Cris S. Cubero
We’ve spent years observing a curious paradox in B2B SaaS: some marketing teams spend 90% of their budget fighting for the 10% of the market that is already looking to buy. We see it every day—the frantic bidding on “best accounting software” keywords, the obsession with rankings, and the hyper-optimization of pricing pages.
It’s understandable. It’s convenient to market to people who are already standing in the checkout line. But if you want to grow, you have to stop focusing solely on the people in the line and start talking to the people who don't even know they need to be at the store yet.
Most SaaS marketing today is what we call demand capture. It’s the act of channeling existing intent toward your brand. If someone is Googling your competitor’s name or searching for a category-specific solution, they are problem-aware. You are simply trying to be the most convenient option at the moment of purchase.
The problem is that demand capture is a red ocean.
Every one of your competitors is bidding on those same high-intent keywords. As a category matures, the cost-per-click rises, the dark funnel grows deeper, and your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) eventually hits a ceiling.
We understand the pressure to drive leads now, but you cannot buy your way into a category-leading position. If you only capture demand, you are essentially paying a cost on the market’s existing awareness.
To scale, you must move beyond the convenience of the 10% and start creating the spark for the other 90%.
We like to tell a story about a tree-pruning service that understands human behavior better than most SaaS marketers.
They don't knock on every door in the neighborhood asking, do you want your trees trimmed? That’s a sales pitch, and most people will say no because they aren't problem-aware.
Instead, they only knock on doors where a heavy branch is visibly hanging over the garage. When the door opens, they don't lead with a price list. They point to the branch, explain the risk, and might even leave a flyer showing how to spot a rotting limb before it falls.
They are creating demand by solving a problem before they ever ask for a dollar.
In SaaS, this is your most powerful lever.
When you meet your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) where they hang out—on LinkedIn, in specialized Slack communities, or through deep-dive webinars—and you solve their daily challenges for free, you are leaving that flyer. You are building a bridge across the river.
You aren't selling a feature; you are establishing yourself as the trusted guide.
While the tree branch theory is compelling, as a leader, you immediately face the “but how?” factor. Transitioning to a demand creation strategy is a leadership challenge that brings up very real anxieties.
Here is how we navigate those hurdles:
If you stop obsessing over the 10% in the checkout line, how do you prove to your board that your investment is working? Standard software attribution often lies—it gives 100% credit to the last click (Demand Capture) while ignoring the months of trust-building (Demand Creation) that made that click possible.
At Kalungi, we solve this by looking at self-reported attribution. By simply asking your leads, How did you hear about us? you reveal the dark funnel—the podcasts and LinkedIn posts that Google Analytics can’t see.
When your board sees LinkedIn as the source of your highest-value leads, the anxiety vanishes.
The fear of moving budget away from Google Ads is real. You worry your pipeline will collapse overnight. But remember the 95:5 rule: only 5% of your market is in-market at any time.
We don't recommend turning off your capture engine tomorrow. Treat demand capture as your cost—the minimum spend required to harvest existing intent. Then pivot your incremental spend toward creation. Over time, as your reputation grows, your CAC drops because you are no longer competing in a bidding war for every lead.
Demand Creation sounds like a long-term play, but you have a board meeting in six weeks.
To win the next 6 weeks while building the long-term engine, you can build high-utility lead magnets. Build templates or checklists that solve a specific problem now. This provides the immediate hand-raiser data your sales team needs while establishing your authority as a trusted guide.
The best content lives in the heads of your CTO or Head of Product, but they have zero time to write. We’ve found that the best way to extract this value isn't by asking them to write a blog, but by interviewing them for 15 minutes.
At Kalungi, we act as the translators, taking that raw expertise and turning it into a month’s worth of Syntropic content. You get the authority of an expert with the execution speed of a full-service team.
Your sales team is used to high-intent demo requests. When you start sending them relationship-ready leads from demand creation, they might complain the leads are cold.
The fix is a shift in the sales script.
Instead of a hard sell, the hand-off is positioned as a continuation of the help you’ve already provided. Your sales team stops being closers and starts being consultants who help the prospect navigate the next stage of their problem.
Founders often worry: If I solve the problem for free, am I giving away my IP?
In our experience, the opposite is true. Showing how you think and how you solve problems is your ultimate unfair advantage. Your competitors can copy your features, but they can't copy your perspective. By the time a prospect understands your how, they trust you so much that you are the only one they want to execute it for them.
You don't need to be everywhere. You only need to be in the neighborhood with the tree branches.
At Kalungi, we use a beachhead audit to pinpoint exactly where your specific starving market hangs out—whether that’s a specific LinkedIn group, a niche Discord, or a curated industry newsletter.
We don't guess; we follow the signal of your first 10 successful clients.
Even with these hurdles cleared, a final question remains: Who is going to run this?
Executing an efficient SaaS marketing engine requires a senior GTM strategist, a writer, a designer, and a RevOps expert. For most ventures under $30M ARR, hiring this team internally is a massive financial and management burden.
This is where Kalungi steps in. We provide a full-service marketing department for less than the cost of hiring seniors in-house. We take the accountability gap off your plate, operating the growth engine so you can focus on steering the business.
If 90% of your market isn’t looking for you, your growth depends on your ability to create demand, not just capture it. But how do you build a marketing engine that actually does this without wasting your budget?
In this recorded session, Kalungi Co-founder Stijn Hendrikse reveals how to reach the 90% of your market that isn't looking for you yet.
You’ll learn:
If you're ready to move from founder-led hustle to a predictable growth engine, we invite you to apply for a T2D3 Growth Workshop.
In this focused 1:1 session, we will:
Apply for Your T2D3 Growth Workshop here
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