went from 0-$10m in ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) in 2 years from 2015 to 2017.
Since then, their sales enablement software has sustained this meteoric rise and is now valued at over $1bn.
And how do you maintain such growth?
This posts explains…
You're in digital marketing... at some point during your first week in the industry you probably read or were told:
You have to have a blog.
You have to be creating new content related to your brand.
So sure, you did it...
You set up WordPress, started writing a few articles. As you're a #saashacker, your blog probably did ok.
Not like 99% of all the other company blogs on the internet. Most of them get a trickle of traffic, and the business never gets close to a significant ROC (Return On Content).
However, there has been a trend that #saashacker has been monitoring for the past couple of years...
A trend for larger companies towards either buying or building niche media properties that don't sit under their own brand.
Why do we think this is?
Not 100% sure, but I think non-corporate blog content probably gains more traction and will, therefore, grow faster, with fewer resources required.
As someone considering clicking on the link to the blog post promoted on Facebook could be more likely to do so if they didn't think a business would ultimately try and sell something to them?
Whatever the reason, Outreach definitely saw value in their acquisition of Sales Hacker last year (estimated at $3-5m):
We don't have time to dig into Sales Hacker's growth strategy, especially as they are not #saas...
But check their organic growth:
Solid.
Outreach has refrained from slapping their brand over the Sales Hacker site and are just listed as a partner:
I presume they are trying to maintain this growth of attention in their target market (salespeople) and aim to trade some of that attention for further Outreach ARR growth over the coming years.
1. It may be worth considering acquiring a niche media brand in your space
2. It may be worth starting a niche media brand in your space
After all, what do you think #saasmarketing is? ;)