Marketing success rarely happens by accident. It begins with a clear game plan for how your business will win customers and grow. AKA, a strategy. But marketing strategy development isn’t easy. That’s why I’m here to help.
This guide is written specifically for SaaS founders. You’ll learn what marketing strategy really means, how it differs from a marketing plan, and how to craft a winning approach. Roger Martin’s Playing to Win framework is a great approach, so we won’t re-invent the wheel.
We’ll examine use Roger’s framework and take a look at some real-world marketing straetgy examples, from Southwest Airlines and Marvel to Dollar Shave Club and Apple, to see how strategy comes to life.
Then, we’ll walk through a step-by-step process to help you develop your own SaaS marketing strategy, one that’s designed to adapt and evolve with real-world feedback.
What We’ll Cover
Key Takeaways
- Marketing strategy isn’t the same as a marketing plan. Strategy defines your direction: who you’re targeting, why they’ll choose you, and how you’ll win. The plan follows.
- SaaS markets demand focus. With limited time and resources, startups need clear choices about where to play and how to stand out.
- The Playing to Win framework offers a proven structure. Answering five key questions—aspiration, where to play, how to win, capabilities, and systems—can guide SaaS strategy development.
- Strategy is a process, not a one-time decision. Test your assumptions, adapt to feedback, and treat strategy as a living document.
- Clear strategy leads to smarter execution. When your team knows exactly who you’re serving and what makes you different, your product, marketing, and growth efforts become far more effective.
What Is a Marketing Strategy?
A marketing strategy is your high-level approach to attracting and keeping customers. It defines who you serve, what you offer, why customers should choose you, and how you’ll deliver that value. It’s the “big picture” that informs every marketing decision.
For SaaS companies, strategy is critical. The market is crowded, customers can switch providers easily, and budgets are often tight.
A solid strategy helps you focus on the right problems, differentiate your product, and use resources wisely. Without one, even a generous marketing budget can go to waste. With one, even a lean team can outperform competitors.
Strategy is about making focused, intentional choices that give your SaaS company the best chance to win and grow.
Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan
It’s easy to confuse strategy with a plan. While they work together, they serve different purposes.
Strategy is the “why” and “what.” It defines your goals, your target audience, your value proposition, and how you’ll stand out. For example, a SaaS project management tool might aim to serve small tech startups (who) with a simpler, more intuitive platform than enterprise software (what and why).
A plan is the “how” and “when.” It lays out the specific steps you’ll take to bring the strategy to life. For the same project management tool, the plan might include a content campaign focused on productivity, a social ad budget, and a publishing calendar for blog posts and webinars.
Insights from Roger Martin’s Playing to Win
Roger Martin, a leading business strategist and co-author of Playing to Win, makes a sharp distinction: strategy is not a plan. It’s not a list of initiatives or a long document filled with vague aspirations. Instead, strategy is a set of powerful, interrelated choices.
That’s the heart of the Playing to Win framework, developed with A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble. It centers on five essential questions that every business must answer to build a real strategy.
The Strategy Choice Cascade
Here are the five questions that form the backbone of the Playing to Win approach:
1. What Is Our Winning Aspiration?
This is your definition of success. It’s more than “grow revenue” or “get more users.” It’s a bold but specific goal. For a SaaS startup, this could be:
“Become the go-to project management tool for freelance designers and capture 25% of that market.”
A strong aspiration provides focus and ambition. It gives your team a reason to care and a clear direction to aim toward.
2. Where Will We Play?
No startup can serve everyone. You must choose your playing field—specific customer segments, geographies, channels, or use cases. For example:
“We’re targeting small e-commerce businesses that struggle with email marketing.”
Equally important is where you won’t play. Clear boundaries help avoid wasted effort and distraction.
3. How Will We Win?
This is your value proposition. What makes you different and better. Will you win through:
- Lower cost (e.g. freemium pricing)?
- Differentiation (unique features or better UX)?
- Brand and community (like Notion or Slack)?
You don’t need to do everything. You need to do something distinctively well. Something that your chosen audience values and competitors can’t easily copy.
4. What Capabilities Must Be in Place?
To win, you need the right skills, resources, and systems. For a SaaS company, that could mean:
- Data science talent (if your edge is AI features)
- Strong UX design (if you compete on ease-of-use)
- Content marketing skills (if you grow through inbound)
Your strategy only works if you can actually execute it.
5. What Management Systems Do We Need?
Capabilities require support. Systems to keep teams aligned, measure progress, and adapt quickly. For example:
- OKRs or dashboards tied to strategic goals
- Feedback loops with customers
- Team norms or rituals that reinforce focus
These systems make sure your strategy isn’t a one-time slide deck. They embed it into daily operations.
Why This Matters for SaaS Founders
Many startups confuse activity with strategy. They launch campaigns, run ads, and build features without first making the tough calls about where they’re playing and how they’re going to win.
The Playing to Win framework forces clarity. It helps you make conscious, focused choices so your efforts aren’t scattered, and your differentiation doesn’t get lost.
Testing Your Choices: “What Would Have to Be True?”
A Better Way to Validate Strategy
One of the most useful tools in Roger Martin’s strategic toolkit is a simple but powerful question:
“What would have to be true for this strategy to work?”
This reframes strategy from a debate (“Will it work?”) into a testable hypothesis. Instead of arguing over opinions, you explore assumptions and then seek evidence.
From Idea to Hypothesis
Say your SaaS startup plans to target enterprise clients with an AI-powered analytics tool. You’ve chosen your “where to play” and “how to win.” Now ask:
What would have to be true for this to succeed? Maybe:
- Enterprises are open to buying from a startup.
- Your AI actually delivers insights competitors can’t.
- You can navigate long sales cycles without burning out.
Each of these is a strategic assumption and a risk. By surfacing them early, you can validate or challenge them through research, testing, or feedback.
Why This Approach Works
This question shifts the mindset from guessing to learning. It helps your team avoid getting locked into a strategy based on gut feeling or internal bias.
Instead, you:
- Identify key unknowns.
- Design lightweight experiments (e.g. pilot campaigns, customer interviews).
- Adjust based on what you learn.
This approach turns strategy into a living process. And for SaaS founders operating in fast-moving markets, that’s essential. The goal isn’t to guess right. It’s to learn faster than competitors.
Marketing Strategy Examples
To bring strategy to life, let’s look at how successful companies made clear decisions about where to play and how to win. These aren’t abstract theories—they’re real-world examples of strategy done well.
Southwest Airlines
Where to play: Domestic routes only, budget-conscious travelers, secondary airports
How to win: Low prices, fast turnarounds, no-frills service
Southwest didn’t try to match traditional airlines. Instead, they structured operations around speed and cost efficiency:
- No meals, no first class, no assigned seats
- Direct booking (no travel agents)
- A single aircraft type (Boeing 737) for simplicity
They were willing to lose customers who wanted luxury so they could win those who valued low fares and reliability. That strategic discipline gave them a durable advantage.
Marvel
Where to play: From comic books to film
How to win: Build an interconnected cinematic universe
After financial trouble in the 1990s, Marvel bet everything on film. First, by licensing characters, then launching its own studio with Iron Man in 2008. The innovation? Create a shared world where characters and storylines intertwine.
This required new capabilities (film production, long-term planning), but it worked. Each movie fed into the next, building audience momentum. Marvel became a franchise powerhouse—and was acquired by Disney for $4 billion.
Nvidia
Where to play: From gaming to AI, data centers, and research
How to win: Double down on GPU tech and developer tools
Nvidia saw that its graphics chips were well-suited to emerging AI needs. It invested early in tools like CUDA and built a thriving ecosystem for developers. As AI exploded, Nvidia was ready and became the default hardware provider for the field.
By shifting its focus and backing it with deep technical investment, Nvidia went from gaming brand to AI infrastructure leader.
Netflix
Where to play: Mail-order DVDs, then streaming, then original content
How to win: Convenience at first, then exclusivity
Netflix reinvented itself multiple times:
- Killed late fees with DVDs by mail
- Saw streaming coming and moved early
- Created exclusive shows to defend against new competition
Each move required different capabilities but each was guided by clear strategy: stay ahead, deliver more value, and control the experience.
Dollar Shave Club
Where to play: Direct-to-consumer razors, targeting young men
How to win: Low prices, convenience, irreverent brand
DSC skipped retail and sold affordable razors online through subscriptions. Their viral video clearly illustrated the strategy: “You’re overpaying. We make it easy.”
The result? Explosive growth, market share gains, and a $1 billion acquisition by Unilever in four years.
How to Develop a Marketing Strategy for Your SaaS
Start here before setting OKRs, launching campaigns, or investing in tools. A strong strategy gives your marketing a clear direction and purpose. This five-step framework draws from Playing to Win, tailored for SaaS.
Step 1: Define Your Winning Aspiration
Start with why. What’s the ultimate outcome your marketing exists to achieve? Go beyond vague goals like “grow revenue.”
Instead, focus on what winning looks like in your specific market. For example:
“Become the #1 project management tool for small creative teams, known for the best user experience in the category.”
A strong aspiration aligns your team and raises the bar. Make it bold. Make it specific.
Step 2: Choose Where to Play
Be laser-focused about your target market.
- What customer segments are you serving?
- What industries or company sizes?
- What geographies or use cases?
Example:
“Email marketing software for small Shopify stores in North America.”
This step forces trade-offs. You can’t serve everyone. Focus on the customers you can serve best and ignore the rest (at least for now). You’ll go faster and win more deeply.
Step 3: Decide How to Win
Now: why will your chosen customers pick you over alternatives?
This is your value proposition and it gives you an edge. In SaaS, that might come from:
- A superior product (more powerful, easier to use)
- A better customer experience (support, onboarding)
- A disruptive model (freemium, usage-based pricing)
- A unique tone or brand
Write it out:
“We’ll win by offering AI-powered email suggestions that save busy e-commerce founders hours every week.”
Your “how to win” must be credible, meaningful to customers, and hard for others to copy.
Step 4: Identify the Capabilities You Need
Your strategy only works if you can deliver on it.
What core capabilities must your team excel at? For SaaS, these often fall into:
- Product (AI, UX, integrations)
- Marketing (SEO, content, community)
- Sales/Support (PLG, onboarding, enterprise selling)
If you’re missing a critical capability, decide how to acquire it or revise your strategy to fit your strengths.
Step 5: Build Management Systems to Sustain It
Finally, install the systems that reinforce your strategy.
Examples include:
- KPIs that track what matters (e.g. activation rate, NPS, retention)
- Planning rituals (OKRs, weekly metric reviews)
- Feedback loops (user interviews, surveys, analytics dashboards)
- Culture and training (support playbooks, design standards)
These systems keep your strategy alive so it doesn’t sit forgotten in a slide deck. They help your team act with consistency and adjust as needed.
Once you’ve completed these steps, distill your strategy into a 1-page summary. It should include:
- Your aspiration
- Where you’ll play
- How you’ll win
- The key capabilities
- The systems to support it
Now your team has something to align around and execute against.
How to Adapt Your Strategy Based on Feedback
Strategy isn’t static. Especially in SaaS. Markets shift. Customer needs evolve. What worked last quarter might stall next. That’s why effective strategy isn’t a one-time event—it’s a living process.
Agility doesn’t mean constantly changing direction. It means learning fast and adjusting based on real feedback, not gut feel.
Treat Strategy as a Living Document
Revisit your core choices regularly. Shoot for a review every 6–12 months, or sooner if signals demand it.
Ask:
- Are our assumptions still valid?
- Is our chosen segment responding?
- Is our differentiation landing—or getting commoditized?
If you’re getting consistent traction in a different segment than expected, that might suggest adjusting your “where to play.”
Build Feedback Loops into the System
To adapt, you need to listen intentionally.
Use:
- Quantitative data: analytics, conversion rates, retention, feature usage
- Qualitative insights: sales calls, support tickets, interviews, social listening
If data shows enterprise clients engaging more deeply than SMBs, or if users keep requesting a feature you dismissed, take note. Strategy is a hypothesis. Test it.
Balance Adaptation with Strategic Discipline
Not every disappointing campaign means your strategy is broken. Often, it’s the execution or messaging.
Before pivoting, ask:
- Is the strategy flawed, or just our first attempt to express it?
- Are we getting signal, or reacting to noise?
Stay committed to your core choices but stay open to evidence.
Empower the Team to Share What They See
Your best signals often come from the edges: support, sales, community, engineering.
Encourage your team to surface what they’re seeing. Create a culture where feedback flows upward—not just downward. Strategy improves when those closest to the customer have a voice.
Run Small Experiments Before Big Pivots
Not sure if a new market is worth pursuing? Don’t bet the company. Test it.
- Launch a lightweight campaign.
- Spin up a pilot with a new segment.
- Try a messaging tweak in onboarding.
If it works, double down. If it flops, you’ve learned a lesson without breaking the bank. This lean approach to strategy helps SaaS teams move fast without betting the farm.
Agility Is a Competitive Advantage
Many startups beat incumbents not with resources, but with speed. They can spot patterns, make decisions, and act faster.
If your SaaS company can test and adjust strategy faster than the rest, you’ll outlearn and outrun the competition.
Strategy Is Your Startup’s Sharpest Tool
Building a SaaS product is hard. But getting it noticed (and chosen) by the right people is often even harder. That’s where strategy earns its place.
The best marketing isn’t random. It’s grounded in sharp decisions:
- Who exactly are we serving?
- What do they truly care about?
- What makes our product the obvious choice?
Throughout this guide, we’ve seen that strategy means choosing where to play, how to win, and what not to pursue. It means aligning your product, your messaging, and your team around a shared direction.
Great strategies don’t just live in slides or memos. They shape how you build, how you market, and how you learn. They evolve with feedback, sharpen with data, and grow stronger with each iteration.
The companies that win, whether it’s Southwest, Nvidia, or a SaaS startup nobody’s heard of yet, don’t do everything. They do the right things in the right ways.
If you’re building something you believe in, give it the strategic clarity it deserves. Not just for your customers, but for your team and yourself. It’s the difference between movement and momentum.
Frequently Asked Questions
A SaaS marketing strategy is a high-level plan that defines how your software company will attract, convert, and retain customers. It includes your target audience, value proposition, positioning, and the key channels and tactics you’ll use to win in the market.
Your strategy defines the why and what. That’s your goals, audience, and positioning. Your plan defines the how and when. The specific campaigns, content, and KPIs. Strategy guides the plan, not the other way around.
SaaS markets are fast-moving and competitive. Without a clear strategy, it’s easy to waste time and budget on the wrong channels or audiences. A focused strategy helps you prioritize efforts, differentiate your product, and scale more efficiently.
Playing to Win is a strategy framework by Roger Martin and A.G. Lafley. It breaks strategy into five key choices: winning aspiration, where to play, how to win, required capabilities, and supporting systems. SaaS startups can use it to make smarter, more focused strategic decisions early on.
Successful strategies often focus on a clear niche and a unique value proposition. Examples include:
–Notion: Differentiated on design and flexibility.
-Slack: Won through organic team adoption and a playful tone.
-Calendly: Grew via freemium and product-led growth.
-Each had a clear “where to play” and “how to win.”
Review your strategy at least every 6–12 months, or sooner if customer behavior, market conditions, or your product direction shifts. Strategy should evolve based on real-world feedback, not stay frozen.
The core elements include:
-Winning aspiration (what success looks like)
-Target market (where to play)
-Value proposition (how to win)
-Key capabilities you need
-Systems to measure and adapt
These choices form the foundation of your marketing execution.
