Storybook

The number of buyers who come in-market ultimately sets the ceiling for how many potential deals can actually come your way. Not just buyers seeking you out, but for the very solution category you compete in - a situation which has become more volatile in tech than ever. The challenge is that this kind of data is not available for most products, but it doesn't mean it's not possible to gain insight into. Branded search acts as a good proxy for in-market interest, and when aggregated across all of the options for a specific solution you can paint very interesting pictures of the overall category. Take this example below, where the collective search for a mature SaaS category has been in clear decline as a total, for multiple years, with that decline only getting more pronounced over time. Objectively, if there are fewer people seeking out the brands in this category, then there are very likely fewer buyers coming into it, and this could have real implications for where new deals with come from for everyone, as well as the increased competitiveness that will surely come as a result. But, even in a declining category there can be winners and losers, and total decline can be unevenly distributed, so it's important to look more deeply. In this example, that category decline is being experienced across the board, but with some harder hit than others. I've been obsessing over how to better build this picture with Storybook, and I genuinely believe it's a view that is crucial to company planning. What if you're declining in a category that's growing? What if the category has radically changed direction? Last year's benchmarks may not be a good indicator into this year's outcomes. Effective marketing requires an understanding of the market. That can come through surveys, analyst research, and brand tracking tools, but the fact will always be that those who have insights have advantages.

Brand does not need to be a mysterious and vague concept to report on. With a defensible metric like branded search, we can give very real shape to brand and show with real precision how our efforts are building it. The Storybook platform gets better and better at visualizing brand, and putting it all into context of our competitive set and category. I've had the honor of being included in several clients' internal readouts on brand health with Storybook data, and I've seen how it can result in more brand investment. Brand isn't the thing you invest in after you get performance marketing working, but rather it's the foundation on which it sets that determines its potential. I believe that this kind of data gives marketing leaders power. Power to shift the conversation from "here's why we need to invest in brand" to "here's our current brand standing". And, with monthly updates and granular views, the power to make brand feel more real-time than survey snapshots alone can show. Brand interest has shape and movement, and when we can can see it then we can show how we influence it, and how that influence impacts the business. My mission is to bring B2B brand and demand tracking to the level it deserves, and if that resonates with you - I would love to show you what our platform can do.

I believe that brand and category tracking should be accessible to teams of all sizes and budgets, and so I'm really excited to be reflecting that in Storybook's pricing options. After much work, the product is now available with monthly billing options, as well as some big product feature releases I'll be talking about next week. One of the biggest reasons I started building the Storybook platform was because I saw a major gap in brand tracking - traditional survey and interview options are often too costly and don't fit very narrow audiences like much of B2B SaaS. Search data - both traditional and now AI - allow a view into real market behavior that correlates with actual business outcomes. Built right, it can be one of the most tangible ways to measure brand as well as giving real insights into category demand for even very niche businesses. Brand has never mattered more than it does now, and measuring it is now more accessible than ever. My goal this year is to really scale Storybook and to make brand tracking a mainstream effort, not just one reserved for big brands. If you want to chat and see a demo, DM me or fill out the form on the site: https://lnkd.in/eh8NAhpr

We love to see the data that proves what we can all feel - Fibbler isn’t just riding the category wave, but are growing much faster than it!

It's a pretty cool feeling to become a guest on a podcast where you're a real fan and dedicated listener. I had the privilege of joining the Elena Jasper and the amazing team for the The Marketing Architects Podcast, and it was such a great conversation. We chatted in-depth about the missing brand piece in B2B marketing, the incorrect ways we think about generating demand, and how it's possible to make brand feel more tangible and operational so that it doesn't just have to survive board scrutiny, but can in fact thrive. And we also talked about how I've been an avid knitter since I was a kid, if you're curious :)