GOLD! Ask Me Anything About SaaS ( I'm building my 7th )

[eliquid]

what does your rollout look like in terms of sales and marketing? , hungry commission-only sdr's on Linkedin? any software you utilize to get your first batch of clients?

Mostly word of mouth to this point, and what influence I have over an audience of forum members that knew me, and affiliates.

That is changing this month though

 

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[eliquid]

Sometimes just showing up, even unprepared is enough to win most of your battles.

I began helping a friend of mine with his SaaS in Dec 2019. Helping him with marketing ( no heavy tech stuff ) and almost entirely just SEO within that marketing help I did.

Wanna see how I got them to first page, 5th rank in Google for their largest B2B SaaS term in JUST 6 months with no SEO gameplan?

I don't give away the term or niche, but I wrote this out over at SERPWoo ( my current SaaS ) and here is the ranking right now.

Here are the posts:
Ranking A New Site From Scratch, Day 0
Ranking A New Website From Scratch, Day 1-31
Ranking A New Website From Scratch, Day 31-60
Ranking A New Website From Scratch, Day 61-90
Ranking A New Website From Scratch, Day 91-120

The series is still a work in progress, so there will be future updates.

.

Glad to report that Im now #1 pretty much

 

[Mark_Entr]

For marketing -

SaaS marketing isn't very different from marketing other products. That might be easy for me to say since I've been doing digital marketing for 2 decades now, but the fact is that marketing done right fits tons of niches and verticals.

Probably the biggest difference I have learned with SaaS is that you have to factor in some unique twists:

• You potentially can afford more per customer in marketing with a SaaS than other types of business
  • Since this is recurring sale, you can look at LTV more predictably than with ecom
    
• Customers may churn, but many will come back
  • Do you have a marketing plan to win people back? In my SaaS someone may cancel or quit in month 4, only to come back 3 months later and stay on for 8 months.
    
• Unlike a physical product or info product, I can continuously hype up new potential features inside my SaaS. I don't have to rely on emails that don't get opened, or opened but not read. I also don't worry about spam. People see my messages and new features and get excited to stay on longer as I pass more value to them.
  
  
• Speaking your customer's language really helps. Drawing up demographic profiles/customer profiles is important in lots of areas of marketing even for 1 time sales, digital products, and more. However, when you realize that getting profiles right in a SaaS = thousands more dollars per customer over their LTV, getting it right for a 1-time sale on a physical product gets overshadowed.
  
  
• Like many other areas, "me too" competitors will crop up left and right. Maybe not immediately, but they will come for you sooner or later. You guys selling on Amazon know what I mean.
  • Does you brand story help you stand out above your competitors?
  • Is your marketing message helping provide your unique value over your competitors?
  • Have you made yourself the industry expert? If not, your competitor will and they will become the "first mover" in your industry
    
• Fish where your tech innovators and early adopters hang out. These might not end up being your core audience in 12 months time, but their influence, usage, feedback, and revenue will help get you off the ground.
  • As an example, our SaaS started off attracting affiliate marketers. Me and my partner had a lot of influence in this niche and many affiliates are doing SEO ( white and blackhat ). They also tend to be on the cutting edge of digital marketing so they tend to be early adopters looking for an advantage over competitors.
  • As my SaaS grew, the buzz these affiliates made in other forums, chats, conferences, and online influenced other people to try our product out. By people I mean credible marketing agencies, big brands, fortune 500 companies, etc.
  • Affiliate are no longer our core audience, but they were the group that helped bring in revenue, provide feedback, and help spread our brand name. These tech innovators and early adopters were critical to us.
    
• Be unique in your message. Don't be afraid to stand out or focus in too narrow. Sometimes all you need is to connect with a core group of people. That might mean being unique in a sea of "boring". It might mean really focusing on 1 small group of users now, in order to cast out a wider net to more people later.
  
  
• Are your marketing messages clear enough that your 80 year grandma understands it? If not, can your mom understand it? If you fail both of these, you need to start over. You want even grandma to potentially be your customer, but more importantly you want people to easily understand what it is you do and the value you can provide for them.

focusing your message too narrow on a core group + Making your message understandable to your grandma can be a bit contradictory
- can you elaborate on it ?
-- ( is it about making a very clear message that attracts a core group of users
-- or should your marketing message change as you grow your user base beyond your core group

Thanks for all the info

 

[eliquid]

focusing your message too narrow on a core group + Making your message understandable to your grandma can be a bit contradictory
- can you elaborate on it ?
-- ( is it about making a very clear message that attracts a core group of users
-- or should your marketing message change as you grow your user base beyond your core group

Thanks for all the info

If my core group is digital marketing agencies, I need to narrow in my message on that core group.

However, not everyone in that core group is in the weeds and knows the lingo and buzzwords and understands the intimate inner workings of SEO, so you will need to explain it to them so their grandma understands.

A good example might be the VP of marketing. They might make the buying decision, but they have never done SEO in their life and therefor not know everything about it.

Maybe they spent most of their career in offline marketing and are now the VP in a digital agency. Maybe they did a lot of email and PPC, but not SEO. Maybe they know a little SEO ( to talk the talk to clients ) but they don't know the inner workings enough to understand why your SaaS will really help them.

Focus your message on the group/core topic, but make the message easy enough grandma could get it.

There are actually very very few people who really "get it" in most companies when you start looking at "core" topics. It took me a long time to understand this. I use to think if this was your "job" or "career" that you would just "get it". I use to think if you made it to Director or VP or C-suite, you knew the fine details and inner workings of your "core" topic.

But that is not how it really is 95% of the time.

Craft to the core, but speak to the grandmas. Hint - the grandmas enjoy emotion. Use that.