The CEO saw 'must-have'; users saw 'nice-to-have' feature.
Exposing the product's weak positioning as the real reason for low sales—it turns out, users didn’t see the product as essential.
Our client, a SaaS company, had launched a product aimed at solving key industry challenges. The product was designed to solve core customer needs, yet despite a grandiose launch, user engagement and conversion rates were very low.
Initially, the company attributed the low conversion rates to ineffective marketing campaigns and underperformance by the sales team. They closely monitored vanity metrics like website traffic, impressions, and email open rates—figures that looked positive but didn’t translate into real user conversions.
They saw these metrics as proof of potential success and continuously blamed the marketing and sales teams for not delivering results.
In reality, these metrics provided a false sense of progress. Users were interacting with content, but they weren’t converting into customers.
The deeper issue—weak product positioning—was being overlooked.
Sales were struggling not because of poor ad performance or bad leads, but because the product was not perceived as a must-have by users.
Research & Discovery: Revealing the True Problem
We proposed a solution centered around customer interviews to uncover the real reasons for low conversions. We conducted over 30 in-depth interviews with users to understand their experiences and perceptions of the product.
Key Findings:
1. Positioning issue: The real problem wasn’t the commercial effort itself—it was how it was positioned. Users found the product interesting, but they didn’t think they truly needed it. It didn’t address their most urgent pain points, which made it difficult for them to justify investing in it.
2. Low priority - not fulfilling a real need: Users saw the product as a “nice-to-have” rather than a critical tool. As a result, sales were impacted, as the product simply wasn’t seen as a priority for their workflows.
3. Not just sales inefficiency: The sales team was blamed for low close rates, though they were offering a product users didn’t view as essential.
4. The focus on vanity metrics masked the real issue of weak product positioning, preventing growth.
Solution: Targeted Rollout of Customer Interviews
We recommended a complete overhaul of the product-market fit to align with more pressing user pain points. The following steps were taken:
1. Customer interviews: We validated the findings from our interviews, focusing on understanding what users felt were their critical needs.
This provided invaluable insights that helped realign the product’s value proposition to directly address urgent user needs.
2. Product-Market Fit Audit: Based on the interview findings, we shifted the product messaging to emphasize its role as a solution for more critical challenges.
Conclusion:
This case study highlights the importance of uncovering the real reasons behind low conversions. In this instance, the problem wasn’t the product or the marketing—it was weak positioning that made users feel the product wasn’t essential.
By conducting customer interviews, we exposed this critical issue, allowing the client to pivot their strategy and turn sales around.
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