Growth Tip of the Week!

There's a lot that your indie SaaS needs apart from a great product! A solid growth trajectory requires you build a solid funnel. My friend Nicolas brings out some fantastic points on what can hurt your SaaS growth (and it compounds)!

• No lead magnet to capture traffic

• No nurturing sequence

• No newsletter

• Weak onboarding email flow

• Barely any internal linking

• No personal outreach

• Missing educational resources

SaaS Trends (2022-2025)

Josh from exploding topics shares 11 SaaS trends for the next 2-3 years:

• Increased Demand For Collaboration Software like Codepen

• Martech Becomes More Accessible like Canva, Ahrefs

• More Vertical SaaS Products (micro-SaaS) emerge like Brightwheel

• AI Integrates Into More Software like remove.bg

• Low-Code Becomes The Norm like Nonox

• PaaS Platforms Help Startups Scale Faster like Amazon AWS

• SaaS Founders Double Down On Content And SEO like HubSpot

• New Tools To Fight Churn like Bonjoro

• SaaS Companies Leverage Employer Branding like SqaureSpace

• Growth Of Note-Taking Apps like Notion

• More Cross-Platform Organization Tools Launch like ExpanDrive

Related: 9 steps to effortlessly close sales as a SaaS founder

Lead Gen

A demo or a discovery call is not always the right strategy, especially when you are identifying your right fit. You can instead deploy a Loom strategy that can help you move your SaaS forward in the sales cycle. 

Christian shares the 3-step process that's worked.

1. Pitch a video on your first cold email CTA - ASK for permission the send the video. "Mind if I share a video explaining further?"

2. Record the video - 3-5 mins max with a clear agenda and a CTA for a call (depends if your prospect wants to discuss further).

3. Send the video - Mention the video and ask to click on the email. Ensure your video has a thumbnail. Include a written CTA.

It's about recognizing the needs of your buyers. If they need to know more about how your SaaS can help and work with their existing operations, show them. Nothing better than a personalized video.

Customer Acquisition

Samy shares a few acquisition channels that can help grow your SaaS.

• Cold emails

• DMs

• Affiliate marketing

• Content marketing

• Ads

• Influencer Shoutouts

Of course, there are many more channels. But there will ALWAYS be ONE channel that works BEST for you! Experiment to know what works and double down.

And - your idea is validated when you have your first paying customer.

Related: How to acquire your early-stage SaaS customers? (2022)

Content Marketing

The world is on social media, blogs, videos, and other forms of digital media. Your SaaS product can see HUGE growth with an effective content strategy.

GrowthX says SaaS companies that use content marketing see 30% higher growth rates and 5-10% better retention rates.

4 steps to create an effective content marketing strategy for the next 3-6 months:

Understand your SaaS customers: Carry out market research to determine the audience's behavior, problems wants, needs trends

Focus On Building The Three-Stage Funnel:

• Top Funnel: Identifying platforms to promote brand awareness.

• Middle Funnel: Encouraging your potential leads to get in touch with you through a free eBook, newsletter, etc.

• Bottom Funnel: Nudge the prospects to request sign-up

Create valuable content: Analyse the top-performing niche content based on metrics like shares and traffic to create informative and engaging content.

Distribute your content: Experiment and determine which platform is best suited for the type of content you're creating.

Do you know what your SaaS is missing if you fail to invest in content marketing - Building your Audience and Signups.

Related: How to do Content Marketing for SaaS Founders (2022)

Social Media Marketing

Alex Garcia says 40% of people between 18-25 prefer TikTok as their search engine. And it surpassed Google in traffic last year. If you want to grow your brand in 2023, TikTok SEO is crucial.

Here are 5 tips to create content in TikTok that ranks in 2 min:

• Optimizing for search: TikTok Is Optimizing For Search. It added recommended search queries. It increased the character count to 2200 so you can add more context and keywords. And EVEN Google now lists TikTok short-form videos within its SERPS.

• Own a search query: Look for queries that have high growth opportunities for your SaaS. For example, #sidehustle has a high search volume, high relevance, and high keyword difficulty.

• Look for the perfect search queries: Perfect Search Queries: Medium Search Volume, High Relevance, and Low to Medium Keyword difficulty

• Ranking Recipe: Select the keyword you want to rank for, inject it into your cover photo, in-video text, what you say, and captions, and ddd the relevant hashtag and supporting hashtags.

• Use the SEO algorithm: Use TikTok's SEO To Grow. Find low-to-medium difficulty search queries and create a TikTok series around them. For example: Take the hashtag #sidehustle, and create a series called “Side Hustle Ideas To Start In 2023”

Short-form video content is the next BIG thing! Our brains have been re-wired to get info in less than 1 minute. It is a perfect customer experience. It cuts all the fluff and gives an instant intent-based answer!

Related: How to grow your SaaS with TikTok? (2022)

Get your SaaS Marketing consulting session

I'm experimenting with a new way to help SaaS founders. Get my brains on how you can market your SaaS with a 30 min session (no charges). Reply to this email to set up a time. I'll help you with my perspective on how you can market and grow your SaaS.

Thanks for reading! SaaSwrites is a humble attempt to help SaaS founders and marketers grow their SaaS.

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

SaaSwrites