Do you know which SaaS product this is?
Come on⌠youâre technical right? Surely you can tell which SaaS business wrote this code:
No, obviously you canât⌠because this is what every SaaS business sells: code and servers.
Code and servers.
Thatâs it.
OK, maybe with a little customer service thrown in. But you get my point.
- Drift say âmarketing should be more humanâ â but they sell code and servers
- Salesforce say âno more softwareâ â yep, still code and servers
- Basecamp say âbootstrapping is betterâ â code and servers
All these SaaS business are building incredible SaaS brands. But they arenât doing it by talking about their product, code and servers.
They are doing it by talking about what they believe.
This post explainsâŚ
Yuval Noah Harari of Sapiens fame states that humans are only able to rule the world due to their ability to create âmass cooperation networksâ that allow millions of strangers to collaborate on common goals.
Stories are the glue that enables these cooperation networks to form. E.g. itâs our ability to believe that has fueled our global domination more than having âspecial genesâ.
He believes that without these things that donât actually exist:
- Religion
- Countries
- Money
- Human Rights
- Brands
- Law
The human race would not be much further forward than our primate cousins.
You can never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising him that after he dies, he will get limitless bananas in chimpanzee Heaven.
Yuval believes that the human race lives simultaneously in two different worlds: the objective physical world of houses, parks and cutlery and the imagined world of the government, corporations and gods.
Bear that in mindâŚ
Donald Miller also talks about the human drive to believe something in a marketing context within his book:Â Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen.
He states that to become attractive to buyers, a product must solve an external problem. For example, a drill resolves the external problem of needing more storage space by helping you construct a shelf.
But to really get your conversion rates pumping, you can start to weave an internal problem and its solutions into your marketing messages.
The drill company could produce a YouTube ad showing a frustrated father in a chaotic home attempting to put up some shelves with mediocre equipment. It switches to showing him in domestic bliss after completing the shelf task with the branded drill, lying back on the sofa with his partner, children and super cute dog.
Can you spot the internal problem the drill now solves?
Being a good dad.
You can usually find the internal problem your product solves by asking your customer an imaginary question: âdo you have what it takes?â
(In relation to your product or service.)
OK great work so far drill company, but end of quarter is approaching and we have aggressive online sales targets, how do we take this to the next level?
Enter the philosophical problem.
Itâs time to add a third layer of persuasion into the story of your SaaS. They address the age old human challenge of good vs evil.
Why would the world be a better place if your prospects become customers?
In the case of the drill, the philosophical problem could be that the family unit is crucial in order for the human race to perpetuate⌠and without great overhead storage space the family unit would fight over the cupboards, leading to almost certain divorce.
Donald believes that the power behind combining all three problem types is that humans communicate most effectively in stories and the best stories show characters resolving all three problem types.
For example, when Luke Skywalker presses the button on his laser blaster to shoot the unprotected part of the Death Star he resolves three problems:
- External problem â destroys the Death Star
- Internal problem â proves that he can become a Jedi
- Philosophical problem â enables good to triumph over evil
In a business context, Tesla does this incredibly well:
- External problem â I need a safe way to get from A to B
- Internal problem â I want to look cool in front of my friends
- Philosophical problem â I want to help save the planet
Make sense?
OK, so how are three of the biggest SaaS brands in the world using Nava Yoariâs belief theory and Donald Millerâs philosophical problems to magnetize prospects, customers, employees, partners and investors?
- Drift â Marketing should be more human
Drift believe that the internet should be a conversation:
They preach that the internet is a force for good⌠but it is also pulling us apart:
- Spam
- Lack of face to face interaction
- People on their mobile phones whilst on dates
Externally, Drift will put live chat on your site, internally their brand makes you feel hip and urban and philosophically, using Drift makes you feel like you are bringing people together in a world of impersonal email chains.
This is the war cry that their CEO, David Cancel uses to rally the troops during their annual company retreat.
This is the philosophical problem that they exist to solve.
- Salesforce â No more software
Salesforce believe that software is incredibly good for the world⌠but did not use to be easily accessible:
Their legacy competitors sold software along with on premise servers and an army of technicians required to get a customer started â this was the norm.
Salesforce pioneered the business model now know as SaaS.
This was their core innovation and differentiator. However, when Marc Benioff first suggested the âNo Softwareâ campaign to the team, they all hated it.
They thought it was negative and confusing. As he writes in Behind The Cloud, Marc persevered and wore his âNo Softwareâ badge everyday until the rest of the team did the same.
Marc took things a step further and produced a full television commercial showing the modern Salesforce jet fighter shoot down their old fashioned software burdened competitors:
This was their war cry that CEO, Marc Benioff used to shout at the first Dreamforce events.
This was their philosophical problem that they existed to solve.
- Basecamp â Bootstrapping is better
Basecamp believe in bootstrapping. Their business 37Signals sustained itself with consulting, info products and even events that their founders Jason and David hustled through whilst building Basecamp.
They espouse the typical software business lifecycle of multiple funding rounds leading to a grow or die mentality and have grown Basecamp at a modest rate from 45 accounts in 2004 to 3 million in 2019.
Though interestingly both founders sold a chunk of their shares to Jeff Bezos in 2007. Bootstrapping is definitely better when you have multiple millions of dollars in your bank account đ
This is the war cry that CEO, Jason Fried shares in the multiple books he has written around the topic.
This is the philosophical problem that they exist to solve for the thousands of bootstrappers around the world inspired by their story.
What did we learn?
Well, that SaaS businesses are really just selling code and servers. AndâŚ
That to grow your SaaS brand into something your prospects, customers and employees care about⌠you need something to believe.
What does your SaaS believe?