Nobody Cares About Your Product Features
It’s 4:58 PM Central on a Monday. Someone’s doom-scrolling LinkedIn, begging the feed for a dopamine hit. You hit them with your AI-powered dashboard specs.
Whew!
Riveting stuff.
You’ll forgive them if they’re not moved to stop and stare, won’t you? Here’s the problem…
In B2B SaaS, everyone’s shouting at the same audience with the same playbook:
- Product specs!
- Performance claims!
- Show those screenshots!
- Flex that funnel!
Over and over and over. Don’t believe us?
Take a look at these five SaaS company posts I randomly pulled from my LinkedIn network.
Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.
If you want to be more than a flash in a pan and be somebody worth enduring forever, you must enchant your audience in your storyworld. Honestly, it’s not even just your ICP for that matter, it’s anyone who comes into contact with your brand: your team, eager partners, investors, your mom and dad who swear—no matter how many times you tell them— you work in IT.
Key Point: It’s not features that make people feel alive, it’s your vision, your vibe, your brand’s personality, your people’s response to it, your story. And if you can’t make them feel something, you’re just noise. You need a storyworld. More on that in a second.
The Abstract Messaging Epidemic
There is an epidemic that is sweeping the globe, and it’s called the Abstract Messaging Epidemic.
See, most SaaS brands don’t actually say anything. B2B marketers, or whoever happens to be writing copy for a lot of B2B brands, have this broken habit of writing in a way that sounds interesting, in the writer’s opinion, without actually making any points or saying anything at all. It’s digital word salad, and it causes nausea, heartburn, indigestion, upset stomach…DIARRHEA!!…in the hearts and eyeballs of the infected readers.
The good news is, the scientists are back from doing sciency things and have located the source of the contagion:
Most B2B SaaS marketers are risk-averse and rely heavily on writing from a product perspective, believing it’s the safest—and therefore, most profitable play.
Hang on a second, quick aside:
I thought that marketers of all people would be the most risk-taking professionals. At the heart of marketing is trying to think of unique ways to get people to desire your product. Well, when marketing today has been swapped out from its original definition to one that’s more of a cross-hybrid of order-taking and focusing heavily on promotion with no substance, there’s not a lot of room to be risky anymore. That’s a whole other op-ed blog topic for another day.
But yes, risk-aversity is a large part of the reason why you’re overrun with phrases across SaaS like “optimize visibility” and “streamline alignment”, while never answering the buyer’s actual question: why should I care?
12 tabs open in a browser, 10 tools that all sound the same, and one buyer wondering if every brand in the market is just one more NPC with a martech badge.
Key Point: Story isn’t a cute add-on to branding. It’s the only way to stop sounding like a f***ing template. #StopTheSpread
You are Not Iron Man: What Story Means (and what it doesn’t)
Let’s set the record straight.
Story ≠ corporate origin myth (“We were founded in a garage in 2012…”)
Story ≠ fake customer testimonial copy with a stock photo named “Jill, VP of Ops”
Jill, probably.
Real Storytelling =
- Conflict. Tension. Stakes. Risk.
Filet me in sensory details, senpai. - Transformation. Empathy. Vision.
Make me feel the shift. Make me want to become someone else.
Your story is a narrative arc where your customer is the hero, not you.
Key point: You are not Iron Man. You’re Nick Fury. You’re Yoda. Or that weird old man in the forest with a treasure map. You are not the main character.
Enter the Storyworld
A storyworld is the atmosphere your brand lives in. It’s not a logo. It’s a living thing made of:
- Emotions
- Visuals
- Sounds
- Symbols
- Language
- Inside jokes that make people feel like they’re inside something
- Sensory memory
Think: Notion’s aesthetic. Slack’s snark (pre-Salesforce acquisition). Webflow’s builder energy.
These aren’t brands. They’re cults with UI/UX budgets.
To Build a Storyworld
- Anchor your message in pain and possibility
- Give your audience a villain (chaos, bloat, inefficiency, boredom)
- Create rituals (i.e., onboarding that feels like a rite of passage)
- Build a consistent emotional palette (curiosity, confidence, rebellion, clarity, etc.)
Key point: If your audience doesn’t feel like they’re being transported somewhere, they’re not entering anything. They’re just logging in.
Storytelling Cheat Sheet for SaaS Brands
| Move | What It Means | What It Looks Like |
| Start with the human | Don’t pitch product. Start with pain or identity. | “Remember when work felt like building, not babysitting a tech stack?” |
| Speak in visuals | Make them see it, not decode it. | Use metaphors: “We’re the soft beach sand tranquility in your RevOps chaos.” |
| Elevate the mundane | Turn functional benefit into emotional reward. | “We’re giving you your 1 AMs and Sundays back.” |
| Use story structure | Setup → Conflict → Resolution → Stakes | Stop saying “We help companies grow.” Say “Most SaaS teams sputter at Series A. We build A+ brands that make it to C.” |
Story: The Real Slim Shady in a Room Full of Imitators
The great philosopher Marshall Mathers—more often known as Eminem—once said:
“There’s a million others just like me, who cuss like me, who just don’t give a f**k like me…who just might be the next best thing but not quite me.”
That’s it. That’s your product. Not the features. The vibe behind it.
It’s like my grandma used to say, “Mijo, you’re nothing special.” RIP Grams.
There’s always going to be a million other SaaS tools with the same core features, same integrations, same demo flow.
The only way to stand out?
Story.
Disagree? Let’s fight!
3710 Scott St
Houston, TX 77004
The more commoditized your product, the more imaginative your brand needs to be.
You’re not selling software. You’re selling belief.
A great story makes two identical products feel worlds apart.
Real-world clones that won through story:
- Gong vs Chorus
- Asana vs Trello
- Figma vs literally the entire design universe
So is it worth it to stop being a clone and start being real?
Key point: Buyers don’t just pick the tool they need. They pick the world they want to live in.
Yes, Nerds. There’s A Lot of ROI in Storytelling
I know. You growth marketers all want to see metrics.
When it comes to measuring storytelling, there are two categories to track storytelling effectiveness: raw numbers and outcomes. A lot of marketers focus on the raw numbers only, and while that’s great, outcomes are the things that everyone hopes the raw numbers lead to.
Raw Numbers
- Great storytelling → lower CAC, higher CLV
The more likable and enjoyable your brand’s storyworld is, the more likely they’re going to click on your ads and convert, and the more likely they’ll continue to be loyal. Yes, even your ad copy and email campaigns need to wrap your ICP up in the storyworld you’ve built. - Higher engagement metrics: more time on site, higher conversion rate
Effective storytelling should, generally speaking, always lead to higher engagement numbers across the board (average time spent, engagement rate, conversion rate, etc). A more sensory experience translates to deeper curiosity and enjoyment. - Lower churn
People are less likely to leave something they feel emotionally attached to.
Outcomes
- Trust builds faster → shorter sales cycles
Raw, authentic, human, and real stories build insane trust. You tear the veil between “What are they trying to sell me?” and “They get me.” When you’re great at storytelling, you tend to close deals quicker. - Evangelists and advocates (cue the anthem)
When you create something livable that’s desirable, you breed evangelists and advocates, people who want to be part of your world (🧜♀️ Ah ah ahhhhhhh, ahhh, ahhh, ahhhh, ahhh, aHHHhhHHHHh). They, in turn, become your best salespeople to attract new, lucrative leads. - Talent flocks to you → culture > comp
When your brand tells a compelling, emotionally resonant story, people want to be part of it, not just because of how much you pay, but because of what you stand for. In a crowded job market, the best talent doesn’t just want a paycheck, they want purpose. - Investors get it faster
We love that. Obvious reasons.
Key point: Brand storytelling is anything but soft. It’s the sharpest tool you have.
Final Thought: Give Me Story or Give Me Death!
Here’s the hard truth:
If your SaaS brand isn’t telling a story, you’re always going to be one emotionally intelligent competitor away from being forgotten.
So, be brave and tell a story:
Tell the truth. Make it weird. Make it feel like a movie, not a memo.
Key point: If your SaaS brand isn’t making people feel, it isn’t a brand. It’s a tool waiting to be forgotten the moment someone builds a faster, unforgettable one.
