Accelerating the growth of airfocus by the Axis strategy
Airfocus can easily scale up sales to Millions in the next 6 months. Here’s how adopting the Innovative Account Management framework can help them
I am an Axis Architect — an Account Manager specializing in Enterprise Relationships. I recently stumbled upon airfocus and just loved the way they have built & scaled a first-of-its-kind modular product management platform. It felt like an Innovative approach
Being the Product Nerd that I’m, I went a bit deep into exploring the product & how they’re growing the product & Startup, as a whole
I was impressed by the way they’re trying to build their content library to also fuel their organic product-led growth. It’s no wonder they’re starting to work with huge clients like Shopify or The Washington Post.
They’re right now in the perfect position to start building a separate Account Management team to further add fuel to the fire and scale up their sales along with their already organic product-led growth! (which btw, they’re already on it)
But I have a problem with them right now. They’re missing on a huge opportunity right now
When I googled airfocus, all I could find were a few social accounts & content on a few generic benefits. Further, their blog had a few diverse content pieces posted regularly on categories covering Product Management, Product strategy & other broad Product centric pieces
I feel this is where an innovative company like airfocus should adopt a creative approach to building more Enterprise relationships, & further increasing their B2B sales & revenue
It pains me to see the opportunity they are missing out on by not focusing on the right kind of strategic approach to B2B relationship building as a way to scale their business.
Why Airfocus should do this?
Airfocus wants to reimage the way teams make decisions.
But to accomplish that goal, they’re missing one important thing: A solid strategy to partner up with other companies to understand their product development philosophy & further introduce them to their platform
Most of our current Account Management strategies & approaches are a bit outdated
The Outbound approach was & has always been the go-to strategy for Account Management, but it is time we made inbound, especially content the driver of our Sales machine
And not just any normal content that talks about generic stuff or something about our Startups. We need to build a strategic content system that helps us create valuable content (that replaces our content marketing efforts), build vital relationships (that will fuel our prospect pipeline) & position our leaders as Thought Leaders (that humanizes our brand & make us the go-to resource in our industry)
If you’re going to spend company time and resources on Account Management, then the goal should be to build the brand, community, attract new customers and strengthen relationships amongst existing customers.
And that’s what we will aim for
The Approach
In true Startup spirit, I will assume myself to be an Account Manager for airfocus & walk through how I would run Account Management for airfocus.
In doing so, I hope that Founders learn how to create a strategy for their Startups to build Enterprise relationships and how to capitalize on it to scale their business & revenue.
I have already written in-depth about the innovative Account Management approach for B2B Startups here. I call this Inbound Account Management to approach the Axis Strategy. But it’ll take some time to catch on, I suppose.
In short, the strategy entails using an Inbound approach for Account Management. Sales, at its core, is all about trust & relationships. That’s what we will target right off the bat.
We’ll figure out the relationships we want to build, our ideal clientele & work backward from there to the beginning. We’re figuring out the relationships we need to build to achieve our goals, going directly to those people, and creating content with them
We’re providing them with a platform.
And by providing anyone a platform to talk about their story & their journey, we give them a chance to share their expertise with a broader audience and show off what they know
We’re essentially having a conversation & getting to understand their pain points & how we could potentially help them. If we could help them at all, in the first place. We’re qualifying our leads proactively
We’re engaging with them & building a rapport very quickly along the way
And as a result, we will end up with better prospecting & a Targeted Network, positioning ourselves as effective Thought leaders & turn our Startup into a Media entity to sell more & distinguish ourselves as unique
The Strategy
For the Axis model to function, we will need to build 3 pillars in parallel
- Content-Based Networking to build & nurture prospects
- Focus on the bottom of the funnel content to drive more signups
- Utilize User-generated content to humanize the brand & build a Community
1. Content-Based Networking to build & nurture prospects
The main pillar of the Axis strategy is the Content-Based Networking
Any startup striving to reach ambitious goals cannot achieve it without the right relationships. Content-based networking (CBN) allows us to reverse-engineer relationships with the exact people we want to connect with & grow.
Instead of relying on chance encounters and random in-person events, it allows us to connect with anyone, at any time, and from anywhere in the world
All we need to do is provide them a platform & talk about their journey, preferably like a show or a Podcast
And NO, you DO NOT need tons of listeners for a podcast to drive actual revenue. All it needs is a consistent flow of guests. Because, in the end, it is your Guests you interview that is going to drive new revenue
To put your doubts & suspicions to bed, here is how an agency used CBN to add over $1M to their Sales pipeline in less than 90 days
All they did was start a show & interview their ideal buyers to build a relationship with them.
With today’s tech, you find most of the Podcast tools free online & all you need to do is dedicate a portion of your time before you systemize it
Executing the CBN strategy is also pretty simple & straightforward. It can be boiled down to 3 simple steps:
- Get clarity around your goal.
- Figure out the types of people who can help you achieve that goal.
- Create content with those people.
As simple as that
I have explained in detail how a startup use CBN to drive sales & revenue in detail in this article.
2. Focus on the bottom of the funnel content to drive more signups
While we’re on the trajectory of building an unusual creative campaign, we need to also examine & question the industry norms that are accepted as laws
We’re approaching this campaign on First-Principle reasoning. We’re breaking down all the situations into basic elements and then reassembling them from the ground up
We did it for relationship building by adopting the CBN approach. To drive more signups, we will opt for content yet again. But where we will differentiate ourselves is by focusing on the bottom of the funnel content.
Yeah, First Principle reasoning in action.
Let me explain
The standard playbook that most SaaS Startups use is to focus on the top of funnel topics like email signups, eBooks, white paper downloads among others in hopes of generating more trails & demo requests
What usually happens is that they start focusing on educating the potential customers at all the stages of the Sales funnel — Top of the Funnel, Middle of the Funnel & Bottom of the Funnel
This is a huge waste of resources since this does little to help get trials or demos. What we can do is skip this altogether.
Unless we’re so unique that we’re THE ONLY player in our category, which essentially means we have created a new category, other players in our category have already educated a large number of our prospects on top of the funnel topics.
What we need to focus on instead, are the people in the middle and bottom of the funnel. These are the people already actively searching for a solution to their problem.
Most SaaS sell to evolved businesses who are already in the industry for years. They don’t need to be taken into our Sales funnel from the top. There are already a substantial amount of potential customers who are already in the consideration and conversion stages.
We’re targeting those — Prospects with high purchase intent
We will need to focus on creating content that will generate trials, demos, and product signups. We will implement this by identifying the pain points and topics that indicate someone is already looking for a solution
We create content to rank for those terms and lead them to the main product-related call to action (CTAs) like sign up for a free trial or demos.
When we’re focusing on the bottom of the funnel topics, we can go directly for the sale instead of pushing people to email signup.
This is the secret Content Marketing Experts in Grow & Convert unearthed.
This is the Gold mine we can take advantage of & further increase the signups before it becomes common knowledge or mainstream
As a bonus, the bottom of the funnel, conversion-focused SEO content we create will end up outperforming the larger volume keywords content. This is also something that the experts in Grow & Convert discovered.
“…after looking through various client’s analytics accounts, we started to notice a trend that certain blog posts that happened to rank for bottom of the funnel keyword terms would outperform blog posts going after larger volume keyword”
This SEO content that we create will make sure we keep getting traffic for years & the bottom of the Funnel focus will convert these traffic into product signups or demos & eventually revenue growth & sales
Start from the users that don’t need to be educated or taken through the complete funnel from the top
3. Utilize User-generated content to humanize the brand & build a Community
User-generated content (UGC) is the best shortcut to get potential customers to trust us.
People trust their peers more & buyers usually place more trust in the recommendation coming from their counterparts or at least people they are connected with
This is where we will complete the circle & close the loop.
We will utilize the recommendations of our customers, especially we converted from either CBN or Bottom of the Funnel content. What essentially we are achieving from this is the reach & recognition. By getting our customers to talk about us, we’ll be the unique product they are recommending to their peers
We have already won half the battle even before their peers, that are essentially potential clients start looking for solutions. We can then reach them through a warm introduction or they will eventually find us through our bottom of the funnel content
In addition, UGC results in a 28% higher engagement rate than standard brand content. We get a chance to add depth and certain creativity to the content roster.
We are further giving a voice to our customers & showing that we care.
What all these inevitable does is build a community.
UGC gives our audience a platform to showcase their creativity, share their ideas & thoughts and further connect with like-minded people on a similar path
And while the UGC content strategy isn’t new or original, how we will separate ourselves is the type of UGC we will focus on
Again, First Principle Reasoning!
Instead of the normal over-saturated UGC content like the video testimonial or Case studies, we will go for our customer’s Product activities & how they utilize airfocus
We can create UGC on how different Product teams utilize airfocus & how they tackle their daily challenges.
Everybody has their unique take on Product development & customization is inevitable along the way. Lucky for us, dynamic roadmaps & collaborative decision-making are the core specialties of airfocus
There might also, in addition, be a few more unique use-cases where people are utilizing airfocus for their projects. We will feature those too
These UGC will not only garner more attention & build engagement but also can help us build a small community
The Difference in the Current Strategy of airfocus vs What I’m proposing
CBN is a pretty novel concept & not many SaaS are aware of the impact it can have on the product.
By being the early adopters & quickly capturing the Product space, we can be the SaaS leaders in CBN, building beautiful relationships & networks along the way, while competitions are following the standard method of growth
In addition, we are also reaping the secondary benefits of CBN — Thought Leadership & a Media entity
Airfocus already has a solid Content Strategy & they are pretty consistent with publishing. They have a wide variety of content
But as already mentioned, most of it focuses on Top of the Funnel content, which tries to educate the potential customer & tries to take them through the complete funnel
Although Top of the Funnel has its place, what I’m disputing here is Prioritization.
What’s the point of creating Top of the Funnel content that doesn’t have product intent, when we can be focusing on those that do have buying intent?
It is better to go for the low hanging fruits & then gradually move up the Funnel
Moving on to UGC, airfocus already has a few case studies & guest blogging. But again, what it lacks is the engagement & a vibrant community
I feel this is a huge missed opportunity right here
By differentiating ourselves as the brand that encourages Creativity & highlights the ones with clever usage & customization, we are creating our unique cheerleaders & product advocates along the way
Airfocus is a beautiful product that many find innovative.
So Why not use our strengths to our advantage?
The Impact That This Strategy Would Have on Airfocus
By adopting this strategy, Airfocus would be able to build deeper relationships with its customers, increase its adoption amongst people who’ve heard of the platform but have never used it, and it would also be the market leader in the Product SaaS space taking the unique approach to grow
This type of Creative strategy could be a huge opportunity for airfocus to beat out its competition. All they have to do is focus on helping people share their stories & capitalize on what’s already working
Finally, since the bulk of these strategies are user-generated, it not only results in a tightly-knit community of loyalists but also encourages potential customers to give it a try
That’s the power of building a Community
Closing Thoughts
Account Managers are the bridge that connects & builds relationships between two organizations. Most of our current Account Management strategies & approaches are a bit outdated.
It’s high time we adapted to the changing times
Its time inbound approach, especially content, is the driver of our Sales machine rather than the standard Outbound approach.
And not just any normal content that talks about generic stuff or something about our Startups. We need to build a strategic content system that helps us create valuable content (that replaces our content marketing efforts), build vital relationships (that will fuel our prospect pipeline) & position our leaders as Thought Leaders (that humanizes our brand & make us the go-to resource in our industry)
Airfocus can utilize this hybrid approach of Account Management to add fuel to their already successful organic product-led growth!
