Article's Content
Article's Content
Welcome to Volume 91
Let’s get straight to the good stuff.
- Zendesk Sells For $10.2 Billion
- How To Create A Winning B2B Marketing Strategy
ACQUISITION
Zendesk Goes Private For $10.2 Billion
Over the years, Zendesk has had a good run. In 15 years, the company has recorded massive successes in different areas:
- An SEO moat that drives 6.5 million sessions every month
- Over 1 billion backlinks from 349,000 referring domains, including Github
- Raised $85.5 million over 8 funding rounds
- Hit $1 Billion revenue milestone last year
- 170,000+ paid accounts across 160 countries
Zendesk also reported a 30% YOY revenue growth in Q1 2022. This was barely a month after the decacorn rejected a $17 billion acquisition offer, believing it was worth more. So, you’d think Zendesk was ready to ride out the brewing storm.
When the storm hit, the Zendesk-Momentive deal fell through, and the company lost its decacorn status. Before June was over, Zendesk agreed to sell to a consortium of private equity firms for $10 billion. That’s way less than the original acquisition offer.
Perhaps if the market conditions were better, Zendesk would have sold for more than its acquisition price. Its expansion beyond desk software amongst other innovations would have given Zendesk an edge.
Sadly, the market conditions aren’t so great right now. As a result, many SaaS companies have made budget cuts to extend their runway. Stock prices and valuations are falling like rain, and VCs aren’t as eager to invest as they would be under normal market conditions. Perhaps now was not a good time to sell.
The deal is expected to close in Q4 2022. Then, Zendesk will be a private company.
CONTENT STRATEGY
How To Create A Winning B2B Marketing Strategy
A typical B2B business wants to win customers and stay profitable. That means relying on a well-researched, documented marketing strategy to drive demand and sales.
Having a marketing strategy allows companies to learn about their ideal customers. They uncover insights about their needs, goals, language, and buying process. This data-driven approach will help you hit your business and customer goals.
So, how do you create a B2B marketing strategy that works? You can do so with these five steps:
- Invest in customer research
- Carry out qualitative and quantitative analysis on the customer data gathered
- Define key objectives and metrics
- Build your customer journey map
- Identify the things you need to do to hit your goals
Of course, each of these steps has its own requirements. That’s why we created an in-depth B2B marketing strategy guide. In addition to the 5-step process, we included useful templates and examples to inspire the approach you take for creating a B2B marketing strategy that drives results.
Get the Ultimate B2B Strategy Guide →
NEWS OF THE WEEK YOU SHOULD KNOW:
✍️ After Facebook gave up on its audio ambitions in April, it recently embraced community. Its team rolled out Slack- and Discord-like features for Facebook groups.
💻Y Combinator officially rolled out Product Hunt competitor Launch YC. The launchpad for YC startups helps its users to discover products that can help run and grow their business and to identify potential work and investment opportunities.
📱Substack rolled out a text-to-speech feature that allows users to hear posts read aloud. Creators can also embed multiple audio files throughout their text posts as they see fit.
A few weeks after acquiring Spell, Reddit acquired MeaningCloud, a natural language processing company. The acquisition will help Redditors find useful information faster among other benefits.
In June, 26,000 employees lost their jobs, and more companies jumped on the layoff train this month. Just in case you didn’t know, we are hiring!
You may soon be able to create podcasts directly on Spotify.
BRAIN FOOD OF THE WEEK:
To-do lists can be overwhelming. You look at the gazillion things you need to get done, and you wonder how you said yes to all these things.
I used to dread creating a to-do list for pending tasks. That’s because I had a boundary issue. I couldn’t say no. Every task seemed important and urgent. It was almost impossible to know which to prioritize. Until I learned how to set better boundaries.
Boundaries are important if you want to get anything done or succeed in your career. It means knowing when to say no and how to prioritize the things you agree to do. If you struggle with your to-do list, you need better boundaries.
I love how Lis Fosslien breaks down the process of setting boundaries. She simplifies the concept with this image:
This means you should:
- Create your to-do list
- Break the tasks up into these three categories: The things you have to do, the things you want to do, and the things other people want you to do.
- Prioritize the things that you have to do and the ones you want to do.
That’s how you set better boundaries, get important things done, and avoid being overwhelmed.
TWITTER THREAD OF THE WEEK:
5 elements of an above-the-fold that will increase your conversion rate by Alex Garcia
NICE FINDS YOU SHOULD BINGE:
- It’s Time to Re-Onboard Everyone
- How To Bootstrap Your Startup With €50k – €200k Of European Funding
- Gmail Now Works Without Internet; Here’s How to “Enable Offline Mail” Option!
- A Manager’s Guide to Helping Teams Face Down Uncertainty, Burnout and Perfectionism
WHAT WE’RE WIRED INTO THIS WEEK 🎧:
This charcuterie board of insights is brought to you by me, Jessica Tee O. ✌!
