SaaS Positioning – Excellent Tips To Absolutely Master It

“People do not buy services and goods, they buy stories, relations, and magic”, the words of Seth Godin, a marketing genius. His words couldn’t have been more relevant now when we apply them to SaaS positioning nowadays.

That’s because, in this era, the competition has sky-rocketed. More and more companies are trying to go online with their businesses and make use of SaaS products. But not every product can entice the customers as well as others.

What is SaaS(Software as a Service)?

Just so you know, it is a type of software modeling where a third-party entity hosts the software applications and the company owning the software makes it available to the customers over the internet. Some examples of Saas Products are MailChimp, Salesforce, Dropbox, and Google’s G Suite.

With a rapid increase in digitalization, competing in the crowded markets to position your SaaS product better is getting more and more difficult with the advent of time. The target audience for which SaaS products hold any value is limited.

Hence, this makes it even more difficult to reach out to them and make them your potential customers.

It’s time to deep dive into the analytics and re-assess exactly why you’re in the market, do a thorough analysis, enhance the customer relationship and increase your brand awareness.

Why Is SaaS Positioning Absolutely Crucial?

This is 2021. Not 2005 anymore where the ideas related to SaaS were just novel and intriguing. SaaS is the new future now. It’s becoming mainstream. Having a SaaS product won’t give you a competitive edge now because you’ll have to compete with a lot of other similar products that may be incorporating SaaS as well.

Why focusing on better positioning and restructuring your SaaS product is important? That’s because, on average, there are roughly 19 or 20 other products in your category JUST LIKE YOURS (with the same value proposition, same pricing models, etc.) This would compel you to figure out what makes you unique and desirable so you can keep more market share and position yourself better.

Before trying to kickstart your campaign to position your SaaS product better, ask yourself a few questions. You should be able to answer them comprehensively and satisfactorily.

• Why do you want your product to be in the market?
• Why is it important for your product to exist in the eyes of your current and potential customers?
• What is your current positioning in the eyes of your target audience in the market?
• Why should your potential customers choose you when there are so many other options available in the market?
• Why should your customers choose to stay with you?
• What would you do or how can you improve to retain them?

Keep going to improve Product Positioning – Here’s everything for you

Remember one thing, if you are following and doing what everyone else is doing, you may never succeed or surpass your competitors.

You have to be different. Because your product is unique, not conventional. Isn’t it?

Effects of COVID on SaaS Positioning

The ongoing pandemic of COVID-19 is still far from being over. The uncertainties in the market and regarding the future has put many businesses on the back foot as far as their spendings are concerned. Many potential and current SaaS customers have started cost cuttings to save their businesses from further losses.

Those companies that have SaaS products related to remote work solutions and strategies saw a boom in sales. The best example is Zoom, the video conferencing app. Zoom earned a total revenue of $810 million in the Q3 of 2020, an increase of over 300% from the same period in 2019.

Scary and thought-provoking, isn’t it?

But there’s a question here. Why only Zoom was that much popular? Why is any other video conferencing software not as important or worthy? Like Google Meet, or Slack? Or GoToMeeting or join. me?

A simple answer. Better SaaS positioning. That’s all.

In a recent survey, the general trends among the SaaS customers included:

• SaaS products that aren’t crucial to the businesses are being cut out.
• New software is not being bought by a large number (28% to be exact) of customers because of future uncertainty.
• Businesses are more focused now on retaining their current customers instead of pushing for increasing their customer base.

9 Tips To Improve Your SaaS Positioning

To mitigate the effects of this pandemic, you’d need a perfect plan to position your SaaS product better and cover more of the market share in your category than your competitors.

1.    Use & Optimize Your Digital Platforms

Just be positive about the situation that you are in. It is in your hands to position your SaaS product better. If your business isn’t growing much, consider optimizing and updating your company’s or product’s website better. Work on your improving your SEO and rankings.

Update your accounts and profiles on any social media platform. Join any new popular media platforms if you haven’t done it yet. That will help in increasing your brand awareness. Go for an even better product description, and create new and more engaging content if necessary.

Optimize your ads, and update your push notifications, messages, and emails that you send to your customers.

2.    Discuss The Main Issues & Play A Role To Improve The Society

Don’t limit your talks and focus on subjects or issues that your product can solve. Keep discussing the issues that your potential clients and present customers may be facing in other areas of life. Try to provide solutions to common issues. Though you own a SaaS product, you can still convey positive feelings and goodwill towards other aspects of life. Play your part in making your society better.

For example, Google is a staunch supporter of green, renewable energy. Google has started many environmental initiatives to show that they care about the planet as much as others. It has committed to employee volunteering of up to 1 million hours to help others. In 2017, Google became the biggest corporate buyer of renewable energy.

Another example is Juniper Networks. The cybersecurity company supports a lot of philanthropic programs to help create opportunities for engineers and technical experts.

Try to portray yourself as a company that isn’t money-hungry only. People love those who care for the general public or social issues. This will help a lot in better positioning your SaaS product in the minds of your customers and will raise brand awareness through positive intent in society.

3.    Make Your SaaS Product An Essential

Times have changed. Now you have to make your product an essential and not something that is “nice to have”.

Study your product’s value and the messages that you wanted to convey to your customers in your latest marketing strategies. The functionality, features, and advantages of your SaaS product your clients needed a year ago may no longer be necessary for their business now.

Try to convey to your customers that your product is what they actually need right now. Try to get viable answers to questions like, would your SaaS product add any value to your client’s business? Would it help them increase their revenue? Would they stay with your product and why not go with your competitors? What will be the immediate benefits and how will your product help your customers expand their businesses?

You have to show that your product is necessary and would help your clients sustain their revenue generation and even increase their business.

4.    Prioritize A Specific Audience for Better SaaS Positioning

You don’t have to target a wide range of audiences in the market. Believe me, that’s a rookie mistake and would only cost you more of your resources needlessly. Cross out all the types of customers that you don’t need or don’t fulfill the criteria you’ve set.

Change and clarify your focus. Your product can’t be everything to everyone. Instead of wasting your energy and resources on the audience who are less likely to buy your product, go for targeting the exact customers who can actually and fully benefit from your product. This would help you gain a better SaaS positioning.

5.    Masterfully Repurpose Your Techniques and Campaigns

In case you have built your SaaS product to suit the different audiences at the same time, you should be able to modify the strategies you have built for one audience to fit the other.

Creating good content and being great at marketing strategies is not that easy. Hence, creating a new campaign for every type of audience that you are targeting may be hectic and very time-consuming along with using up your financial resources.

If we look at Google again as an example, their marketing campaigns do not change much for the different services that they offer. They tweak their strategies just a bit to fit the criteria of targeting the specific audience for different SaaS products.

There is an audience out there in the market for you. You just have to find the right way to target them. Let them know through the right messages that your product is the best fit for their needs. Hence repurposing the content and strategies that you have already created is crucial to get more out of your efforts.

This will save your resources and will help in better positioning of your product by making you focus more on customer needs.

6.    Create Relevant Content & Make It Easier To Access

I’m pretty sure that you may have received a spam message or email not relevant to you at least once or twice. It didn’t feel very nice, right? That’s exactly what your customers are going to feel when they will receive any irrelevant content from you regarding your SaaS product.

Irrelevant content would not only waste your efforts but will put off potential customers from buying your product in the future. According to a survey, more than 9 out of 10 participants developed a negative attitude towards the product when they received messages, notifications, or emails regarding that product not relevant to them.

That can be very damaging for your SaaS product positioning. Focus on creating related content for each set of audiences that you are targeting.

The other thing is making access to the relevant information, that your audience is seeking, easier. Create an appealing homepage of your brand’s website. Be very clear about where the customers can find the information they need. Create visually aided graphs or content.

Include video promotions and intros. Videos are way more engaging than written content.

7.    Validate Your Idea before Rolling Out New Feature

Test your concept first before rolling out any new feature of your product. Make sure that it is what your audience would need and is not something just fancy and useless. Check your competitor’s products to better assess the feature you are going to introduce. Ask your audience for their honest feedback about their needs and how would such a feature help them if introduced.

They are already using your SaaS product so it would be easy to get their feedback on any new feature. Do not think that your idea or the new feature was exactly what your audience needed before thoroughly testing and checking. It could turn out to be disastrous for your SaaS positioning if your product feature turns out to be useless or redundant.

Always start rolling out new products or features with the competitive edge in mind.

8.    Sell The Value, Not Just Your SaaS Product

We started with a saying of Seth Godin. People do buy values and stories along with the product they need.

Let’s take the example of Google. Google’s cloud storage, Google Drive may be pretty secure but another cloud storage provider, pCloud, ranks even higher in terms of cloud storage security.

But people trust and use Google Drive more. Why? Because Google has positioned itself better than iCloud even though both of them provide free storage to a limited extent. Google sells its image and value in addition to its products. It has better and bigger brand awareness and this has helped a lot with its SaaS positioning.

9.    Gain The Trust of Your Customers First

Trust of the customers is very crucial to the growth of your SaaS product. What you can do to build and retain the trust can include:

• Showing customers that you clearly know and understand their needs and issues.
• Give them a free trial of your software and offer a freemium model.
• Offer money-back guarantees if the product does not cater to their needs.
• Provide 24/7 customer support. Outsource it if you are not able to do it yourself.
• Use all trusted platforms for marketing purposes.
• Provide your detailed contact info on your website. Your phone number, email address, and location address. Mention your official firm registration ID or number to show people that you are not a scam but an actual business.

Why don’t you do this? Position yourself in the market, the right way

Conclusion

Dev Basu, a Canadian marketing expert in SaaS products, once mentioned that SaaS companies face 3 crucial questions when it comes to their SaaS positioning and marketing.

⇢ Why buy anything?

⇢ Why buy you?

⇢ Why buy now?

Get your brand or SaaS product to answer these questions. You will start achieving a much better SaaS positioning in no time if you also couple them with effective marketing strategies.

We will close out with another of Seth Godin’s important and relevant sayings:

“In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.”