Own the brand that drives demand

Category Strategy for B2B SaaS

Every category has one brand that the rest try to emulate. It's not necessarily the first to market, but it's usually the best. It’s clear, consistent, often creative, and always confident in how it tells and sells its story. That's not an accident.

"PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION IS GOING AWAY, ACT ACCORDINGLY."

—David Cancel, Entrepreneur (via Mike Troiano, G3 Ventures)

It has never been easier to start a new company. Critical elements such as data, storage, processing power, talent, AI, and capital are more accessible, more affordable, and more scalable than ever.

This global appetite for new tech solutions means that your latest disruptive idea will quickly have competition and ultimately pricing pressures.

When competition hits, most companies double down on product and sales initiatives. That leads to product feature creep, and sales teams selling harder and harder on me-too features with incremental benefits. Leadership sets out in search of some secret sauce to help them differentiate, and the marketing team gets slammed trying to keep up with everyone else's asap requests.

That's not fun or sustainable.

SO WHAT DOES "ACT ACCORDINGLY" MEAN?

  • It means B2B marketing-as-usual is no longer enough.
  • That it's time to inspire before you explain; serve before you sell.
  • That it's time to define the big change in the world and the specific problem you solve.
  • And that it's time to align and activate your team around that insight, so that they have a clear, compelling, and consistent story to tell and sell.

Without a strategic understanding and an ability to establish a larger context for the company–both as a north star to the entire team and to the market at large–you’ll put your teams on the hamster wheel from hell, constantly chasing trends, competitor moves, and investor whims, instead of proactively building a long-term, defendable brand strategy.

"Dustin and Mike helped us distill a complex business idea into a clear and concise story that resonated with our target market. They captured the power of our platform and highlighted the problem it solves for our customers in a compelling manner."
—Joe Garafalo, Mosaic co-founder on their raise of $18.5M in Series A

Who benefits from DRMG?

Early-stage companies with product market fit but not message market fit.
Service-focused companies transitioning to software-focused strategy.
PLG go-to-market companies without a story to tell and sell.
Leadership teams attempting the DIY approach to category design.
Fast growing teams that need alignment on the business opportunity.
Companies initiating upmarket or downmarket strategies.
Companies in need of an ownable, defensible, and scalable position in the market.

category STRATEGY FOR A PRODUCT MARKETING WORLD

"If you've invented something new but you haven't invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business—no matter how good the product." - Peter Thiel, Zero to One.

In an age when business buyers do not contact suppliers directly until 57 percent of the purchase process is complete, your marketing has a lot of work to do to differentiate your business.

Conventional demand-gen models of marketing chase the same SEO strategy and cohorts as the competition. In doing so, they fail to create a strong perception and position in the market.

As the effectiveness of demand-gen and digital direct marketing tactics decreases and costs increase, smart companies realize the need to build a brand to drive demand. They just don't know where to start.

DRMG's SaaS Brand Strategy system provides the framework, toolkit, and playbook to help companies think and plan differently about their place in the market and the world.

It adapts timeless and tested consumer marketing concepts and strategies specifically for SaaS businesses realities.

The system aligns marketing, sales, and product teams around the problem you're solving, and establishes a clear go-to-market strategy for the entire organization.

DRMG builds breakout brands that define entire categories, through our RISE process.

From Seed and Series A to pre-IPO, DRMG has worked with them all.

Kimoby
Business Instant Messaging - A real-time, digital message and marketing system built for the now economy.
LumenAd
Advertising Intelligence platform to sync the data and discipline of media mayhem.
Mosaic
Positioned for the modern era of finance with the world's first Strategic Finance platform.
PFL
A new Hybrid Experience (HX) for our new attention economy.
PWR Lab
Developed Lived Experience (LX) data approach to wearables and digital sensors.
Telesign
Security and identification intelligence for the world's largest internet businesses.

THE DRMG RISE PROCESS

Companies stuck in the closed loop of differentiation frustration need to get out of the weeds. Our RISE process takes teams from confusion and commodity to category, clarity, and conviction in eight weeks.

Research

DISCOVERY AND DIAGNOSIS

There's a subtle but profound difference between what your business or product does, and what your customer can do with your business or product.

  • Qualitative stakeholder interviews
  • Qualitative customer interviews
  • Competitive analysis
  • Customer insights
  • Collaborative discovery workshop

Insights

CATEGORY AND POSITIONING

Our research is applied to define your distinct point of view on the world and the market, key points of differentiation, and the space you own in the market.  

  • Identify the Big Change in the World.
  • The Problem We Solve
  • Key Competitive Insight (KCI)
  • Position platform
  • Category name

Story

BRAND AND WORDWORK

Complex products require clear and compelling narratives to inspire and illuminate the big change in the world and how you solve for that.

  • Brand themes
  • Messaging
  • Strategy story
  • Manifestos

Execution

GO-TO-MARKET ACTIVATION

How do you ensure the entire team understands and appreciates the opportunity and strategy, and their roles and responsibilities in it?  

  • Collaborative plan of action
  • Day in life
  • Competitive landscape
  • Internal launch
  • Ongoing consultation

Team

More than 50-years of C-level expertise in consumer and B2B brand strategy injected into your team.

Dustin Robertson, Partner

Dustin has more than two decades of experience in B2C ecommerce and B2B SaaS, focused on leveraging digital strategies to create winning brands. Highlights include building Backountry.com, turning around Vegas.com for a successful exit, and subsequently moving into SaaS as CMO to build the ecommerce CRM (ECRM) category at Drip, and President to launch Data Navigation at Grow.com, as well as co-founder of Caddis, a D2C eye appliance brand, and board advisor to other companies.

Mike Geraci, Partner

20+ years of experience leading more than 50 brands in SaaS, Tech, Outdoor, Travel/Tourism, Conservation, and Finance through category, positioning, and creative strategy. Mike started as freelance writer, reporter, and TV producer before applying those media skills to PR, then Creative Director and Chief Strategic Officer and partner at creative agencies. Mike lives, works, and does market research in Jackson, Wyoming,

CATEGORY STRATEGY STARTS HERE

Schedule an in-person clinic on DRMG's Category Strategy.
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