#37 - Write your SaaS Growth 📈

Welcome 159 SaaS founders and marketers to the 37th edition of Write your SaaS Growth Newsletter:

In this edition, we discuss:

• SaaS Launch: How to launch your next SaaS product

• Content Marketing: 9 mistakes to avoid

• Growth Marketing: 4-channel comprehensive marketing strategy

• Email Marketing: 5 email automations for SaaS

• Pricing: pricing your SaaS according to your SaaS package

Let’s GO!

Growth Tip of the Week! 🚀

Beata Klein says when discussing SaaS growth, every conversation boils down to these five questions:

• Who are your customers?

• What can you help them with?

• How can you engage, monetize, & retain them?

• Why are you the best solution?

• Where can you find & communicate with them?

This is it.

SaaS Launch:

Alex from Closify says he’s founded or co founded 3 SaaS companies in the last 2 years with Closify becoming a well known name. If he had to start over in SaaS, here's what he'd do:

1. Market Research. I'd be looking to create a B2B SaaS. I'd interview 10-20 online biz owners and ask them: a. what softwares do you use to run your business? b. what softwares do you use that you don't love? and c. what bottlenecks are you facing?

1. Ideation. Once they told you softwares they use and what they dislike, search the softwares in G2 reviews online and see if other business owners have the same complaint. If so, you'll create a similar software and solve that recurring complaint in your MVP.

2. MVP. If you're not tech savvy and you don't have the budget to pay someone look into no-code tools. Usually the MVP should solve that recurring problem.

3. Create a Waitlist. While the MVP is being built, you'll build up a waitlist of people dying to buy your product.

1. Launch Week. When you launch you will: a. launch to your email list, b. launch to your social medias, c. have affiliates you signed up post, d. continue outbound campaigns, e. have strategic partners post.

2. Gather feedback & Iterate. Interview every user and get feedback: a. what do they like? b. what do they hate? c. what do they wish it had?

3. Go to Market: Now I'd buy 5 domains warm them up, buy a few different lead lists of different audience sectors & begin sending cold emails & test different scripts to see what messaging resonates.

That's it that's how I'd start, launch, and take a brand new SaaS company to market in 2023 I've done this process 3x and exited 1 company.

Content Marketing

Kuba says most people suck at growing their business with content.

But if you avoid those 9 content marketing mistakes, you won't:

• No hooks. You don't have much time to make a good first impression with your content. Good hooks bring shock and awe to the table. And those two immediately make you the customer's top-of-mind.

• Overthinking. Good content marketing is simple: a. Research your audience b. Plan & execute c. Test & adjust. No need for a 10-page content strategy (trust me, I used to do it too). Easy = Repeatable = Consistent

• No storytelling. People crave engaging and unexpected stories. If you have a good story about your brand – treat it like a marketing asset. Use storytelling to: a. build emotional connections, b. personalize your content, c. captivate your audience

• No authenticity. Content gives you a unique opportunity to show the world who you are! Use your unique voice and personality to differentiate your brand. Don't be afraid to get creative with your message. Experiment and see what serves your audience well.

• No repurposing. In the era of information overload, posting 1 piece of content won’t bring results (most likely). But you don’t have to come up with new content every time. Take 1 long-form piece and repurpose it into smaller formats.

• No unique voice. Writing is beautiful cause it lets you showcase: a. your perspective b. your personality c. your ideas If you surprise your readers with novel thoughts — they’ll come back for more. Different = memorable

• Being too serious. People online tend to be so serious about themselves. Use humor and wit as your unfair advantage. It makes your content more relatable and enjoyable. Laughter is an underrated marketing tool.

• Low writing quality. Good content isn’t only about WHAT you write. Even more important is HOW you write it. Clear, crisp language sets your content apart and makes it more impactful. If you’re a pro in your industry — write about it like a pro.

• Being too repetitive. There’s nothing wrong with saying 1 thing 100 times. But make sure each time the insight: a. breaks stereotypes, b. challenges the readers, c. provides new perspectives. Embrace the unconventional, and you’ll stand out.

Growth Marketing

The BIGGEST mistake I see SaaS founders make is "Having a single source of marketing source".

For example, when SaaS founders say “I'm marketing my SaaS through Twitter”, what they are essentially doing is building an inbound marketing channel.

But that's only 25% of your marketing.

To build a comprehensive SaaS marketing plan, you need to cover all your bases. Implement these four systems to create the highest ROI out of your marketing efforts:

1. Product-led: This goes beyond your core feature(s). This is when your product has: a. smooth onboarding, b. clear referral systems, c. helpful docs, and d. the right info to make the right decisions (aka landing page(s). This is your key to have a decent CRO. Goal: To improve conversions through product

2. Outbound system: Now, tell people about your SaaS. Most important factor here: Shout at your ICP. and not to the world. Your outbound activities are not limited to sales. Although sales is the most important aspect. You can use outbound to: a. do market research, b. help you position your SaaS, c. invite ICP for a podcast. Goal: To drive sales.

3. Inbound System: Your customers should know who they buy from. Most important factor here: Talk about your customer problems and pains. And give them solutions that are beyond your software. The other big form of leverage: Content. Talk in a way that resonates with your customers. Here are some inbound activities you can perform: a. Build weekly relationships with sales accounts through a podcast, b. Convert podcast content to blogs and social media, c. Reach out to PR folks and share story Goal: To improve brand awareness.

4. Retention System: Retention is GOLD for SaaS companies. It affects MRR that you make each month and finally decides the overall success of your SaaS. It's usually more expensive to get new customers than keep the ones you have. Here are some activities you can do to strengthen your retention: a. Collect Emails and Newsletters to send out weekly, b. Invite customer support interviews weekly, c. provide exceptional customer support and monthly feedback emails Goal: Improve retail customer loyalty.

Email Marketing

As a SaaS founder, you may find email marketing a real challenge. Creating engaging content, building and maintaining a large email list, dealing with technical aspects and keeping up with the ever-changing trends can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Phillip shares 5 simple email marketing automations that have generated him over $50 million for his clients.:

1. Lead Capture. How to set this up: a. create a lead gen offer (discount, free eBook, etc), b. create a popup on your site, c. add copy and maybe a photo to it. d. program it to trigger on a delay, c. A/B test the offer and copy to raise CR%, f. consider using an exit-intent popup too

2. Welcome Flow. How to set this up: a. create a seven or eight-email flow, b. program it to start after a lead opts in, c. program it to stop after making a purchase, d. deliver the lead gen offer in the first message, e. hit that angle a couple more times, f. changes angles once or twice.

3. Browse-Abandon / Exit-Intent Flow. How to set this up: a. create a three or four-message flow, b. program it to send when someone abandons browsing, c. likely pitch the items they were viewing in the messages, d. program it to stop when they purchase.

4. Cart Abandon Flow: How to set this up: a. create a three-message flow, b. program it to send after cart abandon flow, c. program it to stop after purchase, d. tell them their cart is saved but expiring soon, e. if the third message is converting well, add a fourth

5. Post-Purchase Flow. How to set this up: a. create a three to five-message flow, b. program it to send when someone buys, c. thank them for their purchase, d. upsell on complementary products, e. maybe offer an expiring discount for their next order

Conclusion: Automated flows like these are roughly half the game. The other half is regular campaigns. I like to prioritize flows because they’re automated and evergreen. Create them, A/B test them, then let them earn for you forever.

Related: 50+ Expert Email Conversion Tactics to Exponentially Crush Your ROI 

Pricing

Dan shares a wonderful piece in Product-Led about Packaging pricing. You can read the entire article here. He says:

It’s who you charge and how you do it that determines your success in SaaS. Simply put, product-led companies need to focus on:

• Target audience

• What their audience values

• How to align the overall packaging to showcase that value

Pricing

He shares a process that you can consider to put your SaaS charges accordingly:

1. Start By Delivering Value. First, focus on creating and delivering value to ensure you have product market fit, then charge something.

2. Iterate and Optimize. The pricing process mimics every other research process you might go through in a startup. It’s important to prioritize what information you need, what impact pricing has on the business, and how it relates to other areas.

3. Customer Segments. Your customers value different things, which will cause them to value your particular product offering differently. Creating different customer segments will have different competitive alternatives available to them.

4. Value. Value is the positive feeling that your product offers to your customer. We can explore this through the lens of the jobs-to-be-done framework. If you can't focus on financial value, try to ask questions about value with the customers and dive into the psychological aspects of value.

5. Competition. You might be navigating a wide range of competition. For example, there could be low-end players or high-end players. SaaS companies may be competing with themselves, or a status quo.

Those first three elements – segments, your value, and your competition – are part of the research process. They are inputs that you need to filter into your overall pricing strategy.

Packaging

It’s essential to clarify what packaging is from the perspective of a software product. Putting this into context for product-led businesses and SaaS companies means talking about more than just price.

Now he shares a 4 types to package your SaaS that fits into your Pricing Strategy:

1. Price Metric. The price metric is the unit of value you charge a customer. For example, in a SaaS product, you could charge by seat, by API transaction, or by data usage, like Dropbox. The pricing package could be a subscription, a pay-as-you-go model, or freemium. This is your business model or monetization strategy.

2. Bundles. Offer configurations or bundles are often the tiers in SaaS. Companies offer a “good, better, best” as different bundles are sold to customers. Typically, companies recommend a package, such as what Mailchimp does.

3. Price Fence. A price fence charges two different customers different prices for the same product. For example, if you go to a movie at noon during the middle of the week, you pay less than when you go at 7:00 PM.

4. Volume. One of the most common ways to package in B2B is with the concept of volume. If a user buys one seat of your product, it’s a different price per seat than if they buy a thousand. The product is the same, but because they bought more volume, it’s a different price for that product.

For a product-led company with a lot of volume and velocity, it’s essential that your offering is clear. Customers should understand what might be the best for them so that you don't need a salesperson walking them through a full menu of every possible configuration.

Quiz of the Week:❓

Answer will be shared in the next edition.

Answer to the last quiz: Volumetric Pricing. 100% of respondents got it wrong.

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

See you next Saturday.

Ricky,

SaaSwrites