EP27: Growth During an Economic Downturn

In this episode of In Demand, Asia Orangio, CEO of DemandMaven, breaks down the strategies successful companies have used to survive and grow through downturns and how to apply it to your business. TL;DL:   1:00 - A lot of companies simply over-hired during the past couple years of growth and the layoffs now are correcting for that as opposed to a greater market downturn. 5:30 - In a true economic downturn, layoffs and cuts might not be your best strategy for future survival. 6:45 - There are lots of different levers that can lead to growth. Increasing leads and traffic, increasing in sales, increasing retained customers, increasing in upsells or cross sales, and increasing revenue by optimizing pricing. 8:05 - In an economic downturn the first step to take is to get default alive, meaning that you get to a position of not needing future investment to continue operating. 9:34 - The second step is checking for gaps. That means looking at your business from a product, market, model, and channel perspective. In an economic downturn big changes are happening in the market and that likely means your business needs to change. 13:15 - Step number three is refocusing on growth. The companies that succeed during a downturn are companies that tighten their belts, focus on leadership, and then refocus on growth before the market at large. 17:00 - If you're experiencing slowness with growth right now, there are likely root causes beyond just the economic downturn. You should be looking at and focusing on your highest LTV customers and identifying opportunities that create higher LTV long-term. 

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Growing a SaaS? Yeah, that's hard. Growing a SaaS without a clue what you're doing from a marketing and growth perspective? Pretty much impossible — especially if you want to break the $1M and $10M ARR marks. Kim Talarczyk sits down with Asia Orangio to extract and unpack all the strategic insights she holds in her brain from working with hundreds of SaaS companies and interviewing thousands of their customers. Together, they break down how to diagnose and troubleshoot growth challenges across every part of a B2B SaaS business. About your hosts: Asia Orangio is the CEO & Founder of DemandMaven. Asia helps founders of PLG SaaS companies troubleshoot their growth across GTM, acquisition, activation, retention, and expansion and get unstuck. In early 2018, Asia founded DemandMaven — a consulting firm dedicated to helping bootstrapped and funded SaaS companies build revenue-generating growth engines. Previously, Asia served in a number of marketing roles, but most notably as head of marketing at Hull where she helped the team 10.5x in growth, and #FlipMyFunnel / Terminus as demand generation manager. Asia also served on the board of Moz before its successful acquisition in 2021. Kim Talarczyk is the Client Services and Operations Manager at DemandMaven, where she ensures all client engagements are executed to the highest standard. With a strong background in client-facing roles and professional service firms, Kim has played a key role in scaling operations and delivering exceptional experiences for both B2C and B2B brands.