Need advice on strategies to compete with an existing SAAS product

Riches in the niches. Everybody has an ‘accounting saas’ — how many have ‘accounting saas for plumbing companies with 3-10 employees based in Canada’?

• Brand
• Customer service
• UX
• UI

I would start by interviewing existing customers of the product you're competing with. What are their pain points? Are you capable of delivering something that addresses their problems? Is the pool of people that have similar problems big enough that it's consistently mentioned as a problem.

Address the smallest subset of those problems that will get you a paying customer. Grow from there.

Retention! Retention helps make your product defensible against existing solutions and new competitors. Focusing and measuring retention early on is one area where you can compete.

*Retention drives acquisition loops because of more exposure

• An increase in retention causes more viral touchpoints within a cohort
• increases a user generated content loop
• Increases a paid ad loop through reinvestment
• increases sales loop because we use rev from closed customers to add more reps

*Retention builds your acquisition competitive muscle

• Increasing LTV by way of retention allows for reinvestment given your LTV:CAC is constant.
• This gives you an advantage over other companies with a lower retention LTV in that you can increase paid bids, hire content marketers, afford new channels

*Better Retention pays back you CAC faster allowing you to reinvest faster

*Longer Retention leads to more monetization touch points
Increased retention → longer subscriptions → more revenue → increased LTV → which helps drive your acquisition loops above