You built a great product.

You solved a real problem.

You thought, “If I just get this in front of the right people, it’ll take off.”

But instead… nothing.

You're trying things! A LinkedIn post here, a cold email there, you got your landing page up - but nothing is working and you're wondering what gives.

What's happening is that you don't have a concrete approach for how to handle marketing - and SOP if you will! - and marketing does NOT work with one-offs.

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That's why I wrote this blog post.
Here's exactly what to focus on in marketing to build a marketing foundation that works now and scales later in your first 30 days. And what you can safely ignore.

Why You Feel Like You Suck at Marketing

Most SaaS founders feel lost for three main reasons:

1. You’re great at product, not promotion.
2. Your brain is wired for building, debugging, and shipping features. Marketing feels imprecise compared to code.
3. You’ve been fed “growth hacks” without context.
4. Every time you scroll LinkedIn or Twitter, someone’s promising a magic tactic. But without the underlying strategy, those tactics are like bolting a spoiler on a car with no engine.
5. You’re comparing yourself to companies with entire teams. Figma? Notion? They have millions of dollars to spend on brains and ads.
6. That slick brand? Ten people worked on it for months. That big launch? Funded by a marketing budget bigger than your ARR.
7. Nobody told you what the first step actually is.
8. When you Google “SaaS marketing,” you get 500-step guides. Or you’re told to “do everything at once”: SEO, ads, events, partnerships, email.

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The analysis paralysis leaves you like the blinking guy meme.

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The Problem with the Typical Approach

It’s not that you’re bad at marketing. You’re just bad at guessing which piece to do first.

And in early-stage SaaS, guessing is expensive, and usually leads you to merk your marketing in one of these three ways:

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• You jump for a "fix it tool" . A friend says “You need HubSpot” and the moment you open it you regret paying for that annual plan
• You mix up "doing things" with "this will lead to deals" Posting daily on LinkedIn feels productive — until you realize none of those posts actually lead prospects toward becoming customers.
• You start with execution before strategy, research, or planning. You hear “Content marketing works” and start a blog… before you’ve nailed your positioning or figured out what your audience actually searches for and what format to answer their questions in.

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Cease and desist! Here's my 5-step framework for making sure your foundations are in place in the first 30 days. I call them marketing "bricks"

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The Foundations First Framework

1. Customer Research

Definition: Talking to real or potential customers to understand their problems, language, and buying triggers.

Why it matters: Understanding why is voice of the customer important is crucial. If you don’t know what is voice of customer feedback vs. internal team assumptions, or how to collect voice of customer insights, you’ll waste months guessing.

Learn how to do customer discovery:

• Interview 5–10 people in your target audience using a structured user interview template or user research interview template.
• Ask open-ended questions: “What’s the hardest part about [problem]?”
• Listen for exact phrases — these will fuel your copy later.
• Summarize patterns: pains, goals, and decision drivers.

📎 Internal link: [How to Do Customer Research for SaaS]

📎 Internal link: [B2B SaaS Messaging Matrix]

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2. Positioning & Messaging

Definition: Positioning is deciding where your product fits in the market and why someone should choose it over alternatives. Messaging is how you communicate that in plain English.

Why it matters: Without clear positioning, you sound generic — and generic doesn’t sell.

How to do it:

• Fill in the blanks: We help [who] solve [what problem] by [how you solve it better/differently].
• Avoid feature lists. Lead with benefits and outcomes.
• Use the words your customers used in research.

📎 Internal link: [What Is Positioning?]

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3. Brand Voice

Definition: The consistent tone, style, and personality in your copy.

Why it matters: It’s what makes your brand feel human — even if you’re a team of one.

How to do it:

• Decide: Are you formal or casual? Playful or serious?
• Keep it consistent across your site, emails, and posts.
• Think of it as “how you’d explain your product to a friend.”

📎 Internal link: [How to Define Your Brand Personality]

internal link: how to use ChatGPT to build an unignoreable visual brand (featuring Sarah Hart)

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4. Simple Website That Converts

Definition: A lean, clear site that helps a visitor understand what you do, why it matters, and what to do next.

Why it matters: In B2B SaaS, your website is often the first salesperson.

How to do it:

• Above the fold: Who you help, the problem, and your solution — in one clear sentence.
• One primary call-to-action (e.g., “Start Free Trial”).
• Social proof: testimonials, logos, quick metrics.
• Avoid the “feature dump” — instead, focus on value.

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5. Analytics & CRM

Definition:

• Analytics: Tracking what people do on your site.
• CRM: Customer Relationship Management — tracking leads and conversations.

Why it matters: Without tracking, you can’t tell what’s working. Without follow-up, warm leads go cold.

How to do it:

• Use simple analytics tools: Google Analytics, Plausible, or Fathom.
• Choose a CRM that’s lean, affordable, and easy to use for a founder-led team.

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Recommended CRMs for small SaaS startups:

CRM's are never fun but there are several that are functional.

Here's a running table of ones that work well for small SaaS startups, including price, key features, and best use cases.

(You'll notice Hubspot is NOT on the list - I cannot NOT recommend it enough if you're small and on a budget!)

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Bento is my current favorite! And it's built by an indie dev and is bootstrapped to boot!

For product data, use PostHog. They're the cheapest option and equally delightful to use as Bento! (And yes, you can integrate the two of them with Webhooks.)

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Track only the essentials at first: visits, conversions, trial sign-ups. Make follow-up part of your weekly habit.

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Your First 30 Days

You don’t need a year-long plan. You need four focused weeks.

Week 1 — Customer Research

• Understand what is customer discovery and schedule 5–10 interviews.
• Summarize findings into a simple “customer profile.”

Week 2 — Positioning & Messaging

• Draft your positioning statement.
• Write a one-page messaging guide with key phrases. (Yes, we have a template for you!)

Week 3 — Website Basics

• Create or update your homepage with clear headline, CTA, and social proof.
• Skip the blog for now. You can do that

Week 4 — Analytics & CRM

• Install analytics.
• Set up a basic CRM and log every lead.
• Commit to weekly check-ins on both.

📎 Internal link: [The First 30 Days of SaaS Marketing]

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Encouragement + CTA

If you’ve felt behind, remember this:

Most “overnight success” SaaS stories had 6–12 months (or more!) of quiet foundation work before anything took off.

You don’t have to do everything at once. You just need to put the bricks in the right order. Once the foundation is set, every marketing experiment you try and blog post you write will compound.

If you want a step-by-step plan (with examples and templates), start here: [Start Here].

And if you’d rather have someone else handle this, I can do it for you.

Let’s talk.