Most B2B SaaS companies struggle to stand out, even with great products. So what separates the brands that scale from the ones that stall?

It’s not luck. It’s not hustle. The answer is clarity.

Effective B2B SaaS marketing goes beyond ads and blog posts—it tells a story that resonates with your audience. In this post, we’ll walk through a proven B2B SaaS marketing framework that connects strategy to storytelling and drives real results.

Let’s dive in.

What Is B2B SaaS Marketing and Why It’s Different

B2B SaaS (software as a service) marketing refers to the strategies and messaging companies use to promote subscription-based software products to other businesses. Many brands struggle in this category because they approach it like B2C or traditional B2B marketing. What they don’t realize is that B2B SaaS marketing requires a more nuanced approach.

Why? Because the buying process is longer. Multiple stakeholders are involved. And you're not selling a one-time product—you're selling a recurring relationship.

The brands that win are the ones that communicate their value clearly, consistently, and with purpose. Great B2B SaaS marketing creates alignment across teams, clarity for customers, and momentum for growth.

How to Build a Winning B2B SaaS Marketing Strategy

Without a clear B2B SaaS marketing strategy, it’s easy to get lost in tactics. Before you post content or launch campaigns, you need a foundation.

Here’s the playbook:

1. Clarify Your Brand Foundation

Your brand needs more than a logo. Start by defining your brand purpose (the difference you make beyond making money), brand position (what you want to be known for in your customers’ minds), and brand promise (the overarching value you provide to your customers). From there, define the brand pillars (your 5 biggest differentiators and the benefits they provide) and personality (how your brand looks, sounds, and feels).

2. Know Your Audience Deeply

Generic personas won’t cut it. Interview real customers. Understand who they are, what they want, and what’s in their way. Then build ideal customer profiles (ICPs) and detailed personas based on what you discover.

3. Define a Messaging Framework

Create messaging that speaks to pain points and outcomes, articulating benefits, not just features.  Develop messaging stacks for different audiences that are benefit-led and emotionally appealing.

4. Choose the Right Channels

Content, paid ads, product-led growth, and partner co-marketing should all align with your customer’s journey. Focus on the channels your audience most commonly uses and the way they make buying decisions.

5. Map the Multi-Stakeholder Journey

This is where B2B SaaS marketing really stands apart from more traditional approaches. You're not selling to just one person—you're talking to a group. That might include the person using your software every day, their manager, and someone in the C-suite who signs off on the budget. 

Each of these people cares about different things, so you need to adjust your message for each one. A good messaging strategy takes all of them into account and helps you speak to each one clearly.

6. Measure What Matters

Track metrics like LTV, CAC, MRR, and retention, not just traffic or clicks. Growth without retention isn’t quality growth.

A great B2B SaaS marketing strategy isn’t one-size-fits-all. However, the brands that scale follow a similar pattern: clarity first, tactics second.

B2B SaaS Marketing Strategy Example: Lucidchart’s Brand Breakthrough

Lucidchart, a visual collaboration platform, had millions of individual users but wanted to break into enterprise sales. The challenge? Their messaging wasn’t speaking to decision-makers.

Backstory worked with Lucid to clarify their brand story. We interviewed customers across departments—engineering, IT, ops, and product—to uncover the pain points Lucidchart solved for each. Then we built a horizontal messaging framework that spoke to specific needs: improving processes, visualizing systems, and replacing Microsoft Visio.

The result? Lucidchart grew from an individual-use tool to an enterprise-wide platform and scaled to support over 60 million users.

That’s the power of a strategic B2B SaaS marketing approach grounded in insight and clarity.

5 Proven SaaS Marketing Strategies That Actually Work

Let’s break down what’s working now when it comes to SaaS marketing strategies:

1. Value-led content marketing

Don’t just create content to fill space. Use it to teach, solve problems, and position your brand as a trusted guide.

2. Product-led growth (PLG)

Let your product help sell itself. Make it easy to try, easy to share, and easy to love.

3. Multi-audience messaging

Speak differently to buyers, users, and influencers. Each persona has different needs and pain points.

4. Customer stories > case studies

Tell real stories. Make your customer the hero. Help prospects see themselves in the solution.

5. Retention-first funnels

SaaS marketing isn’t just about acquisition. Your most profitable campaigns may end up being the ones that reduce churn.

Smart SaaS marketing plans and tactics balance brand and performance, awareness and activation, acquisition and retention.

B2B SaaS Marketing Examples That Drive Results

Need inspiration? These brands are getting it right:

BambooHR

With the purpose “to set people free to do great work,” BambooHR built a brand rooted in human-centered messaging. Their B2B SaaS marketing strategy focused on culture-first companies, and it paid off, allowing the brand to scale from 30 employees to 1,000+.

Grow.com

Grow made business intelligence accessible to SMBs. By focusing on benefits over dashboards and storytelling over specs, they captured a previously underserved market.

Gabb Wireless

As tech brands compete for attention, Gabb reframed the conversation around safety, positioning their SaaS as “safe tech for kids.” Their storytelling connected emotionally with parents and unlocked a fast-growing niche.

What stands out in these examples is how B2B SaaS marketing works best when it speaks directly to the right audience with clarity.

When to Hire a B2B SaaS Marketing Agency (And What to Look For)

At some point, every growing company hits a wall. If any of these sound familiar, it may be time to bring in a B2B SaaS marketing agency:

• You’ve grown through referrals but need to scale.
• Your messaging feels muddy or disconnected.
• You’ve got the product, but not the positioning.

A great agency won’t just run ads. They’ll help you clarify your story, align your teams, and turn strategy into momentum.

At Backstory, we specialize in helping SaaS brands scale by getting their story straight, inside and out. For more information, check out our article on SaaS branding. 

Final Takeaways: Your B2B SaaS Marketing Playbook

Here’s what to remember:

• Clarity beats cleverness. Start with purpose, not product.
• Strategy guides success. Define your B2B SaaS marketing strategy before launching tactics.
• Messaging matters. Customers don’t buy what you do—they buy what you stand for.
• Storytelling scales. From your homepage to your sales deck, your story should drive everything.
• Map the whole journey. In B2B SaaS, you often talk to a group of people, not just one. The success of your efforts depends on how well you connect with everyone involved in the decision, not just the main contact.

B2B SaaS marketing isn’t easy, but it is essential. The right strategy turns your software into a solution, your brand into a movement, and your company into a category leader.

Ready to Elevate Your Brand?

Take the Backstory Brand Wheel™ Assessment to discover where your brand stands—and what it’ll take to scale.

Or book a call today and start turning your story into a strategy.