Recently, we posted a piece about Google's insight into what they call "Influencing the Messy Middle." It’s an invitation to rethink the user journey and take into account it’s non-linear nature.
The decision-making process entangles a near-infinite loop of evaluation and exploration processes. As SaaS marketers, we want to help users exit this loop in our favor by influencing their cognitive biases. See how to apply category heuristics bias to nudge the user down their buyer journey.
While this might sound like a complicated marketing term, it's really not. You can look at category heuristics as the trigger that helps a prospect finally make a buying decision.Category heuristics are shortcuts that help us make a quick and satisfactory decision within a given category without necessarily exploring all of each option’s features in great depth. Heuristics reduce the cognitive effort by allowing us to examine fewer pieces of information, simplifying how we weigh that information, and considering fewer alternatives overall.
Placing this in the context of your SaaS product is our aim here. SaaS platforms all have specific features to attract customers. You already know this based on the customers you currently have. However, some of your recent prospects are likely trapped in their exploration-and-evaluation loop.
They may be doing some research on your competitors to see whether their features are better than yours. The same goes for comparing prices.You can lure these prospects into converting by tapping into category heuristics or side-by-side product comparisons on your website.
Rather than just marketing your SaaS solution features and letting the prospect do their own research, bring the research right to them. Doing this through a head-to-head comparison landing page is the best way you can speed up conversions.
It all starts by providing a landing page with charts showing feature comparisons between you and a competing SaaS platform. Or, it can be more than one competitor. In the world of SaaS software, you likely have various competitors you can use for feature comparisons.
Most compelling are the comparative Product A and Product B charts. These give a clearer distinction on what separates you apart from perhaps your most obvious competitor.How do you go about designing these comparison charts to bring the most substantial impact and get the prospect into a buying mode? You focus on your ideal customer needs and wants, not only on your features. Once you make it work, expect to see some significant results as we've seen with our other SaaS clients.
One way to design your comparative SaaS features landing page is to simply do a rundown of all your features and consider why would the user care about them.
Start with Feature A and clearly demonstrate just what advantages your feature has over your competitors. Your message would be:
"Here's our competitor, and they have something missing" to drive home the point your product is the better choice. Set each feature category aside and give them individual attention. There isn't anything wrong with showing other competitors can't compete with you.
Along with features, you should also have a separate section devoted to price differences.
Demonstrating better value for the money is your last real step to making this comparative landing page become a winner. Provide another section where you can ably show your price and how it's more affordable compared to other popular platforms.
Seeing proof of this can revoke a powerful response. Adding the price comparison right after feature comparisons only makes sense in the realm of category heuristics.
To make this work right, you need to create a compelling landing page. Personalization, using action verbs, showing benefits, A/B testing – these are only a few of the factors you’d need to keep in mind when building the head-to-head comparison landing pages and applying category heuristics.
All you have to the next is to set up some campaigns and start bidding on your competitors’ brand keywords. Monitor how these pages perform and how successful the campaigns are.
Read more about cognitive biases and how marketers can influence the decision-making process. This one is about the Social Proof bias and how you can use testimonials to make your landing pages convert better.
My job is to match talented, motivated marketers with high-growth companies, arm teams for success, and then get out of the way.
