SaaS growth consulting
A growth strategy you can run on Monday – not a 60-slide deck.
Most SaaS growth strategies are lists of tactics. Mine starts with who you sell to and how they buy, then picks two or three bets that fit – each with a number to hit and a point where we kill it. For B2B SaaS founders under €15M ARR.
Book a 30-minute callWhat you hold after six weeks ↓Led growth at
Toggl · Meilisearch · ChartMogul · Groove
What is a SaaS growth strategy?
Short answer
A short set of decisions – who you'll win, how they buy, which few bets get your time and money, and how you'll know they're working.
The textbook version is the Ansoff matrix: sell more to the market you have, take the product to a new market, build a new product, or both. That's the right question for a board. It doesn't tell a founder what to do on Monday.
The SaaS version usually arrives as a list – product-led growth, content, referrals, partnerships, paid, outbound. Every item on it works for someone. The strategy is deciding which two or three work for you, in what order, and which ones you'll ignore for now.
What does a growth strategy consultant do?
Short answer
Finds the real constraint and makes the four decisions your team keeps postponing – in this order.
Who
The ICP: the specific accounts and people you win, not "SMBs and mid-market".
How they buy
The GTM motion: self-serve, product-led, sales-led, or a hybrid with clear lanes.
Where
Two or three bets that feed that motion. Not ten.
How you'll know
A handful of leading metrics, and a success threshold and kill switch for every bet.
Most founders start at step 3. A few LinkedIn posts, some paid, a blog. Then outbound gets replies but no meetings, and 8 of 10 names on the list don't fit. That's not a channel problem. It's step 1, skipped.
Why does the ICP come first?
Short answer
Because every later decision – the motion, the channels, the message, the metrics – is a bet on who the customer is.
Redefining the ICP from "everyone" to specific personas is the first and most useful job in almost every company I've walked into. And it can't stay a marketing document. If product keeps building for everyone and sales keeps chasing every lead, the new ICP is a slide.
Which growth strategy fits your GTM motion?
Short answer
The motion decides the question your strategy has to answer – and the questions are different.
| Motion | The strategic question | Typical bets | Leading metrics |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve | Where do users who activate come from, and what makes them pay? | Bottom-funnel SEO and AI-search content; onboarding that leads to the paid features; a reverse trial | Trial → activation → paid |
| Product-led with sales | Which signups deserve a sales conversation? | Account scoring on firmographics and in-product behavior; explicit lanes for what self-serve keeps and sales takes | Product-qualified accounts → pipeline |
| Sales-led | Is the problem new leads – or the pipeline you already have? | Work the stalled opportunities first; account-based marketing on 4–6 accounts; the founder's LinkedIn presence, with engagement routed to sales | Meetings booked → pipeline → closed-won |
Most SaaS companies between €1M and €15M ARR run a hybrid they never chose. Without lanes, self-serve eats into sales and sales spends its time on small accounts. Deciding the lanes is often the whole strategy.
How do you measure whether a growth strategy is working?
Short answer
A small set of leading metrics, and a kill switch on every bet – agreed before the bet starts.
Most teams track dozens of numbers so they can always show progress somewhere. Revenue alone is wrong too – it lags by a quarter or more. Pick three to five leading metrics that match the motion and ignore the rest.
Every bet gets two lines written down before any money moves:
- Success at 8 weeks looks like: a number, a source, a stage.
- We kill it if: a lower number, by an earlier date.
A strategy without kill switches turns into a list of things you're "still testing" a year later.
What does a growth strategy engagement look like?
Short answer
Six weeks from first interview to a strategy your team can run – judged on a working roadmap, not dramatic growth.
Weeks 1–2: Find what's working.
Interviews with your best customers and the ones who left. Your CRM, product and revenue data: who converts, who stays, who expands, how they found you.
Weeks 3–4: Decide.
The ICP, the motion and its lanes, the two or three bets. Each bet gets a metric, a threshold and a kill switch.
Weeks 5–6: Set it up to run.
The measurement – source, stage and time-to-close in one place, plus an open-text "how did you hear about us?" field. The first experiments briefed and scheduled.
Week 6: What you hold.
A one-page strategy (ICP, motion, bets, metrics), an experiment roadmap with success criteria and kill switches, a baseline to measure against, and a view on who should run it – your team, a freelancer or your first marketing hire, with a scorecard.
Then your team runs it – or I build the first version with you as your fractional CMO.
Growth consultant, agency or first marketing hire?
Short answer
A consultant decides, an agency executes a channel you've chosen, a hire runs it day to day. Get the order wrong and each one fails.
| Growth consultant | Agency | First marketing hire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best at | Deciding who, how and where | Scaling one proven channel | Running the plan every day |
| Fails when | It ends as a deck nobody runs | It runs channels without a strategy – activity, no pipeline | Hired before the ICP and motion are clear – the wrong profile |
When is a growth strategy engagement the wrong answer?
Short answer
When you don't have a strategy problem.
- No revenue yet. You need customer conversations, not a strategy.
- One broken channel with an obvious fix. Fix the channel.
- You know the plan and need hands. Hire, or bring in someone who builds.
- You want a secret tactic. New tactics come from doing the ordinary things well and in order – if you're hoping for a trick nobody else knows, this will disappoint you.
Who you'd be working with
I'm Ilia Markov. As Marketing Director at Toggl, I rebuilt the product-led engine around a new ICP. At Meilisearch I built the marketing function from zero for a technical product sold to developers. Before that, content and growth at ChartMogul, Hubstaff and Groove.
I've worked in self-serve, product-led and sales-led motions, and I still build the pieces myself – the scoring, the attribution, the pages.
MBA from Michigan Ross. Based in Sofia, working remotely since 2015.
Read the Toggl case study →Questions founders ask
How long does it take to build a growth strategy?
About six weeks: two to find what's working, two to decide, two to set up the measurement and the first experiments.
How is this different from your fractional CMO work?
This engagement decides the strategy and sets it up to run. As a fractional CMO, I stay on and build the first version of each channel.
Do you execute, or only advise?
The strategy engagement includes setting up the measurement and briefing the first experiments. Building the channels is the next step, if you want it.
Do you work with pre-revenue startups?
No. Without customers there's nothing to base the ICP on – talk to users first.
What do I keep?
Everything – the strategy, the roadmap, the data, the briefs. No lock-in.
Do you only work with SaaS?
Mainly SaaS, and B2B companies that sell and operate like SaaS, but I've worked with partners in various industries.
Growth flat, and no clear reason why? That's the first call.
30 minutes. You'll leave knowing whether your problem is the ICP, the motion or the channels – whether or not we work together.
Book a 30-minute call