- Over the last 10 years,
if you've been building out a SaaS business,
there's really been two ways to drive growth.
The first one is demand generation,
and the second one is outbound.
I believe that over the next 10 years, the next 10 years,
if you really wanna grow your SaaS business,
you gotta double down on brand.
Brand is making a comeback and is the single biggest way
to differentiate your SaaS business from the competition,
and actually rise above.
In this video, I'm gonna be walking you through
the three principles that you can follow
to actually build a brand for your startup.
I'm really excited about this video, so let's dig in.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK, author of the book,
"How to Punch the Sunday Jitters in the Face"
Star founder and I also run the SaaS startup school
where I help entrepreneurs like you
start, build and exit their SaaS businesses.
On this channel, I bring you a video
every single Sunday and Wednesday
with the TK energy to actually teach you
everything that I know about building SaaS businesses.
So if you're new, welcome.
Be sure to hit that subscribe button and that bell icon,
so you get notified every single time
I drop an episode like this.
I believe that building a strong brand
for your early stage SaaS startup
is one of the best ways to drive growth.
When you actually have a strong brand, a mini brand,
a brand that others can start to recognize,
then everything becomes easier.
Building leads becomes easier.
Building pipeline becomes easier.
Closing deals becomes easier.
Everything becomes just a little bit easier.
The problem is, over the last 10 years,
brand hasn't been as popular.
Demand generation has been more popular,
outbound has been more popular.
Trust me, I know because I worked at ToutApp,
I started that company that actually helped you do outbound.
And then I worked as the SVP of Strategy in Marketo,
where, well let's be honest,
Marketo practically invented demand generation
along with HubSpot and Eloqua, I know, I know.
But brand is making a comeback.
And on this video, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles that you can follow
to actually build brand.
So if you're excited to dig in,
smash that like button and let's go to principle number one.
Principle number one is when you are building your brand,
in the early days, when you are an early stage startup,
the natural inclination is to actually go after
putting your brand out there.
Now, this is gonna be a little counterintuitive
but follow me here.
So let's just say you started a company,
it's called Awesome.io.
You have the brand, you want the pretty colors,
you have the logo, you have the website.
Interestingly enough, that's not the best way
to build your brand.
The best way to actually build your brand
is actually to put yourself out there
and build your brand, build your personal brand.
You as a person, are more relatable
than your brand is right now.
So if you actually go out there,
you as a person have more connections.
You as a person has a bigger story.
And there's a reason why you started this company, right?
And that's why you're the founder.
And so when you are actually putting yourself out there
and building your personal brand,
and always saying,
"By the way I started this company called ToutApp."
Or "I'm SVP of Strategy of Marketo or "I run Unstoppable,"
your story starts to actually elevate the brand
of your brand new company.
But if you just put Awesome.io front,
no one really knows Awesome.io, they don't trust it.
They don't know who that person is, that company.
But when you put yourself out first
and you actually establish yourself as the brand
as the front and keep mentioning Awesome.io,
all of a sudden your brand starts to elevate
and Awesome.io starts to legitimize
and starts to get a mini-brand in itself.
As you start to do that, you can't just go out there
and say, "I'm gonna build a personal brand."
Like how do you even do that?
How you done in real way?
This is the second piece, you and your company,
both of you, your personal brand and Awesome.io
actually needs to stand for something.
Great brands, always stand for something,
they always have some form of an us versus them.
They know who they are and what they believe in,
and they know who they are against.
If you wanna stand out in this noisy world,
and you actually wanna build brand,
after you've started to put yourself out there
to elevate your company's brand
and start to give it legitimacy,
you then actually have to have a shared manifesto.
You need to actually have a document.
You need to actually have something
that says, this is what we believe, so follow us
and when you have that, the us versus them,
people will start to pay attention.
Now, there's a specific way to do this,
you can't just craft a manifesto that's blur,
because if you're right in the mainstream,
no one's gonna believe you, no one's gonna follow you
and it just won't work.
You also can't have a manifesto,
an us versus them that's forced,
it's like well, we think that x sucks
and it's like well, everyone loves x,
no one wants to hang out with you.
It has to be thoughtful, it has to be meaningful.
That's why manifestos are so powerful
because it requires you to actually dig deep
into your story, dig deep into why you started this company,
what you believe, what's different
and actually craft that manifesto.
And when you can craft that under an us versus them,
or as Andy Raskin will say,
"An old story versus a new story,"
whatever trick you wanna use
and you wanna codify in your manifesto,
everything becomes a lot more powerful.
Now, before I go to the third one,
let me pause here for a second, you starting to get this?
Now, building a brand today, these days,
isn't about shiny colors, a pretty logo,
it isn't about that perfect name.
Yes, a name is important,
yes, the right domain is important,
but it's not the thing that really moves the needle.
Great brands actually have a really strong person
up front as the leader,
great brands believes in something very specific
and it's almost a little polarizing,
great brands actually get people to follow them
because they also believe the same things
that the leader believes, that the brand then believes.
When you start to get these things right,
you start to build an audience
and when you start to build that audience,
you start to get a mini brand.
Now, the reason a brand got such a bad rep
over the last 10 years
was because it wasn't very measurable.
People used to spend money on a billboard,
they used to spend money on a newspaper ad,
they used to spend money on a pretty pen with a logo on it
but there was no way to actually measure
if that will lead to revenue.
That's why demand generation and outbound
became so powerful because they were measurable.
Well now that there's a new playbook for brand,
now that there's social media,
where you can actually establish your personal brand,
and you can actually publish your manifesto,
and you can start to track
how many people are actually downloading it,
and engaging with it, brand all of a sudden,
is A, very cheap and B, it can actually be measurable.
So I'm gonna go into the third thing that you need to do
to actually build a brand and before I do that,
if you're building out a brand,
if you're building out a go-to-market machine,
if you're trying to build out a moat,
then be sure to follow the link below
at the end of this video, I'll link to it below as well,
I have a 45 minute training
on how to build out an unstoppable
sales and marketing machine.
Brand is one part of it but so is demand generation,
so is outbound and you gotta get it right,
so I have a 45 minute presentation, completely free,
that teaches you how to build an unstoppable sales
and marketing machine, I'll link to it below
but let's keep going.
So once you have your personal brand,
you start to give legitimacy
to the actual new brand you're building,
you're starting to emerge as that leader,
you have this manifesto, an us versus them,
the third thing you have to do,
this is where brand really unlocks
and this is why there's like almost a brand 2.0
is you gotta build a community.
You have to make it possible for all the people,
the audience, that also believes in this manifesto,
that's engaging with this,
to actually connect with each other and that's the thing.
Building a community, building a group of believers
that believe in the same manifesto, the same belief,
the same change that's happening in the world, as you do,
that's when a brand really comes alive.
That's when they'll start to wear the same T-shirts,
with the logo because they believe the same thing
that you do and not only that,
they can come together in a place
and compare notes with each other and share their beliefs
and talk about their best practices.
When you do these three things, a bunch of stuff happens.
The first thing that happens is, everything becomes easier.
It becomes easier to build pipeline,
it becomes easier to close deals,
it becomes easier to actually compete.
On top of that because you have this wild group of followers
and believers that believe in the same thing,
even as the market evolves, they'll stay with you,
there's actually trust and there's loyalty,
and that's what brand brings as well.
Here's the thing, you can follow the old playbook
of go-to-market, of sales and marketing but it doesn't work,
there are some changes that are happening in the world.
The biggest change that's happening
is it's noisier than ever.
It used to be that you could map for SEO
and you could get traffic into a blog post,
but that's harder than ever.
And then with demand gen,
you can actually run ads, you can run ads
but that's becoming more expensive than ever.
And on top of that, the most important thing that's changed,
especially in SaaS, is that it's easier than ever
to start the SaaS business,
which means that you need a moat.
You need a way to protect yourself
from the next competitor that comes and copies you
and the biggest moat that exists today is brand.
That's why I think in the next 10 years,
branding is gonna be the thing
that really redefines marketing, how you build brand,
it's not about just the cool colors and the flashy logos,
but it's about what you believe,
it's about the leader of the brand,
it's about the us versus them, it's about the manifesto,
it's about the community, that's the new brand,
and if you can do that for your startup,
you will build a moat and everything will become easier
in terms of building pipeline and closing deals.
So now you know how to do branding for startups.
Number one, you actually wanna establish your personal brand
to elevate your company brand.
You actually wanna emerge as the leader of that brand.
Number two, you wanna be creating and publishing a manifesto
that says, us versus them, that makes you stand out,
it says what you believe,
what your unique belief in the market is.
And number three, you wanna build a community,
and allow all these people
that believes the same thing that you do
to really connect with each other
and rally around your brand.
Now if you're building out a sales and marketing machine,
brand is just a part of it.
There's demand gen, there's outbound,
there's go-to-market strategy, market strategy,
there's a lot there.
This is why I put together a 45 minute training video
on how to actually build out
an unstoppable sales and marketing machine.
It's completely free, you just have to follow the link below
or you can go to TKKADER.COM/SAAS-TRAINING,
TKKADER.COM/SAAS-TRAINING.
You just go there and you'll be able to actually watch
that 45 minute training on how to build out
an unstoppable sales and marketing machine,
which by the way, includes brand.
If you got value from this video
please smash that like button.
Also I drop a video like this every Sunday
and every Wednesday, to help you build, scale and exit
your SaaS business, so be sure hit that subscribe button
and that bell icon.
Also, if you have a friend,
that's also building a SaaS business,
and they could get value from this, please share this video,
it would mean the world to us.
And lastly remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business
but when you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK and I will see you in the next video.
(upbeat music)