The question for modern SaaS ventures is: what separates a successful company from another failed launch? The answer: proper branding. 

SaaS brands spend around 92% of their first-year revenue on customer acquisition. As the marketplace grows more crowded, it’s becoming hard to stand out among the clutter. Branding for SaaS companies is like giving your marketing strategy a megaphone.  It is how your company breaks through the sea of same brands to connect with customers on an emotional level.

Research proves that meaningful (well-known) brands with a viable personality outperform on the stock market by up to 206%. 

Creating the right brand strategy for your business is how you separate your SaaS brand from the competition.

Why Is SaaS Product Branding And Identity So Valuable?

Regardless of size, 88% of businesses say they’re planning on investing in more SaaS applications in the coming years. The SaaS model offers customers the opportunity to adapt new technology which changes at break-neck speed.

It’s never been easier to build a SaaS business. A wealth of tools, infrastructure, APIs to code against makes the cost of entry lower than ever. But all of this brings increased competition. There are currently over 10,000 private SaaS companies. This also means that there’s a lot of other SaaS companies competing for the same customers. In the video conferencing sphere, customers can choose between Slack, Zoom, Skype, Facebook Messenger and dozens of other contenders to do the same thing.

You need a way to stand out from the crowds offering similar solutions to you. That’s where branding for SaaS companies comes in. Branding your SaaS organization:

• Develops trust: Companies that can create a human image for their brands leverage more trust from their customers. Your brand helps your customer to understand the meaning behind your company. 
• Creates confidence: As technology continues to evolve, clients will be drawn towards the brands that demonstrate the most credibility and thought leadership. Your branded content, website, and imagery will make you appear more professional.
• Strengthens customer relationships: With your brand, you demonstrate why your business is the best to address your customer’s problems. You can show that you share the same values as your audience and build an emotional connection as a result. As your customers fall in love with your brand, they become repeat buyers, frequently choosing you over the competition.
• Makes you memorable: What’s going to make you stand out from the crowd? Branding differentiates your company and helps your message to stick in the mind of your audience. Apple’s bold and refreshing image combined with slogans like “Think Different” set it apart from other tech companies in the same industry. No other business has the same innovatively designed products, and modern marketing.

Get Your Story Right

What makes you different to your competitors? Start your narrative by deciding what your mission is. Let’s take Intercom as an example, whose mission is to make “the internet business personal” and bring more humanity to teams connecting over the web. As the world of work becomes more digitized, that’s a valuable mission to have.  

SaaS companies thrive when they build a product that targets a specific problem for a unique audience. If your audience are busy accountants trying to manage a huge number of demanding clients, then you’d position your SaaS product as something that can help those people to manage their time more effectively. You might highlight the benefits of your software by showing how it can save a certain number of minutes on specific tasks. Even your logo could reference time, with the hands of a clock.

Developing the story behind your brand means understanding your unique points of differentiation, and how they appeal to your audience.  What problem are you could to be solving for your clients? That’s the heart of your story.

Do you want to simplify a complicated task for your customers, or give them access to features they can’t get elsewhere? 

How are you going to deliver results in a way that differs from your competition? Can you:

• Deliver a personal approach with excellent customer service? 
• Provide a better pricing promise or value?  
• Offer additional features or services compared to your competition?

Define Your Voice and Tone

Your voice is the verbal persona and attitude of your company. You may be more personal and informal, or you might be professional and sophisticated.

To define your voice, think of around 3-5 adjectives that characterize your company. Are you technical, specialized, and sophisticated, or more friendly and informal? How would other people define your company?

Check that your brand’s tone of voice matches with the identity you’re showing to your consumer and the larger market. If you want to be conceived as friendly and playful, use informal language and emojis in your social media posts. To come across as pioneering, use statistics and figures that show how your products are breaking the mold.

Create A Set Of Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are essentially the must-have components of the image you’re trying to build. Everything from your company colors to your tone of voice on social media should work together to deliver a constant image.

When it comes to branding your SaaS product, these rules will keep your teams, and any marketing agencies you work with consistent. A few points to consider include:

• Your name and any acronyms you use
• A one-line description of your company
• Your voice, and the adjectives that describe it
• Your visuals: brand colors, typography, icons, logos, photos   
• The emotions you want to convey with your marketing materials  

Anything that differentiates your brand from other companies in the SaaS marketplace should go into your brand guidelines. You might also include references to other companies that you feel your business is like, as a point of reference for your staff, and agencies. 

Brand guidelines are an excellent way to identify all the factors that make your business unique for your employees, clients, shareholders, and anyone else invested in your brand. They’re the compass you can use when making decisions about how to grow your business or what kind of marketing materials you should produce.

Without a strong set of guidelines, it’s easy for companies to end up with disjointed ideas about what their business stands for.

Build Your Online Presence

Every SaaS company needs a website that can communicate the value of both their product, and their brand. 

The website you create should be an extension of the brand image and identity you want to create. Customers often judge companies by the experiences they provide. If your site is difficult to use, then your clients won’t believe that you’re an innovative tech company. Your website should be just as immersive, intuitive, and user-friendly as the SaaS solutions you sell.

When building your online presence, think about the message you want to send to your customer. The image you build on your site should also extend to any other digital resources you have, such as your social media profiles, email marketing newsletters, and any external advertising materials you use.

SaaS companies are businesses born into the digital age. If your customers are looking for software, they’re going to start that search online. Having an active brand presence on the web demonstrates that your SaaS company is tuned into the technology environment. The more you build on that presence with an attractive website, thought leadership content, and even video streams, the more your credibility grows.

Buyers will see your digital presence as evidence that your company is real and professional.

Start A Referral Program

Word of mouth is the best way to generate attention for a brand. Your customers are more likely to believe in the positive things that other clients say about you. A referral program rewards the customers that are loyal to your SaaS company with extra bonuses like discounts and gifts. It also attracts new clients to your service.

Dropbox, the cloud storage service used a referral program giving 16GB of free space to both the person who referred their friend, and the new customer. In return, Dropbox earned 4 million users in just 15 months.

Make Your Brand Stand Out In Your Marketing

Your brand needs to shine through in everything your business does.

Use your brand guidelines to make your marketing more memorable for potential customers. A unique brand voice can make your content marketing more appealing, by ensuring you speak to your customers in their language. SaaS companies often use a lot of jargon in their content, so a company that can speak plainly could attract more clients.

HootSuite, the social media SaaS provider, broke records with their video marketing campaign that added a unique spin to the “Game of Thrones” television show. The video earned over a million views and helped HootSuite to speak to a younger audience. By adding their unique brand style to their marketing, HootSuite stood out from the crowd.

Experiment With Influencers

Social proof is growing increasingly valuable for SaaS companies. Any positive reviews about your business will make your SaaS brand more credible. People talking positively about your software after they test a demo means you have proof to back up your claims.

If you can get someone your clients trust to positively review your solution, your brand reach will grow even further. By 2022, market analysis predicts that influencer marketing will be worth more than $15 billion. Find an influencer that your target audience trusts and ask them to review your product.

Partnering with multiple relevant influencers in your industry helps to establish trust between your brand and the people who already follow those thought leaders. It’s a great way to reach new customers you may not have encountered on your own.

Basecamp

Every asset that Basecamp delivers, from its software through to its website, maintains the same clean look and feel. Every page provides concise information that guides the customer through their software journey. Basecamp:

• Promises a friendly and easy-to-use experience for customers
• Guides every client through the software with an informal tone of voice 
• Uses hand-written notes and quirky imagery to appear more approachable
• Maintains the same brand colors on every brand asset
• Breaks its values down into simple ideas, such as easier remote working

Establish A Strong Brand Presence And Voice

Focus on your brand’s unique selling point. Setting your brand apart from the competition is critical. For your SaaS startup to grow, you need to develop a strong sense of what your product offers and to communicate that in a way that differentiates it from all other available products (branding).

Successful B2B brands are no longer chasing the shadows of their more innovative B2C counterparts. The most successful SaaS companies understand that Branding and Positioning are effective methods for getting your ideal audience to pay attention, sign up, and stay with you long term.