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SAAS NORTH NOW Blog

The Details Behind 5 Successful Lead Generation Strategies

Sarah Stockdale, Founder & CEO, Growclass

SAAS NORTH NOW #57

Hello to Canada’s SaaS Community,

Lead generation is a tricky thing. You want to be everywhere, but have to conserve resources. You want to talk to everyone… but only if they are a good potential fit. And generative AI is about to blow the whole thing up, adding tons of potentially useless content that will glut up the ecosystem. Standing out is harder than ever. Speaking with SAAS NORTH ahead of her conference talk, growth marketing expert and Growclass founder Sarah Stockdale shared what it takes to make lead generation tactics successful.

Key takeaways:

  • Lead generation isn’t just about running a playbook; you have to customize your approach so that it’s valuable for potential customers.
  • Think about how your approach in any given tactic can build trust or solve a problem—that way, you deliver value while capturing someone’s information to follow up later.
  • Incentives for referrals are not always about money; think about what your community truly values first.

Dave Tyldesley

Co-Founder/Producer, SAAS NORTH Conference Editor, SAAS NORTH NOW

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Marketing has always been noisy, but generative AI makes it exponentially noisier—when you can create hundreds of pieces of content every second, it’s even more difficult to get your message across.

This is something Sarah Stockdale saw on the horizon as she continues to build lead generation strategies for Growclass, the growth marketing certification program she founded in 2019. With over 800 alumni across Growclass’ various offerings, Sarah has tried many different lead generation tactics and gleaned insights about what truly makes something successful. Speaking with SAAS NORTH ahead of her conference talk, Sarah explained more about how she found success with different approaches.

Growing Growclass

Like she teaches in her flaghip certification program, Sarah said growth marketing is a series of experiments. But in conducting those experiments for her own business, she realized that the holistic approach you take to a given tactic can increase or decrease your chances of success.

Here are a few of the successful experiments Sarah used to grow Growclass—and the underpinning that helped each one succeed.

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1. Launching through your network

Every founder needs to use their network as much as possible. Sarah said the way to think about using your network, though, is to fill a gap in the market.

In the online course space in particular, it’s usually about two things: developing a valuable product and building enough trust with people so they buy from you rather than someone else. Both are a function of high-quality customer discovery.

“Your network drives your first probably 100 to 200 students,” said Sarah. “And then after that, it’s people who have never heard of you. So you have to gain their trust really quickly.”

2. Building trust through content partnerships

A key way Growclass connects with new audiences is content partnerships—being on podcasts, guest posting, and co-creating content. What Sarah said helps Growclass stand out is she views content partnerships as a way to build trust with values-aligned communities.

To make this work, Sarah is more selective about potential partners, looking at their values and how they act them out. From there, she creates content not just for value, but for trust-building.

“I find if you can teach something to someone that they can use the next day, they’re really likely to trust you to be someone who can teach them more things,” said Sarah.

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3. Building a referral engine

Getting other individuals to suggest your product to their peers is a great way to grow. When Sarah launched a referral incentive with Growclass, she realized an important lesson: it’s not always about money.

The key is to first give someone a great experience with your product (or in your course). Incentivizing referrals from there is about giving something they truly value. For example, Sarah said many HR leaders recommend Growclass to their employees; for them, it’s not about money, but being able to help an employee looking to grow. Other Growclass alumni have reached out about having custom training for their teams. The motivation here was more about team building and company building, rather than making a few dollars on a referral fee.

“A lot of the time when you have something like an ambassador program, you think everyone is going to be incentivized by money,” said Sarah. “And that’s usually not the case. They’re incentivized by time, or education, or other things that we can offer.”

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4. Scaling with paid ads

Tracking conversions through paid ads has always been a tricky beast, but it’s gotten even more difficult with changes to privacy regulations and tech platforms becoming more like a walled garden than an open field.

For Sarah, this has meant a pivot more than ditching ads entirely. Instead of hoping ads will do all the work for her, she uses them to retarget people who have engaged with Growclass in other ways—achieving what she calls “perceived ubiquity” that can help further build trust.

5. Delivering tangible value through content marketing

With generative AI producing content at warp speed, traditional content marketing of SEO-optimized info blogs might not break through the noise. Sarah’s approach is to think more about the problems her customers face—then see how content might be able to solve them.

For example, the content Growclass produces is focused on helping growth marketers with the demands of their job—their Growth Strategy Playbook, for instance, features a financial forecast template and executive presentation deck template.

“We found a lot of success building content that people need at work,” said Sarah. “We will build you the financial forecast template for your growth strategy. We will build you the executive deck outline that you need. So you just have to do less work and you look better to your boss.”

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You don’t need VCs to win

After years of building a profitable business in the highly-scalable online education market, you might think Sarah is warming up venture capitalists to become the next Canadian narwhal.

You’d be disappointed. Rather than working with a massive injection of capital to achieve wildly-set expectations, Sarah is focusing on improving the business incrementally—quickly, to be sure, but without sacrificing quality.

“I’m interested in helping a lot of people have a much better experience at work,” said Sarah. “I’m not interested in world domination. Those two things don’t go well together. It’s really hard to offer people a great community experience when VCs are breathing down your neck, telling you to scale and sell.”

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Hello to Canada’s SaaS Community,

Lead generation is a tricky thing. You want to be everywhere, but have to conserve resources. You want to talk to everyone… but only if they are a good potential fit. And generative AI is about to blow the whole thing up, adding tons of potentially useless content that will glut up the ecosystem. Standing out is harder than ever. Speaking with SAAS NORTH ahead of her conference talk, growth marketing expert and Growclass founder Sarah Stockdale shared what it takes to make lead generation tactics successful.

Key takeaways:

  • Lead generation isn’t just about running a playbook; you have to customize your approach so that it’s valuable for potential customers.
  • Think about how your approach in any given tactic can build trust or solve a problem—that way, you deliver value while capturing someone’s information to follow up later.
  • Incentives for referrals are not always about money; think about what your community truly values first.

Marketing has always been noisy, but generative AI makes it exponentially noisier—when you can create hundreds of pieces of content every second, it’s even more difficult to get your message across.

This is something Sarah Stockdale saw on the horizon as she continues to build lead generation strategies for Growclass, the growth marketing certification program she founded in 2019. With over 800 alumni across Growclass’ various offerings, Sarah has tried many different lead generation tactics and gleaned insights about what truly makes something successful. Speaking with SAAS NORTH ahead of her conference talk, Sarah explained more about how she found success with different approaches.

Growing Growclass

Like she teaches in her flaghip certification program, Sarah said growth marketing is a series of experiments. But in conducting those experiments for her own business, she realized that the holistic approach you take to a given tactic can increase or decrease your chances of success.

Here are a few of the successful experiments Sarah used to grow Growclass—and the underpinning that helped each one succeed.

1. Launching through your network

Every founder needs to use their network as much as possible. Sarah said the way to think about using your network, though, is to fill a gap in the market.

In the online course space in particular, it’s usually about two things: developing a valuable product and building enough trust with people so they buy from you rather than someone else. Both are a function of high-quality customer discovery.

“Your network drives your first probably 100 to 200 students,” said Sarah. “And then after that, it's people who have never heard of you. So you have to gain their trust really quickly.”

2. Building trust through content partnerships

A key way Growclass connects with new audiences is content partnerships—being on podcasts, guest posting, and co-creating content. What Sarah said helps Growclass stand out is she views content partnerships as a way to build trust with values-aligned communities.

To make this work, Sarah is more selective about potential partners, looking at their values and how they act them out. From there, she creates content not just for value, but for trust-building.

“I find if you can teach something to someone that they can use the next day, they're really likely to trust you to be someone who can teach them more things,” said Sarah.

3. Building a referral engine

Getting other individuals to suggest your product to their peers is a great way to grow. When Sarah launched a referral incentive with Growclass, she realized an important lesson: it’s not always about money.

The key is to first give someone a great experience with your product (or in your course). Incentivizing referrals from there is about giving something they truly value. For example, Sarah said many HR leaders recommend Growclass to their employees; for them, it’s not about money, but being able to help an employee looking to grow. Other Growclass alumni have reached out about having custom training for their teams. The motivation here was more about team building and company building, rather than making a few dollars on a referral fee.

“A lot of the time when you have something like an ambassador program, you think everyone is going to be incentivized by money,” said Sarah. “And that's usually not the case. They're incentivized by time, or education, or other things that we can offer.”

4. Scaling with paid ads

Tracking conversions through paid ads has always been a tricky beast, but it’s gotten even more difficult with changes to privacy regulations and tech platforms becoming more like a walled garden than an open field.

For Sarah, this has meant a pivot more than ditching ads entirely. Instead of hoping ads will do all the work for her, she uses them to retarget people who have engaged with Growclass in other ways—achieving what she calls “perceived ubiquity” that can help further build trust.

5. Delivering tangible value through content marketing

With generative AI producing content at warp speed, traditional content marketing of SEO-optimized info blogs might not break through the noise. Sarah’s approach is to think more about the problems her customers face—then see how content might be able to solve them.

For example, the content Growclass produces is focused on helping growth marketers with the demands of their job—their Growth Strategy Playbook, for instance, features a financial forecast template and executive presentation deck template.

“We found a lot of success building content that people need at work,” said Sarah. “We will build you the financial forecast template for your growth strategy. We will build you the executive deck outline that you need. So you just have to do less work and you look better to your boss.”

You don’t need VCs to win

After years of building a profitable business in the highly-scalable online education market, you might think Sarah is warming up venture capitalists to become the next Canadian narwhal.

You’d be disappointed. Rather than working with a massive injection of capital to achieve wildly-set expectations, Sarah is focusing on improving the business incrementally—quickly, to be sure, but without sacrificing quality.

“I'm interested in helping a lot of people have a much better experience at work,” said Sarah. “I'm not interested in world domination. Those two things don't go well together. It's really hard to offer people a great community experience when VCs are breathing down your neck, telling you to scale and sell.”