Bootstrapped Startup Building a Go-to-Market Strategy from Zero

Below is our interview with Pietro Saccomani who relied on our coach, Josh to build out a defensible marketing plan. Pietro’s the founder of 3 startups and used Josh’s expertise to build a strategy across all of his businesses. Let’s dig in!

The Problem - No Marketing Strategy

Q. Hi Pietro, thank you for coming on! Tell the reader a little about yourself and what makes you unique as a founder.

A. I’ve founded two bootstrapped businesses, MobiLoud and MixBloom, both profitable and around the $1M ARR mark, and now work on building FeedBear, a solution for software product teams to collect and analyze feedback and ideas from their customers, share a roadmap and keep customers engaged.

Q. That’s cool. Wow, 3 startups. Most of us can’t imagine building just one. Before you were coached by Sparrow, what were your main roadblocks that kept you from growing your revenue?

A. We have a growing business but rely heavily on organic content. It’s great but we want to grow faster, so we started working on a marketing strategy. We needed someone to help us get unblocked and see beyond the obvious marketing channels to recommend us a path forward.

The Solution - GTM Strategy with Weighted Priorities, Tasks and Budgets

Q. What parts of your go-to-market plan and marketing strategy did you learn to improve during your time with Sparrow?

A. Josh gave us a structure for a go to market strategy which helped us focus our efforts and generate more and better ideas. We’ve gained clarity on positioning, target customer and ICP, built personas and value propositions that have guided all our marketing efforts across channels.

Q. Ah I see. Sounds like there’s multiple things you two worked on. How did your time with Sparrow improve how your marketing team thinks and executes content, SEO, copywriting or paid ads? Did this improve your conversions?

A. We needed a sounding board rather than thinking alone. Josh helped us create a strong marketing plan for our product and provided valuable insights that steered us in the right direction when we went off track.

Q. Having worked with our coach (Josh) who grew Hootsuite and other startups to 8-figures in annual revenue, what’s something totally cool that you learned and didn’t know before?!

A. Marketing is probably the hardest part of building a bootstrapped SaaS business. We all know the top marketing channels for a SaaS, but prioritizing is key and that’s the hard part, especially when you have a limited budget and you’re impatient to see a return on your investment. It's all a bit harder when you’re self funded.

Working with Josh gave us more confidence executing on an ambitious marketing strategy and giving each channel enough time and resources to properly test it and make decisions with enough data so we know we’re not killing a new campaign too soon or getting the wrong signal from a channel we didn’t dedicate enough budget to.

Q. That’s awesome man. Thanks for sharing this experience. And by the way, what made you pick Sparrow in particular to help you scale your startup?

A. Everyone can easily claim to be a great marketer, post rehashed marketing advice on Twitter. Sparrow does a great job screening and building relationships with experienced marketers and making them available to founders in an easy to start model.

Q. What kind of founders would you recommend Sparrow to? The more specific, the better!

A. I think Sparrow would be ideal for startup founders with limited marketing resources to guide strategic planning or later stage startups that need feedback on specific channels and execution of their campaigns.

Q. That’s awesome Pietro. Thanks so much for sharing your experience on Sparrow! Looking forward to working with you and your three (!) teams again in the coming months! :D

A. The pleasure is mine!