

Ask HN: How to sell SaaS? - mistiaen

Hi there,<p>Me and my co-founder built an analytics SaaS. We now need to sell it. Next to doing press releases and advertising, we want to use affiliate marketing and are busy with a white label program. Do you have other suggestions on sales/marketing? 
I also wonder how Campaignmonitor and Mailchimp boosted their sales. Anyone knows?<p>Thanks!
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iworkforthem
Here's a few ways to market your Saas.

\- create web visitors badges for your users to embed in their website. WOW
work best!

\- difficult pricing models for different groups of users, less than 200k
visitors(free), paid versions for more than 200k visitors. targeted is easier
to sell.

\- do more videos on these themes; how to use it step by step guide? how this
service bring in actual sales for your customers or you? need to see just by
paying a few bucks, user is able to bing in hundreds or thousands for their
businesses.

\- paid version for another who does a review of your services on their blog,
this won't hurt you now, there is no need to scale anything now.

\- if you have no list, it's not likely that Campaignmonitor/Mailchimp will be
any useful to you. even if you have a list, if it is not targeted, it's not
useful too. current CTR is only at 0.3%, just imagine how many emails you need
to convert emails to leads and then to sales.

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jtbigwoo
Traditional advertising is expensive, even online. A few guerrilla strategies
work well:

-become an expert in real life. Contact conferences related to your speciality and offer to give a presentation on a relevant topic. Contact publications and offer to write a "business forum"-type feature.

-become an expert online. Make an online presence (blog, twitter, etc.) and make sure to refer

-If your product has reasonably wide appeal, business reporters are always looking for easy profile stories. Call your local paper and any locally based business magazines or tabloids.

-If you can find a PR agent who fits your price range and has good connections, he/she can do the work of getting you speaking engagements, profiles, articles, etc. A lot of PR agents simply send out form letters and press releases so make sure they give you a clear plan of attack before you sign up.

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mikecuesta
\- Try contacting web design/dev shops and giving them an incentive rate to
offer your product to their clients

\- Do some case studies including before and after scenarios on existing
clients

\- Referral programs can work great. reach out to your existing clients (if
any) and ask them for their help

Best of luck!

~~~
mistiaen
Thanks! A referral program is a good idea. I forgot about how excellent that
worked for dropbox

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jeffepp
Use an affiliate program to create incentives for your own customers to
sell/refer your product for you.

This will: 1) allow you to set a price for new customer signups. 2) likely get
free advertising on blogs of some of your users.

Shameless plug: ping me for an invite code for our custom, white labeled
affiliate software.

PR / Advertising: A great free resource is HARO (helpareporter.com). Signup
and receive mailings on reporters looking for stories, you can get great, free
PR from them.

Also, signup your company in directories and comment on blogs. There are a
bunch of directories (crunchbase, big startups, etc..) these are potentially
valuable backlinks and will bring users to your site and increase your SEO.

Good Luck!

~~~
mistiaen
HARO sounds good! I'll take a look into that.

Thanks for all suggestions

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bearwithclaws
Make your product sell itself. Offer special free plan to high profile
bloggers who fits your target customer profile in exchange for word of
marketing. Just one of the way.

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warrenwilkinson
You may be in the same position I am: a product with little idea were to sell
it. What I'm doing is reviving old programmer contacts, users groups, fellow
alumni, etc and trying to shop it around there. Ideally I'll generate sales
leads or a better understanding of what needs to be done.

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mistiaen
thanks for your comments! The badge idea is a good one and account giveaways
to high profile bloggers as well. I'll look into that.

Any ideas on relevant advertising? Reddit maybe?

