SaaS Market Research: Go Beyond Your MarTech Metrics

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Authored byRaeann Bilow

Imagine this: You’re the marketing director of a rapidly growing SaaS company. Your dashboard is usually a source of pride, filled with positive metrics. But lately, something’s off. Lead generation has stalled, and you can’t pinpoint why. Your website traffic is steady, your email open rates are decent, and your social media engagement seems normal. Yet, the conversions aren’t there. You’re left perplexed, wondering what’s missing.

This is a classic scenario where the wealth of data available in your internal tools, while valuable, isn’t enough. While your dashboard provides a snapshot of your marketing performance, market research offers a deeper understanding of your customers, competitors, and the broader market landscape. 

You need to invest in dedicated SaaS market research to uncover the “why” behind the numbers and reveal the hidden opportunities and challenges that your internal data can’t see.

What Your SaaS MarTech Stack Can Research For You

Internal tools such as website analytics, CRM data, marketing automation platforms, and more, are invaluable resources. They offer a wealth of information about your marketing efforts:

  • CRM Data: Offers insights into customer demographics, purchase history, preferences, and engagement with your product.
  • Website Analytics: Reveals traffic sources, popular pages, user behavior, and conversion rates.
  • SEO Tools: Shows your performance in search engine results, revealing the relevant keywords that your buyers are searching and fluctuations in your rankings. 
  • Marketing Automation Data: Tracks email open and click-through rates, lead scoring, and campaign performance.
  • Social Media Analytics: Measures reach, engagement, sentiment, and the effectiveness of your social media content.

These tools allow you to monitor your marketing performance in real time, track the impact of specific campaigns, identify high-performing channels or content, and segment your audience for targeted messaging. They are essential for day-to-day optimization and decision-making.

The Limitations of Internal Data

However, relying solely on customer data has its drawbacks. It often fails to explain the reasons behind the numbers. For instance, it can’t explain why a campaign underperformed, why leads or sales are declining, or why customers abandon their carts at a certain point.

SaaS research can uncover the root causes behind any KPIs within your marketing campaigns. Whether it’s shifting customer preferences, increased competition, product dissatisfaction, or poor customer service, market research can pinpoint the underlying issues. 

Internal data also fails to reveal deeper customer insights. It doesn’t delve into their motivations, pain points, or unmet needs. Nor does it illuminate the broader industry landscape or competitive forces that might be influencing your business. Market research fills this crucial gap, providing a comprehensive understanding of your target personas and the market in which you operate.

What SaaS Market Research Can Uncover

SaaS market research can answer critical questions that internal data often can’t address. Here’s a deeper look into the specific insights you can gain from SaaS research:

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)

Underperforming marketing metrics could indicate that your message is not reaching the right people. It’s crucial to have a laser focus on your current ideal customer and ask yourself: Who are the people that will find the most value from your solution? What types of organizations do they work for? What are their primary concerns?

If you can’t clearly define your ICP, you risk targeting an overly broad audience in your marketing campaigns. Trying to appeal to everyone dilutes your message and prevents you from truly connecting with your target buyers on a deeper level. Your messaging will lack the specificity needed to address the unique pain points and motivations of your ideal customers.

A well-defined ICP allows you to tailor your messaging, speak directly to your ideal customers’ needs, and ultimately drive better results from your marketing and sales efforts. It should include:

  • Market Segmentation: Identify the specific types of organizations that will find the most value in your offering, including company size and industry, geographical location, and more.
  • Buyer Persona Profiles: Gather detailed profiles of the main decision-makers and influencers in your target companies. Go beyond demographics and basic info to reveal pain points and challenges, motivators, goals and aspirations, technographics, decision-making dynamics, and more.

Messaging Effectiveness

If engagement or sales are declining, your messaging might not be connecting with your target buyers. SaaS research can help you assess whether you’re addressing their key concerns, using their preferred channels, and tailoring your messages to each stage of their buyer journey. Market research can provide valuable insights through:

  • Message Testing: Experiment with different marketing messages to see which ones resonate most with your potential buyers.
  • Buyer Journey Mapping: Identify key touchpoints along the buyer journey to optimize the messaging for each stage.
  • Channel Effectiveness: Analyze the performance of various marketing channels (e.g., social media, email, content marketing, paid advertising) to determine where to allocate resources for maximum impact.

Customer Satisfaction Levels

Sometimes, unsatisfactory marketing metrics might not be related to your marketing strategies, but could instead be a reflection of issues with your actual product or solution. Perhaps a new feature isn’t being well received, or there are problems with customer service that are driving away customers. Maybe certain marketed benefits are not performing as promised. SaaS research can uncover these potential product issues by diving into the following areas:

  • Feature Preferences and Performance: Determine which features, capabilities, or interactions are most important to your customers and which are less critical. Are the key features performing as promised? What configurations or integrations help customers the most?
  • Customer Service and Onboarding Experience:  Gain insights into your customers’ experience with onboarding and overall customer service. Are they encountering difficulties when they need help or have questions? Understanding their experience can highlight areas for improvement.

Brand Perception

The way customers perceive your brand—and how that perception changes over time—will directly affect the success of any marketing or lead generation campaign. SaaS research can help your organization’s:

  • Brand Awareness: Measure how familiar customers are with your brand compared to your competitors.
  • Brand Sentiment: Assess customers’ attitudes and feelings towards your brand, including trust, loyalty, and satisfaction.
  • Reputation Management: Identify any negative perceptions or misconceptions about your brand and develop strategies to address them.

Competitive Landscape

Increased competition can significantly disrupt your marketing KPIs. A new competitor entering the market, an existing competitor launching a competing feature, or even a price adjustment from a rival can all impact your sales. A competitive landscape analysis can shed light on these activities and their direct impact on your business by exploring:

  • New Competitor Identification: Determine who your direct and indirect competitors are in the market.
  • Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses: Analyze competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, market positions, and customer perceptions.
  • Differentiation Strategies: Identify what makes your product or service unique and how you can leverage these differences to gain a competitive edge.
  • Competitive Pricing Analysis: Compare your pricing strategy to those of your competitors to ensure you’re positioned competitively within the market.

Deeper Than Data: When SaaS Market Research is Necessary

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.”

– Daniel J. Boorstin

Don’t settle for surface-level data. While internal metrics and analytics tools provide valuable information, they often lack the depth and context needed to truly understand your customers, competitors, and market dynamics.

SaaS research delves deeper, uncovering the “why” behind the numbers. It reveals hidden opportunities, uncovers unmet needs, and identifies potential threats lurking beneath the surface. By investing in SaaS research, you gain a comprehensive understanding of your market landscape, empowering you to make informed decisions that drive growth and success.

So, the next time you find yourself asking “why?” when looking at your internal data, push for deeper answers. Embrace the power of SaaS research to unlock hidden insights and propel your business forward. At Cascade Insights, we specialize in helping SaaS companies like yours gain a comprehensive understanding of their market through targeted research. Contact us to uncover the insights you need to make confident, data-driven decisions and achieve lasting success.


For more than 17 years, Cascade Insights has conducted powerful B2B market research for SaaS companies. To learn more, visit our B2B market research page.

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