As a B2B SaaS content writer, you know how difficult it can be to break down a technical subject or product into bite-sized pieces for your prospects. Long story short, B2B SaaS technology isn’t always the easiest to write for, there are often many nuances to work through, including how to effectively position yourself to stand apart from your competitors.
From website copy, to email nurture, and long form content like blogs and ebooks, the last thing you want to do is revolve your content around just your product and it’s features. For copy that converts, you’ll need to tap into your prospect’s pains. Then, you can effectively communicate the gains of your B2B SaaS product or service with content that’s actually valuable and resonates with their needs.
Establish key value propositions
The first part of communicating the gains of your SaaS product(s) is to narrow in on where you fit in your market. At Kalungi, we walk our clients through the “Best, Better, Only” exercise so they can determine their unique positioning and apply it to their messaging. In a nutshell, the exercise covers:
- Best: What are some of the things you do really well? This doesn’t have to be unique to you, your competitors might be really good at it as well, but you should still be proud of it.
- Better: What do you think you do better than any of your competitors in the same space?
- Only: Think really hard about this one. You’ll need to think about what completely sets your company apart from the competition.
At the end of this exercise, the idea is to have 2-3 “only” pillars that will become your value propositions. These “onlys” can be pretty broad because eventually you’ll need to establish “Reasons to Believe” to back them up.
Reasons to believe: the foundation for communicating gains
Think about your value propositions as “umbrella” gains that your service offers. These gains are great and help you come out on top of your competitors, but you’ll need solid evidence to back them up. This is where reasons to believe come in.
Reasons to believe should be 3+ “bullet points” of concrete evidence you can use to back up your value propositions. Think about if you’ve won any awards, have any numerical evidence, or if you have a really solid feature that pertains to the overall “umbrella.”
Your reasons to believe are the solid facts to back up any gains you want to communicate about your SaaS product. Think about it, anyone can say they’re the “best” and “only” in a certain category, but if they don’t have solid evidence to back it up, who’s going to believe them and actually invest in the service?
Narrow in on your prospects’ pain points
Next, you’ll want to identify your Ideal Customer Profile(s) (ICPs) you want to target and their specific pain points. To generate your ICPs, run compile a list of technographics, firmographics, demographics, and finally, their job to be done.
Generating these lists should help you identify what job your ICP is actually trying to get done, what their job titles are, what technologies they use in their day-to-day role and finally, their pain points.
When you nail your ICP, you should nail their pains in a way that aligns with your offerings and how your service can help solve them.
To convince a prospect that your service is right for them, tapping into their real pains makes all of the difference. At Kalungi, we always frame pains in a way to our clients by asking them to think about what keeps their ideal prospects up at night. Really think about what they would like to accomplish in their roles and what keeps them up at night.
Once you identify these key pains, be sure to highlight them across your content deliverables. Your audience will only resonate with your product if they can envision themselves actually using it in their everyday lives. If they can’t picture themselves in the context of using your service, all bets are off.
Once you empathize with their pains, you can show how you can help.
Identify your claims
Next, you’ll need to demonstrate your superpowers in the context of your prospect’s pains. This is where a “claim” comes into play, and most of it can actually be drawn from your reasons to believe. When thinking about claims in the context of something like website copy, this will be your social proof.
Often, claims can come in the form of customer testimonials or quotes published on your website to show you are trusted and dependable. This is your opportunity to establish credibility, so any hard evidence can be useful to your overall narrative.
Finally, communicate the gains of your SaaS product
To nail your messaging, you’ll need to establish a “fear of missing out” or sense of urgency your prospects won’t forget about.
One way to do this is to pull relevant statistics that emphasize time-saving, money-saving, or ROI. At this stage, prospects generally need buy-in from key stakeholders in their organization, so you’ll need to emphasize their risk of missing out if they don’t invest in what you have to offer, and soon.
It’s important to recognize that communicating the gains of your SaaS product can’t just be listed at the top of a webpage or lead magnet without any context. Think about it, wouldn’t that look a little shady to you as a reader on the other end?
Interview your current customers
Instead, do your due diligence on what your prospects are looking for in their roles, and what they can’t get done. At Kalungi, one of the ways we do this is by conducting customer interviews for our clients. Interviewing current users of the product or service is a super efficient way to get into the nitty-gritty of what your ICP is looking for.
Conducting interviews can also help you generate impactful quotes you can use on your website and content deliverables. Here are a few questions we’ve generated to help you get started.
Create a messaging framework
Once you’ve gathered all of your research, it’s an organic next step to generate an in-house messaging guide that you can use as one source of truth. A messaging guide will ensure all of your deliverables are consistent in emphasizing the right pains, claims, and gains.
To get started on a messaging guide, we have a framework available here.
Communicating the gains of your SaaS products will always evolve
It’s a given that technology is always evolving based on our needs. This means that your SaaS product(s) will always be evolving in the context of the real world. The result? Communicating the gains of your product will likely always change as well.
That’s why you should always be updating your messaging on a 6-month to yearly basis in order to keep up with changing demands and stay relevant. Just like your product, your positioning shouldn’t remain stagnant. Always keep a pulse on what your customers need and who they are. Once you nail this, communicating the gains of your SaaS product should be a breeze.
