, almost, daily. That’s 5-7 times a week. You don’t need to do it.

I write my unfiltered thoughts, being vulgar, do grammar mistakes. That’s my style of writing, and that’s how I come out as authentic… and, I complain a lot!

Some of the top influencers I know produce TOP quality material - studies, carousels, data posts, in-depth articles.

If you post 3-4 times a week a TOP quality post, that could be enough. A carousel takes hours to do well, you can post 1-2 per week at best.

Co-promotions / collaborations

Collaborating with people around the same level as you is great. You share your audience, engage with each other.

I have made great friends by talking to others on LinkedIn!

Do some cross-posting like:

• Tagging others

• Co-carousels

• Common lives

• Collaborative posts / graphics

Brand, Templates & Canva

A couple of cheap tools, free or paid have saved my life. I uploaded my brand colours on Canva and did some easy templates to re-use.

My brother (who is a designer) helped me decide some colours and recently did another round of rebrand. Now, everything is there and I can quickly prepare graphics on-brand.

Find your style, and be consistent. I pay $12/m on Canva, and that reduced my work for decent visuals (I am not great at design).

Be Original & Useful

Originality, opinion, and expertise are more important than regurgitating what others say.

The times I heard an executive or CEO mention my lowest performing post at an event I met them physically is extraordinary.

Do not get discouraged.

Write great content with true, good, actionable insights.

It’s a professional community.

They want professional post with an emotional appeal (still, it’s also a social network).

I am happy when I have ~30% of my posts being read by Directors, Owners, and CXOs, that’s my target group. And, I don’t care if a post underperformed.

10 CMOs reading my posts is more important than 1000 junior marketers, even though I care about educating new marketers (a lot), but the value is in the potential network.

Newsletter — Powerful tool

I write newsletters, like here.

They send notifications and have better readership, I can add images, links, embeds, and can be long-reads.

They are also great for parasite SEO 😉

Growing Your Audience & Reach

So, how do you actually grow?

You won’t see me boasting 1M impressions, but I get my days with 5-10k impression posts here and now.

One of my posts reached >100k impressions because an influencer in the industry commented and everyone got into the train! (and all it took was a small mistake in writing)

Regular Invitations

My “secret” is connecting with my ICP.

I have a small list of people & locations I am targeting, and spend 5 - 10 minutes every morning inviting people. Those are targeted, industry people who fall into two categories:

• ICP, or

• Cheerleaders

P.S.: I wrote more about it here. This is a more personal post.

About half my followers are organic follows and the other half are invitations. Each one boosts the other.

Tactics:

• From comments to other influencers (find engaged users)

• ICP hunting through search

• Daily 20 invitations at least (start slow)

I am not happy if I don’t see this at the end of the week. But, after 14k people, I slowed down as it’s not needed as much.

Engaging in Comments

Engaging is important, commenting to others, liking, answer your commenters, helps build your engagement.

• Writing insightful comments

• Funny comments

• Emotional comments

Not regurgitating information or trying to self-promote is important.

My recent comment on Chris Cunningham’s post is getting crazy attention with 17k impressions.

The Good, The Bad, and A Conclusion

I have almost reached my word-limit.

Before we end up with some positive and negatives, be sure to comment if you are interested in learning more on how to grow a personal brand on LinkedIn!

Comment, like, and share this post, and I will write again :)

The Good

• Making real connections - for work, sales, or being better at what you do

• People reaching out with great comments - after years of writing, I occasionally get someone sending me a message that they enjoyed what I wrote, this helps me move forward, as I don’t really monetize my content :) (some occassional sponsorships)

The Negatives

• It’s exhausting being there, engaging, and writing every day

• You can’t take a break without getting hit by the algorithm

• Algo updates since late 2024 have reduced reach for everyone

What about you?

Are you building a brand on LinkedIn, Substack, or someplace else?

Let me know in the comments!

No longer.

Vibe coding tools are here to help you make:

• simple calculators,

• data visualizers, or

• niche name generators…

…that would be an absolute perfect lead magnet for your ideal customer.

We sat down with Zacharias Xiroudakis and George Fakorellis to guide you through the process of building your first mini-app.

Join Growth Vibers

Before you go further, be sure to check our community of Vibe Code marketers!

We will be sharing the resources we talked about on the webinar inside the slack community:

• Best tools we tried

• Resources to take you further

• Our own experiences

• How to improve your skills in vibe coding

P.S.: I am not an AI-first marketer, I do believe in strong fundamentals and good knowledge first, then AI to help you build up and deliver on those. I am an AI-skeptic using the tools to test their potential and deliver truthful, fact-based, real uses.

You Don’t Need to Be a Developer (But You Need to Know the Lingo)

You don’t need to be fully technical or know coding.

But, knowing some basic coding and thinking more technically will go a long way to debug and correctly build what you need.

Zacharias takes us through the basics for building an app:

• Front-End: This is simply what your user sees and clicks on. The buttons, the text, the colors.

• Back-End: This is the server, the “brain” that does the processing. It’s where the logic happens.

• Database: This is just the “filing cabinet” where data is stored (like user info or content).

• Libraries: This is pre-written code that does a specific thing (like create a map or a chart). You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

You don’t need to know how to write this code. You just need to know what these things are, so you can tell the AI what you need.

Stop Thinking “SaaS,” Start Thinking “Mini-Tool”

Complex, multi-feature SaaS products usually fail badly with vibe-coding. But, making a simple mini-app, chrome plugin, web-app, it’s achievable!

Mini tools can be:

• productivity boosters

• lead magnets

• SEO traffic gold-mines

These mini-tools are powerful because they:

• Capture High-Intent Demand: People are searching for “keyword generator” or “backlink checker.” Ahrefs captures that search, solves their problem, and introduces them to the main product.

• Showcase Your Core Value: The mini-tool gives users a small, free taste of the power behind your full, paid platform.

• Act as World-Class Lead Magnets: A tool that solves a real, recurring problem is something your audience will actually value.

Instead of trying to build a massive, all-in-one solution, focus on solving one tiny, specific problem for your ICP.

Define the Problem - Get Better Results

This was the most practical lesson of the day. You cannot just type “build me a cool map for my blog post” and expect a good result. The AI will make assumptions (or “go rogue,” as they said), and they will almost always be the wrong ones.

You have to be the project manager, not just the requester.

In the webinar, I showcase the example of building my mini-map for Country Tier Lists.

Knowing the terminology of “choropleth maps” and specific libraries like leaflet.js was the point where I truly unlocked the capabilities of vibe coding for the specific problem.

How it impacted it:

• “I need a Chloropleth map.” (The specific type of map)

• “Use the Leaflet.js library.” (The specific technology to use)

• “Use OpenStreetMap as the baseline data source.” (The specific resource)

The AI is a powerful intern. It can code incredibly fast, but it has no business context or strategic vision. You have to provide that.

The more specific your brief, the better your outcome.

Use the AI as a Guide

This might have been my favorite takeaway. When the AI builds something for you, it’s tempting to just copy the code and move on.

Try to understand what it’s building... Ask it.

Why did you choose to do it this way?

What is this back-end structure you’re using?

This transforms the AI from a simple factory worker into a 24/7 personal tutor. In my experience, this is how you build real, durable skills.

By asking “why,” you go from being a button-pusher to being a true builder.

Where to Find Problems Worth Solving

“But what do I actually build?”

It’s the most common question. Here are the answers:

• Solve Your Own Pain: This is the easiest one. Look at your own team’s tedious, manual workflows.

• Productize a Service: Go to Upwork or Fiverr. Find simple, high-demand gigs (like “I will build a basic mortgage calculator for your site”). If people are paying for it as a service, it’s a great candidate for a mini-tool.

• Search Reddit: Use search operators like site:reddit.com “is there a tool for [your niche]” to find what people are desperately asking for.

• Check G2 & Capterra: Look for software categories with high demand but low user ratings. Read the 1- and 2-star reviews. You’ll find a list of common feature gaps and pain points that you can build a mini-tool to solve.

Wrapping Up: Just Start Building

The main lesson here is that the barrier to entry for building useful tools has never been lower.

It’s not “easy,” and it’s not magic. It still requires you to think, to research, and to be a good project manager. But for the first time, you don’t have to wait for a developer to be available.

My advice? Pick one, tiny, annoying problem that you or your customers face.

Then, go try to build the solution yourself.

And… join our Growth Vibers slack community to upskill in Vibe Coding for Marketers:

Subscribe now

This year, we see a lot of examples leveraging existing ecosystems to sell SaaS through creating playbooks, templates, or workflows.

In this newsletter, I will go through 3 examples of Social Selling on LinkedIn using this tactic.

But, first, a shameless plug for a community we are building with some friends :)

Join Growth Vibers on Slack

We teach marketers, entrepreneurs, and young professionals to turn ideas into products with AI.

Join us in our slack community:

Register here

If you're a marketer who's curious about technology, coding, and building your own solutions, this is your tribe. No gatekeeping, no dumb questions. Just practical learning and support.

#1 Creator Collaboration: Kevin Indig <> AirOps

This story started when Kevin posted a viral workflow on automating keyword cannibalization through AirOps. AirOps helped Kevin create the flow and dropped it with limited access first through the comments of the post.

The post went viral with:

• 602 likes

• 103 comments

• 37 reposts

Then, they expanded this using Kevin as the ambassador and created a publicly accessible workflow here.

You can go and test this workflow right now.

My friend George Chasiotis called this Creator Product Launches in an earlier newsletter of Growth Waves, while he interviewed AirOps’ Head of Growth, Eoin Clancy.

GrowthWaves by George Chasiotis

Creator Product Launches

👋 Hey, I’m George Chasiotis. Welcome to GrowthWaves, your weekly dose of B2B growth insights—featuring powerful case studies, emerging trends, and unconventional strategies you won’t find anywhere e…

Listen now

a year ago · 5 likes · George Chasiotis

The collaboration also lasted outside LinkedIn with AirOps and Kevin Indig:

• Hosting a webinar

• Having a full newsletter on Growth Memo

• And, more content on LinkedIn

#2 Leveraging a Community to Sell a SaaS: Instantly <> Lovable

Otton Tatton showed up on my feed last week. He is an Account Executive (Sales) at Instantly.ai.

Instantly’s ICP is SMEs, and guess which tool new entrepreneurs use to create quick MVPs?

You guessed right (or read the heading): LOVABLE

He built a step-by-step guide showing the process of building your business on Lovable and monetizing it with Instantly.

These drops are pretty common on LinkedIn, but leveraging an already “vibing” community which is trending right now made this post next-level viral with:

• 2311 likes

• 2818 comments, and

• 28 reposts

I am pretty sure they made quite some sales on Instantly just from this post!

Combining a complimentary tool to a community your tool can serve well, finding a use case, and offering an easy-to-implement solution is a great way reach your target audience.

#3 Mapping the Strategy: George <> Attio

decided to break-down Attio’s strategy, as his new agency Restartt does growth hacking for GTM.

And, he was kind to allow me to share his impression numbers as well :)

The CTA?

That's why we mapped their entire GTM journey, from early steps signals to their current status, in one timeline.

Comment to get the full GTM strategy.

Resulting in:

• 59 likes

• 102 comments

• 1 repost

• 10k impressions

Analyzing another tool, break-down, strategy, or template copying popular tools helps you offer a strong brand-relevant lead magnet that does well on LinkedIn.

Which Playbook Works for You?

B2B SaaS have to rediscover new playbooks for growth, and social selling, whether it’s a founder-led brand like Adam Robinson’s, ecosystem plays like leveraging Lovable’s community, or creator collaborations can be the new levers of growth.

Of course, this strategy is already maturing, and there is little time before it’s another overused, under-delivering one.

Be fast, or begone…

What pinged my interest were Google news impacting advertisers, but we quickly dove into the rise of Business-to-Business (B2B) e-commerce.

Giannis is the founder of Upcommerce, an e-commerce agency, and co-founder of ElHub, a platform dedicated to educating e-shop owners in the challenging world of e-commerce.

Big manufacturers are moving away from the traditional way of selling to businesses, and moving to e-commerce stores.

But, first, a few Google News.

The Big Google Shake-Up: Fines and a Faster API

Before we get to B2B, it's worth noting a couple of significant developments at Google that Giannis highlighted.

EU Fines Google

Google was recently hit with a massive €3 billion fine in Europe for monopolistic practices. According to Giannis, this is part of a series of fines targeting big tech's dominance. While Google plans to appeal the decision, it signals growing regulatory pressure in the EU.

Google API Upgrade

Google has enhanced its Ads API, increasing the frequency of calls advertisers can make. In simple terms, this allows large e-shops with thousands of products to adjust their ad campaigns much faster. This opens the door for greater automation and more responsive, AI-driven advertising strategies.

The Main Event: The B2B E-commerce Revolution

For years, B2B sales have been stuck in the past. As Giannis explained, the traditional process involved distributors sending PDF catalogs to their clients, followed by orders placed over the phone or via email.

This manual process is

• slow,

• inefficient, and,

• filled with costly mistakes.

A new trend, which started in the US and has now arrived in Europe, is fundamentally changing this dynamic. Manufacturers and distributors are now creating dedicated B2B e-commerce portals.

Imagine a private, online store where a business client can:

• Browse the full product catalog.

• See their specific pricing and compare products.

• View their complete purchase history and easily re-order past items.

• Place orders directly, eliminating communication errors and automating the entire workflow.

The Mechanics of a Modern B2B Platform

Giannis detailed a few key features that make these B2B e-shops unique:

1. Gated Access: The most critical feature is that these websites are "closed". A business client must request an account, which is then manually approved by the seller. This is essential to protect wholesale pricing and prevent B2C customers from seeing sensitive information.

2. Flexible Pricing Models: Once inside, pricing can be handled in two main ways:

   • Pre-Set Discounts: Each client can be assigned a specific, permanent discount level (e.g., one client gets a 20% discount, another gets 25%).

   • Volume-Based Discounts: This is the bigger trend right now. All clients see the same initial prices, but a final discount is calculated at the end of the year based on their total purchase volume.

The Evolution from Swag Shops to Big e-Commerce Manufacturers

This B2B e-commerce model isn't entirely new. We've seen a version of it for years with B2B "swag stores," where a company's employees can order branded merchandise.

However, these platforms have also evolved dramatically. What used to be a lengthy back-and-forth with designers via email is now a seamless, real-time experience. Users can upload their logo, select colors, and see a live preview of the final product directly on the site.

The AI Expectations

Giannis predicts that AI will push this even further, automatically applying a company's branding across an entire catalog of products, making the process instantaneous. This will lead to a huge increase in the use of swag shops in the coming years.

Tools of the Trade

You don't necessarily need highly specialized software to build a B2B e-shop. Giannis mentioned that many standard e-commerce platforms can be configured for B2B sales. He has a client using

OpenCart for a home decor B2B site and another using BigCommerce for a swag shop. The core requirement isn't the specific platform, but its ability to support gated access and user-specific roles or discounts.

Key Takeaways

• B2B is Digitizing: The era of PDF catalogs and phone orders is ending. B2B e-commerce platforms are reducing errors, automating workflows, and providing a better experience for business customers.

• Privacy is Paramount: B2B sites must be closed environments to protect wholesale pricing structures.

• Pricing Needs Flexibility: Successful platforms accommodate client-specific or volume-based discount models.

• Swag stores was the Blueprint: The evolution of swag shops toward real-time customization and AI-driven branding offers a glimpse into the future of all B2B e-commerce.

It was an insightful discussion that shed light on a quiet but powerful transformation in the business world.

You can connect with Giannis Kiskipelis on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok under his name or his company handle, "SubcomCommerce".

We've all been there.

With AI, marketers who understand technology and how to work with code can create anything from

• website tools to get traffic

• quizzes & tools to capture leads, or

• internal tools to improve processes.

This is where the idea of "vibe coded" mini-apps comes in.

And, apps like Lovable, Replit, Cursor, or Bolt can help you do it.

The trick? You also need how to implement, embed, or setup to run on a website. That’s why we built Growth Vibers, a community of technically minded growth marketers:

Join Growth Vibers on Slack

We teach marketers, entrepreneurs, and young professionals to turn ideas into products with AI.

Join us in our slack community:

Register here

If you're a marketer who's curious about technology, coding, and building your own solutions, this is your tribe. No gatekeeping, no dumb questions. Just practical learning and support.

What is a "Vibe Coded" App, Really?

Think of "vibe coded" as the practical middle ground between a messy spreadsheet and a full-blown software application.

It’s a tool built with a simple goal:

Does it work and solve our immediate problem?

It doesn't need to be perfectly polished, scalable to millions of users, or have the prettiest code. It just needs to have the right "vibe"—it feels right, it's useful, and it saves your team time and headaches. It’s about utility over perfection.

So, what does this look like in the real world?

Example 1: X-pense - Expense Management Software for SMEs

We built X-pense in a weekend with some friends, but took 4 weeks to iron out the bugs, setup a Github, Supabase, custom domain, emails, marketing website (still being built) etc.

The app?

Upload a CSV of your expenses and it helps you categorize the expenses and identify the “fat” and where to cut it.

Example 2: Employee Advocacy Leaderboard

Giulia de Oliveira Camargo from Chameleon built a Leaderboard vibe coded on Lovable to track her team’s performance in personal brand on LinkedIn to support social selling.

This is a great example of an internal tool for the marketing team!

Example 3: Training ROI Calculator

A simpler example here, a Training ROI Calculator.

Every training or services company struggles to prove they are a “must-have” and not a “good-to-have”. The best way to do so is creating an ROI calculator either as a spreadsheet or a live calculator on a website.

I used Lovable to create it, but run a Deep Research prompt on Gemini to give me instructions as if it were a product manager in order to achieve it.

Are you building tools with AI?

If you are, feel free to comment with your favorite use cases, and don’t forget to join our community!

Join Growth Vibers

Your sales team is reaching out through email & LinkedIn to executives.

BUT…

…they have trouble following up.

How many times can they “retouch” a lead asking them about their decision or pushing them down the funnel?

Strong personal brands lead the way, but for B2B Sales, you need to create a process for employee advocacy. Where your prospects know your sales people as influencers and your company as a thought leader.

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Get first-hand insights into what AI and SEO hold for us, marketers, in the near future.Beloved and well-known SEO peers like

• Aleyda Solis,

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• Viola Eva,

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You’ll also hear from experts at companies like Reddit, Google, Microsoft, DHL, and Decathlon, who will enrich your perspective and shed light on essential elements of today’s digital marketing landscape.

🎟️ Use this 50% off code to save your spot: NICKDO50OFF

https://digitalolympus.net/digital-olympus-conference/

P.S.: Don't forget to ping me if you are there, will only be there for a day, let's meet on the break :)

P.S.2: This is not a sponsored post. I will be going to the event, and Alexandra asked me to help her share the word :)

What is Employee Advocacy?

Employee advocacy takes place when employees promote the business they are working from. This (usually) happens either through word of mouth or social media.

Sales Enablement for Account Penetration

While your marketing team and PMMs are creating content, sales rarely engages, interacts, or even knows about it.

Sales enablement material is usually “staying on the shelf”, think of:

• Infographics

• Data sheets

• Reports

• Data visualizations

• Thought leadership content

Part of the process for ABM alignment is content distribution.

Employee advocacy is part of that process (not the only part). Think of them as a part of the strategic ABM engine.

Instead of just blasting content, you're equipping your most influential people, your sellers and executives, to systematically warm up target accounts, build credibility with key personas, and become the go-to voices in your industry.

This isn't about vanity metrics. It's about using your team's influence to support specific ABM plays and drive revenue.

Here is what you need:

A Curated Content Library

Your sales people (in most cases) are not great writers.

They are great talkers, meeting physically, and creating long-lasting connections with prospects.

What they need from marketing teams is to prepare the material, in an easy and accessible way.

Preparing a library of shareable content, curated, updated, and new content flowing is helping your sales & execs share content online.

That could start as a folder including:

• Case studies

• Industry reports

• Webinar clips / links

• Statistics

Anything that would help with the next sales touch.

How to Build Your ABM Advocacy Program

You have the content.

You have the foldering.

What’s missing?

Now the hard part, your sales has to use it. Bear with me to go through the process to enable your sales team, and make them actually follow up the plan.

Step 1: Set ABM-Specific Goals

Define what success looks like in the context of your target accounts. You need to prove this process works, for that, you need your sales & execs to be both active on social and talking with prospects using the content you created.

Set goals:

• Each sales person posts 3-5 times per week

• Tracking engagement from the top 50 target accounts

• Re-starting conversations with key personas e.g. reaching out to 10 key account personas from target accounts (social selling)

Step 2: Get Leadership Buy-In and Participation

If your CEO and VP of Sales aren't actively using LinkedIn to engage with their networks, no one else will take it seriously.

Their activity validates the strategy.

And, senior leadership is more likely to get some eyeballs to your content. They have to be leading the strategy.

Step 3: Launch with a Leaderboard and Gamify It

Salespeople are inherently competitive. Use this to your advantage.

• Scoring: Award points for shares, but give bonus points for engagement (likes, comments, reshares) from people at target accounts.

• Prizes: Offer rewards that matter. A bigger commission kicker on a socially-influenced deal, a premium tech gadget, or lunch with the CEO.

Giulia de Oliveira Camargo create a gamified dashboard for her team. Read her post on what she did.

Step 4: The Weekly ABM Check-in

Integrate advocacy into your existing sales stand-ups or a weekly Slack message. Create a Slack/Teams group chat and get everyone for 30 minutes each week to share experiences, wins, and stories.

Celebrate Achievements: Publicly congratulate the rep with the most target account engagement, impressions, likes.

Highlight a Key Win: "A post from Sarah this week was re-shared by the CTO at ACME Corp. That's a huge win! Let's all engage with that." This connects activity to tangible progress.

Share New Intel: Remind them of new content, support them in scheduling the posts, and ask what they need to move deals forward.

A Look at the Top Tools for Employee Advocacy

For an ABM-focused strategy, you need a tool that can prove its impact on revenue, not just clicks.

Below are tools where you can support employee advocacy. Preparing content on the platform that sales can choose & pick to schedule, reducing the time required by them.

P.S.: My team has experience with Everyone social, but I tried to compile a more complete list and give you some choices :)

Oktopost

This is the go-to for any serious B2B marketer running ABM. It's designed to track social's influence on the sales pipeline.

• Pros: Deep integrations with marketing automation (Marketo, HubSpot, etc.), robust analytics that tie social shares directly to leads and revenue from specific accounts, excellent for managing compliance.

• Cons: Can be more complex and expensive, which might be overkill if you can't commit to tracking ROI.

• Why It's Great for ABM: You can see exactly which target accounts are engaging with your team's content. It's the best tool for proving that your social selling efforts are actually influencing deals.

Sociabble

If your ABM strategy involves building a strong internal culture around your target accounts, Sociabble is a powerful choice.

• Pros: Best-in-class gamification that drives high user adoption, strong internal communication features, supports user-generated content.

• Cons: Analytics are more focused on engagement metrics than the hard-and-fast revenue attribution of Oktopost.

• Why It's Great for ABM: You can create specific channels and leaderboards for your ABM team, fostering competition and collaboration around engaging key accounts. It excels at rallying the team.

EveryoneSocial

This platform is designed to empower your executives and sales leaders as individual thought leaders.

• Pros: Empowers users to discover and share relevant third-party content, fostering authentic influence. The UI is incredibly intuitive and mobile-friendly.

• Cons: Less direct marketing control over messaging. The focus is more on the individual's brand than a unified company campaign.

• Why It's Great for ABM: It's the best choice for a "trust your experts" strategy. It allows your C-suite and top sales reps to build authentic, credible personal brands that resonate with senior leaders at target companies.

Extra Tip: Win the Hiring War

When your executives build their personal brands to influence target accounts, they also attract top talent. A-players want to work for visible, respected leaders.

Your C-suite's influence in the market becomes a powerful, passive recruiting tool that helps you hire the best people to serve your most important clients.

So, stop thinking of your team's social presence as a liability to be managed. Start seeing it as your most valuable asset for penetrating your target accounts.

How are you currently enabling your sales and leadership teams to build influence within your key accounts?

I'm thrilled to kick off this experimental series of vlogs with my Stefan Repin. In this episode, we dive headfirst into the world of Account-Based Marketing (ABM), particularly for organizations with long and complex sales cycles.

We break down some of the toughest challenges marketers face today, from getting sales and marketing on the same page to navigating the tricky waters of legal compliance.

A quick heads-up: my video editing skills are still a work in progress, but we're committed to improving with each episode. Thanks for your patience as we learn! For now, let's get into the good stuff.

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P.S.: Don't forget to ping me if you are there, will only be there for a day, let's meet on the break :)

P.S.2: This is not a sponsored post. I will be going to the event, and Alexandra asked me to help her share the word :)

The Elusive Goal: Sales & Marketing Alignment

We started with the foundational challenge of any successful ABM strategy: sales and marketing alignment.

Stefan and I agree that perfect alignment is less of a measurable KPI and more of a "feeling" or a "social contract." You know when it's there, and you definitely know when it isn't.

So, how do you know if you're getting close? We believe it comes down to a few key things:

• Shared Definitions: The first step is for both teams to agree on what a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) and a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) actually are. As a marketer, I need the freedom to bring in 100 leads to find the 10 great ones. If sales understands this process, we're on the right track.

• A Healthy MQL-to-SQL Ratio: Once definitions are set, tracking the conversion rate from MQL to SQL becomes a meaningful metric that both teams can rally behind.

• CRM Hygiene: The biggest hurdle is often getting the sales team to consistently update the CRM. It’s a pain—we get it—but without clean data and notes from the sales front lines, marketing is flying blind.

• Fewer Complaints: Perhaps the most honest measure is a reduction in complaints. When marketing stops hearing "these leads are garbage" and sales stops hearing "you're not following up," you know you're building a healthier partnership.

Without this fundamental alignment, any ABM campaign is destined to struggle. It’s the essential groundwork before you can build anything meaningful.

Navigating the Legal "Nightmare" in Marketing

Next, we tackled my personal nightmare: legal and compliance.

In a world governed by regulations like GDPR, how do you convince your legal team to approve the powerful marketing tools (like 6sense or RB2B) you need to be effective?

The truth is, many effective marketing tactics operate in a legal gray area. Getting approval isn't about finding a foolproof tool; it's about internal persuasion and risk management.

1. Take Responsibility: Understand that your legal team's primary job is to protect the company. By acknowledging the risks and taking personal responsibility, you can build trust. Frame it as a calculated business decision.

2. Get Executive Buy-in: The CEO can often make the final call on accepting a certain level of risk if the potential reward is high enough. If a tool could generate millions in revenue, a small risk of a fine might be worth it.

3. Respect Industry Nuances: Some industries, like FinTech, pharma, legaltech, and cybersecurity, are extremely litigious. Tactics that work elsewhere might land you a cease-and-desist letter. In these fields, you have to be extra cautious and creative.

We also discussed the power of alternative tactics when digital channels are restricted. If you can't email a lead, maybe you can retarget them with ads on LinkedIn, send a physical gift, or invite them to an exclusive event.

The Human Touch in a Digital World

As digital channels become saturated, the value of human connection skyrockets. We discussed how some of the most effective ABM plays happen offline. Simple things like reactivating a year-old list with an email newsletter can bring in huge deals because the timing is finally right.

However, even offline tactics have their challenges. Many companies have strict no-gift policies, and with remote work, you can't even be sure an executive is at the office to receive a package. This has led to creative solutions like using services that allow the recipient to enter their own shipping address or hosting influencer-led dinners where the sponsorship is hidden to create a more natural, low-pressure environment.

Ultimately, successful B2B marketing is about coordinating a multi-channel effort. The decision for a $100k deal isn't made from a single ad click; it's the result of a dozen touchpoints, both online and off, that build trust over time.

Thanks for tuning in to our first shot!

We’ll be back with more soon.

Enter RICE; the framework that turns chaos into a clear, confident roadmap for growth.

🔑Key takeaways from this week's newsletter:

• RICE helps you pick the right ideas.

• How to identify the easy wins first.

• How to use RICE for marketing prioritization.

• The maths behind the methodology.

• Famous brands that used RICE to scale.

Let's break this down.

Download the Template

This September, I will be at Digital Olympus Event in Amsterdam.

Join me on the 11th of September, for a VIP experience in marketing, with top speakers representing some of the biggest brands in marketing-led roles.

*This is not a sponsored ad. If you are going to be there, ping me on LinkedIn and we can meet on the day of the event!

Meet RICE

R.I.C.E. is a primarily product management tool to prioritize ideas over the product backlog. The same methodology can be used to prioritize marketing projects or actions, although with a few changes on how to approach it.

Why use R.I.C.E.?

If you’ve build a high-productivity, high-creativity team, your product backlog is probably bursting. Ideas everywhere, features you’d love to ship are coming in on a daily basis.

But which ones actually deserve the spotlight to your next sprint?

And which ones should stay parked at the bottom of your backlog for just a bit longer?

Meet RICE; RICE lets you score ideas clearly based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, so you can focus on what truly drives growth.

How does RICE work?

RICE cuts through the chaos of “too many ideas, not enough time.” It scores each backlog item on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, turning gut feelings into hard numbers.

Source: Roadmunk.com

Big reach and impact with low effort? That’s your winner. Weak confidence and high effort? Park it for later. It’s the shortcut from endless debates to a roadmap your team actually believes in.

Using RICE as a Marketing Evaluation Framework

Most marketing brainstorming ending up generating dozens of ideas, and your team might even end up collecting 100+ marketing projects or actions.

This can easily lead to indecision or decision-fatigue, due to the sheer number of ideas.

Using a framework like RICE to evaluate these ideas, helps prioritize them with the most impactful ones first.

Download the Template

Important Notes

The RICE score might not always be the best way to decide, take it as an indicator. With industry expertise, you usually get a “gut feeling” of what works best for your industry.

Leave some space for your gut feelings, and consider adding some long-shot ideas into the mix that you truly believe they will resonate with your audience.

When using RICE, I usually see some ideas I am excited about score low, and helps me surface invisible opportunities that I may have skipped without taking a hard look at the numbers.

Usually, I will pick 4-5 ideas to prioritize for the quarter based on the RICE score, but also add 1-2 with low or medium scores that I truly believe will resonate with the audience I try to reach.

9 Cases you should let RICE “decide”

1. When your idea backlog is packed and you need clarity.

2. When teams compete for resources and opinions clash.

3. When planning your marketing roadmap for max impact.

4. When prioritizing growth experiments or marketing campaigns.

5. When time or budget is tight and mistakes are costly.

6. When you need data‑backed decisions instead of gut calls.

7. When presenting priorities to leadership or investors.

8. When revisiting old ideas to see if they’re worth it.

9. When optimizing for ROI and speed, not just output.

The maths behind RICE methodology

RICE takes the guesswork out of prioritization with one simple formula. It tells you which ideas actually move the needle versus which ones just sound exciting in a meeting.

Not every shiny idea pays the bills. RICE gives you the “ammo” to prove which product backlog items actually matter. So when the board asks “why this, not that,” you’ve got the receipts handy.

Source: www.savio.io

Reach, Impact, and Confidence push your score up. The more people you touch, the bigger the effect, and the surer you are, the better.

Effort drags the score down because hard, resource‑heavy tasks need a bigger payoff to be worth it.

How to use each variable

Reach: Consider this an absolute number based on your KPIs, you can consider to use audience reach, leads, or customers this activity can generate.

Impact: This is about converting the people into the next step of the funnel or into revenue, you can consider for example whether the conversion from a lead to a paid customer will be high, or if the customers this activity will generate come with high ACV/ARR.

Confidence: How confident you are on your data for this activity? Did you base one number on hard internal stats, or more on gut feelings? The confidence will downgrade an idea with uncertain results and help you prioritize ideas with hard data behind it.

Effort: Every activity requires human effort, and in most teams this is a scarce resource. Effort helps you add the Human Resources into the equation. Whether it will take a few hours, days, or months of implementation.

How to use RICE

How to use RICE as a marketer

As a marketer, RICE is your filter against “shiny‑object syndrome”. Score every campaign or experiment by Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. High score? Launch it. Low score? Park it. RICE keeps your energy on moves that actually drive growth.

How to use RICE as product owner

As a product owner, RICE helps you make clear, objective choices. Score each backlog item by its Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, then compare the results. High scores guide your next moves, while low scores can safely wait their turn.

How to use RICE as SaaS founder

Especially in the MVP stage, when resources are tight, every decision carries extra weight and can make the difference between moving fast or burning time on the wrong thing. Prioritize feature development and roadmap decisions by quantifying which ideas will drive the most adoption or retention for the least effort.

Dos & Don'ts in RICE framework

✅ Do’s

• Score everything first, debate later. Let the numbers cut through the noise.

• Revisit scores regularly. Data changes, and so should your priorities.

• Use RICE as a guide, not gospel. Combine numbers with real‑world context.

• Focus on high‑impact, low‑effort wins. That’s where growth lives.

❌ Don’ts

• Inflate Reach or Impact. Optimism bias kills objectivity.

• Ignore Effort. Huge projects with small upside are silent killers.

• Rely only on gut feelings. RICE works because it adds clarity to instinct.

• Treat scores as final. Priorities shift; flexibility keeps you sharp.

Big brands winning with RICE

📌Airbnb

Airbnb didn’t scale by chasing shiny ideas; they scaled by scoring them. In its hyper‑growth phase, Airbnb leaned on RICE to decide what to ship first: smoother guest bookings, faster host onboarding, smarter platform updates. Today, RICE is still how their product team makes every call. And I think they are right doing so!

📌Intercom

Intercom was the one that put RICE on the map. Their product and growth teams have scored everything from onboarding tweaks to messaging upgrades and new integrations. The result? Fewer debates, faster decisions, and a roadmap everyone actually buys into.

📌HubSpot

HubSpot has built its own lead‑scoring approach (probably inspired by RICE and similar frameworks). It’s not the first time HubSpot adopts proven business tools, renames them and makes them part of their own playbook. Yet, the principle is the same: a sharp, data‑driven way to focus on impactful actions and avoid pouring energy into “nice‑to‑haves.”

The bottom line

RICE is your shortcut from debate to decision. Score it, sort it, ship what matters, and then watch your team and roadmap finally align!

That’s it for now. See you next time with another round of impactful insights for your marketing strategies.