Launching my first SaaS and here's my plan to land our first 10 customers.
I'm a service-business guy and now learning to be a SaaS guy. Feel free to share any tips!
Our SaaS helps writers and thoughts leaders create rich content whilst protecting their time.
Whilst we develop the MVP we have a landing page and currently 16 active subscribers.
I've got a bunch of marketing ideas and created a notion page to organise it all.
The plan is to run agile marketing whereby each marketing tactic is tested across a 2-week sprint and then by the end of the sprint, we know whether to continue or pause.
4 marketing tactics I'm prioritising to get to our first 10 customers:
- Product hunt - I still need to figure out all the ins and outs, but for now I've looked at 3 top product hunt examples and then written my own version. The format tends to be:
- Heading and subheading
- Compelling description
- Within the first comment provide an overview of the problem and solution
-
Influencer writers - reach out to writers who hold influence (measured by engagement/followers) on Twitter and offer the tool for free in exchange for feedback. I'll then approach them to see if they'd be open to doing a shoutout.
-
Twitter commenting - identifying popular threads and tweets to offer value or add a bit of humor. Users then look at the bio which captures their attention and encourages them to sign up for the free version.
-
Hard graft outreach to network - I'm literally going to go through my entire LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and mobile phone and send personalised messages telling them how the tool would benefit them specifically.
Open to other ideas I can add to my marketing notion!
LinkedIn Cold outreach, Reddit posting, and Polywork have been working well for us with Brandesaurus
With LinkedIn we do connection request -> follow up message -> email -> meeting
For Reddit we align the content to the community and trust that people will check out the profile (similar to your Twitter strategy)
We're still getting used to Polywork but have seen some great interaction on there (5+ comments on first post)
Yeah I need to build out the linkedin outreach flow a bit more to include email.
I've not really thought about reddit too much, that's interesting!
No heard about Polywork is, just checked it out - verrrry interesting.
Thanks
Congratulations on starting your SaaS journey and taking proactive steps to market your product! Your agile marketing approach sounds like a great way to test and iterate different tactics until you find what works best for your product and target audience.
Here are a few additional marketing ideas that you might consider:
Content marketing - create blog posts, videos, or social media content that provides value to your target audience and positions you as an expert in your field.
Guest posting - reach out to relevant publications in your industry and offer to write a guest post about a topic related to your product.
Referral program - incentivize your existing subscribers to refer their friends or colleagues to your product with a discount or other rewards.
Social media advertising - consider running ads on platforms like Facebook or Twitter to reach a larger audience and drive sign-ups.
Remember, marketing is all about experimentation and finding what works best for your specific product and target audience. Keep trying different tactics, measuring your results, and adapting as needed to achieve your first 10 customers and beyond!
For your first 10 customers, it might be best to try to tap into your network, network of your network. It shouldn't be hard to get connected to 20 people that write.
When people know you personally ( or you are a friend of a friend ) - they will be inclined towards helping you out and trying your product.
Yes, it's probably easier just to focus on that strategy and go deeper – I like it! Cheers
Engage in subreddits and fb groups where your target audience hangs out.
This could also give you an edge.
Good shout!
Keep up your work you can also run some ads to see how this can add value and you can grab the eye balls for your brand.
Thanks, literally looking at ads right now! :)
Hi Niel,
More than happy to have a chat if you want to as I would like to learn the process at least before building something by myself. Thanks.
(Sorry for crashing your comment Ben. )
Thanks for sharing and I wish you well. This may help. Phil… https://abitgamey.substack.com/p/our-product-led-growth
Cheers, will check it out