Hendrik: Hey Gia! Where are you right now? And who are you?

Gia: I’m at home in Montreal, Canada. But I always work remotely so it’s not weird for me, really. With my company Elevate, and Forget the Funnel, which I run with my business partner Claire, we offer resources for people who are responsible for growing SaaS companies. Primarily SaaS companies that are in the B2B space. That’s my absolute focus – I absolutely LOVE the subscription business model. We work with a lot of martech and fintech companies. We also run workshops for people in marketing roles, SaaS marketers. But soon also consultants, founders, and sales people made their way into our workshops. And we’re excited to help these people.

Hendrik: What is special about SaaS companies? And what’s the difference to a non-SaaS-company?

Gia: Before I got into that scene, I worked with more traditional businesses on their digital channels. Websites, SEO, you name it. The difference in SaaS is that the business model is based on delivered value over time. SaaS businesses live and die by the delivery of customer value and customer retention. The customer experience needs to be at the core of the business and product strategy. And I love that in SaaS, there’s a really big role to play for marketers – not only in customer acquisition, but also in onboarding, evaluation, retention, expansion. SaaS really starts to shine if you talk about post-acquisition. The DNA of a marketer is just so valuable here. And now I’m really zoomed out and help SaaS companies find their biggest growth levers and revenue opportunities.

Hendrik: How do you find the AHA moment? And what is it?

Gia: AHA moments have a lot of different meanings and interpretations. But the job of this moment is basically to convince the customer that the solution that they’re seeking is leading them to the right path. It might not be that it’s the solution forever, but it will get up the momentum so you can keep investing in the solution. In SaaS there’s many moments to consider for this, and if your product is complex, then you will need to define this moment very clearly to activate your customer.

You really want your customers to use the product the way you intended it to, so that the likelihood and frequency of usage leads to a customer with a habit, a customer that stay. So you have to look for a moment that defines a high likelihood for a customer to get to this point.