Advice to get my SaaS off the ground?
I've learned that my skills seem to start and finish at writing code, I have some experience with ads, marketing, etc. but I've found it to not be good enough. I'm hoping to get some advice on how to proceed before I waste any more of my time. I know I should have validated my idea, done more competitor/market research, and found some customers before launch but I didn't. Instead of looking back at should haves, I'd like to look forward for what to do now.
The service I built is menustash.com. I built it primarily because I found that almost all QR menu services were charging monthly fees between $5-50, meanwhile the #1 complaint I found restaurant owners had about this kind of service was having to pay monthly fees for something so "simple". I thought I could capitalize on this by build a QR menu service that is dead simple to use, had all the basic needs (analytics, QR code, PDF hosting, etc.), and best of all charged a 1 time lifetime fee. With a lifetime fee I'd be able to attract everyone that was tired of paying monthly fees, but it also has the benefit of being very simple to test pricing to find the right price point. My monthly costs are $5 to keep the service alive, could be lowered to ~$1 with some effort but not worth it yet.
Anyway, I launched Menustash, reached out to a few places (mostly reddit), ran some ads (Google, Reddit, FB), and ended up with just a few users who just let their trial expire without even uploading a menu.
Now I'm trying to figure out how to proceed. Is my service just not valuable? Am I targeting people wrong? Is my price point off? My landing page bad? I'm just not sure where to go!
My thoughts for next steps were to start cold outreach to any restaurant I found either without a menu or using a service that had high monthly fees. And/or posting to AppSumo since I already charge a monthly fee, and see if I can get initial users there.
Thoughts?
I hit the same wall on a restaurant QR project, code was the easy bit, getting owners to care before they felt the pain was harder. ScanLoop is the narrower version I'm building now, basically editable QR destinations plus scan history after print, and the pattern I keep seeing is owners dont switch for "digital menu", they switch when a stale menu link or zero tracking costs them money. I'd test the pitch around one ugly outcome like monthly fees plus no clue which table card got scanned, not the full feature list.
Personally, I like what you're doing and think you could improve the messaging. Remember your target audience, people who work at restaurants, who may not know a lot about digitization and QR codes.
Perhaps something along these lines (hope it helps):
Ooo I like this a lot! I’ll try out something like this, thanks!
I'm liking this positioning!
I wish you great success!
This comment was deleted 3 years ago
You need to get to the ground in order to get your saas off the ground.
Go to restaurants in your place help them get the menu and QR code.
Ask them to share story on their social handles how you helped and how easy it was. Hit the share button to your social handles.
What I don't understand is:
"I built it primarily because I found that almost all QR menu services were charging monthly fees between $5-50, meanwhile the #1 complaint I found restaurant owners had about this kind of service was having to pay monthly fees for something so "simple".".
Is $5 - $50/mo really such a huge deterrent for businesses to choose an alternative that may lack certain features?
The amount seems so insignificant for someone running a business. Let alone a restaurant.
I know money is money but I couldn't fathom not choosing (x) option because of such a small fee in my eyes when what their offering suits what I need. I will gladly pay for any SaaS that does what I need to it.
--
Are one time payments better? Yes.
Would I choose to pay one time over monthly? Yes.
Is it worth the hassle to sign up for another product to save a small amount of $10-$20 a month when i'm generating a lot? No promises there.
From what I understand, there is a lot more to a business than just offering the cheapest prices. If you're going to compete, you need to really understand why people are using the service that they chose. For me, that would be "Excellent Customer Service".
^ Everything above is just my observation. I could be wrong but if so, I hope someone would rather correct me so I can learn. Advertising is hard and getting users to switch is harder.
You're website is beautiful. I like your product. I wished my product EatRadar.com was able to succeed. I also tried to game the restaurant scene but I failed by not validating the product first. I did similar advertising as you did. I sincerely hope your project works out.
agree with @customsitenow
You should in fact charge maximum what businesses are willing to pay. Never compete on pricing in Software business if offerings are similar.
Try to print some flyers about your service and hand them out to local restaurants in your city.
Great looking website and well done for getting to this point.
I'd echo what the others have suggested, useful feedback.
One thing I've observed on your Pricing page, there's a fair few spelling mistakes which could put businesses off.
Ah good catch I’ll get on fixing those errors!
It seems like both your site and product are good, so what's stopping you from trying to sell this solution to the restaurants in your neighborhood? Even if they already have QR code capabilities you could at least:
did you design the site yourself? it looks great.
Also, this may be hard with a pandemic going on, but have you tried walking into places that you know use QR scanners and talking to the manager face to face? Usually gets more of a reaction than just sending a dm on reddit.
I used Tailwind UI so it helped a lot with the design but otherwise yeah I designed and developed everything.
To validate the idea I would recommend you to go directly to your clients who you already know they are using this type of service and tell them that you will give them the product for free in a return of some feedback.
I dont know much if the industry your in but i believe its something that ppl need. To not make this post longer than it should be lets say ppl want the product.
You would then have to carve out a customer persona. You would have to brainstorm who is your ideal customer?
You would need to do research and investigate... Why should he get my services? Where does he hang out online and offline? How much does he make a year? What is a problem i can solve for him?
After you have your customer persona everything will be much easier because you know exactlly who your prospect is and now you "speak there language".
The customer persona should not be skipped. Marketing channels change all the time but customer persona is everlasting. Its the most hated and the most important thing to do in marketing.
Another tip is to capture there emails.
What i mentioned is just the the tip of the iceberg. Theres a lot more to do.
Make sure to reach out to me so i can point you in the right direction. And so i can answer any questions you may have.
Good luck.