Building, Launching and Growing a SaaS Business Model

Meet the Expert Rand Fishkin, CoFounder and CEO of SparkToro

They say, “Timing is everything”. Well, if you are developing a SaaS product, your timing couldn’t be better! Over the last decade, computing has become more distributed, portable, and personal due to the popularity of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) models of distribution.

Overall spend per company on SaaS products is up 50%, and the number of unique apps in usage per company goes up about 30% year-over-year. From accounting, ecommerce, marketing automation, and manufacturing intelligence, many new SaaS solutions are continuing to emerge that address the difficulties every business, small or large, experiences.

This Meet the Expert Session features the always informative and entertaining Rand Fishkin, a two-time co-founder of successful subscription SaaS marketing platforms - MOZ.com, a high growth inbound marketing software, and his new startup venture, SparkToro, an audience research platform.

Based on his years of experience and lessons learned, Rand will answer your questions and generously share his knowledge and experience in growth marketing to help startups and established businesses make good decisions about viable product strategies leading into the buildout, customer/audience research and marketing, launch, sales, and scaling for growth.

Riddle: Are growth hacks good for quick wins?

You won't want to miss this opportunity and gain expert insight on marketing strategies that will benefit businesses of all kinds.

Topics Covered

SaaS Growth Marketing strategies including marketing and product led
Audience research strategies for identifying and understanding your potential customer
The four types of keyword research required for today’s digital marketing and driving traffic
Smart Flywheel Marketing for Social, Influencer, & Advertising Flywheel, Press & Word-of-Mouth, PR/Awareness, Media and Conversion, and Sales

As a result of this session you will be able to:

Understand the value of implementing a variety of Marketing Flywheel strategies and continuously improving a set of repeatable, tactical investments to grow and scale
Perform audience research to gain an understanding of your potential customers, their sources of influence and information consumption.
Define and apply audience focused growth strategies to build awareness, drive traffic and convert customers

PLEASE NOTE: This webinar is scheduled for 2:00 P.M. Eastern Standard Time. Rand is on the west coast and says he is a notorious night owl ;)

Meet the Expert: Rand Fishkin, CEO of audience research software startup...

Meet the presenter

Rand Fishkin is cofounder and CEO of audience research startup SparkToro. He’s dedicated his professional life to helping people do better marketing through his writing, speaking, startups, and his book, Lost and Founder. When Rand’s not working, he’s usually cooking a fancy meal for the love of his life, author Geraldine DeRuiter. If you bribe him with great pasta or great cocktails, he’ll spill big tech’s dark secrets.

In 2004, Rand created the SEOmoz blog, which, over the next decade, became the world’s most popular community and content resource for search marketers. In 2007, Rand became CEO of Moz (prev. SEOmoz), the software company he co-founded with his mom based on the blog’s success. That same year, he proposed to his longtime girlfriend, Geraldine DeRuiter, with a TV commercial that received widespread publicity (and, later, an awkward appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show). The two married in 2008 in a move Rand consistently refers to as the best, luckiest one of his life.

Over 7 years as CEO, Rand grew Moz to 130+ employees, $30M+ in revenue, and traffic to 30M+ visitors/year. He raised two rounds of funding, led three acquisitions, and a rebrand. Rand stepped down as CEO in 2014 during a rough bout with depression and left the company 4 years later. Rand was also the co-founder of Inbound.org alongside Dharmesh Shah. The site was sold (for no profit) to Hubspot in 2014.

Rand may be best known for his popular blogs and regular Whiteboard Friday series, watched by tens of thousands of marketers each week. Rand is also a frequent keynote speaker at marketing conferences around the world, averaging (before the pandemic) ~100 days on the road each year and 30-40 speaking appearances. He has, much to his own surprise, amassed a large following on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pocket, Facebook, and Instagram.

In 2018, Rand founded SparkToro and published, with Penguin/Random House, Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World. Rand previously co-contributed to two books: Art of SEO, and Inbound Marketing & SEO. He’s been profiled in the Seattle Times, featured in Puget Sound Business Journal’s 40 Under 40, named to BusinessWeek’s 30 Under 30, written about in Newsweek, The Next Web, the Inc 500, and hundreds of other publications. He is, however, most proud of his prominent appearances in Geraldine’s first book, All Over the Place. Geraldine and Rand are also small investors in TinySeed Accelerator, LegUp, TeamSportz, Techstars Seattle and Backstage Capital.

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Building, Launching and Growing a SaaS Business Model