The quickest way to establish credibility in your market is to have industry experts advocate for your product and your brand.
This is exactly what Benepass did, an employee benefits platform, to gain distribution. Here's a quick rundown.
👉 Collaborate with channel partners to build credibility and extend your product reach. Build relationships with stakeholders who influence your customer's buying journey to convert them into product evangelists.
👉 Use specialized roles to improve the efficiency of your sales team. Have your AEs focus on what they do best – closing deals, while Bussiness Development Reps build the top-of-funnel pipeline.
👉 Leverage a pricing structure that supports organic expansion. By using a pricing model that scales alongside your customers, you can improve your new growth and net dollar retention.
Distribution often takes a back seat in early-stage companies, as founders steer through the product roadmap.
While the tech deserves attention, it's your customer's awareness and feedback that determine if you're moving in the right direction.
Here are my takeaways from Copy.ai’s growth story!
👉 Focus on distribution from day one. Ditch the stealth mode. Copy.ai garnered attention on Twitter for early momentum, then leveraged SEO to grow from 0 to 10 million users.
👉 Iterate rapidly and seek feedback early. Five MVPs in just 90 days – Copy.ai's founding used speed to their advantage. They built an MVP within weeks, released it on Twitter, and used the feedback for rapid iterations.
👉 Test your pricing strategy as diligently as your MVP. Starting at just $3, Copy.ai adjusted prices based on user engagement and demand. Then over time, they fine-tuned their strategy to balance growth and value.
Distribution doesn’t need to be a solo endeavor. Instead, partnerships can help scale your GTM efforts by expanding your company’s audience reach and generating sales. Here's a quick rundown.
👉 Prioritize building trust with partners. Identify partners who align with your vision and brand. Use co-creation projects to build trust, like how OriginTrail's collaborations with GS1 and Oracle.
👉 Focus on depth, not breadth of coverage. Evaluate the eight partnership types against your goals and capabilities. Focus on partnerships that enable co-development and expand your audience.
👉 Systematize the management process. Add partnership tracking and management to your CRM. Have the CRM be the source of truth for setting objectives, ensuring follow-ups, and monitoring initiatives.
Don't forget to add these three landing pages to drive growth.
👉 Craft alternative pages to capture ready-to-switch users. Create alternative pages that rank for high-intent search terms.
👉 Use comparison pages to highlight your edge. When prospects are weighing options, comparison pages that pitch your SaaS against competitors can help get the buy-in you need.
👉 Design migration pages to ease the transition. Create detailed migration guides that promise a hassle-free move, reinforcing the benefits of switching to your service and offering clear, step-by-step support throughout the process.
Calculating content marketing ROI throws many SaaS founders for a loop. It requires blending complex costs, intangible value, and tricky attribution into a challenging mix. To help make a path clear, here are three things to try.
👉 Implement robust tracking tools. Start with Google Analytics or similar to meticulously track how your content drives customer actions.
👉 Capitalize on content's broad impact. Recognize content's power beyond customer acquisition – from boosting upsells to cutting support costs and enhancing brand affinity.
👉 Adopt a multi-touch attribution approach. Given the complex buyer journeys, a multi-touch model allows you to value each content interaction leading to a conversion.
I found that words are easier to sell than code. In my past life, I spent months pushing code before publishing content, only to discover my ideas didn't resonate. Long story short…those products are buried in my virtual backyard.
Here’s a recap of why I started writing this newsletter and the big takeaways I learned so far (the third lesson is my favorite).
👉 Value starts with your content, not with your product—that’s how you build trust.
👉 Lead with your story, not with your solution—it saves you time before launching.
👉 Growing an audience is really hard – but the key to its success is showing up everyday.
What’s the secret to building an onboarding flow that gets users to activate? It’s simple – highlight a feature a day for the first 7 to 30 days.
Your onboarding flow is one of the first touch points with a new user. And these emails play an important role – helping them follow through with their intent to use your product.
Here are three onboarding tactics you can learn from.
👉 Superhuman sends daily emails that focus on one specific feature at a time.
👉 Notion’s first email focuses on its killer feature and sets expectations of how many emails you’ll receive.
👉 Dropbox starts by guiding you through the setup process (i.e., upload your first file) through embedded videos.
Read this summarry if you want people to take action.
CTAs convert prospects into customers at the final stage of the marketing funnel. But what makes a killer CTA? Here are three attributes to consider.
👉Clear – The offer must be straightforward and easy to understand to encourage action.
👉Specific - You ask for only one required action to prevent prospects from being confused.
👉Compelling –The design is attractive and user-friendly, use tactics like limited-time offers and social proof to encourage immediate action.
(Now, how would you rate my CTA for this summary – 10 out of 10 would recommend?)
After analyzing over 100 SaaS websites, here are the guidelines to get your landing page to convert.
👉 Within five seconds, a viewer can answer 1) what’s the offer, 2) who’s it for, and 3) what’s in it for me.
👉 The subheadline explains the promise of the headline by summarizing the product or service.
👉 The CTA is specific, clear, and conveys a benefit.
Reddit is often an untapped marketing channel, and for good reason – the crowd is not kind to self-promoters. But there’s a way you can still acquire users without being burned at the stake or banned.
👉 Build your own community – create your own subreddit to build a community and grow your presence on the platform.
👉 Ask for product feedback – write a post to get community feedback or run AMA (Ask Me Anything) threads to facilitate conversations with users.
👉 Add value to trending threads – add comments to trending posts to gain exposure, but be sure that you add value to your posts before you link to your site.
Over the past few years, there have been a handful of examples where SaaS companies either acquired or launched a media arm.
• HubSpot acquired The Hustle
• Pendo.io acquired Mind the Product
• Salesforce launched Salesforce+
• Crossbeam launched Insider
Although I haven’t seen any activity recently, I’m still bullish on the strategy. In this post, I explain why.
Let's cut to the chase…Pricing and packaging don't often get the spotlight as key growth levers. But here are three insights to help shift that perception.
1) The pure usage-based pricing model is taking a backseat.
The trend is tilting towards hybrid models that mix the best of both worlds – subscription stability with usage flexibility.
2) Creative pricing strategies are breaking the mold.
From GitHub’s usage incentives within subscriptions and Intercom's success-based fees, companies are aligning their pricing with how customers see value in your product.
3) Jumping on the usage-based (UBP) bandwagon can backfire.
UBP is not a silver bullet. Not every SaaS product fits the UBP mold, and recognizing this can save you from a strategy that misfires.
How Product-Led Companies Can Fuel Growth With Pricing And Packaging Optimization.
For PLG-first companies, it’s not just about what you charge – it’s about who you're charging and how you’re doing it.
As a result, aligning your offerings with your target market and go-to-market strategy plays an important role in driving growth.
To nail your pricing strategy, follow this three-step motion.
1) Zero in on your target audience segments
2) Pinpoint what really drives value for each segment
3) Tailor your packaging to spotlight that value
BAM! This is what your boss will say if you close a deal with a new ABM strategy (probably not, unfortunately).
But to spell out the strategy correctly (pun intended), ABM is a go-to-market strategy that focuses on a clearly defined set of target accounts within your market.
By starting with the account first, sales and marketing teams can craft highly personalized cadences that encompass a variety of data points.
This article walks you through 7 Key Steps that will help impress both your boss and your prospects with a new ABM strategy.
Everyone knows that SEO plays an important part in acquiring customers efficiently, but where do companies start and how do they keep track of their initiatives?
The answer – creating an SEO roadmap. An SEO roadmap helps marketing teams align on the right priorities, effectively allocate resources, and generate buy-in for long-term strategies.
This article walks you through the seven steps to create your own SEO roadmap and offers templates to help guide you.
