Omni Lab Consulting

Omni Lab is a demand gen agency for Series A to Series C B2B SaaS companies. We help you create, manage, and optimize paid advertising campaigns cacross most major ad channels like LinkedIn, Google Ads, YouTube, Display, Reddit, TikTok, and more.

We focus on optimizing for leading and lagging indicators to ensure your paid efforts are driving qualified leads and opportunities that meet your ICP.

Co-Founder

RevGenius

Member

Jellyfish

Sr. Director of Sales & Partnerships

Stitch Labs

Regional Director of Sales

Teralytics

Head of Sales, East

XeoMatrix

Head of Sales & Marketing

MicroStrategy

Sr. Account Executive

Sr. Business Development Manager

Carahsoft Technology Corp.

Account Representative

Smashwizard

Founder, CEO

Over the last 15+ years, I've worked for 4 VC backed SaaS companies, consulted with more than 100+, helped 1 get acquired, 1 reach unicorn status, and many more generate millions in net new revenue.

I've also seen a handful of those startups go out of business...including my own SaaS business so I know many of the mistakes. 

Over that time I've noticed that the buyer's journey has evolved. 

Today buyers have the power.

Yet, many SaaS businesses still continue to run the same programs that worked a decade ago. 

They continue to over-rely on lead gen and create friction in the buying process. 

This is pushing customer acquisition costs sky high and causing many to miss their targets. 

The way forward is to take a buyer-centric approach to creating and capturing demand. 

Buyer-centric demand gen is when your funnel aligns with how the buyer wants to learn about your company. 

It means you write in the language your buyer understands, you consider how they consume information, and when and how they want to buy. 

When you take a buyer-centric approach you generate more pipeline and revenue and an enduring brand. 

This is why we started Omni Lab.

------------------------------------------------------------

What we do for Series A to Series C SaaS startups:

→ Manage and optimize paid media across any digital channel
→ Distribute content/messaging via paid to grow pipeline and revenue
→ Build out engaging ad creative
→ Focus on optimizing the funnel based on pipeline and revenue. 

Results from SaaS companies we have worked with: 

→ Unicorn Status in 10 months
→ Grew pipeline 372% and lead > opp rate 266%
→ 1,300% increase in revenue Q3 > Q4
→ 20% increase in revenue Q over Q

If you are looking to create and capture demand via paid media, let's chat :) 

email: jonathan@omnilabconsulting.com or DM me

There are 5 major ways to target on LinkedIn and Meta (Facebook/Insta)

This is how you should prioritize them 👇

1.) 1st Party Data - 

WHAT:  Retargeting audiences, existing contacts, opportunities, customers in your CRM, etc. 

WHY: These are the people most familiar and engaged with your brand, and they are most likely to convert/close in the short term. 

2.) Target Account List - 

WHAT: When you upload a target account list directly to LinkedIn or use 3rd party data tools to create an audience that can be uploaded to Meta. 

WHY: There is NO excuse for the marketing team not to be marketing to the same accounts as sales. NONE. 

3.) Firmographics - 

WHAT: When you target your ICP based on job titles, company size, growth rate, industry, geography, etc. 

WHY: It's the most narrow type of targeting to ensure you are reaching the right audience vs. job function, interests, groups (LI), which are much broader. 

4.) Interests & Groups - 

WHAT: When you target people with specific interests (e.g. SQL, Big Query, Data Analysis) and/or groups they belong too (e.g. Big Data Turtle Heads)

WHY: After maxing out reach & frequency with firmographic-based audiences, you can expand into interest and group-based audiences that will likely be broader but could open up new people you haven't been able to target with titles. 

5.) 3rd party intent data - 

WHAT: Tools that scan the web for people interested in your category and then surface those accounts to your sales team. Or people going to your competitor pages on review sites. 

WHY: In some cases, this can help your marketing team focus on the accounts that are already market, which, in theory, will close quicker. 

This was just one of the topics I talked about with Vladimir Blagojević & Andrei Zinkevich. 

I'll be going deep on each slide over the next few weeks. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

Jonathan Bland

7 things you can do today to make it HARDER for buyers to buy. 👇 

Remember, it's about you and what your company want, not what they want. 

It's your job to control every step they take across the buyer's journey. 

The more you can control it, the better you can predict it. 

Start with: 

1.) Remove pricing from your website or better...have a pricing page without pricing on it
2.) Don't let them book a demo directly with your sales team....chase them with emails and calls. 
3.) Hide your product; don't let them see it; their curiosity will lead them to reach out. 
4.) Pass them around like a baton...SDR > AE >...and make sure you don't share information with the AE, better to ask the same question twice. 
5.) Add more form fields, rev ops said they need more data for lead routing. 
6.) Spend all your money promoting gated TOFU content that is unrelated to your product. 
7.) Give them TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content in that order. I read my content from top to bottom, after all. 

This is the way. ;)

What am I missing?

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

Marketing and sales should ALWAYS be targeting the same accounts.

Let's say you have 100-500 accounts right now that are in your target account list for the quarter/year; here are the 10 steps of what should ideally happen:

1.) VP of Sales works with the sales team on identifying top-tier accounts they will be focusing on for the quarter/year

2.) After the accounts are vetted and research is done, the VP of Sales will meet with the VP of Marketing.

3.) They will agree on the targeting, theme, core messages, and content that they can use to start engaging the audience with their brand.

4.) The VP of Marketing will use the target account list to target the core accounts on LinkedIn and Facebook with ads or wherever the audience is spending time.

5.) Then, the marketing team will launch a podcast to interview the top people at these companies with the goal of developing a relationship, not selling the account.

6.) They will then use the content from the podcast to repurpose and distribute via paid and organic. With your logo next to theirs, it will increase your credibility to other target account companies in the space.

7.) The VP of Sales will then work with the sales team and develop personalized messaging for cold outreach to the key people at the account via email, phone, and LinkedIn. Not everyone will come inbound, sometimes you need to go to them.

8.) Over the next 3-6 months, they will work together as a TEAM to open up those accounts.

9.) The core metrics they will track are the number of new accounts engaged with the brand (impressions, website visits, etc.), the number of conversations (meetings taken), and the number of opportunities created.

10.) The marketing and sales teams won't argue over who sourced the deal, they will celebrate when they have hit the above goals in step 9. (one can dream...)

Does that mean marketing isn't targeting anyone outside of those target accounts? No.

They may have additional campaigns focused on building brand awareness in other markets.

HOWEVER, marketing will ALWAYS be targeting the same accounts as sales. NO EXCUSES!

If you aren't doing this today, get on it! )

#demandgen #b2bmarketing #saas

Tomorrow at 9:00am EST I go live with Andrei Zinkevich and Vladimir Blagojević at Fullfunnel.io to discuss how to build a modern paid social strategy. 

We'll discuss: 

1.) How to think about setting the right budget
2.) What targeting options help you best target your ICP
3.) Paid social campaign limits 
4.) The 4 content buckets
5.) Nailing naming conventions (borrriiinng, but important)
6.) Building a killer paid social strategy
7.) Write engaging ad creative and creating product marketing ads
8.) What ad formats to use and how many
9.) Determine how you will measure results and allocate budget

If you haven't registered link is in the comments. 

I'll also be joined by even smarter people like: 

Sam Kuehnle
Megan Bowen
Morgan J Ingram
Dani Woolf
Fran Langham
Drew Spencer Leahy 🍉
Kathleen Booth

Teaser video below... sh$$ did I just go through the whole deck?!? Might add a few last minute things to this before tomorrow.  ;)

🛑 Don't over-index on targeting decision-makers. 🛑
👉 Focus on the people that feel the problem.

Everyone sales team wants to talk with the "decision-maker," but often, the decision-makers aren't the ones who decide on the product.

Any good "decision-maker" will trust their team to advise them on the best product/vendor.

You first need to convince the champion/end users, the person who feels the problem or has been delegated to solve the problem.

They are searching on Google, talking to friends about how they solve the problem, clicking on ads to learn more, engaging in communities on Slack, etc.

Run a report for yourself: 

1.) Pull data on the last 90-180 days of inbound leads (high-intent, not content downloads)
2.) Pull in all the titles that came inbound and opened opportunities within a time period.

Now you know the titles you need to win over.

Does that mean you drop all the C-level titles from your campaigns? No, but it means you ensure the titles in the report you ran are in your paid campaigns.

P.S. The smaller the company, the more the "decision-maker" is heavily involved with the day-to-day operation of the company, meaning they likely feel the pain and are trying to solve it; adjust your targeting accordingly for the SMB folks.

P.P.S. The GTM strategy will certainly alter what you see below.... For example, brands like Zapier, Slack, Tableau, Udemy focused first on converting end users, then leveraged salespeople to follow up with enterprise accounts. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

When I hear, "I've been following you for months" 

It's almost a sure thing we will work together. 

These are the comments you want your salespeople to hear when they first talk with a prospect. 

❤️  "I love content"
❤️  "You guys are everywhere"
❤️  "Love your POV"
❤️  "I see your ads all over the place"

When you hear, "Yeah, I don't know much about you, could you walk me through what you do" You know it'll be a rough call. 

You want to create the same thing for your brand. Maybe it's: 

1.) Running a killer webinar series with practical information on how your ICP can do better at {topic}
2.) Delivering value packed newsletter that comes out every Friday
3.) Helping them understand the core problems you solve and how you do it through advertising. 

There are endless ways to create and distribute great content; the point is you don't want sales to get on the first call and hear, "Yeah, I don't know much about what you do..." You should 🤮 ...that's a failure. 

You want them to know: 

✅  What you do?
✅  What outcomes you drive?
✅  How your product works? 
✅  Who else uses it?
✅  How much it costs?

The more you can derisk it from them upfront, the faster your sales cycle, the higher your close rates, and the happier your sales team will be. 

Who does most of this work? Marketing. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

You can bid on the software category or what people want to "DO" with your product. 
The cost difference will surprise you. 

1.) Software Category is the category your software operates in 
2.) Capabilities are the things that people do with your product

When you spend money on Google Ads, you want to focus on the people with the highest-intent first. Think of keywords with "tool," "platform," "app," etc. vs. keywords that start with "what" and "how"

Zapier falls into the category of "workflow automation tool," so you would naturally want to spend money on that keyword. 

However, if you want to connect Hubspot and Salesforce, would you type in:

1.) "workflow automation tool"?

OR

2.) "Hubspot to Salesforce integration"?

Most would type in the latter.

After typing in "workflow automation tool," I get:

1.) IBM - Does everything
2.) KarbonHQ - workflow management for accounting firms 
3.) Unito - A data connector

From an end user's perspective, this could be frustrating.

While bidding on "workflow automation solution" isn't wrong, you don't want to exclude your end-user searches (especially in PLG motions).

For Zapier, that might be:

✅ "Hubspot to Salesforce integration"
✅ "Google Sheets to Salesforce integration"
✅ "Mailchimp to Hubspot integration"

TL;DR High-intent category keywords can make sense, but consider your end user searches, especially when targeting end users. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

What happens when you scale a cold campaign on LinkedIn from $1k to $14k/month. 

First, some context: 

- Objective: Website Visits
- Targeting: Target Account List + firmographic 
- Budget: $1k to $14k/month
- Timeline: Sept 2023 to Feb 2023
- Audience Size: 32k
- Goal: Traffic, Reach, Frequency
- Ad format: Single image

Interesting findings: 

- Reach maxed out around ~40% of the total audience size (typical for many cold audiences on LinkedIn. 
- Frequency rose from 1.56 to 7.57, which is healthy over 30 days
- CPM spiked in February mostly because the bid strategy was changed from manual bid to max delivery
- Increase in budget was highly correlated (.83) to increase in high-intent demo requests
- Don't expect CPC and CPMs to stay the same as you increase budget; they will generally increase with more budget. 

Data Transparency: 

- This data was exported from LinkedIn and formatted/enriched by my team with audience size and % of audience. 

Things to keep in mind: 

- Your goal isn't demo requests and pipeline in the cold layer; you scale campaigns based on reach, clicks, and frequency. Now, you may look at influence in the cold layer, but it is not likely to have many attributable leads in a demand gen play. 
- There were multiple creative refreshes between Sept and February to refocus creative on the best-performing assets. 
- Each objective will scale differently

Happy to answer any questions if you have any.

95%+ people that hit your website for the first time won't convert. 

To nurture, engage, and convert that traffic, you need to retarget those people. That means running paid ads on channels like LinkedIn, Meta, Reddit, Google, etc. 

On LinkedIn, you can retarget by: 

🎯 Visited a page on your website 
🎯 Engaged with a single-image ad 
🎯 Engaged with a document ad 
🎯 Viewed a video ad 
🎯 Opened or submitted a Lead Gen Form 
🎯 Opened a conversation or clicked on any conversation ad call-to-action (CTA) 
🎯 Engaged with your Company Page 
🎯 Responded to your LinkedIn Event 

Each of the above has differing levels of intent. For example, someone who watched a video of you on LinkedIn likely has a lower intent level than someone who has visited a few pages on your website. 

If you have a big enough audience, you can segment by high-intent pages on your website, like your pricing, success stories, or demo page. 

If you don't have a big enough audience to segment this way, then start with all pages on your website, minus your careers page. 

Once that is setup, you can add other audiences like ad interactions, video views, and visits to your LI company page. 

Ever heard of the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, people forget 50-70% of what they learn within 24hrs. So your job is to remind them of who you are, what you do, and how you can help. 

🚪 Enter retargeting. 

Thanks for being my victim, Dooly ;)

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

🚨 Your LinkedIn profile is NOT “just” a digital resume.🚨 
It’s a landing page for converting buyers and driving qualified inbound traffic. 

Here are 8 suggestions when running thought leaders ads via LinkedIn Ads.

1️⃣  Strategy:

- Post on LinkedIn 2-3 times per week (or however often you can manage)

- Your post should have a dotted line back to your product. Examples: Sharing your POV, narrative, a case study, how to build a paid media strategy, or any content related to people seeing you as the expert in xyz topic.

- Review posts weekly to determine the highest-performing posts

- Evaluate engagement rate 3% is above average, 2% is average, and anything below would be below average. Edit the post (after it’s run its course organically), then add a link to the post at the bottom: 
  - Link to your newsletter 
  - Link to your demo page OR
  - Link to your main home page

Then, promote the post with Thought Leader Ads on LinkedIn to guarantee distribution to your ICP.

2️⃣ Banner

Your LinkedIn banner is the backdrop to your profile image and should answer one of the following: What’s the main outcome you deliver? OR What do you do?  

3️⃣ Photo

Your profile picture should be professional and up-to-date. You should also add your primary brand color as the background to your photo to stand out in the feed.

4️⃣  Headline

Your headline should indicate what you do, the outcome you drive, and the client you serve.

4️⃣  Custom Button

If you have a premium LinkedIn account, add a custom button to the top of your posts, as you see below: “Visit my website.” This gives people another way to get to your website, learn more, and ultimately convert when they are ready. 

You can do this by:
- Go to your profile and click “edit.”
- Scroll to the bottom and click the “custom button.”
- Click “premium custom button”
- Set your CTA and landing page
- Enable button to appear on posts, messages, etc.
- Save

6️⃣  About

Your About section should detail your narrative and POV on how you see the market, what you do, recent successes, and how they can contact you.

7️⃣  Featured

The featured section allows you to display certain posts or information you want to highlight. Create an image that promotes the main capability you can help with with a link to your website. You could also promote a few case studies, organic posts that received a lot of engagement, etc. 

8️⃣  Job

Your job should reflect your current position (strange I know). If you have a sales deck or other information that could be helpful for someone to review, add it to the media section.

TL;DR Update your LI profile BEFORE running thought leader ads. 

Thanks Andrew Bolton for being my victim :)

#demandgen #b2bmarketing #saas

Does anyone actually send messages on LinkedIn company pages?

Many LinkedIn company pages have "messaging" enabled by default. That means the button leading back to your website will be pushed into a dropdown menu. 

Aka, they won't have an easy button to "learn more" about what you do. 

You can click on the URL provided in the home section or about section, but why not make it easier for them? 

If you want to drive more traffic back to your website, do the following: 

1.) Go to LinkedIn Company Page
2.) Edit page
3.) Go to buttons
4.) Disable messaging
5.) Activate custom button
6.) Choose CTA (learn more, register, etc.)
7.) Add URL
8.) Save

Now, when they land on your company page, scanning from top to bottom, they'll see an easy CTA to learn more about your company. 

All love for accessiBe :)

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #b2b

In 2024, every SaaS brand should start rethinking the following 5 things:

❌ Don't push webinar/e-book/guides straight to sales
✅ Do invite them to a content collaboration and build a relationship

❌ Don't optimize for the lowest cost per lead on Google Ads
✅ Do optimize for the lowest cost per opportunity on Google Ads

❌ Don't push the benefits and outcomes of your product
✅ Do promote what your product actually does first

❌ Don't have a marketing focus on accounts that aren't aligned 1:1 with sales
✅ Do use the same target account list to warm up the accounts on LinkedIn

❌ Don't target all geos and all industries to keep options open
✅ Do target specific geos and industries that show historical success

Danny L. invited me to her podcast, "How to Build an Empire," to discuss all of the above. 

If interested, check it out in the comments. 

Or search Spotify for "How to Build an Empire by Danny Lev"

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

"Is my audience active on {insert_ad channel}?"

There are 3 ways to determine if your audience is active on a channel. 

1.) Run a targeting ad campaign to the audience

Whether it's Reddit, LinkedIn, Meta, etc. you can log into the campaign manager and quickly create an audience of people that match your ICP, then run an ad campaign against them. If they click, engage, or even convert on your campaign, then you know they are active. 

2.) Talk to your customers 

This is the most universal advice for every situation, but at the end of the day, the answers lie in talking to customers and future customers about where they spend time, how they do research, what groups they are part of, what podcasts they listen to, etc. 

3.) Get active in the channel

BEFORE you spend on advertising, try spending some time on the channel organically. Get involved in groups, connect with influencers, comment on others' posts, and post your own thoughts that help answer questions your buyers have. 

The reality is everyone in your ICP isn't having a party on ONE channel; they are on multiple channels. 

However, you need to start with one. The easiest one to get going on is LinkedIn. 

Even if you don't reach 100% of the audience (impossible), you'll still reach a large % of people who could be a good fit for your company. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

"It shows $1.43M in pipeline created in Q1, not $1.73M" - CEO 😕 

Reporting discrepancies happen ALL the time. 

Why? Most of the time, it's because you are using different filters, your x and y don't match, the time period is different, or you are using a different attribution model. 

📈  Filters - You filtered out non-ICP fit leads; they are looking at all inbound leads

📈  X and Y - You're recent conversion date, they set the date as the opportunity was created

📈  Time period - You're looking at April 03 - April 21st; they are looking at April 1st - April 21st

📈  Attribution model - You're using 1st touch; they are using a multi-touch model

I say this to my team all the time, "we all need to be reading from the same sheet of music". 

As soon as someone says I have a different number than you, then your first question should be: 

---- "Please send me a link to your report." -----

That way, you can dispense with all the back and forth and get to the bottom of what they have done to their report to get xyz answer. 

Ideally, everyone at your company shares ONE executive dashboard to review # of high-intent leads, inbound opportunities, etc., but sometimes, it's just fun creating one-off reports. ;)

TL;DR Align on the way you want to report (the tough part), then stick to those sets of reports when reviewing performance. 

P.S. There is a time and a place for ad hoc reports, using different attribution models to get different questions answered, but if we change how we look at the data every week, it becomes hard to understand how things are performing. 

#demandgeneration #b2bmarketing #saas

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