Growth marketing roundup: cool SaaS, marketing lies, VR ads and more

One might think that a short week due to a U.S. holiday calls for a short weekly recap, but we have plenty to share about growth marketing from our coverage over the week. With the help of your recommendations, this week we were able to interview Peep Laja and Lucy Heskins, and publish multiple guest columns on growth-related topics including homepage testing, marketing lies to watch out for, VR ad opportunities, company-naming and ad compliance.

TechCrunch is collecting responses in this survey to find the best growth marketer for founders to work with. We’ve included some of our favorites, below the links.

This early-stage marketing expert says ‘B2B SaaS is actually very, very cool now’: Extra Crunch reporter Anna Heim interviews Wales-based growth marketer Lucy Heskins about her experience working with start-ups, how content marketing is best used, and more!

Navigating ad fraud and consumer privacy abuse in programmatic advertising: Did you know that “ad fraud exceeded $35 billion last year, a figure expected to rise to $50 billion by 2025”? Jalal Nasir, CEO of marketing compliance startup Pixalate, lends his thoughts about how business leaders and brands can ensure they don’t fall victim to the problem.

To stay ahead of your competitors, start building your narrative on day one: Anna also sat down with Peep Laja to discuss the importance of a startup being the one to write their own narrative and how it can mature with the company.

Demand Curve: How to double conversions on your startup’s homepage: Head of content Nick Costelloe looks at when it’s good to be unique, and when it’s best to stick to the status quo when working to double conversions on your homepage.

(Extra Crunch) Demand Curve: 10 lies you’ve been told about marketing: For subscribers, Costelloe goes through 10 lies you’ve heard about marketing, and what to try instead to create better results.

(Extra Crunch) Can advertising scale in VR?: Have you been on the fence about VR advertising for your company? AR/VR analyst Michael Boland lists out the pros and cons in this article.

(Extra Crunch) What I learned the hard way from naming 30+ startups: Naming a start-up might require more thought than you imagined. Marketing executive Drew Beechler takes us through what should be considered when picking out a name, like strategic alignment.

As always, please let us know if you can recommend a top-tier growth marketer who works with startups by filling out this quick survey.

Marketer: Nikita Vorobyev

Recommender: Ruby Club

Testimonial: “Nikita & his company, Buildrbrand, have worked tirelessly to bring my idea to life and did everything in his power to get it to the level it is today. He & his team created a world-class conditional quiz visual experience that I think would be really cool for him to share with the industry. He doesn’t know I nominated him, but I definitely wanted to give back to him in any way I can since I believe his agency creates some of the best brands going viral online right now.”

Marketer: Max van den Ingh, Unmuted

Recommender: Harry Willis, ShopPop

Testimonial: “They [have] shown considerable and demonstrable growth marketing success at various companies. One of them being MisterGreen, a Dutch Tesla-leasing company that had grown 10x under Max’s leadership.”

Marketer: Patricia (Patty) Spiller, Chief

Recommender: Livongo

Testimonial: “Hired her to lead Product Marketing and she identified the opportunity to do growth in a much different way, which could significantly accelerate our company’s growth. So, she founded the Growth Marketing team and scaled the team from 1 person to 30 people in less than 2 years, based on all the success they had in growing our member base.”