Brendan Hufford

Director of SEO

Exploring how SaaS companies *actually* get customers

Getting results via my 4-part SaaS growth framework is what I do.

Having led and scaled growth teams at two agencies, most of the clients I worked with didn’t want (or need) 6-12 month marketing engagements. I knew there was a better way, so I created this service.

My best clients could be incredibly successful if only they just had a little help guiding them along the path of making sure they had a strong website and were perfectly positioned to rank in Google.

It’s why so many of them double, or even triple leads and MQLs after working together:

📈  +2,750% MQLs for ETL Software company

📈  Launched content marketing campaign that brought in 100k site visitors, 1,000 new backlinks and  $130,000 in monthly traffic value for Cloud Operations software company

📈  Led strategy for a multi-pronged SEO and content marketing campaign for an established software company resulting in +100% website traffic in only 3 months.

Founder

We Help Take SaaS Companies From $10M to $100M ARR. Using our SaaS Growth Sprint Framework, we help Saas companies increase revenue from Google through short, focused marketing sprints.

"Our product is so technical, no one can write for us."

I hear this on at least half my discovery calls. 

And I always ask the same question:

"Can no one do this? Or has no one done it so far?"

Nine times out of ten, they pause.

Because they've hired a bunch of generic content writers who gave them generic content. And now they're convinced the problem is their product complexity.

It's not.

The problem is they hired writers who don't understand the problem they solve.

Here's what's actually happening:

- You're so in love with your product that you think it's completely unique.

- You think because YOU live in the weeds of your data science platform or your DevOps tooling, the market must see it the same way.

The market does not.

I had a client, super smart marketer, genuinely innovative product. 

He kept telling me "we're nothing like [their biggest competitor]."

I'm like, "First of all, your [biggest competitor] has an awareness problem and they're incredible. Second, the market is trying to figure out what problem you solve. And unless somebody's actively thinking 'we have a data science problem,' you're invisible."

There's a huge difference between:

A. A writer who can explain your features

and

B. A writer who understands why those features matter to someone at 2am trying to solve a specific problem

The first one gives you generic content.

The second one gives you content that actually converts.

Stop playing small behind claims of "we're too technical."

Instead, answer this - "Have we hired people who actually understand the problems our buyers are trying to solve?"

⚡️

PS - The companies with the most "technical" products often have the clearest content strategies. 

Because they can't hide behind vague marketing speak. 

They have to get specific about the problem. 

And specific problems attract specific buyers.

SaaS Marketing - Content, AEO & SEO | Newsletter: How SaaS companies *actually* get customers

Content marketing in 2026 has 4 ingredients.
Most teams have all 4, but almost nobody has them working together.

You can do SEO, AEO, social, and newsletters. You can even have a clear point of view.

But if they're running as separate projects with separate calendars and separate goals?

Nothing compounds. It's just activity.

The teams winning right now figured out something simple:

1. Content IP (your language layer)

Out: Jargon. Naming solutions instead of problems. Copying competitor messaging.

In: Pick one problem to solve. Give it a snappy name. Make people say "oh, THAT'S what that's called."

This is the foundation.

2. Discoverability (SEO/AEO)

Out: Checklist-driven. Clicks over intent. Too general, too siloed.

In: Problem-driven. Partnered with sales, success and support (3S content). Content that doubles as sales enablement.

3. Virality (social)

Out: Chasing trends. Rage baiting. Generic ghost-written posts that could belong to anyone.

In: Focused on your audience's actual problems. Making people feel seen. The "I see you at the top of my feed every time I log on" energy.

4. Relatability (newsletter)

Out: Blog distribution. AI rewrites. Treated like an afterthought.

In: Feels human. Conversational. Focused on insights people actually forward to their team.

--

Repetition IS the strategy.

Saying the same thing from different angles across all 4 channels is how ideas stick.

The best content gets discovered. Saved. Shared with teams. Forwarded to a boss.

Because it gives people language and ideas they can reuse.

⚡️

PS - If your SEO team has never talked to your social person, and your newsletter is just "here's what we published this week"... you don't have a content strategy.

My wife looked at me and said, "That's not normal."

I was telling her about a rough stretch in the business. 

She asked if I'd ever just... quit.

And I said no. I'll never quit.

Now listen, I'll humble myself and do literally any job if I have to. 

Family first. 

Also, all work is valid.

But I'm not going to wake up one day and decide *this* is too hard.

That's when she hit me with it.

"That's not normal. Not everybody thinks like that."

And she's right.

If I took a landscaping job tomorrow, within 6 months I'd be:

- Writing down every house I visited. 
- Learning every client's name. 
- Sending follow-up cards nobody asked me to send.
- And quietly planning to run things some day..

I can't turn it off.

Nick and I were laughing about this on a call the other day. He said the same thing — he'd take any job, and his brain would immediately start figuring out how to run the place.

Not everybody’s like that.

But some of you are.

- You sit in on sales calls because you want to hear how customers actually talk
- You read the board deck because you want to understand where the company is headed
- You learn the P&L because you're tired of marketing being treated like a cost center

You're not a specialist. You're not a generalist either.

You're a deep generalist.

You analyze. You synthesize. You make connections across channels and functions that nobody else sees. And then you turn those connections into new skills.

Most people become myopic about one channel. They get religious about SEO or paid or email and stop there.

You can't do that. You need to understand everything.

And thanks to that - if you got laid off tomorrow, you wouldn't panic. 

You'd start reading. Watching. Talking to people. Synthesizing everything you learned into your next move.

That's the deep generalist brain. It never turns off.

You don't have to be crazy to do this work.

But it helps.

⚡️

PS - If you're nodding along, you're one of us. Acquiring skills and taking ownership of things that aren't technically our job. It's what gives deep generalists teeth. 

That's why when people compete against us... they lose.

The winners in SaaS marketing are already playing a new game.

+ Klue
+ Ramp
+ Gusto
+ Lattice
+ Dropbox
+ Sendoso
+ ActiveCampaign

Intuit, Datadog, Cloudflare and Notion, too.

ALL have public interactive product demos.

I’ve been pumped about interactive demos over the past few years because they WORK.

+71% click-through rate (yes, in 2026!
+ Convert 12% better than product videos

oh and...

+450% lift in free trial signups
+100% lift in users reaching activated trial status
+175% lift in users converting to paid customers in that same timeframe

The list gets longer every day.

But now it’s about to get REALLY long.

Navattic just their State of the Interactive Demo 2026.

40,000+ Navattic demos have have been built in the past year.

And they analyzed every single one of them.

In a few years, we'll look back and wonder why it took us all so long to surf the wave with them.

⚡️

PS - If you've got big 2026 goals to hit, this is the move.

Fernando Mendoza might be the best thing to happen to LinkedIn:

1. Wins Heisman Trophy

Adds it to his LinkedIn bio.

2. Undefeated season and win a national championship

Posts  "Here's what winning a National Championship taught me about B2B sales"

💀

But it gets better.

3. Declared for the NFL draft this week

Changes his status to #OpenToWork.

Updated his profile picture with the green banner and everything.

The man is clearly having a GREAT time on here.

And you can tell.

Fun fact: Mendoza deleted every other social media app during the season.

Kept only YouTube and LinkedIn because, in his words, "it's a positive site."

This is the energy I want to see more of.

⚡️

PS - If you're not following Fernando Mendoza on here yet, fix that immediately. 

The man understands the assignment better than most of us.

I've been looking at Search Console data across a dozen different companies lately. They're all seeing the same thing.

I call it the crocodile curve.

Impressions up. Clicks down. A little mouth opening wider every month.

Google is showing your links more than ever. And less people are clicking them.

Most people think this is bad and traffic their job is to get traffic to go back up.

I disagree.

My take: The value of a click just doubled.

If you used to get 1,000 clicks and now you get 500, each of those 500 clicks is worth twice as much. 

The people who DO click actually give a damn.

So why are you still serving them the same generic content you were writing when clicks were cheap?

This is where most companies get it backwards.

Traffic is down, so they panic. 

They pump out MORE content. 
More keywords. 
More volume.

Checkbox marketing at its finest.

But the answer isn't more checkbox content. It's better content for the people who still bother to click.

When someone lands on your blog in 2026, you have about five seconds to prove you're worth their time.

The fastest way to do that? Name the problem they've struggled to articulate.

If the first thing they read is "digital fatigue is higher than ever" or "checkbox marketing is destroying your pipeline" (and they've felt that in their bones for months) you've got them.

They're not skimming anymore. They're reading.

Clicks are the new currency.

And the people who click deserve better than recycled content that could be swapped with your competitor's.

⚡️

PS - If your traffic is down, "how do we get more?" is the wrong question.

"How do we deserve the clicks we get?" is the right one.

I don't think about clients. I think about careers.

Told a client last week, "I get the privilege of helping you, but at the end of the day, you put this work on your resume forever."

This gets your next job. 

Your next promotion. 

Financial stability for your family.

I think about that constantly.

If we do this *right*, this person's ENTIRE career gets easier.

When I'm on a sales call, I'm not just talking about content strategy or pipeline. 

I'm talking to someone whose career is on the line.

They don't hire me for "more" content.

With Chatty G, every company can content volume themselves into oblivion if they want.

I get hired because we need to prove to their CEO that marketing actually works. 

They need wins they can point to. 

Results that follow them to their next role.

I'm competitive. I want to win. But this isn't really about me.

It's about the director of marketing who just got promoted and has six months to show impact before the board meeting.

It's about the VP who left a safe corporate job to bet on a startup and can't afford for this to not work.

It's about the CMO who's four months in seat and needs to show their new team they made the right choice.

These aren't just clients. These are people with mortgages and kids and careers they've spent years building.

So when I say I take this work seriously, I mean it.

Not because I'm trying to close a deal. Because I understand what's actually at stake.

Your content strategy isn't just a marketing initiative.

It's your career. 

It's your life.

⚡️

PS - If you're working with someone who doesn't understand the weight of what they're helping you build, find someone who does.

Invisible content gets approved instantly.
Visible content gets torn apart.

Why does the content nobody reads ship every week, but the newsletter and social posts that could drive $100K in pipeline sit "in review" for three months?

“This is going on social?! I need to scrutinize EVERY WORD” - Your CEO who doesn't know anything about marketing.

Terry from product marketing needs to review the carousel because "is that how we talk about the product?"

Legal wants to weigh in.

And don’t forget about your boss's boss that has "just one small note."

So, the social content sits. The newsletter sits. The stuff that could actually build relationships and drive pipeline just…sits.

While the content nobody reads keeps shipping on schedule.

This isn't a people problem.

It's a visibility problem.

Social and newsletters live somewhere public. They're exposed. Leadership sees them. Customers see them. 

Your CEO's college roommate might see them. (gasp)

The blog is safely tucked away on your website where nobody's watching.

So you keep producing the invisible work that ships easily and avoiding the visible work that actually matters.

And six months later you're wondering why your content isn't driving pipeline.

⚡️

PS - When I ask discovery call prospects "Are you thinking of hiring somebody? Why not keep doing what you've been doing?" this is usually the answer. 

They've been doing SEO for years. It works. But it's not enough anymore. 

In 2026, you need 3 loops:

1. Discovery loops (seo/aeo)
2. Viral loops (social)
3. Relationship loops (newsletter)

But the content that builds real relationships keeps getting killed by committee and they know that needs to change.

Goal: 50k followers (49,930) - SaaS Marketing - Content, AEO & SEO | Newsletter: How SaaS companies *actually* get customers

"I know this is working. I just can't... prove it."

1. The sales team is mentioning content in deal notes. 
2. Prospects are showing up warmer. 
3. The brand is getting recognized at events.

But when it's time for the exec update?

Crickets. Fuzzy charts. Defensive posture.

Newsletter. LinkedIn. AEO. Community. SEO. Influencer. Events.

All of it shows up later.

And "later" doesn't fit in a weekly, monthly, or quarterly dashboard.

So you end up in prove-it purgatory.

You know something is true. And you still have to defend it like a courtroom case.

The gap between impact and proof is the real stressor.

Not the work itself.

The work is actually working. You can feel it. Your team feels it. Your audience definitely feels it.

But feelings don't get budget renewed.

Here's what I've learned:

The work is always hard to measure.

But it's FAR harder when you're checking boxes.

Before they've named the problem they're solving.

Before they've picked the leading and trailing indicators that matter.

Before they've given leadership a story to tell the board.

If you don't build the executive narrative before you scale execution, you'll spend every quarterly review playing defense.

And that's exhausting.

The best marketers I know build the case for the work FIRST.

⚡️

PS - If you're stuck in prove-it purgatory right now, you're not alone. 

The gap between what you know and what you can show is real. 

Trust your gut. 

Then build the narrative to match.

Marketing channels should be about customers.
But they're really about careers.

The budget doesn't go to the channel that might work best.

Especially in big orgs, it goes to the channel that's easiest to explain when it doesn't work.

"We ran Meta ads."

Nobody gets fired for that. It's the safe choice. The explainable choice.

But pitch a newsletter strategy? A LinkedIn play? Something newer that might actually reach your buyers where they are?

Now you're on the hook.

If it works, you're a genius.

If it doesn't? You're the person who wasted budget on something "unproven."

So what happens?

Conservative budgets win.

Newer channels get scrutinized to death.

And mediocre-but-defensible beats promising-but-risky every single time.

The problem isn't that marketers don't know what might work better.

You do!

The problem, especially for new leaders, is the org punishes them for being wrong about anything that wasn't already approved by consensus.

This is why so many marketing strategies look identical across competitors.

Because they're safe for the marketer.

The customer comes in second to safety.

And until that changes, we'll keep funding the explainable over the effective.

⚡️

PS - If you've ever killed a promising idea because you couldn't defend it in a meeting (to non-marketers, of course), you already know this is true.

Most channel decisions are career decisions.

Helping non-tech businesses build software products in 8-12 weeks | DM me your app ideas | Owner - Ionio |

Hi, I'm Rohan! I run Ionio — a strategic AI consultancy for Retail & Ecom SaaS. We help mid-market platforms ($5M-100M ARR) build AI features that reduce churn, justify premium pricing, and turn their product into something merchants can't live without.

Over the past 5 years, we built 40+ products and helped founders go from zero to seven figures multiple times. Same playbook, over and over: take an idea, ship it fast, make it work, scale it.

After doing that tens of times, we wanted to take everything we learned and bring that energy to companies at the next stage. That's how we ended up focused on mid-market Retail & Ecom SaaS.

I'm genuinely passionate about this space. Generative AI lets us do something that was never possible before: personalize every single customer interaction. Not segments. Not cohorts. Actual one-on-one conversations at scale. Retail and ecom is where that has the biggest impact.

I've been working in AI since 2016 — back when that meant computer vision, not ChatGPT. Smart cameras, facial recognition, number plate recognition. That foundation matters when you're building production systems that actually need to work.

Previously: From 18 to 20, Sr. Software Engineer at SmartCow (Deep Tech AI company in Malta). At 17, Python work for a Mumbai startup, who are YET to pay me. At 15, building websites and apps for family friends in Java. It's been over a decade.

I started Ionio as a college junior, from my parent's bedroom, while hiring someone to do my assignments & a chauffeur to take me to college. Now it's a little less grunge than that.

In another life: rapper, musician, and cinematographer. Now I just build AI for retail... :(

What our clients say:

"Working with Ionio felt like having an extension of my own team — professionals who genuinely cared about delivering results, not just collecting a check."
— Stefan Georgi, Founder, 9-figure ecom founder

"Fastest I've ever launched a polished product. From wireframes to +1000 paying users in <8 weeks."
— Brad Milne, CTO, SupplierHQ

"Ionio has the character to navigate challenges and the technical depth to turn our 'AI-first' vision into reality."
— Sallyann Della Casa, CEO, Gleac

Read 35+ case studies on our site.

I post about: AI strategy for retail, technical deep dives, and behind-the-scenes of building Ionio.

If you're leading product, engineering, or strategy at a Retail & Ecom SaaS company, or a founder in any space — DM me, I always reply. If you're in Mumbai, I'll buy you a coffee.

Rohan Sawant

The $100K truth about enterprise SAAS that everyone forgets!

Last year, I helped a nine-figure retail brand evaluate data analytics platforms, they wanted to understand & visualize an frontend A/B test. 

Standard buying process—shortlist vendors, book demos, compare features. 

Here's what actually happened: I joined every call as their technical advisor. 

Not to hear the AE's pitch. To strip it down. 

To see what the product actually did versus what the marketing claimed it did. 

Got a list of 5-6 platforms from Chatgpt. Booked calls. 

Removed all their positioning, all their messaging, all their sales theater. Just laid the core products side by side. 

Made the decision based on capability, differentiation, ROI & cost. That's it. This is the actual buying journey for most of SaaS right now. 

In most sophisticated markets. 

And this experience crystallized something I've been seeing across dozens of conversations with SaaS companies over the past few weeks: 

All the marketing gimmicks, all the positioning frameworks, all the clever messaging—they work exactly once. 

They get you shortlisted in the discovery phase. But when an enterprise buyer is actually deploying a $100K budget? 

None of that matters anymore. 

What matters is: 
1. Does your product actually do what you claim? 🤔 
2. How differentiated is the core capability? ⚡
3. What's the measurable ROI? 💰

The mid-market knows this. Enterprise buyers definitely know this. 

Yet somehow, SaaS companies keep optimizing for discovery metrics instead of decision metrics. 

As we move into AI-native products, this gap is going to become even more obvious. 

Because AI products are easier to test, easier to compare, and harder to hide behind marketing. 

The companies that win won't be the ones with the best positioning decks. 

They'll be the ones that built something meaningfully better. 

For companies wondering how their products stack up in an AI-native future (esp. ones who just rolled their eyes at that) you should definitely drop me a DM, saying "AI"

CEO & Founder | AI, LLM & NLP Consulting | Training, Deploying & Scaling GenAI Applications

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