How do you stand out when everyone’s shouting the same thing?
Most SaaS products look different on the outside, but under the hood? Same features. Same pricing. Same pitch.
In a market where attention spans are short and alternatives are plenty, sounding “better” isn’t enough. You have to sound different. And that difference needs to be strategic.
In 2025, even if you enter an entirely new market, alternatives will pop up faster than weeds on your porch. Product is not a MOAT anymore... so what is?
In this article, here’s what we’ll break down:
Find your edge: The real way to analyze your competitors and spot gaps
Own the narrative: Positioning strategies that make your product unignorable
Back it with proof: SEO, pricing, and reviews that align with your core strategy
P.S. If you’re still guessing what makes you different, ValidateMySaaS gets you a real competitor teardown - features, SEO, audience research, and pricing in under 2 hours.
There are four main pillars that almost every great software company gets right.
If you're just starting out, you don’t need to max all of them. But you do need to know what these are because most SaaS teams enter the market blind. They build features. Launch a landing page. Hope something sticks.
It doesn't work that way.
In the next few sections, we’ll break down each Horseman and show you what strong execution looks like so you can figure out what’s missing and where to double down.
Let’s get into it:
Most SaaS founders treat marketing like a post-launch task.
They build the product. Stress over UX. Obsess over features.
Then after months of dev they ask: “Okay, how do we get users?”
That’s backwards.
The best companies don’t start with the product. They start with a promise that’s easy to sell. The product is built around fulfilling that promise.
It’s not about what your tool does. It’s about the offer... the outcome someone gets and how fast they can get it.
If your homepage reads like a checklist “AI-powered, end-to-end, seamless automation” , you’re already losing.
Nobody wakes up thinking, “I need seamless automation.”
They’re thinking: “I need to stop bleeding money” or “I’m sick of doing this manually.”
Most founders write about what their product is. when they should be selling what their product does for someone’s actual life.
A strong offer makes your reader say:
“That’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.”
So, what separates a feature dump from an attractive offer?
Clear transformation
“Know which ad campaigns are performing so that you don't turn off winning campaigns.”
→ This tells me what changes in my life. I have more clarity into which ad campaigns are doing well because of better attribution tracking.
Quantified outcome
“Save 12 hours a week by replacing 4 tools with one dashboard.”
→ Time saved. Money saved. Fewer logins. I can picture me using just one app to do what used to take me 4. I can picture how that makes my life simpler.
Minimal lift required
“Fully set up in 15 minutes. No dev needed.”
→ This reduces my risk. I won't be thrown into the deep end with a new tool, forced to figure it out by myself.
Let’s say you do have a great offer.
If your funnel can’t break even on cold traffic, you’ll still lose.
In 2025, it’s not enough for your product to “convert.” It has to convert profitably. Fast or you’ll never scale.
Most SaaS founders retrofit monetization after they’ve already built the tool:
$19/mo starter plan
A free trial or freemium tier
No monetizable backend
But if your cost to acquire a customer is $150... and your average customer pays you 19 this month?
You’re going to have to wait 8 months before you can even start generating revenue from a single user.
If you're bootstrapped, this means your business will quite literally fail.
The smartest founders reverse engineer product and pricing from paid acquisition.
They ask:
How fast can I get my ad spend back?
Can I sell a high-ticket setup fee, premium onboarding, or annual plan to be liquid on Day 1?
Do I have mid-funnel monetization (e.g. strategy calls, audits) to recoup CAC?
Even Hubspot had a high ticket strategy day 1. That's how they are the monolith they are today.
So... what do you do instead?
Build at least one offer in your funnel that pays back CAC immediately.
Examples:
Annual plan with a steep discount
$500 setup fee with live onboarding
One-time strategy call for $297
Warm leads who aren’t ready to convert? Sell them something.
Playbooks
Mini-courses
Market audits
Most early-stage teams obsess over what they’re building but the real leverage lies in how you sell it and how fast that sale pays you back.
But let’s say you get that right. You’ve got the offer, the funnel, the promise.
Now comes the next test:
Can someone try your product and get enough value in the first 10 minutes to actually come back?
Because if they can’t?
All the ad spend, great copy, and clever positioning in the world won’t save you.
Next up...
You got users through the door. Your offer landed.
You’ve earned their attention. Now, you need to keep it.
And that brings us to a far more important question:
Can they see the payoff early enough to justify pushing through the learning curve?
Switching tools today is one click away.
And most users don’t quit because the product is “hard.”
They quit because they don’t understand why they should invest the effort.
Not every great tool is easy on Day 1.
Notion takes effort.
ClickUp overwhelms at first.
N8N? It’s basically an IDE.
And yet… people stick. Why?
Because they understand the reward.
They know that once they pass through onboarding, they unlock leverage.
That’s the real job of product experience:
Not to remove all friction, but to make the benefit of pushing through it crystal clear.
If you're like Hyros, where the entire setup is "paste one link into your funnel", then absolutely lean into that. You should be marketing that simplicity from the jump.
But for most products, especially horizontal tools (broad use cases like Airtable) or complex vertical tools (deep industry solutions like legal or healthcare CRMs), some onboarding entropy is unavoidable.
And that’s okay.
What matters is how intentionally you’ve engineered the experience to answer these three questions:
Where do users get stuck?
Where do they feel lost?
Where do they feel momentum?
Your job is to:
Provide fast first wins
Deliver guidance at every friction point
Keep users moving through the setup with purpose
If you can do that, users won’t resent the effort.
If your product has a steep ramp, offer a paid concierge onboarding service.
It creates a new revenue stream
It recovers CAC faster (covered in Horseman 1)
It filters for serious users
And most importantly, it accelerates time-to-value
Here’s what to build for:
Don’t pretend your tool is simple. Frame the reward of learning it.
“In 30 minutes, you’ll eliminate 3 hours of work per day.”
That’s an honest value prop that pulls users forward.
Ask only what you need, when you need it.
Let people experience value before committing.
Use default templates, pre-filled values, or “start from example” flows.
Don’t put 12 fields between sign-up and the dashboard.
Don’t rely on help docs. Bake direction into the experience. Use:
Empty states with simple explanations and a clear CTA
(“No campaigns yet. Start your first campaign →”)
Tooltips and smart defaults on first interaction
Microcopy that guides instead of just labeling
Great UX doesn’t happen by accident. Bake it into your actual workflow:
For every new screen or flow, ask:
What’s the first win the user should experience?
What happens if this view is empty?
What’s the next step, and how do we nudge toward it?
Can a first-time user understand this screen without explanation?
Is there clear progress feedback?
You’ve nailed the first two Horsemen:
You know how to craft a sellable offer.
You’ve built a product experience that delivers real value fast.
But now comes a quieter, more powerful challenge:
Why should anyone care about your product when they already have five others like it bookmarked?
Because no matter how functional your tool is... how it feels matters just as much.
And this is where most SaaS products fall flat.
They sound like each other.
Look like each other.
And ultimately… fade into the noise.
Next up: Horseman 3: Brand & Story
Acquiring a new customer is 5-6x more expensive than retaining an existing one. Yet, most people overly focus on acquisition than retention.
In this section, we're going to go over the basics of customer retention and benchmarks you shoud aim for.
There are two types of tools:
a. Daily-use (habit-based):
Slack, Notion, Linear are used as part of someone’s daily workflow.
b. On-demand (outcome-based):
Loom, Apollo, Docusign etc are only used when the need arises.
Why this matters:
Trying to force daily usage on an on-demand tool will just burn users out.
Instead, build your retention model around value timing:
For daily tools → encourage rhythm and check-ins.
For on-demand tools → show up exactly when the user needs you.
Every sticky product hits at least one of these three:
A. Trigger-Based Nudges
Send prompts based on user behavior, not a fixed calendar.
For example, SurferSEO does this very well with weekly emails going over new content opportunities and updates that can be made to previous articles.
These nudges feel helpful, not annoying, because they’re relevant.
B. Anchored Data
The more a user inputs, personalizes, or integrates, the more painful it becomes to leave.
Examples:
Saved searches
Connected accounts
Built dashboards
The goal: Make your product their control center.
C. Habit Stack
Don’t ask users to form new habits.
Instead, plug into existing ones.
Example:
Step 1: Find your sticky users
Who logs in weekly?
What features are they using most often?
Why are they staying?
Step 2: Spot your drop-offs
Where are users bouncing?
Is it after setup, after the first report, after 3 days?
Step 3: Add retention systems
Ideas:
Milestone notifications (“Your first campaign is live!”)
Recap reports (“Here’s what you accomplished this week”)
In-app nudges to underused features
Prompts to connect more data sources
Key KPIs to Track:
Day 1 Activation Rate → Aim for >40%
→ % of users who complete a meaningful action in their first session
Week 1 Retention → Aim for >25%
→ % of new users still active 7 days later
Day 30 Retention → Aim for >15%
→ Signals true long-term value
Feature Retention → % of users who return to core feature weekly
→ Tells you what’s actually sticky
WAU / MAU Ratio → Aim for >40%
→ Measures product habit-forming behavior
Time-to-Value → Under 10 minutes ideally
→ How fast users get a clear payoff
Cool so now you have people signing up, liking your product, and staying onboard. What's next?
Setting up your business for the long term. Next up -
By the time someone lands on your product, they already have some sort of preconception for or against you.
If you're a small player they've never heard of, they will have their guards raised towards your product even if it's objectively better or cheaper (sometimes the inexpensive nature raises even more flags.) This is because they don't trust you.
Their brain's running and thinking:
"I've never heard of this product before but I have heard of (COMPETITOR) who do the same thing" -> bounces, chooses your competitor's product
"I don't really trust these guys. My friends use (COMPETITOR)" -> bounces, chooses your competitor's product
This is why you need to have a multi-channel presence where prospects have heard your name before they even go onto your site.
This means:
Showing up on their feed (LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube organic)
Popping up in their search resutls (SEO, AI recommendations, YouTube organic, Google Ads)
Having your name being thrown around by people they trust (newsletters, word of mouth)
Getting referred by influencers and content creators they already follow (word of mouth, influencer marketing)
To achieve this, we use the KLT framework -
→ This is top-of-funnel presence.
Run Meta and Google Display ads to case studies, leading with social proof.
Publish weekly on LinkedIn and YouTube -> show how your product solves real pain points, and the behind the scenes of the company
Own key search intent:
“{competitor} alternative”
“how to fix {pain point} manually”
“{ICP problem} solved without engineering”
KPI to track:
Ad impressions, CTR across cold audiences, and email signups to your ad funnel
Branded search volume month-over-month
Weekly reach across core platforms (LinkedIn, YouTube, Ads)
→ People don’t fall in love with features. They connect with story, belief, and tone.
Founders often focus so much on what the product does that they forget to show who it’s for and why it exists. But emotional connection is what moves people from passive browsers to motivated buyers.
Here’s how to build “Like”:
Share your own story. What made you start the venture, what roadblocks you hit, where you plan to take the business.
People buy into stories - this is why mythology and cinemas perform so well.
You're bootstrapped competing against venture backed companies with millions in funding? Great, people love rooting for the underdog.
The best advice for this step is to be unfiltered.
Use formats like:
Posts on your personal LinkedIn
Company YouTube videos which go beyond just how to content
Origin story snippets in your welcome flow, and your engagement flow (for ad funnels.)
Take a stance. Why does your product exist? What’s wrong with how things are done now? What "sacred cows" do you kill?
Examples:
“One A-player is worth 10 B-Players""
“Typical SaaS advertising is a losing game. Packaging your SaaS to be more high ticket is how you scale.”
This is what separates you from every other blog post and generic SaaS brand.
Tactical formats:
POV-based content (LinkedIn posts, YouTube videos, blogs)
Manifestos or “What we believe” pages -> Netflix's culture deck is a great read for this.
Opinion-led ad copy (“Tired of CRM bloat?”)
Match how your users already think, speak, and scroll.
Examples:
Selling to technical founders? Keep your copy lean, jargon-free, and backed by logic.
Targeting creators or marketers? Use color, playfulness, and emotion.
Your brand is a vibe. If it doesn’t feel familiar, users won’t lean in.
→ Most SaaS founders build a great product, then hide the results behind a “Case Studies” tab no one clicks.
Trust isn’t just built through the product. It’s built before the user signs up and reinforced after they do.
The key: Don’t isolate your proof. Embed it everywhere a potential buyer might interact with you.
Think of every page, post, or pitch as an opportunity to show:
“This works and here’s the evidence.”
Here’s where your proof should live:
Landing pages → Include real user faces + quantified results near every CTA
Pricing pages → Include ROI quotes near high-tier plans
Ad copy → Run creative featuring user testimonials
Cold emails → Lead with proof:
“Helped {{competitor}} cut churn by 22% in 30 days”
Onboarding flows → Show success stories from users who look like your new customer
You MUST instill certainty that your product is the best solution out there on the market.
One killer customer result should fuel 5–6 different assets. Most teams build once and forget. That’s a mistake.
Break down your top case studies into:
Long-form blog posts
→ Great for SEO, deep dives, and high-intent buyers
60-second video ads
→ Fast social proof for Meta, YouTube, and retargeting
Carousel posts
→ Visual format for LinkedIn/Instagram. Walk through the “Before → After”
Slides for sales calls
→ Equip your team with plug-and-play proof for closing deals
Snippets in email marketing
→ Add lines like: “X company cut costs by $5K/mo using our AI workflows”
Testimonials like “We love it” don’t move the needle.
Numbers do.
Bad → “It’s great.”
Better → “We saved 10 hours a week.”
Best → “Cut manual work by 73% in Week 1 which helped us save $5,000/month.”
Help your clients track real outcomes. Follow up post-onboarding to get hard data if needed. It’ll pay off across ads, sales, and SEO.
Key KPIs to track:
Number of testimonial and case studies deployed
% of leads referencing a specific case study
These are everything that top companies like Hyros, Listkit, HubSpot have applied in one way or another. The truth is, these are quite literally ALL the levers you need to pull to create an exceptional software business.
The secret is not in the information, but in the continuous iteration.
You don’t need to do everything at once.
You just need to build the right things, in the right order:
Start with a clear, quantified offer that makes acquisition easy
Design a product experience that earns a second session
Build trust before the click through omnichannel visibility
If you can pull that off, you’ll get users who show up pre-sold and stick around long enough to compound.
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