Marketing for SMEs: Brandon Falcon on Relationship-First Marketing for SaaS

I recently had Brandon Falcon on Marketing for SMEs. Brandon is the founder of Falconics, and after 14 years in marketing, agency work, then SaaS, he’s landed on something most of us in paid ads don’t talk about enough: relationships are the actual growth engine, not the marketing tactics sitting on top of them.

We got into his ERM framework, why most funnels are built backwards, and why SaaS churn is usually a positioning problem in disguise.

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Getting Into Marketing, 14 Years Apart

Jeremy Yang: All right guys, welcome back to another episode of Marketing for SMEs. We’re anchoring this show to people doing about three hundred thousand to two million dollars a year. Today I have a very special guest, Brandon.

Brandon does a lot of work in the SaaS space, software as a service. I don’t read out long intros because I don’t think it does it justice. Brandon, why don’t you just tell us about yourself and we’ll go from there?

Brandon Falcon: Yeah, awesome. So great being here. I’ve been in the marketing world for about 14 years, started from the ground up and moved into a full service marketing agency over time.

Eventually shifted that into a focus on SaaS, software as a service or software entities as a whole. Then over the last three years, shifted further into guiding and consulting software companies on how to build stronger relationships.

We realized the foundation that actually grew a business was relationship building more than the marketing side itself. So marketing became a tool to build the relationships.

Jeremy Yang: Hundred percent. So fourteen years ago, what was your entrance? Mine was coming out of uni doing marketing, and SEO was too slow, everything was too slow.

No business is going to wait nine months. So I got impatient and got into ads. What was your entrance?

Brandon Falcon: Yeah, I entered sort of accidentally. Back then I was actually doing IT and computer repair. Then I realized I really don’t like fixing things that break when I don’t know how or why they broke, it frustrated me.

I had a client ask about needing a website, and I moved into web design for a while. That’s what actually started it off.

Three Filters for a Referral-Ready Strategic Partnership

Jeremy Yang: I was watching one of your videos where you talked about three filters for a referral-ready strategic partnership. It really resonated with me, because as ad specialists we work a lot with SEO people, they’re complementary services.

Your three filters would be shared customer profile, so business sizes should be about the same, we shouldn’t be latching onto a giant and hoping something trickles off.

Brandon Falcon: That’s pretty silly, I had to learn that the hard way. Complementary offers so we don’t step on each other’s toes, that’s really important, because sometimes SEO people worry ads will start taking some SEO work off their plate. And then a real champion on their side who will push for the introductions.

The ERM Framework: Emotional Resonance Marketing

Brandon Falcon: I looked into it and found the framework, ERM, emotional resonance marketing. My belief is that most all funnels and marketing activities are what I call “me-first funnels.” They’re engineered to move the end user through a sequence I desire, with a specific outcome I desire.

Over time I started realizing that wasn’t what I wanted to do, because yes, I might make a sale on the front end, but at the same time we could be hurting a relationship, hurting rapport, and actually limiting the growth of that account and opportunity.

So I flipped it once I realized the underlying elements that actually made a difference. Since the beginning of time, humans have done business with humans. We do business with people we know, like, and trust.

So my ERM approach became: how do I build an emotional bond with someone, and mutually, how do we build trust with each other so that they want to move forward? I’m not guiding them, I’m not forcing them, I’m just saying, here are the options, does this make sense to you?

We go to where they are in their journey, and then offer the next logical movement through our system. Still an aspect of a funnel, but we don’t force it. We started realizing that just works so much better. When you give people choices and don’t force it, people start saying yes a lot easier.

Three Core Areas: VIP Prospecting, Partnerships, Retention

Jeremy Yang: Where do you think that applies most?

Brandon Falcon: We’ve narrowed it to three core areas: VIP client prospecting, strategic partnerships, and retention.

For VIP prospecting, we narrow it down with the client’s ideal customer profile, we find three to five of their absolute best clients, then build a profile of the common denominator across those, and go find more of that type of person.

Two, strategic partnerships. Finding people who align and want to go on the journey with you, where there’s reciprocity, I give them something, they give me something, we’re winning together.

And lastly, retention. A lot of these organizations have clients, but they’re scared at the eleven month mark, are they going to renew. We help them install a system that helps retain and keep the end user, and potentially upsells.

How VIP Client Research Actually Works

Jeremy Yang: So when it comes to VIP, say someone comes to you and says, let’s do that VIP thing, what does that look like?

Brandon Falcon: It becomes about doing the research. Everybody says “we want senior decision makers,” but that’s not really a profile, that’s anywhere and everywhere. Usually it’s a one-hour call, and we dig through and record the entire thing.

I’m looking for what lights them up, what areas they get excited about. We’re doing it for three to five accounts only, so you have to be very picky, I don’t let them tell me ten, twenty, thirty accounts for a reason.

Once we’ve identified that, we look at how many touch points happened, usually somewhere in the ten to fifteen range, and what channels mattered. We’re platform agnostic, we go wherever the pattern is.

Once we know the right types of people, the pains they typically have, the touch points needed and the channels necessary, we basically have every ingredient to engineer a perfect relationship at scale, over and over again.

Why SaaS Churn Is Often a Differentiation Problem

Jeremy Yang: Is there any metric in SaaS that surprises people, beyond the normal churn and retention stuff?

Brandon Falcon: SaaS has a lot more churn than a lot of other industries, especially in the startup space, which is where we help a lot, Series A, Series B usually. Those are the ones I prefer honestly, because it really screams out, we’re not differentiating ourselves enough.

We’re not solving a specific enough problem that someone says, this validates me continuing to pay for it. If you do video editing software, there’s a million tools that do it, why would I pick one over another?

When you can do very specific things better than another tool, now we’re able to start differentiating ourselves.

Vibe Coding, AI, and the Risk of Feature Cramming

Jeremy Yang: With vibe coding and all the noise around it, smaller teams making bigger things faster, how does your role evolve in that ecosystem?

Brandon Falcon: I’ll caveat, I’m not opposed to it, I love the idea of it. If it helps you get to an MVP, it’s worthwhile, if it helps you clarify what you actually want to bring to the world, it’s valuable.

It gets confusing when you’re trying to out-compete or outpace something that’s already there. I see this often, “I want to be the next blank.”

I stop them right there, because if they can’t clearly define what they do differently, they’re just going to be in a race forever, there’s nothing unique about that.

I want them to say, I love this, I want to solve this, I’d do this for free because that’s my passion. And once they get that, then we narrow down to what you do differently.

With vibe coding, my biggest fear is instant gratification, we can have something deployed in days or hours, and the issue with that is feature cramming. Every software saying “we do this, this, this, now with AI built in,” it’s too much for an end user to make a decision.

They get fatigue, they pause, they come back to it later. So I guide them, less is more, start with less, you can always expand it later.

Jeremy Yang: That’s interesting, that’s a hill you’ll die on. When you’re looking for podcast guests, you’re looking for people who have hills they’ll die on, and that’s yours, because it fits the ERM model.

Brandon Falcon: Yeah, that’s exactly right, I want to grow with them.

Where to Find Brandon

Jeremy Yang: Cool man, if people wanted to find you, do you just take on SaaS now, or are you still open to relationships with high ticket services?

Brandon Falcon: We target software because that’s our niche. But we work in spaces that are parallel or complementary and relationship focused, business services, consultative services, cybersecurity, even nonprofit, because they’re looking for both financial backers and awareness.

We lead with helping first because this is our passion. If it works, great, and if it doesn’t, I’ll tell you why, this is what I know can help you, go do it on your own. You don’t need me to do that part, I’d just slow you down.

Jeremy Yang: Yeah, for sure. I think if anyone’s listened this far and heard your passion and your voice, they can tell you’re not going to BS them around, it’s the real deal.

Jeremy Yang: Let people know where they can find you, how to connect with you.

Brandon Falcon: Brandon Falcon, you can basically find me anywhere, I’m on every social platform I can think of. My company’s name is Falconics.

We’re on most social channels, but probably most active on LinkedIn, for obvious reasons, business networking. Check out Falconics if you want to dig into the ERM framework further.

Key Takeaways

• Most funnels are built backwards. Brandon argues most marketing is “me-first,” engineered to push people toward an outcome the business wants rather than meeting them where they are.
• Referral-ready partnerships need three things. A shared customer profile, complementary (not competing) offers, and a real champion on the other side pushing for introductions.
• VIP prospecting only works with a small pool. Brandon caps VIP research at three to five accounts, built from one-hour recorded calls, because scaling it to ten or twenty loses the specificity that makes it work.
• Churn is usually a positioning problem, not a product problem. High SaaS churn often points to a business that hasn’t defined what it does differently, not a broken tool.

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This conversation is from Marketing for SMEs with Jeremy Yang, founder of Digital Goliath, an Australian paid advertising agency. Available on your preferred podcast app and on YouTube on The Online Ads Guy channel.