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/

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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