Why LinkedIn is SaaS's best growth channel

Interview

May 28

Synopsis

Most founders hear the same marketing advice: post consistently, build a brand, run some ads, track the funnel. But for SaaS founders specifically, the bigger question isn't whether to market. It's whether the channel they're betting on actually drives revenue, or just makes them feel busy.

In this episode of Fanclub Setlist, Erica sits down with Jeffrey Zhao, founder of Ordinal, a social media management platform built to help SaaS companies and agencies drive real results and revenue on social. Ordinal works with over 1,000 fast-growing teams, including Mercury, Clay, and Zapier, and the conversation traces how Jeffrey's thinking on marketing evolved from a side pain point into a company-defining bet.

Before Ordinal, Jeffrey ran Slope, a design and marketing agency doing brand work and organic social services. The team kept hitting the same wall: the scheduling and publishing tools on the market were built ten or fifteen years ago, around assumptions about social media that no longer held. So they built their own tool to solve their own problem. That tool was originally called Assembly, and it didn't even have scheduling at first. It was built to solve a coordination and visibility problem for teams trying to manage a growing, more complex content workload.

One of the more counterintuitive parts of the conversation is the rebrand story. Assembly became Ordinal not because of an emotional rebrand, but a tactical one. The name was too generic to rank for, too easy to confuse with other companies, and people genuinely struggled to find the business after hearing about it secondhand. Jeffrey is direct about his philosophy here: most names are neutral vessels you build equity into over time, not the emotional core of a brand. Visual identity and brand strategy deserve strong opinions. The name itself mostly needs to be ownable, pronounceable, and searchable.

The conversation's centre of gravity, though, is LinkedIn. Jeffrey argues that social media has shifted from a brand-awareness checklist item into an actual go-to-market channel, especially for B2B SaaS. Some of the highest-valuation teams using Ordinal report that the majority of their leads come directly from LinkedIn organic content, driven by founders, salespeople, and entire teams posting in a coordinated way rather than relying on a single company page.

Erica and Jeffrey also dig into what kind of content actually works, why even Ordinal struggles to consistently post on its own platform, and where Jeffrey sees marketing heading as AI tools get folded into the workflow. The episode closes with Jeffrey's advice to founders weighing whether to start a SaaS company at all: stop optimizing on paper, and start building.

Who is this episode for?

This episode is for SaaS founders, B2B marketers, growth leads, startups and agency owners trying to figure out where to actually spend their marketing effort. If you've been treating LinkedIn as a brand-awareness nice-to-have, are weighing a rebrand, or are trying to figure out how AI fits into your content workflow without losing your team's voice, this conversation gives you a founder 's-eye view grounded in real product and growth decisions.

Why is LinkedIn becoming such a high-ROI channel for B2B SaaS companies?

Jeffrey argues that LinkedIn has shifted from a brand-marketing checklist item into a real go-to-market channel. Because it's a professional network with a high density of buyers, posting consistently, especially from founders and salespeople rather than just a company page, can directly drive leads and revenue. He points to teams using Ordinal, some valued in the billions, where the large majority of leads trace back to LinkedIn organic content.

Should you rebrand a company for SEO reasons alone?

It worked for Ordinal. The company rebranded from Assembly to Ordinal largely because the original name was too generic to rank for and too easily confused with other businesses, which Jeffrey says was actively hurting their conversion funnel. The rebrand also lined up with a real inflexion point: the product had hit early market fit and was evolving past its first version, which made the timing make sense beyond just the SEO problem.

Is there really such a thing as a "good" or "bad" brand name?

Jeffrey pushes back on the idea that naming should carry heavy emotional weight. In his view, most names are neutral vessels that gain meaning as a company builds equity into them; the exceptions are names that are hard to pronounce, limiting, or carry bad associations. He treats visual identity and brand strategy as the places that deserve strong, opinionated decisions, while naming should weigh practical factors like domain availability and SEO competition.

What kind of content actually performs well on LinkedIn?

There isn't one winning format. Jeffrey points to a mix that includes humour and memes, thought leadership, product marketing, and more personal or behind-the-scenes content like office videos or new-hire posts. He notes that accounts which lean entirely into one bucket, all thought leadership or all product marketing, tend to underperform compared to those that blend formats based on what resonates with their specific audience.

What's the best advice for a founder building a new SaaS product?

Start building. Jeffrey is candid that he and his co-founder didn't have a fully formed product vision when they started; Ordinal's first version solved a narrower coordination problem and evolved from there based on direct customer feedback. He cautions against founders getting stuck over-optimizing total addressable market and pitch decks before they've actually built and tested anything with real users.