Exposing 5 SaaS Marketing Mistakes: Opinions from a Career Tech Writer

One of the best pieces of advice I’ve received in my 15 year career as a technology marketer and content writer came from a globally recognized data and analytics influencer.

It was 2016, when AI was still an abstract concept for most businesses, not the must-have initiative it is today. At the time, data and analytics were gaining momentum, and I just submitted a meticulously researched blog educating business leaders on AI-powered customer experience solutions.

When I opened the feedback, I found a single comment:

“This is great, but what’s in it for them? Why should they care?”

The question stuck with me because it highlights one of the biggest gaps in SaaS marketing. Even the best products won’t sell without the right messaging. Too often, SaaS companies, from global behemoths to small startups, fail to answer the basic question: why does this matter to your audience? 

In Part 1 of this ongoing series, I’ll break down the most common SaaS marketing mistakes I’ve encountered across the world’s top AI and SaaS providers - and how to fix them.

1. Complicated Solutions that Sound Complicated

Problem: If you’re a leading cybersecurity and compliance solution provider used by 75% of the world’s businesses, your marketing assets probably reflect that industry position. More often than not, security and compliance companies tend to adopt a professional, urgent, and serious brand voice designed to instill trust.

You might create a blog discussing the top emerging AI-powered financial fraud trends impacting large financial services organizations (FSO), and painstakingly describe how each feature in your enterprise risk management (ERM) solution uses advanced AI and machine learning to combat fraud. 

The problem is that this kind of marketing content can come off as unapproachable, overly technical, and too high-level. Essentially, you’re making complicated stuff sound complicated. In this case, terms like lightweight API, limit-based controls, and blackbox algorithms may be meaningful differentiators to you, but they usually have more impact on product data sheets and other technical documentation than in a blog. 

Many tech companies default to niche industry terms and complicated explanations, often because it can sound authoritative, smart, and reassuring. After all, a client potentially interested in your cybersecurity or compliance solutions needs to be confident that you know your stuff. But leaning too heavily into complexity creates distance - not trust. You’re not speaking to a payments executive navigating the fraud implications of faster payments rails, or a bank manager struggling to align risk with customer friction. 

Advice, tips and tricks:

• Skip the why: Don’t get stuck on why your product is a market leading solution, and why you’re a best-in-class company - people can find that on your website’s services and About pages. Instead, describe how your product gets things done - how it’s resolving pain points, improving your customer’s bottom line, and making their lives easier.
• Don’t focus too much on technical depth: There’s a time and a place for deep diving into technical features and the nuances of the AI underpinning your product. Overly complicated messaging doesn’t automatically foster customer trust, or make your brand seem more authoritative or cutting-edge. It often does the opposite, alienating decision-makers who need clarity. 
• Balance your brand voice with a human one: You can still be a serious, trusted brand while sounding human. A formal, professional tone doesn’t have to mean dry or overloaded with tech-speak. Decision-makers are juggling multiple priorities and messaging that’s clear and solution-oriented can help you better resonate with them while maintaining credibility. 
• Analogies are your friend: Think of the elevator pitch you’d give to someone about your SaaS solution. Now turn that into a universal analogy anyone could understand. That’s your ticket to helping customers understand the complexities of your solution in a simple way. 

Key takeaway: When in doubt, default to simple and relatable every time. 

2. Starting with a Needle Instead of a Haystack

Problem: Many tech companies I’ve worked with get fixated on one particular type of marketing asset. In this case, they might hire our team for a one-off project, such as “a blog about how agentic AI is transforming healthcare diagnostics.”

Hiring content creators to execute a single, isolated project is a common industry practice. For example, I worked with a Top 1% Microsoft solutions partner who tasked me to create a weekly blog about a range of Microsoft topics related to their specific services. Superficially, this works because it directly aligns to their service offerings with the latest Microsoft security updates, product releases, and trends. 

The problem is that this creates piecemeal B2B marketing. Heard of piecemeal AI initiatives? Same thing applies here. These blogs were value-driven as solitary marketing assets, but the company never leveraged them as springboards for a larger vision. They weren’t connecting a new Microsoft security update with their service offering and a broader industry trend, such as the need for zero-trust security models amid the steep increase in sophisticated ransomware attacks over the past year.

Marketing tunnel vision limits the impact of your content. Without a broader strategy, companies miss out on opportunities to build narrative consistency, drive multi-channel engagement, and create a cohesive brand story. 

Advice, tips and tricks:

• Always piggyback: Always exploit your content to maximize its impact. Every blog, white paper, or case study should be a launchpad for multiple assets. For example, that weekly Microsoft-focused blog could have been repurposed into a gated white paper, a customer case study, or a video series. If you can’t wring at least three more content pieces from that blog you want to make, then skip it.
• Weigh the value: Consider to yourself, what’s the value of this blog as a standalone piece? As part of a broader series, or a multi-channel campaign? If you can’t answer all of these questions, then don’t make the content. 
• Leverage content developers as strategic partners: Content writers are like a spider sitting in the middle of a web; we feel the vibrations of everything happening in various industries, markets, and customer conversations. We see what works, what falls flat, and how different audiences respond to different types of messaging. Instead of just handing over a brief, ask your content developer what they’re seeing across the industry. What trends are shaping buyer expectations? What messaging strategies are actually driving engagement? What types of content formats are resonating right now?
• Echo, extend and evolve: If your content isn’t designed to do this, then you’re not marketing - you’re just publishing. SaaS marketing should start with the big picture, otherwise you’re overlooking how the blog is fitting into your overarching marketing campaign, if it overlaps other content, if it’s being released too early in the marketing funnel, if it’s meeting compliance obligations, if it’s timely, or even if it should even be created in the first place. 

Key takeaway: Start with a haystack and finish with a needle.

3. Not Utilizing Your Own Company Experts and Executives

Problem: SaaS companies frequently underutilize their own SMEs and leadership teams in content marketing, missing out on tapping into the deep expertise and real-world insight within their organization. 

For example, a global accounting firm was struggling to drive employee adoption for an advanced GenAI product they had developed during the technology’s initial hype wave. Employees would try out the tool for a few days or weeks, then eventually drift back to their old work habits. The firm had released numerous assets to promote user engagement, including technical documentation, an email campaign, training programs, and newsletters.

The problem is they weren't using their own workforce to sell the product to their peers. Understanding that GenAI improves productivity and transforms workflows isn’t the same as seeing exactly how it’s used by another team member to address real pain points in specific work tasks, or hearing firsthand from leadership why it’s a business priority. Without employee stories or leadership advocacy, messaging felt abstract and people couldn’t see tangible, day-to-day examples of how the tool fit into their workflows. 

Advice, tips and tricks:

• Interview SMEs for credibility: A skilled content strategist can interview your engineers, product managers, and customer success teams to extract insights, then transform them into easily understandable content. This approach makes your messaging more personalized and authoritative, without overwhelming your internal teams. 
• Make leadership-driven thought leadership: Executive voices carry weight. C-suite and senior leaders should lend their perspective for marketing content to help your brand become synonymous with expertise. Your leadership should be active participants in delivering critical messages because when they’re a visible, trusted voice, your marketing gains credibility and a human touch.
• Turn internal wins into external proof points: Your company’s own challenges, experiences, and successes can become powerful marketing content. Case studies, behind-the-scenes insights, and lessons learned from internal initiatives help position your brand identity.
• Diversify your formats: Not everyone consumes content the same way, so always repurpose content. Insights from leadership and SMEs can be transformed into multiple formats, like podcasts, short-form videos, or interactive reports, to extend reach and engagement throughout different audience preferences.
• Don’t just market your SaaS product: Market your people. Your workforce are your best champions and their voices can help build a brand that prospects actually want to engage with. This approach also ensures you’re not creating marketing content that sounds like marketing.

Key takeaway: Integrate your people’s goldmine of knowledge without making them responsible for content creation.

4. Letting Your Internal Experts Dictate Marketing Approaches

Problem: This may seem like it’s contradicting the previous section, but just because you’re harnessing your workforce to augment your marketing campaign doesn’t mean they should be designing it. 

Tech companies often believe their internal experts, including engineers, product developers, or even sales teams, are the best people to create marketing content. It seems like the perfect approach because they know the product inside and out, understand its technical differentiators, and can speak directly to customer challenges. 

For example, I was interviewing an AI developer about the subtleties of his company’s agentic AI solution. While he was extremely knowledgeable about his company’s products, he also had a very specific perspective of the product - that of a developer. 

The problem is, sales, engineering, or development expertise doesn’t equate to brand messaging, content strategy, and storytelling expertise. Using your internal experts to guide B2B marketing campaigns or develop content does your company a significant disservice. 

I’ve worked with companies where engineers were tasked with shaping technical blogs, sales teams were responsible for creating case studies, and product managers attempted to craft positioning statements. This led to technical, jargon-intensive, and inconsistent content that fails to engage both broader audiences and targeted B2B buyer personas.

Advice, tips and tricks:

• Avoid overloading content with SaaS details: Engineers and product developers may naturally want to highlight every solution nuance, but too much detail confuses audiences. Your internal experts can contribute to the big picture context, like how your product solves business problems, while content teams focus on developing appropriate content in a brand voice your prospective buyers understand.
• Maintain a clear division of roles: Internal experts provide valuable perspectives, input on accuracy, and specific technical details. But keep marketing and content strategy separate from technical, sales, and leadership expertise. B2B content creators can turn your complex vision and products into digestible material and audience engagement, ensuring marketing assets communicate why SaaS products should matter to them.
• Don’t contradict yourself: When your content is created by multiple internal stakeholders without a unifying marketing strategy, your brand voice can become disjointed, unfocused, and contradictory. You might be sending mixed signals to your audience and potentially undermining the trust you’ve worked hard to build. If your marketing perspectives aren’t aligned, decision-makers, users, or buyers can leave with the impression that your company doesn’t have a clear direction.
• Prevent mixed messaging: While every viewpoint is valuable, if they’re usually not completely aligned with the larger brand vision then you're likely to lean too heavily towards one team's agenda instead of creating a cohesive message. Routine collaboration and feedback between teams can prevent mixed messaging and help maintain a consistent quality, cohesive SaaS marketing campaign. Just don’t let each department or service line’s agenda overshadow the overall customer journey.  

Key takeaway: Avoid leveraging your internal experts as jacks-of-all-trades, because your brand might look like a master of none. 

5. Using Hype Words Instead of Your Own Terminology

Problem: Even the best companies love certain terminology - insert “ticking compliance boxes,” or “staying ahead of evolving regulations," or "seamless integration."  

The oversaturation of buzzy or generic terminology does help bridge knowledge disparities (e.g. we all now know at a glance what data-driven implies) and ensures you hit your SEO targets. It can also convey to audiences that you’re on top of emerging trends, like the need for AI compliance or the rise of unsanctioned AI models. 

The problem is that it doesn’t make your blogs, Linkedin posts, or social media campaigns distinct or special. It can also make your brand appear dated, insensitive, or out of touch. Terms like increasing efficiency are almost a cop-out today, because it’s often a blanket term for cutting labor costs, introducing automation, or replacing legacy processes with modernized ones. Increasing efficiencies might actually be confusing or negative to your audience, translating to replacing human workers with AI, or purchasing expensive SaaS solutions that disrupt operations and require massive infrastructure overhauls. 

Advice, tips, and tricks:

• Ditch the clichés: Relying too heavily on catchphrases may make you sound knowledgable, but they lack the specificity and originality that attracts attention. Instead, focus on showcasing how your product or service delivers tangible outcomes or unique advantages.
• Get specific: Whether it’s about AI compliance, data security, or efficiency improvements, don’t just say what your product does, explain how it solves real-world problems or addresses industry challenges. Provide examples, case studies, or statistics to give your message more weight and credibility.
• Mirror your audience: Ensure your messaging reflects the evolving needs and concerns of your target audience. Instead of relying on outdated or blanket terminology, mirror the language your audience is currently using to discuss these issues. This will ensure your content resonates with them more authentically. 

Key Takeaway: Find a comfortable medium between familiar buzz words and your own brand vocabulary.

Strike a Perfect Balance in Your Brand Voice 

Tech companies, and SaaS providers specifically, can find themselves in an awkward marketing zone where they have to toe the line between professional and relatable. But there’s a way to achieve both in your content marketing while still remaining authentic to your brand’s voice and identity. 

At Orange Bridge, we’ve helped companies in manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, professional services, consulting, security and compliance, and gaming find their perfect voice - and consistently leverage it to enhance their content strategy and B2B marketing initiatives. 

Reach out to us for a free consultation, and discover why we’re trusted SaaS marketers to the world’s leading technology innovators.