MARKETING
How to Build Brand Identity for Your SaaS Venture
Microsoft. Salesforce. Cisco.
The common element that contributed to the success of these SaaS companies is their strong brand identity.
Brand identity signifies how the target audience perceives a company. The better the perception the more trustworthy the brand becomes. A survey reveals that 46% of consumers can pay more money than average to buy from brands they trust.
So, offering quality products and services is not the only quintessential factor for a brand’s long-term success. Brands need to focus on building a unique brand identity to make a positive impression on the audience, thereby establishing their brand as trustworthy.
If you are a SaaS company looking for best practices to build a strong brand identity, this post can help. Here, we will share five tactics to help SaaS businesses build a strong brand identity, thereby helping them thrive in the current competitive scenario.
#1: Define Your Target Audience
Reports reveal that 92% of SaaS companies fail within three years of inception.
The reason? They focus on developing products that are misfit for their niche.
No wonder, all successful SaaS companies invest hugely in understanding their target market demand.
So, to avoid falling into the pitfall of failure, conduct an in-depth target market analysis. This can help your brand offer the best products and services, thereby improving customer experience.
Ask yourself:
- Who buys your SaaS products?
- What are their key pain points?
- What features or services influence their purchases and conversions?
- Are they satisfied with your product pricing?
These are a few questions that will help you understand who resonates with your brand and why.
Pro Tip: Count on tools like Zumvu’s Sales CRM and Analytics software to get insights into your existing target audience. With this tool, you can check customer demographics like interests, age, gender, number of sales, purchase history, and more.
#2: Understand the Latest Market Trends
Next, focus on understanding the latest market trends.
Market trend analysis can help you understand:
- Business strategies of leading SaaS providers.
- Competitors your target audience follows for SaaS-related information and purchases.
- SaaS offerings of your competitors.
- Target audience’s attitude toward your brand.
- Key improvement areas.
- Demand for the SaaS projects that you’re looking to invest in.
Most importantly, you can identify underserved or unaddressed customers’ needs.
With these vital insights, SaaS ventures can attract new business opportunities. Experts predict that the market research industry will reach $90.79 billion in 2025 at a CAGR of 5%.
Here are a few tips to consider.
- Keep track of industry leaders using competitor analysis tools like Semrush. With this tool, you can evaluate your competitors and their strategies, including keyword research, social media, content, SEO, PPC, content, PR, and more.
- Proactively read SaaS industry-related news and reports to understand the innovative ideas and initiatives thought leaders are taking. Count on digital report resources like British Library’s Business & IP Centre to search reports from top publishers, such as Euromonitor, Mintel, Frost & Sullivan, and more.
- Keep a tab on social channels like Quora (300 million users) and Reddit (48 million users) to identify your prospects’ intent and concerns.
#3: Define Your Brand Tone and Personality
Customers love brands they can relate to.
Brands that seem unapproachable or feel mechanical during interactions may fail at winning customers’ trust. So, SaaS businesses should create a unique brand tone and personality that attracts and engages the target audience.
Building a unique brand personality requires attributing human characteristics to it. For instance, the brand personality can reflect competence, excitement, sincerity, ruggedness, or sophistication.
On the other hand, establishing a brand tone requires developing an attitude to convey the brand message and values to the audience.
Apple Services is an exemplary SaaS brand to consider. The company reflects a sophisticated tone and personality.
Rightly so, they have millions of happy and engaged customers.
So, how would you like your SaaS brand to appear among the target audience?
Create and maintain a consistent personality and tone. This will help your brand stand out from the crowd, thereby ensuring long-term success.
#4: Harness the Power of Storytelling for Content Creation
Content can convert customers into brand advocates and thus is pivotal in building brand identity. With the right content, brands can convey their vision, mission, value proposition, and product offerings, thereby improving conversions.
Here are a few ideal content formats according to customers’ stage in the sales funnel:
- Awareness: Articles, blog posts, videos, digital business cards
- Consideration: how-to videos, how-to blog posts, case studies
- Closing: Case studies, user-generated content, buyer’s guide, research reports
How can you make the content engaging?
Brand storytelling is key to creating engaging content. It involves creating a narrative to help audiences understand the offerings while making an impact.
The only requisite to creating compelling content is having a story idea and its successful execution.
Here’s a great example from HubSpot. Notice how HubSpot highlights its product value proposition by sharing a customer’s story.
Pro Tip: Manage and Publish the Content on the Right Channels
Managing a plentitude of marketing materials can be an overwhelming experience for SaaS companies. In fact, it is one of the top challenges that early-stage SaaS startups face. That’s where advanced software like Digizuite’s digital asset management solution (DAM) can help.
This cloud-based software provides users with a centralized system to organize, store, and share digital media assets like videos, imagery, audio files, documents, and more.
With Digizuite’s DAP, brands can streamline and accelerate the content distribution process to multiple marketing channels, including social media, websites, emails, and more. This can help improve customer experience, thereby resulting in high ROI.
#5: Implement Color Psychology to Design a Suitable Logo
A great brand logo can help SaaS businesses create instant recognition in the industry. When designed right, it can help customers and brands in the marketplace remember you.
And the benefits of logo designing are not restricted to a solid visual appeal.
An impressive logo can help your SaaS venture:
- Create a positive impression on your customers
- Define your brand values
- Boost your brand strategy by becoming memorable in the market
Since the color scheme is a vital part of the logo, you should implement color psychology to reap the best benefits.
Color psychology depicts the effects of color on human behavior and decisions. Reports state that colors influence 75% of customers’ judgments and purchase decisions.
For instance, the blue color is linked to trust. No wonder, leading SaaS brands like Salesforce uses a blue-colored logo.
Notice their website theme is made with shades of blue to match their logo.
Besides color, you should pay attention to the logo text. In this example, Salesforce combined Italic and regular font, thereby making the logo simple yet attractive.
Pro Tip: Create a Brand Style Guide to Ensure Consistency
A brand style guide is a standard reference tool that contains the logo, color scheme, imagery patterns, and more. Creating a brand style guide can help your existing and new team members ensure consistency while designing any form of digital content.
Conclusion
From developing advanced software to updating product features to attract and engage the target audiences, SaaS companies are ever evolving. These changes can impact a brand identity in the long term.
The shared tactics and tools can help you create solid foundational elements and maintain your SaaS brand identity even during the business shift.
So, implement the mentioned tips to engage and convert the audience, thereby improving your ROI.
MARKETING
YouTube Ad Specs, Sizes, and Examples [2024 Update]
Introduction
With billions of users each month, YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine and top website for video content. This makes it a great place for advertising. To succeed, advertisers need to follow the correct YouTube ad specifications. These rules help your ad reach more viewers, increasing the chance of gaining new customers and boosting brand awareness.
Types of YouTube Ads
Video Ads
- Description: These play before, during, or after a YouTube video on computers or mobile devices.
- Types:
- In-stream ads: Can be skippable or non-skippable.
- Bumper ads: Non-skippable, short ads that play before, during, or after a video.
Display Ads
- Description: These appear in different spots on YouTube and usually use text or static images.
- Note: YouTube does not support display image ads directly on its app, but these can be targeted to YouTube.com through Google Display Network (GDN).
Companion Banners
- Description: Appears to the right of the YouTube player on desktop.
- Requirement: Must be purchased alongside In-stream ads, Bumper ads, or In-feed ads.
In-feed Ads
- Description: Resemble videos with images, headlines, and text. They link to a public or unlisted YouTube video.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that play outside of YouTube, on websites and apps within the Google video partner network.
Masthead Ads
- Description: Premium, high-visibility banner ads displayed at the top of the YouTube homepage for both desktop and mobile users.
YouTube Ad Specs by Type
Skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Placement: Before, during, or after a YouTube video.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Action: 15-20 seconds
Non-skippable In-stream Video Ads
- Description: Must be watched completely before the main video.
- Length: 15 seconds (or 20 seconds in certain markets).
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Vertical: 9:16
- Square: 1:1
Bumper Ads
- Length: Maximum 6 seconds.
- File Format: MP4, Quicktime, AVI, ASF, Windows Media, or MPEG.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 640 x 360px
- Vertical: 480 x 360px
In-feed Ads
- Description: Show alongside YouTube content, like search results or the Home feed.
- Resolution:
- Horizontal: 1920 x 1080px
- Vertical: 1080 x 1920px
- Square: 1080 x 1080px
- Aspect Ratio:
- Horizontal: 16:9
- Square: 1:1
- Length:
- Awareness: 15-20 seconds
- Consideration: 2-3 minutes
- Headline/Description:
- Headline: Up to 2 lines, 40 characters per line
- Description: Up to 2 lines, 35 characters per line
Display Ads
- Description: Static images or animated media that appear on YouTube next to video suggestions, in search results, or on the homepage.
- Image Size: 300×60 pixels.
- File Type: GIF, JPG, PNG.
- File Size: Max 150KB.
- Max Animation Length: 30 seconds.
Outstream Ads
- Description: Mobile-only video ads that appear on websites and apps within the Google video partner network, not on YouTube itself.
- Logo Specs:
- Square: 1:1 (200 x 200px).
- File Type: JPG, GIF, PNG.
- Max Size: 200KB.
Masthead Ads
- Description: High-visibility ads at the top of the YouTube homepage.
- Resolution: 1920 x 1080 or higher.
- File Type: JPG or PNG (without transparency).
Conclusion
YouTube offers a variety of ad formats to reach audiences effectively in 2024. Whether you want to build brand awareness, drive conversions, or target specific demographics, YouTube provides a dynamic platform for your advertising needs. Always follow Google’s advertising policies and the technical ad specs to ensure your ads perform their best. Ready to start using YouTube ads? Contact us today to get started!
MARKETING
Why We Are Always ‘Clicking to Buy’, According to Psychologists
Amazon pillows.
MARKETING
A deeper dive into data, personalization and Copilots
Salesforce launched a collection of new, generative AI-related products at Connections in Chicago this week. They included new Einstein Copilots for marketers and merchants and Einstein Personalization.
To better understand, not only the potential impact of the new products, but the evolving Salesforce architecture, we sat down with Bobby Jania, CMO, Marketing Cloud.
Dig deeper: Salesforce piles on the Einstein Copilots
Salesforce’s evolving architecture
It’s hard to deny that Salesforce likes coming up with new names for platforms and products (what happened to Customer 360?) and this can sometimes make the observer wonder if something is brand new, or old but with a brand new name. In particular, what exactly is Einstein 1 and how is it related to Salesforce Data Cloud?
“Data Cloud is built on the Einstein 1 platform,” Jania explained. “The Einstein 1 platform is our entire Salesforce platform and that includes products like Sales Cloud, Service Cloud — that it includes the original idea of Salesforce not just being in the cloud, but being multi-tenancy.”
Data Cloud — not an acquisition, of course — was built natively on that platform. It was the first product built on Hyperforce, Salesforce’s new cloud infrastructure architecture. “Since Data Cloud was on what we now call the Einstein 1 platform from Day One, it has always natively connected to, and been able to read anything in Sales Cloud, Service Cloud [and so on]. On top of that, we can now bring in, not only structured but unstructured data.”
That’s a significant progression from the position, several years ago, when Salesforce had stitched together a platform around various acquisitions (ExactTarget, for example) that didn’t necessarily talk to each other.
“At times, what we would do is have a kind of behind-the-scenes flow where data from one product could be moved into another product,” said Jania, “but in many of those cases the data would then be in both, whereas now the data is in Data Cloud. Tableau will run natively off Data Cloud; Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud — they’re all going to the same operational customer profile.” They’re not copying the data from Data Cloud, Jania confirmed.
Another thing to know is tit’s possible for Salesforce customers to import their own datasets into Data Cloud. “We wanted to create a federated data model,” said Jania. “If you’re using Snowflake, for example, we more or less virtually sit on your data lake. The value we add is that we will look at all your data and help you form these operational customer profiles.”
Let’s learn more about Einstein Copilot
“Copilot means that I have an assistant with me in the tool where I need to be working that contextually knows what I am trying to do and helps me at every step of the process,” Jania said.
For marketers, this might begin with a campaign brief developed with Copilot’s assistance, the identification of an audience based on the brief, and then the development of email or other content. “What’s really cool is the idea of Einstein Studio where our customers will create actions [for Copilot] that we hadn’t even thought about.”
Here’s a key insight (back to nomenclature). We reported on Copilot for markets, Copilot for merchants, Copilot for shoppers. It turns out, however, that there is just one Copilot, Einstein Copilot, and these are use cases. “There’s just one Copilot, we just add these for a little clarity; we’re going to talk about marketing use cases, about shoppers’ use cases. These are actions for the marketing use cases we built out of the box; you can build your own.”
It’s surely going to take a little time for marketers to learn to work easily with Copilot. “There’s always time for adoption,” Jania agreed. “What is directly connected with this is, this is my ninth Connections and this one has the most hands-on training that I’ve seen since 2014 — and a lot of that is getting people using Data Cloud, using these tools rather than just being given a demo.”
What’s new about Einstein Personalization
Salesforce Einstein has been around since 2016 and many of the use cases seem to have involved personalization in various forms. What’s new?
“Einstein Personalization is a real-time decision engine and it’s going to choose next-best-action, next-best-offer. What is new is that it’s a service now that runs natively on top of Data Cloud.” A lot of real-time decision engines need their own set of data that might actually be a subset of data. “Einstein Personalization is going to look holistically at a customer and recommend a next-best-action that could be natively surfaced in Service Cloud, Sales Cloud or Marketing Cloud.”
Finally, trust
One feature of the presentations at Connections was the reassurance that, although public LLMs like ChatGPT could be selected for application to customer data, none of that data would be retained by the LLMs. Is this just a matter of written agreements? No, not just that, said Jania.
“In the Einstein Trust Layer, all of the data, when it connects to an LLM, runs through our gateway. If there was a prompt that had personally identifiable information — a credit card number, an email address — at a mimum, all that is stripped out. The LLMs do not store the output; we store the output for auditing back in Salesforce. Any output that comes back through our gateway is logged in our system; it runs through a toxicity model; and only at the end do we put PII data back into the answer. There are real pieces beyond a handshake that this data is safe.”
-
SEARCHENGINES7 days ago
Google August Core Update Done, Google Interview, Google Ads & Merchant Center News & The YouTube Algorithm SEO
-
SEO6 days ago
Google’s Guidance About The Recent Ranking Update
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Google Search Volatility Still Heated After August Core Update Rollout
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 9, 2024
-
SEO5 days ago
Mediavine Bans Publisher For Overuse Of AI-Generated Content
-
SEO4 days ago
Expert Embedding Techniques for SEO Success
-
SEARCHENGINES4 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: September 10, 2024
-
AFFILIATE MARKETING6 days ago
Invest in Yourself with a Lifetime of StackSkills Courses for $29.97
You must be logged in to post a comment Login