Have you ever seen something and thought, “That doesn’t make any sense”? For me, it’s a QR code on a flyer posted to Facebook or Instagram.The instruction says, “Scan the QR code to register.” Okay. I’m looking at it on my phone.

How am I supposed to scan the QR code when it is already on the device I would use to scan it?

A QR code makes sense on direct mail, a poster, a menu, or a printed flyer. On a social media graphic, the customer usually needs a clickable link in the post.

The person who made the graphic probably created it on a desktop. They know where the QR code goes. They know what it opens. They may even have another phone nearby to test it.

The user experiences it differently.

That’s the point: You are not your audience. Think like the user.

This isn’t only a marketing problem. SaaS founders make the same mistake in product design, documentation, onboarding, customer support, sales, and founder-led marketing.

Watch “You Are Not Your Audience” on YouTube.

You Know Your Product Too Well

Writers have a hard time proofreading their own work because the brain already knows what the sentence is supposed to say. We don’t always read the words that are there. We read the sentence we intended to write.

SaaS founders have the same problem with their products.

You know what every button does. You know which admin panel the documentation means. You understand the terminology. You know the steps that happen between creating an account and getting value from the product. Your user doesn’t.

I recently used a software product I love and opened its documentation to learn how to connect Google Analytics. The instructions said, “Go to the Admin Panel.” So I went to the admin panel in Google Analytics. Wrong admin panel. The company meant its admin panel. Oops. 

That ambiguity was obvious to me only after I chose incorrectly. It probably wasn’t obvious to the person who wrote the instructions because they already knew which screen came next.

This is why you cannot test only with the people who built the product. They share too much context.

Test the Entire User Experience

Testing the entire user experience means you need people who don’t know what you know. This could be some people off the street, a full-blown market research campaign, or a small group of beta users. Ask someone to complete a task without coaching them. Watch where they hesitate. Notice which words confuse them. See what they click first.

Test your:

• Signup process
• Onboarding sequence
• Product documentation
• Knowledge base
• Transactional and onboarding emails
• Third-party integrations
• Navigation and interface
• Cancellation process

Here’s an important thing. Keep testing after launch. Interfaces change. Google Analytics changes. Stripe changes. Your own UI changes. Documentation that was accurate six months ago may now be sending users to a button that no longer exists.

This is also why you don’t want to skip beta users. Beta testing isn’t only about finding bugs. It shows you where your assumptions collide with someone else’s experience.

You don’t need to be offended when a user doesn’t understand something. They aren’t stupid. They’re new. They also have money and may be willing to spend it with you—if using your product doesn’t make their brain turn into oatmeal.

Awkward UI Is Expensive

Sometimes the friction is in the documentation. Sometimes it is the product itself.

On my phone’s camera app, the button that changes the camera direction is easy to reach with the thumb already holding the phone. In Snapchat, that control sits near the top of the screen. I cannot comfortably reach it one-handed. Honestly, is there anyone who can?

Maybe the designer has larger hands. Maybe the team prioritized visual symmetry. Maybe everyone testing the screen already knew where the control was. None of those explanations improve the experience for the person trying to use it.

This is what “think like the user” looks like in practice. Can someone read the font? Reach the control? Connect the bank account? Find the setting? Understand the error message? Complete the job they hired the software to do?

Your design can be beautiful and still create unnecessary work.

Support Tickets Come From the People Who Cared Enough to Ask

Support tickets are marketing gold. I’ve been saying this since I helped GiveWP back in the day. When someone submits a support ticket, go ahead and solve their problem. Then ask a second question:

What can we change so this ticket never needs to be submitted again?

Could you clarify the documentation? Add a tooltip? Rewrite the error message? Change the onboarding email? Improve the webpage copy? Fix an awkward step in the UI?

The support ticket is not merely a customer-service task. It is user research.

SparkToro’s guide to audience research makes the same practical point: useful audience data comes from the audience itself, including interviews, social listening, CRM data, and customer-support logs.

“The way people discover and engage with content has fundamentally changed. Google answers two-thirds of searches without a click. Social platforms prioritize native content over links. And your audience? They’re probably making decisions about your brand long before they ever reach your website.” Amanda Natividad

But support tickets only tell you about people who cared enough to submit one. How many users hit the same confusing step and think:

This is too frustrating. I don’t have time for this.

Then they leave.

No ticket. No angry email. No feature request. No cancellation explanation.

Just silence. Just churn.

Silence is not evidence that the user experience works. I’d argue that silence is a warning sign.

Sales Objections Show You the Gap

Your sales calls are another source of user research. When a prospect says “not right now,” don’t just accept that answer – dig deeper. Is the price really the problem? Or does switching feel too hard? Does the UI make the product look complicated? Are they worried they can’t get the CEO’s approval? Does the safer, familiar competitor feel easier to defend?

The objection may point to a product issue, a positioning issue, missing documentation, or a trust problem.

Jason Cohen explains in “Excuse me, is there a problem?” that solving a real problem is not, by itself, enough to create a viable business. The customer must also recognize the problem, want it solved, believe your product solves it, and be willing and able to buy.

“If a person does not already believe they have a problem, they will not be surfing the internet looking for a solution, and even if they happen upon your website somehow, you cannot get them to spend money to solve a problem they don’t think they have.” Jason Cohen

That gap between we built the solution and the customer understands and chooses the solution is where marketing lives.

Listen for the language prospects use. Their words may be better than the terminology on your landing page because they describe the problem from outside the building.

Social Mentions Are Customer Research, Too

People will talk about your product in public, especially in tech and B2B. They will mention what they love, what confuses them, what they wish it did, and how they explain it to other people. That is why social media should not be treated only as a place to broadcast links.

I use Twitter Lists as a SaaS and B2B research tool because they make it easier to listen to real conversations instead of inventing a buyer persona in a conference room. Your users will give you language, patterns, objections, and use cases. You have to be present—and teachable enough to hear them.

Founder-Led Marketing Has the Same Blind Spot

“You are not your audience” also applies to founder-led marketing.

Founders like following other founders. That doesn’t mean users want to follow founders.

Your customers may not know your name. They probably don’t care who started the company. When they have a problem, want to recommend the product, or see something worth sharing, they are going to tag the brand they recognize.

Claim the company’s accounts. Build the LinkedIn company page. Build the brand account on X. Even if the founder remains the primary voice, give the product an identity people can find, follow, mention, and trust.

The founder can help create distribution, but the company should become an asset of its own.

I’ve seen that compounding effect firsthand. In my Andrews Wharton SaaS case study, a mostly inactive company account became a consistent, recognizable brand channel that supported product launches, audience relationships, and the company’s visibility leading into its acquisition.

And if you are waiting until launch to create that recognition, you are already late. As I wrote in “What’s the Hardest Part of Shipping SaaS That Nobody Warns You About?”, distribution and relationships need to start before you ask people to buy.

Think Like the User

Founders, you are not your audience. You know your product too well. You have context your users don’t have. You know what you meant, where the button is, why the feature matters, and which admin panel the instructions refer to.

Your users will show you where the gaps are if you pay attention. Watch them use the product. Read the support tickets. Study the sales objections. Listen to the public mentions. Ask beta users what confused them. Then take their experience seriously.

Your job isn’t to prove that your product makes sense to you. Your job is to make it make sense to them.

Get SaaS Marketing That Works

If you’ve built a good SaaS product and you’re sitting there thinking, “Why doesn’t anybody know about us?”—that’s probably when you should call me. Especially if you know you should be participating on X and creating content, but you’re busy building the company and you don’t want to become a full-time marketer.

Book a quick sales call or a paid consult today!

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Full Transcript

(00:03):

Have you ever seen something and thought, “Hmm, that just doesn’t make any sense?” For me, it’s the QR code on a mobile device, on a picture that’s like a flyer, okay? That is on Facebook, Instagram, wherever. Now, how are you going to scan the QR code when you see it on your phone?

(00:34):

This is thinking like a user. So, we have AI now, we have Canva, we have all kinds of ways to make these posters, flyers, what have you. Now, here’s one way it makes sense, having it on a piece of direct mail or a printed flyer. But I will tell you that spending time at the cash register at TJ Maxx taught me that there are still people post-COVID, six years post-COVID, when the QR code just got its life back, that still take pictures of these and do not know how to use it to open up a link. So, that is thinking like a user. That kind of research, that kind of thinking, that kind of wondering how, how does a user experience this? Okay?

(01:32):

Here’s another one. If I open my camera app right down here, and I’m holding it, right, because I’m gonna take a picture, right by my thumb. It’s kinda hard to show you, but right by my thumb, I can change the direction of the camera. So, right by my thumb, it’s one easy movement. I’m holding it in my hand because I’m gonna take a selfie, right? Go like this, selfie, turn it around, right? Now, let’s talk about Snapchat. That’s a good software as a service kind of thing. Uh, I mean, it’s a $11 billion corporation. You go, you have the same thing, okay? So, let’s see.

(02:23):

You got, you got the camera button. The camera button is right here, so you can take a picture. No problem, right? But, when you go back to the camera, where is the button to change the direction of the camera? Is it anywhere near where my thumb was? No. It’s way up here. So, whatever you’re holding your hand, now you gotta, you gotta touch way up here to get the direction to change. That, that is not gonna work unless you’re like, got these ginormous hands, and with the way that phones are going now, it’s just not gonna happen.

(03:11):

Why do I bring this up when I’m always talking to SaaS founders? How does this apply to you? You, the SaaS founder who is hoping to get some, some sweet, sweet, Y Combinator money? Who wants to get your first 10, 100, 1,000 users? How is this appealing to you?

(03:33):

Well, it come, it shows up in SaaS in a few ways. The first way is founder-led marketing. And you are not your user also means you’re probably not that good at marketing because marketing is communication. And the thing is that founder-led marketing generally means there is no brand account on Twitter, for example, on X. There is no company page on LinkedIn. There is no company page on Facebook. There’s probably not an Instagram account either. And I mean, claim these digital assets. Even if you’re not using them, claim them. Um.

(04:21):

Another way that found, that SaaS companies encounter “you are not your audience” is by being too educated. So, this is, this. Another way to think about it is how writers have a really difficult time proofreading their own work. And there’s all these tricks to make sure we do it okay. One of them is reading backwards. And I don’t mean reading the sentence backwards like playing a record backwards, but reading the last paragraph first and then going up and then going up, and then actually reading it out loud or aloud will help your brain catch those errors. But if you read it start to front, your brain already knows what you said, and so it’s very difficult to catch errors. So, errors being one, that the proofreading aspect.

(05:15):

But also, if you’re not checking the process, if you’re not testing the process with a user or somebody who’s not as educated as you are, you might miss something. Just today, I was using a software that I love, and I was reading their instructions, their knowledge base, their documentation on how to connect Google Analytics. And it said, “Go to the Admin Panel.” So, I went to the admin panel in Google Analytics. No, go to our admin panel, Bridget. <laugh>.

(05:54):

Now, I don’t think this is just me saying this, but one of the reasons to have the documentation is to onboard the user and also avoid support tickets, frustrations, and the ultimate bad actor for SaaS: churn. You don’t want somebody to go, “You know what? This is too frustrating. I can’t. I can’t deal with this. This is too hard. I’m, I don’t have time for this. I, I don’t have the bandwidth. My brain is turning into oatmeal. I don’t care anymore.” Right? You don’t want that.

(06:30):

So, test your onboarding documentation, um, test your emails, your onboarding emails, your sequence. Test all of your third-party integrations and make sure that the, not only are the processes clear on which admin panel you go to, but that they’re also up to date. So, that’s something that, because everybody loves changing their UI, right? So, just make sure it’s up to date.

(07:04):

Another way that it comes through is an awkward, okay, perfect segue, awkward or strange UI. And that Snapchat, you know, example where here’s my, here’s a way I can press my camera just easy with my thumb and I can change it right here with my thumb to like, there’s no physical way I could ever do that one-handed, you know? At least Snapchat finally a- allowed us to swipe left to make a whole video. But then again, um, if you have to have readers to be on Snapchat, maybe you’re too old. Oh, don’t even get me on the fonts. Don’t even get me on the font sizes. Anyway, so <laugh> I mean, Gen Xers, we’re, we have the money to spend for your things. Don’t forget about us. Total diversion, but also not. So an awkward UI, um, something that just isn’t clear, um, like this doesn’t make any sense on how you connect this. If it’s an accounting program, how does it connect to my bank? Is it using Plaid?

(08:19):

These are the questions you need to ask. And in order to do this, you need to really ask a user. And this is why the beta tester phase of your SaaS marketing plan or your GTM, go get to market, go to marketing strategy, right? Whatever acronym you wanna use, this is why you don’t wanna skip the beta users. You wanna get that feedback, make sure everybody understands it.

(08:51):

And don’t get all, like, snooty about it, like, oh yeah, they don’t know anything. They don’t. But they have money and, and, and they wanna spend it with you. And money is good because you don’t want churn. Money, good. Churn, bad, right? So just, this is the problem. You know your, you know your pro – you know your program. You know your product. You know it too well, you’re too educated. Um.

(09:20):

Another thing that goes with being, uh, too educated is not being teachable or not listening to your audience. So your audience is giving you feedback. This is another reason why you should have a brand account so they can tag you, um, when they’re having issues like, “Hey, so-and-so. @so-and-so brand.” Nobody knows the founder. Nobody gives a crap. Yeah, okay. We knew Steve Jobs, Tim Cook. I don’t know who the next guy is. I don’t care. I know it’s a guy. I know it’s another, uh, “old white guy,” as they would say. I don’t know his name. I don’t care. I’m gonna tag Apple, right?

(10:04):

So listening to your audience, to your customers means listening to the feedback you’re getting in support tickets and really taking it to heart. Is any of what they’re saying true? Is any of what they’re saying something that I can change in my documentation, knowledge base, onboarding docs, UI, marketing, the webpage copy that will prevent this support ticket from ever happening again?

(10:41):

Is there something I can do in order to make this customer happy? Yes, of course, make the customer happy. But also think about if one person gave you a support ticket, how many people are not gonna bother giving you a support ticket and just bounce? That’s churn. The people you don’t hear from, if you don’t hear from customers, if you get silence, if you get silence from a woman in your relationship, if you get silence from an employee at a job, and if you get silence from a customer base, that’s not good. It means they’re just quiet quitting, quiet leaving, making a plan, churning. They’re gonna churn.

(11:28):

So your sales objections. This is another really good place. Where, what are people saying to you when they’re, when you’re pitching them with, when you’re having your demo calls? What are they saying about, “Oh, not today.” Like, really dig deep. Is it because it’s too hard to switch? Is it the price? Does the UI feel awkward? Do they feel like they can’t convince the CEO to approve their change? You know, like “nobody ever says no to Microsoft,” “nobody ever says no to IBM,” that kind of thing. So wh- where is that, where’s that gap and fill it?

(12:13):

And then mentions on social. Again, mentions on social, off-page SEO, uh, a, a way to build an audience, a following, super fans. These people wanna talk about you. People in tech wanna talk about you. Twitter has always been the place for tech, finance, anything B2B. Of course, you know, LinkedIn, whatever, but, you know. <Laugh>.

(12:44):

You gotta be on Twitter. I just. It confounds me. It, it honestly confounds me. I can’t understand why there aren’t more brand accounts. I can’t understand why founder accounts say, don’t say “founder of @account” instead of 12345saaS.com. You know, you, you do want them to go to your webpage, but on Twitter, you really don’t. You want, you wanna build the brand asset. I mean, I’ve talked about this.

(13:20):

If you’ve, if you found this video and you’ve never heard of me before, my name is Bridget Willard, I help SaaS founders and SaaS companies make sense of their product in a way that the general population, your user base understands so that they will know that you’re solving a problem they have and become users, super fans, and, and reducing churn. So I build brands. I’m pretty famous for some of the brands I’ve built in my own little niche. So I would love to help you. If you would like to know more, just go to BridgetWillard.com. It tells you everything you need to know, and you can always reach out to me.

(14:02):

But yes, you are not your audience. If you wanna follow founders and you’re also a founder and I tell you, you should have a brand account, you’re also not your audience. You wanna follow your peers. People wanna follow brands.

(14:22):

All right. Thanks for watching. Bye.