The SaaS industry is maturing, and the market is huge right now. Plus, B2B SaaS is growing its roots deeper into the market.
--Digital Product Management, Insights, Day 48--
Any B2B business can have a tough time establishing its presence in the new market today.
As a result, companies are re-thinking their strategies to cater to this new model that is here to stay.
How do they manage that? There are three common ways.
1. Being a pioneer, not a fast follower
B2B SaaS pioneers are changing the industry rules from scratch by building new products or reframing existing ones.
One example is Outreach.io – a sales communication platform.
It was the first of its kind and helped salespeople automate their communication, reduce manual overhead and increase productivity by 200%.
Related reading: https://bit.ly/3nJdnFG
Another way to innovate is to continuously add new features that help users be more productive or simplify their lives.
The classic example is Slack – a team communication tool from when people were still using Skype for business.
A lot of minor improvements helped them reach more people faster.
2. Deliver continuous value
B2B SaaS products that don’t follow the fast follower strategy but still manage to outpace their competitors – deliver constant value through a sequence of minor improvements over time.
Every improvement is valuable in itself and, when added up, they can make your company stand out from the crowd.
The approach is also called continuous delivery, and it’s trendy among businesses today.
To give you an example, Customer.io helps customers communicate with their audiences based on behavior.
The way they do that is by delivering tons of small value additions to their product every day, like email notifications that are the more personalized or better-looking user interface.
Related reading: https://bit.ly/3CwG6DV
3. Show superior growth-hacking skills
This is the most competitive type of B2B SaaS innovation.
The basic idea behind it is that business success can be achieved through constant and massive experimentation and testing regardless of the industry or size of the company.
You can apply growth-hacking techniques to many areas, like sales and marketing, and drive innovation in the market.
Companies like HubSpot and Optimizely were created precisely based on the growth-hacking mindset.
Related reading: https://bit.ly/3Bwnp1K
There are many paths to choose for companies today.
But it doesn't matter which strategy you apply – the key is to be fast and iterative.
One more thing - competitors won’t let you get advantage easily, and act quickly, and iterate fast, or else another company will take the lead in your industry.
B2B SaaS growth is a complex subject; therefore, I'll tackle it in several articles in the future.
