Any suggestions to reach potential early adopters for my MVP?
Hi Indie Family!
Some time ago I posted this asking for help: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/saas-idea-i-need-feedback-i-m-sure-i-m-missing-something-44fd59d3e6
I'm gonna copy/paste the relevant part: "I'm thinking about launching a new SaaS. A client asks us to build them a very simple platform to track their company goals (with some game elements, gamification is our expertise). We're bootstrapping and it was easy money for us, so we did it and they are very happy with the result. So I've been thinking 'Well... this could be an awesome SaaS if we polish it a little bit!'"
The feedback received was awesome (because everyone here is awesome, really. Indihackers is my Stanford). And the conclusion was this: I should create a simple prototype and see if it sticks before doing any extra development.
So I've created an interactive prototype with 'Adobe XD', and we've launched a landing page (http://zeppelean.io/goals/) and a video tour (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUwWEC7FXE4)
But now we're struggling a little bit trying to reach companies who can be interested. We've launched two products recently, but this is our real first "lean startup way" starting from the very beginning (hypothesis + MVP + pivots...). The way the other two products came up was quite different, so we are a little bit lost here.
We've been thinking on:
-Cold emails
-Facebook ads
-Reddit and communities
-Actual clients
-Companies near us (this one is tricky. We're from Spain, and software here sucks. Everybody wants everything for free and organizations are very old-school. So testing a software (pricing, features...) here could be not realistic if we want to sell it worldwide)
Any suggestions to reach potential early adopters?
Thank you very much! =D
This is really great idea and site. You want to look for and source company's that have inside sales reps and can leverage this system internally to help drive sales. I recommend:
Thanks a lot for your feedback, Travis! :) Our first intention was to sell it for the whole company, for all kind of goals (sales, communication, even recycling...), but now we're thinking about to focus only on sales. It's easy to sell it and use it if only one department is involved.
I've always thought that content marketing was a long-term investment. That's why I discarded the idea at this point (first validation). But I guess I could write some medium posts about it. Do you think it's better to talk about our experience with the project? (for example a post like 'We're developing Zeppelean Goals. We're trying to improve your sales with games. We're looking for early adopters'). Or is it better to write something with a low-key message? (for example: "This is how you can improve your sales team with a game. Oh, btw, this is my product").
And about reaching the CEO. If we're focusing on sales teams. Should we try to reach sales team leaders? Or go big and try to reach CEOs anyway?
Again, thanks a lot, Travis! =D
I would honestly write content on how gamification works and why its motivates people. Start there for sure on the content. You need at least 1 case study though too I feel
Okay, perfect! =D I'll write some posts about gamification and sales, and a case study. Thanks again, Travis! :)
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Cheers!
Are there any tech meetups you can go to or former colleagues you can reach out to? I'm currently reading Traction [https://amzn.to/2SilHuM] and they propose 19 different channels to find/attract customers.
Thanks a lot, Cara! =D I've just found a summary of the book on Blinkist. I'm gonna read it right now
I also struggle with this but have recently been joining Facebook groups and communities for my target market to get feedback and beta users/early adopters. Maybe this can help you a bit?
Thanks a lot Danielle! =D That helps a lot. Did you just look for this communities on google or you found them on some kind of directory?
Mainly just searching them on Facebook or Google! I've been building up engagement with Telegram and Slack communities too which really amazing to be a part of and so long as you don't storm in there asking for feedback or plugging your product straight away I find they're very helpful and happy to test/and give you pointers
Who did you initially make the product for? Are there companies similar to them.reach out to anyone you think will find value!
I second. Create a customer persona for who you are targeting. That makes it a LOT easier. Start from there and expand later on.
Thanks! =D We've been working on our buyer persona. The problem is how can we reach them and get their attention. We're a little bit lost.
Then you'll have to figure out where to find them, do they have networking events every Wednesday (a rotaract meeting for example), are they part of a local council? Do these companies belong to an organization? Facebook groups are very helpful.
Thanks again! =D I'll start looking for facebook groups. In our situation, I think it's better to avoid local companies, so we'll work on digital networking. Thanks! =D
You can also start looking at software review websites and check out products that are similar to yours, find the emails of the reviewers (especially the negative ones) and send them a cold email
Wow! This one is gold, bro! Thanks a lot!
That's a great advice. Thanks!
The initial client is a very traditional company. They asked us for that just because they have worked before with us and they are very happy with our work, the gamification results, and our customer service. But we keep a very personal relationship with them, I think they aren't "digital enough" to find a similar product online and buy it. That's why we would like to test it with another kind of companies if our final goal is to create a SaaS product. Because the initial company wouldn't have hired us without our previous background.
Have you tried asking for referrals? Since, they're a very traditional company like most companies here in the Philippine, it's mostly referrals.
Good point! Thanks! =D
We thought about that. But as you know, things go sooooo slowly in these traditional companies. If we really want to find out soon if there's a scalable business here, we need to have control of the situation and take action. We can't wait until a third company do some work for us (because we've been there, and if it isn't an emergency they take their time)
At this stage it may be wise to keep all your doors open. Ask for referrals from them but also network digitally.
Yeah, you're right hahaha Thanks! :)
Sounds great. I’ve been blown away by the effectiveness of Facebook ads, if I was you I’d start testing some audiences and ads then drive them to a landing page for either the purpose of email signup (then you can educate them on the product and build community) or to signup for your product outright.
After tweaking and experimenting you will have a funnel which is repeatable and that you can somewhat rely on and plan with.
I’ve been doing the above and writing blog posts every two weeks as my main marketing efforts.
Facebook ads is also an awesome way to validate interest in your product and also what kind of people are interested (by looking at the click through rate).
My product is physical so I can directly price the ad costs into my products rrp, but just wanted to give you another perspective.
Best of luck!
Figure out your pricing model. It's hard to determine where to spend your initial efforts without determining what effort will yield to revenue.
Everything will involve marketing but some models may require moderate to heavy sales approach:
Smaller pricing model (self service)? Focus on marketing velocity and growth hacking. Ads can be risky since it's a high-cost ratio. Cold sales calling is good to get some product validation but it won't be scalable later on. If you go this route I strongly suggest you look at automated FAQs like https://getchipbot.com
Moderate pricing (transactional)? If you can support 1 sales guy off a years worth of sales, you might consider having a blended approach. 33% sales effort, 33% digital marketing effort, 33% partnerships/growth hacks. Profit is key for this phase.
Enterprise-grade pricing (corporate/enterprise)? You only need a couple sales, in the beginning, focus 80% on building relationships with companies that can buy your product. Value is key here. You need to deliver an incredible amount of value to land that 12-month contract. With the money up front! 20% in various marketing activities will be fine, but don't spread yourself thin. 1 or 2 reliable channels will do.
Wow! Thank you so much, Matt! This is gold!
I think we're going to go with the second and the third option, especially with the second one. Do you know where can I learn some useful growth hacks?
Thanks a lot, Matt. You're awesome :)
Growth hacking is going to be a creative and unique strategy only related to you.
You can come up with "hacks" by understanding your audience and their buyer personas. Once you understand their personas, you can research what tools they currently use and what message they convey. Once you know this, the final part is finding that creative way to get your message across.
For example AirBnB auto-posted their listings on the user's Craigslist account to add "virality" into the product while promoting the business through their users.
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