Hi friend! 👋 

Where did this year go? Who knows. But what we do know is that we have a few good reads to share with you just before the holiday season kicks in.

And while we normally focus on marketing, this time there is also some life advice in this letter. If your holiday dinner somehow goes off the rails, just try to carefully shift every conversation back to marketing. ✅

Here are a few examples of how to pivot from any uncomfortable holiday dinner topics to Growth Marketing.👇

👨🏻 “Can you believe what Sanna Marin just did?”

🙆🏻‍♂️ “I’ll tell you what I can’t believe! The untapped potential of secretly adding links to your website on Wikipedia articles! #growthhack”

👵🏻 “So, are you seeing anybody?”

💁🏻‍♀️ “No, but I am seeing a strong upward trend in several of my growth marketing campaigns.”

🤰🏻“When are you going to settle down and start a family?”

🙅🏻‍♂️ “I think the bigger question is, when are you going to settle down and start experimenting?”

👨🏻 “Remember my friend Mark? I could set you up!”

🙆🏻‍♀️ “Sorry, they don’t fit my ideal dating profile (IDP).”

👵🏻 "Can you pass me the sauce?"

💁🏻‍♀️ "I see you have a need here. Could you tell me more about what the job to be done with the sauce is for you?"

You can also try starting some conversations on your own:

💁🏻‍♀️ "Did you know that Santa is actually just an old man from the neighborhood wearing a silly costume? He has built such an incredible brand."

🙆🏻‍♂️ "Do you know how some people have started to refer to those days from Christmas to New Year where you don't get much done as Betwixtmas? Right there, you can see how Christmas is growing its reach and taking more and more of that December market. Is this something you think your business is ready for?"

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What's happening at Advance B2B? 🎥 🎙 📝

A lot and never enough - sounds probably familiar. Marketing is all about prioritizing. In any case, we hosted a webinar about the importance of brand in growth marketing. In case you missed it, you can watch it here. 🍿

We also published some new (awesome!) pieces of content:

• [Guest post] SaaS marketer: These are the growth metrics you should be reporting to your CFO, written by Niko Laine from Calqulate
• PLG pähkinäkuoressa – mitä se on, ja mitä se ei ole? written by our very own Hanna Isohanni-Nikula
• Holiday Special: The SaaS Marketer Christmas Drinking Game 🎅🏻🎄 (This game works well with non-alcoholic drinks, too, but please note that they won’t help you forget these boring old SaaS marketing clichés as easily as another type of drink would.)

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🎙 Podcasting 🎙

On top of this, there is also a new 'The Growth Hub Podcast' episode up. It's about Building a world-class SaaS marketing team. A theme we have discussed with many of you just recently!

The guest in this episode was Frida Ahrenby, CMO at GetAccept. You can listen to it 👉 here. 

🎙 🎙 🎙

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Then, let's go to the reading tips of this month. 👇

Product qualification matrix

Our main takeaways from Sherlockscore's blog post about the product qualified matrix are the following👌

• PQL is not the same as SQL. SQL by definition means that the company as qualified by sales is a right fit. In comparison, PQL shows the activation within the product.
• Companies can use the entire lifecycle from MQL to SQL to define how they want to handle incoming leads and free trials.
• A matrix that plots all incoming users based on right fit and product engagement can help decide how their future journey will be driven, whether it's by sales or activation teams or fully self-service and supported through in-product onboarding.

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CRO vs CXO vs experimentation

In our last growth letter, we focused quite a lot on experimentation when it comes to the articles we shared with you. 

We still want to go back to this, as this article about CRO vs. CXO vs. experimentation touches a really important subject: Namely, what differentiates these three.

Experimentation is the process, and CRO/CXO are the applications or mindsets applied. 

• Experimentation is all about a testing goal. And it's characterized by the goal to run better tests through improved processes. 
  
• CXO is characterized by a learning goal, a goal to learn more about the customers.
  
• CRO is, in turn, characterized by numbers to achieve.
• We are not quite sure if we 100% agree with separating learning and experimentation. In our opinion, learning is the goal of experiments. Apart from this, the article offers an in-depth view on how to run experimentation and CXO and CRO as well.

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Customer Spotlight of the month: Mediamaisteri ❤️

Mediamaisteri sells e-learning products such as a learning management system and they also offer additional services, like trainings. We've been working with Mediamaisteri since the spring of 2021. 

We started the work by diving straight into Mediamaisteri's customers. And based on the insights we gathered there, we helped Mediamaisteri form out their updated tone of voice and messaging.

We created a strategic roadmap that is designed to help us raise awareness around Mediamaisteri and acquire new customers. And we are particularly proud of a new pricing page we helped launch.

Clicketi click here for the full customer story!

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What's next? 

Now it's time for the holidays and some quiet time between the days for family and loved ones, only to be back in full force in January 2022! 🤩

Remember, you can always send us your greetings, ideas, and thoughts by replying to this email. We’d love to hear from you, and we'd appreciate your feedback! 💌

Have a relaxing holiday season and a sparkly new year!