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No, The Product Doesn't Sell Itself

You need to market your SaaS product smartly to cut through the noise and make sales.


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Claire Mason

3 years ago | 2 min read

No, The Product Does Not Sell Itself… But PR Will

Is your product booze after lockdown? Then congratulations, you do indeed have a product that sells itself.

For any other product, I’m here to break it to you that you’re going to need to market its socks off if you want to make sales.

And one of the best ways to do that for a SaaS product is by engaging with publicity.

SaaS products are everywhere and many of them have the same features

In a 2020 article, TechCrunch stated that the SaaS boom we’re experiencing is at the “same stage as the PC market in 1983 or the smartphone market in 2003”.

It’s a great time to be in the SaaS industry, but competition is rising fast.

Well, competition of a sort.

More products are coming on-stream. And many of them are doing the same thing.

Well-known SaaS blog, Chargebee, recently put it this way:

“Many vendors position themselves to be providing managed services or “business ready” applications that are available 24/7. The problem with these propositions is that every company is saying nearly the same thing.”

With such a crowded marketplace, competing on feature functionalities is no longer enough. By not showcasing your differentiation marker(s), you are harming your chances for success.

Why you want to pay attention to brand awareness + differentiation as a founder

It’s easy to mock the concepts of “brand awareness” and “differentiation”. They sound like the kind of wishy washy terms only marketers who’ve swallowed a text book of jargon pay attention to.

But you dismiss them at your peril.

Because brand awareness and differentiation have some pretty impressive superpowers you want to harness for your bottom line.

Research has shown that businesses who increase their brand awareness by 5% can expect an increase in profits by 25+%. Is anything else as exponential business-wise?

Public relations (PR) helps you reach your end user

There are many marketing strategies and tactics you can employ to market your SaaS solution.

But here I’m speaking specifically about PR for its ability to help you cut through a heavily saturated and intensively competitive market.

Publicity/PR is simply the way that brands speak to the public via the media. Including PR in your overall marketing campaign will:

  • Help you build the reputation of your business and SaaS products
  • Provide you with broad exposure…
  • That comes with an extra dose of credibility since it’s not advertising
  • Share your vision for your company
  • Highlight user stories (immediately impactful for attracting leads that are a good product/market fit)

Alongside these benefits, PR also helps with:

  • Building a winning perception of your company
  • Recruiting top talent (employer branding is becoming a big factor in getting the ideal people to take a job with your company - startups especially are competing with tech behemoths - positive and frequent media coverage can help you hire well)
  • Providing social proof that can be shared across all channels
  • Engaging prospects through your customer funnels
  • Making fundraising a little easier (media coverage can reassure VCs that they’re speaking to a strong contender)

With a consistent, integrated and robust publicity campaign behind your SaaS solutions, you’ll find the product selling itself.

But you’ll know better of course.

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Created by

Claire Mason

Content Strategist


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