How I can acquire first phase customers for my SaaS product
When you are launching your new SaaS what marketing strategies helps to acquire the first phase customers. Should I need to run paid ads?
When you are launching your new SaaS what marketing strategies helps to acquire the first phase customers. Should I need to run paid ads?
I've been writing on this extensively (see Zero to Users). Basically, I've analyzed 480+ IndieHackers interviews and identified acquisition channels that consistently worked for founders.
As to getting your first X customers, I think it's a good idea to bias towards channels where you can get 1-on-1 interaction (so you can learn the most). Channels like:
Chances are very high you're going to get rejected/get objections for your product once you start promoting it. The advantage with "1-on-1- interaction" acquisition channels vs. "silent rejection" channels (FB Ads, SEO, etc) is that you're making the objections visible. If you run FB ads, for example, and get 4000 visitors, 3 trials and 0 conversions, you'll have to go and be proactive to find out what's wrong. With cold email, it's the other way around, where prospects are more likely to come to you and say what's wrong first, instead of you chasing them for feedback.
Hope this helped!
Great analysis
This will really help. thanks!
Your first 10 customers should be onboarded by you personally, after that you will get more traction.
Means, I should interact with them in person to onboard?
Yes, as long as you are communicating with clients directly. Works best for software with no social media presence. You can start with marketing but you don't want to do that.
You need to comfortably scale and give yourself some breathing room. Let's say you have 100 customers at once, how will you handle the feedback? It's tough.
Thanks midom! This is a satisfying solution
I'd say the answer to paid ads is - it depends. It depends what you're trying to do.
For our first product, we ran a cable commercial and paid for Facebook and Google Ads and it resulted in practically 0 traction and 0 sales. We are running an app ad for our new Android app and it's working very well - our app has been installed by about 20,000 users and we've got 3744 registered users (that is, they've unlocked the app).
About a month or so ago, we embedded Google's rating API into our app so that two weeks after downloading and installing the app, it asks for the user to provide a rating and review. It's been a great way to collect feedback.
It's huge traction, Congrats Razer! So I believe choosing a relevant channel to advertise will convert.
Ask for feedback in online communities where your customers hang out. Good things will come of that - revenue, referrals, product feedback.
I have a list of community websites. For B2B SaaS what are the best communities to hang out?
Take a look at hive index for some communities for your user group and info about each one.
Thanks! This could help
You'll have to be more specific than that. What is your product and who is your ideal customer?
Figure out who your ideal customer is and work backwards from there. Where do they spend time and money? What are their interests? Where do they actively participate? That will give you a good sense of the communities you can engage with to find new customers.
Thanks Rushabh! I will make use of it
Learn your customer persona. Harvest leads from Facebook groups. (connect with messenger - https://pepper4fb.com/) Alternative: Cold email outreach. Start conversations. Track your funnel. This helps (https://funnelytics.io/)
Thanks! I will see how this works
Reach out to me, I'll send you a copy of https://getrhys.com/101 for free seen as you had the initiative to try and ask.
Sure Rhys
Find a subreddit on Reddit to talk about your product in a way that is not spammy.
AdWords is great too, but only if you know exactly what keyword + copy combination results in signups. Every keyword will bring in a different “” of user.
I’ve been able to get my visitors to convert for most of my apps at between 40% to 70% from Adwords. People just need to know you are better or different from the competition and fast.
If you need free help tweet me at @malcolmtyson on twitter.
Thanks for your insights! As a beginner is it really worth running AdWords? I haven't thought about setting a budget for marketing yet
Yes. It’s a way to great way to get users without begging.
Adwords is pay as you go, with no minimums. So for $100 , let’s just assume it costs $4 to acquire a trial user. That’s 25 users that you didn’t have before.
Got you
I think l will come back to read this article
For me, posting on forums where people were discussing the issue my app solved. This works particularly well if the thread ranks on high on google. You get SEO without owning the site.
That's great! I am in the process of making it happen :)
I am on the same page. We keep trying different channels with repurposed stories. BetaList got us a bit of traffic, raddit, and hacker news. retaining those first batch of customers is also challenging. what field are you working on? I am on remote work communication tool https://tappy.so/?ref=ih
We are building an email marketing tool but the competition is too high for us to stand out
Yeah, I totally feel you. But high competition also means TAM is huge. What is your product? I recently sent out 4000 cold emails to my potential targets with simple app-scripts. I might be interested, depends on what specific problem you are trying to solve.
I wrote a piece about this, hope it helps! https://www.makesales.io/blog/starting-your-sales-efforts-without-budget-the-can-t-get-wrong-approach
Thanks Watus! Hope this helps...
Offering free trial: If you offer a free trial, email your customers and ask for feedback. If you feel that email leaves too much to chance, ask for a phone number and call them.
Start a Referral program: Referral programs are very common. Consider offering incentives to have people sign up and share the product.
Thanks for your insights. Its really valuable