The $8 Billion+ B2B Marketing Strategy That Loses 10% Revenue in Month 1 (But Creates Unbreakable Customer Loyalty) with RevenueCat’s VP of Growth

Imagine pitching a “growth strategy” to your leadership team that starts with: “We’re going to lose 10% of revenue next month.”

Now imagine they say, “Do it anyway.” Not because they love pain, but because they love something rarer in B2B: trust that compounds.

That’s the heart of the approach Rik Haandrikman (RevenueCat’s VP of Growth) described: mission-driven marketing built on generosityso real it makes customers feel like partners instead of targets. It’s the kind of strategy that can sting short-term (hello, revenue dip) while building the kind of loyalty competitors can’t pry loose with a discount and a friendly GIF.

Why this strategy is “$8B+” sized (and why that matters)

RevenueCat sits in the monetization plumbing for thousands of subscription appsmeaning their credibility lives or dies on one thing: whether developers believe RevenueCat cares about the same outcome they doapps making more money. That context matters because the strategy below isn’t theoretical. It’s what you do when your entire business depends on long-term customer success, not one-time persuasion.

And that’s the key B2B lesson: when your buyers know you win only when they win, marketing stops feeling like “a funnel” and starts feeling like an alliance.

The “developer in the corner” problem (aka: the real decision-maker isn’t always on the org chart)

In the interview, Haandrikman described a pattern: leadership might be excited, product might be aligned, and marketing might be ready to hit “launch”… but there’s often a skeptical technical stakeholder in the room, silently shaking their head. In modern B2B, that person matters because buying decisions usually involve multiple stakeholders who each bring their own criteria, concerns, and “what could go wrong” list.

Translation: you don’t just sell to the budget holderyou sell to the people who will maintain the integration at 2 a.m. when something breaks.

Mission-driven marketing is how you win that person. Not with hype. With proof that you’re on their side.

The T-Shirt Test: would customers wear your mission (in public) without being paid?

This is the litmus test that makes marketers laugh… until it makes them sweat.

The question: Would your customers voluntarily wear your mission statement on a t-shirt?

RevenueCat’s mission“help apps make more money”passes because it’s written in the customer’s language. It describes a customer outcome, not a corporate aspiration. Contrast that with the average SaaS mission statement that sounds like it was generated by a committee trapped inside a PowerPoint deck.

When the mission is crisp and customer-centered, it becomes believable. And believability is the down payment you need before you can build loyalty at scale.

The Mission-to-Revenue Chain: why this works (even when it hurts)

Haandrikman frames the model like this:

Mission → Believability → Generosity → Revenue

Here’s the counterintuitive part: the mission must improve your customer’s life before it improves your ARR. If the mission is obviously “we want your money,” your generosity looks like bait. But if the mission is obviously “we want you to win,” generosity looks like partnershipand partnership creates advocacy.

The Generosity Ladder: six rungs from “helpful” to “uncopyable”

Most B2B companies stop at content. Some dabble in webinars. A few build a calculator. RevenueCat structured their approach as a laddereach rung demands more effort, but also creates deeper customer intimacy and becomes harder for competitors to copy.

Rung 1: Insights (teach what you know)

This is your blogs, guides, playbooks, and podcastscontent that answers real customer questions and helps them do their job better.

• Example: Instead of “Why our platform is innovative,” publish “How to reduce billing bugs during an app store change.”
• Better metric than traffic: How often sales hears, “I’ve been following your content for months”.

Rung 2: Utilities (build tools that make customers faster)

Utilities are where generosity becomes tangible. A tool saves time, reduces risk, or creates claritythree things B2B buyers worship.

• Examples you can build: ROI calculators, benchmarking dashboards, compliance checklists, migration planners, templates that remove busywork.
• Pro tip: a utility doesn’t need to be complex; it needs to be used.

Rung 3: Spotlight (make the customer the hero)

Most “customer marketing” still centers the vendor: “Look what we did for them.” Spotlight flips it: “Look what they built.”

RevenueCat’s Times Square example is the purest form of thisinvesting budget to highlight customer apps. The brand benefit comes as a side effect of doing something customers actually want: recognition, pride, recruiting energy, and momentum.

Rung 4: Building Together (co-create the solution)

This is where you stop “marketing to” customers and start “building with” them.

• Co-created research reports
• Open-source contributions
• Customer-led integrations
• Joint webinars where the customer teaches and you support

The outcome: customers feel ownership. Ownership is loyalty with a seatbelt.

Rung 5: Experiences (create learning that feels like a moment)

Experiences are high-touch and memorable. They take effort, but they create stories customers repeatand stories are the highest-leverage distribution channel in B2B.

RevenueCat’s example of taking a small group of developers to learn a market together illustrates the point: it’s not “an event.” It’s a shared mission in real life.

Rung 6: Championship (let customers lead)

This is the most powerfuland the most dangerousrung: customer councils that actually influence your roadmap and strategy.

It only works if your incentives are aligned. If you secretly want control, customers will sense it. If you truly care about the same outcomes, it becomes a flywheel: customers help steer the product, the product gets better, and the relationship becomes incredibly hard to replace.

The famous “lose 10% in Month 1” move: align pricing with your mission

Here’s where the strategy stops being “content” and starts being “courage.”

RevenueCat’s model emphasizes mission alignment: pricing that tracks customer success, so the vendor isn’t rewarded for customer pain. Their pricing approach has emphasized paying when customers make money (including free thresholds and removing upfront costs). That kind of alignment can trigger short-term revenue loss when you change pricingbecause some customers will pay less, some will churn, and some will test whether you’re serious.

But the trade is huge: the customers who stay believe you. And belief is the foundation of loyalty that doesn’t disappear when a competitor slides into the inbox with “Quick questiondo you have 15 minutes?”

Why a short-term dip can create long-term loyalty (the math behind the “feelings”)

Mission-driven marketing sounds warm and fuzzy until you remember what retention does to economics.

Classic retention research shows that small improvements in retention can meaningfully increase profitability over time. That’s partly because early customer years can be cost-heavy (onboarding, support, enablement), while later years often become more efficient as customers expand, refer, and require less hand-holding.

So a mission-aligned pricing change that causes a short-term dip can still be rational if it reduces churn, increases expansion, and turns customers into advocates who lower your acquisition costs.

How to run this strategy in your own B2B company (without setting your calendar on fire)

Step 1: Rewrite your mission in customer language

Your mission should describe a customer outcome clearly enough that a customer could repeat it without reading it twice.

• Bad: “Empowering transformation through next-generation workflow intelligence.”
• Better: “Help accounting teams close the books faster.”

Step 2: Identify the “developer in the corner” equivalent

Every B2B category has a gatekeeper. Find yours and map their fears.

• Security: “Will this create risk?”
• IT: “Will this break or create work?”
• Ops: “Will this slow us down?”
• Finance: “Can we measure ROI?”

Then build your generosity around reducing their risk and workload, not just increasing your pipeline.

Step 3: Build one rung higher than you are today

Don’t jump from “blog posts” to “Tokyo trip.” Move up one rung.

• If you’re doing insights, build a utility.
• If you have utilities, spotlight a customer (without making it an ad).
• If you spotlight customers, co-create something with them.

Step 4: Pick mission metrics that a CFO can love

“Awareness” is not a mission metric. “Engagement” is not a mission metric. A mission metric is measurable progress toward the customer outcome you exist to deliver.

• Examples: time saved, errors reduced, revenue increased, adoption achieved, incidents prevented, payback period shortened.

Step 5: Protect the strategy from becoming “marketing theater”

Mission-driven marketing fails when it becomes a costume. Your audience can smell performative empathy from three tabs away.

• Don’t ask for social proof like it’s a favor.
• Don’t slap your logo on the customer spotlight like you’re claiming ownership.
• Don’t promise generosity you can’t sustain.

The AI twist: mission-driven brands get recommended

One of the most modern points from the interview: as AI becomes a discovery channel, brands that clearly solve real problemsand demonstrate it publiclyget surfaced more often. If your public footprint is packed with useful, specific, customer-centered material, recommendation engines have an easier time “understanding” what you do and who you help.

In plain English: when your content and tools are genuinely helpful, AI (and humans) can confidently point others your way.

Common mistakes (so you don’t accidentally cosplay as a “generous brand”)

Mistake 1: Confusing generosity with freebies

Generosity isn’t “we made our template PDF free.” Generosity is: “we reduced your risk and made you better at your job.”

Mistake 2: Treating customers like case-study inventory

If your customer spotlight feels like an ad, you didn’t spotlight themyou rented them.

Mistake 3: Building rungs without a mission

Utilities, experiences, and councils only work if customers believe your mission is real. Otherwise, it feels like a trapdoor labeled “community.”

Conclusion: the real strategy is becoming the vendor customers defend

Most B2B marketing tries to win attention. This strategy tries to win alignment.

When your mission is clear, your pricing is aligned, and your generosity is consistent, customers stop acting like “accounts” and start acting like advocates. You might take a hit in Month 1. But you gain something far more durable: customers who stick around, expand, refer, and defend youbecause leaving would feel like breaking up with a teammate mid-game.

of Experience: What Running This Strategy Feels Like in the Real World

Teams who adopt mission-driven, generosity-first marketing usually expect a content upgrade. What they get is an operating system upgradeand that’s where the surprises live.

The first surprise is emotional: your marketing meetings get quieter. Not because people are boredbecause the questions become sharper. Instead of “How do we increase MQLs?” you hear “What’s the customer trying to do on Tuesday afternoon, and why are we in the way?” That shift sounds small, but it changes everything. Your writers stop producing “thought leadership” and start producing answers. Your designers stop making banners and start making tools. Your PMM stops polishing claims and starts collecting proof.

The second surprise is operational: generosity creates work. A utility needs maintenance. A customer spotlight needs care. An experience needs logistics. The best teams treat generosity like a product line with owners, roadmaps, QA, and measurement. They create a “utility backlog” the way engineering does. They track usage, not applause. They keep a short list of recurring customer pain points and ship small improvements monthly. It’s not glamorous, but it’s how you avoid the classic failure mode: launching a brilliant tool once and then abandoning it like a neglected houseplant.

The third surprise is political: the “10% revenue dip” moment isn’t just a pricing discussionit’s a trust discussion inside your own company. Leaders have to agree that brand equity and customer loyalty are assets worth investing in, even when the dashboard looks worse for a moment. Teams that succeed get alignment early: they pre-brief finance, show retention economics, define guardrails (“we’ll review churn and expansion monthly”), and explain why the short-term hit is the cost of becoming the vendor customers don’t want to replace. The moment the company treats trust like an asset, marketing gets permission to be human again.

The fourth surprise is social: when you spotlight customers properlymaking them the hero, not youyou get advocacy without asking for it. People share because it makes them look good, their team feel proud, and their product feel real. That’s when you see the magic: customers start defending you in public, recommending you in private, and showing up to your webinars without being bribed by a gift card and a half-hearted “lunch & learn.”

The final surprise is strategic: mission-driven marketing makes competitors feel interchangeable. Not because they’re badbut because they don’t share the same visible, proven commitment. You become the company with receipts: tools that work, content that teaches, pricing that aligns, and customers who act like teammates. And once you’ve earned that, loyalty stops being something you “drive.” It becomes the default.