Inside Olivine #12
🎢 The rollercoaster of 2022 + predictions and strategy for 2023 with Raechel Lambert
👋 Hey everybody!
Rae here, co-founder at Olivine. We launched this monthly newsletter back in January to just 134 folks and grew it to over 1,338. I can’t thank you enough for being here. 🙏
2022 started super strong for us revenue-wise until July, when we drove off the proverbial cliff. Like everyone in tech, we’ve been on a rollercoaster ride to stay on top of the reality of the situation and adapt our tactics—all while keeping our eye on long-term growth strategy.
We’ve had big highs:
Launched this newsletter and grew it to 1,338 subscribers (thank you!)
Ashley and I attended All-In Summit (Jason Calacanis attended our brunch), and the talks gave us a heavy dose of looming recession reality
Hosted our first company off-site in Portugal and filmed a music video live (because why not?)
With our fair share of lows:
Clients planning to renew had spending freezes, and our revenue dropped 35%
Decrease in leads, lower win rates, slower time-to-close, and smaller deal sizes
We had to cut back hours with our freelancers, and some went in-house at other companies, which was happy for them but sad for us
What we saw in 2022 & our approach for 2023
For this last newsletter of 2022, I decided to dive into three themes I saw this year—what we learned and how we’re thinking about 2023:
Facing a downturn and learning to grow in harsh conditions
AI hits content marketing in full force
It’s harder than ever to cut through the noise
#1 Facing a downturn and learning to grow in harsh conditions
TL;DR: 2023 will continue to be slow as layoffs trickle down to revenue contractions for SaaS companies charging per seat. Companies will need to ruthlessly prioritize marketing & sales activities without sacrificing all of their long-term growth strategies.
Tech companies across the board (not just early-stage) froze spending, founders took pay cuts, and mass layoffs were announced (these seem to be market layoffs, not just performance layoffs blamed on the market).
And it’s not just businesses taking a hit, folks in tech are seeing job opportunities dry up, serious inflation, and increased borrowing rates. The Fed has made it clear they will break the economy in order to break inflation.
Even big, exceptionally well-run companies are seeing scary SaaS Metrics. For example, look at the CAC payback period explode to 10+ years for Salesforce (previously 2.5 years). Given they are pretty well-optimized on demand gen and selling motions, the only way to meaningfully reduce the payback period back to reasonable levels is drastic cuts on marketing activities and sales headcount.
These losses are expected to continue well into 2023 since most SaaS companies price per user. This could create a vicious cycle: Layoffs > Seat contraction > Revenue decreases > Cut Costs > More layoffs…
The past few years SaaS has seen a tailwind of starting the new year at 120%+ of the previous year’s starting revenue just from existing customers hiring more employees and paying for more seats. Now it looks like companies are starting the year below last year’s starting revenue.
Source: David Sacks on SaaS slowdown in EP 106 of the All-In Podcast.
How we survived 2022 and our strategy for 2023:
Facing Reality: Clarity to see what’s actually happening quickly and without denial. Our pipeline was strong but we stopped trusting our typical benchmarks and cut spending as much as possible.
Building Resiliency: Ability to think of, execute, and test new strategies. We launched Marketplace in July to close our revenue gap and help make sure the freelancers in our network had work.
Diversifying Revenue: Going “upmarket” doesn’t necessarily solve issues since we’re seeing hits across the board. We’re reviewing our client portfolio and will take steps to diversify our revenue just like we would diversify a stock portfolio.
Still Thinking Long Term: Once you are “default alive,” it’s critical to have a combination of short- and long-term tactics despite the temptation to focus solely on the current period. We’ll continue to invest at least 20% of our resources in future growth.
Related resources: How to grow in a downturn; Customer acquisition and retention—7 ways to grow
#2 AI hits content marketing in full force
TL;DR: What previously felt like industry insider information, AI writing tools are now out in the open, and only foolish people will ignore them. The consequences of AI writing tools will be an arms race of content creation.
A couple of years back we hired a content marketing freelancer to jump-start our blog efforts. They produced impressive amounts of content, and while the topics and tone weren’t 100% to my taste, I decided not to be too precious about it and just get things going.
In hindsight, I think this writer was an early Jasper user. Jasper is one of the many AI tools (there’s also ChatGPT, Copy.ai, Otter.ai, and tons more). When I first started digging into Jasper, it crossed my mind that I overpaid for that early content creation. But we rank #1 on Google for the search term “product marketing agency,” and we’ve expanded our client base well beyond our network. Our inbound leads make up 95% of our revenue, and most leads cite Google Search as how they found us.
I don’t blame that writer for not telling me about Jasper. Marketers don’t want to tell anyone their tactics because once too many people know about it, the tactic has been diluted and they’ve lost their edge.
“The future is here but not evenly distributed” comes to mind every time I see the comments on a Jasper Facebook ad. Every single comment is negative—but Jasper didn’t raise $131M in funding with no users. There’s no incentive for users to defend Jasper in the public domain, because the more people who use it, the less impactful will be. The key is to stay in the know and keep implementing new strategies faster than everyone else.
The good news is that even if you start today, you’re still ahead of the curve.
How we’re using AI in our content for 2023
I’m not an SEO expert, but I know there is an element of "you just gotta feed the beast” in the algorithm (i.e., publish consistently). The key will be to find the right balance between quality, volume, and consistency.
Here at Olivine, we will continue to create human-written “base content” and focus on sharing what AI can’t: our deep experiences and strong opinions. But we will leverage AI for ideas, summaries, conclusions, SEO optimization, social posts, and bigger distribution—all faster and cheaper than before.
2023 Prediction: AI will touch most content, but the #ahumanwrotethis will trend, just like indications of handmade, local, organic, and fair trade in consumer goods.
Related resources: Founder’s growth guide to content marketing
#3 It’s tougher than ever to cut through the noise
TL;DR: The number of tools is ballooning in every single industry. Competitor feature tables are nearly exact replicas and it’s harder than ever to break through to the top five tools in a consideration set. The only way to stand out is with clear positioning and powerful storytelling.
You’ve seen the Martech landscape graphic. The number of products is ballooning in every single industry. Competitor feature tables are nearly exact replicas, and it’s harder than ever to break into the top five tools of a consideration set. There are boundless resources available on go-to-market and growth tactics, so you can’t expect a tight marketing operation to be enough.
Most employees at a company can tell you what the product does. But answering questions like “What are you known for?”, “What do you do 10x better than everyone else?”, “Why do you resonate with the people you care about?” is less likely to be answered consistently.
Even with a good product, what’s missing for most companies is clear positioning and powerful storytelling.
Positioning is where your product fits in the market, who you serve, what you’re doing, and how you’re different. Developing positioning is the act of defining how you are unique, what value that uniqueness provides to customers, and who specifically your customer should be.
Storytelling is the vivid description of ideas, beliefs, personal experiences, and life lessons through narratives that evoke emotions and insights. Storytelling is powerful for humans—it shapes how we feel about ourselves and the world, and it drives us to build bonds with people and products.
Both of these things take a long time to get right, and they don’t have a clear ROI that you can measure, so it can be hard to prioritize. Many people are afraid of narrowing their positioning for fear of shrinking their addressable market. But that’s not how consumers buy. Not convinced?
How many people drink Red Bull who don’t jump out of planes?
How many people wear Air Jordans who don’t play basketball?
How many people drive Jeep Wranglers who’ve never gone off-roading?
People don’t just buy products for jobs they specifically need to get done—they buy products to associate with the person they aspire to become.
🎯 Your goal with positioning is to become as relevant as possible to your target market.
🎯 Your goal with storytelling is to become as memorable as possible to your target audience.
So no more shadowboxing! If you don’t take a stand with your positioning and storytelling, no one will notice or remember you.
Our positioning & storytelling strategy for 2023
We’ve always been super specific about what we do and who we do it for. In fact, some folks have gotten frustrated with us for not making exceptions on the scope of work, industry, or deal size. But staying focused on what we know we do well and not trying to win every prospect that lands in our inbox has 100% been the right strategy. Often in sales calls, I tell prospects what we don’t do, just so they understand what we mean when we say we are a product marketing agency and not a digital marketing agency.
We will keep sharpening our tools on positioning and messaging—for ourselves and our clients. We will likely gently expand our expertise and services in basic SEO to inform our website work and content marketing, but we aren’t going to be the kitchen sink of marketing agencies.
Related resources: How to win in crowded markets–using story-first product development; The difference between positioning, messaging, and copywriting; Positioning: Just Do It (or at least try)
Top tweet(s)
This is exactly what I was talking about with AI disrupting content marketing. Despite a drastic increase in content volume looming, all hope is not lost. The stuff that can only be written by a human—real-world experiences and strong opinions—will stand out.
Fresh finds
Tool I *think I will* love
Phantom Buster LinkedIn Commenters Export & Search to Lead Outreach plugins: I haven’t tried this yet but I’m about to. We’ve got a really special cookbook (our version of an ebook) coming out soon and I want to do distribution right. So even though this tactic feels tacky, I’m gonna give it a shot and will let you know how it goes.
Inside Olivine
What we shipped in 2022
Olivine Marketplace: In July we launched Olivine Marketplace on Product Hunt. We connect startups with vetted product marketing freelancers and support both sides to make it great for all. Learn about Marketplace.
Olivine Affiliates: Our give/get referral program gives new clients a $1,000 discount and gets you a $1,000 bonus for clients you refer who work with our full-service Agency. Become an affiliate.
Design Directory: Find talented brand designers and illustrators from around the world. Find designers.
Marketing Job Board: Find open marketing roles that are vetted by Olivine or post a job opening. Go to job postings.
Guest Writer Program: If you are doing great work in B2B SaaS marketing and have something unique to say, we’d love to have you as a guest author on our blog. Write for Olivine.
Cookbook: 30-60-90 Day Guide for New PMMs—our version of an ebook coming soon. Waitlist here.
Content Gems for 2022
Best of Inside Olivine—our top 10 blogs & newsletters from the year
Offsite Music Video: “Feel it Still” recorded live in our AirBnB
Thanks a million for letting us take up precious space in your inbox. I’m rooting for you big time in 2023!
💪 Rae
P.S. #ahumanwrote this — no AI tools were used in the writing of this very long, but hopefully juicy newsletter.