S5E17 – How to Build a Brand Strategy for your SaaS with Angeley Mullins

Are you wondering how to build a brand strategy for your SaaS? In this insightful episode of the Grow Your B2B SaaS Podcast, host Joran sits down with Angeley Mullins, former CCO at Resourcify, to explore the art of building a brand strategy for SaaS companies. With over 20 years of global leadership experience at companies like Amazon, GoDaddy, and Intuit, Angeley is a highly respected marketing and sales expert. Recognized by CrunchBase as one of the most influential women in sales, she offers a wealth of practical and advisory insights. This episode is a must-listen for SaaS founders and marketing leaders aiming to create a strong brand strategy.

Defining Brand

Angeley starts by clearing up a common misunderstanding: a brand is not just a logo or a catchy campaign. It’s about the feeling people get when they interact with your company. She shares a classic quote: “People will forget what you say, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” This emotional connection is the core of a strong brand.

Importance of Building a Brand

In the competitive world of B2B SaaS, having a strong brand is essential. Angeley explains that brand recognition can make or break a customer’s first impression, especially when sales development representatives (SDRs) reach out. Without a solid brand, companies risk getting stuck in the “check box of death,” where they only compete on features and price, not on emotional connection or values.

Building a Brand Strategy

To build a brand strategy that works, you need to understand your customers’ needs and pain points. Angeley stresses the importance of aligning your brand message with what your customers truly want. She points to Nike’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign as an example of how a brand can go beyond just products and create a powerful emotional story.

Common Mistakes in Brand Building

Many early-stage SaaS companies either ignore brand building or put it off for too long. Angeley warns against focusing only on short-term revenue goals, which can lead to scalability issues and a disconnect with the market. She advises integrating brand building into the early stages of business development to avoid costly fixes later.

Quick Wins for Early-Stage Companies

For companies with limited time and resources, Angeley suggests focusing on storytelling. Crafting a compelling narrative about your company’s value can set you apart from competitors and allow you to sell based on value, not just price. She also recommends conducting usability testing to get direct feedback from customers, ensuring your brand strategy fits their expectations.

Messaging and Its Role in Brand Building

A strong brand is the foundation for consistent messaging. Angeley talks about how many companies keep changing their sales pitch because they lack a clear brand story. By establishing a solid brand narrative, companies can create marketing materials that resonate with their audience and stay consistent across all platforms.

Long-Term vs. Short-Term Branding

Angeley challenges the idea that storytelling takes longer to sell. She argues that storytelling helps companies think about the long-term impact of their brand. She compares successful campaigns from companies like Nike and Apple, which have built strong, lasting brands by focusing on emotional and aspirational storytelling.

The Role of Usability Testing

Usability testing is key to refining your brand strategy. Angeley explains that engaging directly with customers through surveys or interviews gives valuable feedback and fresh ideas. This ensures that your brand messaging resonates with your audience and stays relevant.

Frameworks and Their Role in Branding

While frameworks can guide branding efforts, Angeley stresses the importance of aligning your brand’s goals with customer needs. By focusing on what the client truly wants, companies can create an effective and adaptable brand strategy.

Best Practices from Industry Leaders

Angeley points to successful B2B SaaS companies like HubSpot, Hootsuite, and Snowflake as examples of great brand strategies. These companies use storytelling, content marketing, and innovative campaigns to stand out and lead in their industries.

Brand Metrics and Evaluation

To measure the success of your brand, you can use traditional metrics like brand awareness. However, for early-stage companies, Angeley suggests using methods like usability testing, A/B testing, and pitch competitions to see how well your brand resonates and performs.

Challenges in Building a Brand

Common brand-building challenges include focusing too much on taglines and logos without creating a deeper story. Angeley recommends starting with a belief statement that captures your company’s core values. This is a crucial first step in building a strong brand story.

The Future of Branding in SaaS

Looking ahead, Angeley predicts that brand marketing will continue to grow in importance for SaaS companies. As companies realize how critical brand is for driving revenue, they will invest more in brand storytelling to stand out in competitive markets.

Advice for SaaS Founders

For founders aiming for 10K MRR, Angeley suggests using AI tools for efficiency while staying focused on critical thinking. For those targeting 10 million ARR, she emphasizes the importance of building influence and creating a movement within the industry.

Conclusion

Angeley wraps up by encouraging SaaS founders to keep pushing forward. She points to successful companies like Canva and Bumble for inspiration. Her insights highlight the power of a well-crafted brand strategy and the importance of storytelling in creating lasting emotional connections with your audience.

Key timestamps

• (0:00) – Introduction to brand resonance and customer connection
• (0:48) – Episode overview and guest introduction: Angeley Mullins
• (1:25) – Defining brand and its significance
• (2:12) – Importance of building a brand in B2B SaaS
• (3:36) – Elements of a strong brand strategy
• (4:58) – Examples of effective brand storytelling
• (5:51) – Common mistakes in brand building
• (7:17) – Recommendations for early-stage SaaS companies
• (8:41) – The power of storytelling in branding
• (10:10) – Messaging and its impact on branding
• (11:38) – Long-term versus short-term branding strategies
• (13:25) – Combining short-term wins with long-term brand building
• (15:16) – Usability testing as a strategy for brand building
• (16:46) – Methods for conducting usability testing
• (18:10) – Frameworks for understanding customer needs
• (19:05) – Real-world application of customer feedback
• (20:06) – Importance of completing fundamental branding steps
• (20:26) – Best practices in brand strategy for B2B SaaS
• (23:07) – Building a brand in a competitive market
• (25:21) – Metrics for evaluating brand growth
• (27:39) – Understanding brand messaging and storytelling
• (28:23) – Challenges in building a brand
• (29:42) – Importance of belief statements in branding
• (31:54) – Developing a brand belief statement
• (32:56) – Making technical products engaging
• (33:08) – Future trends in branding
• (35:52) – The role of brand in marketing and sales
• (36:17) – Advice for early-stage SaaS founders
• (37:34) – Strategies for scaling SaaS companies
• (38:55) – Addressing potential challenges in brand building
• (39:25) – Summary and key takeaways
• (40:59) – Final thoughts and advice for SaaS founders
• (41:39) – Contact information and closing remarks

Transcription

[00:00:00.000] – Angeley

There’s always a way, if you can connect to the customer pain and what they’re going through, there’s always a way to resonate with them and to reach them. And I think as great marketing and/commercial leaders, it’s our job to figure that out. People will never remember what you say, but they’re always going to remember how you made them feel. And that’s the same thing with the brand. It’s the pain. We go into our conference rooms, or nowadays, our virtual conference rooms, and we decide something, right? We have this great strategy, and we’re like, Oh, the customer is going to love this. And then it launches and then it’s like dead silence. And everyone’s like, What happened? And then the first question is, Did you ask the customer what they’re looking for? Did you ask the customer how they feel about this? Dead silence. Nobody did.

[00:00:48.220] – Joran

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to build a brand strategy for your SaaS. My guest today is Angeley Mullins Angeley is a marketing and commercial leader and a former CCO at Resource Next to this, she’s an advisor, mentor, and public speaker. She has more than 20 years of global leadership experience and worked at companies like Amazon, GoDaddy, Intuit, and she has been recognized by CrunchBase as the most influential woman in sales. I think this hands-on and advisor experience will make a great combination for today. Really happy to have you on. Welcome, Angeley.

[00:01:23.120] – Angeley

Thank you, Joran. Nice to be here.

[00:01:25.850] – Joran

We’re going to dive right in. We’re going to talk about how to build a brand strategy for your SaaS. Maybe let’s start with the real basics. How would you define brand? What is brand?

[00:01:38.890] – Angeley

It’s a really great question because a lot of founders and CEO think brand is just a logo or a really interesting campaign or colors or they’re throwing a celebrity up there. Really what brand is the feeling that your clients and also the broader market has when they hear your name or when they see the logo, the feeling they invoke. That’s the most important thing. It reminds me of one of those old quotes that people will never remember what you say, but they’re always going to remember how you made them feel. That’s the same thing with the brand, it’s the feeling.

[00:02:12.950] – Joran

That slogan really hits the nail here. What is then the importance of building a brand?

[00:02:20.330] – Angeley

That’s really interesting because especially in B2B SaaS, and if you’re selling to enterprises or you have a larger client base, a lot of companies, they tend to go outbound, and that’s fine. But what happens is you have your SDRs prospecting and the people on the other end, they’re like, Okay, who are you? And what are you about? Or let’s say to even Google, you get the HubSpot sequence or whichever, and they Google you and they’re like, Okay, I get it. There’s some basic products marketing up there, and we all know how it is. And I call it the check box of death, where here’s our service and here’s our competitor service, and here’s the check marks of what we do and what they do, and exactly what I’m talking about. But they don’t actually understand what I say ethos is in the company. Versus, I’m just making this up because it’s easier for the listeners, but if it’s a Amazon or a Nike or whoever, and let’s say you got the proverbial SDR, they’re like, Oh, yeah, I know Nike. I feel awesome when I see those campaigns. Most people do. Yeah, okay. I’m interested to hear what you have to say, versus I’m so and so SDR calling from this company that you’ve never heard of and you have no idea what that feeling is.

[00:03:28.430] – Angeley

That’s what’s happening right now in the place. That is why it’s so important. There’s a lot of founders and CEOs that actually forget this critical stuff.

[00:03:36.800] – Joran

You mentioned already, you have, of course, your logo, your name. These are probably not the key elements of a strong brand strategy. If you have to break it down, what makes a good brand or how can you build up a brand strategy?

[00:03:49.180] – Angeley

It’s very interesting that we, practitioners, inside the B2B SaaS sphere, we think we understand what the customer thinks and feels and what they This happens with product creation and product launches as well. We go into our conference rooms, or nowadays, our virtual conference rooms, and we decide something, right? We have this great strategy, and we’re like, Oh, the customer is going to love this. And then it launches, and then it’s dead silence. And everyone’s like, What happened? And then the first question is, Did you ask the customer what they’re looking for? Did you ask the customer how they feel about this? Dead silence. Nobody did. And so this is really the basics. Understanding what the customer what it wants, but also what that customer pain point is, and then aligning your brand messaging and the core of your brand ethos to either helping the customer overcome that pain point or at least having sympathy and empathy and having this relational capacity with what the client wants. I use Nike as a great example because they are masters at this. I know Nike is not SaaS. I get it. I know it’s e-commerce, but they’re really good at this.

[00:04:58.140] – Angeley

Everybody knows they sell shoes, whether it’s walking shoes, running shoes, sports shoes. You’re noticing there go-to-market with the shoes. They don’t talk necessarily so much about we use this rubber, this material, and look at all the layers and the laces are built out of this, that, and the other. You look at their campaigns, one of them is so amazing. It’s called Find Your Greatness. It’s always about people overcoming obstacles or hurdles. And when you watch those ads, you’re like, yes, you’re watching it, and everybody can relate to it. And so how did a shoe company invoke this much passion because they related to the customer need, the customer want, and they align with the customer in trying to help them overcome something, basically, like their campaign says, Find Your Greatness. It’s a really nice masterclass in branding, and SaaS companies can do it, too.

[00:05:51.250] – Joran

You see probably also companies make a lot of mistakes. What are the most common mistakes companies make while trying to build up a brand?

[00:06:00.010] – Angeley

Especially with early-save CEOs and founders in SaaS, they just don’t do it. They don’t do it or they wait too long. There’s this push, whether it comes from playbooks, whether it comes from investors, wherever it comes from their own thinking, wherever that comes from, they think they have to get these quick revenue wins. We understand why. They need to show traction. They need to show ARR, MRR push. But at the same time, what happens is sometimes you get to what we call that spade mark of success, where you’re showing some traction And once you actually have to scale it, it’s not the same. It’s the classical founder-led sales to scalable sales model. And a lot of founders have to do this. They have to sell to anyone and everyone to get something in. They’re not focusing on a brand. They’re focusing on their network, they’re focusing on the features, or I’ll give you a deep discount. Let’s just get pipeline into the business. Then once you actually have to set up what I call the black box and start scaling it, they’re like, Oh, my gosh. Usually, that’s when product market situations happen. Then, only then, they start to realize the importance of brand and that they didn’t spend any time building one.

[00:07:08.400] – Angeley

This is the main mistake that CEOs and founders make, that they just don’t focus on it early enough in their scaling process.

[00:07:17.070] – Joran

What would you recommend them doing? Same like me, I’m early stage SaaS. You don’t have a lot of time, so you do all the things you need to do to actually start building your company, scaling your company. What are some quick wins we do, for example, in the early stages, which won’t take us a lot of time, but will benefit us in the long term?

[00:07:35.880] – Angeley

What I always recommend is storytelling. It’s one of the easiest, most basic things that you can do, especially as an early stage founder or an early stage company, there’s always stories to tell. What is the story? It’s very interesting because in the past five years or so, especially in B2B SaaS, there’s been this huge push on product marketing. And that’s okay. And like I said, you get that chart of death. My product is better than your product. We have more features. But then it’s a race to the bottom. What is the actual story? You want to sell value? And to sell value, you have to have a story. You have to align with the customer’s pain points and needs. And a lot of times your clients will end up paying more for your product or service than a competitor if that storytelling is correct, if you’re able to really prove out your value proposition. And the basics of that is the story. What are you doing in broader space. Not every company has to have a product or service that’s solving world issues, but you have to have a story that makes sense, that is inspiring what people want to listen to.

[00:08:41.780] – Angeley

This is also something that early stage companies sometimes skip because they’re so focused on getting unit economics correct at the very early stages. There’s nothing wrong with having great unit economics. It’s just that sometimes you have You have to focus on longer term initiatives and your longer term facts, and this is what brand is. And I always give the example of Amazon. If you guys look to the old videos of Jeff Bezos when he’s on the news, they were asking him for years, did you make a profit? No. It’s one of those things they kept investing into the business. The one thing that he really talked about with his storytelling is they wanted to be first biggest selection. They were really talking about that, and now it really is now. But they were really great at the beginning of the story that they were creating in the market.

[00:09:37.970] – Joran

It’s really the story about why are you doing things and what are you actually trying to accomplish? Why did you start it? In the end, what are you trying to help your clients to do? Focusing also what you mentioned before on the customer needs and the pain points and tell a story about that. How can you actually help them? Exactly. I don’t know if you’re purely focused on brand, but you mentioned before already messaging as well. I guess having this clear, probably also help you to frame the messaging on the website, marketing materials and everything else you do.

[00:10:10.890] – Angeley

Absolutely. When you see, especially with early-stage companies, constantly flipping their messaging. They’re flipping their sales pitch deck because the salespeople, they’re testing something like, No, that doesn’t work. We need a whole new pitch deck. All of a sudden, you’re up to pitch deck number 100 and something. It’s usually because you haven’t gotten the core story down. When you have to work on your brand and your core story, who are you? Why do you exist? Why does that matter? Why does it matter to your clients? Why do they care? What’s the feeling that they get? That base level, that foundation will be the foundation for all of your content, all your value propositions, all your competitive storytelling, your product marketing, so on, so forth. But again, a lot of companies, they skip this vital fundamental step, and they jump right in to steps 5 through 10, and they forget steps 1 through 5. This is why they have to constantly go back. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it with many companies. I have many colleagues in the industry. They’ve seen it. And we see sales leaders, and they’re saying, Okay, we’re on our 50th pitch deck, trying to tweak this for the clients because they didn’t have the right exercises at the beginning for the foundation.

[00:11:22.830] – Joran

Is it maybe because it doesn’t sell as quickly? Because if you look at why the startups do it, they probably iterated as much as they can to get the deal done quicker and to get the deal done. Telling a story could maybe take longer, or am I wrong here?

[00:11:38.910] – Angeley

I’m not sure I necessarily agree with that because the storytelling forces you to think through all of these things. Are you going for a long-term process sales-wise, or are you going for short-term wins? Most companies that go for short-term wins, they’re not even focusing on the storytelling. They’re going to try to compete with price, some fancy feature, get the product or service in the door and then try to upsell them later. But what brand and storytelling force you to do is they force you to think about the long game. If you go back to the Nike example, just because most people have seen or never heard of Nike in their campaigns I’ve said this before, this Find your greatness type of campaign is a ultimate master class in the long game. If they wanted short term wins, they’ll be talking about the rubber on their shoes and how their shoes are better than Adidas and all the others. They would be talking about the new laces and the new colors and it’s 50% off and on sale for this quarter. That’s the short term situation. The long term game, which is what they play, it’s the same thing that Apple did and think different, just because I think some of the listeners probably want some examples of SaaS companies out there.

[00:12:49.760] – Angeley

Hubspot does this well. Hootsuite does this exceptionally well. They had an I work from anywhere campaign. There’s a newer company out there called Snowflake, and they have much more of a technical product service, they’re doing branding quite well. There are a lot of B2B SaaS companies that are understanding this, and they’re understanding the longer term aspects of this.

[00:13:11.340] – Joran

I think, as you mentioned, it’s long term, so don’t expect any quick wins, If you start earlier, then you will benefit from it later on. Maybe SaaS companies have to find a model where they have some short-term wins, but focus on the long term as well while building a brand.

[00:13:25.420] – Angeley

Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s something that e-commerce understood very well quite quickly. They have much quicker, more transactional sales processes, but something that B2B SaaS has had to catch up. B2b SaaS has primarily been focused on product marketing, and we’ve seen in the past five years. Basically, what happens is if you over index, you need product marketing, but if you over index on it, then what happens is it’s a race to the bottom because you have to create so many features and every deployment has to be features and it’s features and price. But you didn’t really focus on the core value proposition, and especially in the need to be SaaS, it’s a lot more value selling, and it’s a lot more storytelling and about your services, what you’re trying to solve. And what we find in the commercial areas is clients sometimes are willing to pay more, even for something in the product or service may not be as competitive in the market, they’re willing to pay more for it if the story is there, if the value proposition is there. Anyone that questions that can look at the Apple MacBook computer versus the Microsoft surface.

[00:14:35.910] – Angeley

Look at those two. There have been many competitive analysis done that the Microsoft surface technically is a superior product, but Apple still outsells them all the time. Why is that?

[00:14:48.400] – Joran

Are you struggling to find people and companies which have access to your ideal customer profile? At Reditus, we just launched the second side of the marketplace, which allows you to search, filter, and contact B2B SaaS affiliates which have access to the audience you’re looking for. We do this by leveraging first-party data sources. Want to learn more? Go to getreadit. Com. Are there any other processes or strategies you would recommend SaaS companies to use to build up a brand?

[00:15:16.940] – Angeley

Usability testing. It’s something that is not a new concept. By any means, usability testing has been around for a long time. Even before it was coined as Usability testing, it was called surveys and survey taking, this thing. Back in the days when people would go into the office, you would bring in either potential new clients or existing clients, and you bring them into a room and you do a lot of surveys. For whatever reason, this has wanged out a little bit over the years. I would say even 10 years ago, it was really big deal. Then it went down, and now only it’s starting to make a reemergence. But again, really about doing this due diligence. What we think in our virtual offices, that’s a good a good idea for a go-to-market launch, a product launch, whether it’s brand marketing campaign whenever, is that what the client will resonate with? It is astounding how many times I’ve been in meetings where we think something’s a good idea, we test it with clients, and clients either don’t understand the concept, have never heard of it, wouldn’t do it that way, or sometimes you even get brand new ideas, bumping clients on something that’s even better.

[00:16:28.810] – Angeley

I would say to every marketing/commercial leader out there. Brand, of course, storytelling, of course, but match that with your usability to make sure that your go-to-market motions are functioning in the right way and that they are on track.

[00:16:46.180] – Joran

Would you then recommend them to really do them for SaaS company in interviews, like Zoom calls or you mentioned surveys already?

[00:16:55.410] – Angeley

Whichever way you can. It depends on your budget, but if you have the budget to hire a proper a disability company that can help you source depending on how much your ACVs are, your sales tickets out the door. If they’re massive, I would encourage you to invest more in this process to make sure that you get it right. If you have ACVs that are quite low and you have high traffic in a SaaS environment, you can easily do A/B, MBT testing on a website. There’s many different tools out there, and you can do everything from color, shapes, images, to full experiences and digital experiences. If you don’t sell anything digitally or primarily if your sales cycle is more 100% outbound and your sales people on the call with big client sets, then I would recommend your old-school usability. Talk to your clients because you want the context. You don’t just want the yes or no. You want to know the why. You want to know why they think that, why they feel that, because you’re going to incorporate those things not only into your sales process, but your marketing process. Also, sometimes your product set in your product features and your product growth notes in the future.

[00:18:05.210] – Joran

Within this process, do you always use a jobs to be done framework or do you use anything else?

[00:18:10.870] – Angeley

I would say frameworks come and go. They really do. Every single year, there’s a different book or something different about a different framework. For the very basics, match what you want, your outcome, to the needs of the client. If you can keep that in mind, then it doesn’t matter for what you’re using. Keep that in mind and it will steer you correctly.

[00:18:34.520] – Joran

We actually did something ourselves just last week where we interviewed, I think, 10, 15 clients. We were going to build a new feature, almost like a new product. Before we wrote any line of code, we had this set of questions where we want to identify, does it actually match what they’re looking for, but without showing them anything first. We asked, I think, 10 questions, and then we showed them what we have planned. We got the unbiased opinion first, showed them what we have, and then try to not say as much as possible.

[00:19:05.410] – Angeley

And what happened?

[00:19:06.980] – Joran

People loved it. We got quite some good feedback. It gave us new ideas on what we should be doing because we didn’t actually show them first what we’re planning to do. For us, it gave us some new ideas as well.

[00:19:18.840] – Angeley

Exactly. You would never get those if you didn’t actually take the time to ask the client. So I know it sounds like a very conventional piece of wisdom, but there’s a reason sometimes why these goals golden rules or golden rules, and you shouldn’t skip them. If there’s any listeners to this podcast that are in positions where they really need results at the end of Q1 and want to cut some things out of their process or try to get these quick wins, I would encourage them to really think about making sure that you complete these fundamental steps, because sometimes companies that don’t, I’ve seen many out there across many different markets. If they try to take the shortcut or skip around these fundamental pieces, they can end up costing you more money, time, people, etc. Later.

[00:20:06.160] – Joran

Yeah, it’s going to take you a lot more time indeed. You mentioned already a couple because my question is going to be like, can you share some best practices regarding a brand strategy, and we’re going to focus it on B2B SaaS. You mentioned HubSpot, Snowflake, Kahoot! Suite. Can you elaborate a little bit more on what do you think they are doing well or maybe some other cases?

[00:20:26.720] – Angeley

For the listeners that don’t know if it’s a social media management platform, they’re B2B. They basically target social media managers out there to manage all of their channel and marketing campaigns. What they did really is they started with a great brand and a great brand story, and they integrated that brand. They have the AL, the all-same wisdom, and they integrated that brand not only throughout all their offices, but throughout their campaigns, et cetera. Hubspot did something a little bit different. Hubspot became an absolute content machine. Back 10 years plus, when we had that term, content is king, hasn’t really changed much. Content is still king. They were really taking that, and they have full conferences around inbound marketing because they are really pioneering that whole concept of inbound marketing, inbound demand. I think, isn’t their conference called Inbound They really pump out massive amounts of content to really solidify their expertise in the space. And then they are leaving this inbound type of branding throughout everything. So I would say they did that really Snowflake, interesting use case, more technical type of product service set. They made it fun. This is one of the things, especially for any of the listeners, if you are in leading marketing sales with a product service that may If the fee is boring or dry, or people would consider it not fun, make it fun.

[00:21:51.610] – Angeley

I’ve had friends and colleagues there in cybersecurity, make it fun. They’re in something interesting. They’re in some back-end API tool that’s just for developers, make it fun. When I used to work at Intuit Quickbooks, a B2B accounting software, their sister company was TurboTax. People hate doing their taxes. Make it fun. There’s always a way, if you can connect to the customer pain and what they’re going through, there’s always a way to resonate with them and to reach them. I think as great marketing and/commercial leaders, it’s our job to figure that out.

[00:22:28.930] – Joran

I see. I just had I have a podcast interview with Chris Cunningham from ClickUp. They’re trying to reach 100 million views per month. They make it fun as well. They go over the top. Some people like it, some people might don’t like it, but they make a productivity app or an all-in app, I think it’s called right now. They make it fun and they not make it all about the product itself or any features, I guess you mentioned. For SaaS companies, a lot of SaaS companies are in a crowded market, right? If you’re building a CRM, there’s hundreds of thousands. Any advice for building a brand in a really highly crowded market/competitive market?

[00:23:07.110] – Angeley

I’m going to double down on what I was saying at the beginning of this podcast, especially, so for all the listeners, especially if you represent a company that is an extremely crowded market. This is where brand and storytelling is going to be critical to having the competitive advantage. This is where the storytelling is going to make or break it. Because if you go the opposite and you try to win in a crowded market with product features, everybody at some point in their career who’s listening to this has probably heard the term, are we a product or are we just a feature? Could another company basically buy us because we’re another feature? If you get into that space, dangerous space to be in. If you start with your go-to-market with, We’re just going to give you 20% off, super dangerous. Your competitor comes in and offers 25% off. It’s really critical if you are in a very critical a crowded space to have a very solid brand that resonates with extremely, I would say, inspirational/funny, whichever angle you’re trying to go with type of storytelling. It really needs to stand out because you don’t just want to be the top of your market for one quarter or for two quarters.

[00:24:24.690] – Angeley

You want to lead the pack indefinitely, and you also want to make sure that you have flexibility on your unit economics. You can only do that if you’re selling value. You can’t do it if you’re constantly have to sell new features or you’re constantly selling price. It doesn’t work in the long run. This is why my message on today’s podcast about brand and storytelling is even more critical in these super crowded spaces. And I’ll say it again that e-commerce has, because they were forced into it, e-commerce is a very crowded space. Think of the beauty space or the fitness space or whichever space you’re interested and crowded. How many online gym services are there? A lot. How many online, I’m making this up, online vegan protein bar companies are there? A lot. Online, beauty, e-commerce stores, tons. How are they standing out? It’s all about their brand and their storytelling. It’s all the storytelling.

[00:25:21.240] – Joran

Nice. I guess you mentioned a little bit, but when people think, Oh, yes, I have to build up a brand, what metrics should they track to know, evaluate if their brand is growing or becoming a success?

[00:25:36.650] – Angeley

The traditional methods, and it really depends on where you are in the space and how much awareness you have, but just to answer the question directly, the traditional way is something called brand awareness measurement, which you actually would go to a brand tracking company. They do this, survey-taking companies, and you could measure your brand awareness in the market over time, and you can measure down your brand funnel. If it’s preference consideration, et cetera. That’s a very traditional way of doing it in the way that as you grow, depending on how big your company is and the awareness you have in your market, that’s the way it should be done. The issue that early stage founders and CEOs have is they say, we’re new. We’re the new kid on the block. We don’t have any awareness in the market. Of course, the answer is don’t throw your money away at tracking something, at least in the brand awareness space, when you’re brand new because you don’t have the awareness. What I usually say to this cohort of companies is there are certain things that you can look at. Number one, in the usability studies, you can do usability study.

[00:26:36.370] – Angeley

You can match what clients are saying from a qualitative perspective. Do they resonate? And you can see the reaction on their faces. You can tell just immediately, depending on how much traffic you have to your website. You can do a small A/B test. You can do an MBT test. You can do that thing. Pitch competitions are a great way to do this. Get up in front of your peers peers, if your peers in the industry can understand within 30 to 45 seconds who you are, what you do, and you see some emotion coming out of them from it, you’ve got it. If you get up and you do your elevator/ lift pitch, and you’re 30 to 45 seconds in, and people are still looking at you like, What is this? I don’t get it. Probably not on the right track. But these are things you can do if you’re in the cohort where you’re just starting. You don’t have enough awareness in the market to pay for a formal brand awareness measuring tool, I would say to go more of this route.

[00:27:39.390] – Joran

Yeah, that’s interesting. Really, I guess going at the beginning, do people even understand what we’re doing? It’s even more about messaging rather than brand, I guess, in this case, especially with the pitch competition.

[00:27:50.340] – Angeley

They go hand-to-hand. You can come up with a nice tagline. That’s fine. Chatgpt these days, they’ll probably give you 20 different taglines, but that’s not the same as your story. Not the same. Just for ease of example, when you go back to the Nike ad, Find your greatness, you can come up with a tagline, Find your greatness. What does that mean? It’s the story you’re seeing behind it, and that’s the important part. That’s what clicks with people in that 30 to 45 seconds in. That’s the important piece.

[00:28:23.120] – Joran

We always make it sound really easy. We’re 30 minutes in and now building a brand sounds super and straightforward. People are going to run into challenges, obstacles. What are some common ones SaaS companies will face when they try to build up a brand?

[00:28:38.610] – Angeley

It’s actually something that we just talked about a couple of seconds ago. They try to focus on their tagline first because they think a brand is a tagline or they think it’s just the logo or choosing the right colors. All those things are important, but that’s not your brand. I think there is a LinkedIn post flying around somewhere. Some guy, he posted the Apple logo, the Nike logo, and he said, This is not a brand That’s not a brand. Whoever posted that on point completely. It’s the story. So this is why I always start with a statement of what you believe. There’s a famous motivational speaker, Tony Robbins. He was very famous in the ’90s, and he still is very famous. He has coached many CEOs, world presidents, world leaders, et cetera. And what he talks about in the sales sphere is people don’t buy what you sell. They believe what you believe. This is always even foundation of sales where good salesmen and women, they actually find ways to relate with their clients. A lot of them don’t even start with the product or service first. They talk about, Where are you from? How’s your life going?

[00:29:42.000] – Angeley

How many kids do you have? What do you like? What do you play sports? Et cetera, et cetera. They get that relationship going because people buy for people they believe in. They also believe what other people believe, and that’s the important thing. So I would say start with your belief statement. For example, at WorkSourceify, when I was there. We focus on waste management and recycling, et cetera. When we were coming up with the brand, our belief statement is different materials. These materials would be cardboard glass, aluminum, and waste management industry. Not sexy, right? Nobody thinks that’s the most sexy industry. Super interesting industry, though. We talked about these materials, and we said, these materials can have a second and a third life. You really start to create something out of it, which is quite cool. You can do it for any type of industry any type of product or service. I would say start with what is your belief statement? What do you believe?

[00:30:36.970] – Joran

It’s the first time I actually hear about this term. How would that work? Do you focus on, if we go back to the beginning, your customer needs, the pain points, what are you trying to do for them? Is that turned into the belief statement?

[00:30:49.550] – Angeley

These are things that will influence it. We influence it. I’ll just say from the resourceify example in waste management, basically people have a need They want to recycle. They also have a need because there’s a lot of waste, and that waste has impacts on our climate, on the economy. We also have regulations that are coming into play, 2025 and 2026. These are all customer needs and pain points. But then the belief statement of we believe that materials can have second and third lives, this is how you’re tying that story in and you’re weaving it in. This is why at the beginning of the podcast, when you were asking me the building blocks to building a brand, This is why taking the time to go through your storytelling is the most critical thing because it feeds into everything else. A lot of companies, what they end up doing is they skip that step. They go straight to the pitch deck. What are we selling? Clients, let’s say we have a tax building software. Clients need to do their taxes. We have a software that does it. It’s 20% off. Here’s our fancy tagline, slap a color on there.

[00:31:54.400] – Angeley

And then they go back in and the client, Oh, my gosh, the client, and they’re not resonating. Flip it again. After they flipped 10 times, then they’re like, oh, wow, we need to bring it. We need to do something.

[00:32:05.100] – Joran

Yeah. So for example, and maybe I’m super wrong here, but for the tax company right here now, for example, they could say something like, we believe that you only have to spend one hour per month on your taxes or something like that, or is that too practical already?

[00:32:18.590] – Angeley

It depends. I don’t know how much joy there is in taxes, but we believe that everyone can find joy in the situation, or everyone can learn cool insights or can just discover something that’s a little bit juicy, something to grab attention and build a story off of. Then what happens with the clients? They’re like, Oh, wow. Show me how. What do you mean? Then it becomes interesting. Then that’s when marketing and sales together, it becomes fun. You really get to work with your clients and the client needs. That’s how some of the best brands on the planet are made. It becomes so much fun.

[00:32:56.650] – Joran

Nice. I guess the question is, is it going to remain fun? How How do you see the future of brand? There’s a lot of things going on right now. Any trends you’re foreseeing maybe in the early future, so 2025?

[00:33:08.520] – Angeley

I talked about this last year, 2024. I spoke at an event called SASTOP, one of the best in Europe. So out to them and also talked about this a couple of other times with LinkedIn, since most of the listeners probably are on LinkedIn. They did a really great study, 2024 and also 2023, of what marketing leaders are spending their money on and rightfully so, because they’re going to back up what they’re saying with the money. And you can really see the trends and trajectories that way. They broke it up for SMB and also for enterprise cohorts and what you’re selling into. The interesting thing is, over the past years, a lot of people think it’s product marketing or you think it’s ABM, account-based marketing. We should do both of those things. However, do you know that both of those things did not make the top of the list? It’s quite interesting. You want to know what did? Number one, lead gen for obvious reasons. Number two, brand. Brand and brand marketing. Because these are the things that are moving the needle. These are the things that influence all of the other types of activities, such as product marketing, such as account-based marketing, channel marketing, influence of marketing, going down the list.

[00:34:18.140] – Angeley

And this is what companies now into 2025 and beyond. There was also, I think it was marketing week. They came out with a bunch of B2B companies that are now really paving away for the fundamental shift from just basic product marketing in ABM towards more brand marketing in SaaS. Just like I was saying before, e-commerce had this down pat because like you were talking about, you’re in a really competitive market. It’s really tight. How do you differentiate yourself and not just sell great for one quarter, but sell great indefinitely? E-commerce had to learn this lesson really fast. B2b SaaS is just now catching up because they’ve gotten over that initial hump of, Okay, we’re going to give you percentage discounts. Okay, great. We’re going to do some great product marketing, put out some great features. Great. We’re going to put together some 8:00 PM campaigns. They’ve gone through that. Now they’re in the stage of the life cycle. They’re like, Okay, you need a brand because you can’t keep pumping out features endlessly forever. And there’s only so low that your price can go. Now they’re just trying to figure out now, Okay, now that we need brands.

[00:35:26.400] – Angeley

So certainly in the 2025, it is a huge deal. A lot of the marketing leaders and also sales leaders within the industry, they’re asking for this. You’re seeing budgets change to correlate with this, and you’re starting to see a lot of people talk about this. Because what I say is it is the original revenue driver brand, and it is the one that keeps giving back over time.

[00:35:52.900] – Joran

Yeah. In the end, it’s as old as companies are, to make me know there. We’re going to close off the interview view. For listeners, they’re really familiar with these two questions. We’re going to take it more broader. You can keep it on brand. You can answer however you like. When we talk about growing a B2B SaaS company, what advice would you give a founder who’s just starting out and growing to 10K monthly recurring revenue?

[00:36:17.750] – Angeley

I would say because we’re in the beginning of 2025, I would look into AI tools, assist AI agents, anything like this. Ai tools and agents are now starting to replace SDRs. Whether you are doing cost-backing for inbound, outbound, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Look into some of these AI tools. I would say look into anything that can help you be more efficient and reduce your costs so you can take that extra money and throw it where it will really matter. On the reverse, for those founders and CEOs and early go-to-market teams that maybe are already on top of their AI game, I would tell them, remember the critical thinking. Using AI is great. I think it’s the future. It’s here to stay 100%. But make sure that you do not forget your critical thinking. Ai is only as good as the inputs. If you haven’t started using it, start using it. If you’re already on top of your game using it, just remember the critical thinking.

[00:37:17.450] – Joran

You can automate everything, but at one point, you don’t talk to your clients anymore, which means you can’t build an actual good brand. Let’s assume we pass 10K MR and we’re going to make a huge step, I know. What advice would you give SaaS founder who’s growing towards 10 million ARR?

[00:37:34.450] – Angeley

I would say to focus on your influencing. So whether it is founder-led influencing content, storytelling. Some founders like to be the influencers in their industries and spaces, some don’t. But if it’s the CEO or someone else in the C-level or whoever it might be, really just focus on your influencing. Because what you want to do is you want to create that movement within your industry. Getting Getting to whether it’s 10 million ARR or 10K MRR, whichever milestone you’re at, the first stage is about setting yourself up and establishing yourself and creating a story and proving that you have product market fit and you can get some revenue going. The second stage and further stages is showing that you are masters of your industry, that you’re here to stay, and that you are leaders of a movement. So think about Canva, for example. Melanie Perkins, she She didn’t get funding from however many investors. She finally got the funding, and she brings the money in, and people are like, What do you mean this little design tool? What is this? She proved out the product market fit. They got everything going. But then Canva has created this movement.

[00:38:46.060] – Angeley

It’s something that I think everyone was just blown away by in the industry. So focus on creating that movement.

[00:38:55.040] – Joran

Yeah. And can it go sometimes wrong as well? Because I remember they did a presentation, what was it, last year when people made fun of- Things go wrong.

[00:39:02.480] – Angeley

Look at Elon Musk when he unveiled, I forget the SUV where he took the hammer and slammed it against the window and it broke. Stuff goes wrong all the time. That’s just part of a journey of growing your company. But you have to look at it on a for a scale. What they’re trying to do is it creating a movement. Are they going in that right direction? You’re always going to have pickups going down the line, focusing on the big picture.

[00:39:25.840] – Joran

Yeah, in the end, we remember it. They are creating a movement one way or another. Cool. Let me try to summarize. A brand is the feeling when they hear your name or see your logo, what do they actually feel? Understand your customer needs and pain points. Don’t talk about the features. It’s going to be the checkbox of that. It’s a raise to the bottom. Common mistakes, don’t build a brand or do it too late. Not focusing on the long term instead of focusing on the short term wins, skipping the fundamentals. And remember, your brand is not your logo or your tagline. It’s the actual story. So when we go to best practices, leverage storytelling, be inspiring. Build a core story for your company, leverage usability testing, match your outcome to the need of the client. If you’re in a crowded market, brand needs to stand out. Brand moves the needle for all marketing efforts. Define your belief statement. We believe that… And then something after it, make it a little bit juicy. Yes, you can make a technical product fun. In the end, brand is the original revenue driver. When we go more towards 10K MR, leverage research AI agents, stay efficient, remember the critical thinking, 10 million ARR, focusing on influencing, create a movement, show that you are the masters of the industry, and to end it off with a quote, People don’t buy what you sell.

[00:40:43.320] – Joran

They believe what you believe.

[00:40:45.250] – Angeley

Excellent. 100%. I would say about the features, though, it’s not that you shouldn’t focus on features. Features are important. It’s that you shouldn’t always use that as a leading driver of your Zona market or sales basis. Nice.

[00:40:59.320] – Joran

Good addition. Any other general advice for SaaS founders who are now on their journey, no matter the revenue stage?

[00:41:07.520] – Angeley

Keep pushing, don’t give up. That’s more general advice for founders. I know a lot of founders, they have to be very tough. They face lots of rejection. They’re trying to get investment money. Don’t give up. Keep pushing. It’s always the founders that keep pushing that make it. Look at all the big ones like Bumble. Nobody wanted to invest in it. Canva. Nobody wanted to invest. Even Harry Potter, one of my My favorite, JK Rallying, couldn’t get any publisher. I look at where they are now. So keep going.

[00:41:35.890] – Joran

Nice. If people are getting in contact with you, Angeley, how can they do this?

[00:41:39.610] – Angeley

Linkedin, of course, is a great place. Then also my website. I can put it in the link, Angeleyemollins. Tech. In either of those places.

[00:41:46.730] – Joran

Yeah, we’re going to make sure to link to both of them so people can’t make any spelling errors towards your LinkedIn or your website. Thanks again for coming on. For people listening, if you haven’t done so, please leave us a review on the platform you’re listening right now. We’re going to add a poll to the Spotify recording. We always want to know what you think of these episodes. Thanks again for coming on Angeley. Thank you for watching this show of the Grow Your B2B SaaS podcast. You made it till the end, so I think we can assume you like this content. If you did, give us a thumbs up, subscribe to the channel. If you like this content, feel free to reach out if you want to sponsor the show, if you have a specific guest in mind, if you have a specific topic you want us to cover, reach out to me on LinkedIn. More than happy to take a look at it. If you want to know more about Reditus, feel free to reach out as well. But for now, have a great day and good luck growing your B2B SaaS.