Marketing Is Not Complicated. Show Up Where Your Customers Are.

There are 4,000 marketers sharing their wisdown on LinkedIn. Entire courses dedicated to funnel optimization and attribution modeling and demand gen frameworks. Conferences full of people arguing about brand vs. performance marketing.

But here’s what I’ve learned after watching hundreds of SaaS companies scale from $0 to $100M+ ARR:

Marketing is not complicated.

It really comes down to one thing: Show up where your customers are.

That’s it. That’s the post. Okay, not quite — let me break it down.

Why Sam Altman and Dario and Amjad and Anton Are Everywhere. For a Reason.

Have you noticed that the CEOs of the biggest AI companies are everywhere right now?

Sam Altman is every podcast. He’s at every conference. He’s doing fireside chats, press interviews, product launches that feel like Apple keynotes. Dario Amodei is writing 10,000-word essays and showing up on Lex Fridman and doing deep dives with policy leaders. Amjad at Replit is shipping product publicly, building in the open, engaging on X constantly. Anton at Lovable is constantly evangelizing.

These are some of the busiest people in technology. They are running companies growing at unprecedented rates, managing thousands of employees, raising billions in capital. They would probably rather be working on product.

But they show up anyway. Because they understand something fundamental: showing up is the product.

When Sam or Amjad goes on Rogan, he’s not doing it for fun. He’s reaching millions of potential users and enterprise buyers who would never read an OpenAI blog post. When Dario writes a long essay, he’s building trust with the exact policymakers and enterprise CIOs who need to feel confident betting on Anthropic. When Amjad demos Replit’s AI features live on X, he’s showing every developer in his TAM that Replit is the real deal.

That’s not vanity. That’s marketing at the highest level. It’s showing up where your customers are.

And it applies to every stage. You don’t need to be on Rogan. But you need to be on the podcast your buyers listen to. You don’t need to keynote Davos. But you need to be at the regional conference your ICP attends. You don’t need 2 million followers. But you need to be in the community where your 50 best prospects hang out.

The CEOs who hide behind their desks and say “the product will speak for itself” lose. The product never speaks for itself in B2B. You have to speak for it. Even when you’d rather be shipping code.

Phase 1: They Haven’t Heard of You Yet

In the early days — from $0 to maybe $2M-$3M ARR — nobody knows who you are. Nobody. Your TAM has no idea you exist.

So you have to go to them. You have to show up where they already are:

• If your buyers live on LinkedIn, you need to be publishing on LinkedIn.
• If they go to Dreamforce, you need to be at Dreamforce. Even if it’s just a tiny booth or a dinner for 20 prospects.
• If they read industry newsletters, you need to be in those newsletters.
• If they hang out in Slack communities or Discord servers or niche subreddits — guess where you need to be?

And here’s the thing — showing up isn’t enough. You also have to break out. You need something remarkable to say when you get there. A killer demo. A provocative point of view is OK-ish, but alone often doesn’t get folks to try or buy. Much better? A customer story that makes people lean in.

You can’t just show up and be boring. You have to show up and be undeniable. And you have to do it constantly, and for real. Just doing a ProductHunt and going away isn’t enough.

The Mini-Brand Kicks In (Sooner Than You Think)

Here’s what surprises most founders: even after just a few million in ARR, you’ll have a Mini-Brand. I’ve written about this before — it’s one of the most important and under-appreciated dynamics in B2B.

A Mini-Brand isn’t ChatGPT-level awareness. It’s not a household name. It’s something much more subtle but incredibly powerful: it’s when a handful of folks in your core target audience start to hear about you. When prospects come to you instead of the other way around. When someone at a conference says, “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of you guys.”

It might only be 1 or 3 or 5 inbound leads at first. It won’t feel like enough. The model won’t work in your head yet. But trust me — if you serve those early customers well, if you remain innovative, if you keep showing up — your Mini-Brand compounds. SaaS compounds.

The key is to lean into it. Service those early customers like they’re everything (because they are). Talk to 6-10 customers a week on Zoom. Follow up on every inbound lead with 10x the enthusiasm. Bring your customers together at events — even small digital ones. Get them telling their friends and peers about you. That’s how Mini-Brands grow.

And once that Mini-Brand kicks in? It changes everything.

Phase 2: From Mini-Brand to Top of Mind

Once you’ve crossed that threshold — and you’ll feel it, usually somewhere around $5M-$15M ARR — the marketing job changes completely.

Now it’s not about discovery. It’s about reminding them you’re there.

Reminding them to pick you when the buying window opens. Because here’s the dirty secret of B2B marketing: most of the time, your buyer isn’t in-market. They’re busy. They’re dealing with other priorities. And then one day, their contract comes up for renewal, or their CEO asks about a new initiative, or their current vendor drops the ball — and suddenly they’re buying.

You need to be the first name that comes to mind in that moment.

That’s it. That’s the job.

Don’t Flee From Where Your Competitors Are. Go There, Too.

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see, especially from first-time founders: they avoid the places where their competitors show up. They skip the conference because Competitor X is a platinum sponsor. They avoid the podcast because Competitor Y was on last month. They steer clear of the G2 category page because the incumbent owns it.

This is exactly backwards.

Go where your competitors are. Go right into the lion’s den.

Why? Because almost every buyer in B2B wants to look at at least 1-2 vendors before they make a decision. That’s just how enterprise buying works. Nobody signs a $50K contract without at least glancing at an alternative. Often their boss requires them to.

And that means if your competitor is at the booth across the aisle, at the webinar, in the newsletter — your buyer is already there looking. They are actively in-market and evaluating. That’s the highest-intent audience you could possibly reach.

If your differentiation is strong and crystal clear — if you can articulate in 30 seconds why you’re different, why you’re better for this specific buyer — you’ll be stunned how often you can steal deals this way. Prospects who walked into a conference fully intending to buy from the incumbent walk out with your demo on their calendar instead.

But you have to show up. You can’t steal a deal from your couch.

I’ve seen this over and over again. The scrappy challenger brand that shows up at the same events, writes for the same publications, targets the same accounts — and wins 20-30% of competitive deals they had no business winning on paper. Just by being there, being sharp, and being clear about why they’re different.

Don’t run from the competition. Run toward them.

Customer Marketing Is Just as Important as Demand Gen. And Almost Everyone Underinvests.

Most founders and marketers don’t market to the customers they already have. That’s a big mistake. Once you have even 100 customers, customer marketing is just as important as demand gen. Maybe more important.

And yet almost nobody invests here. The entire marketing budget goes to acquiring new logos. New leads. New pipeline. And meanwhile, your 100 or 500 or 2,000 existing customers — the people who already chose you, who already love your product, who already have stories to tell — are sitting there, untapped.