The people behind the pixel: Breathing humanity into your software company

Young Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies have what it takes to grow and succeed. The ideas and innovation are there, but when it comes to execution, an awful lot of them are falling down. Why? Because they don’t have a strong brand to match. 

Let me paint the picture for you: a tech genius sees a serious problem for a user, and creates software to solve it, creating a new SaaS company in the process. The company gathers endless data by resolving pain points across user needs on their platform, and the minds behind the product come to know the ins and outs of every pixel.

However with such a laser focus on the tech, SaaS founders often forget to hone in on framing their offering in a human, relatable way, instead leaving their users in a clinical bubble of tech speak, enterprise posturing and functional features that confuse rather than empower. 

To date, only a few SaaS companies have successfully used user insights to build an enduring, ownable and distinctive brand that drives a sustainable competitive advantage — think Shopify, Xero, Monday.

So how do you create a unifying positioning for your SaaS?

1. The brand positioning ‘capability gap’

   When your software company has an incredible product but don’t know how to take it to market, you have a capability gap. The sooner you can identify when your SaaS is lacking this the better, so you can take action and engage brand experts that can bridge the gap between product and positioning.

   Positioning your brand is about understanding that the cultural impact you create is going to have deeper and more influential relationships with your audience than pure product and feature messaging. There’s an art to engaging and persuading people, and product is only one part of it. 

   Competitors will shout product and feature benefits from the rooftops, but a unique positioning is a sustainable competitive advantage in a cluttered market like SaaS. I often hear founders say “our product is better” or “our service is better”, but product performance is irrelevant if nobody knows you, or even worse, they know you but they don’t like you. 

   Brand positioning is key to being seen and convincing people to like you, trust you to buy from you.

2. Look for the human benefit in your offering

   It’s all good and fine to talk jargon and specs with your colleagues, but there’s a 99.9% chance that the person on the other side of the tech stack does not know what you mean, or if they do, it’s because your competitors are all talking about the same thing.

   So how do you jump the fence and start thinking about things on the other side of the tech stack? As you develop your brand position, understand that the benefit of your product offering might be adjacent to the feature — ie. it might give your user more time back in their day, so they can work on the business and not in the business, or it might help someone be more awesome at their job. 

   There’s often confidence in not talking about the feature, and instead talking about what the feature actually allows people to do as a result in their life or in the world. 

   The University of Sydney and Hotwire recently analysed the state of Australian tech brands in their Decoding Tech Brands Report, and the evidence is clear: Aussie SaaS companies are all communicating in a similar way, and very few are daring to do things differently. 

   Those that are, communicate their tech’s human benefit simply and consistently across all touchpoints, and can confidently cut through the clutter of tech brands by being bold because they know they’re adding value to their end user in everything they do. 

3. Have a go at underperforming

   There’s an awesome quote from Harvard Professor Frances Frei. She talks about brands daring to be bad and underperforming in strategic ways, in order to achieve excellence.

   Instead of trying to be the best at everything, decide where you’re willing to perform poorly based on the dimensions that your users value least, and double down on being awesome at the things they care about. While most marketeers talk about tracking sales and churn (and yes, they have their place), find the dimensions you’re going to win on and make them your marketing mantra. It might be sustainability, service or value. Whatever it is, find them, nail them to the wall and don’t try and be everything, just be great at those.

4. Customers aren’t the be all end all

   Brand positioning isn’t just about your end user — it’s also an organising principle for your business. It’s going to influence everything from why top talent wants to work with you, to why employees choose to stay with you, and why you become an envied place to work in the marketplace — it’s your company’s internal cultural compass. The talent war is as competitive as ever, and where five years ago tech companies might have previously won with free coffee and beer in the fridge, in 2022, that’s not going to cut it. You need to be offering value and substance.

We’re living in a time where SaaS users are spoilt for choice, and customer loyalty is near non-existent. The only way to cut through is by looking past the tech in front of you, and getting to know your customers.

Don’t delay — start meeting them, talking to them, understanding them and crafting a brand to match. Remember, people not pixels, in everything you do.