Software Still Has to Make People Want It
SaaS marketing loves explaining features. Customers are usually more interested in what changes after they use them.
5 min
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Automate workflows. Centralise data. AI-powered insights. Seamless integrations. Real-time dashboards. You have seen the homepage. Probably several hundred times. Software has become incredibly sophisticated while the language used to market it has become strangely repetitive. SaaS marketing faces a particular challenge: products can be technically complex, but the customer still needs a simple reason to care. Complexity belongs inside the product. It does not automatically belong in the proposition.
SELL THE CHANGE
Features matter when somebody is evaluating software.
They matter considerably less when nobody understands why the software should be considered in the first place.
Good SaaS marketing starts with change.
What becomes easier?
What becomes faster?
What stops being painful?
What can the customer do tomorrow that they cannot do today?
The feature explains how.
The marketing should establish why.
That distinction becomes more important as competing platforms quickly replicate functionality.
Today's differentiating feature can become next quarter's standard checkbox.
Brand is harder to duplicate.
Software marketing has traditionally been comfortable with a familiar aesthetic.
Blue gradients.
Floating interface cards.
Geometric illustrations.
A photograph of four people looking unusually delighted by a dashboard.
It is safe.
That is precisely the problem.
SaaS does not have to look like SaaS in order to be understood.
B2B IS STILL HUMAN
Business audiences are still people.
They consume fashion, culture, films, publishing and beautifully designed consumer products outside working hours.
They do not lose aesthetic judgement when they open LinkedIn.
SaaS marketing can be intelligent without becoming sterile.
A distinctive brand can actually make a complicated product easier to understand because it creates confidence before every technical detail has been processed.
The website then has to manage complexity intelligently.
A user wants to know whether the product solves their problem.
A manager wants to know whether their team will adopt it.
Finance wants to understand cost.
IT wants security information.
Leadership wants the commercial case.
Trying to answer all of those questions simultaneously on the homepage creates the familiar wall of copy.
Hierarchy is the solution.
Start with the clearest proposition.
Then allow different audiences to find depth.
The same applies to content.
Reports. Whitepapers. Webinars. Articles. Guides.
Volume is not authority.
Useful content needs an actual point of view.
What has the company learned?
What does it believe?
Where does it disagree with accepted thinking?
Thought leadership without thought is simply publishing.
Do less explaining for the sake of explaining.
Be clearer about the problem.
Build a recognisable identity.
Give people a reason to care before asking them to book a demo.
Software can be technically brilliant.
Somebody still has to want it.
If the product is cleverer than the way it is currently being marketed, there is work to do. i313 creates SaaS marketing across brand, advertising, campaigns, PR, design and websites — making complex products considerably easier to want.
LET'S MAKE IT CLEARER →
