Cadence #29 - De-Positioning Your SaaS Product

Hello and welcome to another weekly #Cadence. This Cadence comes from British Columbia, more specifically, Vancouver.

This week's cadence I want to cover an important aspect of SaaS content marketing that a lot of companies are successfully implementing - de-positioning.

This week's #Cadence is again sponsored by Mirador Local.

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What is De-Positioning?

Positioning is the practice of establishing your product or service in the mind of the consumer, ideally as a solution to a particular problem or as fulfilling a specific need. This often involves pinpointing your unique selling propositions (USPs) and promoting them to the right audience through targeted content.

In contrast, de-positioning involves intentionally downplaying or even removing the 'problem-solving' identity that brands often anchor themselves to. Instead of stressing what makes your software exceptional in solving a particular problem, you highlight what it does not do, or where it does not fit, thereby establishing clearer boundaries between you and your competitors.

A SaaS Content Problem

I've been fortunate to work with a large number of SaaS companies and a lot of them have the same mindset when it comes to content.

• Define the user/ICP problem.
• Frame our product as a solution.
• Choose keywords based on this narrative.

For the most part, it can work, but I've been in rooms where SEO has been a siloed mindset, and content decisions made on metrics such as Ahref's "expected traffic" score, and not actually how to rank for that keyword, or it's relevancy.

De-positioning as a mindset helps teams move away from this repetitive factory model and start to actually do "content marketing" and not just "content production".

How De-Positioning Helps With Differentiation

Avoids Commoditization

Positioning yourself purely as a 'solution' can make you interchangeable with any other software that solves the same problem. De-positioning helps you break away from this risk by focusing on the unique elements that your product does not share with others.

Targeted Appeal

While positioning attempts to be all things to all people within a given problem space, de-positioning helps you zone in on a more specific audience.

By defining what your product isn't, you naturally attract customers who are looking for something different—something specifically like your offering.

Clears Market Confusion

De-positioning can be beneficial in a crowded market where multiple products seem to offer similar solutions.

By clarifying what your product is not designed to do, you make it easier for potential customers to understand why they should choose you over competitors.

Moving Away From the Problem-Solution Mentality

Broader Brand Narrative

Traditional positioning often locks you into a problem-solution mindset that can be limiting. It ties your brand's value exclusively to its capability to solve a problem. De-positioning allows you to construct a broader brand narrative. For instance, instead of being just a ‘project management tool,’ you can focus on being a tool that fosters team collaboration, thereby not restricting yourself to project management.

Promotes Emotional Connections

By avoiding the problem-solution tunnel vision, you create space for other types of connections between your brand and the customer. These can be emotional, aspirational, or rooted in values and beliefs. De-positioning opens the door to these kinds of multifaceted relationships.

Future Adaptability

Markets evolve, and problems get solved. If your entire brand is tied to solving one problem, what happens when that problem is no longer pressing? De-positioning makes your brand more adaptable to market changes. You're not confined to a particular issue; hence you can pivot more comfortably.

Space for Innovation

Lastly, by not pigeonholing yourself into a single problem-solving identity, you give your business more room for innovation. You can expand into different markets, or add features that aren't strictly aligned with the original problem you set out to solve, without causing brand dissonance.