How did you get your first SaaS customers?
How did you get your first SaaS customers? This is an area I am really struggling to market. Any tips for first time product launchers?
How did you get your first SaaS customers? This is an area I am really struggling to market. Any tips for first time product launchers?
Most often, the answer is to do things that don't scale. Literally go out and talk to people one at a time. Send cold emails. Make cold calls. Tweet people. Respond to individuals on internet forums. Walk up to people in coffee shops. Buy targeted ads on Facebook. Etc.
In other words, do things that can get you tens of customers, even if they're too time- or cost-intensive to get you hundreds or thousands of customers.
Why? Because brute forcing things is easy! It's tedious and effortful, yes, but it doesn't require you to be nearly as clever as you'll have to be later on when growing to huge numbers. It also doesn't require you to have any real audience or infrastructure to build on. It's the best way to get things off the ground.
The other reason to do things this way is because it forces you to talk to customers right off the bat. You'll probably learn a lot and end up tweaking your business for the better. One of the tough truths of the startup world is that it's exceedingly unlikely for our hypotheses about what makes our products great to be correct right off the bat… they need constant adjustment in response to how our customers behave in the real world. The early you can make those improvements, the better.
Very good points @csallen thank you! The agency I work at grew from word of mouth and we started way back by cold calling, finding recommendations etc. You are 100% right, just need to start going out and pushing sales now the product is ready to sell!
Your question is too vague, is it a fitness app? Then someone telling you they got their first 5 customers cold calling ski resorts for their niche app from a directory they scraped months back is virtually useless.
The is also a general rule that whatever advice you get on customer acquisition will not ever be as good as the one you find yourself.
If it's good and scalable then it will have been pushed to the point of diminishing returns by the person/people recommending it to you and if its not a scalable solution then its as good as you swinging at it one at the time yourself already (which you can already be doing then having someone point out the obvious to you).
Hey @nickolas_t sorry that was fairly vague! Interesting point. I was interested to hear how people got their first SaaS based apps off the ground once built. For example if they pushed Google Ads/Facebook etc or had more success with organic marketing etc.
To add to Nickolas' answer, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to your question. Different things work for different products. You need to come up with your top two or three customer personas, and understand intent and behavior. Once you understand and analyze that, you can start asking specific questions. But really, once you understand that, you'll know exactly what actions you need to take.
An example:
I run HostedMetrics.com. My top customer persona and behavior is:
Once I have that down on paper, it becomes obvious I need to work on my SEO. From there, I can break that down into:
Yep, understood about it not being one size fits all. I'll start writing out some personas to get an idea of the target market to point to first. Really great points here! Thank you, gave me lots to think about :)
Talk to @louisswiss
Check out his website/handbook https://www.socialproofhandbook.com/
Notice he has a "tools" section. Ask him for feedback on your product. See if he can mention/link to your ReviewDrop.io product in his tools section if it's a good fit.
Or maybe your existing customers can be used as examples in his gallery https://gallery.socialproofhandbook.com/post/reca9MFHd0cNpji3n
Thanks @louisswiss ! Very helpful. I will get in touch 👍