How to define your target verticals for your horizontal SaaS product
I became a tech marketer in a nontraditional way, studying geography and working in a few different roles at various mapping companies before landing in product and content marketing. I hope my experience offers a unique perspective on marketing a horizontal product.
How to market a horizontal product
As a subject matter expert turned product marketer, I’ve only ever marketed one type of product: mapping software and data. But before you keep scrolling because you think this is too niche for marketers outside the geospatial space, let me explain why this industry has actually provided me with a mini-master class in product marketing: maps can be used by ANYONE for pretty much ANYTHING. B2B, B2C, you name it.
Think about it: you probably used a consumer mapping application this week to find the closest cup of coffee, while a company developing autonomous vehicles has been busy programming its systems with an up-to-date map of possible routes. At the same time, a local government has been analyzing a map of its sidewalks to understand community walkability, and a retailer is mapping out the optimal locations for a new store. The list goes on, but the point is mapping technology has a pretty broad addressable market.
This might seem like a PMM’s dream; endless topics to cover in content without sounding repetitive, lots of opportunities for cross-collaboration with a diverse set of partners, and abundant audiences to target with the help of your demand gen or growth colleagues.
But as all product marketers know, doing any of these things well enough to produce winning results requires going super in-depth into use cases and personas. That’s extremely hard to do without strategic focus, even if you have a large team with ample resources. There are a million overused phrases for this in business - boiling the ocean, going a mile wide but an inch deep - you get the idea.
Of course, horizontal products exist outside of the mapping industry, too. Any CRM, project management tool, or video conferencing app is technically horizontal. While some of the biggest names in SaaS fall into those buckets, today’s tech market is increasingly shifting towards vertical SaaS. It now feels like all of the product marketing playbooks, guides, and other educational resources are geared towards highly verticalized products, leaving us horizontal marketers feeling like we’re set up to fail.
The reality is product marketing looks a lot different depending on whether your product is vertical or horizontal, but both GTM approaches are valid. One is not better than the other, nor easier or more difficult. What matters is knowing what strategy your product needs to be successful and doubling down on that, be it a laser focus on one vertical or a few target industries.
So while my expertise may be niche in that I’ve only been a PMM for mapping companies, I think it also contains some universal experiences that offer insight into how to successfully market a horizontal product in a world that seems to favor vertical SaaS.
All that said, without further ado, here are my recommendations for best practices when it comes to marketing a horizontal product.
Placing your bets: how do you decide where to focus?
The number one challenge—or opportunity, depending on how you look at it—of horizontal product marketing is deciding which use cases, industries, or personas to devote resources to. It’s simply not possible (or smart) to create the same exact motion for each possible application of your product. Not only will this stretch resources too thin, but it will also weaken your GTM motion across the board. If your best messaging and positioning gets lost in all the noise, your top prospects will have trouble seeing how your product is relevant to them.
Even the largest horizontal product companies with the biggest budgets and teams strategically focus their marketing efforts on core verticals, use cases, or personas. Whatever your organization’s size or stage, to define your focus, you should:
Look at the numbers. This one is the most obvious, so we’ll start here. Naturally, some use cases will yield higher results than others, or have a larger TAM for you to pursue. If there is a market that will pay more for your product than others, bring in reliable renewals, or is experiencing growth you can latch on to, it’s a good idea to allocate resources there. Consider this the safe and steady bet to place while you take risks elsewhere.
Check out the competitive landscape. Of course, market opportunity has more to it than pure financials. Doing an in-depth analysis of competitive offerings will tell you which verticals may be oversaturated with a product like yours, where it makes little sense to focus. It may also help you identify untapped opportunities. This could be markets that aren’t currently served by your offering or even places your competition is starting to gain traction in that you haven’t explored yet. Remember, if they’re a competitor to your horizontal product, they are 99% likely to be dealing with the same focus challenges you are, so learn from them!
See where you can plug and play. Once you’ve identified a strong GTM motion for a market or two, dig into where there may be overlap with other industries, use cases, or personas. Oftentimes, content that is relevant for one vertical may also be applicable to another, allowing you to ‘double dip’ your resources. Just make sure to create a few new or unique pieces that tie those existing messages into what makes this market separate from the others. This approach can be applied to ABM or a more repeatable strategy, depending on your specific goals.
Triangulate with your product and sales teams. As with anything in product marketing, it is SO important to collaborate closely with both your sales and product teams. Check to see if sales is getting a lot of inbound for a new use case you haven’t marketed yet, or if they are getting more pushback than usual in conversations with your traditional prospects. It’s also helpful to go back to the basics with your product team; what persona did they develop this product for, or what problem was it originally meant to solve, even if slightly different than what you offer now? There may be product history or early user feedback that can guide your strategic bets.
But what about the other relevant use cases?
Imagine you’ve finally identified which verticals to focus your horizontal marketing strategy on. You also have a clear understanding of where to allocate your resources and how to craft your messaging and positioning. You’re glad you’ve defined your strategy, but in the back of your mind, you can’t help but think about the other possible use cases for your product that you’re essentially leaving out to dry. Are you dropping the ball? Or leaving revenue on the table 😰?
The short answer is no, you’re not. A good product marketing strategy requires depth, not breadth, and you need to strategically align your resources. However, there are ways to get the best of both worlds and reap the benefits of a horizontal product while following a predominantly vertical-based approach.
The best way to ensure you’re staying focused but leaving the door open for growth in other verticals is to optimize your outbound motion for your core use cases while providing space for inbound from your other potential markets. For example, while your main SEO keyword targets should be related to your strategic focus, it can’t hurt to have a few landing pages set up that can catch high-intent search traffic for some of the verticals you’re keeping an eye on. But you shouldn’t be running ads or hosting webinars devoted to these verticals; save those tactics for your focus areas.
How do you know if your bets are working?
Once you’ve placed your bets and have put your focused strategy into motion, you need to keep a close eye on their performance to make sure you are informed for your next round of betting. A lot of different internal and external factors can impact the success of your strategy, and in reality, some bets won’t pay off. And that’s ok. Part of product marketing—especially where a horizontal product is concerned—is taking calculated risks and pivoting if they don’t work out the way you’d hoped.
Chances are, some of the verticals you’ve chosen to focus on will see a boost in performance after you’ve increased the resources behind them, while one or two may still lag behind. By keeping close tabs on your marketing and sales analytics, you can dig into why certain focuses are stronger than others and use those learnings to decide where to focus in the future. Just make sure to give your current strategy a fair shot before switching things up again.
A good rule of thumb is to run your focused strategy for at least a quarter before deciding to abandon or swap out a vertical. Of course, the optimal amount of time will depend on your particular product’s sales cycle, any major tradeshows that produce outliers in your marketing performance data, and similar nuances. Generally speaking, a quarter will give you enough time to not only collect data on what works or doesn’t, but also produce a solid amount of content that can be used to attract inbound leads for a vertical you ultimately choose to shift outbound focus away from.
The metrics you look at to measure your strategy’s performance will differ depending on what product marketing is responsible for at your organization (which we all know can be wildly different across companies), but consider some of the following questions when assessing the quarterly performance of your newly focused strategy:
Has the meeting rate increased for the reps covering your target verticals?
Have you meaningfully progressed deals with your target verticals?
Has the win rate for your target verticals improved?
Have email engagement metrics like open/reply rate increased?
Are your SEO rankings improving for high-intent keywords (note that this might take more than a quarter to really measure)
Whatever you do, don’t just look at revenue. Doing so could distract you from other really important indicators of strategy performance and disrupt your plan before you’ve seen true results.
When is it time to expand into a new vertical?
The beauty of marketing a horizontal product is that there is always opportunity for growth and expansion. But it’s important to be smart about when to expand your strategy to cover a new vertical. The following three situations are the best times to consider including a new vertical in your focus areas.
A different vertical bet didn’t play out. I covered this one in detail above, so won’t reinvent the wheel here. But if you decide to shift focus away from a vertical that is not performing the way you were anticipating, it’s a good time to reallocate those resources to another promising use case you’ve been keeping an eye on in the background.
You’ve mastered your current strategy. This should always be a horizontal marketer’s goal: creating a well-oiled GTM machine for a few core verticals that is so strong you generate enough growth to fuel further expansion into new markets. Just make sure your new bets don’t come at the expense of your tried and true strategic focus areas, or you could lose valuable progress. Use the same discretion and reasoning as you initially did when choosing where to expand, and don’t take on more than you can handle just because you have more resources to throw around now.
A seismic shift has occurred in the market. Sometimes market conditions have a drastic impact on our organizational and marketing focus, which we need to roll with and adapt to. For instance, if a new technical capability has just been unlocked that positions you differently in a given vertical than before, it might be time to shift some focus there or else risk losing increased demand to the competition. Similar situations can arise when competitors break onto the scene or close up shop. All of these external factors should play into your strategic focus decision-making.
Tbh, it’s rare that a situation outside of these three is cause enough to shift or expand your focus.
What’s the best way to structure a product marketing team for a horizontal product?
I mentioned earlier that product marketing looks different at every organization, and the same is true for how these teams are structured. I’ve worked for four different companies with horizontal products ranging from 30 employees all the way to 6,000, and can say that while that is true, there are a few key team structures I’ve seen work well for horizontal product marketing.
Industry-based. In an ideal world, your team will have enough product marketers to cover each vertical focus area. Many companies are opening up ‘industry marketing’ roles which essentially perform an industry-focused product marketing function. With this structure, each PMM essentially acts as the lead marketer for a vertical SaaS product, while closely collaborating with their colleagues to ensure brand continuity. This allows the PMM to get really in the weeds with their target personas and use cases, resulting in the hyper-focus needed to see winning results.
Product-based. Some companies have product portfolios so diverse that product marketers are best organized by features or capabilities. When teams are structured this way, it’s important for PMMs to do the research to dive deep into each vertical focus area to ensure they aren’t falling into a generalist trap, which could result in less effective messaging, positioning, or content. The advantage here is being able to really focus on what technical capabilities enable specific users, and devising a strategy that shows your target audience why your product is the perfect fit.
Jack-of-all-trades. And of course, many of us work for smaller organizations where PMMs have to do a little bit of everything. Whether you’re a one-person team or just outnumbered by the verticals and product features you market, it’s still possible to execute an effective horizontal marketing strategy with limited resources. After all, the whole point of focusing your strategy is to optimize the allocation of those resources to see the best results. If you fall into this category, it’s even more important to understand all of the aspects of horizontal product marketing I covered in this piece, as you’ll likely encounter most, if not all, of the challenges that come along with it.
Bringing horizontal marketing experience to vertical SaaS, & vice-versa
I hope this has been a helpful guide to marketing a horizontal product. There are certainly many more topics to dive into on this subject, and I’m happy to debate any of the above and hear what others have to say about the diverse world of horizontal product marketing. Let’s connect!
As a parting thought, I want to mention that if you are a horizontal marketer looking to make a switch to one of the many opportunities out there in vertical SaaS, don’t sell yourself short. I know I’ve felt discouraged from breaking out from the horizontal space because of my ‘lack of experience’ marketing to only one vertical. But in reality, horizontal marketers bring valuable expertise to a vertical SaaS organization, having spent time in the trenches of many different industries and creating diverse strategies that win. The same can be said for vertical SaaS marketers looking to join a more horizontal brand; bring your specialized experience and apply it across a couple of strategic verticals to see how you can drive growth in a new way.
TL;DR - maybe there isn’t that much difference between vertical and horizontal product marketing, at least if you’re doing it right 🙃.
