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Building a brand is challenging, but it’s worth it. Learn how a strong SaaS brand boosts your business value for acquisition or investment.
When SaaS branding is done right, it strengthens your company's presence in the market and increases customer loyalty. However, creating a solid brand takes time.
Building identity, aligning messaging, and optimizing customer experience is challenging. However, once you start, you are on the path to having a robust and long-lasting brand that ultimately adds business value and becomes one of the things competitors can't replicate as easily.
But how much does brand matter in a SaaS valuation? In this article, you'll find the basics of a SaaS branding strategy and tips to consolidate your brand. Keep reading!
Developing the right SaaS branding strategy is essential to stand out from competitors. A SaaS brand is also a tool, so your target audience can identify and understand your unique value proposition.
Users choose a service business based on how it solves a problem for them, but they also consider price, features, and -you guessed- the brand. Research from Adobe found that users who trust a brand make more purchases (71% of consumers) and recommend it to friends (67%).
A strong branding strategy can bring in more customers to the company, translating into an increase in revenue, a higher customer lifetime value, and, as a result, a better valuation. A survey found that 71% of consumers prefer to buy from a brand they already know instead of an unknown business.
In terms of money, a brand's worth is measured by "brand value." Elements such as brand assets, reputation, and customer experience fall into this concept. A well-known brand can turn clients into returning customers and push leads into conversion. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are the top 3 most valuable brands worldwide.
Read: The SaaS Business Model Explained
Every branding strategy has three pillars: brand identity, messaging, and customer experience. Once established, they inform all your marketing and communication efforts, creating a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints.
Brand identity is the visual representation of your brand. It includes logos, color palettes, typography, and designs. A consistent brand identity will remain in the minds of your current and potential customers. The elements included in your brand identity make it easier for users to recognize your brand, and at the same time, they can express your company's personality and values.
Brand messaging is how you communicate with your audience. A unique SaaS brand tone, voice, and key messages connect with your target audience and build your brand.
Effective brand messaging resonates with your users' expectations and communicates that you understand their pain points. Using the right words and statements to promote your value proposition is essential, so users choose your brand over others.
You can describe customer experience as every interaction customers have with your brand. This begins with the discovery of your solution, continues with the use of the service, and ends with the post-sale experience. In the case of SaaS companies, offering a delightful and intuitive user experience (UX) and interface (UI) is important.
As entrepreneur and author Seth Godin puts it: "Every interaction, in any form, is branding." High-quality customer service helps you stand out from other solutions in the market and turn current customers into loyal clients.
For a great customer experience, feedback is essential. Paying attention to what your users say about you allows you to strengthen your bond with them and leaves the door open for constant innovation.
The best SaaS brands clearly understand the company's mission and the product value proposition. Here are 5 essential steps to build your SaaS brand.
Understand your target audience's pain points and the solution they are looking for behind the obvious. Learning about your target audience preferences is helpful when crafting your tone of voice, visual identity, and the customer experience you want to deliver. During the market research phase, look for direct and indirect competitors that offer similar solutions to solve your customer's problems. If you are researching for an online business, Similarweb helps you find competitors and similar products to what you offer.
What are your brand's values? What is the mindset behind decision-making? Establishing clear values will guide your business steps. Before choosing your values, remember that they'll have to align with the findings from your market research, especially the needs and expectations of your target audience.
Mailchimp values independence and creativity and focuses on its customers. These values have shaped their solution features, allowing users to explore their creative side without needing too much help from an expert team.
A key component of SaaS branding is visual identity. Your logo, colors, and overall design will attract your audience's attention through memorable elements. Meanwhile, a compelling and transparent message will strengthen your core values with your audience. Remember to lay out your unique value proposition in the messaging you create.
You can tell when your visual elements and brand message are adequate when an outsider from your business can understand your brand's mission, values, and competitive advantage.
If you don't have many resources to create your visual identity, Dot Yeti is a great graphic design solution. They offer a dedicated design team for a fee.
When developing a SaaS branding strategy, consider the valuable resources you can provide your target audience. In this stage, some companies choose a content marketing strategy to offer helpful information. By doing so, they create marketing assets with which people can engage.
Another path is creating customer support resources so users have the information available when needed, the "Help Center". This will teach your customers how to get the most out of your solution. Additionally, businesses can offer training in the industry to which the SaaS belongs. To polish your customer experience, you can use customer support frameworks to guide your customer support team.
Hubspot is a SaaS company that creates marketing and customer support assets. It hosts webinars to teach its users how to make the most of its platform and show new tactics in the industry. Additionally, the company developed the Hubspot Academy, which has courses and certifications related to the business. Finally, they're constantly publishing new content in their blog about marketing, sales, and customer experience trends.
The last step in creating a SaaS branding strategy is listening to what your users say. Through your customers' opinions, you can make any necessary adjustments to your brand that will help you align better with their needs and expectations and, as a consequence, find potential customers. Managers can collect feedback through surveys using online tools such as SurveySparrow, Qualtrics, and Jotform.
Whether you have already created a SaaS branding strategy or are on the way to doing it, here are some things you can do to enhance brand recognition:
A successful SaaS brand is easier to achieve if you have a high-quality product. Marketing efforts yield better results if the solution solves a problem for the users, and you discover what they are during the market research stage.
Learning what users want and the available options in the market will help you find a competitive advantage and establish your unique value proposition.
But this is not a one-time effort. Reviewing the collected feedback constantly is essential to fix any issues, developing new features, and iterating your solution until it stands out in the market because of its quality.
When Slack was launched in 2013, it was only available to a few users in Beta mode. Customers provided valuable feedback that the SaaS team used to improve the platform and later deliver a high-quality product. Since then, Slack has continuously iterated its service to exceed users' expectations and solve their pain points.
Use the same tone of voice, visual identity, brand message, colors, and typography across all channels where your brand has a presence. By doing so, you remain consistent, reinforce your message, mission, and value proposition, and work on creating a solid brand presence.
Salesforce is an excellent example of how to keep your brand identity across multiple channels without faltering. Users can identify visual elements and messages unique to the brand through their various solutions. The brand's personality is even present in Salesforce Trailhead (the SaaS academy).
Good customer service solves the client's issue while at the same time following your business values. Because of this, personnel must be trained in their competencies and the mission and values your brand promotes. Employees who face customers daily are responsible for accurately representing the brand with third parties.
The marketing platform for small businesses, Mailchimp, promises to empower its users through its tech, customer support, and available resources. The company (and employees) do so by offering supportive customer service that thinks about small business growth and constantly creating resources that empower users to develop their marketing skills.
Consistency plays a part in a successful brand, even in the early days. Delivering an unchanging message under a constant image builds your core identity. Furthermore, consistency develops trust between customers and your brand.
Zendesk is a customer service SaaS that uses the brand's color palette through its communication channels and in its multiple offices across the world.
Pay attention to new tech developments, how they affect your brand identity, and what other businesses in your industry are doing regarding their SaaS branding. Use the latest trends in tech to approach your audience progressively to stay a step ahead of your competitors.
The SaaS company Drift uses AI to make the connection between buyers and sellers more human, boosting the quality of its solution. Additionally, they improved how they engage with leads and visitors to its website. But using the same tone of voice the brand uses for the rest of its communication channels.
At Boopos you can find your next SaaS business. Look at the available SaaS companies from the listing and find the right fit for your goals and that aligns with your portfolio.
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