The SaaS Brand Strategy Show

On this week's episode of the SaaS Brand Strategy Show, Ryan, Mike, and Dustin delve into HubSpot's recent acquisition of Clearbit. A move that is part of what's been a significant shift in HubSpot's strategy over recent years, from a focus on inbound marketing to a broader customer management approach. We explore how Clearbit's data enrichment tools can impact customer's CRM and marketing strategies, enhancing lead generation and customer insights—and how this purchase does and doesn't position Hubspot against Salesforce.

Join us as we analyze HubSpot's potential motivations behind the Clearbit acquisition and its impact on the SaaS marketing landscape. We discuss the fine balance between being specific enough to be compelling and generic enough to encompass a wide range of services in your messaging and positioning. And, how does HubSpot's evolving narrative align with the principles of effective category design, and what does it mean for their future, and the future of SaaS marketing?

Tune in this week for an insightful conversation on SaaS marketing, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

On this episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we kick off a critical analysis of the world’s first “AI pin” introduced this month by Humane. Not just the pin itself, but the launch, and the combined praise and ire it’s drawn within the tech community. We’ll be discussing features, design, and the philosophy that drove its creation—but even more so whether or not that philosophy is showing up prominently enough in the messaging and positioning of the product for it to matter and make waves.

Join us as we unpack Humane.ai’s product launch strategy, and wonder aloud if the focus on its technical prowess has overshadowed the company’s ability to merchandise the human problem its supposedly there to solve. We discuss whether the balance of innovation and human-centric design, and the messaging of it as a whole, is enough to make what Humane.ai is doing meaningful.

Whether you're a tech enthusiast, a marketing professional, a SaaS founder looking at what to do or what not to do in your own messaging and positioning, or just someone curious about the future of wearable technology, we offer our perspectives on the evolving landscape of AI, its potential impact on our lives, and the crucial nature of telling and selling a story when launching new categories of products and technology into the market.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

In this episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, Eddie Yoon, a renowned author, B2C and B2B marketing consultant, and category design expert, joins us to share his experience in consumer psychology and growth strategies. He highlights the importance of category creation for companies of all sizes, and why knowing your customer (and who your Super Consumers are) is key to selling and telling the right story.

Eddie has authored a variety of marketing books, and aided innovative companies like Keurig and iRobot and his wisdom is both wide and deep. With a shared ethos for how we approach marketing, and maybe even the world, this week's episode offers valuable perspectives on consumer behavior and business success in the context of analytics and category design.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we dive deep into the captivating story of Klaviyo's decade-long journey to transform the ecommerce landscape—culminating in what's expected to be a massive IPO next week. Today's episode unveils the intertwined relationship between Klaviyo and Shopify, shedding light on why Klaviyo has managed to stand out as the dominant platform for ecommerce email marketing.

We explore the resonating power of customer advocacy, the brand's unique value proposition (or lack thereof), and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead with its anticipated IPO. We devil's advocate our own position on the importance of differentiation, and look at why Klaviyo has had a simplistic and undifferentiated message for years, and yet continued to skyrocket in growth.

Industry experts are keenly watching Klaviyo's moves and what it signals for the future of ecommerce marketing. Whether you're in the ecommerce or digital marketing space, this episode gives insights into their growth, messaging, positioning, market conditions, and more. You won't want to miss it.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

Strap in, SaaS fans. On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we're taking a ride into the heart of Front’s category strategy around their Customer Operations Platform. We love finding interesting and well-executed category strategy in the wild, and Front has made waves with their's raising over $200 million in their pursuit of this category, and the narrative surrounding it.

Today, we dive headfirst into their website, dissect their product video, and give you our no-holds-barred take on what we think works and what could use a little polish. We're all about celebrating what we think of as the good stuff that aligns with our process and perspective, while also pointing out the things that we think would benefit from a tweak.

If you're looking to stand out in the SaaS crowd too, tune in to see what we think of their marketing strategy and the of their category approach, plus hear our thoughts on how they could level up even further. You'll walk away with a ton of inspiration, and maybe even a few ideas on how to shake up your own game too.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

In this episode, we dive deep into Databricks' recent acquisition of MosaicML, a staggering $1.3 billion transaction that aims to democratize AI and bring its services to, well... everyone? We'll explore their before and after messaging, the key elements of category strategy in play, and the role of AI in shaping today's software messaging landscape. We also delve into the challenges of positioning AI in an industry that's rapidly expanding and evolving, and worries over reverse differentiation.

Join us as we discuss the potential fracturing of AI models and what this could mean for the future of AI in B2B SaaS as the potential looms for it to be incorporated into tech stacks worldwide. We speculate on Databricks' future strategies, including the buzz around a possible public offering to compete against OpenAI in the future.

With plenty playing out in the AI space, join this squad of seasoned tech veterans, who are also curious about AI's explosive growth, and what it means for all of us. Get all that and more on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

When evolution occurs, previously accepted nomenclature can become obsolete. So it is with "Remote Work," that charming idea of a distributed office, freed from the constraints of traditional office bureaucracy and politics. But remote from what? With the majority of business meeting invites including a Zoom, or Hangout, or Teams link isn't everyone 'remote', even those in a traditional office space? More importantly, does the term create an us-versus-them dynamic that pits on-prem vs off- against each other?

This is the first discussion about what we have termed "Headless categories", category names that have just appeared and been adopted without any really heavy strategic thought behind them. On this episode we discuss the "Fractional Leadership" category. Fractional CMOs, Fraction CIOs, etc...

Is Fractional the correct category name or is there a more appropriate term to capture the comprehensive value provided by top-shelf, um, fractional leaders. (it even feels wrong to say it).

The road to raising $2.5 million dollars is never smooth—but the views are often pretty legendary. On today's episode, we invite a friend, client, category creator, and founder—Adam Stepanovic—to talk about DashLX's journey to their most recent funding round, and how the role of category creation played a massive part in their ability to obtain clients and tell and sell their story to investors.

On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we'll discuss with him the history of DashLX, from the inception of the business idea, to the road to their first customers, to our collaborative creation of the Lived Experience (LX) category in tandem with Christopher Lochhead from Play Bigger, Category Pirates, and The Lochhead on Marketing Podcast. Strap in for the ride as we grill Adam on his team's most recent peak, their $2.5 million seed round, and the very beginning of their road to even more legendary greatness.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

Category design is in the news this week, so we're taking on the role of your friendly local reporter. A presentation on the SaaStr YouTube channel from Bill Magnuson, CEO and Cofounder of Braze, recently talked about the importance of category creation to the success of their business. With a matching blog post summarizing the presentation on SaaStr's blog, we wanted to see what we can learn from the piece and from Braze, as well as weigh in on opportunities for improvement, from a category design perspective.

So on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we take a long hard look at Braze's category journey, and the importance of the first mover advantage they brought to the market. We talk about category design, first mover advantage, skating to where the puck is going, rapid growth trajectories, analyst narratives, and the importance of reinventing yourself. All that and more, this week, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

As SaaS brand strategists and category creators, we're frequently exposed to the reasons why companies don't undertake a category strategy in their business. And there isn't just one objection we hear. There are many, and they're frequently connected. But here at DRMG, we're adamant about the value and importance of category design, and we're adamant that most people don't understand that half (or more) of their objections are unfounded.

So on this week's episode, we consolidate the commonly held reasons software businesses resist category creation. And we argue the other side of those objections and how to overcome them, one by one. We talk about timing and timeline, analyst relations, search engine optimization, damming the demand, content strategy, and a whole lot more, on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

The word community is thrown around a lot when it comes to SaaS companies. Sometimes it's mentioned as a trendy growth tool. Sometimes it's used synonymously with social media. Sometimes it's used to refer to a group of developers coding in the same language, or against the same software. So with all these different definitions—which one is the right one? Which definition of community can you observe and implement in your business to capitalize on the best parts of the concept? And to ultimately grow?

In this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we dive into the complexity of community. We'll define it, discuss the best way to resource it, acknowledge the difficulties of building it and maintaining it. And ultimately, we'll talk about where community and category collide, and how to make use of community in a way that's most beneficial to the growth and success of any B2B SaaS business.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

Brand and branding have the same root word, but they're by no means synonyms. And yet the number of times we hear people conflate these two words is sometimes astounding. Today we tackle a pet project and pet peeve of ours, which is the nuanced but crucial difference between these two words. We're so passionate about this topic in fact, that we pressed record in the middle of a debate to capture the essence of our conversation.

On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, you'll hear us illustrate a few different definitions of what a brand is, we'll define branding and what the components of branding actually are, and discuss about how crucially connected these two concepts are, as well as the essential differences between the two. This is no esoteric semantic argument. Words matter, and how these two specific words get used at your company could be the difference between getting a new logo and growing your business.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

As recession fears continue to muddy the waters of progress, your story is more important than ever. Your narrative—what you tell and sell in the market—will be responsible for the interest and investment you get in your next round—or unfortunately for some, the interest and investment you don't get... So on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we take a page out of Sequoia Capital's playbook, and break down the actual pitch deck they ask for from companies pitching them, slide by slide.

We'll walk you through the narrative they ask for, why they ask for each element, and how you can (and should) illustrate your story and your category to match their roadmap, in as concrete and compelling terms as possible. Plus, an episode about the perfect pitch wouldn't be right without an in-depth discussion of the merits of Kacey Musgraves. You'll get all that and a whole lot more, on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

It's common to want and need domain expertise, when you're problem-solving. We all look for experts who've solved problems like ours before, to help us solve our own problems. But is there a point where your problem is so niche or specific, that the domain expertise simply doesn't exist? Do we sometimes focus so narrowly, that we end up over-indexing on a single aspect of our problems, that ends up not really solving the problem at all? When your problem is multi-dimensional, it's crucial to create a hierarchy of those dimensions so that you end up solving the most critical problem in your business. Otherwise your focus can ruin your focus...

So that's what we dive into on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show. A recent conversation with a prospect spurs the topic this week, as we discuss the concept of domain expertise, over-indexing and under-indexing on certain components of domain expertise, and setting a problem-solving hierarchy that sets your B2B SaaS business up for success in both the short and long term.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

Identify your customer's problem. Create a category that solves it. Assign an enemy to the conversation. Then design a creative lightning strike that proves your category is the solution to your customers problem, and will help them defeat that enemy. Easy to say in a few sentences, but significantly harder to do. But when done well, it's a thing of beauty. That's why this week, we're culminating our series of minisodes covering some of our favorite B2B Cannes Lions award-winners year, with Norwegian glassware company Strahl.

The customer problem? Glassware in restaurants creates inefficiencies, can be dangerous for customers and employees, has costly overhead, and irritating persistent reordering. Their category that solves it? Virtually unbreakable polycarbonate glassware that looks like glass, but doesn't break like like. The enemy here? Traditional glassware. The creative lightning strike? Ship your product in the mail with zero packaging to prove that if a trip through the mail won't break it, normal usage in a restaurant sure won't either. And make an ad about the whole thing.

That's the ride we take, this week on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show. We'll break down the campaign, discuss what works, what doesn't, and why. Plus we'll dive into what B2B SaaS companies can take away from Strahl's formula and implement in their businesses to set themselves apart, create a category, and make a statement.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

When the pandemic hit, and the world went into quarantine, bars and restaurants were saddled with product they couldn't sell. Heineken decided that instead of letting their beer go to waste in bars and restaurants all over the UK, they would buy it back from their customers, and try to do something good with it. From this goal, the "Unwasted Beer" campaign was born. Heineken rescued their beer back and converted the beer that couldn't be consumed into green products like fertilizer, animal feed, biogas, and more. And then they won a Cannes Lions award for it, which brings us today.

On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy show, we release our third of four mini episodes covering the most interesting winners from 2022's first ever B2B Cannes Lions awards. We break down the campaign, discuss what landed and what didn't, and the lessons that B2B software companies can take away from the campaign, and start applying to their business today. Is it green-washing? Good marketing? Does it pay off a promise? Does it matter in a world that quarantines, no more? We tackle it all this week, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

How do you tackle account-based marketing (ABM) when you're the largest music streaming platform in the world? If you're Spotify, you make custom music for the CMOs at individual accounts to showcase the power of audio advertising on your platform. And you use it to thank those marketing leaders for their investment. Then, once it's all said and done, you win a 2022 B2B Cannes Lions award in the "Targeting and Engagement" subcategory.

On this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk through one of the best and most fun B2B campaigns we've seen in a long time, as musicians and big music fans ourselves. But also one of the best we've seen from the angle of marketers and brand strategy geeks as well. And even if your SaaS business doesn't have perfect pitch, musical chops, or the budget to pull off a campaign like this, there's still plenty to be learned and put into practice in your own business.

In this second of our four-part mini-sode series on the inaugural B2B Cannes Lions awards, we talk about all those brand and business strategy lessons, play a mashup of ABM-targeted CMO songs, and cover a whole lot more.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

Today, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we kick off a new four-part series on what SaaS companies can learn from this year's first-ever B2B Cannes Lions awards. In partnership with LinkedIn Think Tank, the B2B Institute, this year's Creative Lions celebrate creativity in B2B marketing. With all the lessons to be learned from B2B companies (particularly some with B2C marketing chops), we'll be covering four interesting campaigns and winners. We'll discuss how B2B SaaS companies can learn from these award winners, and apply the lessons to their business strategies, marketing, messaging, and positioning.

Our first episode in this new series focuses on Dole and their partnership with Ananas Anam to create Piñatex—a new vegan leather textile made from the refuse that comes from harvesting pineapples. As they create a new category and market it, we find a multitude of takeaways for SaaS businesses of all sizes they can learn from and start applying today.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 where Geartrade came from, how their opportunity emerged, and the work his team did to set themselves apart and capitalize on that opportunity. Knowing they needed to stand out in the world of gear marketplaces across the internet, Geartrade opted to go the category creation route. The clearly defined their point of view, named it, and aligned their team around it, spurring massive growth over the past three years.

Hop in and take a ride through the success story of a B2C brand that created a category, reaped the benefits, and continues to own that space in the market, seeing the value continue to pay out dividends this day.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 such a simple, commonplace outcome? Are consumers disappointed when brands with past advertising clout release inferior advertising and messaging? What can SaaS startups that don't have massive reach learn from these major corporations? And how can SaaS businesses punch up by selling their different, instead of leading with boring, repetitive messaging we've seen over and over again?

We talk about all that and more, as we do a teardown on a blasé messaging campaign from Intel, on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 is, how you reveal your strategy to important stakeholders has a massive impact on whether or not it will be successfully, both internally and externally. As folks who've helped numerous businesses with category design, brand strategy, and business strategy, we've seen reveals go both ways—well and poorly. So in today's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk about the best practices and pitfalls around socializing your strategy.

We'll give step by step instructions on what to do, and steer you away from what you absolutely shouldn't do, to make sure that your category and your brand strategy have the best chance of survival and success.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 marketing split into so many different disciplines, it's hard to know which role will be most impactful to your business at this stage. So on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we dive deep on the subject and break it down. The roles you might choose, the job descriptions you do (and don't) want to post, plus the best roles to hire to nail the job, and catapult your brand to the next level.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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, or offers that make your brand relatively obsolete.

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, content, and SEO-driven thought leadership, PR ultimately comes up as a relatively cost-effective alternative to paid media campaigns.  This is brand-level thinking (which is why we’re talking about it).

In this episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, Mike and Dustin dive into the top 6 FAQs they receive about PR, including:
Why hire PR?

• Is PR right for us, now?
• Are we ready for PR?
• Are we PR worthy?
• Are we ready to "Make the News"?

And, much more, including some memory-lane tales on how we got Backcountry.com into The Wall St. Journal, Forbes, and others. 

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.

Brands are built on potent ideas planted in the mind of the consumer through market penetration and repetition. If you're changing your story every six months, as some product positioning experts recommend, consistency is lost and so are consumers. With a brand strategy, you gain differentiation through your strategy and not just your products, so when competition comes after you, they copy your strategy and not your product.

And it’s really hard to commoditize a strategy. We talk about the difference between brand strategy and product positioning, plus a whole lot more, on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 year.

We talk about the ads, who hit, who missed, and discuss the strategy behind the play. Without the segmentation of digital marketing and advertising, what is each brand trying to accomplish by placing brand to business ads on television in front of 100 million football viewers? Did the creative support the strategy? Did the strategy make sense from where we sit? And will the big investment pay off?

We ask all those questions and more, this week, on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 team exercise, and collaboration thrives.

In most cases, collaboration is helpful. Two heads are better than one, they say. But even more recently we've come to wonder—has the startup culture of collaboration gone too far? Are there ways that collaboration can actually become detrimental to a brand and a business? How do you know when there's too much collaboration going on in your business? And how do you solve for making sure you're an agile business moving decisively and quickly—but also listening and bringing your team along with you?

We talk about all things strategic collaboration and a whole lot more on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 predictions on what we see coming in the B2B brand strategy space, for the year ahead. 2022 will, no doubt, be a year of continued change. Of course in the way  every year brings change, but also in the way the past two years have accelerated that change for B2B and SaaS businesses in general. This year, too, will continue the trend.

In this week's episode we predict the continued decline of the CMO role, the death of the ebook, we examine the birth of the B2B creative Cannes Liones award, discuss B2B businesses leaning on their brands more as their data changes, and a whole lot more. Tune in this week to hear what we see coming, and keep tuning in as the year goes on, to put our clairvoyance to the test...

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we dissect a common misconception we regularly run into: the idea that leading with messaging on saving time and saving money will set your brand apart. Nearly every product claims to do it—and some, if not most, actually do! But in an undifferentiated world of products and services, time and money messaging is a game of inches that you'll always end up losing.

We discuss the misconception itself, why we believe we continue to see it so often (and why companies rely on it so heavily), and why and how to avoid this type of language, in your business's pursuit of growth. So you can sell different, and set yourself apart.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 world as the Chief Brand and Experience officer at GALE Partners.

We took time to consider the impact on the B2C space of the ever-changing marketing leadership title, as well as the implications it has in the B2B space. Do the additions of words like "brand" or "growth" or "disruption" and more, signify that something about marketing as we know it isn't working?

The word "brand" arriving in the C-suite is something we've discussed before, but the word-salad additions of "disruptive" and "growth" signify the ever-evolving and fracturing nature of marketing as a whole. What does the changing role of marketing (and marketing leadership) signify in businesses in both the B2B and B2C spaces? And how should business leaders in both spaces navigate these changes?

We debate the merits of it all and a whole lot more, on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

Listen to Winston's podcast at GALE Partners here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/is-this-thing-on-the-gale-audio-series/id1566626637

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 important? How does it relate to its equally (if not more) important cousin, message-market fit? And how do both concepts—and your ability to achieve them—impact your brand?

As the speed of development goes up, and product differentiation becomes more of a thing of the past, and product-market fit starts to become more ubiquitous—how do you stand out in your market when your product isn't doing it for you? We cover all that and a little more on this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show.

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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.

Our very own Dustin Robertson responded: "Don’t confuse strategy as a marketing problem. It's the CEO’s job to drive this. We often hear, "We need better messaging." But the root cause is the lack of a strategy on how to be different." This week on The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, we talk about exactly what we mean when we say that, and why Dustin's response was so universally liked by other viewers of the post.

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 on exactly what we mean by putting Liquid Death's strategy and tactics under the microscope.

While not all B2B brands can (or want) to take their positioning to such an extreme level, there's still gobs to learn from the genius strategy, marketing, positioning, and creative ideas that Liquid Death has implemented (and continues to implement). So tune in this week, as we break down what exactly they've done, why we think they do it, and how your B2B SaaS brand can learn a thing or two, too.

Questions, comments, or suggestions about the show? Send us an email, at hi@drmg.co

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, transitioning into their umbrella company Momentive, as well as companies like Dunkin' Donuts, Burlington Coat Factory, and more, we talk about how and why brands change their names. What's the reason? What's the value? What's the risk? When and why does it work? And when and why does it sometimes... not...

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 delve into the benefits of category design that aren't just growing your business. Everything from organizational alignment to recruiting efforts, product roadmaps to investor conversations.

So buckle up, as we jump into the benefits of building a category across the board (and as always, a whole lot more).

About DRMG:

SaaS Brand Strategy (SBS) isn’t about the colors you use, or the typeface you choose. It’s about the category you design and the story you tell.

DRMG exists to help SaaS businesses find their magic bullet, load it, and fire it into the market.

The companies we work with come out the other side with differentiation, defined categories, and the messaging to back it up. They’re organizationally aligned, inspired, and ready to tell a better story—and win.

Own the brand that drives demand. With DRMG.

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 major unlock the teams encountered through interviewing PFL stakeholders and customers: that today’s world is an Attention Economy. And that the best way to gain people’s attention is a combination of online and offline interaction. The perfect blending of what PFL does. And hence, the Hybrid Experience was unveiled.

Strap in for a ride through the PFL’s SaaS Brand Strategy process with DRMG, and what it means to nail your messaging and positioning in a way that intuitively resonates with your market.

We’ll also talk about the recent news that PFL adjacent company Sendoso recently received a $100 million investment. And we ask Nick what this means for their category and their business.

A veritable debate has broken out amongst some of the brightest minds in the SaaS messaging and positioning space. Writer and business veteran Andy Raskin is pushing the importance of "Strategic Narrative." The writer of Play Bigger, Christopher Lochhead, continues to stake his flag on the "Category Design" mountain. Around here, at DRMG, we use the language "SaaS Brand Strategy" (or SBS)—the category we're creating.

Today, we dive head first into the debate to elevate the value of each of these perspectives, and ask the question: Are any of us right or wrong? And what is the core thing all this language is getting at, that SaaS businesses need to have? Are they movements, categories, or brands? Which comes first? And how and why?