If you’ve started your business around a decade ago and haven’t gone into acquisition mode yet, it’s time to stop and rethink where you want to take your business in the next few years. Tech has evolved quite a bit over the past decade and SaaS companies have proliferated like crazy. Everyone’s fighting over smaller and smaller spaces. If you are looking to carve out a special place for yourself, perhaps it’s worth taking a step back to figure out how to get ahead.
Where could have things gone wrong?
Most tech companies are engineering-driven. Product reins over everything else. Reinforced by an aggressive sales approach, products become brands and before you know it, the business is fragmented, represented by several ‘hero’ products that compete for customer attention. It’s not enough to create great products – today, success hinges on figuring out how they’re used, marketed and priced.
This is primarily a talent problem. Back in the day, software developers did a bit of everything. That’s no longer the formula to win. From managing the product, coding, testing, creating the UI and designing the UX, jobs are now much more specialised. If you don’t have the right talent working in tandem, you will end up with a product that has no market. Remember, your product needs to work well, run smoothly, be user-friendly, integrate easily, and be supported by good or rather excellent customer service – all while being priced competitively. Bonus points for being pretty, which sometimes matters. This sounds like many things to be on top of, but it’s achievable if you figure out where to start from.
Where to start?
It’s the million dollar question and the most difficult to answer: what kind of business do you want to be in? Maybe it’s a matter of what business you ought to be in. If you’re at a cross-roads and can’t figure out where to go – think about it like this:
1. Is demand for this sort of business growing?
2. Can you do it better than most?
3. What kind of resources (time, money, people) do you need to turn things around?
4. How long can you sustain yourself before breaking even?
5. How soon can you go to market?
It’s not easy to answer these questions, but once you set a vision for your business, it becomes easier to manage other variables. In many ways, this is a journey to evaluate which assets have become a liability, and which can help you achieve growth if/when repurposed.
One of the assets that is often overlooked by business owners is brand.
How can your brand help?
I like to think of brand as a secret weapon. It’s much more than your logo and color palette. It’s the sum of all interactions your customers, employees and partners have with you. It’s what they remember and know you by. These qualities that reflect what people think of you constitute equity. Think of your brand equity in the same way you think of financial capital – it will only give you a high return if you invest it in the right way. When you have your business strategy in one hand, your future customers and competitors in another, you start having a clear filter for where you need to invest and the kinds of qualities you need to keep, repurpose or get rid of.
Remember, studying your future customers is as valuable if not more than studying your current or past ones. Making a renewed promise to them is not a mere wrapping of the same old truths: it’s connecting your product, service and experience in ways that are authentic to you, relevant to them and differentiating in the marketplace. Your teams have to work together to get through to the finish line – from product development to design and marketing. They must all speak the same language. Otherwise, you will end up with your product doing one thing, users experiencing another, and sales promising something else entirely.
Reinventing your SaaS brand is a fine balancing act, but it’s well worth the effort if you get it right.
About the author
Ahmad Badr is an independent brand strategy consultant who’s been working with startups and Fortune 100 companies for the past decade to help them reinvent their brand. From tech to CPG and automotive businesses, Ahmad has helped marketing and brand teams across Europe, the Middle East and the US bring their strategy to life through brand and customer experiences that deliver value on every touch-point.