This guide is split up into sections. Research, Solving A Problem, Distribution and Acquisition, Repeatable Processes and additional resources. I wrote this a few years ago so some of this data may not be applicable in the age of AI, but still very good information if you're building a software company. Enjoy.
To build a SaaS or startup you need to have customers with a problem, the ability to solve that problem, a distribution network to provide the solution to the problem, and a repeatable process to acquire more customers.
There are four parts to this playbook that help you get started, inspired, motivated, or all of the above. Click on the sections below:
Research Websites
ProductHunt
https://zelby.substack.com/
Trends.vc
https://treendly.com/
https://kern.al/
Research On Reddit
Personally, I like investing in distribution/acquisition methods that have evergreen compounding effects. You won’t see Twitter listed in this playbook because it's not evergreen, search sucks, and low reach. Whereas Reddit has tons of community, evergreen effects, SEO, and great search capabilities. It’s worthwhile to mention.
I’m not a pro-Redditor. However, I think it's one of the better ways to find ideas and build community. Here are some thoughts on how I would use Reddit to grow my company.
Start by reading this: https://latecheckout.substack.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-unbundling and this: https://gummysearch.com/how-to/find-problems-to-solve/
Although both articles talk about how to find ideas on Reddit, I think they provide a good overview of the platform and how to use it correctly.
I have found some insights using this paid tool called https://gummysearch.com. The owner, Fed, created the tool to give users a deeper and more analytical way to see conversations on Reddit.
By using that tool, you can get a good idea of what conversations are happening in your niche. Then you can join the conversations by adding value. Most people say that with Reddit, it’s hard to promote your product because most admins will delete your post or ban you.
But like anything, if you lead with the value, you can add your link without issue.
Examples:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anxiety/comments/advpk8/im_making_a_journallingmood_and_symptom_tracking/
https://marketingexamples.com/content/reddit
The paid side of Reddit doesn’t get much love because, let’s face it…Redditors hate ads. However, this breakdown by Kacper Staniul is the only way you should run ads…and is the only way proven to work. Check it out → https://www.getscrapbook.com/saas-teardowns/reddit-ads-masterclass
If you do run an ad like this, make sure that you also have a /r community that is for your specific product. The ad mentioned in the above link grew their subreddit to 9k members based off that one ad.
Check out how Bearable grew to 300k users using Reddit → https://trends.co/articles/how-bearable-grew-to-300k-users-and-profitable-using-reddit/
More Reddit Resources
https://postparrot.xyz/ - Create Viral Worthy Reddit Headlines using GPT-3
https://socialgrep.com/ - Monitor your {social} on Reddit
gummysearch.com - Reddit Audience Research
https://anvaka.github.io/sayit/?query=writing - How to find related subreddits
https://laterforreddit.com/ - Reddit post scheduler
https://www.delayforreddit.com/analysis/subreddit/vegan - find when is the best time to post in certain reddits
https://accfarm.com/buy-reddit-accounts/softreg-reddit-accounts - Buy Reddit accounts
https://www.delayforreddit.com/analysis - Figure out when you should post on Reddit
https://guide.opryshok.com/ - Guide on how to validate ideas on Reddit
Research Articles
https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/intro
https://gummysearch.com/insights/idea-validation/
Courtland's Business Idea Validation Checklist
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1e-pmkZCM96V_3FhwYFK5ubY8l52YNk9j4i25HWt6oyY/edit#heading=h.eqrnmfrqlu9cResearch Videos
How to spot business Trends https://vimeo.com/723459898/224f7bdcdb?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&owner=119944533 - https://www.headway.io/events/exploring-product-with-kris-eul-kinetic https://www.headway.io/events/understanding-your-customers-when-you-dont-have-any-yet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gwzISgU6hY - Best way to identify business ideasHow to use Vid IQ comment filter to find Ideas
Research Twitter Threads
It's important to note that even if you find a problem to solve you need to make sure that your problem is in a market that has the pain, has the purchasing power, easy to target, and is growing.
Find A Market
Alex Hormozi puts it best when looking to find a market to serve from 100M Offers.
Pricing: Finding The Right Market -- A Starving Crowd
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIzZJFmS2Q8
When picking markets look for four indicators (pg 34)
1. Pain (pg 35)
They must not want, but desperately need, what I am offering. Pain can be anything that frustrates people about their lives.
The degree of the pain will be proportional to the price you will be able to charge
When they hear the solution to their pain, and inversely, what their life would like without this pain, they should be drawn to your solution.
If you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurate, they will almost always buy what you are offering. A prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution.
2. Purchase Power (pg 35)
Your audience needs to be able to afford the service you're charging them for.
Make sure your targets have the money, or access to the amount of money, needed to buy your services at the prices you require to make it worth their time.
3. Easy To Target (pg 36)
Make life easier by looking for easy-to-target markets
Examples of this are avatars that have associations they belong to, mailing lists, social media groups, channels they all watch, etc.
If potential targets are gathered somewhere then we can market to them
4. Growing (pg 36)
There are three main markets that will always exist: Health, Wealth and Relationships
The reason those will always exist is that there is always tremendous pain when you lack them.
The goal is to find a smaller subgroup within one of those larger buckets that is growing, has the buying power, and is easy to target (the three other variables)
Think about what you're good at in regard to health, wealth, and relationships. then think about who might value your service the most (in the most pain), has the buying power to pay what you want (money), and can be found easily (targeting)
Starving crowd > Offer Strength > Persuasion Skills (pg 38)
Even if you have a bad offer and are bad at persuasion, you're going to make money if you're in a great market.
If you are in a normal market and have a Grand Slam Offer, you can make tons of money even if you're bad at persuasion.
If you're in a normal market and have a normal offer, in order to be massively successful, you would have to be exceptionally good at persuasion.
Pro Tip: The point of good writing is for the reader to understand. The point of good persuasion is for the prospect to feel understood. (pg 35)
Commit to the niche - Riches are in the niches (pg 38)
You must stick with whatever you pick long enough to have trial and error. You will fail far longer if you keep changing who you market to, because you must start over from the beginning each time. So, pick then commit. (pg 38)
The more your niche down the more you can charge
Think About The Customer
The ideal customer profile is critically important. Before even finding a problem think about WHO exactly your customer is before going to solve their problem. #[[The Art Of Customer Acquisition]] outlines the steps needed to take when outlining your ICP. This is important to do at the start so you don't waste time later trying to figure out who your ideal customer is.
This also makes it easier to find your customers because you'll know exactly who they are, where they hang out, etc
You can start by interviewing people with potential problems and get an idea of what jobs they would want your potential product to solve.
Ask them these questions
How do you make money
What are the things about running your business that keep you up at night?
What are some things ("jobs") that you are having problems getting done?
Under what circumstances do you usually try to do these things?
What do you currently use to help you?
What other options have you considered?
What did you use or reject thse?
How would you describe the perfect solution?
What are the most important characteristics of this solution?
Identify competition and analyze their customers
Create a job story
A job story is the simplest way to express your job to be done.
Use When (Situation), I want to (motivation), So I can (expected outcome)
"When" refers to the conditions that cause a customer to hire your product, "I want to" refers to the action your customer wants to take, while "So I can" describes the outcome your customer wants.
Here are some examples of potential jobs stories for Cartfuel Customers
When I sell a product online, I want to see the sales data in HubSpot, so I can have our sales team reach out to upsell more products.
When I sell digital tickets, I want to see the sales data in HubSpot, so I can contact the customers with future events
When I sell products online, I want to see the customer sales data in HubSpot, so I can keep track of who bought what product
When I sell products with HubSpot, I want to collect payments using Stripe or PayPal, so I can see customer subscriptions and successful payments
When I sell products on HubSpot, I want to collect payments using Stripe or PayPal, so I can see customer subscriptions and successful payments in the CRM (External)
Set a criteria for the type of customer you want to serve by asking these questions
Examples
What verticals work best for you?
Online Service based businesses
What size companies are most responsive to your product?
3-10 employees
Do your customers tend to cluster in certain locations?
UK, US
What technologies do your customers use?
HubSpot, Spiffypay, Stripe, PayPal,
How long have your customers been around?
Minimum 3 years
What reporting structure and departments does the company have?
Flat reporting structure. One head person in charge who is able to make decisions quickly
What special conditions are there for your product?
Must be an agency or service-based business
Must sell digital products or memberships
Having a sales team is a plus but not a requirement
Has to make $250k+ per year
What red flags appear with customers who don't buy your product?
Not sure about the red flags atm
Solving A Problem
Before solving the problem, it is wise to test if it is actually a problem. Let's say that you find a problem to solve from a forum. You start building a solution but then you put it out there and come to find out there was only one person with that problem. You wasted time and possibly money.
Whereas if you put up a landing page showcasing the solution to the problem outlining the #benefits of the solution, then ask people to signup for the beta program you can really see who needs your potential solution. If they signup, then you have a higher chance of getting those people to actually use the product.
To test, you can use Webflow, yep.so, or Carrd.
https://marketingexamples.com/landing-page/guide - Guide to creating landing pages that convert
https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/landing-pages
Good Twitter Thread on setting up a landing page:
Here are examples of landing pages that do an excellent job of laying out the problem, the solution, and the benefits. If you need help with copywriting, check out the copywriting tips section.
Copywriting Tips
https://itmeo.com/market/landing-pages - List of landing page examples
Saaspages.xyz - List of Landing Page examples
https://www.cirrusinsight.com/
https://www.supportshepherd.com/
https://www.taxcredithunter.com/
https://www.contentgrowth.com/
Use this tool to showcase your product on your landing page → https://www.arcade.software/
To figure out the proper language, use AI to create the features and benefits like this example:
How To Use Copy AI to write great landing page text by Jacob Miller
So we brainstormed our best one-liners with a supporting sentence to create variables for the tool to pull from and then we copied the generated results into the Notion page, highlighted our favorite parts, and then crafted our favorite lines for the landing page.
I hope this loom recording helps explain the above explanation better and shows you what we did with copy.ai and notion together.
https://www.loom.com/share/7f8f0dc48657465aa069e2927766e518
Set a KPI: IE: If 100 people signup for this landing page, then I'll begin to build this solution.
You can run ads (Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter), message people in forums, and Slack groups, or email the customers you've researched to see if the landing page with the solution resonates with them.
If you did customer research prior, then, it should be easy to understand the exact pain point the solution should solve.
Examples of this:
https://www.lunadio.com/blog/i-got-400-signups-with-a-video-of-a-product-that-didnt-exist/
https://www.simple.ink/blog/how-to-presell-saas
Once you have the proper KPI sets and confidence, and evidence that you can build the solution to the problem then start building the MVP
The MVP should be nimble and do one thing well. You can possibly use no-code or low-code tools to get the initial version up and running in less than one month.
Do NOT overcomplicate the MVP with features. Offer the MVP to the users who signed up for the beta as a lifetime deal to get initial capital or give a discount on the monthly price. This only works if the solution doesn't require hosting or anything that would make the project increase drastically in cost over time.
If you decide to offer a lifetime deal, cap it. Meaning only x amount of people can purchase to keep the cost down down the road.
Fed from https://gummysearch.com made over $50k selling an LTD.
Simon from linkdrop.io made $75k preselling lifetime deals for his SaaS: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/i-made-75-000-pre-selling-a-saas-i-havent-built-yet-89d28bb772
Do not implement features from LTD users as they are most likely not your true customers. To know who you’re true customers are, read Repeatable Process.
The point of an LTD is to give you the freedom (and micro validation that your product is worth something) to work on your product without worrying about cash. Yes, you will get feedback but be VERY cautious of the feedback from these customers. Do not let them steer the product too far off your initial vision.
Read about how I used AppSumo to launch Cartfuel and made $11.5K in revenue→ https://www.indiehackers.com/post/0-11-5k-in-revenue-with-a-test-how-you-can-do-the-same-82569532f2
If you don't want to do LTD, then you can follow this method by Denis Shatalin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SavId13-lIEmV6-LTeX4HDaxMc2W8AxK/view, which also works well.
Side note: Denis is awesome with giving advice regarding landing pages. Reach out on Twitter if you need some assistance with your landing page or SaaS.
If customers ask for specific features, take note but do not implement them immediately. Only implement or consider implementing when more than three paying customers have asked for a specific thing.
Regardless if you launch with an LTD or not, you will need to figure out pricing.
MRR gets the bills paid and makes VCs (if you want) happy.
Pricing
Pricing is complex. Pricing is also dynamic. It’s hard to write about pricing because every product needs a different type of pricing model.You will need to test different price points to figure out what your customers are willing to pay. The good thing is if you lead with value and your offer is good, you can pretty much get away with most price points, especially if you’re in the B2B market.
One thing is for sure, freemium reigns supreme.
When your product is free it gives users the chance to truly try it, without constraints. Your goal should be to get them to the ah-ha moment as quickly as possible anyway. So if they need 14-days to get to that point, you’re doing it wrong.
Listen to this podcast on why ah-ha moments NEED to be front and center. Delaying ah-ha moments can literally kill your product. → https://www.lennyspodcast.com/customer-led-growth-georgiana-laudi-forget-the-funnel/#transcript
Once they find the value and their pain point was alleviated they’ll upgrade regardless.
This tweet is from Chris Frantz of loops.so explains why it works below.
When your product is free and has features that your competitors charge for, it makes it easier to get customers to the value your product holds.
More readings on this here:
https://sixteenventures.com/saas-free-trial-credit-card
https://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-metrics
https://sixteenventures.com/saas-free-trial-engagement
https://sixteenventures.com/saas-free-trial-length
Read Profitwell’s freemium manifesto → https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/238448/TheFreemiumManifesto-ProfitWell.pdf
If you decide to offer your product for free or not, it's important that PLA (Product Led Acquisition) plays a part.
This means turning your product's customers into marketers. Think “Powered by” mechanics.
PLA:
Encourage users to invite other users
Turn your product into a billboard
Encourage users to make shareable content
Triggers WOM
Product-led acquisition is responsible for the growth of most of the biggest software companies: Dropbox, Slack, Airbnb, Facebook, PayPal, Netflix, Uber, Snapchat, Zoom, and more. It’s hard to be worth $10B+ without it. - Julian Shapiro
Julian Shapiro wrote about this topic in detail (It’s an amazing read): https://www.julian.com/guide/startup/product-led-acquisition*
When you combine Freemium + PLA you get a hyper-growth loop.
When thinking about pricing you should also be thinking about ascension models. Meaning, what else can your customers purchase once they find the true value of your product.
By having an ascension model you can scale vertically quickly. This is called NRR (Net Revenue Retention).
HubSpot does this well. They offer their CRM for free but to use their more robust features customers have to upgrade.
Net revenue retention is a SaaS metric that measures the recurring revenue generated from existing customers over a set period. Also referred to as net dollar retention (NDR), NRR considers upgrades, downgrades, and customer churn to indicate business growth potential from the current customer base.
If you sell to enterprise, you want to target 100%+ NRR (Net Revenue Retention) and if you sell to SMBs you want to target 75%+ NRR (Hubspot pre-IPO had 83% NRR). To do this, you need to have the following: high investment in onboarding and CS, land and expand product model with upsell opportunities, ideally several product offerings, strong NPS/CSAT.
Quarterly and annual contracts are highly impactful for scaleable growth. CLTV is 100-300% vs. MoM. Also, you need to ask for annual upgrades beyond sign-up. 2-10 months is the sweet spot when they are experiencing value.
Always offer maintenance/pause plans for people looking to leave. Charge $10-50 to just hold their data
Localization, if you have more than 20% of your user base outside your home region, increases revenue by 10-20%.
Retention for users that upgraded to paid from a freemium plan, is over 10% higher.
Offer add-ons in your SaaS pricing. CLTV is 18-54% higher for customers who buy add-ons.
SaaS brands that have usage-based pricing, have baked in expansion revenue potential, vs. having to “re-sell” the customer on additional upgrades.
You should be able to recover 60-80% of defaulted credit cards. If you aren’t, you need to put systems into place to catch that. Try in-app messages and SMS. Localization can help. Don’t make the user log in to update CC. Just take them straight from a link to form and make it easy.
This video explains how SaaS companies should think about pricing → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yA0toAPn8w
Distribution/Acquisition
You can distribute your solution to the problem via ads, referrals, organic (SEO, Media, Borrowed Distribution), cold email.
If you don't have cash then creating a referral network, organic or cold email will be your best chance of success.
🗣 Want to get unlimited leads? Watch this video → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyxwhglPuMg
Referral Network
You can think of a referral network in two ways
1. Affiliate program where you have people promoting your product for a % of the revenue
We use Rewardful
2. Partnering with an industry expert in exchange for equity in the company
Both are equally powerful. However, doing both adds rocket fuel to your growth.
CopyAI, TweetHunter.io, and Tapilo all do a hybrid of the affiliate x partner distribution method
Examples of people doing this:
1. https://twitter.com/tomjacquesson/status/1560648304282992641
Insights from Tom
So we mainly partnered with what I would call "very relevant influencers"
The way we like to do it is by aligning interests.
The more the business grows, the more they get.
Also, we never partnered just for the "influence" part of it. We rely on our partners to contribute to the business in many ways, by acting more like marketing generalists with ideas to promote the product in general.
An example structure would be :
- You can get up to X% of the business
- As the business reaches revenue milestones, you get closer to X
- You don't have to be full time, but we expect you'll put in the effort to reach each milestone.
- It's not just about posting a tweet. It's about leveraging all your channels and participating to the marketing strategy.
- We meet on a weekly/bi-weekly basis to discuss
So we didn't actually reach out to potential partners thinking they were going to become partners
Actually, we just sent JK access to Tweet Hunter, and he replied "I want in"
we targeted him (and tens if not hundreds of others) just because they were pretty influential in our market
So then we had a couple calls to talk about it.
What was really important is he would get 0% until we reached a rather challenging revenue milestone, one that would have probably taken us 6-12 months to reach if we did it alone
But overall, you could feel he was really excited about the project
And it was the same with Alex on Taplio, he reached out to us
so you could tell he had motivation
the only people we proactively reached out to didn't show as much interest
Another company doing this is CopyAI -
Another method is SaaS by Niko - Follow him on Twitter→ https://twitter.com/NikoKolettis
Summary:
In the same way you add value to Twitter, add value to community founders in your niche - then have a grand slam offer for partnering with them. Yes, you give up some MRR, but if you charge enough and you are offering it to already paying community members - they are more likely to bite. Frankly, they only get revenue if the partnership is successful.
SaaS by Niko - Partnership Playbook
Long Version
This SaaS Growth Strategy is Perfect For You If You …
Just launched your SaaS
Have paying customers
100% commitment… you’re all in!
Coachability
This Strategy is Not For
Non-Founders
Selling Digital Products (Courses)
E-Commerce, Lead Gen, Agencies
People who aren’t working on their product full time
If you’ve achieved initial traction, I can help you scale-up to record-breaking MRR faster.
But you must be ALL-IN, because reaching $5K/Mo is HARD.
First, let’s square something away.
Most founders do not charge enough.
Most founders do not charge enough.
Most founders do not charge enough.
We’ll talk about pricing later, but if you are struggling with Price, DM a link to your SaaS and I’ll tell you what I would pay based on the VALUE that I receive.
So you
Have paying customers.
Raised your prices.
And you want to hit $5k/mo
Let’s talk about
1) The Grand Slam Offer
If you haven’t read, Alex Hormozi’s $100M Offers, here’s a summary of his thoughts on offers:
No offer? No biz. No life.
Bad offer? Negative profit. No biz. Miserable life.
Decent offer? No profit. Stagnating biz. Stagnating life.
Good offer? Some profit. Okay biz. Okay life.
Grand Slam Offer? Fantastic profit. Insane biz. Freedom.
As I mentioned before, you should be selling your products or services based on VALUE.
This is where the Grand Slam Offer comes in.
Its an offer that can't be compared to any other product or service available
It combines the following:
an attractive promotion
an unmatchable value proposition
a premium price
an unbeatable guarantee
a money model that allows you to get paid to get new customers
Create Your Grand Slam Offer
Step 1 - Identify dream outcomes
Make a list of the dream outcomes people in your chosen market have.
Don't sell the plane ticket, sell the vacation.
Step 2 - List out problems
Write down as many problems your customers might face that you can think of.
Do your best to list for every type of customer you might have.
Step 3 - List solutions
For all those problems you just listed, list out solutions for every single one.
List them as how-tos. For example:
Problem: Takes too much time to think of content ideas
Solution: How to think of 1000 content ideas in minutes
(Extra: Use this for Ad Copy, Landing Page Copy, Twitter Content)
Step 4 - Create Your Solutions Vehicle
Now you have a big 'ol list of solutions to your customer’s problems.
This is what you're selling.
You should be trying to solve every possible problem your customer might have.
Step 5 - Trim and Stack
Now take all those lists and cherry-pick the ones that are highly valuable and are easy for you to do.
These come together into a high-value deliverable. It should be jam-packed with solutions.
Your customer should think, "Wow, I really get all that?"
I’ll provide a Grand Slam Offer later on, but first:
(2) Cold Outreach for Partnerships
Here, I do a fair amount of research.
I start by Googling for Influencers in my niche that have built Discord Communities (paid or unpaid)
I’ll join their free trials and check out the engagement.
Now, open Google sheets and make a list of your top 10 or 20 influencers (the more you gather the better). I like to put these in order of engagement.
Now it’s time for the outreach:
Think of your strategy as your first date with the influencer. Don’t ask them out on a date and then immediately ask if they could buy dinner. Often companies will reach out offering to send their product, at no cost, BUT, ask for a post or shout out.
Plain and simple: Don’t do this.
Without them ever hearing about your SaaS, your outreach to them is their first impression.
This brings up the core philosophy of influencer relationships and product seeding:
BUILD THE RELATIONSHIP ON GIVING, NOT ASKING.
The way I like to add value is by White Labelling a digital product that they can offer to their communities FREE (A How-To Guide for example)
My SaaS, which I haven’t shared publicly, is in the Finance/Investment Niche.
People who have Discord Communities (especially paying members) are the same clients I NEED.
By first adding value to this influencers and later providing a Grand Slam Offer, I have made partnerships that have taken my SaaS from $0 to $5k/mo in August.
This same strategy will take me from $5k/mo to $25k/mo.
After adding value to and building a relationship with the founder of a community, it’s time to share your grand slam offer.
Your offer might include
providing lead generation to his community at no cost
providing him passive income on every SaaS customer he sends your way
Providing a less than Pro version of your SaaS as a free add-on to his community
By adding value to a community in your niche and getting hundreds of potential customers using your product, you will force product market fit and create a feedback loop to improve the features of your product.
Organic/Media Arm
There's a new way to build SaaS - It encompasses using owned media company as a distribution
Newsletter, YouTube, TikTok
Then pushing that distribution towards the SaaS - ie: profitwell
https://www.profitwell.com/recur/all/pth-b-side-hubspot-and-the-hustle
https://www.headway.io/founders-mindset (Nice landing page example for high quality content)
Through just one partnership, you can increase your MRR from $0 to $5k/mo and beyond and it COSTS YOU $0 IN AD SPEND.
It’s simple, not easy - meaning the process is straightforward, but execution is hard.
You have to continue to say things that matter, hold attention, connect emotionally, and then add a new experience
By doing this you're able to create valuable content that resonates with your ICP giving more chances they become a customer because the value was high they will wonder what they'll get out of the SaaS.
Owned media is the future and big players like HubSpot are acquiring media and using it to push HubSpot to the masses.
If you struggle with understanding how to create content, start with one piece of content and remix it. Read this guide to see how it could be done.
Remixing Content
Media is the new way to promote offers. What used to be done via webinars, emails, ebooks, pdfs is now done through a culmination of episodic, high-value, content pieces.
It's not just one piece of content its many pieces of content spread across different mediums where the intended audiences reside. Some people listen to podcasts, some people read email newsletters, some watch YouTube, and others like TikTok or reading blogs.
The key is to be on all of these platforms, generating an audience on each and pushing them into an offer -> most likely a free product (still high quality ). In the sense of SaaS, it would be a free version (freemium) of the product. IE: Profitwell does this well. This podcast episode explains they view it: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6u5vCfttZNEKjrmm9dCIgi?si=cb5996038f494e0c
According to Profitwell, it cost a little under 10k to produce a “season”.
Each season lasts 3 months (12 episodes per season) so 40k per year producing content.
So how would we do this in a manner that is affordable for business?
Start with one medium and remix that content to other mediums.
For example, My First Million podcasts records their podcast but make sure to film it so that it can go on YouTube. From the YouTube video, clips are taken out and shared to TikTok, Instagram reels, and YouTube shorts.
🗣You can use this tool to take your videos and turn them into blog posts → https://videotapit.com/
Short-form mediums like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube shorts act as the trailers pushing audiences to the longer formats on YouTube and Podcast
My first million (Doesn't do this but their fans do )takes the transcripts of the podcasts and turns them into a written format for newsletters and blog posts.
Take the snippets from the blog posts/newsletter and turn them into Twitter threads and LinkedIn Threads.
One piece of content turns into content for 7-8 different mediums keeping the distribution growth loop intact.
The order in which this is done doesn't matter - it’s probably easiest to start with video but not necessary.
As long as MFM keeps creating high-quality content the growth will be non-stop as each medium has a different type of person who consumes the content on the specific medium.
Profitwell started with a podcast and eventually branched out into bigger, more produced, and polished, episodes. But the content quality level never dropped. People felt the quality of the content was amazing, therefore, they knew by signing up to Profitwell that the experience would be the same.
Profitwell made sure that when people eventually signed up, their free plan would be better than any of their competitor's paid plans aligning their ethos of high-quality wins.
Media arms make distribution easier, conversions easier, and customer success and delight easier.
As an added bonus if a business owns the distribution network it makes the business x more valuable.
Audience + Product = exit liquidity in the multi-millions.
Profitwell (Content + SaaS) sold for 200M
The Hustle (Newsletter + Subscription) sold for tens of millions.
Don’t think you need to have a huge studio budget. Profitwell got started with a cheap mic and a makeshift studio. The most important part is getting started.
Interviewing Industry Leaders
One of the easiest ways to find content is by interviewing industry leaders. These people have spent years in their field and their knowledge is vast. Often, they will be more than happy to speak with you about their area of expertise.
But how do you find these people?
You can check Twitter, LinkedIn, or Cold email using the Cold Email tips in this playbook.
The kicker here is when you ask for the interview, tell them that you are creating a report and that the data and insights from the interview will be included. Also mention that you’ll include backlinks to their website or offer.
For this to be super effective (and spend less time trying to find the right people) you may want to go an alternate route which is to hire a company like Qualtrics to find the leads that are appropriate to your niche and then send the survey to participants who agree.
This can be expensive costing anywhere from $3-12k.
In addition to the above, you’ll need
1 Writer
1 Editor
1 Data Scientist
1 Graphic Designer
Here are some examples of a finished report:
https://www.swipefiles.com/state-of-saas-marketing/2022
To understand how this particular playbook works fully (and if you want templates, more examples, etc) purchase Erin Balsa's course who does this exact thing for a living.
https://hausofbold.com/course/
This could be a powerful tactic for a more established company that wants to attract enterprise-level clients.
Organic/Amplification of Messaging To Borrowed Distribution Networks
Casey Hill, the marketing lead of Bonjoro used Podcasts to grow to 1M in ARR. How? He went on different podcasts to talk about his message. The message he talked about aligns with the message of Bonjoro. So when customers heard Casey and went to Bonjoro, the connection was there.
Although there are more ways to grow a SaaS, going forward in 2022 and beyond these methods will be the most effective.
The growth loop would look like this:
User reads or hears content on a borrowed distribution network
Podcasts, YouTube, Blogs, Twitter Threads
The user then reads more content from a reworked fresh perspective in the owned distribution
Newsletter, Blog, reports, Twitter
Something free but high quality
Has to be aligned with what your product or service is otherwise it won't work
You need to have a consistent message which you or the product and service is known for
This needs to be consistent in the borrowed distribution appearances, in the owned distribution, and in the SaaS/program
User signs up to aforementioned program/SaaS
The deciding factor is the touch points of listening/reading from an already established creator/network
Then reading or listening to more thoughts on the message that was previously amplified
Finally deciding the program or SaaS is for them based on the thoughts and relationship that has been built
Bonus: Add ‘Powered by’ mechanics to add extra fuel. Julian Shapiro calls this the bulletin board method. It works.
Step one starts again
If you add the referral partners you now have high-quality content to refer their promotions to adding fuel to the growth loop.
Organic SEO (Blog)
SEO will never die. But it takes 12-18 months to see results.
Content has to be high quality using keyword clusters that match the intent of the user
Here is a live tweetstorm on how to use AI to write blog posts with keyword clusters:
Here is a good SEO starter strategy by Alex Garcia that is extremely helpful
https://preview.mailerlite.com/k2v5v2s8r3/1872829976827402243/v6h9/
Here are some different types of content types that you can use as well.
Follow this SOP for proper blog structure → https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fz8M_dsobtXUHy56SzshZ6IPhZ93OPv2zmznKt67I04/edit?usp=sharing
https://metatags.io/ is a cool tool to preview how your blog post would appear in SERP.
Cold Email
Because the ICP is defined as cold email is a serious contender when reaching out to future prospects
Tools needed:
Warmupinbox (Or Lemlist)
Apollo
Before sending any cold emails read The Art Of Customer Acquisition! https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fe9wgrh9w2yx1u/The_Art_of_Customer_Acquisition.pdf?dl=0
Targeting
Once you have the specific buyer persona matched to the specific recipient within a company that matches your ICP, you can personalize most of your campaign from that document.
Research -> Job Story -> ICP -> Buyer Personas
CRM (HubSpot Free)
All you need is the name of the prospect and the name of the company and you can create a personalized message that speaks to that prospect’s needs. This means you only need some basic research to personalize your messages rather than having to construct each campaign from the ground up using new research.
Finding The Best Way To Approach Your Prospect
Step 1: Decide Who You Want To Contact
A good place to start is with pain point described in your job story. Figure out who is responsible for alleviating that pain point.
Example: "When I need to increase the number of qualified candidates for managerial positions,..."
Since you are talking about job candidates this would probably be handled by people with job titles like: HR, Chief Happiness Officer, Chief Human Resources Officer, VP of HR and Vice President of People among others.
Working under them you will find people with job titles like: Recruiter Job Posting Specialist, Human Resources Specialist, Recruitment, and Social Media Coordinator.
Working above them would be people with titles like: CEO, COO, and Head of Operations.
Step 2: Generate Prospects
Generate the prospects based on the ICP
Step 3: Match Your Approach To Your Prospect
At this point you are going to be searching not just for a company that matches your ICP but a specific person to contact. There are a few ways you can go about this and you should always be testing your approach.
Direct Approach
The most basic approach is target the decision maker.
Example Email:
Hi {First Name}
One quick question to a fellow {head of sales (or any title)}. I'm curious, how do you handle extending your customer base at {company name}?
I'm asking as we have created software that gets it done instantly - so you can triple the efficiency of your team.
Will you or someone on your team find 15mins this week to see the platform in action?
Add a little addition to the end of the email. A sentence politely requesting that if our content is not directly relevant to you, could you please pass this information onto the right decision maker.
Top Down Approach
Bottom Up Approach
For companies large enough to have end users, decision makers and executives filing separate roles in the buying process, use the three musketeers approach where you use each approach simultaneously to target executives, decision makers, and end users.
The first step to personalization is to create a separate campaign for each approach you use with a certain ideal customer profile.
You are going to get better results the more you target.
If the company has 50 employees or fewer, the C-suite is where decisions are made
Example: If you are selling marketing automation software, you should target the VP of marketing or chief marketing officer. For companies with over 50 employees, jobs become more specialized. For those companies, it is best to target a marketing manager or even a regional marketing manager if it is a really big company.
Once you have your ICP defined you will want to warm up your emails. Use something like warmupinbox.com. NEVER use your main domain for cold email sending. Buy secondary domains like example.net, example.xyz, etc etc. Set the forward rules so if a user types in the URL they go to your main site.
The warming up will take 2 weeks at least. This is needed so your emails don’t go to spam. Give it time to warm up.
Once it's warm, then you will want to start sending your emails.
Your chances of getting a response are higher when you keep the first email short and sweet. End the email by asking them if they want to see a video demo. If they say yes, then you send the video.
Remember that the purpose of cold email is to get people on a sales call
Additional Resources
How We Grew Instantly To 100K MRR (Steal Our Strategy)-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg23xbo3_JAHow to do Lead Generation for Dummies?- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5xd6naWbzM
Cold Email Lecture Playback: Notes, the Lecture, and Presentation -
https://trends.co/video/cold-email-lecture-playback-notes-the-lecture-and-presentation/
Instaly.ai cold email playlist- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDVt6xCSRx3dqr_SGgc1hng/playlists
Tweets
##Docs
Instantly.ai -> Growth doc https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U9AV7wXHqMSa5-jYWFy-MQPjUbzIXV_d-ehMyp0wCdY/edit#heading=h.4ub55xvkkgb1
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IarZKx5uc1smgbcvDMtII7_kN6S7D6XPZW4u-tgjJXo/edit - Alex Berman 50 Email Scripts
https://reply.io/30-email-outreach-templates - 30 Outreach Templates
https://coachtestprep.s3.amazonaws.com/direct-uploads/user-103393/bc6f39cb-92a4-4610-9051-9e97c15c260b/EBOOK - THE ART OF COLD EMAIL.pdf - The Art of Cold Email by Lemlist
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ei_H0FxQH5bGl9zxe5VSnLxaO9zV4b5OYTsxiTJtEyQ/edit?fbclid=IwAR3W04JRYA1VM_LaijPrqSY5c0qI0OVHa0dNiFfOd1fXmS0SYeUUTgjhLyY - 48 Email Outreach Templates That Generate Results
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O_nDqc8M2Do9TZa_fD2L27Agh3TNPI0I75GuJoeB1Fo/edit - Instantly.ai Masterclass - Land in the Inbox Every Single Time With Our Ultimate Cold Email Framework
Sales/ Demo Calls
When you get a prospect on a sales/demo call you need to structure it in a way so the prospect gets all their questions answered. There are tons of resources out there on sales and demo calls, but I'm going to speak about what has worked for me.
Essentially there are 6 steps to conducting a winning demo call
- Research the business, diagnose their problems
- Appreciate them meeting
- Review the top 3 features that support the pain
- Identify Top 3 Features - Show the outcome of each feature, address questions, ask if they'd use it
- Summarize
- Close
Dan Martell calls this the Rocket Demo Builder. Check out this video where he explains the process.
The key takeaways:
Demo not tour. You're not on the call to show every single feature of the app
Your goal is to show them how PARTS of your SaaS/Service can solve their specific problem
You show them the outcome they can achieve by using your service
Keyword: Outcome
Connect to the pain.
Figure out why they are on the call. What is the pain point they need solved.
You want to anchor them to their current situation to let them know the situation is not optimal.
Peg the money shot.
Save the best for last so you can give them an "aha!" moment and transition into the close.
Most importantly, never leave the meeting without booking another meeting, or as Dan says, BAMFAM. Book a meeting from a meeting.
Following this system has helped me feel more prepared, more confident, and able to move through the demo without feeling like I'm not moving the needle.
Bonus:
Watch this video for high-ticket closing techniques → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROEqCXj_Vv4
Repeatable Process
"""At the highest level, the idea is, to understand your best customers, map their experience, like we were just talking about, map their experience through the lens of delivering value to them, make it measurable, and then evaluate what you're doing today that is out of alignment with that." - Georgiana Laudi (https://open.spotify.com/episode/4wheyOyKwBlx4MtgqAbq3Y?si=7a3483a9c9634611)
As Lincoln Murphy says:"""Once you have the MVP and have some users offering feedback and using the product, you need to figure out who your REAL customers are.
Who are the people that could not survive without your product? You need to survey them. Use this template from forgetthefunnel - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vZNrBXRaBAVO_ddAgoRJAy3fquAZrXN_UXf703kAu04/edit
The point of surveying customers is to understand who you serve and who you DO NOT serve.
You want to interview the people who are happy because they found success using your product and signed up recently.
You want to ask customers who knew life BEFORE your product to get the desired outcome
JTBD thinks about the desired outcome.
Goal + Appropriate experience = desired outcome
A good way to think about this is:
Use When (Situation), I want to (motivation), So I can (expected outcome)
"When" refers to the conditions that cause a customer to hire your product, "I want to" refers to the action your customer wants to take, while "So I can" describes the outcome your customer wants.
Once you ask these questions, then take it one step further and follow Alex Hormozi's process:
Find your biggest spenders: Sort the replies by the customers you like the most, spent the most, and stayed the longest. Focus on the top 20%. Ignore the rest.
See what they have in common: This takes reading through all the answers and using your brain. I know. Thinking is hard.
The good news is - your competitors won’t do it - easy advantage. Goal: Come up with the fewest qualifiers they all have in common. Now, list them out. Usually, there are three to five qualifiers.
Execute: Once you have these answers you’re going to do two important things.
a) Speak your new avatar. Be upfront about your customer requirements. Get all
advertising to speak directly to them. You will repel the bad customers and attract
the good ones. Stop selling anyone who does not meet your ideal customer requirements. Seriously, stop it. Then, increase effort on the channels these people
come through
b) Re-engineer The Sales Process. Look at what caused these better customers to buy.
Reverse-engineer the buying process your best customers went through. Then, make it happen on purpose.
Example:
Demographics: Right leaning/conservative, Married, 25-45, Male, Gym Owner, US-based
Business Requirements: Signed Lease, 1+ Employees minimum, $10,000+ Per Month
Revenue Minimum when starting, Min 30 Existing Clients
Aspirations: $1M+ gym, not work so much, open more locations
Buying Reasons: Not enough leads, “bad market”, bad pricing, can’t find good employees
Step 4a: New Redefined Avatar: We surveyed our customers to see what the top 20 percent had in common. In other words, we got to see what our most successful customers looked like. Actions: We focused on the audiences that had the highest concentration of these types of gym owners. We spelled out our requirements in our ads and pages. We talked only about the specific problems and aspirations of our best customers, rather than all customers.
Findings from step 1-3 about how they bought:
After looking at the data, we found that 78% of our top customers had consumed AT LEAST TWO pieces of long form content before purchasing from us. This means that if we got on the phone with someone who had not done that, our chances of selling them were lower.
Step 4b: Reverse-engineer buying process. Actions: My team then recreated this “ideal” buying experience. From this point onwards, we injected two long-form high-value content
pieces to each lead as a part of their buyer journey. And, we increased our total output of content. On top of that, we created a list of our “all time greatest hits” of content to arm the sales team. They then hand-select two to three pieces they think could help the prospect. By doing that, they forced them to go through the same buying process that caused our best customers to buy. Note: They have not disguised sales pitches, they were genuinely
value-in-advance content. (Like this, hopefully).
More readings here: https://www.acquisition.com/hubfs/The_Lost_Chapter-Your_First_Avatar.pdf
Once you really know who your customers are go back and refine the marketing strategy and focus on the customers who match the top 20% of your paying customers.
Then Double down.
This tool → https://requstory.com/ is a neat way to generate user stories based on the feedback you acquire.
From the questions, you will learn what your first value should look like, which of that first product activation experiences, and what that would look like from the customer's perspective...
Then based on that answers, you'll know what parts of the product do you need to push right up to the front of that experience so they can get to it quickly right after they sign up.
You want them to experience the ah-ha! Moment (https://userguiding.com/blog/what-is-aha-moment-how-to-find-it/) as quickly as possible so that the pain is alleviated and they know your solution will continue to alleviate that pain point.
User onboarding solves a lot of these issues. Check out this site to learn how to create proper user onboarding → https://www.useronboard.com/bulletproof-user-onboarding/. They also have user onboarding tear-downs which is really cool and effective → https://www.useronboard.com/user-onboarding-teardowns/
Recap:
Step one, understand what your customers are going through, figure out the most important customer and their biggest problem, then map out the journey that they go through (using a survey questionnaire), the struggle they go through before they discover your product, the steps they go through to evaluate, decide to use your product. And then once they use your product, get them to continue using your product more and more.
You should survey customers often, possibly every 90 days. We used a simple Typeform that looked like this → https://form.typeform.com/to/E0pdTS4A
Dealing With Churn
Even if you provide value to customers and their pain point is alleviated, they may churn. If they churn it is imperative that you have an exit interview before they cancel so you understand why.
You can ask questions like…
Please share your reasoning for leaving
Is there anything that we could do to make you stay? Added feature? Better support? Or something else?
How likely are you to return
What will you use now?
How can we make x better?
Then use that data to guide your decision-making.
Good Reads on Churn
https://sixteenventures.com/eliminate-churn
Another thing you can do is remind the user what they are missing out on by canceling. Similar to what Airtable does below.
Once you click downgrade they ask why are you leaving.
/w=3840,quality=90,fit=scale-down)Then as a final way to keep the customer, they offer two free months if you say.
If you do cancel they lead you to a simple page that tells you the ending date and provides you with more detials
Dealing With Expired Cards
Sometimes cards expire and customers are not aware. Give them grace by following up with them and letting them know about the expiration. These tools help.
