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.

Pentest-Tools.com

Get a hacker's perspective on your web apps, network, and cloud.

Senior Product Marketing Manager

The Matchmakers

Independent Consultant

Beyond.A world

A monthly newsletter of my and your thirst for knowledge. From product to content, from media to visual studies, from literature to philosophy.

Creator 

📌 Leading the content strategy
📌 Voice of the customer and editor-in-chief of the product’s voice
📌 Product marketing ecosystem & framework ownership across the organisation — cross-functional collaboration with Product, Engineering, Customer Success, and Business Development
📌 User interviews and case study development 
📌 Owner of paid, organic, and earned strategy and ecosystem for all content marketing efforts
📌 Style guide design, ensuring brand & product voice consistency across the journey 
📌 Creating and managing a distributed freelance team of writers, editors, designers, and a developer to scale product-led content across touchpoints and formats (website, customer stories, sales enablement, etc.)

*Highlights*
📌 Spearheaded the development of a demo account for sales enablement purposes
📌 DX as LinkedIn top voice in the #cinematech  industry
📌 Put in place problem-solution framework for product-led materials with insights from competitive research and user research

Content Lead & Product Marketer

SEOmonitor

📌 Leading the content & community strategy + team
📌 Editor-in-chief for the voice of the product
📌 User interviews advocate and facilitator

*Highlights*
📌 Created content and copywriting guidelines and scaled feature-benefits product pages resulting in +30 product and feature pages delivered in less than two quarters.
📌 Initiated and led a user interview process resulting in +30 interviews conducted, boosting product-led articles’ average CTR by 150%, and tripling direct Sales Qualified Leads attribution.
📌 Spearheaded the design and execution of a sponsored webinar with Search Engine Journal featuring a long-term client doing a live product demo.
📌 Designed and delivered core product tours for the Onboarding flow improvements initiative (from wireframing to production) — part of the Product team for 2 development cycles.

Senior Content Marketing Manager

We’ve designed SEOmonitor to help you acquire, manage and retain more customers for your agency. 
Join us, and hundreds of SEO agencies clients, in the journey of bringing more transparency and measurability to the SEO industry.

Marketing Content Manager

Visionary Business Consultants

Tailored strategic plans, copywriting and content marketing for entrepreneurs and SMEs

•	Managed, wrote and produced social media and email marketing campaigns for 20+ entrepreneurs and small businesses in various industries (tech, food, psychology and coaching, HR, health & pharma etc.) using Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Youtube etc. 
•	Coordinated and implemented 50+ business communications strategies for startups, commercial enterprises and NGOs, with positive results and increased engagement.
•	Successfully developed and implemented 3 special trainings on content strategies and management for 20+ entrepreneurs and communications professionals;

Marketing Manager & UX Writer

University of Bucharest

Teaching The Archeology of Contemporary cultural phenomena elective at the Faculty of History, for third-year BA students with a focus on:
- cultural studies
- digital trends
- popular culture

Associate Professor

Freelance

•	Highly involved as a cultural specialist in the humanitarian project "Following the traces of communist Albania" for Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) Albania.
•	Thoroughly co-authored a study on individual giving in Romania, Serbia and The Czech Republic, using the Most Significant Change framework for understanding the motivations and challenges of organizations and persons. Based on a PACT Foundation & Global Fund for Community Foundations research grant (August - November 2016)
•	Managed to gain needed insights on participatory education methods like forum theatre, photo voice and living library, within a team of social scientists, for ART Fusion, a Romanian organization focusing on education and social inclusion for marginalized teens and groups (2014-2016). Conducted in-depth interviews and focus-groups with teenagers, educators and marginalized groups.
•	Managed a communications audit for two Europe Direct Centers in public libraries in the South of Romania, an area with educational and social access issues (2017).
•	Successfully developed and implemented +10 lectures and summer schools at Calea Victoriei Foundation, from the theoretical (Introduction to Japanese Culture, Introduction to Japanese Animation, Anime Stories and Myths) to the practical (Creative writing, Blogging and writing for the online environment);
•	Thoroughly engaged students in one day events and sparked their interest in topics such as cultural studies, popular culture's influence on society and more in collaboration with Calea Victoriei Foundation.

Researcher and Lecturer

messBusters

Removing friction between man and technology by designing beautiful and easy to use products, centered around real people.

We're a welded team of established software development and creative professionals, with +15 years experience in building web platforms & mobile apps, amazing design and smart content to give your brand the unique voice it needs.

See more about portfolio and pricing on our special landing page: https://creativemarker.ro/

Researcher & Content Strategist

Creative Marker

Your brand DNA guides your business every step of the way. We value your potential and build a story for today and tomorrow. We're a tech-savvy team of creative professionals and storytellers, with +15 years experience in crafting a brand essence, translated in amazing design and smart content to give your business the unique voice it needs.

As a Head Storyteller, I help create the brand story, from the creative concept to the strategic ways to deliver that story through specific content (articles, blog posts, newsletters etc.) and, also, contribute with in-depth research methods to discovering your target markets & audiences and what channels you need to address for compelling brand engagement.

Head Storyteller

GTM + Product Marketing for B2B SaaS 🔗 | Remote-first 🤓 | Researcher at 💚

👋 Alice here.

I’m a researcher by education with a Ph.D. in Communications Sciences, was a Comms/PR Manager in my early career, and have been a marketer for almost 2 decades now. I’ve created compelling B2B and B2C narratives around many different things — from restaurants, training, and travel, to lifestyle social apps to business intelligence solutions to digital marketing and cinemaops B2B SaaS.

During this time, I’ve worked and learned from driven founders and business investors at the intersection of product strategy, go-to-market, and UX (design thinking & research).
 
Right now, I’m focusing on driving ambitious product visions and go-to-market efforts in a sustainable way.

Key know-how areas:
✔️ GTM for B2B 
✔️ Product-led narratives (positioning & messaging, product marketing strategy & tactics)
✔️ Cross-functional coordination and stakeholders management
✔️ User and market research
✔️ Data-driven sales enablement
✔️ Partnerships with external customers across markets

I'm always happy to talk about any of these things and meet fellow passionate "product people". Feel free to reach out for a cup of coffee!

P.S. I write monthly about product & content marketing, media & visual studies, social sciences, and more  👉 https://beyondaworld.substack.com/

taplio

The Battle

Brendan Hufford

dr. Alice Teodorescu

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taplio

The Battle

Brendan Hufford

dr. Alice Teodorescu

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Brendan Hufford's LinkedIn Performance

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