Modash Marketing Playbook | Ryan Prior, Head of Marketing

Playback speed

Share post at current time

Share from 0:00

0:00

Transcript

Scaling €1M to €100M ARR, Brand marketing, SEO, Raising 12M Series A

and

Apr 24, 2025

Finding early traction in marketing is tough—especially for B2B SaaS startups trying to compete with bigger players in saturated channels.

To solve this, Modash doubled down on SEO and built a content-driven engine that scaled them from €1M to €6M+ ARR with zero outbound sales.

In this episode, we spoke with Ryan Prior, Head of Marketing at Modash, to discuss:

00:00 – SEO for customer acquisition

02:57 – How Modash built its early marketing

05:50 – Challenges and opportunities with SEO

08:48 – Mini tools to drive traffic

12:07 – Why Modash shifted focus to brand marketing

14:56 – 95/5 Rule

18:00 – Why video marketing is the next big bet for Modash

20:52 – How to build mental availability for your brand

29:58 – Choosing the right problem to own

30:41 – First principles of brand building

33:21 – Does design matter?

35:31 – Growing a brand through LinkedIn

40:54 – Making sense of LinkedIn ads for B2B SaaS

42:50 – Short vs Long term marketing

44:50 – How Modash measures go-to-market

48:19 – Why attribution in brand marketing is broken

51:49 – How to communicate marketing results to leadership

SEO can be fast—if your market is already searching.
Modash focused on high-intent keywords like influencer search tools, driving a 20%+ trial conversion rate. This worked because the target customers were already in-market and had clear pain points.
Mini-tools scale traffic.
Modash built lightweight tools like a fake follower checker and engagement rate calculator to satisfy long-tail queries. These tools bring 250k+ monthly visitors and feed into product trials.
95/5 rule, Long term vs Short
The Modash is now shifting focus toward brand marketing, based on the 95-5 rule: only 5% of your market is ready to buy at any given time. The rest? They’ll choose from brands they already know.
Brand marketing is “brain SEO.”
If people search their brain before Google, your job is to make sure Modash is already there. That means building mental associations like “the only platform with enough influencer data” or “the one where filters don’t break the search.”
What actually works? Ask your customers.
Sales calls, branded search growth, contributor-led blog content, and even TikToks about “how many fake followers Ronaldo has” became indicators that their marketing is working—even when ROI can’t be tracked precisely.

Ahrefs / SEMrush – SEO tools used to identify keyword opportunities and validate search volume.
Modash Fake follower checker – https://www.modash.io/fake-follower-check
Modash Engagement Rate Calculator – https://www.modash.io/engagement-rate-calculator?influencer=%40therock
Modash Blog – https://www.modash.io/blog
Modash PSEO pages (e.g., “Influencers in France”) – https://www.modash.io/find-influencers/france
TPG article on Copilot2Trip’s marketing tactics – https://www.tpg.ee/p/how-to-launch-0-to-1

“The Long and the Short of It” by Binet & Field
• Discussed in detail when explaining the balance between long-term brand marketing and short-term performance marketing.
• Suggests a 60/40 split between long-term brand-building and short-term activation.
The “95–5 Rule”
• A widely referenced B2B marketing principle: only 5% of your market is actively buying at any given moment; the other 95% need brand familiarity when they eventually come into market.
“Share of Search” Concept
• Referenced as a proxy for market share in branding. Used by Modash to measure brand awareness vs. competitors based on branded keyword trends.