In our “Going Multiproduct” series, we'll explore the go-to-market (GTM) process for adding new SaaS products to your platform. Drawing on our experiences launching our white label Employee Onboarding Solution, we’ve tailored this guide to pilot business leaders and product managers from conception to launch.
Positioning is Just as Important as Development for a New Product
While the engineers are building, the rest of the GTM team can pivot to defining the product offering and positioning. Having navigated the complexities of product development, from conceptual sketches to creating a market-ready MVP, the journey moves towards strategically positioning the product in the market landscape.
This next phase is about articulating the value your product delivers, identifying its unique place among competitors, and crafting a compelling narrative that resonates with your target audience. It's a critical juncture where the hard work of development meets the nuanced art of marketing, setting the stage for how potential users will perceive and embrace your product. As we delve into defining your product offering and positioning, we'll explore how to highlight the strengths that differentiate your solution.
A Roadmap for Developing Your Product Positioning
- Understanding the Product Offering
- Identifying Your Unique Value Proposition
- Market Positioning Strategy
- Ensuring Your New Product Positioning Aligns With Core Competencies
- Always Be Iterating
Understanding the Product Offering
Defining the product offering involves a detailed understanding of what’s being sold, not just in terms of features but the benefits and solutions it provides customers. A comprehensive product offering articulates the uniqueness of the product, making it clear why it stands out in a crowded market. This clarity is crucial, not only for the GTM team but also for customers.
From Internal Jargon to Marketable Solutions
Translating the internal language and nicknames development and product teams use into clear, customer-friendly language that resonates with external stakeholders is challenging. Yet this translation process is essential for ensuring your target audience understands and values your product's innovative features and technical capabilities. We did this by:
Identifying Our Core Features
The internal team listed all the features of our new onboarding solution, including technical specifications, innovative components, and unique service offerings. As the one spearheading the GTM strategy, I noted which would resonate with customers and which would have to be translated out of technical jargon for them to fully understand.
Defining Our Benefits
Once we had the features that defined our product listed, we asked ourselves,” What does this do for our customer?” about each. This further helps translate technical specifications into tangible benefits that appeal to our core customer segments.
It’s worth noting here that at HiringThing, we have to do double duty when it comes to benefits because of our business's white label nature. We must define the benefits for our white-label partners (increased revenue, increased stickiness, partner support) and end users (streamlined onboarding, stronger retention).
Articulating the Solutions
After we defined the benefits we most wanted to highlight, we went a step further by explaining how each feature (now translated into a benefit) solves a partner/customer challenge or fulfills a need.
During development, we initially referred to our Employee Onboarding software as OnboardingThing but thought better of that in our positioning and messaging decision-making discussions.
Understanding and effectively communicating the product offering is about more than listing features; it's about translating those features into clear benefits and solutions that resonate with your target audience. By converting internal jargon into customer-centric language and using real-world examples, you create a compelling narrative that demonstrates the value of your product in a way that is both understandable and appealing to external stakeholders. This clarity is the foundation of a strong market presence, driving interest and adoption among potential users.
Identifying Your Unique Value Proposition
The value proposition clearly describes your product's benefits, how it solves customers' problems or improves their situation, and what distinguishes it from the competition. A well-crafted value prop is critical for capturing the attention of your target audience and compelling them to choose your solution over others.
Integrated into every aspect of your marketing and communications, your unique value proposition will be the cornerstone of your messaging to consistently remind your audience of your product's unique value.
Market Positioning Strategy
A market positioning strategy is essential for distinguishing your SaaS product in a competitive landscape and defining how your offering is unique in meeting the needs of your target market. This strategy involves identifying your product's key differentiators and value propositions to ensure it stands out to prospective customers. Effective market positioning requires deeply understanding your target audience's pain points and preferences and thoroughly analyzing competitor offerings.
By aligning your product's features and benefits with your audience's specific needs and desires and clearly communicating this alignment in your marketing and sales efforts, you can create a compelling reason for customers to choose your solution over others. A well-crafted positioning strategy attracts attention and builds loyalty by consistently delivering on the promises made, ensuring your product becomes the preferred choice in its niche.
The Duality of White Label Tech in the Market
Developing a market positioning strategy for a white label SaaS product presents unique challenges and opportunities. Since the product will be offered under our partners' brands to their clients, our positioning must appeal to both stakeholders: the partners who will adopt and integrate our solution and their end users who will directly interact with the product. This dual focus requires a nuanced approach to positioning, ensuring our solution is seen as an invaluable addition to our partners’ portfolios and beneficial software for the end users.
Effectively positioning a white label SaaS product requires a strategic approach that addresses the needs and expectations of both our partners and their clients. By clearly articulating our solution's benefits and value to both groups, we establish a strong market position that sets us apart from competitors, fosters partner relationships, and ultimately enhances the end-user experience.
Crafting Your Positioning Statement
A positioning statement is a succinct description of your SaaS product's unique value and relevance to your target audience, distinguishing it from the competition. It serves as a guiding light for all marketing communications, ensuring consistency and clarity in how your product is presented to the market. An effective positioning statement requires precision and a deep understanding of your product, audience, and the competitive landscape.
Your positioning statement should inform all aspects of your marketing and product strategy. It should be reflected in your website copy, marketing materials, sales conversations, and customer service interactions. Consistent messaging helps build a strong brand identity and ensures that all team members are aligned on how the product is positioned in the market.
As your market evolves, your product develops, and you gain more insights into your customers, revisit and revise your positioning statement to ensure it remains relevant and compelling.
Our marketing positioning statement for white-label employee onboarding is, “Enhance your existing product by adding our white-label onboarding technology. You’ll grow your revenue while empowering your clients to strengthen and scale their new hire onboarding.” Versions of that message appear throughout our employee onboarding landing page, marketing content, and sales collateral.
Ensuring Your New Product Positioning Aligns With Core Competencies
Introducing a new product into an existing SaaS company's brand and product line requires careful planning and execution to ensure a seamless integration that enhances the overall brand image and value proposition. This process involves aligning the new product with the company's established brand identity, ensuring it complements and strengthens the existing product suite.
Product Synergy
First, assess how the new product fits within the broader portfolio, identifying synergies and opportunities for cross-promotion. The latest product must be positioned in a way that leverages the strengths of the existing brand while also filling a gap or meeting a new customer need.
New hire onboarding is a natural extension of recruiting in the HR lifecycle. When our employee onboarding software is paired and integrated with our applicant tracking system (ATS), our partners can offer their clients a more seamless hiring experience.
Brand Strategy
Developing a cohesive branding strategy is critical. To ensure brand consistency, the new product should adopt the visual and verbal branding elements that define the existing brand, such as logo style, color schemes, and messaging tone. However, it's also essential to distinguish the new product with unique features or benefits that set it apart, clearly communicated through its naming, marketing materials, and promotional campaigns.
Messaging
Product messaging is the bridge between your product's features and the needs of your target audience. It involves crafting clear, compelling messages highlighting your product's unique value, addressing specific customer pain points, and how your solution solves them. Effective product messaging is consistent across all platforms and touchpoints, from your website to social media, ensuring that potential customers receive a unified understanding of what makes your product stand out. By focusing on the benefits and outcomes rather than just the features, product messaging helps to create a strong emotional connection with your audience, driving engagement, conversions, and loyalty.
Early in the beta phase of our Employee Onboarding software, we uncovered that each of our customers’ new hire processes was unique. While we offer out-of-the-box workflows, we quickly pivoted our messaging to highlight the customization capabilities over the standard processes available to customers looking to get started fast.
On a personal note, this revelation delighted me. Customization is a key benefit and core part of positioning our white label employee onboarding offering as well.
Customer Experience
Consider the customer journey across your product line. Seamless integration of the new product into your existing ecosystem, with thoughtful consideration of user experience, can encourage adoption and loyalty across your portfolio. Offering bundles or incentives for current customers to try the new product can also facilitate cross-selling and enhance the perceived value of your entire suite.
Successfully folding a new product into an existing SaaS brand requires a strategic approach that aligns with the company's brand identity, fills a strategic gap in the product line, and is communicated effectively to internal stakeholders and the target market.
Always Be Iterating
Defining your product offering and positioning is not a one-time effort but a continuous cycle of evolution and iteration. To stay relevant and responsive to market changes and customer feedback, it's essential to revisit and refine your strategies regularly. In line with this philosophy, I host a Strategic Positioning Summit with our leadership team quarterly. Carving out time to evaluate our current position, discuss market trends, and make informed decisions on potential pivots or adjustments is required to stay ahead of the curve.
By staying committed to evolving and iterating based on comprehensive market insights and strategic collaboration, businesses can ensure their SaaS products launch successfully and continue to thrive and grow in an ever-changing market landscape.
Thank you for reading the third post in our “Going Multiproduct” series. In the fourth article, we’ll discuss creating a sales and marketing plan to market your SaaS. The other blogs in this series include Understanding Your Market, Building Your Product, Selling Your Product, and Launching Your Product. Additionally, we have another blog series helping companies determine whether they’re ready to go multiproduct.
About HiringThing
HiringThing is a modern recruiting and employee onboarding platform as a service that creates seamless talent experiences. Our white label solutions and open API enable technology and service providers to offer hiring and onboarding to their clients. Approachable and adaptable, the platform empowers anyone, anywhere to build their dream team.
