Andrew Gazdecki explains how SaaS brands cut through noise with storytelling and bold positioning. Drift created the "conversational marketing" category by replacing forms with chat. He argues the real competition is for customer attention, not features, and that founders should tell their origin story from day one across every channel.
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Another favorite example of mine is Drift. Their tagline, connect your sales team with your future customers now. And so what Drift did is they noticed a trend. They noticed that, you know, a lot of buyer journeys that, you know, we put people down, they don't want to go down those paths. Like, and the shift that they really identified was marketing funnels are converting to customer journeys. And that category they created was conversational marketing. And the theme they kept reinforcing was conversations. And then they started a movement around no forms. So instead of having to fill out a form, get an ebook, then schedule time to learn about the product, you're just able to instantly get the information you need directly through Really just a chatbot on a company's website. So that's also a play that you can use where you're branding an enemy. You're essentially taking a stance against— Salesforce took a stance against on-premise software, and then Drift took a stance against forms. previous company, Business Apps, going way back up here, we took a stance against big business. We said, you know, why should only big businesses be able to afford the cost of mobile application to connect with their customers? And again, I want to reinforce this slide right here. So this is why just, you know, this sort of branding is so important, because the way I think of competition today is you may have, you know, 3 to 10 direct competitors that kind of do the same thing as you. But really what you're competing for is you're competing for attention. And everyone here is competing for your customer's attention. There's so many solutions, there's so many different, you know, things that help in different ways. And this is the MarTech 5000 from 2017. If you look at the newer one, it's much bigger. So your biggest competitor today for your company is customer attention. And so that's why storytelling can really help you cut through the noise and have people recognize your brand, which gives you air cover over your sales calls. So when you actually talk to prospects, you reach out to them, they've heard your story, they've recognized what you stand for. And I think that's really what powered Salesforce in the early days and then also Drift in the early days and definitely business apps in the early days. So with that being said, brand is really everyone's business. So it's the job of the CEO and the founder to create the brand. It's the job of the marketers to drive the brand and then product CS to deliver the brand and then sales to sell the brand. And then you can interchange brand and storytelling. This is just a presentation that when I think of brand, I think of storytelling as one of the biggest, if not Like 80% of it is storytelling. We got a question here. When a SaaS company should look for brand 1K? So I say brand day one. Like, start— like, if you're just starting a company, And I'm assuming this is, you're asking this like, when should I start thinking about brand? Go on every podcast, tell your story everywhere you possibly can. It is one of the most cost-effective ways to get the word out about your company, get people again rooting for your company, but also understanding, you know, why did you start the company, which I'll get into more. Like, how do you put together a story about your company that really resonates with people? Like, where do you get some ideas of— a good story that will resonate with your prospects. So where to start? So every, every company has a story, and so you just need to identify it. And some 3 questions that you can ask is, where did the idea come from? Like, why did you start the business in the first place? How did it begin? How has it developed? Was there any difficulties that you had to overcome? Is it a problem that you personally experienced? You know, what, what really made this company something that had to exist? And I think that's probably the most powerful aspect is having a, like a purpose-driven story where you felt this company needed to exist so bad that you created it for XYZ reason. And that could be for a number of reasons. Other things to think about when thinking about storytelling is you can tell a story from the perspective of your user— excuse me, users or customers. That was a hard one. So on sales calls, when you're speaking with a prospect, you know, weaving in other customer stories that are very similar. Like, I'll use an example from a company called Spiff, which automates Sales commission calculations. If you haven't heard of them, definitely check them out. I worked with them for a little bit and they're phenomenal. But during our sales calls, you know, we would run into a lot of similar issues. And an example I can think of off the top of my head would be my sales reps don't understand their commission because of XYZ's very specific reason. And we'd be able to say, well, we actually have a customer that had that exact same problem. And let me tell you about that problem. And this is how we solved it. And this was the outcome. And there's, you know, different types of stories that are— excuse me, frameworks that you can use to tell these types of stories. But just even inserting, you know, a real story from another customer similar to the one that you're selling to. Can be huge because you're connecting the dots. You're just saying, hey, I understand, understand your problem so well that we've actually solved it for another customer and it worked out great. And then that really can resonate in a lot of different ways. So I highly recommend that every sales team has like a book of stories, like a book of like— Another really great story that we had at Spiff was And we'd ask prospects this, and it's kind of a funny question to ask, but we'd ask, you know, have you ever, you know, rolled out software to your team and had a standing ovation? And at Spiff, we quite literally had a standing ovation from the sales team when it was rolled out because they finally understood their sales commissions. Other things to think about, is there a Goliath in your industry? Is there a big, like, company that you can call out and kind of create this sort of narrative of, again, David versus— everyone loves to root for David in a David versus Goliath story. I've done that at Business Apps. I've done that at Altcoin. I've done that at MicroAcquire. And the one thing I would say about David versus Goliath stories is you really need to believe it. You can't just make it up and just be like, Yeah, I don't like my biggest competitor because they are expensive or something like that. No, it has to be, you know, there hasn't been any innovation in this. Like, I'm just gonna make one. Does anyone have like a company I can make up a story? That could be kind of fun. I don't know. I'll use MicroAcquire as an example. So I started MicroAcquire because I saw an industry where startups were being ripped off by business brokers charging them up to 15% commission to sell their business, and they had no other options. And I thought that was ridiculous. And so I said, well, what if we just take out the middleman and then we let buyers and sellers communicate directly? And that story really resonated with both buyers and sellers. And so, you know, if you think of a Dunkin' Donuts, I'll do it. Okay, I said Dunkin'. All right, all right, we're doing Dunkin' Donuts. All right, so Dunkin' Donuts. Chaos mode. Okay, this is all right. Dunkin' Donuts, they sell coffee and donuts. Um, what else do you drink in the morning? Um, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a different angle. So if I was starting a new company, I'm competing against Dunkin' Donuts. Like, you shouldn't be eating donuts, uh, every single morning, uh, because you're gonna gain weight and Their coffee is— I don't know, their franchise. This is a really tough one. I don't know if I can get a story out of this one, but I would look at an angle of what customers do not like about Dunkin' Donuts. I'm assuming eating donuts every morning isn't good. And so if you're a consumer brand that has healthier donuts and healthier coffee, That could be a kind of a way to wedge into, you know, Dunkin' Donuts. That's a hard example. And that's probably not a story I'd recommend. But that's the best I got off the top of my head.
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