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/
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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
