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SaaS startups usually know about the term Brand Positioning, but they seldom know what it is, if it’s worth it as it’s currently defined, or how to do it right.

Changing the status quo in SaaS solutions is all about getting your brand positioning right in the eyes of your target audience/ICP’s. Think of it as your secret sauce. It's not just about slapping on a cool personality or having better features. It's about painting a picture of “life after” so vivid and compelling that your market can't help but see you as their go-to solution.

But the phrase “Brand Positioning” is often overwraught with zero next steps - and you need next steps! So here, instead of fluff, in this blog post, we’re going to go through:

1. The strategic aspect of brand positioning, (bottom-up, NOT top-down!)
2. When to start focusing on it in the lifecycle of your company
3. Step-by-step instructions on how to effectively distinguish a SaaS company in a crowded market.
4. How to bake that positioning into the company
5. how to grow and scale the positioning  so it evolves as the company does
6. Guardrails and yellow flags so you know when things are starting to go off track before your positioning gets murky

Let’s get to it!

1. What does Excellent Brand Positioning in SaaS Do for You?

In the crowded Bootstrap SaaS landscape, a strong brand positioning strategy can keep you from getting lost in the noise. It also helps you become your target audience’s go-to solution. After all, who better to know what you do and how you can help them?

Think of it as your brand's GPS, guiding customers to understand why you're the ideal choice for them.

But before we jump into how-to’s let’s start with some benchmarks from the masters:

So, here are some examples of excellent positioning in SaaSland and what their audience knows them to be:

• Posthog - B2B and enterprise
• Figma - prosumer and creative-friendly
• Discord - B2C and well-loved by techies!

How have they achieved it, you ask? By combining their unique features with messaging that empathizes with their target audience. Then letting their brand personality—yes, brands have personalities too—sparkle through everything - they do.

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As you can see, they each have distinct personalities. It’s those personalities and a great product that connect with customers on an emotional level. That way, they’ll be more likely to become loyal brand advocates.

Find out how to build your Ideal Customer Profile for Brand Positioning using an ideal customer profile template, an ICP template, or an ideal customer profile template B2B framework.

2. When is it too Early to Start Thinking about SaaS Brand Positioning?

It’s never too early!

Think that the brands we mentioned above only got that positioning once they were big and had hundreds of employees on payroll? Think again!

These companies established the foundations for their current brand identities waaaaay back when.

Even in their early years, each company laid the groundwork for the personalities they're known for today:

• Figma (1-2, 2016-2017): The focus on real-time collaboration and user-friendliness in their early iterations solidified their Collaborative Creative personality.

• Discord (1-3, 2015-2018): From the very beginning, Discord emphasized features catering to gamers and online communities. Vibrant visuals and inclusive messaging further cemented their Tech-Savvy Playground personality.

• Posthog (1-2, 2019-2020): Even in their early blog posts, Posthog focused on data-driven decision making and empowering businesses. This content established their expertise and aligned with their current Data-Driven Guru image.

These examples showcase the importance of developing a strong brand identity early on.  A clear and consistent message resonates with target audiences and lays the groundwork for future success.

Also notice

• the cute visual branding touches from the beginning, with Posthog’s logo!
• the unique interface on display with Figma
• the straight-to-the-user copy from Discord (using “gamers” and two specific competitors instead of generalized fluffy copy)

It’s alllll tied together to form a cohesive brand positioning!

Great positioning with a distinct personality helped Figma, Discord, and Posthog become the well-regard brands in the space they now are. As any growth marketer, growth agency, or CMO worth their salt will tell you, it shouldn’t be implemented after you get to the top.

3. So, Where should I Begin?

When it comes to the ABCs of brand position, you start with the C, instead of A!

We, of course, are referring to starting your positioning by conducting voice of customer research and voice of the customer research by talking to Customers! If you want to know how to collect voice of customer feedback to build a successful SaaS brand, you must start by connecting with your customers on a deeper level.

Let’s give you a step-by-step breakdown on how you can understand and define your company's value to your top customers from their perspective. After all, these are the people you want more of, those who love your product and stick around for the long run.

1. Identify Your Top Customers

Okay, but saying you’re having trouble naming exactly who your top customers are?

f you don't know how to build an ideal customer profile, start by looking for those with the:

• Most use of your product (pick usage KPIs that make the most sense for your business, examples below)
• Recent sign ups—in the last 3-6 months (past the initial honeymoon phase but still relatively new and excited)
• Ideally, have already interacted with you, whether through support emails, reviews, or social media praise—your most bought in customers.

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Worried about which KPIs will work for you? Check out these examples:

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You have your people. So, what comes next?

2. If You Email them, They Might Come

Create an email campaign , asking them to jump on a 15-20 minute call with you. You’ll want to talk about:

• Why they chose the product
• What their process was for choosing the product
• What their use case is

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Your customers not really email people? here’s some other ways to get hold of them.

• Push notifications
• Posting in discord
• Third-party in-app survey tool, like SurveyMonkey, Typeform
• Embed survey within your app’s interface

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Here’s a template for an e-commerce brand with a quirky brand personality:

Subject: You're a [E-commerce Platform Name] Ninja (& We Want to Know Your Secrets!)

Hey [Customer Name],

Hold up! We spotted you crushing it on [E-commerce Platform Name].

But guess what? We're also super curious!

Get on a quick 15-20 minute call where we can chat about:

• Why You Chose Us: What made [E-commerce Platform Name] your e-commerce soulmate? Spill the tea! ☕️
• Your Ninja Workflow: How do you use [E-commerce Platform Name] to dominate the online marketplace?
• Hidden Gems: Are there any features you haven't explored yet that could be your secret weapon?

Click the link below to schedule a call that fits your ninja schedule: [Insert link to scheduling tool]

The [Company Name] Team (Your Biggest Fans)

Put in a redacted screenshot of the email campaign that Abhishek sent for DE to get them to book a call!

3. Setup a system to make it simple and easy to talk with you

While you’re waiting on ayes and calendar bookings, move on to this next bit so you’re ready for those calls!

4. It’s Time to Make Some Calls

First, determine who in your org should take these calls.

As a business growth agency, we’d recommend you spread them around Customer Service, Marketing, Product, and Leadership teams. Here’s why.

Customer service teams know the customer inside and out already. They talk with them at their most frustrated and already have the ease and experience of dialoging with them. They will also probably spot

Marketing has (probably) been the one managing the messaging. They know what’s been working to hit those KPI’s and what hasn’t. They also know what implementation will look like once new positioning, and the marketing changes that will come out of it, will require. They also often end up in the middle between what leadership wants, and what customer service says customers need. Speaking directly with customers cuts out the in-between.

Product is fusing what leadership wants and what they hear customers say they need. It goes without saying those are usually two verrrry different lists of requests. What will actually work? - they’re not fortune tellers. But they are building the future of your company. Getting them directly to customers without a middleman at the same time leadership is doing the same thing will help align both of them on the same page for when to do what on the roadmap, what should be included in those features and which customers they’ll be mostly for.

Leadership has a vision for what they want the company to be now and in the future. Where it will sit in the cosmos of SaaS companies…..and how the frick they’re gonna make payroll. Being stuck between future glories and present realities is a lot to bear (i know this well as a founder myself!), and being close to customers often falls by the wayside courtesy of the tyranny of the urgent and ludicrous amounts of self-confidence required to attempt to build something from nothing (as i founder, i can related to this too!).

Having a “round robin” approach to taking these calls will ensure that everyone is talking to the customer directly and can help cut through siloing. Everyone is on the same page with the same goals: understand the customer, build positioning that speaks to and empathizes with them so that everyone makes more money.

Oooh lookie lookie - consensus!

Exhibit A:

Alternatively, if you’re just starting out, your teams are at 110% capacity, or you need the new positioning ASAP, then it’s better to have one person conducting all the calls. Ideally the same person who is going to do the messaging work (copy, marketing changes, product recommendations and leadership updates) and be responsible for it’s implementation.

This is where calling in a specialist like a Customer Experience (CX) Specialist who isn’t bogged down in the way things have been done or preconceived ideas about the customer can be super useful!

Whichever route you plan to go, leave your expectations and assumptions at the door and listen to customers with a fresh mind.

5. I Need to Talk to You…

Okay! So, you’ve prepped who on your team is going to take those calls.

Next, let’s look at the how:

Store all customer insight data in one place. Have each person follow a standardized user interview template or user research interview template pattern. That way multiple teams have insight into the customers and a centralized database for the next step!

Now, we’ll be showing you what to ask once you’re in the call:

Put in a redacted screenshot of questions that Abhishek asks on the DE calls

Behold, your quirky call script for e-commerce ninjas with variations for callers from different teams:

Intro (1-2 minutes):

• "Hey there, [Customer Name]! Thanks for joining the call! We noticed you're a total rockstar on [E-commerce Platform Name]." (Customer Service)
• "But hey, we're also mega-curious about how you became such an e-commerce ninja!" (Marketing)

Understanding the Choice (3-5 minutes):

• "So, spill the tea! What made [E-commerce Platform Name] your e-commerce soulmate back when you were on the hunt for the perfect platform?" (Marketing)
• "Did any other platforms catch your eye? What made [E-commerce Platform Name] the ultimate winner in this online battle royale?" (Marketing)

Optimizing the Workflow (5-7 minutes):

• "Take us on a whirlwind tour of your typical day (or week) using [E-commerce Platform Name]. How does it make conquering the online marketplace a total breeze?" (Product)
• "What features are your secret weapons in your e-commerce arsenal? The ones that make you say 'heck yeah' every single time?" (Product)
• "Is there anything about the platform that feels a bit like kryptonite to your e-commerce superpowers? We're all ears (and ready to make improvements!") (Product)

Unearthing Hidden Gems (3-5 minutes):

• "We're all about helping e-commerce ninjas unlock their full potential. Are there any hidden features in [E-commerce Platform Name] that you haven't discovered yet, but might be total game-changers?" (Product)
• "Do you have any secret integrations with other tools that make your [E-commerce Platform Name] experience even more epic?" (Product)

Wrapping Up (2-3 minutes):

• "Seriously, a huge 'high five' (virtually, of course) for your awesome insights! We'll make sure to document your e-commerce wisdom and share it with our brainiacs at [Company Name] to keep making the platform even more awesome." (Customer Service)
• "Would you be down to be a part of our inner circle of e-commerce ninjas? We might send you occasional updates and surveys to pick your brain in the future." (Marketing)

Bonus Quirky Questions!

• "On a scale of 1 to emoji meltdown, how easy is it to navigate the platform and find what you need?" (Customer Service)
• "If [E-commerce Platform Name] was a superhero, what would its superpower be?" (Marketing)
• "If you could add one feature to the platform to make it even more epic, what would it be?" (Product)

💡 Tip: You really only need a group of 12-30 of those customers. It’s best to have these emails automated, so you always have a trickle of interviews on the calendar to revise the positioning and see what’s hitting in real time. :)

6. Understand Your Brand Through Their Eyes

Once you've spoken with your top customers,   it's time to dive deep into their perception of your brand.

This involves understanding three critical aspects based on their feedback and interactions with your product:

1. Mission: What does your brand stand for in the eyes of these customers? This goes beyond your product or service. It's more about the change or value you bring into their lives or businesses.

💡 Phrases to look for would be customer quotes that paint a picture of your brand's role in their success.

Look for statements like:

• "You guys are the engine that drives my online store's growth."
• "[E-commerce Platform Name] is the secret weapon for managing a thriving online business."
• "You've helped me turn my passion into a profitable reality."</aside>

1. Results: What does your brand excel at doing? This is where your product's effectiveness and the tangible benefits it offers come into play. How does it solve problems or make life easier for your customers?

💡 Key questions to ask:

• What specific features were most impactful in streamlining your online store management?
• How has [E-commerce Platform Name] helped you increase sales or improve customer experience?
• Can you share any examples of how the platform helped you overcome a specific challenge?</aside>

1. Emotional Appeal: This is the most crucial element that takes positioning from basic to beloved. What is the emotional reason these customers tried your product in the first place? And more importantly, how did they feel after reaching their aha! moment?

Remember, the emotional connection often precedes the results. It's what gets them through the door and keeps them engaged until those results manifest.

💡 Uncovering the Aha! moment:

• What initial frustrations or challenges led you to seek an e-commerce platform solution?
• How did [E-commerce Platform Name] address those emotional pain points?
• Describe the feeling you had once you realized the platform's impact on your business.</aside>

By focusing on these three elements, Bootstrap SaaS founders can craft a brand persona that resonates deeply with their current and potential customers.

And since it is all about creating a loyal community that grows organically, you should turn the data and insights from your top customers into actionable strategies. Use them to reinforce your brand's mission, highlight its strengths, and amplify the emotional connection with your audience.

Don’t forget to check out: Top 3 Bootstrap Marketing Strategies for Startups

6. Call in the Big Guns

💡 If you’re not the founder and are jumping in to get this positioning sorted, then you can skip this section.

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If you, as the founder, are ****customer service, marketing and the leadership team, ****then you should think through where who you are interweaves with who the company is.

If the brand positioning is completely different to who you are, it’s going to clash at some point and mess with its trustworthiness! I mean, can you imagine if Elon Musk was the founder of Discord? That would NOT match its warm and inviting brand positioning! That would not match.

So, how do you incorporate your founder’s personality into the brand’s?

First, identify aspects of their personal story, values, or mission that would resonate with customers:

1. A shared struggle that led to the creation of the product
2. A common industry insight
3. A mutual desire to impact a specific area positively

Next, integrate those elements into your brand narrative. It makes your company more relatable and trustworthy. Remember, customers are more likely to engage with a brand that feels authentic and aligned with their own values or experiences.

Confused? Here’s an exercise you can use to find the part of the founder that ties into your brand’s voice:

1. What are your three most noticeable personality traits?
2. Are you an extrovert, introvert, or ambivert?
3. What do you love talking about when you talk about [Company Name]?
4. Who do you most enjoy speaking with about the company?
5. (For cofounders) How do your other founders describe you?

Now plug the responses here:

💡 When I think about Brand Name, I want Brand Name to sound _personality trait 1, 2, 3, because I love talking about facet of the company with group of people.

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7. Let Your Brand Personality Sparkle

Whether your brand is quirky, serious, innovative, or compassionate, let that personality shine in a way that highlights and reinforces the value you provide to your customers.

In doing so, you create a brand that's valuable in the practical sense and deeply resonant on an emotional front. This combination is powerful, making your brand not just a choice among many but a community that your customers feel proud to be a part of.

Here’s how to create a personality that takes you from positioned to personali-tied: AKA making the customer’s problems related to and seen.

• What are the 3-4 most common emotions that customers express about using the product?
  • Relief?
  • Joy?
  • Fear?
• How do they feel the brand speaks to them (in a literal sense) - tutorials, demos, etc.
  • Is it witty?
  • Very educational like a teacher?
  • Personable like their favorite aunt or uncle?

In other words, you’re taking the personality that customers already ascribe to the brand. Then you’re pairing it with clear words on how to make that practical in day-to-day operations. Because positioning without placement has no purpose.

More on that in a sec!

4. Who Can I Copy from, AKA, Brand Positioning Case Studies

You already know three, i.e., Figma, Discord, and Posthog who have nailed their brand positioning.

Use these as your real-world success tales to draw out the lessons that aspiring Bootstrap SaaS companies like yours can apply, such as:

1. Defining Your Target Audience

• Figma targets prosumer and creative professionals, tailoring their message to resonate with designers' needs for collaboration.
• Discord focuses on B2C users, particularly gamers and online communities, with a brand image that reflects their tech-savvy preferences.
• Posthog targets B2B businesses and product managers seeking data-driven insights, establishing themselves as thought leaders through content.

2. Focusing on a Specific Need

• Figma addresses the need for seamless collaboration in design workflows.
• Discord caters to the desire for a fun and engaging platform for online communication.
• Posthog focuses on empowering businesses with actionable data for data-driven decision making.

3. Unique-to-Your-Brand Content Marketing

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Find out how to decide which marketing channels you should choose here!

4. Evolving with Your Users

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We’ve seen how the brands remain true to their unique brand personalities. Now, let’s check out the lessons that all of them share—and you can cheat off of:

• Keep it simple to start out
• Use conversational language to describe your value proposition, not jargon
• Write the VP’s/features around how they help the customer/solve a problem
• Use Use Cases to test additional ICP’s without changing up the core messaging

Check out: Beyond Corporate Buzzwords: Crafting Marketing Messages That Resonate With Your Audience

5. Let the Positioning Sink In

To bring your brand to life, those joyous feelings of your top customers have to come out everywhere—marketing materials, the copy on your website, and the way you speak on demos!

And while such coherence helps reinforce your brand's positioning and makes your messaging stick, it’s crucial that these strategies are not siloed within the marketing department.

1. Examples

For instance, Discord ensures that its community-focused approach is reflected in its customer service—quick, personalized, and engaging support—and is consistent across all customer touchpoints.

Or, Figma with its ridiculously interactive demos, allowing potential customers to experience the collaborative features firsthand.

And even Posthog’s blogs written in a clear and concise language that breaks down complex data analytics concepts.

2. Emulations

So, what should you do to make the personality un-ignoreable no matter where a customer comes into contact with it?

How about:

1. Through Content Creation

Instead of trying to tack on personality at the end of the content creation process, include it from the very beginning. For instance, when you decide themes and topics for your content creation, ask yourself, How would this topic be presented with [brand personality traits] to highlight [how this product can change their work life]?

Then create a reference doc of the answers so when you’re back on the content you’re not reinventing the writing wheel.

1. By Experimenting with Non-Traditional Marketing

When you do your KW research to decide what content to write on, always ask What is the best format to present the answer in a way that’s immediately useable?

These kinds of creative and fundamental marketing strategies for startups will also bring multiple teams together (dev, CS, marketing, and product). The message will become more real, making you indispensable to your customers at every stage in the journey.

Some examples include:

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Prioritize features that bring increased simplicity and functionality to your ICP’s lives. The easiest way to do this is building the features they ask for and fixing the frustrations they have.

As you branch into new ICPs and dive deeper into your existing ICPs, there will always be features in need of being built, better ways to showcase new use cases, or the product tweaks to make that work. Pay attention to those and add them to your JTBD list!

Finally, no matter how shiny the latest, greatest advance is in tech (AI, cough), don’t bake it into the product. Not unless you can clearly explain how it will help your ICP do their job better. Otherwise it’s just for show without showing the benefit of using the product. This helps you stay focused on not creep into feature bloat (burp).

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6. But What if my Brand Outgrows the Positioning?

As a growth strategy agency, we know that your SaaS brand will continue to grow and evolve. But we also know that maintaining the integrity of your positioning and personality will become increasingly crucial.

So, you’ll have to embed, scale, and future-proof your brand’s approach within every department and process to stay true to your unique positioning.

Let’s see how:

1. Centralize Brand Resources

Start by placing your final positioning document in a central location within your team space. This ensures easy access for everyone and serves as a constant reminder of:

• How your brand speaks
• Who it’s talking to
• Why it exists for customers

2. Integrate Brand Personality into SOPs

Modify all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for writing tasks to include specific tasks that reinforce your brand personality. This could range from the:

• Tone of voice used in communications
• Storytelling elements in your content
• Customer Support message templates and phrases used

After all, you’d expect different customer support from Reddit and Figma, right?.

3. Collect Department-Specific Examples

Encourage each team to contribute examples of how the brand personality influences their work:

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And once you have those examples, add them to your living doc!

Also Read: How to create a landing page that converts

4. Review, Review, & Review

1. Immediately: Make your living doc a part of your teammate onboarding and offboarding.
2. Within 1-3 Months: Check for brand consistency referring back to the living doc as the litmus test.
3. Quarterly Basis: Add best examples from each department to the doc, including:

• Visual
• Written
• Audio
• Campaigns
• Gifs/videos
• Ads & launches

5. Monitor Customer Sentiment

Setup or better integrate customer data with sentiment and feedback, allowing for consistent checks on how your brand message resonates over time.

Create a system to collate the data from customer calls with their feedback. This can be as:

• Simple as an updated internal dashboard with graphs of top use cases, emotional words, and great phrases from your customer interviews
• Complicated as a CDP platform like Ortto that links all of the messaging, marketing, and product data together.
• A recurring email
• A notes database in Notion
• Video recordings folder in TLDV
• Meeting notes folder in Drive

This feedback loop is crucial for understanding if your brand persona remains relevant and engaging as you scale.

Incorporate INM here with a short story of how it stayed true to its roots.

Conclusion

A well-defined brand positioning strategy is the cornerstone of a thriving SaaS brand. By integrating positioning and personality through the use of the fundamental marketing strategies for startups we have mentioned above, you can carve out a unique space in the market and build a community of loyal customers.

Ready to craft a beloved brand? Let INM help!

FAQs

How often should we reassess our brand positioning to ensure it remains relevant and compelling in the rapidly evolving SaaS market?

You should reassess brand positioning annually or with significant market shifts. Adapting to changing customer needs, tech advancements, and competitors ensures relevance. Regular evaluations will boost agility, keeping your brand aligned with evolving audience expectations.

How does effective brand positioning contribute to customer retention in the SaaS industry?

Effective brand positioning is one of the fundamental marketing strategies for startups that contributes to customer retention. Clear communication of unique value and consistent delivery builds trust and loyalty. A resonant brand that meets customer needs forms long-term relationships, reduces churn, and enhances customer lifetime value.

How important is employee engagement in reinforcing our SaaS brand's positioning strategy?

Employee engagement reinforces a SaaS brand's positioning strategy. Employees who understand and believe in brand values deliver aligned experiences. Internal alignment ensures every interaction reflects the brand's personality and value, strengthening its position in the market.

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