"Have you been running in circles around the same "tried-and-true" GTM strategies that a thousand other SaaS companies are using and wondering why you're not standing out Chances are, your GTM strategy isn’t bad; it’s just boring."
Kent Height
Everyone in SaaS is trying to be Salesforce / Adobe / Atlassian etc, but unless you’ve got billions in your marketing budget and a legion of fanboys camping outside your HQ, you need to drop the dream of world domination and focus on what’s actually going to make your product sell. I’m talking less about buzzwords and more about strategies that gets results—unapologetically.
Let’s flip the script on these “go-to” GTM rules everyone follows like gospel:
1. Buyer Personas are Dead, Move On
Buyer personas? Perlease. Every SaaS company has the same imaginary tech-bro or corporate Karen sitting behind a desk deciding whether your tool is worth their precious time. Stop wasting hours crafting personas that sound more like bad Tinder profiles than real-life decision-makers. The truth is, most customers don’t even know what they need until they see it. So instead of hand-holding them through their journey, why not punch them in the face with value?
Build a killer product that solves the problems that folks genuinely have, show them why their life sucks without it, and let your solution do the talking. Personas won’t buy your SaaS – People looking for very real solutions will.
2. Stop Worshipping Freemium – The Cost Is Too High
Sure, freemium models sound sexy. You’ve heard the fairy tale about Slack growing a $20 billion company on freemium, but guess what? You’re not Slack, and most freemium models turn into charity drives for entitled freeloaders… and damn(!) it feels like everyone’s a freeloader, amiright?
Here’s a hard truth: customers who refuse to pay for your product are probably the ones who will drain your customer support and ghost your upgrades. Or, as is the case with many SaaS platforms, those free accounts are abusing your offer with no intention of becoming paying customers and / or they’re using their account access to hack you – that’s just what happens.
Give people enough value in the trial to prove your worth, but stop giving everything away for free. SaaS is not a community garden.
3. Pricing Models: Just Because It’s Tiered Doesn’t Mean It Works
Here’s where things get spicy – tiered pricing is the fast food of SaaS strategies. It’s easy, everyone’s doing it, and it feels like a decent choice at 3 a.m. when you’re too tired to think. But does it really work for everyone? Hell no.
Instead of mindlessly offering “basic,” “premium,” and “enterprise” packages like a Subway sandwich menu, why not get radical? Customise your pricing based on what drives the most value for specific industries. Throw in dynamic pricing or usage-based models if it makes sense. The old-school tiered model is a one-size-fits-nobody approach, and it’s probably screwing you over.
90%
of SaaS startups fail, due to poor product-market fit, flawed go-to-market strategies, and an over-reliance on vanity metrics.
4. Inbound Marketing Isn’t Enough – You Need To Kick A**
Inbound marketing is like that super chill friend who always suggests you “just wait it out” when things get tough. It’s passive, slow, and often as effective as screaming into the void. By the time a lead fills out your form, they’ve already ghosted three other SaaS products.
It’s time to get aggressive. Push your product in people’s faces. Yes, you still need content – ideally that will take the form of high-credibility thought leadership, but ditch the 1,500-word blog posts on “The Top 5 SaaS Tools for Remote Teams.” No one’s reading that garbage. Instead, target decision-makers directly with ads, podcasts, LinkedIn videos, and anything that’ll grab their attention like a Black Friday deal. Cut the fluff – get direct, and get results.
5. Customer Success is Just Code for “Hand-Holding”
You’re not running a day-care centre, so stop treating your SaaS customers like toddlers. Yes, I said it. Customer success has become a crutch for companies who won’t admit that their product’s onboarding sucks. If you need a whole team to walk someone through using your product, you don’t have a customer success problem—you have a product design problem.
Focus on building an intuitive, self-service product that can onboard itself. The simpler your SaaS is, the less you’ll need to hand-hold. Customer success is necessary, but it shouldn’t be a stand-in for bad UX.
6. Churn is Your Fault, Not the Customer’s
Here’s a hard pill to swallow: churn isn’t the customer’s problem, it’s yours. If users are leaving, it’s because your product either doesn’t deliver enough value or your messaging sucks. Stop blaming churn on “poor fit” or “budget constraints.” Own it. If your users don’t see ROI, you failed to communicate why they need you in the first place.
Fix it by improving your onboarding, making sure your product stays sticky, and constantly demonstrating value. You want customers to stay? Give them no reason to leave.
Here’s a hard pill to swallow: churn isn’t the customer’s problem, it’s yours.
7. Don’t Overhype, and Underdeliver
Most SaaS companies are selling unicorns but delivering donkeys. You overhype your product, promise the moon, and then watch your customers bounce when reality sets in. SaaS buyers are more cynical than ever, and if your product doesn’t live up to your slick marketing, you’re done.
Instead of puffing up your product with buzzwords, be brutally honest. Set real expectations and make sure your product consistently delivers.
Overdelivering on a modest promise will always beat underdelivering on a big one.
8. SEO Is Dying – Stop Worshipping at the Altar of Google
Still clinging to the dream of ranking #1 on Google like it’s 2018? I hate to break it to you, but while you were busy stuffing your blog posts with keywords and backlinks, your audience quietly slipped out the back door and started asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude for answers instead. And guess what? They’re getting what they need without ever clicking a link.
Sure, SEO still has a pulse—Google isn’t going anywhere overnight – but let’s not pretend the game hasn’t changed. The top 10 search results are an endless scroll of affiliate spam, content-farmed garbage, and brands who’ve paid their way to the front of the line. Users are done with that. They’ve had enough of clicking through commercial sludge to find the one half-decent article buried on page seven. So they’re bypassing the whole mess.
Instead of betting your growth strategy on search engines that are slowly bleeding relevance, focus on creating content worth consuming – high-value thought leadership articles, videos drenched in authenticity, hot takes, real insights, and standout stories delivered directly to your audience on the platforms where they’re actually paying attention. SEO isn’t dead… but it’s definitely not your saviour.
Conclusion: Forget What You Know – SaaS GTM Strategies Need to Evolve
Here’s the bottom line: stop following the same tired rules everyone else is. If your SaaS GTM strategy looks like everyone else’s, you’ve already lost. Be bold, be different, and above all, stop being boring. Success in SaaS doesn’t come from following the playbook—it comes from rewriting it.
So go ahead, break the rules. Your SaaS survival depends on it.
Author: Kent Height
Thought leader, growth marketer and consultant to innovative start-ups and scale-ups - Kent is the founder of Techtonic, and a leading voice on successfully scaling businesses with value-driven strategies. Based at Cambridge Science Park in the UK, he helps ambitious organisations cut through the noise to drive real commercial results and audience engagement with impact.
