Demand & Acquisition

Marketing Demand & Acquisition

An acquisition playbook for Series A+ B2B SaaS scaling across EU/US/Canada with a hybrid PLG/sales-led motion. Covers demand gen, paid media, SEO, and partnerships, with attribution and MQL->SQL handoff.

Core KPIs by Role

• Demand Gen -- MQL/SQL volume, cost per opportunity, marketing-sourced pipeline $, MQL->SQL rate.
• Paid Media -- CAC, ROAS, CPL/CPA, incrementality lift, channel efficiency.
• SEO -- organic sessions, non-brand traffic %, rankings, assisted conversions, technical health.
• Partnerships -- partner-sourced pipeline $, partner CAC, net-new logos, co-marketing ROI.

1. Full-Funnel Framework

TOFU (awareness) -> MOFU (consideration) -> BOFU (decision) -> handoff.

• TOFU -- paid social (LinkedIn thought leadership, Meta), display/retargeting, content syndication, informational SEO, co-webinars. Goal: brand lift, traffic.
• MOFU -- solution-keyword paid search, retargeting, gated content, email nurture, comparison pages. Goal: MQLs, demos, trials.
• BOFU -- brand + competitor search, direct outreach, free-trial CTAs, case studies/ROI, intent retargeting. Goal: SQLs, pipeline $.

Every campaign gets a brief: name, objective, budget, duration, channels, audience, offer, primary/secondary metrics, tracking (campaign ID + UTMs), and handoff protocol (SQL criteria, routing, SLA).

2. Paid Media

• LinkedIn -- structure by funnel stage (awareness/consideration/conversion); target Director+ at 50-5000-employee SaaS; lead-gen forms convert 2-3x but lower quality (TOFU/MOFU), landing pages for BOFU.
• Google -- prioritize brand > competitor > solution > category search; start manual CPC, move to tCPA after 50+ conversions; maintain a 100+ negative-keyword list; responsive search ads (15 headlines, 4 descriptions).
• Meta -- only for ACV <$10k / visual products; lookalikes + interest + retargeting; video with a 3-second hook, captions.
• Scaling -- if CAC < target, raise budget ~20%/week; if CAC > target, pause and optimize; scale winners, kill losers on a 2-week minimum.

3. SEO

Technical foundation first (sitemap, HTTPS, Core Web Vitals passing, schema, hreflang). Keyword tiers: T1 high-intent BOFU ("best [category]", "[competitor] alternative"), T2 solution-aware MOFU ("how to [solve]"), T3 problem-aware TOFU ("what is [concept]"). Optimized pages (2-3k words, internal links, schema, staged CTAs). Links via digital PR, quality guest posts (DA 40+), partnerships, community, and broken-link building at natural velocity. Content cadence: ~4 TOFU + 2 MOFU + 1 BOFU + 2 refreshes per month.

4. Partnerships

Four tiers: strategic (complementary SaaS, co-marketing/integration/rev-share; high effort, high ROI), affiliate (bloggers/influencers, 10-30% commission), referral ($500-1k/SQL from customers), marketplace (app-store listings for discovery). Playbook: identify (overlapping ICP, complementary, similar stage) -> outreach -> agreement (scope, rev model, metrics, term, exit) -> activation (co-branded assets, enablement) -> QBRs. Joint webinars are the highest-leverage co-marketing motion.

5. Attribution & Experimentation

Use multi-touch (W-shaped 40-20-40) for hybrid motion; compare against first/last touch. Track weekly (traffic, MQL/SQL, pipeline, CAC, channel mix) and monthly exec KPIs (sourced pipeline/revenue, blended CAC, MQL->SQL, velocity, ROMI target 3:1+). Prioritize A/B tests by ICE = (Impact x Confidence x Ease)/3; require 95% confidence and ~1000 visitors/variant; aim for 4-6 tests/month at a realistic 30-40% win rate.

6. Handoff

Define SQL criteria (title/authority, company size, budget, 90-day timeline, high-intent action). SLA: SDR responds to MQL in 4h, AE books demo in 24h, first demo within 3 business days. Recycle lost opps to nurture and feed closed-lost reasons back into roadmap, pricing, and positioning.

Budget Allocation (Series A, $40-60k/mo)

40% paid (LinkedIn + Google), 25% content/SEO, 20% partnerships, 10% tools/automation, 5% experiments. Regionally, EU skews LinkedIn-heavy; US/CA balances Google and LinkedIn.

Output

A multi-channel acquisition plan: full-funnel tactics, channel mix with budget and CAC targets, SEO keyword/content plan, partnership tiers, attribution model, weekly/monthly KPI dashboards, and MQL->SQL handoff SLAs.