Mass Market vs Niche SaaS: Selling a Problem They Don't Know They Have
As a developer learning how to market my project from scratch, I’ve been analyzing different strategies and just had a massive "aha" moment. I finally understood the fundamental difference between selling a service and a niche IT product.
If you sell a service (like video editing or web design), your client already knows they have a problem. They are actively searching for someone to fix it. Good SEO, running a few ads, or showing a solid portfolio is usually enough to close the deal. The demand is already formed.
But when you build a niche micro-SaaS (like my project for video creators), the rules of the game flip 180 degrees.
You are solving a problem your future client doesn't even know they have.
My target audience consists of creators (from beginners to pros) and SMM agencies. Right now, their workflow looks like this: half of the script is written in Google Docs, revisions fly in as 5-minute WhatsApp voice notes, and communicating with editors takes up a massive amount of time.
It is pure chaos. But the paradox is that they are used to this pain. They just assume that "this is how the industry works."
They aren't Googling for a "video planning workspace" because they don't even know this category of products exists.
That is exactly why, at this early stage, traditional marketing (just dropping links and buying ads) is a complete waste of time for me. My best strategy right now is to chase down every single user personally, explain that they do have a problem, listen to their pain points, and integrate the solutions directly into my product.
My sales funnel isn't "Saw a link -> Bought". It looks like this:
Find the client.
Show them the problem. Like a doctor with an X-ray, I have to show them the exact chaos they live in and how many hours a week they lose to it.
Sell the product. Only when a person realizes their pain can I offer my service as the "pill."
In the early stages of a niche product, you don't sell features. You first sell the awareness of the problem. And only then, the product itself.
Has anyone else experienced this exact mindset shift when moving from client work to building your own SaaS? How did you "educate" your first users?
This is such a real insight. I went through the exact same shift.
When you sell services, you're basically responding to demand that already exists. People know they need a designer, editor, or developer—they’re just choosing who.
But with niche SaaS, you're almost like… creating demand from scratch. You're not just selling a tool, you're changing how people think about their workflow.
The hardest part isn’t building the product—it’s making someone stop and say, “wait… this actually is a problem.”
I like your “doctor with an X-ray” analogy. That’s exactly it. You’re diagnosing something they’ve normalized.
From what I’ve seen, the best early traction comes from:
talking to users 1:1
showing them their own inefficiencies
and building with them, not just for them
It’s slower, but way more powerful long-term.
You’re definitely on the right track with this approach.
Man, this is such a sharp and honest insight. You nailed the biggest difference between service work and niche SaaS.
When you're doing client work, the client already feels the pain and is actively looking for a solution. But with a micro-SaaS, especially a niche one, most of your potential users are living in the pain and think “this is just how it is.”
That mindset shift from “selling the solution” to “first selling the problem” is brutal but so important in the early days.
I’ve been through the exact same thing. The best early traction I got wasn’t from ads or landing pages — it was from jumping on calls, showing creators screenshots of their messy WhatsApp + Google Docs workflow, and watching their eyes open.
Quick question for you: How are you currently finding those first users to have these “problem awareness” conversations? Cold DMs, Reddit, Twitter, or somewhere else?
Really good post. This kind of thinking separates the ones who eventually break through from the ones who stay stuck.
I have a plan: to record an onboarding video showing how cool it is to use the app. Next, I'll try to collaborate with YouTubers who create content about video production.
Ideally, I want YouTubers to understand the problem themselves and share it, offering my solution.
So far, I've come up with the idea of working through influencers.
There's a very high rate of ignorance if you post like: "You have a problem, I have a solution." No one sees the problem.
Or spam heavily and be on everyone's lips, so that new users simply want to watch out of curiosity rather than necessity. But that requires a huge advertising budget.
Basically, I need to sell the problem first, then the solution.
I'm dealing with the same challenges your facing, and honestly I think any technical founders will have the same things because its new era for us.
Implementing new processes in old companies is always painful. I don't think this is a new era, it's just the path of a niche product.
I definitely resonate with this. I haven't built my own SaaS yet, but I tend to build things that aren't obvious solutions to problems people have, for the reasons you stated. It's certainly harder to get to the customer when they don't realize they have a problem, and you can't follow the usual marketing advice. Thanks for sharing your experience with this.
Interesting fact: Gmail earned its first dollar for its service 10 years later.
This mirrors exactly what I'm navigating right now. The "doctor with an X-ray" framing is the most useful mental model I've seen for this stage — you're not selling a solution, you're first selling the diagnosis. The part that resonates most is the chaos being normalized. The hardest users to convert aren't the skeptics, they're the ones who've built their entire workflow around the broken process and genuinely don't feel the pain anymore because they've adapted to it. What's working for me in early stages is finding the moment of acute frustration rather than chronic pain — the specific instance where someone says "I can't believe this doesn't exist" rather than "yeah this is annoying." That moment is where the sale actually happens. How are you identifying which creators are closest to that acute frustration point before investing time in the full education cycle?
I can't figure it out yet; my app isn't available on the Play Market yet. But several friends who already use my service have given positive feedback. You're right, people are used to chaos and inconvenience; they accept it as the norm.
Settilo is a niche SaaS, and our situation is a bit different. Our users — homebuyers and renters in the US — are fully aware of the problem: they know the neighborhood matters deeply, and they say it explicitly. Our customer interviews confirm this. But their current workflow looks like a patchwork: listings on Zillow, separate Google searches about the area, Reddit threads asking "is this neighborhood actually safe?", and cross-referencing school ratings on a third-party site. They don't search for "neighborhood analytics map" because they don't know that kind of tool exists yet. Instead, they Google "[neighborhood name] school ratings", "[neighborhood name] crime rate" — and land on a dozen different websites, each with a different format, different depth, different data. They find one metric, then go back and search again for the next one. So our job is slightly easier — we don't need to prove the pain, we just need to show that the scattered process can come together in one place. But that "aha, this is exactly what I needed" moment works exactly the same way as your X-ray analogy.
To your questions — my shift was different. I never did client work, so I had no "service mindset" to unlearn. But I hit a different wall: I thought that users who know their pain would immediately see the value of a new tool. They don't. Knowing you have a problem doesn't mean you're ready to change how you work. That was my real shift. The education is still there — just a different kind. Not "your workflow is broken" but "look what's possible." And our best education tool turned out to be the product itself. One demo, zero explanation needed.
Thanks, I also came to the demonstration and will soon post a gif or video of the application in action on the site.
This is exactly the problem I'm running into with competitor intelligence. Founders don't google "competitor monitoring tool" because they don't think of tracking competitors as a thing you automate — they just check a competitor's website once in a while and call it done. They don't realize they're losing hours a month to something that could be a weekly email.
The "doctor with an X-ray" framing is spot on. I've found the only thing that works is showing someone their own blind spot — like "did you know your competitor launched a new pricing page last week?" and watching their face change. That's the moment they get it. No landing page copy does that.
Curious how the 1-on-1 approach is scaling for you. At what point do you think you'll have enough pattern recognition from those conversations to write marketing that does the "showing the problem" part without you being in the room?
I'm still just starting out in my marketing journey. Based on my experience with manually attracting clients, I'll develop a communication script and automate it. I also have an invite system. How it works: a screenwriter invites an editor to the workspace even if they don't have an account. Then the editor sees that my system works well and will recommend them to other clients/friends.
The invite flow is doing your marketing for you before you even have marketing — that's the best kind. When you start building that communication script, pay attention to the exact words your current users use to describe why they like it. Those phrases usually work better than anything you'd write yourself.
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wow..
This is a profound realization, Evgeny. The concept of 'normalized pain' is exactly what prevents innovation in legacy workflows. I’m currently building Flex (an AI agent for desktop automation), and I face this daily. Users have spent a decade doing manual Alt-Tabbing and data entry; they don't search for a solution because they think the friction is a 'feature' of using a PC, not a bug.
I love your X-ray analogy. I’ve found that showing a screen recording of the tool doing 10 minutes of their work in 30 seconds is the only way to break that 'normalization.' Since you’re only 4 days in with Cutria, are you planning to build a 'Chaos Calculator' or something similar to help users quantify the time they’re losing before they even sign up?
I didn't plan to until your comment. Thanks, I do 😁
Going through exactly this right now. I built a CSV/Excel comparison tool — the people who need it most (accountants doing manual reconciliation, analysts writing throwaway pandas scripts) don't search for "data reconciliation tool" because they've accepted the pain as normal. They just think VLOOKUP + eyeballing is how it's done.
What's working for me so far: finding the conversations where they're already complaining about the symptom. Reddit threads asking "how do I compare two huge spreadsheets" or Twitter posts about reconciliation nightmares. They know the pain, they just don't know a category of tool exists for it.
Your doctor/X-ray analogy is spot on. You can't sell the pill until they see the problem.
And it took me two days of marketing research to achieve this result. Personally, I find it easier to write another feature than to deal with all this.
That sounds right and as someone who likes to make stuff, I run into this alot.
Thanks for crystalizing this concept.
Curious to hear your thoughts, another item along the same thread for SaaS products is either social or product proof. (ie: Benchmarks, testimonials, etc.)
I found it hard to get metrics on how things improved. I personally go more the consultant/service route, introduce tools, and get a first hand look at their impact.
But please let us know if you have other ways or strategies of getting your SaaS impact in the markets.
I think the main metrics here will be for clients. Previously, they made videos in X hours, now it's Y.
It's important to understand the problem my service solves:
1. Planning and script writing for creating high-quality videos for Beginner bloggers
2. Streamlining video production for Experienced bloggers by simultaneously working on three projects. Getting ideas, refinements, and thoughts for each script out of your head and onto paper. Focus on one project.
3. Reducing communication time between the creative team (scriptwriters) and technical staff (editors) thanks to a pre-defined script with scene lengths. For Professional bloggers with their own team.
Thank you, you asked a very interesting question about metrics and now it will be in my head until I find a solution 😁
That’s a really insightful point. Most people don’t realize how much of a shift it is until they actually try selling to a niche.
I think the hardest part isn’t just pointing out the problem, it’s helping them see the pattern in what they’re already doing. Because from their perspective, it doesn’t feel chaotic. It feels normal, just how things are.
What I’ve noticed is, once you reflect their workflow back to them clearly, they start connecting the dots themselves. That’s when the “aha” moment happens. They see the pattern, and suddenly everything clicks.
I’ve been exploring this idea from a slightly different angle like more about helping founders understand what’s really happening in their workflow over time, rather than just adding another tool to their stack.
I’d love to hear when you talk to users, what’s the exact moment they realize there’s a problem?
I've only attracted three users so far, my officemates. I explained to them that their work was chaotic and gave them a link to the app. This SaaS project was actually a small project for a friend who realized he had trouble organizing his team. He didn't even know what to Google to solve his problems. I wrote a small app, my friend was delighted, and I turned it into a full-fledged SaaS project.
I’m still figuring this out as I go.
What I’ve seen so far is that people don’t have a sudden realization. It usually happens little by little.
At first, they think everything is fine. It’s just how they’ve always worked.
Then, when I walk through their process with them, they start to notice small issues.
The real shift happens when I make it more concrete. For example, how much time they lose, how many back-and-forth messages they deal with, how often they switch between tools.
That’s when it starts to click.
I also noticed that showing works much better than explaining. If I just tell them their workflow is inefficient, it doesn’t really land. But if I reflect their process back to them, they can see the problems on their own.
I like your idea about automating that “X-ray” step. It feels like a more scalable version of what I’m doing manually right now.
If I were starting again, I would probably focus earlier on making that process more repeatable. Even something simple that shows “you are losing X hours per week” could be really powerful.
It really feels like helping people see the problem clearly is just as important as the product itself at this stage.
Yes, I had another “brilliant” idea today. Make a video on how to work with my app as a team. I think this will help the “casual passerby” understand what kind of product it is.
To be absolutely honest? Nothing (yet)! 😂
I literally launched Cutria just 4 days ago, so I haven't had the time to make any massive wrong choices. Right now, I'm exactly in the trenches doing what I described in the post: manually doing the 'X-ray' for my first users, watching them interact with the app, and planning my next steps.
But ask me again in a month — I'm 100% sure I'll have a solid list of things I wish I did differently! Are you building something in this space right now too?
This is such a realistic breakdown, especially the part about selling the problem before the product.
I've noticed that this is where the majority of technical founders struggle. Not building, but transforming chaos into something tangible enough for users to feel.
Because, as you mentioned, the problem isn't always that the workflow is broken; rather, it's been normalized.
I've been looking into something similar from a different perspective: instead of manually educating users each time, what if some of that "awareness step" could be automated?
For example:
- User inputs how they are currently working.
- The system identifies inefficiencies (time loss, back and forth, scattered tools).
- Show them a clearer, optimized workflow before introducing the product.
It's almost like giving them the "X-ray" automatically.
It appears that the real opportunity in early-stage SaaS is not just distribution, but rather the development of mechanisms that reveal problems at scale.
Curious: have you discovered any patterns in how users react when they first "see" the problem clearly?
I'm currently planning to attract my first users. I currently have two users of the system. I explained the problem to them, and they realized it and started using my service. A little later, I'll attract a few more people and write a story about their reactions.
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