Ask HN: How to sell SaaS?

[mistiaen]

Hi there,

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?

Thanks!

[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.

[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.

[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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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?