- Spending time on branding on early stage startups used
to be kind of a dumb thing.
People didn't really believe in it
and they would always say,
"Look, leads, don't come from branding.
It comes from demand generation and ads.
Focus on that."
A few startups though, a few years ago,
started to focus a lot more on branding.
And when they did some amazing things happened.
Not only were they able to get a growth machine going
through word of mouth because of their branding,
because of their branding,
they were also able to command a much higher valuation.
They were able to win more deals
because customers knew about their brand a lot more
than their competitors and meant something for them.
And even more so because of their branding,
their customers remained more loyal.
So here's a question.
If you are an early stage startup founder
and you're looking to build a brand,
maybe you don't have the world-class marketers on your team.
Maybe you don't have a massive budget.
How do you actually build the brand?
Having built a brand myself,
Today I'm going to walk you through
my brand strategy blueprint.
I'm going to walk you through the five principles
that you need to know
to actually build out your brand for your SaaS business.
So that you can actually accelerate your growth,
command to higher valuation,
get loyalty from your customers and essentially grow faster.
Intro.
What's up everybody.
Welcome to Unstoppable.
I'm TK and on this channel, I help SaaS founders like you
navigate and accelerate the path to
the next stage of growth.
If you are new to this channel
be sure to hit that subscribe button and the bell icon.
I bring a video like this every Sunday, Wednesday,
and Friday
with the TK energy.
Also, if you are a part of the community already.
If you are a member of my SaaS
go to market coaching program.
Welcome back, it's really great to see you here.
I'll never forget
the first time I was at a bar in San Francisco.
I was running ToutApp at the time.
My last SaaS business, which I exited.
And I was at a bar, I think it was like a Friday night,
and across the bar I saw someone walking around
with an I close deals T-shirt.
I close deals T-shirt were these T-shirts
that we made, it was part of our brand.
We sold to salespeople
and our tee shirts didn't have ToutApp on it.
And it just said, I closed deals.
Just like, kind of this T-shirt.
This is for Unstoppable.
And on the back it just had a tiny ToutApp logo.
And I saw that and I was like,
"Oh my God, this person is just wearing it out
and about at a bar, that's so bizarre."
And that was,
like I always knew the value of brand.
At that time, it wasn't the popular thing
to do to spend time on building your brand.
But I'm glad I did because pretty soon
people were paying $10 to buy those I closed deals T-shirt.
Every single time someone wore it outside, they would ask,
"Hey, what is that T-shirt?
I close deals too.
I want one of those."
And automatically they would start talking about ToutApp.
And best of all, because we start to build that mini brand
we started to actually see
the effects of that in the market.
Customers liked us more.
They were more loyal to us.
We won more deals because they recognized our brand.
They recognized what we were about, our movement.
It wasn't just us selling software to salespeople.
It was a movement for salespeople
because we were all about helping empowering salespeople
to close more deals.
That was the power of the brand.
That was when I really clicked for me on, Oh my God.
There's something to this truly.
And people are wrong.
Branding is not useless.
Branding is actually super powerful.
So having done that for ToutApp
and then seeing branding in effect at Marketo.
Marketo bought ToutApp.
And Marketo is one of the most iconic brands in mark tech.
I'm gonna walk you through
the five principles you need to follow
to build even a mini brand
for your early stage SaaS business
so that you can reap the benefits of a brand as well.
So if you're excited to dig in,
go in and smash that like button.
And let's go in principle number one.
So principle number one is your name and your domain.
This is where everything around branding starts.
You gotta have a name and a domain
that's easy to communicate.
And this is the benchmark that I use, okay?
It's a benchmark I used for ToutApp.
You got to assume
that one of your youngest members of the company,
let's just say maybe an SDR or an intern,
is out and about on a Saturday night in a really noisy bar.
This is post pandemic.
Or, you know, just imagine that for a second,
just work with me.
They're at really noisy bar and they're like,
"Hey, where do you work?"
And they're like, "Oh, I work at blank.
We do blank."
And in that noisy bar, your brand new name
and what you do has to be communicated super easily.
The easier it is to communicate,
the easier it is to pronounce,
the easier it is remember
the more powerful everything else that you do.
If it's hard to do, then all of these other things are going
to be that much harder.
Is it impossible?
No, but just think of all the names that exist
and that are pretty easy to communicate,
easy to pronounce.
They don't have to be known.
Like Google wasn't known,
but Google is so easy to pronounce, right?
So that's kind of the baseline here.
You need to get a name and a domain
that is easy to communicate even in a noisy bar
and being communicated by a drunk person
that's an intern on a Saturday night
as they rightly should be enjoying their lives, right?
So that's principle number one.
Once you've done that, the second thing
that you need to actually think about is,
well, why and who do we serve?
Why do we exist?
And who do we serve?
That's essentially like,
that's the kind of the whole being around the brand.
Now, this is not about what you do.
So for example, at ToutApp,
we sold software to help salespeople, got it.
But that's not what our brand was about.
What our brand was about.
Like, if you think about it,
our T-shirts said I closed deals.
When you went to our booth in Dreamforce,
it would just say the first thing I ever sold was blank.
And we would just call onto salespeople
to share their story.
They would write it in a post it note,
they'd put it on the board,
they'll share their story of where they first saw,
what the first thing was that they sold.
We celebrated salespeople.
We wanted to be the flag bearers of salespeople.
We wanted to empower salespeople.
We wanted them to close deals.
That's what our brand was about.
And we knew the why and the who.
The whole point of our entire brand, forget the software.
The software helps them do all of that was we wanted
to serve salespeople and sales leaders.
And we want, we existed to actually empower salespeople.
Help them do more, helping them be more effective.
And we wanted to celebrate the art of selling.
And because of that,
everything else started to come together.
The tee shirts were easy.
The theme at the booth was easy because were like,
look who we're serving are salespeople and sales leaders.
And why we exist is to empower them.
So let's just make everything that we do,
every messaging,
every single touch point about that
and then talk about, oh, by the way,
we have software that helps you do
that a lot more effectively.
Are you interested?
So the third thing you want to do is start to think about,
well, what is our tagline?
Once you know why you exist and who you're serving,
there needs to be some sort of a call to arms.
And this is the thing where I always,
this is, this is the marketer in me.
I always kind of picture the T-shirt.
And the T-shirt...
I'm just like, look, if we're going to have a tagline,
it's got to fit on our tee shirt.
So for us here at Unstoppable,
Unstoppable is another brand that I'm building now.
We're probably about, I don't know, two years into it.
We're starting to gain momentum around this.
And it takes time and you have to be persistent about it.
But I always thought about like,
what do we put on the tee shirt?
And for us, who we serve are SaaS founders.
SaaS founders, we serve them.
And why do we exist?
We want to help them build incredible SaaS businesses.
And we want to help them be unstoppable in the market
because it just takes so much
to build these incredible businesses.
And our tagline essentially was ship code, close deals.
Those are the two levers that every SaaS vendor has,
either shipping code or you're closing deals.
And that was our tagline.
So I basically, and we have T-shirts.
You can buy these.
So this is one of them, I ship code.
I'll link to it below
if you're interested in buying one of these seizures.
We literally have a tee shirt that people wear
and people ask for it that says ship code and close deals.
We also have a T-shirt that says I ship code.
And we have a T-shirt that says I close deals.
One for each of the cofounders,
which is typically how it works.
So the whole point of this is you got to have a tagline
that could put on a T-shirt.
This is your call to arms.
This is what really brings together who you guys are,
who you're serving,
why you exist into this one core phrase
and that's yours tagline.
And how do you know if you've got a good tagline?
People are willing to wear it for free on their chest
on a tee shirt because it just makes them feel good.
The target people that you're serving it
makes them feel good to wear it.
That's that phrase, that's your tagline.
It's not about you.
It's not about what you do for them.
It's about how they feel and what you enable for them.
And that's what really matters.
That's your tagline.
So that's principle number three.
Okay, now, before we go into four and five,
let me just pause here for a second.
If you starting to get this,
if you starting to see the power of this,
brand doesn't have to be a nebulous thing.
In the early stages you don't need to hire a branding firm.
That's a bunch of waste of money.
If you starting to see just
by answering these three questions
how much more powerful your brand is going to be,
your purpose and your mission is going to be.
Can I just get it yes in the comments below?
Also smack like button for the YouTube algorithm
if you haven't already.
Now, if you're also building out your SaaS business,
you're on the early stages,
you're looking to build a predictable go to market machine
and really generate revenues.
I encourage you to download
my five point star of strategy guide.
I'll link to it below
and tell you more about it at the end of this video.
But let's keep moving.
Okay, principle number four
is you need an attractive character.
Not like an, like, like a hot looking person.
That's not what I mean.
Like you need an attractive character.
It's probably gonna be you the founder.
99.9% of the time it's the founder
that is attractive character.
But let me explain.
See this brand, this name,
over time, it's gonna become a thing.
So Unstoppable day one,
you're watching Unstoppable right now.
No one knew anything about Unstoppable.
It doesn't mean anything.
Maybe the word means something to people,
but it doesn't really explain why we matter
to SaaS founders.
So from day one, I had to attach Unstoppable to TK.
I had to say, "Hey, I'm TK.
I've built SaaS businesses.
I've grown SaaS businesses.
I've raised money from the best venture capital firms.
I've exited SaaS businesses.
I have helped exit SaaS businesses.
And now I help other SAS businesses.
I'm TK."
And people would look at me and then say,
"Oh, okay, well, this guy has done things.
He's actually done things.
He's not just reading from a book and preaching.
He's not pretending.
So maybe I should listen to him."
And that elevated the Unstoppable brand.
And over time as I keep doing that and keep doing that,
and keep doing that.
And we have more customer success stories
from our SaaS go to market program,
which is like some of the success stories are amazing.
And I'm excited to share them soon.
As soon as you have that, then the brand becomes bigger.
But what's super important is
that you have an attractive character
up front for the brand.
This is the person.
This is the spokesperson.
This is the person that embodies everything
that the brand believes in.
This is the person that's the face of the brand.
This is the person that's leading everyone.
This is a person that's constantly looking to serve.
And you need an attractive character.
It's likely going to be you or your co founder.
It's going to be one of you two
if you're starting a SaaS business.
So in Unstoppable's case, it's me.
I'm the, I'm the attract quote unquote attractive character.
I'm not calling myself attractive
and just saying I'm the attractive character,
the leader of the Unstoppable movement.
And you need one too for your brand.
And likely will be you or your cofounder.
Now let me just clear up something here for you to be,
or your cofounder to be the attractive character
you do not need to be an extrovert.
I'm actually not an extrovert.
I'm an ambivert.
I can turn it on when necessary,
but generally speaking, I'm an introvert.
And so you don't need to be a gregarious,
outgoing extrovert.
What you need to do is take on a serving mindset.
You naturally get out there and serve people.
You want need to care and you need to truly care.
And for me, even at ToutApp I truly cared.
I loved talking to salespeople.
I loved hanging out with salespeople.
I love doing dinners with sales leaders
and talking about where sales is going.
All of those things. I absolutely love.
Even at Marketo when I was running different organizations,
I did all of those things because I truly wanted to serve
that group of people,
whether it was salespeople or marketers,
both were really near and dear to me.
And so you got to figure out who it is that you're serving,
why you're serving them,
what your tagline is.
So for us as it's ship code.
close deals.
And over here.
And it's also actually, ship code,
close deals, be unstoppable.
And you need to have an attractive character
that really spreads the word around this.
Once you've done that, there's this last piece of this.
You'll have certain movement,
you'll have a messaging,
you'll have a way to mobilize all this.
And if you're part of my SaaS go to market program,
we teach you how to really mobilize all of this
and really define all of it.
But the last piece of an important brand
to really make it real is to be consistent in mobilizing it.
You have to find a way
to constantly get your brand out there
and mention your brand.
So right now we start with one YouTube video a week.
Now we have three YouTube videos every week.
We have a mailing list.
We have an insider community.
We have a go to market coaching program.
We have a podcast.
And we have, we post on Twitter.
I post on Twitter.
I post on LinkedIn.
I am consistently getting the Unstoppable brand out there
and consistently talking about how we empower SaaS founders.
And we're consistently talking about how
to actually grow your SaaS business on a regular basis.
And because of that consistency, little by little,
every single time, every video gets more views.
We get more and more people joining
than ever before in our SaaS go to market program.
All of these things start to come together
because of the consistency.
I'll tell you in the first month or first two months,
or first three months, it may not feel like anything.
It may not feel different,
but with this consistency and I call this a Broadway show,
we actually teach how to do this in the,
in the go-to-market program.
When you actually are consistent
in getting your message out there and leading
and serving these people
and actually being a thought leader on it
and actually actually saying,
"Hey, here's a different way to think about things, right?"
When you start to do that over time it compounds.
In the early days, it will seem like nothing,
but it'll exponentially actually have an impact on you,
on your customers, on your community,
on your brand and on your revenues.
Okay, so now, you know, those are my five principles.
Number one, get an easy to pronounce,
easy to communicate,
name and domain.
Number two, figure out the why and the who for you guys.
Number three, have a tagline.
It's fun, put to our T shirt.
I will link to our T-shirt store down below.
Number four, establishing an attractive character.
This is going to be the leader.
You cannot outsource this.
You can't just hire for this.
It has to be you or your co founder.
And number five,
be consistent about getting your message out there.
And we do it through a Broadway show and a manifesto.
So that's how you actually build out a brand.
It's not complicated.
You don't have to pay millions of dollars in consulting fees
to help build that.
This is what you need to do.
And when you do it
you will get unfair advantages in the market.
And that's the biggest power in this.
By the way, if you are building a SaaS business
and you're building out like how to actually get noticed,
how to get more customers,
how to build a scalable go to market machine,
how to actually grow your SaaS business.
I invite you to download
my free five point startup growth strategy guide.
Inside of that guide, I'm going to give you
the five key ways
that you can drive growth for your SaaS business.
The key things that you actually need
to build a strategy around.
And how to codify it into a one page strategy
that you can tether yourself to.
So if you want to get access to that, it's completely free.
I invite you to download it
go to getunstoppable.com/strategy.
Getunstoppable.com/strategy,
or just follow the link below.
I'll link to it down below as well.
Along with a link to our T-shirts store.
If you actually want to get one of our T-shirts.
We don't make any money on the tee shirts.
It's just,
it's just like to get spread our brand
and get more people part of our movement.
Speaking of movements, if you are enjoying these videos,
if you enjoy this channel be sure to hit that like button
for the YouTube algorithm so we can help more SaaS founders.
Be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
if you haven't already so that you can get notified
when I drop an episode like this
with actionable strategies to grow your SaaS business.
And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business, but when you are with us,
yours is going to be unstoppable.
I'm TK, I'll see in the next episode.
Our tee shirts says I close deals
whenever you went to a booth at Dreamforce,
Nope, it's ringing.
Okay, they're right.