We get it. Launching your own Software as a Service Business is never easy, but if you already have a starting point and a Unique Selling Proposition, things start to get easier. In this article, we will bring some key insights from our conversation with Xenia Muntean, CEO and Founder of Planable, from the most recent episode of our marketing podcast, The Marketing Innovation Show.
Planable is a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams at brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Viber, Siemens, and United Nations.
Let’s get down to it!
Identify a problem
As any other products or services, your product needs to serve to an existing problem, or you’ll need to identify a new problem that your product will resolve. When launching Planable, Xenia considered her previous work experience in her first business, a Social Media Marketing Agency. When building campaigns for her clients, Xenia discovered that there’s a lot going on in this process: from planning, to execution and approval, which can take a longer time than it is needed.
So how do you manage it all, right? That's the question that she was asking herself when she had her own agency, and when she thought of building the system that a lot of brands are using today.
Me and my team, we got together and we realised that this entire process and the entire workflow that happens behind the scenes of content could be simplified and there's a lot of time that could be saved, so we created Planable.
Xenia Muntean, Vlad Caluș and Nicolae Gudumac, Founders of Planable. Photo source: Forbes.ro
2. Know who you compete with
One thing to keep in mind: no matter the scenario, you need to be aware of who is out there next to you. Try to begin with simply asking your current customers or your ideal audience what are their alternatives and what would they like to experience more.
Don’t forget that there will always be similar products and you need to be constantly aware of your competitor’s presence, so your main focus would be communicating your value.
The main challenge is to communicate this in a way that people understand that we're not in the same category as others.
For example, Planable does have something to do with Social Media, but it's not about the publishing side or the scheduling side, or even about the analytics and managing the channel, it's more about managing content and working as a team on that specific content, says Xenia.
3. Build a strong launch strategy
If you decide to launch your product on ProductHunt, you need to be prepared. Xenia shared with us her strategy when launching Planable:
We had a hunter and we asked him to launch Planable on a specific day. We gave him all the materials needed and we had an army of friends prepared to vote. You need a big bump in the beginning so that Product Hunt will be like: "Oh, what's this thing everyone votes?".
That was the main launch. After this, Xenia also invested in their blog, started doing a bit of SEO Optimisation, being a content marketing-driven product from the first days.
We knew that this is going to be something, product-led growth and we need to market the product in a way that people understand us and in a way that positions us well.
4. Do proper customer development interviews
Even if you’re showing people a product that is not ready yet, you need to get honest replies to keep improving - but the question is, how do you do that?
Reading up quite a lot about customer development and what type of questions to ask and how to get people committed to something. Here are a few questions that you should be asking your customers:
What's the problem that you're struggling with?
How did you try to solve it?
How did your solution work out?
If you would get a solution that would actually solve your problem, would you pay for it?
That's another part of it. They might have a real problem, they might need a real solution, but they might not be willing to pay for it. So you need to check all of those boxes, and then you need to get a commitment from them.
5. know yourself as a brand
Self knowledge is something that not only us, humans, should have, but also brands. If a brand is not aware of its own values and what it stands for, it will be hard for them to get through rough times. One example would be the times facing right now, but also when launching the service.
The first thing you want to do is some introspection in yourself as a brand, figuring out who you are, what you stand for, how you want to be seen as a whole? Next, make a list of your brand’s values you want to be identified for, and implement those in what you do, in your team, and in your general state of mind. Know who you are!
Knowing yourself as a brand, doing proper customer development interviews, knowing your competitors, building a strong launching strategy and identifying your problems, these can be the main key points that you need to consider when launching a SaaS business.
Take your time, don’t miss any steps and we are convinced that this small piece of advice will get you far away with your business. If you somehow still need help when building your strategy, book a 30-minute meeting with us and we’ll be more than happy to help you reach success.
This article is inspired by an episode of the Marketiu podcast - The Marketing Innovation Show.
The chat between Andrei Tiu and Xenia Muntean - the Founder of Planable was a source of information and made us extract some interesting ideas from our digital marketing podcast.
To listen to the full version of the podcast episode, choose one of our streaming platforms, or watch it on YouTube:
