Breaking down early-stage SaaS marketing | Madhav Bhandari (Storylane)

Early-stage marketing can be full of challenges, but what if there were a playbook to follow? Meet Madhav Bhandari, first marketing hire at Hubstaff and one of the first marketers at Close.io, and Weflow, all of which he helped to cross $10M+ in ARR. He's currently the CMO of Storylane, where he has helped grow their ARR by 250% in 2024 alone. In other words, Madhav has pretty much mastered the art of scaling SaaS companies from $5M to $15M+ ARR. Here's what you'll learn in this episode: (00:00) Intro
 (1:01) Early-stage marketing playbook
 (12:25) Why Madhav only scales to $15M (15:42) The average tenure for a CMO (19:50) The ideal CEO/CMO fit (26:46) Earning your CEO’s trust (36:01) Employee advocacy as a marketing tool (49:10) Easing friction by bringing community together (Demo Days) (56:16) Creativity in community awards (Demo Dundies)(1:05:40) 10xing traffic in 6 months through demo-led SEO( 1:13:36) Hot take on backlinks (1:15:41) Strategies for growing a brand (1:24:08) Defining and codifying a brand (1:31:20) When rebranding makes sense (1:34:18) Founder brand vs company brand (1:40:50) Is testing multiple tactics in a short period of time a good idea? (1:45:17) The best channels for early stage founders (1:47:47) Fixing burnout in marketing (1:52:45) Outro We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ahrefs Podcast! As always, be sure to like and subscribe (and tell a friend). Where to find Madhav: LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhavbhandari/) Website: https://earlystagemarketing.com/ Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/) X: @timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/ ------------------------- Referenced: • Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com • Canva: https://www.canva.com • Notion: https://www.notion.so • HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com • Slack: https://slack.com • Ahrefs: https://ahrefs.com • Hubstaff: https://hubstaff.com • Close: https://close.com • Weflow: https://www.getweflow.com