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Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here, and today what I want to talk to you about is how to keep track of the market, in particular, the competitive options that your customers may also be interested in, similar to what it is that you’re doing with your B2B SaaS. Now I’m talking about competition, obviously, but. From the perspective of where you should be when you’re thinking about this.
My recommendation would be after you’ve launched your product, after you know you can turn cost, you can turn prospects into paying customers, you know that they’re getting value outta the product, you’re seeing some consistent usage. Those are all good metrics to make sure that you get past first. Once you’ve done that, then you’re gonna wanna also know more about what the rest of the market looks like.
Because it’s not just where you start, it’s also where your product may go. How do you make sure that you continue to make it better? Now, you can do that by engaging with your customer base, and that’s always primary because they will tell you what they need next or what else could stand to provide them with more value.
And you should be looking for ways to gather that information as frequently as you can via chat or. Email communication or whatever, right? Provide your customers with the ability to provide you with feedback. At the moment, I’m using Hot Jar to collect survey data on different pages throughout the experience.
That is my B2B SaaS application for podcasting. Now, the other element is what else is going on in the market? You need to track that as well. That’s the threat of new in the Porter’s five Forces model. So if you’re keeping track of this as well, And you’re just Googling random stuff that might be related to what your prospects and potential customers may also be looking for.
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You’re going to probably learn more about other options on the market, other products, and there’s a lot that can be learned from doing a little bit of homework here as well too. Now, I don’t want you to obsess, and I also don’t want you to freak out. If it looks like someone else is doing something similar to what you’re doing, I found probably a half dozen of these already that started right around the same time I did with my podcast show notes tool.
Now, that is largely a good thing, right? Competition helps us educate the market. It also indicates that there is a market, so all of those are positive signs. Now, When you’re doing this homework, I want you to learn a little bit more about a couple of things, right? Who are they selling to? How are they positioning what their product is and what it can do?
What can their product do? What are they priced at? What is the experience like to gain access to the product? And if they’ve got a free trial, even if it’s paid, you may want to take a spin. Take it for a spin yourself to see what you can’t learn about how their product experience works, right? There’s so much to be learned about this from the perspective of.
Where your product fits into the market, right? And how you may position yourself. Cuz we’re always looking for unique angles and areas of opportunity to improve all of those categories that I just mentioned. So do this homework as well. Also see what kind of buzz is being created in different circles, but don’t, again, obsess over this.
This isn’t something to spend every day on. This is more like a. Every couple weeks things. This might be a once a month thing, once a quarter thing where you dive deep and see like what’s going on in the greater landscape. But when someone mentions a name to you, especially as you’re circulating the B2B SaaS product, you’re building and growing.
And it’s somewhat related to what it is you’re doing. Someone may be aware of another tool. Keep track of that so that you can keep track of them a little bit over time as well too. And there’s other automations that you can set up, like Google alerts if you wanna learn a little bit more, or if their name pops into the news and that can send you email inbox kind of notifications when they potentially change something or launch something new or whatever.
But either way, there’s a ton to be learned from here as well too, right? Where are they and what direction are they heading? That can help you define essentially where you want to go as well too.