Go-to-market explained for a bootstrapped Customer Service SaaS

I offered to help entrepreneurs with marketing on Reddit and got surprisingly a lot of comments. "How to position my product or service, how to launch, how to grow?".

So I thought I'd take an example of a business and write a go-to-market case study. I designed it to make you feel we sit next to each other while trying to bring this business idea to life.

Why doing this for a Customer Support tool? Every business needs to do customer support and doing it well is a fantastic way to stand out. So, why not work on an indie alternative to the giants? Here's how I'd try to think, position, and make such a business grow.

Part 1: Positioning my project

My way of doing marketing starts with figuring out what my overall project will (or will not) be. In this case, I looked at the vendors like Zendesk, Intercom, Freshdesk, or Help Scout. They all have whizbang features such as live-chat, collaboration stuffs, automations and workflows. They bill per contact and addons. I’d emphasize a straightforward, fuss-free angle instead.

Picking a market

Who would use such a product? My first guess is small businesses. I’ve already felt the pressure of tens of live-chats notifications in a support shift. Plus, owners can’t answer live around the clock and they don’t need multi-users real-time workflows or granular permission systems. They only want to provide great answer, make the relationship feel warm, and pay a fair price. I’d double down on that.

Developing a story

Making customer service more transparent and decentralized is compelling to me. I personally hate fake AI-powered bots and phone routing systems – all I want is a quick answer. And I’m eager to find it by myself.

Features and pricing

I'd start my product with a simple forum to work as knowledge base and public roadmap. Pricing would be flat, to go against competitors’ models. Straightforward.

Part 2: Marketing, from launch to beyond

You don’t need to write a line of code to work on a launch.

Preparing my launch

I’ve made quite a few hypothesis based on my beliefs, now it’s time to validate them. First thing is to get a landing page out and instead of talking about features or anything, I’d tell a story. I’d figure out a message that can reasonate with what I want to build. I’d make it as personal as possible.

I'd share this page in communities to call for testers and hope for a bit of visibility: here, Social media, Reddit, ProductHunt Community topics, etc. To make it more personal and give further explanations, I’d record myself in video and post it on my Twitter.

But most importantly, I’d start blogging on the topic and being more active. Where do people are talking about customer support? What questions do they ask? How can I help them with non-bullshit answers? On the side, I’d document my journey and share it in the same communities.

All this should get me enough interest for the pre-launch until users can test my product.

It's D-Day

It'd now be open to public. Website would be ready – no fancy animations or mainstream copy. I want visitors to feal it’s no fluff, easy to use software. Readers should feel it’s something different. And I need to be able to iterate fast.

I'd also ask for feedbacks on my landing page, to gain free visibility and peers inputs.

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Acquiring more customers

When it comes to acquisition, there are 3 groups of people:1- The ones who already know me, follow me, and like my work. I'm sure they supported me since the manifesto phase

2- The ones who don’t know me, but are looking for a customer service tool that’s not a live-chat

3- The ones who don’t know me, are hating their live-chats, but are not yet looking for anything in replacement

People looking for an asynchronous customer support tool

I'd list my project to the Software Directories (G2, Capterra) and social websites (here, Betalist, Betapage). Even if this gets me 80 visitors per month, that'd be enough for my first signups. It’s free and it can work forever.

‍Second, I’d watch keywords on social media (e.g Twitter). I’d add searches for competitor and live chats related keywords.

Examples:

• alternative AND (zendesk OR intercom OR freshdesk OR helpscout)
• (fail OR issue OR problem OR alternative) AND (chat OR bot OR support OR customer)

I’d reach out personally to just tell in a non-intrusive way about my project. “Dropping it here if you want to know more”.

Leading with ideas

I’ve always believe that people who like what I have to say are more likely to like what I have to sell. So I'd blog about my journey growing this business: wins, mistakes, plans, updates. This would be an open window for anyone to see how I run Good Customer Service – from product to Marketing. I’d share convictions, celebrate milestones and show new features.

Building authority in the industry

As a Customer Support platform, I’d want to show expertise in providing great Customer Support myself. So I'd create a content series to promote better ways to do for my industry. It'd contain long-form posts featuring good practices, thoughts, essays and sharing great customer experiences I come accross. I'd edit the content into smaller chunks to share it.

I'm sure repeating that process would be enough to get me to an honest revenue level. What comes next depends on the trajectory, and I’m sure it’ll be clear for you. In time.

Some extra initiatives

I wouldn't consider them right now, since they need the business to run already:

• launch a referral program for my customer base. 3 months free if you refer a new paying customer
• oprtimize my knowledge bage content for SEO (rewrite questions, add more content to existing answers, create new questions based on search keywords, answer questions in my communities with links to my forum)
• bring together my best pieces of content into a book and promote it

Final words

There’s definitely room for an indie Customer Support Tool SaaS!
In fact, there are many markets to address: verticals (e.g e-commerce, creators), sizes (e.g solo business owners) or platforms (e.g Shopify). Maybe an open-source tool would make sense because customer service involves a lot of personal data.

All you need is to find the untapped market you'd like to serve and double-down on your differentiator.

Do you mind sharing a feedback?
Here, on Twitter @clementrog or directly on my email?