Avetis Ghazaryan, Founder of Growth Hunter, a community for SaaS professionals, shares how momentum marketing can enable marketers to overcome marketing challenges and increase pipeline growth.
Avetis explains what momentum marketing is, shares some strategies on how to stand out, and offers some advice on how to maximise impact.
Listen to the podcast now via the links below:
- Marketing B2B Technology on Apple Podcasts
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About Growth Hunter
Growth Hunter is a resource for SaaS professionals to learn, share knowledge and find inspiration for high-demand impact and momentum marketing.
About Avetis
Avetis Ghazaryan is the founder of Growth Hunter with over a decade of experience helping SaaS companies developed impactful sales and marketing processes by tapping into high-congregation events.
Time Stamps
[00:47.2] – Avetis discusses his career journey and the events that lead to founding Growth Hunter.
[07:31.3] – Avetis explains what momentum marketing is.
[12:25.1] – Avetis shares the tactics marketers can use to keep up with momentum marketing.
[14:41.4] – How can you stand out on a topic everyone is discussing? Avetis offers his tips.
[20:02.0] – Avetis shares some marketing advice.
[22:24.5] – Avetis contact details.
Quotes
“If you keep obsessing over understanding your buyer, their needs on a personal level, there is a lot to gain as a marketer.” Avetis Ghazaryan, founder of Growth Hunter
Follow Avetis:
Avetis Ghazaryan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/avetisghazaryan/
MRP website: https://www.growthhunter.com/
MRP on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/growth-hunter-official/
Follow Mike:
Mike Maynard on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikemaynard/
Napier website: https://www.napierb2b.com/
Napier LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/napier-partnership-limited/
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Want more? Check out Napier’s other podcast – The Marketing Automation Moment: https://podcasts.apple.com/ua/podcast/the-marketing-automation-moment-podcast/id1659211547
Transcript: Interview with Avetis Ghazaryan – Growth Hunter
Speakers: Mike Maynard, Avetis Ghazaryan
Mike: Thanks for listening to Marketing B2B Tech, the podcast from Napier, where you can find out what really works in B2B marketing today. Welcome to Marketing B2B Technology, the podcast from Napier. Today, I’m joined by Avetis Kazarian. Avetis is the founder of Growth Hunter. Welcome to the podcast Avetis.
Avetis: Thank you Mike, thanks for having me, really excited to be here.
Mike: So it’s great to have you on the podcast. I mean, I think the first thing you know I’d be interested in is a bit about your background and your career journey. So tell us how you got to where you are now.
Avetis: Yeah, I’ve been in software as a service space for over 10 years now. And I started my career, opening my own marketing agency back then very inspired by inbound marketing, who were working with B2C direct to consumer brands are also SAS software companies. And after a year or two, doing consulting and you know, agency type of work for those businesses, I ended very fascinating the challenge a lot of software as a service companies had when it came to marketing challenges for them.
And so very quickly shifted and really wanted to dedicate my career more in that sector. And I happen to work with amazing companies and software as a service as head of marketing, Head of Business Development. And one of the luckiest things I had was every company I joined the product they had they were offering to the market was the perfect window, I worked with a company called cue connect, we’re offering solutions selling platform or social media and shopping on social media was thriving back then it was a great opportunity for a marketer to work on a company like that. And then I worked with the company in retail tech sector, AI sector. So every every product offering we had and as a marketer, I had the opportunity to position that company at a perfect time, the perfect window, or that product category was thriving and was of interest. But one thing I found was very quickly as a pattern with all these companies, and I really worked and dedicated my career with an early stage company series A to Series C. And the main challenge I noticed as a head of marketing is the demand problem.
First of all show for context series A and DMC companies, and all those early stage companies, they always have this aggressive annual revenue goals, right ARR goals, it’s pretty much 100% year over year growth that every company is trying to achieve. And as head of marketing, your responsibility is to deliver the demand to lead the lead generation everything that required for sales team to achieve those revenue targets. Interesting thing was that that I came to realisation very quickly as every quarter, you have to really deserve your pipeline, you have to really be creative and be on the lookout for new campaigns new strategies to achieve that level of demand. Because early stage companies don’t have that level of awareness. And brands are not familiar with the product. It’s a new product, new way of thinking new technology. And as head of marketer, you really need to solve for that issue. And that’s gotten even more excited a lot of challenges. And, and that was one of the things that drove me to look deeper into and understand what can I do as a marketer to be successful at helping these companies achieve the growth, my focus was always buyers, really trying to understand the buyers needs, where they are in their journey. And how can I position the product to resonate with my marketing positioning to resonate with my messaging with those buyers. And somewhere in throughout my journey, one of the things I noticed is a pattern that works for me is looking for events, I congregation moments that are top of mind for buyers, and really using that to build my marketing my sales development as the our campaigns and messaging. And that really helped me to achieve that high level of demand generation high levels of engagement quarter over quarter, and help these companies achieve that pipeline growth to align with with the revenue targets. And so really excited about the journey and trying this few companies back to back I realised that okay, there’s some concept or method of doing this.
So two years ago, I went to Sastre on my own. I just wanted to connect with a lot of software companies and founders, marketers sellers and just understand their challenges and see if this concept resonates. And it did. And it allowed me to connect with really interesting, like minded people who shared the same vision and the challenge, essentially, that enabled me to open a company called Growth Hunter where we just popularise the idea and we bring into challenges discuss how it could be solved through momentum marketing. So that’s kind of my journey from where I started to where I am and just a really interesting period in my life where I get to connect with so many amazing people in tech and brainstorm together and solve challenges. That’s kind of where I am right now.
Mike: So presumably that Why you form Growth Hunter is to format, I guess community where you can actually discuss these kinds of marketing challenges for SaaS companies, with people in the industry is that was that the reasoning behind it?
Avetis: It is, the reason behind it is the main reason is to enable and help my peers in marketing and business development and sales, who are struggling with that high demand challenge with ideas and you know, inspire them with strategies and tactics to be equipped to go through this, especially now when in North America tech downturn feels like a big topic. And a lot of SaaS companies are struggling with generating and acquiring new customers. It’s just becoming more and more relevant topic for a lot of people.
Mike: And so in terms of that community, I mean, what are you trying to give the people who join? I mean, what, what are the benefits? I mean, obviously, there’s, there’s an opportunity to talk about issues, but I guess there are other places to do that. So can you just walk through what makes Growth Hunter different?
Avetis: What makes your attention different is our focus on the momentum marketing? Hi, congregation moment. Discussion, right. So we see people come in, who are looking for ways to achieve that demand, and we offer a solution and that people usually come to our website to learn how to leverage momentum marketing, how it works, how they can benefit from it naturally, which is interesting that when we started this, a lot of people expressed interest we connected with discuss we shared ideas, they went tried things, and realise that people want to share their success stories or, you know, challenges and how they overcame through momentum marketing. And so when you go into growth entering really stories from ambassadors, we call people who are champions in a way who show the vision and try these things and stress test the concept in a way. And so you find a lot of interesting stories of from different industries from different verticals, within markets, where shass marketers, and as the ORS are trying this concept, which, by the way, in a way, led us to naturally create a community, a small community of people, because we were having this ad hoc discussions of, hey, I’m interested, I don’t know how I did started, how do you do this with content writing? Do you know how can I apply this to content marketing? And so after a few discussions by bringing in ambassadors realised we just should do this in some centralised place. So the idea of the community came up?
Mike: I mean, that’s fascinating. There’s a couple of questions there. But I think first, we should really go back and talk about momentum marketing. This is obviously a concept you’ve built the community on, can you just explain what you mean by it and maybe give an example of how you actually run a campaign using momentum marketing?
Avetis: It’s a great question. And so momentum marketing is really lies on the idea of momentum, right? There’s key moments, events that are happening every given quarter that draw your buyers attention. So if you’re a software as a service company and your target market or retail decision makers, let’s say VPS, or E commerce are the decision makers of a solution like yours, any given quarter, there’s certain events that happen that are really working through them. And the way we define them entrance are those are high congregation moments, which involves a large segment of the same buyers that pay attention to that event, but are also strategically important events. One example I have from my experience was Instagram. So one of the companies I worked for SaaS company conversationally i years ago, but Instagram was one of the channels, we were deploying AI automation. And up for our VPs of E commerce, Instagram was a strategic channel, Instagram came up with a upcoming announcement on automating DMS, they were launching new features every time that this was unique in many ways, and was unique because it had a high congregation a high interest of CPAs of E commerce as an upcoming solution. And they were really curious of what that could allow them to do and for their brands and how they can leverage that. And so those are types of events that I call high congregation moments that usually occur every quarter or a few times.
Another one could be in healthcare. For example, Amazon’s acquisition of one medical was an interesting and those are entering healthcare is the fig leaf for healthcare industry, it had certain momentums the acquisition of one medical was one of the momentum one event that lasted about six weeks or so. And it got a lot of health care companies small practices attention, because it meant something then things cooled it down a little bit. And then one medical was now part of Amazon’s application. And now Amazon is pushing one medical with heavy promotion. So there, those things create those Momentums. The big wave, the big steam is Amazon entering healthcare. But what happens within those certain time periods is what we call Momentums. And so after every business, our recommendation is for every SaaS company, you need to know your buyer by knowing what is top of mind for them. What are those important moments in time every quarter, and that are important for that and build your marketing campaign, your sales outreach campaign, really aligning based on those momentums and in my case of Instagram automation that I brought up is Our approach was, we broke it into three phases. And what we suggest is essentially, phase one, you don’t promote your product at this stage. But what you do is you really try to be the guide the voice, helping us supporting your buyers journey. And so in our case, as an AI solution in the space, we really helped our DPO become buyers understand why Instagram automation is a key opportunity for them, and for their business, because I’m relying on their consumers, because we were seeing high demand from consumers on messaging channels, like Instagram, on social media, but also messaging capabilities of Instagram, are really informing and educating by bringing in experts, from Forrester, from our other customers to come in and speak about the need for a technology solution to enable that conversation with consumers at scale. And so what it allowed us to do is position ourselves as a thought leader and an expert in the space without necessarily sharing that we are that one of those solutions, gradually, you then introduce new capabilities. And you inform that audience that, hey, we are actually one of those solution providers, they could help you in your journey. But the way it starts, it’s really by you being the voice around that event, and you sharing that unique perspective and voice. And usually my recommendation is, if you’re an early stage startup, you use your CEO or your founder, when knows how everything started, why you started this technology product in the first place to bring in that perspective, and help buyers see the opportunity. And you could sum in some cases, it could be also controversial, it could be you making a statement against AI, that might actually, you know, as long as it’s genuine, as long as it’s guiding and helping your buyers to achieve something. It serves the purpose. So Lee leaning on those events, and building your marketing and sales campaigns around that work. 656 weeks is enabling you to achieve three times more results in terms of engagements, lead generation demo, requests, webinars, submissions, and is what I have seen, in my experience working with all these companies, I’m pretty sure with ambassadors compared to traditional campaigns that companies normally run.
Mike: I mean, that’s interesting, it’s kind of feels like it’s underpinned by a lot of the, you know, HubSpot theory around inbound marketing to educate first. But it also feels that there might be a challenge. I mean, for example, if Amazon’s making an acquisition, you know, you’re not gonna know about it until after it happens. So do you have to be quite agile to take advantage of momentum marketing?
Avetis: Not necessarily, but it does give you the advantage. So one of the things that I recommend is when you look for momentum is are three ways to do that. One is always talk to your buyers, right? You need to really be connected with your customer base, and really know what’s happening top of what’s top of mind for them what’s happening in their space. What are they currently reading, exploring publications, the topics that are top of mind. The second one is a partner ecosystem. Usually, if you’re partnering with large companies, in our case was metal, Facebook, they’re always ahead and they know what is coming up. In some cases, they are defining that momentum, they’re going to be the momentum, the organisation that brings the momentum. But the third one is using tools like C three, or probably or any PR or like just a Google search, really, or subscribing to key publications that your buyers have subscribed to, you can notice a pattern. And even that you can catch it pretty fast. My general recommendation is if an event is being covered by more than two publications, and they have a pretty strong customer base user base, you can see based on their web traffic, if this is a recognisable publication or not, but if the same topic is being covered by two or more publication, and that topic is being discussed in multiple ways by the publication. So if you see that, you know, one article from a publication, and then a follow up article a few days later, you know, there is a momentum, that if it is a strategically important topic. And that’s one of the criteria that needs to be strategically important. It shouldn’t be just a quick news, but it needs to be strategically important for the buyer. And if it has more than two publications, that indicates it’s going to last about five, six weeks, more than enough time to make sure that whatever you’re creating whatever you’re using in your SDR outreach, whatever you’re using in your marketing, upcoming campaigns, you really want to position that if you have a webinar coming up with one of your guests really want to drive the conversation towards that topic,
Mike Maynard
if that makes a lot of sense. And I think maybe some people are sat there thinking, well, if we’re talking about a topic that’s important, that’s got a lot of industry attention. How do I stand out? I mean, how do I compete when you know, for example, if I’m a start up with low awareness, and maybe there’s some incumbents that are that are much bigger enterprise companies with really strong awareness? How do I get my voice out there when there are other people fighting for attention as well on the same topic?
Avetis: It’s a really good question. And I think very timely because I happen to do the same or for AI topics. So about a year ago, like about 10 months ago, AI topic has become very hot and GPT. Three went out and everyone was talking about this and I used that opportunity as a mentor. Men really interest noticed an interesting pattern. So AI, I would treat that as a general weights general topic. But then there’s shifting enrollments in AI that you need to be looking out for. And that can help you achieve that differentiation. And so when to GPT went out, and people were using it and there was a lot of coverage on the topic of my approach was Chuck GPT is a hot topic, you need to stay up to date on how this technology works, best practices, and what this could mean for your organisation. And that drew a lot of people’s attention very quickly. However, within my target vertical within the market that I was after, I noticed that people were sceptical because there were certain events that happened with AI, as Samsung had an unfortunate tribe charge CPT, where they just gave a lot of information to judge. There’s a lot of scepticism around this, this topic. And it really allowed us to understand, Okay, it’s time to shift away from this type of messaging and to really adapt to the new message.
And gradually, the thing about three momentums that I identified over the past 10 months with AI, the last one is really proof right now, there’s certain verticals that require proof, they want to see more companies do this. And so if you’re able to align your marketing and change your position, and you’re still talking AR you’re still within that within that categories, but if you can understand the signals that your buyers are giving you what is like, what is their perception of that topic? How do they feel about that, and be able to change and navigate that that will allow you to stand out and be differentiated? Ai topic is, is really interesting, it’s a, it’s a double edged sword in a way, in one case, it’s a topic that has a high level of awareness. So it makes whatever you say, very familiar. However, it is so noisy today that every company regardless of what type of solution they offer, they have an AI capability. And as a marketer, that brings a big challenge, you need to be able to differentiate. So my recommendation is within your vertical, understand if that’s a hot, big topic, understand what is top of mind for your buyer, how what’s what is their perception of that event, what is maybe it’s a challenge for them, maybe it’s an opportunity for them, maybe there is something that’s that’s top of mind for them around that topic, and really bringing a unique voice, not from your company, from your founders, as to how you see you can guide your buyers throughout this time.
You know, and I think that’s, that’s really, that’s what really creates this connection with with your prospects. And that’s really what resonates with them. I’m certain one last thing I just want to add from my experiences that brought the Instagram example is, the fascinating things about this is when we did the Instagram campaign, six months later, it was so big for us that six months later, a lot of those VPs of ecommerce would recognise us at a different conferences, as that Instagram solution providers is that assaulted or about Instagram automation, which is a good and a bad thing. But if you run multiple momentum marketing campaigns, you achieve that trust. And if they don’t convert necessarily into a revenue or close deal or partnership in the short term, when they come back, you need building you build such a big vision and trust with them, that you have a high likelihood of those opportunities to potentially convert for you in the future.
Mike: And I think that’s that’s very important. That brings us back to something you mentioned right at the start with SAS companies that are under a lot of pressure to close business this quarter short term business. But ultimately, you’re never going to be able to keep that process of closing up. Unless you’re building awareness and bringing people at the top of the funnel. So I think it’s always an interesting challenge. With SAS, there’s a lot of focus on bottom of the funnel, converting people already interested. And actually, I think you know, what you’re saying about momentum marketing, it really gives an opportunity to keep filling that funnel with new opportunities, new people who are aware of your products, and particularly for startups, I think that’s important. Otherwise, suddenly, you find that the few early adopters that get dry up and then you’ve got this Crossing the Chasm problem.
Avetis: Yeah, exactly. I do think there are certain late stage companies that you could also find this relevant, because it’s pretty much the same thing. Even like pre IPO stage companies are really very focused on that quarter over quarter goals and achievements that they’re that they need to reach. But yes, I think I agree with you. I think that’s the level of awareness necessary. And this could also be applicable for companies launching a new capability. Like every time you’re launching a new capability within the market, that’s a different it’s novel feature. But it’s a new capability that you would like to introduce to your market, it’s a really good way to make it relevant to your buyers at any given quarter, why that particular capability could be so helpful for them. And so aligning that throughout the year. And introducing the same capability from different prisons of different events happening at any given quarter. Still kind of helps you achieve that level of awareness even if you’re late stage company.
Mike: That’s great advice. I love that. I’m I’m obviously aware of time. And what we’d like to do is ask some general questions. You’ve been very generous sharing your marketing advice. I’m interested to know what’s the best bit of marketing advice you’ve been given by somebody else?
Avetis: That’s a good question. That’s a good question. I happen to work with many brilliant founders and Chief Revenue officers throughout my career and every one of them has given me so many one to take would be probably focused on your buyers. And this was an interesting feedback that I received early on in my career, and back then it seemed very valuable, but at the same time very general, because everyone would suggest that Amazon was customer centric, HubSpot, inbound marketing is all around your buyers and understanding of buyers, your buyers profile, throughout my career and pretty much close to second half of my career, I really saw the value of understanding your buyer well, and the impact that can make for you. And when I say understand your buyer, don’t understand your buyers a business, right, especially in B2B, we tend to think of buyers as businesses and you know, it’s as the POV calm, they have one problem, it’s conversions, you solve for it, there’ll be happy but there’s humans behind that. And so they make decisions whether to open your email with a to request the demo. And it’s not always driven by the main pain point, the main challenge that you are aware of it, there’s more to it, that you’re able to segment your buyers and it could be VPs of ecommerce being segmented into different groups, and understand their preferences in terms of what time of the day, they would like to be reached out what type of publications they’re researching, like really in depth information about your buyers broken into segments that only will multiply your outcomes that the KPIs you’re after. And so that’s something that I’ve noticed, and I’ve been chasing as a North Star. And I think one of the things that this Growth Hunter journey has given me and in our community is while we are focused on momentum marketing, it got us closer to understand the buyer, and really be obsessed about understanding the buyer. And there’s some interesting things that are coming up for for us in the next month or so. And I’m very excited about it, because it’s just it’s been driving us to try to unlock the next thing. And I think yeah, to keep obsessing over understanding your buyer and their needs. On a personal level, there is a lot to gain as a marketer.
Mike: And that’s great advice. And it’s exciting that you’ve got, you know, so many new things happening as well coming up. If anyone listening to this, you know, wants to find out more about momentum marketing or more about you. I don’t know what is your best to go to Growth Hunter, what’s the best thing for them to do to connect with you? Absolutely.
Avetis: The best way is to go to Growth Hunter.com. And we have multiple ways you could get started with our blogs with our stories with our community, we have a newsletter. So there are multiple ways you can learn about momentum marketing, you can also connect with me through LinkedIn, just connect with me there or you can reach out to me that that isn’t Growth Hunter.com available there. Love to share ideas, brainstorm every open book.
Mike: That’s amazing. That is this has been fascinating, a really good introduction to the concept of momentum marketing. Thank you so much for appearing on the podcast, Mike.
Avetis: Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah, very excited to have this conversation. Thank you so much.
Mike: Thanks so much for listening to marketing B2B Tech. We hope you enjoyed the episode. And if you did, please make sure you subscribe on iTunes, or on your favourite podcast application. If you’d like to know more, please visit our website at Napier B2B dot com or contact me directly on LinkedIn.
