The SaaS Brand Strategy Show

Category creation isn't reserved for B2B folks alone. And we've talked at length how much B2B SaaS businesses have to learn from their B2C counterparts. Today, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we take a heaping dose of learning from today's guest, Aaron Provine, President at Geartrade—an UnNew Outdoor gear marketplace, based in Utah. In this episode, we put Aaron in the hot seat, and grill him on...

Bad messaging can only survive at scale. On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we examine an example of bad messaging from a company that has more reach than 99% of businesses in the world: Intel. An Intel display ad touting the promise of saving you time and money came across our path in the wild this week, and we had to talk about it. Why would a company like Intel lead with su...

Your brand and business strategy aren't created in a vacuum—but not everyone who needs to know it inside and out is there for the creation process. That means at some point, your strategy needs to be relayed from the few who created it, to the many who need to know it, live it, and breathe it—from your leadership team, to your investors, to your employees—and eventually, to the market. The reality...

If your SaaS business is growing, your team probably is too. And in the early stages, it's most likely growing without a full blown marketing team. In fact, it may be growing without anyone in the marketing seat at all. But at a certain point; in an effort to grow more and grow faster—you're ready to hire that first member of your company's marketing team. It's not an easy decision. And with marke...

When it comes to monitoring your competition's marketing activities, there's a Goldilocks-like conundrum of finding the just right amount of time, effort, and influence. Spend too much time obsessing on the competition's latest market moves and risk chasing tactics unaligned from your strategy. Not enough time monitoring the market, and you risk being caught by surprise by disruptions, advances, o...

When capital markets get puckered (that's a technical finance term), CEOs and founders second instinct, after cutting headcount, is to cease advertising as most CFOs and even CEOs treat advertising as a cost rather than an investment. While that might seem like a good idea in the short term, in the long term it will damage your position, your sales, your ability to recover, and in the end your abi...

What the hell happened to Clubhouse, the world's first Social Audio app?  Instead of owning the Social Audio category, Clubhouse has surrendered category queen space and made Social Audio a product-feature on every other social media and technology app (Twitter Spaces, Facebook Audio Rooms, Spotify Green Room...). With audio still considered one of , if not the, next phase of immersive digita...

Four of our current/recent clients that have established market traction and are realizing message-market fit from our work with them are now plotting next steps to activate their category and their positioning into the larger market. Driven by their need to increase awareness among a larger group of prospects (plus some pressure from the board), and after realizing the limits of demand gen, conte...

When an early stage company pursues a new category design strategy, leadership in the Sales, Product, Marketing, CS, and Development departments response can be summed up as, "Great, now what?"  Now What is the gap jump between strategy and tactics, between idea and action, and it can feel massive and intimidating. In this episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk to Bridget Quinlan, t...

Finance people are notoriously skeptical when it comes to anything associated with the word brand. In their world view, something as esoteric as brand had better be supported with concrete KPIs to back up the investment. As veterans of Palantir's FP&A department with a big idea for a new SaaS product, the Mosaic team were convinced that they had solid product market fit, but they were also acu...

Positioning your company through the lens of your product is limiting. It creates a narrow focus for your customer to approach your company through; one that over-indexes on product features and benefits but never raises above that level. Product positioning is crucial for product marketing, but to impact the rest of the business and build a brand, SaaS businesses need to focus on leveling up. Bra...

Last month's Super Bowl featured more new advertisers than any Super Bowl before. And of those new advertisers, we saw the most B2B companies we've ever seen, ponying up the cash for their first ever ad in the big game. On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we take a look at a handful of the most intriguing B2B brands that prioritized a Super Bowl as part of their strategy this y...

We've worked inside, outside, and all around organizations of varying sizes for a combined several decades. And in recent years, particularly in the world of software, we've witnessed firsthand a continued rise in a culture of collaboration. In software, it makes sense. Many organization start out flat, with founders coming into leadership roles by virtue of their ideas. Decision-making becomes a...

Strategic thinking requires looking into the future. We're no savants or soothsayers, and we (unfortunately) don't actually have a crystal ball. But at DRMG we're always looking ahead and keeping our ears to the ground, in an effort to continually help our clients skate to where the puck is heading. So on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we go around the table to lay out our pr...

A series of tweets from a young SaaS founder made its way across our desks this past week, and we couldn't help but comment. Because in that series of tweets was a declaration that product market fit comes from saving people time and money. An emphasis on efficiency as the best way to frame, position, and message yourself for succeed in your market. And to be frank—we wholeheartedly disagree. On t...

General Mills recently introduced their new "Chief Brand and Disruptive Growth Officer" after doing away with the CMO title internally earlier last spring. The oddity (and length) of the title gave us some thoughts—and we knew our friend Winston Binch would have some too. With a storied career in creative, brand, marketing, and experience, Winston works with some of the biggest B2C brands in the w...

Product-market fit. The perpetual pursuit of any SaaS company. Make sure your product matches the needs of your market—and you'll see predictable, repeatable, and scalable revenue as a result. Easy to talk about. Not always so easy to achieve. On this week’s episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we dive into the concept of product-market fit. What does it mean? How do you achieve it? Why is it...

Two weeks ago, we talked about strategy belonging to the CEO—not marketing. A listener and friend of the show found himself yelling at that episode, and told us so on Twitter. We loved it. Enter Mike Troiano. Mike is a graduate of Cornell and the Harvard Business School. He's a TechStars mentor, a Board Member of Hometap , RippleMatch , Fetcher , and Hack Diversity . He's a venture capitalist at G...

A buzz-phrase echoing the Zoom halls of many (if not most) software companies today is "Product Led Growth." It's a phrase, an acronym (PLG), and a directive that many of our clients are running into and up against. So on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we meet the topic head on. We answer the question of exactly what the hell Product Led Growth is, and discuss whether it is i...

A LinkedIn comment section caught fire this past week, as Drift's Chief Brand Officer Dave Gerhardt posted his take on a proper order of operations: First you develop your strategy. Then you create your positioning. And last you write your messaging. And while we here at DRMG agree wholeheartedly, this order of operations unfortunately falls into Marketing's lap in its entirety. And it shouldn't....

What do Tony Hawk's blood, vegan cannibal restaurants, pop punk bands singing hate mail songs, and killer baby names all have in common? They're brilliant lightning-strike-level marketing and messaging brought to bear by B2C canned water brand, Liquid Death. Last week, on The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we were clear that B2B marketing has a lot to learn from B2C marketing. This week, we deep dive o...

This past week, the SaaStr conference returned. And we couldn't help but notice the event felt a bit quiet. Great content that attendees enjoyed—but no marketing lightning strikes that made headlines (or even made their way to social media). It got us thinking—why isn't B2B marketing more... exciting? In this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we dive into our combined B2B and B2C exp...

A big part of branding is what we call things. We're the first to admit that names are important. Whether you're deciding what to call your brand, your product, or your category, there's a lot that goes into a name. On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk about everything that does (and sometimes doesn't) go into names. Through the lens of the recent rebrand by SurveyMonkey...

We're no stranger to the benefits of building a category. And the primary benefit we see most businesses seek, when it comes to developing a SaaS Brand Strategy, is the dollars. Straight up growth. But over the years, we've seen the results of category design expand far beyond the bucks. On today's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we take a rapid fire approach and dive a layer deeper to de...

A first for The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we bring on guest Nick Runyon, President at former DRMG client PFL. On today’s episode, we get into the category creation process with Nick, and unpack PFL’s business. We talk about their progression and evolution through the years, the category they started with, and the category they ended up with after their engagement with DRMG. You’ll hear about the m...