How to position and brand your SaaS product in 5 steps

For your SaaS startup to grow, you need to develop a strong sense of what your product offers (positioning) and communicate it in a way that differentiates it from all other available products on the market (branding). 

Defining these elements isn’t easy, but like so many aspects of launching a successful startup, it all starts with your customers. Effective positioning is more about listening to your customers than inventing something for them. Take your cue from the people who want to buy your product, and you’ll soon be able to craft a brand identity that’s worthy of their loyalty. 

Here’s how to position and brand your SaaS product, in 5 actionable steps.   

What is brand positioning and why is it so important? 

Product positioning is the act of explaining what problems your service or product is going to solve. For example: helping professional teams communicate in quick and informal ways (Slack), helping website or app owners understand their users, identify issues, and find opportunities for growth (Contentsquare).

A strong positioning statement allows you to define your target audience, differentiate yourself from the competition, and make sure that everything you do is ‘on brand’.

Think about your product’s position in terms of a location on a map. Any decision you make, for example, choosing whether or not to build a new feature or integration, will move you on this map, placing you closer or further from where your competitors are located.

Without further ado, here’s how to identify your product's ideal positioning and create branding that communicates this. 

1. Use the JTBD framework to understand the problem your product solves 

When you work on positioning, consider why your customers (current or prospective) might need your product. A really effective way to investigate your customers’ concrete needs, and the context that might drive them to a purchase, is the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework.

This helps you identify the ‘job’ your product is fulfilling for your customers, giving you a better idea of how to focus your marketing, while also challenging your assumptions about which products you are competing against. 

For example, let’s say you’re a company that sells milkshakes in drive-throughs on highways. When you interview customers, you might find out that many of them buy milkshakes on their way back from work because they’re bored—not necessarily because they’re hungry or thirsty. 

Therefore, the job to be done is ‘to cheer up commuters on their way home’—and your product isn’t competing against other food or drinks, but against other forms of entertainment people can enjoy whilst driving home from work, like radio and podcasts. 

JTBD-style interviews are structured interviews that help you retrace your customers’ steps from the point of purchasing (if you don’t have customers yet, you can use the framework with your target audience). Arrange a quick interview, and ask questions like:

• When did you first realize you had a problem or opportunity and needed help?

• How did you go about looking for a solution?

• What solutions did you try, or not try, and why?

• What were your expectations about the product or service you purchased?

Pro tip: recruiting, hosting, and analyzing customer interviews can be a logistical hassle. For a smoother process, use Contentsquare’s Interviews capability. 

It reduces the steps to meeting customers (or potential customers) 1-on-1. Recruit from your own customer base, or from Contentsquare’s pool of 200k+ on-demand participants, then host the interview on our platform.

Once you’ve asked your interviewee everything you need to know about their jobs to be done, the tool transcribes your conversation. You can watch it again and again, turn key moments into sharable clips, or even leave comments on the video’s timeline. Easy!

Contentsquare’s Interviews tool transcribes your conversation

2. Use your JTBD to shape your positioning statement

Now that you have a clear idea of the problem your product is solving for its target customers, reformat this information into a positioning statement. A positioning statement should hammer down who your product is for, how it solves their problems, and what it does differently from the competition. Though this will only be one sentence, it’s worth devoting some time to workshop it, since it’ll act as a north star for your branding efforts. 

Here’s a template to use: 

For [target customer] that needs [customer need], [name of your product] is a [product category] that [how your product solves a customer problem]. Unlike [competitor], our product [how your product is different from the competition].”

For example, to return to our earlier example: 

“For commuters that need a little pick me up, YummyShakes is a milkshake that serves as a delicious treat you can pick up for the long drive home. Unlike listening to the radio, our product provides reliable satisfaction and is also a solution to hunger.” 

Though this may seem like a creative writing exercise, you should not be inventing information. If you've done sufficient research into your customers’ problems and desires, your positioning statement will pretty much write itself. 

3. Choose a name aligned with your positioning 

Next, use your positioning to inspire a name for your product. There are good and bad names, but no name is going to magically make your business flourish.

Did you know: Google used to be called…BackRub?

There are a few standard guidelines for naming your product at the Minimum Viable Product 

(MVP) stage. You should choose a brand name that is

• Easy to pronounce and write down

• Short enough to remember

• Not used by competitors or corporations (do a trademark search!)

• Not offensive in other languages

• Possible to find a memorable domain name for (if you can’t get .com, it’s common for startups to use alternative top-level domains like .io or .so)

One thing to remember is that if your first brand name doesn’t work, you can revisit it (you can even use a brand name generator tool to get extra ideas) after you have an established product-market fit and a more long-term vision.

For example, in 2024, the London-based fintech company Paytrix picked a new name because their original one sounded too connected to their original offer—they used to provide payment solutions, so Paytrix once felt apt. Their new title, Navro, combines the words ‘navigation’ and ‘growth’, speaking to the company’s expanded mission: to help customers navigate their growth into new markets. 

4. Communicate your positioning in a way that connects to customers’ emotions 

The true foundation of branding is to communicate your positioning in a way that touches your customers’ emotions. When marketing your SaaS product, you must be able to capture people’s attention in a few seconds and get them interested and wanting to know more. 

For example, check out this advert from the productivity and note-taking app, Notion. In 30 seconds, we see a narrative arc where the protagonist, Erik, loses his job and successfully retrains as a web designer. The story is relatable and emotional—but its ‘hero’ isn’t really Erik; it’s the tool that supports his journey, Notion. This branding as a friendly app for projects on a human scale reflects Notion’s positioning as a tool for personal use and small businesses.  

To create an even stronger connection in the minds of your users, ‘speak your customer’s language’ by utilizing the words and phrases they themselves used during their JTBD interviews. Also try to showcase your product in action with screenshots, screencasts, and videos whenever you can. Help your audience visualize how your product will work for them in practical terms, how it will ease their pain points and lead them to believable wins. 

Pro tip: for another way to understand what words and phrases your customers use to discuss your product, use Contentsquare’s free Surveys capability. Place surveys on key pages in your product journey to solicit customer opinions in the moment, as they browse. 

If you receive too many responses to read through, use Contentsquare’s AI survey analysis tool to create a report that summarizes the key themes—and pulls out key quotes for you to focus on. 

Set which tags you’d like Contentsquare’s AI survey analysis tool to search responses for, or allow it to decide for you

4. Showcase brand-aligned customer testimonials

The next step is to show that real customers use your product in a way that directly aligns with your branding and positioning, via testimonials. There are different ways to gather testimonials, from transcribing conversations you have with your customers and quoting them directly, to sending surveys that ask questions like

• What changed for you after you got our product?

• How does our product help you get your jobs done?

• How would you feel if you couldn’t use our product anymore?

If you’re strapped for time, you can ask your customers to leave reviews on third-party websites (like TrustRadius, AlternativeTo, GetApp, Capterra, and G2Crowd) instead by sending them a direct link. This also helps you with SEO and conversions, as users might end up on your website because they’re unhappy with their current solution and are turning to third-party review websites while looking for an alternative.

The problem with testimonials is that they often feel staged and lack credibility. As you ask the questions above, add an element of reality by guiding your customers to highlight the elements of doubt or concern they had before they made the purchase. This is a process called ‘reverse testimonial’, which focuses on doubt and skepticism as opposed to praise.

An example of 'reverse testimonial' for a website masterclass led by Sean D’Souza

Strong branding and positioning help your product find its mega-fans

It might seem daunting to place a flag on a map and declare exactly who your product is positioned for, since it means closing off other options and sidelining some possible use cases. 

However, no one loves a product that doesn’t stand for anything. If you build a brand around specific positioning, you set yourself up to attract your SaaS product’s first superfans. Though it might sound counter-intuitive, building on the success of a few dedicated fans is a much better growth strategy than offering a broad but weak appeal to everyone. 

Key insights

• To define your product positioning, you must be able to visualize the specific contexts and circumstances in which using it will benefit your customers

• Talk to your customers through online surveys or interviews

• Pick a brand name that’s easy to remember, write, and pronounce

• Showcase your product in action with images and videos. Use emotional messaging, including the actual language people use to describe their problems and pain points, to ensure potential buyers connect with it.

• Use testimonials that address your customers’ objections and allow them to visualize how your products will help them

Blog posts

• What I Learned From Renaming 3 Companies, Emily Highstreet 

• Positioning Your Startup Is Vital — Here’s How to Nail It, First Round Review

• The 6 Components to Positioning Your SaaS Product So It Sells Itself, Dan Martell

• Jobs to be Done 101: Your Interviewing Style Primer, Nikki Anderson-Stanier

Video and audio

• How to Position Your Startup with Rob Kaminski, Rob Kaminski

• How to Nail Product Positioning and Messaging for B2B SaaS, Anthony Pierri

• How to position your SaaS | the SaaS Revolution Show, Tope Awotona

• How to nail your product positioning, April Dunford 

Books

• The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth, Clayton M. Christensen

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel

• The Brain Audit: Why Customers Buy (and Why They Don’t), Sean D’Souza

• Value Proposition Design, Alex Osterwalder, Yves Pigneur, Greg Bernarda, and Alan Smith 

FAQ about startup positioning