Launching a SaaS - Initial Marketing Steps?

[badya122]

Hi guys!

Short Intro
I've been working on a SaaS project for a couple of months. It is near completion and I would like to start getting the word out there that this kind of service exists.

This SaaS is geared towards a fairly small niche of people who are looking to apply for a Permanent Residency or Citizenship in a country they migrated to. I did a bit of research, asked around and generally got somewhat positive feedback about this, so that I knew what I was developing had a bit of demand.

Initial research:
1. Nothing of this sort exists yet (that I could find)
2. 5 people said that they will not only use this service, but also don't mind paying a monthly fee for it (if its justifiable)
3. More people said they are interested in it, but did not say they would pay for it

I would really love some general advice on how to start getting the word out there that my project is launching soon. Here is my primary marketing strategy:
1. Build an email list with people interested in my project <-- main priority
2. Build a social audience with Twitter and Facebook
3. Find where my target audience is handing out and traffic leak from there
4. Reach to bloggers in this niche and offer them a free account in exchange for a review <-- this seems like a good idea only when the product is launched and ready to

The goal of this project
1. US$10,000/month revenue by the end of 2017
This is the main and only goal of this project. This means I will have to figure out a pricing and the number of users that I will need to get to that point. I am leaning towards $5 a month, which means I will need 2,000 active monthly users to reach my goal.

 

[turtle]

1. Build an email list with people interested in my project <-- main priority
2. Build a social audience with Twitter and Facebook
3. Find where my target audience is handing out and traffic leak from there

Nr. 3 should be Nr.1.
Building an email list is fine, but HOW are you going to do it?
Building a social media following is fine, but HOW are you going to do it?
You need a more specific approach to it. Just saying that you are going to promote it with social media isn't a valid marketing strategy.
Social Media Profiles, Email Lists or even Websites are only a form of collecting, grouping and funneling your potential buyers in order to sell them something.
Those are all just different platforms to interact with them. The real question is HOW you are going to attract them to those platforms.

Also I'm not sure if you are defining SaaS by 'Software as a Service' or 'Service as a Service'. Because to me it seems that your niche rather needs a one-time service rather than an ongoing one.

 

[badya122]

Nr. 3 should be Nr.1.
Building an email list is fine, but HOW are you going to do it?
Building a social media following is fine, but HOW are you going to do it?
You need a more specific approach to it. Just saying that you are going to promote it with social media isn't a valid marketing strategy.

Good point, the strategy needs a lot more work.

Also I'm not sure if you are defining SaaS by 'Software as a Service' or 'Service as a Service'. Because to me it seems that your niche rather needs a one-time service rather than an ongoing one.

Actually, this project is not a one time service, it is an ongoing service but with a max of around 5 years lifespan for each user.

 

[turtle]

Actually, this project is not a one time service, it is an ongoing service but with a max of around 5 years lifespan for each user.

My initial reply was only an assumption of course. If you can tie your customers for a max of 5 years that's even better.

If you are mostly interested in Traffic Leaking be sure to reread Day 12.

But like I said. Sit down and create a real strategy. In your initial OP it seemed that you didn't really take the time to think it through. After you've done that and ask more specific questions on how to approach certain tactics/methods I'm sure that you will get a more helpful response from the community.

 

[badya122]

In your initial OP it seemed that you didn't really take the time to think it through. After you've done that and ask more specific questions on how to approach certain tactics/methods I'm sure that you will get a more helpful response from the community.

Working on this, thanks!

 

[bat-man]

You said you have been working on this for a "couple of months"????
But based on what you wrote you barely did any research..
It seems to me counter-intuitive to build a product for months with just 5 people saying they were somehow interested to pay for this product.

Sorry to break it to you but you might have wasted months for nothing (I hope for you not) but it sounds like it.
A friendly advice, go back to basics do your market research thoroughly and figure out who your audience really is and if there is a real need (meaning is there a real problem to solve that people are willing to pay for)..

You have one of the best resources available here to help:
https://www.buildersociety.com/forums/digital-strategy-crash-course.25/

 

[badya122]

Sorry to break it to you but you might have wasted months for nothing (I hope for you not) but it sounds like it.

It was more of a hobby project for me, making something that I will use myself, which also happened to interest a few people.

 

[turbin3]

It was more of a hobby project for me, making something that I will use myself, which also happened to interest a few people.

To clarify this in advance, I really don't mean to come off like a dick, as it's never my intention to discourage someone or belittle there efforts or dreams, when I don't even have the full backstory behind them. So I only mean well here. ♥

Re-read that quote. Judging by what we've heard so far, this doesn't even sound remotely like a ready-to-launch product and business with prospects chomping at the bit to convert. Based on what you've said, it sounds as if your unique value proposition might even be something that your market segment knows nothing about, has no experience with, and therefore means you would need to introduce them to an entirely new concept they may not even see the value in.

Again, I don't want to dissuade you, and only want to help. What I HIGHLY recommend is starting with Day 1 on the strategy guide above. It will be time-consuming, but get out a pen and paper, start sketching, start taking an "inventory", and start building the foundation for this thing. The first few days will really help solidfy, in your mind, whether there's a market for this thing, and what you can hope to achieve. Ultimately, you really want to gain the self-confidence in the business proposition, to do it right.

Another thing to keep in mind. Based on the progression through the Builder Society Digital Strategy Guide-to-end-all-guides, the possibilities are literally limitless. Positive stuff ahead, so I hope I haven't offended you. The genius in the entirety of The Guide™, is that it's laid out in pretty much an optimal progression to what you would normally want to do when looking to build any business.

««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««««« Φ »»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»​

In other words, the foundation comes first. The fundamentals set the stage. The direction and the focus starts growing. Brand identity and other unique characteristics begin to rise to the top. Things begin moving under their own steam. Eventually, you're cruising. Then focus shifts to expert-level targeting, fine detail, and optimization. Eventually, God Mode. It's almost as if it was oriented that way on purpose...

The point I'm getting at, is do the work so that you can confidently answer the question yourself. Regardless of what the answer is, it will still be to your benefit. If it's a no-go for the particular market segment, hey no biggie. Lesson learned, and it was a great exercise for the next one! In other examples, maybe you determine the barrier to entry is just too difficult. That's okay. Try to take your mindset to the next level. Maybe you decide you can't see pushing this forward yourself. Alright, what if there already exists businesses and/or infrastructure in that marketplace, that does have the strength or resources to do it? You may have a product you can sell to them! You still profit. Even better, license it to some big international corporation.

 

[CCarter]

Not considering whatever business you are actually in for the SAAS:

Initial marketing steps begin with gathering your potential customers' contact information and potentially their interest. There really is no difference in marketing a SAAS, a website, or a brick and mortar business that wants walk in sales. The only thing with SAAS is you can start gathering interest a lot sooner before you launch, but that's the same thing with "Grand Openings" of stores. The key with everything is knowing where your audience is.

Your current "primary marketing strategy" isn't a strategy, they just are steps of your tactics - without a real strategy.

"Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat." - Sun Tzu​

But I have to agree with @turbin3, somethings are off in your market. If customers aren't used to paying for a certain process in an industry then you become the defacto outlier and have to warm up/educate customers to this new process - that's a difficult feat.

One thing I don't like is you have zero opportunity to gain bigger player customers - meaning corporate accounts - so that's a huge miss on potential growth.

Also what's your potential for expansion? Can a user go from a $5 account to a $20 premium account?

Your pricing is WAY TOO LOW. I know what you are thinking people will not have a problem constantly paying a low amount of money for a service so it'll go un-noticed - NOPE. You'll get more cancellations on the lower end of the market than the higher end. People that go for cheap products/services are the first ones to leave. 99.99% of your headaches will come from the bottom end of the market, and at $5 you are setting yourself up for massive headaches.

Doing your numbers you need 2,000 active users to generate $10K. Let's just say it's going to be a herculean feat to keep 2000 people paying $5 a month happy, and for 5 years? No.

You are better offer raising your price to $10 and going after 1,000 users, or $20 and going after 500 users, or $40 and going after 250 users, or $80 and going after 125 users. I can hustle and convince 125 people a lot easier to pay for a premium service versus convincing 2000 cheapskates to pay $5 a month.

I don't care what your business is or does, if you are coming in at an angle of "better pricing" than the competitor as your main and only angle, you are going to start a race to the bottom.

I know it sounds strange but it's easier to sell Bentleys than it is to sell used cars. The person walking into the Bentley dealership isn't expecting any "discounts" or "coupons", they want to be treated like royalty and want the car to show their social status. If 100 people walk into your Bentley store you'll probably get 1 out of 100 that will attempt to haggle you for price. But on the other end of the spectrum, lord have mercy...

It seems to me counter-intuitive to build a product for months with just 5 people saying they were somehow interested to pay for this product.

^^ I want to expand on this. A lot of people when they want to create something, whether it's a business, a SAAS, a website - they think they have to re-invent the wheel and come up with something so crazy and out of left field it's going to dazzle the world. You don't. Facebook was a slightly better and cleaner Myspace. Microsoft simply beat Apple with the GUI (mouse interface) by 1 year. You don't have to re-invent anything, you can go into a market where there is huge opportunity because there are already competitors in that market fighting each other, and do customer service better, improve a major function/feature by 10-20%, and you'll start gaining customers.

You never should come out with a brand new wheel (when new), because then you have to convince people that wheel is worth paying for - and that's hard in a niche that you have to create a market for. You shouldn't be in the business of creating markets if you have no audience, no base of attack, and no exposure for your brand already.

If Apple introduced the iPhone in 1980 something, no one would have bought it, there was no market for cellphones let alone a smartphone. People were just getting used to landlines. Apple would have to have created a market - on top of that there was no infrastructure for cellphones let alone credit card processing. It would have been an uphill battle that would have killed them.

But when the atmosphere is right, the timing is there, you are "with the times", it makes sense. When Apple finally came with the iPhone they didn't have to create a market for cellphones that was done by competitors for years. The internet was growing at a rapid rate and credit card processing was getting more streamlined - the time was perfect for a product to converge and monopolize the market.

I feel like there should be a beginner guide to SAAS creations made to help people contemplating getting into this type of business.

 

[turbin3]

I think I know just the person to write that guide.

 

[badya122]

To clarify this in advance, I really don't mean to come off like a dick, as it's never my intention to discourage someone or belittle there efforts or dreams, when I don't even have the full backstory behind them. So I only mean well here. ♥

Don't worry, you did not come off like that. I'm really glad you provided so much insight and good advice along with some food for thought. When I said it started more as a hobby, I meant to say that I had a problem that I wanted to solve and decided to try and solve it myself, just to see what could come out of it. Only after working on it for a bit and asking around I've been getting interest from those people I mentioned earlier.

Judging by what we've heard so far, this doesn't even sound remotely like a ready-to-launch product and business with prospects chomping at the bit to convert. Based on what you've said, it sounds as if your unique value proposition might even be something that your market segment knows nothing about, has no experience with, and therefore means you would need to introduce them to an entirely new concept they may not even see the value in.

You're spot on. As far as I could tell there is nothing like that that exists right now. Yes, you are also right that its not ready-to-launch. It's still half baked, but I want to start gathering interest for it early on, before launch. Also, you are correct that I will have to introduce this to new users and convince them to use this due to its unique proposition and lack of anything similar out there.

Also, very good points regarding foundation and actually thinking through and coming up with a strategy. As a dev all I cared about is making it, not marketing it :/ Will definitely go through the guide and try and come up with something, will probably post what I come up with here for more feedback.

 

[badya122]

The key with everything is knowing where your audience is.

Working on this right now, actually! And making progress I think.

If customers aren't used to paying for a certain process in an industry then you become the defacto outlier and have to warm up/educate customers to this new process - that's a difficult feat.

This is the problem I will have to face for sure, and I realise how much of a trouble it could be. But I think its not hopeless for me, I'll share why in a separate update post.

You are better offer raising your price to $10 and going after 1,000 users, or $20 and going after 500 users, or $40 and going after 250 users, or $80 and going after 125 users. I can hustle and convince 125 people a lot easier to pay for a premium service versus convincing 2000 cheapskates to pay $5 a month.

Wow, common sense but opened my eyes! This here is actually what I wish I've seen sooner, it makes so much more sense to charge more and market to smaller but targeted audience/niche. I will need to rethink the pricing for this project a lot.

You don't have to re-invent anything, you can go into a market where there is huge opportunity because there are already competitors in that market fighting each other, and do customer service better, improve a major function/feature by 10-20%, and you'll start gaining customers.

Yeah I realise that, even from reading your SaaS#2 case study I learned that its better to enter the developed market where there already are players, which you can then overtake with new ideas and better customer service or tech. However, I'm in a very small niche where no one is doing it, and since I'm almost finished I want to give this project a fair go and even if it fails I want to be able to say I gave it 100% effort.

You shouldn't be in the business of creating markets if you have no audience, no base of attack, and no exposure for your brand already.

Yes, this is the trouble I will have to face, but there is hope. Will share in the next post.

I feel like there should be a beginner guide to SAAS creations made to help people contemplating getting into this type of business.

Would be great, but there are so many guides on this topic and so much useless stuff that I think its better to learn by doing.

Thanks for the advice! Really glad you decided to chime in and provide your insights, super helpful!

 

[badya122]

Just want to quickly thank @turbin3 for his insight and advise and @CCarter for pointers and ideas.

I realise that I will need to come up with a marketing strategy to create initial buzz (I guess) before launching, which I will do asap.

What I wanted to share is I've been doing a bit of outreach on Twitter to the guys who have experience in what I am doing. I shared the screenshots and provided a short description of what this SaaS is for, what it does and why people should use it.

The feedback was positive, and I've also gotten more interested customers who shared their ideas and feature requests! Also one of the big players offered to feature the service on their twitter when its launched with 16K followers, and also suggested where my audience might be on Reddit, HackerNews etc and I was really excited to see that!

Basically the general feedback was that the project has potential, and some said that it will confidently work and have demand, which is great news!

This got me pumped up to work on this even more, and hopefully I can nail the marketing with the help of the guides mentioned by @turbin3 and hopefully more advise from @CCarter

 

[turbin3]

Also, a few other things.

Be careful what you put out there. In the software / SAAS world, the level of IP theft (or things bordering on it) out there is ridiculous.

Also, another thing worth considering. Although I'm not sure exactly what this product/service is, I would warrant a guess that it's probably one that is a good candidate for visual media. What I mean by that is, when you can not only tell them what it is, but when you can show them and demonstrate how it can improve their lives, you're often able to latch on to their subconscious quickly and effectively. It never ceases to amaze me that more SAAS companies don't provide more visually-oriented examples of their platforms.

Hell, a $50 copy of Snagit and an hour or two worth of work can take care of a significant percentage of it. Particularly video. Short video clips of 1-2 minutes or less can often have a PROFOUND impact, and really drive the unique value proposition home with the prospect. If your platform sounds like a candidate for this, some strategic thinking and planning here can have you swinging out the gate, more prepared to hit a homerun. Here's a good example (the auto-play video): https://www.muut.com/

 

[badya122]

It never ceases to amaze me that more SAAS companies don't provide more visually-oriented examples of their platforms.

That's a great point! My initial idea was to have a video at the top of the landing page that showcases the functionality and explains what the software does.

Here's a good example (the auto-play video): https://www.muut.com/

Great example, not a fan of HTML5 video in the background due to increased page loading, but maybe a YouTube video that shows how to use the software sort of like Dropbox did when they first launched