This past week, Mike Brown Jr. sat down with Tien Tzuo to talk about good messaging and marketing as it is applied to SaaS web design. Tzuo is the CEO of Zuora, a powerhouse in the subscription experience space. Prior to Zuora, he was an early employee and the first Chief Marketing Officer of Salesforce. During his time at Salesforce, Tzuo developed the Three Rooms Concept by deconstructing CEO Marc Benioff’s methodical-thinking and practices when it came to presenting the company’s message. The Three Rooms Concept is meant to design the fundamental positioning and messaging of the company. In SaaS web design, the purpose of every room is to talk about an individual aspect of a company’s marketing strategy. The Three Rooms Concept allows SaaS companies to paint a picture of what the future looks like and explain how they will disrupt and affect that future.
Room One – The Market: In order for customers to adopt a product, they need to understand “why” they should be using it. Room One of SaaS web design provides the context in which the company is situated. It explains what is happening in the world and what has specifically changed to provide the opportunity for the SaaS company to succeed. Explaining the big shift in the market landscape is extremely important. SaaS founders need to spend the most time developing their Room One approach because their customers need to understand the shift in the market.
Room Two – The Value Proposition: Room Two of SaaS web design helps to explain how the shift in the market affects potential customers. As potential customers change, SaaS businesses need to adjust accordingly. In this space, SaaS founders need to articulate all of the problems that the marketplace is undergoing in its current state. These problems are the specific pain points that potential customers experience. Mitigating these pain points is a significant opportunity for these SaaS companies to provide value.
Room Three – The Product: Room Three is how the SaaS company addresses the shift in the market landscape. In this space, the SaaS company typically describes their product and features. In SaaS web design, this is the traditional block of marketing. For SaaS founders, the product is the block that they should be most familiar and comfortable explaining. This is an important aspect for the overall message of the company; however, the context needs to be set first.
Great marketing takes people through The Three Rooms in that order. Although we applied this concept to SaaS web design, The Three Rooms should be applied to all aspects of a company’s messaging and marketing. At this time, not many SaaS companies use this framework in their web design. However, examples of SaaS web design that successfully employ The Three Rooms Concept include: Zuora, Shopify, DataFox, Speakeasy, Demandware, MuleSoft.
If you’d like to listen to the complete podcast, you can do so here.
