In this episode, Ryan runs through 8 key things that you need to consider and change so you can go more upmarket and sign bigger clients. A year ago, Rocket SaaS set out to win clients in the 50 to 500 headcount range. Going upmarket changes almost everything, from your pricing and brand to your messaging and the way deals reach you. Ryan walks through all eight, ending with one deceptively simple habit that got him into a room full of ideal clients.

Takeaways:

• Start with research. Interview the bigger clients you already have, or invest in a tool to survey the upmarket buyers you want. What large companies care about is often the opposite of what smaller ones do
• Revisit your pricing. If an enterprise buyer lands on low pricing, they assume you are not for them, and “why are you so cheap?” is rarely a compliment
• Bigger buyers subconsciously judge your credibility based on how your site looks, so a dated design will most likely cost you those larger deals.
• Rewrite the messaging to speak to what larger teams are missing. Smaller companies want you to be their department; larger teams need to know how you fit into their current system
• Offer a free audit. Bigger brands already have a supplier or an in-house team, so lead with the problems they are still struggling with rather than your product
• You need to have an ABM strategy in place. Start with podcast invites, founder-to-founder connections, co-hosted events, and direct mail
• Big deals need a door opener, and partnering with a well-known consultant or advisor is one of the most powerful plays available
• And the last key takeaway? That one's Ryan's best-kept secret. Listen to the full episode to find out

In this episode, Ryan sits down with Sam Gocher, Head of Content at Rocket SaaS, to make the case for top-of-funnel (TOFU) content: the kind that grows pipeline by reaching the 95% of your market who aren’t ready to buy yet. Ryan credits top-of-funnel content as arguably the single biggest reason Rocket SaaS scaled from $1 million to $7 million ARR in two years, and yet it’s the part of the funnel most businesses under-invest in.

Sam and Ryan break down where to start (your ICP and the problem that keeps them up at night), how to decide what you want to be known for, and how to find your topics by mining your own sales calls. If your growth relies too heavily on the 5% ready-to-buy-today audience, this episode shows you how to widen the top.

Takeaways:

• Top-of-funnel content targets the 95% of your market who aren’t in-market yet, so that when they are ready to buy, they already know you, like you and trust you.

• Ryan credits top-of-funnel content as arguably the biggest driver behind Rocket SaaS scaling to $7 million ARR in two years.

• It all starts with your ICP: if you don’t know who they are and the problems they’re facing, you can’t create content that resonates

• Decide what you want to be known for and tie it back to your offering, without ever pushing your product at the top of the funnel

• Build ‘big rock’ campaigns: one deeply-researched pillar asset and then repurpos it into video, social clips, blogs, events and posts that all link back

• Don’t gate your top-of-funnel content: gating drags it down to bottom-of-funnel. Top of funnel is about giving, not extracting

• Find your topics by mining demand: survey your audience, add top-of-funnel questions to sales calls, then use AI to transcribe and an LLM to surface the common themes

• A podcast is one of the best top-of-funnel investments you can make

• CEOs often resist top-of-funnel because it doesn’t attribute leads immediately, but a wide top of funnel is how you scale pipeline fast

In this episode, Ryan makes the case for content frequency over the one big campaign that you think makes an impact. He used to spend months building towards a single webinar, guide or exhibition, hoping it would deliver a wave of leads. Now he knows that it’s the weekly rhythm that makes those big campaigns work at all.

The simple saying of ‘consistency is key’ is a true testament to your marketing. Your content needs to be going out there everyday and help lead up to the one big campaign. Ryan walks through how to build that rhythm, from the six-month content calendar and the thought leaders who feed it, to the data that tells you what to double down on. Don’t just wait for the one big win. Compound your work every week and see constant results.

Takeaways:

• Frequency beats intensity. One brilliant session a month gets you nowhere, but showing up every week compounds.

• Quality will dip when you first raise the output, and that’s fine. Expect around ten run-throughs before it feels slick, and get your thought leader critiquing every piece

• Build a six-month content calendar rather than a twelve-month one. One main topic per month with four subtopics gives you a fresh topic to work with every week

• Find those topics in your sales calls transcripts, conversations with clients, feed them to an LLM and draw out the pain points.

• Assign a thought leader to each topic. It can be someone internal, a partner or even a paid influencer, but get their buy-in on the topics before you start

• Find your golden egg of content. Take that 15-minute interview, or podcast episode and turn it into various content pieces. Social clips and posts, blogs, newsletters.

• Let the data choose your big campaigns.Get your most popular podcast, turn it into a webinar, the best webinar into a guide, and the best guide into a live event

• Put ad budget behind it. Organic-only rarely works for B2B SaaS brands without a large following