Tips to get more users per month in the first year of the SaaS business

SaaS, or “Software as a Service,” is a software licensing and delivery model. It is cloud-based software, licensed via subscription, and hosted centrally.  SaaS products are in use for all kinds of bases and industries.

Here are some of the tips for growth of SaaS business in the first year-

Reach Out to Your Network– Start contacting people from your network: friends, acquaintances, current and former co-workers, and ask them for introductions. Ask them specific questions about your product and market. You may feel that they need your product. But it is better to talk to the market and validate the hypotheses.

Common value proposition– Find a way to get users to see the value in your app in the shortest amount of time. Making the customer understand why he needs your product for providing an awesome experience is important. You may not have enough money. However, you do have one big advantage over more established companies: you have more time. Thus, you can give your subscribers more time than a big company can.

Leverage the ‘freemium’ model– You need potential users to see the value in what you offer. Offer a free trial. Then, after some time email your customers and ask for feedback. Additionally, ask for a phone number and call them to help you build a genuine relationship

Use Twitter for Market Research– Twitter can let you know about online complaints. You could reach out to those users directly, and ask them to chat more about their issues so that you understand how to make your product better. Thus, you can do your market research. It also helps to build a list of potential beta customers.

Use Quora  – It gets answers from people in your target demographic about the product you’re trying to sell. You will get responses for the pain points you are trying to solve. It  helps you to gauge the response by the number of comments and upvotes it receives

Evolve Customer Development Tools– If you know what an ideal customer profile looks like, create a survey that qualifies your prospects. Ask one leading question that defines the prospects. Once they reply you can ask them for details like their name, e-mail, and/or company name and treat them like a lead.

Create compelling content and grow your email list- To grow a new SaaS company, the power of content is well accepted. Content along with an email list and a large database leads to more traffic and more money. It is simple to find the email addresses of your prospects. It is also easy to reach out to a high volume of people relatively quickly Alternately LinkedIn messages can yield a higher conversion rate for your business. Try to add value to your subscribers in the first few e-mails. Then persuade them to buy your product in the last one or two e-mails.

Set the right price for your product– They sometimes ask for less than the customer would’ve been ready to pay. Add new editions of your product, with a nil increase in the price for the current editions. A release with more features can be created later and new customers can be charged more for it. This change has to be communicated immediately.

Make your offering exclusive– Exclusivity is a prominent strategy for growing a SaaS business without feeling a huge amount of pressure. Psychologically, people want to be a part and not be left out. Create a compelling reason for people to sign up; then get them to share your service with their friends

Use Betalist– Sites like Betalist help to rapidly generate a list of early bird signups. If the product is liked by the community, hundreds of qualified signups are guaranteed in a matter of days

Leverage Other People’s Platforms-Find other brands that have an audience similar to what you’re trying to build and bring them over to your platform. The trust so far they’ve built with that audience, can be leveraged by you, as well. Use guest posting for leveraging other people’s audiences to build your own. Many businesses have tried and benefited from this approach.

SEO– Search engine traffic can also lead to many paying customers

Run Paid Advertisements– Paid advertising can be an alternative source for getting new customers.

Leverage Online Communities– Online communities are essentially scalable versions of industry conferences. Interact with like-minded people, offer something of value to them, stay in touch, and potentially get some new paying customers.

Generate Press Coverage– There’s always a clever way to discover press coverage opportunities. Press coverage helps to discover some impressive link-building opportunities. It also increases your search engine rankings. For example, if a well-read newspaper such about your company and links to your website, you will receive a noticeable increase in search traffic over time, apart from new customers at the time of publication.

Conclusion

The strategies differ when the business is in its early stage and when it increases. In the beginning, a lot of effort goes into sending cold e-mails, LinkedIn messages, or crafting paid advertising campaigns. You might be interacting with your subscribers personally, asking questions, and responding to every e-mail. You might visit Quora to source long-tail keywords. You may be writing content around that to generate traffic from search apart from other efforts for business growth. The above tips offer possibilities to grow your business in the first year.