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by silvaben 3461 days ago
Growth hacking.

I'd like to learn how to sell a SaaS product[1] to businesses. I'd also like to explore content strategy and marketing. As a software developer joining a new 2-person startup, this is uncharted territory for me. Looking forward to the experience.

[1] https://www.metriculator.com

6 comments

There's several good blogs out there but I really suggest reading Traction [0]. It's well organized and very practical/easy to put into action. I've bought copies for multiple people (including my wife who recently joined a startup doing marketing).

Also you used the word "sell". Don't forget that sales is different than marketing. If you plan on doing real sales the book Predictable Revenue is great (though designed for slightly larger teams than just 2).

Good luck! And don't forget, NPS tools are good for brick and mortar businesses too.

[0] http://tractionbook.com

Traction book seems interesting and is highly recommended by a lot of people. I plan to buy a copy and read it over the holidays.

I've got a few broad ideas for marketing - direct "cold-connecting" via LinkedIn, Angel; long term content strategies and Facebook/Bing ads.

Approaching brick and mortar businesses seems challening, especially since I don't have a background in sales. I have a feeling that online startups might be more approachable to begin with.

Adding Predictable Revenue to my next year's reading list. Thanks for the suggestion.

My favorite growth resources are Brian's essays at http://www.coelevate.com/
Thanks for the suggestion. I am also an admirer of Brian's writings. Other resources that I have started referring to are - frequenting Inbound.org and GrowthHackers.
Looks neat. It's also worth you looking at CES (Customer Experience Score). CES feeds into NPS... eg NPS is a result of lots of CES's, so to improve NPS you actually need to look at the core issue(s) that may be impacting it. You might be able to build CES into your offering as well.
Great idea. Adding it to our roadmap. The idea is that we will initially start off with in-app NPS, then explore other channels like email campaigns, SMS, Android and iOS SDKs.

Once we have the entire workflow for NPS worked out, we can look at customizable surveys and other survey types.

That sounds good. I think your challenge will be that organisations who offer online resources (client portals etc) or mobile apps probably also have CRMs, so could replicate your product pretty easily. That said, if you can feed your data straight into the 2 leading CRMs globally (salesforce and dynamics 365) you might be able to leverage them to your advantage.
Yes, integrations are the key. We are currently working on a Zapier integration since that is the easiest way to connect with multiple 3rd party APIs. Later on, we will add support for Salesforce and other CRMs.
I've grown up on the marketing side of the house, so if you want to exchange ideas and feedback feel free to reach out via james@craft.cx.
Starting a company involves so much marketing. SEO, SEM, etc. In the SEO domain, you need to pay a lot of attention to blogs and sites like Moz, rank tracking with services like getstat, make sure you aren't doing anything blackhat.
Vincent Dignan's stuff is quite jolly eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYexcPB8WG0