Do you know that every successful, market-leading SaaS product is just lines of code until they get a compelling narrative that transforms it into user obsession?
Netflix, Slack, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter)—all of these SaaS platforms fixed everyday problems, made their solution a ‘dogfooding’ for the masses, and the founders themselves were the ideal customer profile (ICP).
Now, virtually everyone has become the ICP for these platforms, holding a cumulative net worth of $467B [1, 2, 3, 4].
What has made these SaaS products go so viral? Is it just the hype, or are they genuinely solving the real problems of their consumers?
In truth, it’s a mix of everything; it’s called SaaS Branding. And we are here to dissect the ins and outs of it.
By the end of this blog, you will know exactly how to build a powerful SaaS brand, ensure it thrives in a crowded market, and—the best part—know the insider strategies to generate the ROI you expect.
What Is SaaS Branding?
SaaS branding is how your users perceive and interact with your software-as-a-service offering. It’s the unique narrative your software tells, distinguishing it from competitors and emphasizing the value it delivers to users.
Now, what unique story does your software tell, how it showcases it is different from other SaaS in the market, and what ‘add-ons’ users will get when using it is what your SaaS branding will be for.
But branding can be different for everyone. It can be a logo, the name of your brand, the color palette you use, or the website you have. It can even be the reputation of your brand or just the look and feel of it.
3 Things That Strong SaaS Brands Have in Common
When we said impactful SaaS branding goes beyond logos and marketing campaigns, we were talking about:
1. Strong Brand Identity
Think of your brand as having a personality. The logo design, the colors you use, and the typography, when combined, give your SaaS brand a visual identity.
Show your potential clients your brand consistently, and slowly, they become familiar with it. This deep-seated familiarity is the start of a long-term and continuing relationship with your customers.
At this point, your users didn’t even use your solution, but your visual identity has already given you a headstart in the market. It has communicated your value proposition, making sure your customers like it afterward.
2. Clear Brand Messaging
What ideal problem will your software solve, how is it different from its competitors, and what is that ‘unique thing’ that will make everyone want to use it? This is your value proposition.
Your brand messaging gives you an opportunity to touch your customers emotionally. Taglines, mission and vision statements, and even the name of your brand can help you do just that. Make sure your tone and voice resonate with the user, highlighting their pain points.
Here is one of the best brand messages (screenshot below). It clearly shows Front’s:
- Value Proposition: automated customer support that ‘feels like human.’
- Identity: a brand that has the ‘wow’ factor
- User Experience: fast, accurate, and human-friendly SaaS
3. Enhanced Customer Experience
Customer experience is an ongoing thing; it goes for as long as your SaaS is out in the market. So beyond those aesthetics and promises lies the practical side of your SaaS solution.
The moment your users purchase it, every user interaction with your solution will dictate whether they would want to keep using it. The user interface (UI) will be the first tangible point of interaction.
An intuitive UI with little to no learning curve would make your solution easily accessible to all. Short tutorials and quick walkthroughs can help a lot here, so make use of them.
Next is the post-purchase customer support.
Not everyone is as apt at learning, and chances are some people are not just used to reading manuals or going through tutorials. There can even be genuine faults in your SaaS that evaded the testing phase. Use this as an opportunity to improve your software and build lasting relationships with your clients by responding proactively to user queries.
Lastly, it’s time for some quick feedback.
Asking users what they like about your SaaS and what they don’t can help you keep your solution updated. It also keeps your users in the loop, giving them the idea that their opinions matter.
But as SaaS founders, don’t initiate your SaaS branding process until you read this.
6 Things Founders Need to Know Before SaaS Branding
1. SaaS Branding Doesn’t Need to Mean Anything
One thing that most CEOs look for when thinking of their SaaS branding is that they want their brand to mean something: to clearly convey what they offer, highlight their services, and portray the big picture that only they have in their minds.
But you don’t necessarily need your SaaS branding to mean anything for it to be successful because some of the biggest B2B SaaS providers and industry giants have logos that have absolutely no relation to what they do.
Consider Apple, for instance, and think if the half-bitten fruit logo has to do anything with this tech giant that has a net worth of $3.2B as of 2024. Rather than having something tech-related, Apple has a simple, plain logo.
In reality, it is not the logo that is working wonders for Apple but rather its overall reputation of almost 50 years in the tech industry and the way it portrays itself. This has made people subconsciously relate the Apple logo with modernization, sophistication, authenticity, innovation, and a higher standard of living.
Or as opined by the Big Think:
“Apple has been telling you this story over and over again, that Apple is the brand for hip, cool, fun, and creative people.”
Here is the short video from Big Think if you want a high-level introduction to how industry giants tend to ‘brand your brain.’
Now, here is an image with logos of various SaaS solutions. Ask yourself whether the logos portray the services each business provides (hint: it’s not what you think).
Remember: when you are looking for a logo, are coming up with a SaaS brand name, or even thinking about the general ‘look and feel’ of your website, know that it doesn’t need to translate verbatim the services and products you provide.
It is okay to be a little elusive. It is actually a little better that way if you want to introduce your product to new markets or new audiences, as it allows for flexibility.
2. Always Think About Longevity in SaaS Branding
Let’s take an everyday example of a construction hat as your logo. After a few years in the construction industry, you want to branch out into home renovation. Will the previous logo work for you? No, it won’t unless you undergo a 360-degree rebranding.
So, if your brand is successful in the start and isn’t too niche-specific, this will save you time, money, and resources in the long run when you pivot into a new market with it.
3. Prefer to Stay Simple, Startups
In the beginning, you won’t have a large team with different departments to take care of your brand design, content creation, business development, marketing, and more. Usually, it is just a few friends who have a well-rounded skill set handling everything cross-functionally.
Here is a quick video from Bloomberg Quicktake explaining why companies like Intel, Pfizer, Durex, and many more have discarded depth and detail from their logos to debrand.
Keeping a simple SaaS branding will make it significantly easy to apply it to whatever material anyone produces without going into the nitty-gritty of laborious style guides. Also, this ensures your branding stays consistent and modern.
This doesn’t just apply to startups only; it fairly applies to tech giants and established SaaS businesses, as well. Once again, take Apple: simple, plain, yet modern.
4. Get SaaS Branding Inspiration From Non-competitors
When you are scrambling for your SaaS brand creation ideas, logo, and colors, we recommend taking a look out of the niche you are aiming for.
But why non-competitors?
Often, competitors are just running in a ‘copycat marathon,’ and the only results you see are different versions of the same idea. Looking at a wide variety of different SaaS brands helps you round out what you ought to see in yours. It also provides you an opportunity to stand out and differentiate yourself.
We are not saying you totally neglect what your competitors do, but rather something deeper. Research your competitors thoroughly, see what their customers like about them and what they don’t, and what else the audience expects them to provide that they are not currently offering.
Once you have done your homework, create a SaaS brand that feels like a calling to your ideal customer profile—it has both the good aspects of your competitor base and everything else the demand is for.
5. Don’t Get Lost in the Details
A lot of SaaS branding is subjective; there is no right or wrong. This means that the color of the logo, what the design would be, and whether to pick a vector or traditional style guide are not something important.
As long as the design and the feel of your brand really hooks people and stays in their minds, choosing red over orange color rarely has any dramatic effect in the start. However, note that changing your brand color or rebranding from scratch when you are already set up and generating profit can have negative effects on your ROI.
Consider how Google takes brand refreshes for Gmail in a very subtle way. It keeps the hardcore Gmail users loyal (honestly, who isn’t?) and makes people realize the apps are continuously being ‘modernized’ when it is just a brand refresh to stay updated.
Make your decision, stick to it, and don’t get lost in details – that’s the point.
6. Finally, it Takes Time for People to Love Branding
You have created the ideal SaaS platform, and you know it is going to work out because you did your research well. It is finally out of the pipeline and into the market – now what?
It is time for you to have some patience, take the back seat, and let the marketing department do its job. Be it traditional outbound or modern inbound marketing, both take time to help you get meaningful leads.
So you may need some persistence–it’s all part of the process.
Pro-tip: If you are short on budget and want a more effective and targeted SaaS lead generation strategy, consider inbound marketing. Because SaaS inbound marketing generates 54% more leads[5] and is 80% less expensive than traditional outbound marketing strategies[6].
If you are still there with us, consider yourself lucky because these tips weren’t put just to make this guide look longer. These are real insights into SaaS branding that can save you tons of resources and valuable time when creating your SaaS brand.
Now, let’s get to the real deal.
How to Build a SaaS Brand from Scratch?
Building that perfect dream SaaS brand requires understanding your core reason for creating it before understanding what your customers need it for.
Ask yourself, what drives you? What are the ideal problems you are solving? Why you are the only one who can create that ideal solution?
This brings us to the steps in the SaaS brand creation process.
Step 1: Research to Understand Your Audience and Their Needs
Begin by thoroughly researching your target market. Understand their needs, pain points, and buying behaviors. Conduct surveys, analyze competitor offerings, and identify any gaps in the market your SaaS can fill.
Consider this as a speed networking session with your potential audience. Start by asking these questions:
- Who is your audience, your ICP?
- What do they want from you?
- Do they have a real problem that only you can solve?
- But why you and not your competitors?
- And what makes you stand out?
- Do you have a solution, the ideal one?
Pro-Tip: Conduct regular market research to stay up-to-date on industry trends and competitor offerings. This will help you refine your value proposition and adapt your branding to remain relevant.
Step 2: Define Your Brand’s Purpose and Your Core Values
What drives your company? What principles guide your decisions? Clearly define your brand purpose and core values. This will shape your overall brand messaging and decision-making.
For instance, let’s see how Slack does this.
What’s Slack’s core purpose here? Actually, it is two things:
- Software made for everyday people.
- What type of people? Working professionals.
Now how does Slack go about defining its purpose further? It does this by strategically blending it in the social proof it provides.
Here’s what we mean.
Slack presents three statistics to define its mission of increasing productivity at work:
- Improving Communication
- Ability to Work Remotely
- Boosting Team Connection
With your core principles laid out in the best way, you move on to create a narrative, a story, and an idea around your value proposition.
Step 3: Develop a Compelling Narrative and Value Proposition
What makes your SaaS solution unique? Craft a clear and concise value proposition that articulates the specific benefits your software delivers to its users.
Let’s take the example of Trally here and see how it builds its narrative.
Trally is a SaaS platform that lets people schedule virtual tours online and help tourists earn on the go. People can either schedule the tour in advance or watch one live – and tourists themselves can livestream from anywhere.
From ‘scheduling your hours, saving your tours, and managing your money’ – Trally bags everything together. This is Trally’s unique selling point.
Are you wondering who the ICP is? It’s all the tourists and everyone who loves seeing them exploring. Here is how Trally hooks them:
Step 4: Establish a Visual Identity That Hooks
Create a memorable logo, color scheme, and typography that reflects your brand personality. Develop a consistent brand voice, a tone that resonates with your target audience and hooks them.
And when it comes to visuals, Adobe Photoshop Suite is the leading SaaS giant here. See how even the news section has got a high-resolution image to accompany it?
That’s so Adobe, so visual. It’s the perfect example of maintaining the look and feel of your SaaS brand across every channel. Because wherever you see Adobe Creative Suite, they are bound to be followed by stunning photography and/ or digital art.
Pro-Tip: Develop a brand style guide to ensure consistency across all marketing materials and communication channels. This includes guidelines for logo usage, color schemes, fonts, and brand voice. Remember how Google does that for all its products and services?
Step 5: Run Content and Product Marketing Campaigns to Promote Brand Awareness
Create informative and valuable content that educates your target audience about your industry and positions your SaaS as the solution to their problems. Utilize various content marketing channels like blog posts, webinars, and social media engagement.
However, product marketing in the SaaS industry is different than B2C marketing campaigns, where the product is physical and not a service or a solution. It’s advisable you learn about product marketing beforehand.
Step 6: Prioritize User Experience in Your Design
The user experience (UX) of your software is a crucial aspect of your brand. Ensure your interface is intuitive and user-friendly and fosters a positive interaction with your product.
Here, Microsoft Image Creator becomes the perfect example of a clean UI with little to no learning curve. Users just type in a prompt, select the output size, and click generate—it is that easy.
But you don’t have to necessarily keep your UI under a certain number of steps; just prioritize users’ comfort, reduce friction between consecutive steps, and maintain a low learning curve.
It is always better to ask the user what they feel about this.
Pro-Tip: Actively seek feedback from your users. Analyze their reviews and listen to their suggestions. Use this valuable input to refine your brand messaging and improve the overall user experience.
Step 7: Invest in Customer Support, Gather Feedback, and Form a Community
Excellent customer support fosters trust and loyalty. Offer multiple support channels, prioritize quick response times, and provide helpful and knowledgeable assistance to your users.
Pro-Tip: Build a strong brand community around your SaaS by engaging with your customers on social media and online forums. This allows you to connect with them on a deeper level and receive valuable feedback.
Bonus: Is This All to SaaS Branding?
By now, you know what SaaS branding is, why it’s important, and all the insights you need to have. We have also given you a detailed walkthrough of how you can build a SaaS brand yourself with real-time examples and pro tips to make the best out of every step.
But does it end here?
No, it won’t. Not until your SaaS branding has become successful, and by successful, we mean the ROI you predicted.
To make it happen, here is our last gift to help you realize your dream SaaS platform.
5 Proven SaaS Marketing Secrets to Make Your SaaS Branding Successful
You could have the best SaaS, the most converting website design, and the perfect team to handle customers, but without marketing yourself, how would people know you are out there?
That’s why you have to market yourself to get your share of screen time from your users. So either you watch this recent podcast on ‘Top 10 SaaS Marketing Strategies for Business Growth.’, or you can continue reading the blog ahead.
Seems like you skipped watching it – no worries. If you are more of a reader, then let’s start discussing these strategies in plain English.
1. Start a Podcast for Your Industry
Think about it: people say no to sales meetings, but they rarely say no to interviews. Starting a SaaS podcast today is one of the easiest, classiest, and most gracious methods of building relations with SaaS founders, decision-makers, subject-matter experts, angel investors, and more.
You not only interview them on your show and unravel the insights they have into their domain; you are simultaneously becoming a thought leader who is building a platform of education for your industry.
The interviewees love you because you are giving them the spotlight and the audience, and the industry loves you for creating a forum where SaaS-related knowledge is being created.
Slowly, people start to subconsciously see you and your SaaS branding as future-proof, resourceful, up-to-date, and trending.
2. Join Relevant Business Networks
Business networks are a great place for you to build a casual relationship before exploring a formal one with the right people in the SaaS industry.
Most SaaS founders are lazy about this strategy and underestimate the impact of networking, especially in a B2B environment. Joining an industry association or a body gives you an immediate shortcut to prospective clients without having to force your way into the hierarchy.
So nurture connections via these events as this gives you a free ticket to two things:
- To form your interviewee list for your SaaS podcast and invite these connections.
- To introduce your SaaS brand whenever you introduce an established SaaS founder.
By showing up with people that the audience already trusts, you start to build your own trust profile. Slowly, your target audience will begin to trust your brand, and they will tend to find it wherever reputed founders are.
3. Use Data-driven Pitching to Generate B2B Leads
This SaaS marketing technique is especially useful to B2B businesses. The benefit of opening a SaaS in a B2B environment is that you have enough data in public domains about your target customer profile (other businesses), their challenges, their financial position, etc.
Now, you can leverage this data, identify their pain points, and create a compelling narrative for your next B2B SaaS branding. This story would clearly portray your SaaS brand value proposition and how it solves everyday problems. Eventually, this becomes a gateway to generating leads and getting life-long customers.
If it’s easier, think about data-driven pitching as a personalized marketing campaign where you are actively researching your prospective clients and creating a product just for them.
Pro-tip: Just like inbound SaaS marketing, 80% of companies see a spike in sales volume when creating personalized marketing campaigns for B2B SaaS branding[7]. Consider services from a SaaS branding agency to devise a strategy for you. They usually offer free quotations and an overview of their campaign. Here is a list of the best B2B SaaS marketing campaigns curated for you.
4. Use Your Content for Better Reach, Initiate Recall, and Drive Results
The biggest mistake you can make as a SaaS founder is to assume that content marketing is for B2C businesses only whose ideal customer profile is available on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
In fact, every SaaS branding needs some amount of content marketing to attract eyeballs—be it a B2C or a B2B SaaS product. On average, SaaS companies spend upto 50% of their yearly revenue on content creation and marketing.[8]
But how do you make the most out of your content budget? The following are three ways we recommend:
- Use Content for Better Reach
For starters:
- LinkedIn can be used to generate newsletters and everyday posts to introduce your SaaS brand to everyone interested.
Don’t know how to market with LinkedIn? Then watch our recent video on ‘How You Can Acquire B2B SaaS Customers with LinkedIn.’
- YouTube can be used to start a podcast (just as we have started our SaaS Podcast) and attract curiosity from your audience (like we have discussed), show the real-time working of your SaaS platform, and demonstrate the effectiveness of your solution via the use cases.
Still, if generating leads with YouTube seems vague, just go ahead and watch it in action.
Now that you have reached out to users, here’s how to keep their memories fresh about your services.
- Use Content to Inititate Recall
Beyond using these platforms for reach, you can also use content creation as a strategy to establish the recall value of your SaaS in a B2B environment.
Let us explain what we mean.
In B2B environments, your customers (other businesses) don’t give you requirements and orders immediately. Instead, you have continuous meetings and appointments. Most of your prospective clients would ask you to get in touch with them during the procurement season.
But once this ends, the energy you have created during that introductory period goes down.
The best way of keeping the energy going well after the procurement season is to consistently create and share engaging content with the prospects you already have had meetings with.
Use content marketing via all the channels you were approaching your clients before. This is called ‘content for recall’, and it keeps your users attached to your SaaS brand.
Finally, it’s time to cash your content creation efforts.
- Use Content to Drive Results
Finally, you can also use content to drive results by sharing case studies, success stories, and testimonials of some of your existing happy customers.
You showcase your recent and most prestigious projects, which creates a compelling case of credibility, urging prospects to give you orders to solve similar problems you already have.
Or even new ones, depending on how well you have created your SaaS brand image.
5. Curate Events for Your SaaS Industry
Remember when we said that SaaS branding means everything, from your logo to just your reputation or your brand’s name?
This is why earning a name in the SaaS industry equals creating your personal brand.
When you curate events in the form of conferences, seminars, award ceremonies, and networking platforms, you become a thought leader in that space.
Now, if your budget allows you to curate physical events, go ahead and do that. But if it doesn’t, you can always go for an online event.
Online events barely cost anything. So invite some of those decision-makers you are connected with, ask leading SaaS personalities to become panelists in a panel discussion, or just put all of them together with people they would like to network with.
Slowly, you and your SaaS brand will be recognized in the industry. More recognition means more reputation, and reputation builds trust and drives sales, especially in the B2B environment.
Pro-tip: A personal branding agency can help you build and develop your personal brand while taking care of business needs.
The Bottom line: SaaS Branding Takes Real Narrative to Sell
SaaS founders, by now, you would have realized that SaaS branding isn’t just about slapping a logo on your website. It is about crafting a narrative that resonates with your target audience, positions you as an authority, and ultimately converts those clicks into loyal customers.
However, with an already saturated SaaS market with tons of options available, the most difficult part is not just converting users but keeping them loyal, as well – all while staying within a budget.
But how do you win the SaaS game on a budget? The answer is right here.
Partner With the UK’s Best Branding Agency for SaaS Companies
With our strategic SaaS branding and targeted marketing efforts, we have seen dozens of SaaS platforms transform into market leaders.
Our work with MarketFinance, which saw a 250% rise in organic traffic, Shopware, which rose to an ARR of $70M, and Quolum, whose monthly visitors jumped three folds speaks for itself. We are a team of tech enthusiasts, niche experts, and business growth specialists obsessed with taking projects out of pipelines and into the market.
At NUPOTIMA, expect us to devise scalable SaaS marketing plans that fit your content creation, marketing, and SaaS SEO needs without straining your wallet.
You get to see your SaaS being adopted by users who need it, and we get another success story to celebrate – a win-win for all.
Wait, you want the best SaaS branding? Let’s talk right away!
FAQ
Anyone can start a SaaS brand without having the tech expertise to create a software solution, as you can always hire a team for that. However, it may be a challenge to start one on your own.
There is not a simple ‘yes or no’ answer to it. You can start a SaaS business if you get your hands on an angel investor and convince him. But if you are unable to find resources, starting a SaaS without any investment may be impossible.
In one word, it depends. However, the average cost of a SaaS startup is anywhere between $ 70,000 and $ 300,000, depending on which niche you are developing a solution for.
References
- Netflix Net Worth 2010-2024 | NFLX | MacroTrends[1]
- Slack Revenue and Usage Statistics (2024) – Business of Apps[2]
- How Much Is Instagram Worth in 2024? Here’s the Latest Data – EarthWeb[3]
- Twitter Net Worth 2013-2022 | TWTR | MacroTrends[4]
- 40+ Latest Inbound Marketing Statistics (2024 Report) | Sender[5]
- 54 Inbound Marketing Statistics and Trends 2024[6]
- Personalization: How To Make A B2B Brand Stand Out And Thrive (forbes.com)[7]
- SaaS and the Rule of 40: Keys to the critical value creation metric | McKinsey[8]
- Apple Net Worth 2010-2024 | AAPL | MacroTrends[9]
