Growth & Strategy
Personas
SaaS & Startup
Time to ROI
Medium-term (3-6 months)
When I started working with a B2B SaaS client who was drowning in a sea of competitors, they told me something that stuck: "Our landing page looks exactly like everyone else's." They were right. Their hero section, feature grid, testimonials, and pricing table were indistinguishable from the other 47 tools in their category.
Here's the uncomfortable truth about most SaaS companies today: you're all following the same playbook. The same "proven" landing page templates, the same feature-benefit copy, the same social proof placement. While everyone's busy optimizing button colors and A/B testing headlines, they're missing the bigger picture.
Standing out in a crowded SaaS market isn't about being better at the same game—it's about playing a completely different game. After working with dozens of SaaS startups and seeing which approaches actually break through the noise, I've learned that differentiation comes from challenging the rules, not following them.
In this playbook, you'll discover:
Why following SaaS "best practices" is keeping you invisible
The counterintuitive approach that made one client's conversion rate double
How to find inspiration outside your industry (like I did with e-commerce)
The framework for creating uncopiable market positioning
Real examples of SaaS companies that succeeded by breaking convention
This isn't another generic growth hacking guide. This is about the strategic foundation that makes everything else work. Unlike optimizing trial landing pages or traditional acquisition strategies, this approach focuses on fundamentally repositioning how your market perceives you.
Industry Reality
What everyone's doing (and why it's not working)
Walk through any SaaS website directory and you'll see the same pattern repeated endlessly. The industry has created a template for "success" that everyone follows religiously:
The Standard SaaS Playbook:
Feature-focused hero sections with generic value propositions
Three-column feature grids with icons and benefit statements
Customer logo walls for social proof
Testimonial carousels with headshots and company names
Freemium models with "Start Free Trial" CTAs
This conventional wisdom exists because it does work—for the first few companies that used it. The problem? When everyone in your market follows the same template, you're not differentiating. You're commoditizing.
The industry justifies this approach with data: "This layout converted at 3.2%" or "Companies using this structure see 40% better trial signups." But that data comes from a time when these approaches were novel. Now they're table stakes.
Where This Falls Short:
Generic approaches work when the market isn't saturated. But in today's SaaS landscape, where customers evaluate 5-10 similar tools before making a decision, looking like everyone else is the fastest way to become forgettable. Your prospects aren't comparing you to benchmarks—they're comparing you to your competitors who are sitting in the next browser tab.
The result? Price becomes the main differentiator, margins compress, and you end up competing in a race to the bottom. Sound familiar?
Consider me as your business complice.
7 years of freelance experience working with SaaS and Ecommerce brands.
The client I mentioned came to me with a classic problem: great product, solid team, decent funding, but completely invisible in their market. They were competing in the project management space—arguably one of the most crowded SaaS categories.
When I audited their positioning, the issue was immediately clear. Their homepage could have belonged to any of their competitors. "Streamline your workflow," "Boost team productivity," "All-in-one solution"—the same tired phrases everyone uses.
But here's what was interesting: during our strategy session, the founder told me something fascinating. "You know what's weird? Our best customers don't actually use us for project management. They use us to manage their client deliverables completely differently than we intended."
That's when it clicked. They weren't in the project management space—they were in the client service space. But their website, messaging, and entire go-to-market strategy was targeting the wrong category.
The First Failed Attempt:
My initial instinct was to optimize within the existing framework. Better copy, cleaner design, more compelling social proof. We A/B tested headlines, restructured the value proposition, added case studies. The results? Marginally better, but nothing transformative. We were still swimming in the same red ocean as every other PM tool.
That's when I realized we needed to stop playing by the category rules entirely. Instead of making a "better project management tool," we needed to create a completely new category where competition was irrelevant.
Here's my playbook
What I ended up doing and the results.
The breakthrough came when I started looking outside the SaaS industry for inspiration. If everyone in SaaS was following the same playbook, what were completely different industries doing to stand out?
The E-commerce Insight:
I remembered a landing page optimization experiment I'd done for an e-commerce client. Instead of following traditional SaaS landing page conventions, we treated their software like a physical product. Minimal text, product screenshots arranged like product photos, and a simple "Get Access" button positioned like an "Add to Cart" CTA.
My SaaS client was skeptical: "This goes against everything we know about SaaS marketing." Exactly. That was the point.
The Category Creation Strategy:
Instead of positioning them as "project management software," we repositioned them as "client delivery software." This wasn't just semantic—it was strategic. We rebuilt their entire narrative around a problem their existing category didn't address.
The Implementation Framework:
Audience Redefinition: Instead of targeting "teams that need project management," we targeted "agencies struggling with client delivery"
Language Shift: Replaced industry jargon with customer language. "Project management" became "client work." "Workflows" became "deliverables."
Visual Differentiation: Used customer work examples instead of generic project screenshots
Social Proof Realignment: Showcased client delivery success stories, not productivity metrics
Feature Reframing: Same features, but positioned around client outcomes rather than team efficiency
The key was recognizing that their strongest use case wasn't the obvious one. By focusing on how customers actually used the product (not how it was designed to be used), we found an underserved niche where they could dominate.
The Cross-Industry Application:
This approach works because most SaaS founders are too close to their industry to see differentiation opportunities. The best insights often come from completely different sectors. E-commerce sites focus on visual storytelling. B2B service companies emphasize credibility and expertise. Consumer apps prioritize emotional engagement.
By borrowing successful patterns from outside your industry and adapting them to SaaS, you create something genuinely unique. Your competitors can't copy what they don't understand.
Niche Discovery
Find your actual strongest use case, not your intended one
Cross-Industry Inspiration
Look outside SaaS for differentiation patterns that work
Category Creation
Position yourself in an underserved category you can dominate
Visual Storytelling
Use customer success visuals instead of generic product screenshots
The results spoke louder than any optimization we'd tried before. Within 30 days of launching the repositioned site, several metrics shifted significantly:
The most telling change wasn't in conversion rates—it was in the quality of conversations. Sales calls went from "How are you different from [competitor]?" to "Tell me more about how this works for client delivery." They'd successfully moved from a commodity comparison to a consultative conversation.
More importantly, they started attracting customers who were genuinely excited about the product. Instead of grudgingly switching from another tool, prospects were discovering a solution to a problem they didn't know had a specific answer.
The Unexpected Outcomes:
What surprised everyone was how this positioning affected their product roadmap. Feature requests started aligning with actual usage patterns instead of theoretical needs. They began building toward their strength rather than trying to compete feature-for-feature with established players.
The repositioning also created natural word-of-mouth growth. When you're the only solution in a specific category, satisfied customers become evangelists because they have something unique to recommend.
What I've learned and the mistakes I've made.
Sharing so you don't make them.
Here are the key lessons from this experience that apply to any SaaS looking to differentiate:
Your Best Customers Are Your North Star: How your product is actually used matters more than how you designed it to be used. Talk to your happiest customers and find the patterns.
Industry Best Practices Are Competitive Traps: When everyone follows the same playbook, the playbook becomes noise. Differentiation requires breaking some rules.
Category Creation Beats Category Competition: It's easier to be #1 in a category you define than #20 in a category you're forced into.
Cross-Industry Inspiration Works: Your biggest breakthroughs will come from outside your industry, not from studying your competitors.
Language Shapes Perception: The words you use don't just describe your product—they define your market position.
Visual Differentiation Is Strategic: How your product looks on your website signals which category you belong to.
Niche Focus Enables Premium Positioning: Being specifically valuable to a smaller group beats being generically useful to everyone.
When This Approach Works Best:
This strategy is most effective for SaaS companies with existing traction who are struggling to break through in competitive markets. It's less about finding new customers and more about attracting the right customers.
When to Avoid This:
If you're in a truly novel category or your differentiation is purely technical, focusing on category creation might be premature. Sometimes you do need to establish basic market understanding first.
How you can adapt this to your Business
My playbook, condensed for your use case.
For your SaaS / Startup
For SaaS startups looking to implement this approach:
Analyze your happiest customers' actual usage patterns
Map their language, not your product language
Study successful companies outside your industry
Test positioning before rebuilding everything
Focus on one specific use case first
For your Ecommerce store
For ecommerce stores seeking differentiation:
Identify your most passionate customer segment
Position around customer outcomes, not product features
Use customer success stories as visual proof
Create content around your niche expertise
Build category authority through thought leadership