Are you planning to lay out a plan to grow your SaaS company? You might have a plan already, but in the advanced digital world of marketing, you have to be super cautious of the tactics and strategies that you use for your business.
One way to promote your business to the front line, and differentiate your tactics from the rest, is through the process of storytelling.
This article is aiming to assist you in taking your business to a reputed pedestal via storytelling. This strategy has worked out for everybody, and so will it for you.
You won’t just learn the significance of storytelling, but how you can actually benefit from this. You will understand the step-by-step procedure of storytelling and how it will jet-set your brand to its highest potential.
What is Storytelling?
The term says it all. It is your best bet when it comes to website marketing. It is all about narrating stories to your readers.
Storytelling helps people remember things vividly in comparison to simple facts. Plus, stories are more enjoyable and engaging as they tend to stimulate the reader’s brain.
Why is Storytelling Important to SaaS Companies?
It is imperative to SaaS companies because it makes their blog posts more enjoyable and intriguing.
It lures readers in and engages them because stories tend to boost the attention span. Storytelling allows clearer communication and assists you in providing proof for your augmentation. It elevates the level of clarity in their posts.
The readers will remember your story, and it will give them what they are looking for. The message of your brand will be remembered soundly on their minds.
Plus, if you can execute your stories in a good way, you will inspire not just the customers but also future entrepreneurs. This is why storytelling is such an integral part of SaaS companies.
Before You Get into It: You have to remember that stories shouldn’t be entirely about your company, brand, or products.
Yes, you have to mention them to a certain degree, but the stories should wholeheartedly focus on your buyers. The sole purpose of your company creating a product is to meet the capabilities that your buyers lack. It should focus on obtaining the business objectives for achieving a better outcome.
In the words of Tim Soulo, Ahrefs’ CMO – My theory is that people first learn how to use your product. And they sign up because they don’t know how to use your tool.
The best way to summarize Tim’s theory is via Product-led storytelling. It is a form and type of SaaS content marketing that is product-focused.
It consists of crafting helpful stories that are discoverable that show your targeted audiences or customers can overcome obstacles with the help of your product.
There are so many examples out there, but Tim Soulu’s story is definitely one of a kind. The narrative isn’t far-fetched at all.
The techniques he used for brand storytelling and content marketing are unapparelled. The infographic of Ahrefs is all about profitable engagement.
I will narrate how Tim Soulo and his team members use product-led storytelling even up to this day.
This tactic helped Tim and his team garner over 3000+ new users every week, which is absolutely amazing.
It Starts with a Great Product – Just as the name “Product-Led Storytelling” goes, it all begins with an excellent product. This is how Tim started his incredible journey of growth. Great products will always sell for themselves.
Yes, products that are backed by advanced marketing sell out fast. However, great products will always get discovered in some way or the other.
In 2015 when Tim Soulo joined Ahrefs, the first thing he ensured was this – ”Marketing only works if the product is great.” This was his core belief.
In a recent interview of Tim Soulo with Leedfeeder, he admitted that he refrained from doing even a single activity or work that was classified traditionally as “Marketing” during his 1st year in Ahrefs. He refrained from producing any videos, content, or ads. Instead, Tim had gone on to work on the user experience and the product.
The choices and efforts that he made paid off quite well. The product instantly became great, and the audience started to identify with the brand of Ahrefs happily. It was also introduced offline to other users.
How did it happen? Well, a few months after he joined Ahrefs, Tim attended a conference concerning digital marketing. The marketing director of SurveyMonkey’s Int’l initiated a conversation with Tim because he had a branded Ahref T-Shirt on.
Eli Schwartz didn’t just talk to Tim, but he had gone on to introduce Tim and Ahrefs to a lot of important people at the conference. Schwartz started to drop many phrases that praised Ahrefs and regarded it as the best
However, Tim Soulo kept going even after all the success that Ahrefs received. He worked relentlessly on enhancing the user experience of Ahref, even though it was already great. He envisioned something even greater and better. You also have to take note of this as the user experience for your SaaS tool is a vital business-driving factor.
Users will always pay more to garner a better user experience. According to the recent study made by Salesforce, it showed that about 80% of users seriously take the experience of the product into account. So, this goes to ask if Tim’s improvements on the user experience of Ahrefs paying off? Yes! Absolutely.
Promotion and Strategic Creation of Product-Led Stories – Nowadays, SaaS competition is compared to saturated. It is because over 7000 SaaS tools presently yearn for the same market share as you. Yes, you can possess a great product, but a compelling story is required. Your company will soon be functioning in motion.
Ahrefs possess SEO tools such as Helium10, Moz, and SemRush to contend with. They were aware that they couldn’t overcome these beasts, waiting for customers to notify about the SaaS tool to others. They switched to content marketing to elevate their company in its current growth motion that is quite enviable.
However, this wasn’t to create some content pieces randomly. Ahrefs does resort to product-led stories that are quite hardcore. How are they actually doing this? As soon as he brought Ahrefs to the spotlight, he switched his attention.
Tim started creating and promoting stories in a strategic manner for Ahrefs products. The major move here is the fact that he highlighted the problems with each story. This is how he targeted his audience. He displayed how readers can overcome the same situation by utilizing Ahrefs.
The key phrase you have to take note of here is – displaying how readers can overcome the same situation utilizing Ahrefs. This means that every story rotates around the tool.
They had gone all-in to acquire customers with product-led storytelling. This has been incredibly pivotal in generating over 3000+ users every week by Ahrefs. Tim Soulo openly admits this! He revealed this in an interview with Leedfeeder back in 2018.
Ahrefs Most Remarkable User Acquisition Drivers – It is no doubt that they have excellent products. It isn’t always about Ahrefs most notable user acquisition drivers. You are probably wondering what it is then? It is their strategic and outstanding creation, as well as the promotion of these stories regarding the SaaS tool and how it helps in targeting audiences.
It does not matter how great the product is as it cannot generate organic visitors up to 230K every month. Also, it cannot produce YouTube views up to hundreds of thousands every month.
So, what is the driving force that is making it possible? Well, the answer to that question is pretty interesting.
Dmitry, the founder and CEO of Ahrefs, made it all possible by hiring a top-quality SaaS marketer called “Tim Soulo.” Tim set the backbone of product-led storytelling for Ahrefs.
Important Things to Remember
- Creating the base for a B2B (Business-To-Business) story.
- Drafting the story.
- Never losing focus on the protagonist of your brand’s story.
Assessing and Developing the Ideas for the Backstory of your Hero
- Deep insights concerning the challenges of undertaking a newer SaaS product should be shared. How cloud and on-premise deployment is in comparison for responsiveness, scale, product updates, and uptime should be shared as well.
- Content that speaks about the role a team of managed services plays in collaboration with the core group to ensure the infrastructure fully supports developments of new products and customer demands should be produced.
- Understanding the compliance and security measures that can provide to act as a point of sale for his buyers and investors.
- Understanding the model of “Pay for what you use” and how it will help keep margins exactly where they need to be.
- Insights about the future trends of your industry should be shared to be addressed easily with cloud infrastructure as well as its importance for the app and the buyers.
Key Takeaway
Storytelling is the trendiest buzzword in the marketing world of B2B right now. A lot of companies admit that they are doing it. However, most of their stories truly don’t resonate with the audience. Most of the readers spend about 37 seconds reading each one. This isn’t an engagement, but it is more of a drive-by view.
But by following the steps mentioned above, which Tim Soulo also did, you will be on your way to creating a successful brand. The product should always be under check, and the user experience should be under monitoring all the time. Once you follow the growth hacking strategies mentioned above, you will maximize your campaign of products easily.
It’s nothing about a different culture. These strategies will easily work for any brand that is planning to thrive in digital marketing. Your brand’s evolution can be an emotional roller coaster at times, but storytelling will definitely up your game. But you should have an effective product from the get-go to witness the power of storytelling and its benefit.
Storytelling is also associated with neuroscience because it positively affects the brain. You get to tap into your creativity and requires analytic data when you do so. Data visual is always appreciated by the readers. Storytelling is a non-profit idea that is available to everybody in the world of visual marketing. You should definitely look it up by now!
Conclusion
You don’t have to learn digital marketing to start a business online. Website marketing is so much easier with storytelling nowadays. Now that you have completed this post about the use of storytelling to build and grow your SaaS company, we ask you to comment on this post down below for interactive purposes.
storytelling – DepositPhotos
