80. Series 2 | Episode 43. How to Get Your First 100 Customers and Grow Your B2B Start-Up, with Asia Orangio, CEO & Founder of DemandMaven

As an early stage B2B tech start-up, getting your first 100 customers is a significant task. Not only is the technology market incredibly competitive these days, but customer acquisition costs are going through the roof. And if that wasn’t enough, there’s growing economic uncertainty.

The obvious solution is to hire a demand generation focussed marketer and start to run a wide variety of campaigns. Putting some budget behind things like this will start to get everything moving.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t always set you up for success. And it can often lead to frustrations between the founding team and the marketer(s), which in turn leads to people getting despondent about marketing altogether.

So what’s a better way to get your first 100 customers?

Today I’m joined by Asia Orangia, CEO & Founder of DemandMaven, Board member @ Moz (successfully acquired in 2021), and previously at two 10x startups, who talks to me about the proven steps she goes through when working with early stage B2B tech start-ups on customer acquisition. 

We cover;

• The common reasons Founders struggle to get their first customers
• What stage your B2B tech start-up needs to be at before investing in marketing
• The foundations that need to be in place before you launch campaigns 
• How to decide what channels to use 
• Proven marketing strategies that Asia has seen work at B2B tech start-ups 
• The metrics you should be tracking
• The various options for Founders wanting to build a marketing engine (pros & cons)
• The marketing stack Asia recommends for B2B tech start-ups 

And so much more...

Market Mentors is brought to you by Matt Dodgson, Co-Founder of Market Recruitment. Market Recruitment is a recruitment agency that connects B2B Tech & SaaS businesses with top class marketers to help them grow.

If you'd like to be a future guest on the Market Mentors podcast you can apply here.