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