- One thing that I love, more than actually writing code,
more than closing deals, more than shipping code,
more than delivering value to customers,
more than any of those, more than creating these videos,
which I do love doing, more than any of those things,
the one thing that I absolutely love doing is marketing.
It took me a while to really figure out that
the one thing that I'm super passionate about is marketing.
Maybe it was from working at Marketo as SVP of strategy
and being inside of a marketing company.
Or it was while I was taking ToutApp
from zero to seven million AR,
including an actual mini brand,
a mini brand around ToutApp at seven million AR
where people wanted to pay us
to wear our I close deals t-shirts.
I think that somewhere along those lines,
I finally realized I absolutely love marketing.
Now, on this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
my three strategies on how to do marketing right
for your SaaS company.
But before I jump into that,
I have this qualm with marketing, and let me explain.
The problem I have with marketing is people oversimplify it.
When you think about marketing,
these are some of my most favorite books around marketing.
By the way, this is some of my favorite people from Tout.
You think about marketing, you think oh, marketing,
but when you really break it down,
I've got books here on actually writing ad copy,
I've got books on copywriting, I've got books on brand,
I've got Primal Branding's one of
the best books about brand.
There's this classic book,
The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding.
I have another book somewhere over here,
maybe it's here or it's somewhere over,
well there's another book called
The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing,
and I really don't know where that is right now,
maybe it's somewhere over here.
Crossing The Chasm, that's a really good one.
So you get the picture.
Marketing is just not this one thing,
it's this very broad body of knowledge.
And maybe that's why I like it so much
because there's just so much to it, right?
So on this episode I'm not gonna try
and do marketing disservice by just dumbing it down,
but what I will do is give you
the three principles that matter the most.
Out of studying all those books
and practicing marketing and helping build brands,
I'm gonna give you the three things that you can adopt
by the end of this video so that you can actually transform
your marketing in your SaaS business,
and use it as a strategic advantage for growth.
Intro. (powerful music)
(beep) What's up everybody?
Welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK, author of the book
How To Punch The Sunday Jitters In The Face,
entrepreneur, and I also run the Unstoppable Legion
where I help startup founders with an unstoppable mindset
and an unstoppable growth strategy.
On this channel, I bring an episode every single Sunday
to help you actually grow your SaaS business,
and also lead an incredible life while you're doing that.
So if you're into that, be sure to hit
that subscribe button and that bell icon.
(bell dings) So that you get notified
every single time I drop an episode.
Now, I've said this before and I'll say it again,
and I even made t-shirts for this
which I'm not wearing today, and also don't get freaked out
that I'm wearing a button down shirt,
I just have a really important meeting after this,
so I need to dress up, sometimes I dress up,
just, it's not a big deal.
One of the things I always say on this channel,
as a startup founder, you really have these two levers,
you're either shipping code or you're closing deals,
ship code, close deals, ship code, close deals.
Those are the only two things that matter.
Now here's the thing, when you actually nail marketing,
when you get marketing just right,
shipping code and closing deals
becomes easier for everyone in the company
because you'll start to have a mini brand,
because you'll start to actually
get noticed more in the marketplace,
because you'll get into more customer conversations,
shipping code becomes easier because customers
will find you and tell you what they want,
and closing deals becomes easier
because you're in more deals
because they'll always think of you in your space.
So when you nail marketing, when you really get it right,
it pays out dividends for everyone else involved
in the company, everyone's job becomes easier.
And that's probably why as an engineer, I love marketing,
because marketing is truly a leverage point
that you can use to make everything rise up.
And so on this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles that I have around marketing
that I've picked up from years of actually practicing this,
implementing this, learning from others,
I'm gonna break it down for you into three simple strategies
that you can start to follow,
especially if you're building out a SaaS business
in the early stage where budget is limited.
So if you're excited to dig in,
smash that button and let's get started.
Now, before I go into the three strategies
which I have for you here,
I wanna first give you my favorite definition of marketing.
I tried to google this, I couldn't figure out
who exactly said it, but if you know who it is,
put it in the comments below.
But great marketing is when more people
know about you today than yesterday.
Isn't that awesome?
Great marketing is when more people
know about you today than yesterday.
That's it, that's all that matters.
As more people know about you,
then they're going to take action,
they're going to actually enter into customer conversations,
that's gonna make shipping code
and closing deals a lot easier.
So that's the definition, it's as simple as that.
How do you actually do it?
So I have three of these strategies for you
that after researching brand marketing,
researching demand gen marketing,
researching copywriting, researching ad copy,
after doing all those things
in multiple roles that I've been in
and multiple companies that I've been part of,
here are my three strategies.
When I look at SaaS businesses out there,
there's a big mistake that I see,
this is where my strategy number one comes in.
Great marketing is specific, polarizing and consistent.
Specific, polarizing and consistent, let me break that down.
It's very specific, I see a lot of websites where I go to,
and actually this is one of my most favorite things.
When I get on calls with startup founders
because they wanna join the Unstoppable Legion,
and I'm like, on the Zoom call I'll be like
hey, I'm checking out your website.
99% of the time the startup founder's like
oh, we're redoing it.
And the reason they're always so self-conscious
about their website is because they're hedging,
they're not being specific enough,
they're not being polarizing enough,
and also they're not being consistent,
they're constantly changing the website.
And look, I get it, you wanna iterate in the early stages,
but if you're marketing copy, if you're a home page,
if the way you describe your company is not specific,
if it's not polarizing, and if it's not consistent,
then you will not start to build out
a marketing machine for your brand.
And the way you start to do that
is you start to take a position.
You start to get very specific about who you're talking to.
You start to actually take a polarizing position,
because it's a noisy world out there.
When you actually start to say you know what?
We're gonna make a very, very unique point of view
and we're gonna take that stance
and we're gonna go into the market with that
and we're gonna own it, and you're gonna consistently do it
over and over and over and over and over again.
And once you nail these three things,
everything becomes a lot easier.
How do you start with something like this?
Well I did an entire video on how to create
an ideal customer profile.
You can check that out here, or here,
and I'll also link to it below.
You don't have to leave this video yet,
I'll link to it below.
But in that ideal customer profile view,
I actually teach you how to
actually craft a message that's very specific,
that can be polarizing but doesn't make it
sound like you're crazy,
and you can deliver in a consistent way.
I have another video on that,
I'll tell you about that in a second.
But as soon as you start to get specific and polarizing,
people will start to notice,
they'll enter into customer conversations,
and that's just the first step in really making sure
that you're shipping code and closing deals.
The second strategy that I have
is you gotta talk about the thing about the thing.
Let me explain.
Most marketers, or most startup founders
that are putting on the marketing hat,
and I made the same mistake when I was starting ToutApp.
I would talk about the thing,
the thing being my SaaS product.
I would say well, we did email tracking and templates
and analytics for salespeople,
and it wasn't even that specific, it was like well,
if you use email, you're probably an email user,
we help you actually be a lot more effective with email.
That means nothing, it means nothing,
it's not specific, it's not polarizing,
and it's definitely not consistent
'cause I kept changing it.
Once we defined our ideal customer profile,
we said it was for salespeople.
Then we started to really understand
what is the thing about the thing?
And when you think about it,
you always can put your thing into a sentence.
For any customer that's happy with your product,
they can say I use the thing,
which is your software, so that I can blank.
Figure out what that blank is.
We realized at a certain point with ToutApp
it was salespeople first of all,
that was our ideal customer profile,
but more importantly, they used ToutApp
so they could get pipeline.
And when they got pipeline, they could go close deals.
Pipeline and closing deals was the result
that our software delivered.
It was the thing about the thing.
Figure out what your thing about the thing is,
and talk about that, get specific about that,
have a polarizing view on that,
get consistent about talking about that.
Talk about the thing about the thing instead of the thing,
and everything becomes easier.
You wanna know why?
The reason is if I come to you and I say you know what?
Hey Joe, or hey Nancy,
whoever you may be on this other side,
did you know that marketing is really hard?
We help you do marketing better in your startup,
we help you figure out a go-to market strategy.
And by the way, being a startup founder,
really is, it takes a mental toll,
and in order to do marketing right and sales right,
we help you get your mindset right too.
You'd be kinda interested right?
But if I come in and say did you know
that only 4% of startups graduate
from the seed stage to the series A stage?
That means the mortality of startups is 96%.
That's funded startups, not some Joe Schmo startup.
So imagine what it's like for a bootstrap startup?
It's probably even lower.
One of the biggest things you can do
to actually change that metric,
to actually be part of that 4%
is increase the number of customer conversations.
When you increase the number of customer conversations,
you can ship code and close deals
and be a lot more effective.
Are you interested in talking more
if we can help you with that?
Just think about how different that is.
I'm talking about the thing about the thing,
I'm not talking about what features my product has,
I'm not talking about what aspects
of the program you're gonna go through,
I'm just talking about what the result's gonna be,
and what you're gonna accomplish and some macro trends
that really are gonna make the difference for you.
So don't talk about the thing, your software,
and I know you're excited about the software,
I get excited about it too, I'm an engineer,
talk about the thing about the thing in your marketing.
When you talk about the thing about the thing,
and you get specific and you get polarizing about it
and you get consistent about it,
then more people will start to know about you
today than yesterday, and even more tomorrow.
Now, the third one, but before I jump into the third one,
what do you think about this?
Can I just get a yes in the comments below
if you're starting to get this?
And I also wanna hear from you.
What startup are you working on,
also tell me who do you think
is crushing the marketing game today?
You can't say Drift, everyone knows Drift is crushing it,
and you can't say Privy 'cause DJ's now at Privy,
but who else in the SaaS game do you think
is just crushing marketing and doing exceptionally well?
I wanna hear from you below, so hit me up on that.
With that said, let's go into number three.
Number three is don't sell an improvement,
but sell a transformation.
Don't sell an improvement, sell a transformation.
I see a lot of ads on Twitter,
I get targeted by SaaS companies all the time,
I don't know why, but they're always like
X is just not good enough, or Slack is not enough,
or here's a better way to do X, Y and Z,
and it's just like, it's just an incremental improvement.
Here's the thing, when you are talking to me
about an improvement, I'm already thinking man,
that's a lot of work, I've gotta do yet another thing
and I'm already invested on this other thing,
and they're the leader, and I gotta do this,
it sounds like a lot more work
and you're now talking about the thing,
and not the thing about the thing,
and it's related to the thing I'm already using,
I just get confused and I get turned off.
And I see a lot of SaaS businesses not going big enough
and not really saying here is our big position
in the market, here's a big point of view,
here's how we're gonna change how you do things,
here's how we're wildly different
and you need to get super specific
and you actually like really push for it.
You kind of play small, and you try and hedge all your bets,
and that's where SaaS businesses really go wrong.
That's where you're starting to position your thing,
first of all, you're talking about the thing,
and not the thing about the thing,
and really, you're still talking about an improvement.
X is not enough, or it's like Y, but better.
It's like, well who cares?
I'm pretty good over here.
But when you start to position
more as a transformation, everything changes.
When you start to say you know what?
In order to actually grow your startup,
here are the things that you do, you get a blog,
you do blog posts, you do SEO, you run ads,
you do this, this, this and this.
And 96% of them still fail.
Here's a whole different way to think about go-to marketing,
here's a whole different way to do the marketing.
All of a sudden, you're talking about a transformation.
We did this at ToutApp, and ToutApp,
we were like look, it takes seven touches
to turn a lead to an opportunity.
How many of your reps do you think
are actually doing those seven touches?
We have a whole system that actually
systemizes those seven touches,
does some of them automatically, and the rest of them
the rep can actually engage on their own.
Are you interested?
That was a transformation instead of an improvement.
I wasn't trying to say look,
we can improve your sales productivity.
We tried that, it didn't work very well,
they didn't go very far, but as soon as we started
talking about the thing about the thing, pipeline,
as soon as we started to sell a transformation,
everything started to change.
So think about what you're marketing
and ask yourself are you being specific?
So let's go through these, let's recap, right?
Number one, are you being specific?
Are you being polarizing?
And are you doing it consistently?
Number two, are you actually talking about
the thing about the thing, or are you just stuck talking
about the thing 'cause you care about it?
The customer doesn't care.
You gotta talk about the thing about the thing.
And then finally, when you think about your messaging,
are you pitching it as a slight improvement
over the current thing
and you're talking about your competitor?
Or are you talking about a transformation, a new way?
Are you positioning yourself as being the fastest,
or the cheapest, or the quickest,
or the best, or the most premium?
And more importantly, are you actually
pitching a mindset shift?
When you actually pitch a mindset shift,
a different way to think about it,
a new opportunity, everything starts to change.
And the most successful companies you could ever think of
came into it with a mindset shift.
If you can get your customers
to actually change their mind
on how they think about something,
they'll trust you forever, and they'll be with you forever,
and they'll buy from you, and they'll be interested
even if they're with a competitor right now.
So in summary, great marketing is when
more people know about you today than yesterday,
and my three strategies, going through them
really quick again, be specific, polarizing, consistent,
and actually do a transformation instead of an improvement,
and talk about the thing about the thing, not the thing.
By the way, if you wanna dig more
into how to exactly do this,
I created an entire guide around this,
it's called The Unstoppable Guide To Product Market Fit,
I'll link to it below, it's completely free,
and you can download that.
I also run My Unstoppable Legion,
My Unstoppable Legion is a program
that helps startup founders do two things.
Number one, we actually help transform your mindset
so that you can approach these things.
A lot of the founders I work with are technical founders,
just like me, I have a computer science degree,
I had to learn this stuff,
that's why I have so many books on it,
I had to shift my mindset to actually adopt
the growth that I needed in my life
so I could grow my startup.
The second thing we do is we actually
help you implement these things,
these ideas around an unstoppable funnel,
which is a different way to approach sales and marketing.
So if you're interested in that,
the details are in the guide,
so download the guide, we'll go into the details
on exactly how this whole thing works
and how to actually build an unstoppable funnel,
and if you wanna work closely together,
the details are in there to apply as well.
In my next episode, I'm gonna take these three strategies
and apply to a real SaaS business, and talk through
exactly how it would apply in a concrete way.
So I'm sure you'll be interested in that
if you're watching this vlog, so make sure you're subscribed
and that bell icon is turned on.
(bell dings) So you get notified
when I drop that episode next Sunday.
Lastly, if you got value from this video,
it would mean the world to me and my team
if you smash that like button, it really would,
that's how we know that what we're doing matters
and is helping people, also comment below,
let me know who you are,
I wanna connect more with all of you.
And if you're part of a Slack group, a mailing list,
an internal collaboration thing with other startup founders,
do share this video, sharing is caring,
and it'll also show that you're hooked into
the best strategies that are out there on SaaS.
Lastly, I just wanna thank you for joining today
on this Unstoppable Sunday video.
I absolutely am having a blast with these,
and I've been having a blast even more,
I've done nearly 100 of these videos,
and you can start to see that shift,
I'm starting to get more DMs, more emails,
more messages, and just more subscribers,
and it's just honestly so rewarding,
so I want you to know that I appreciate you
for being part of this community.
And 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 next Sunday.
(uplifting music)
(beep)