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The SaaS Brand Strategy Show
By DRMGBusiness
The SaaS Brand Strategy Show episodes
- Ep. 32 - The Trap of Domain Expertise (When Your Focus Ruins Your Focus)
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
24 min - Ep. 31 - Strahl Lightning Strikes to Prove Their Glassware "Unbreakable" | 2022 B2B Cannes Lions Minisode #4
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
24 min - Ep. 30 - Heineken Goes Green(er) with "Unwasted Beer" | 2022 B2B Cannes Lions Minisode #3
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
28 min - Ep. 29 - Spotify's ABM Campaign Targets CMOs with Custom Hits | 2022 B2B Cannes Lions Minisode #2
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
24 min - Ep. 28 - Dole Creates a Category with Piñatex | 2022 B2B Cannes Lions Minisode #1
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
24 min - Ep. 27 - "UnNew Outdoor" - A B2C Category Success Story (with Aaron Provine, President of Geartrade)
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
43 min - Ep. 26 - Punching Up By Selling Different (An Intel Messaging Teardown)
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
35 min - Ep. 25 - How To Socialize Your Strategy (And How Not to...)
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
45 min - Ep. 24 - Which Marketing Role Should A SaaS Hire First?
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.
Send us an email at: [email protected]
Learn more at: drmg.co
43 min - Ep. 23 - Creeping on the Competition (with Russ Somers, CMO of Lytho)
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.
In this week's episode of The SaaS Brand Strategy Show, Lytho CMO Russ Somers joins Dustin and Mike to discuss the pros/cons, risks/rewards, costs and impacts of balanced and unbalanced competitive market awareness. The topic was spurred by Brandi Starr in a CMO Slack channel conversation.
Thanks to Russ for the time and insights.-DRMG
32 min
About The SaaS Brand Strategy Show
From the publisher's feed
As marketing team and agency leaders specializing in B2B and B2C category creation, your co-hosts Dustin Robertson, and Mike Geraci talk all things SaaS. We dive deep into in our software experience…
with brand and business strategy, fundraising with the right story, strategic narratives, the voice of the customer, and anything in service of SaaS business leaders owning the brand that drives demand.