7 Go-to-Market Lessons from Botify’s Journey to Enterprise Success
Moving upmarket isn’t just about landing bigger deals – it’s about transforming your entire company to serve enterprise customers. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Botify CEO Adrien Menard shared hard-earned insights from scaling to serve giants like Nike, L’Oreal, and the New York Times. Here are the key lessons for founders navigating similar transitions:
- Start with Technical Differentiation
Before chasing enterprise logos, build technology that can handle enterprise scale. Botify’s founding team discovered that “50% of the content of a website is actually not indexed by search engines.” This insight drove them to build solutions that worked “ten times faster, ten times larger and ten times cheaper than any competitor in the market.” This technical foundation became their wedge into enterprise accounts because “simply we could technically do things that no other platform could do.”
- Don’t Wait to Go Enterprise
While many startups begin with SMB customers, Adrien admits this traditional path isn’t always optimal: “We started with an SMB approach, but we quickly realized that the true opportunity for Botify was mid-market and enterprise. And I think it was a mistake. As an entrepreneur, we should probably have started with an enterprise approach a bit before.”
- Build Organization-Wide Credibility
Enterprise sales require winning over multiple stakeholders. “You need to be known by the precise decision makers and all the influencers in the marketing organization,” Adrien explains. This means developing:
- Security credentials: “If you don’t have high security standards, there is no way an enterprise organization is going to select you”
- Legal coverage: “If you don’t have the insurance, if you don’t have the coverages to match with the level of responsibility”
- Marketing fit: “We have to craft the perfect message for each tier of this go to market”
- Demonstrate Fast ROI
Enterprise deals move faster when you can show quick wins. Adrien shares how they closed a major retailer: “in less than 60 days we were able to impact the traffic of the website coming from organic search results by 16%.” This rapid value demonstration is crucial when “CMOs or VP of marketing want to generate as much return as they can from their investments.”
- Build for Market Evolution
Stay ahead of industry shifts. Botify recognized early that “we are moving away from a keyword approach to a conversational approach.” This insight shapes their product roadmap and positioning as search behavior evolves.
- Focus on Sustainable Growth Channels
The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of diversified marketing channels. When paid advertising costs spiked, Botify’s clients realized “if I stop advertising, I’m going to disappear from the surface of the Internet if my organic marketing is not solid.”
- Prioritize Team Building
Perhaps most importantly, Adrien emphasizes: “Make sure to build the best team that you can imagine… you never succeed alone.” With 300+ employees globally and 70% of revenue from North America, this focus on team building has proven crucial to Botify’s success.
These lessons underscore a crucial truth about enterprise go-to-market: it’s not just about having enterprise-ready products, but building an enterprise-ready organization. As Adrien notes, “Everything is different” when selling to enterprises. Success requires aligning your technical architecture, team structure, sales process, and company DNA around serving sophisticated enterprise buyers.
For founders considering the enterprise journey, these insights offer a roadmap for transformation. The path isn’t easy, but with proper foundation-building and patience, the enterprise market offers tremendous growth potential.
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