“Have all your decisions from March 2020 played out as you hoped?”

That’s a question I asked the CMO of a mid-sized B2B SaaS vendor yesterday. It opened a wealth of insights…

“Back in March 2020, cutting Marketing on marketing spend felt like an obvious choice,” he said, “for two main reasons.”
1 – The immediate impact on freeing up essential budgets
2 – The direct effect on cash flow

“But was it such a wise choice?” I asked

He paused

“Well, you’re asking a passionate marketer.” he replied. “this hurts my heart. But taking emotions out of the way, we learned a few critical lessons in hindsight that are worth sharing.”

👉 – We heavily underestimated the long-term effect of these short-term measures.
👉 – Even though the immediate effects helped the business back then, the long-term effects we still feel until this very day
👉 – If I’d put it in perspective: Every $1 we stopped then now costs +$4 to recover

“It’s not only that you stop the spending, but you also stop the exposure. You stop the essential touchpoints to move potential customers across your funnel – and with that, you stop the flywheel.”

“The big lesson learned: As we’re exploring our measures to minimize the negative impact of a potential economic crisis – there’s one thing our CEO has become an advocate for: Protect any marketing investment that has a mid-long-term impact”

Question for you to reflect upon:

What’s the “hindsight” Corona lesson you’ve learned within your SaaS business?

 

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