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Introduction

Let’s say you found your “single good idea” and you were able to validate it after a while.

Today we will discuss:

• How to find your first customer

• Role-play until getting paid

• Growth Hacks Systems and Marketing Strategies

• Examples and resources

🗣️ How to find your first customer?

Running a SaaS company can be approached in two ways:

1. Develop a product first and then search for customers.

2. Find customers first and then create a product.

Newbies are more likely to opt for the first option, whereas SaaS’ers who have done it before, tend more to opt for the second option.

Note: If you have validated your idea, then you have already at least 3 prospects, and you can skip this part and jump to the “Systems and Marketing Strategies” part.

Getting your first customer is the hardest part, this is why you need to focus intensively on strategies that don’t scale: Here are some potential strategies for you that you can use to approach your target customer:

• Direct Messages via LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram (depending on your target customer)

Hi [Prospect's Name],

I wanted to quickly introduce you to our product, [Product Name], designed to help businesses like yours [benefit or solve a problem]. Our platform offers [specific features] that can improve [specific outcomes].

Would you be interested in a free trial to see how [Product Name] can benefit your business?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Best regards, [Your Name]

• Outbound Email (with some Email Sequences)

Subject: Your Feedback on [Product Name]

Hi [Prospect's Name],

I hope you're doing well. We would love to get your feedback on our product, [Product Name]. It's designed to help businesses like yours [benefit or solve a problem].

Would you be interested in trying it out? Your opinion is valuable to us and we appreciate any feedback you can provide.

Thanks for considering it.

Best regards, [Your Name]

• Outbound Phone Calls

Hi [Prospect's Name],

This is [Your Name] from [Your Company]. Our product, [Product Name], can help businesses like yours [benefit or solve a problem].

Do you have a moment to discuss it further and see if it might be a good fit for your business?

• Social Network Groups (e.g. Facebook Groups or LinkedIn Groups)

Hi,

I'm excited to be a part of this community. My goal is to assist {{your audience}} in resolving {{your main problem}} using {{your main feature}}. I created a video showcasing a tool that I developed, which can deliver {{your main value prop}}. Check it out by clicking the link below.

I'm seeking people who are interested in trying out the tool I've created for this purpose. Would anyone here be interested?

{{Link to your video demo}}

• Newsletters outreach

Subject: [Your SaaS] - A Great Fit for Your Newsletter

Hi [Newsletter Editor's Name],

I hope you're well. I came across your newsletter and was impressed by the value you provide to your readers.

I wanted to introduce you to my SaaS product, [Your SaaS]. It helps businesses [state the main benefits and features of your SaaS] and has already helped [number of clients] in [industry/field] achieve [achievements of your clients with your SaaS].

I think [Your SaaS] would be a great fit for your newsletter. Could we discuss the possibility of featuring it?

Let me know if you're interested and I'll provide you with more information, visuals, and a press kit.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

[Your Name] [Your SaaS]

🎴 Role Play: play Dominatrix with your customer

Kinky stuff? Really ?! … Sorry, I am from Berlin. Anyway...

Qualify your customers

Instead of trying to sell to every interested prospect, it's important to qualify your customers. If you already did the outreach and got some clicks on your landing page, try to get e-mail signups and redirect people to a form. In the form itself, you need to ask some questions to qualify the customer.
The result of the form needs to give you a clear insight into who is the customer.

Example: I am trying to sell a SaaS that helps you create reels, youtube shorts and tiktoks. A lot of the customers, where just normal users on reddit trying to test the SaaS. What I am looking for is content creators who would use this daily, have money and are already subscribed to other SaaS, and can relate with the pain points.

If you have an MVP or a video about your SaaS, you can use tools to analyze the behavior of the prospects and even chat with them instantly to catch that first qualified customer:

• Loom: get notifications when your video is first viewed, also viewing figures (as well as who viewed it)

• Hotjar: gives you behavior analytics and feedback data to help you empathize with and understand your customers.

• Sendbird: instantly chat with the customers using a chatbot.

Play Dominatrix with your first customer

If you found your first qualified customer, then you found the bridge between you and the money, and only they will help you cross it.

You need to do EVERYTHING to retain them:

• Value their time.

I had to order many pizzas for my first customer because he was only free in his lunch break and by ordering food, he was really happy to help and give valuable information.

• Build a good relationship.

You don’t have to personally like them, you only need to build trust. No one will tell a person, who they don’t trust, about their work process. Build trust, so you get to know the manual process.

• Stalk them.

Remember: you are trying to build a customer profile based on them. So you need to know: where they hang out? what do they do in their spare time? how do they scale their business? how much money are they making ? do they have a big audience and/or network ?

• Record everything.

Record every conversation, video, phone call or even text messages. You will need their exact words when they are explaining their pain points and how is the product helping them make money or win in time. Because, that’s the content you will be posting in your landing page.

• Be submissive.

Listen and don’t talk. You need to be fast and efficient. Whatever feature they tell you to implement and / or change, needs to be done right away! You can’t lose that personal connection by waiting a whole month for a single change. You need to keep them using your product until it’s perfect for them.

• Break free from the kink.

If they are satisfied with the product and are using it daily, ask them to pay you! If they are not ready to pay yet, ask them why ? And what should be changed in the product to make them pay ?
Remember: you don’t have a business unless you have a paying client. And you can’t really know if your product is really good, unless someone is willing to pay for it.

🔓 Systems and Marketing Strategies

Growth hacking is a myth, what you need is consistency, which you can build by creating systems and long-term strategies.

Oussema Mzoughi @meMzoughi

"Systems over hacks. Patience in the right activity(ies) is what delivers those "quick" wins." - John bonini

11:38 AM ∙ Mar 4, 2023

Three things that you need to understand after acquiring your first customer:
Sales, visibility and metrics.

Sales

I will explain these 5 concepts of sales with an example from Zendesk :

The sales funnel for Company X, a customer support software provider:

• Awareness: Senior manager hears about Company X's customer experience webinar.

• Interest: Visits Company X's website, downloads free demo, and receives an email from sales rep offering help.

• Evaluation: Tests software and calls sales rep with questions.

• Commitment: Sales rep follows up with reminder emails.

• Purchase: Prospect expresses interest, meets with stakeholders, and finalizes contract.

So to raise awareness, use inbound marketing like social media or cold calling. Once you catch interested leads, engage with them and answer their questions. During the evaluation, show them how your product meets their needs and be prepared to address any objections. Keep the interaction flowing and maintain the relationship until the customer buys. After the purchase, continue to take care of customer relationships to minimize churn.

Visibility

There are a ton of companies out there offering SaaS. Like, seriously, it's a pretty crowded space. You can check out SaaS 1000 or the MarTech 5000 to get an idea of just how many players are in the game. And if you search for something like "CRM" on a platform like Capterra, you'll find a whopping 770 options to choose from!

At this day and age, visibility is everything. To build awareness, you need to reach people that don’t know that they need your product, and unless you are a billionaire and into throwing money, you can’t pay for ads on every platform. Instead, you can harness your social media presence by growing your accounts, either Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Reddit, or Instagram. Wherever your audience is at, start by building social media and SEO Strategies and be active in every group. This is something that requires patience: you are creating a strategy and a system of social media, SEO, and building backlinks and can only see the fruit of your labor after six to eight months.

All of us are fighting over the user’s attention to make a sale. According to Gartner, buyers these days are bombarded with information, making it a challenge for SaaS marketers to educate their audience without overwhelming them.

Find the balance between educating your audience and drowning them in information! But start early...

Metrics

Metrics are a boring subject, but if you don’t track your metrics, you set yourself up for failure.

Make this your SaaS Motto.
You will need these metrics, in the early stage, to know in which direction you are going and later to negotiate with investors and raise money.

To start with metrics, you need to ask yourself these questions:

1. How many client pitches do you make every month? 

   In a given month, the total number of clients you aim to close a deal with should be your target

2. How many new clients do you close each month? 

   To calculate this number, simply determine how many new clients you acquire each month. If the number is less than 1, calculate the decimal by dividing the number of clients by the total number of months.

3. What’s your current close rate?

   To determine your current close rate, you divide B/A as shown in the previous answers. For instance, if you pitch 20 times in a month (A) and gain 2 new clients per month (B), your close rate is 5% or 0.05 (2/40).

4. What’s the average number of pitches it takes to land one client? In other words, how many total pitches do you have to make in order to get 1 new client?

   it’s 1 (for one client) divided by the close rate 5% which in our example is 20.

Once you know your current numbers, it becomes incredibly easy to see a path forward to acquire new customers.

Other metrics that you need to track are:

1. Churn Rate: this is the percentage of customers canceling their software subscription. A lower churn rate indicates better software performance. Keep track of churn to increase LTV (Life Time Value) by retaining long-term customers.

2. CAC: Understanding CAC (Cost of Acquiring Customers) is crucial to determine the cost-efficiency and potential success of your SaaS. It's calculated by dividing all costs spent on acquiring customers by the number of customers acquired in that period. Keeping track of CAC helps manage expenses and avoids overspending. For example, if a company spent $100 on marketing in a year and acquired 100 customers in the same year, its CAC is $1.00 which means it can scale now and pump money into ads.

Examples and Resources:

This is how big companies got their first customers:

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

5/ You can adjust your sales approach down the road — @zoom_us and @Amplitude_HQ started sales-driven and later became bottom-up. @Box and @newrelic did the reverse.

5:17 PM ∙ Aug 1, 2020

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69Likes5Retweets

• This is how Kinsta acquired their 1000 customer: Growing a SaaS Company – How We Reached the Magical First 1,000 Customers

• This is how Bannerbear acquired its first 25 customers: How to Get Your First 25 SaaS Customers

• This is Rob Walling explaining how to strategically get your first 100 customers: How To Get Your First 100 Customers for Your SaaS Product

• 🚨 This is a must-watch Microconf talk from Asia Matos: How to Acquire Your First 100 Customers

📑 Conclusion

Well, well, well... look at that. Only 22% of startups fail because of a poorly implemented marketing strategy (They didn’t say “Growth Hack, they said STRATEGY). That's such a small percentage, it's practically nothing! Why bother spending time and resources on creating an effective marketing plan when there's a good chance you'll fall into the successful 78% anyway? Who needs a strategy when you can just wing it and hope for the best?

In all seriousness, folks, don't be fooled by that seemingly small percentage. A poorly implemented marketing strategy can make or break a startup, and it's not worth the risk. So take the time to create a solid plan and invest in marketing efforts that will help your business thrive. Trust me, it's better than being part of that 22%.

…and sorry for the kinky stuff 😔.

Ask me questions! Don’t be shy, I am willing to answer and chat, maybe grab some coffee if you are around. Just reply to this email.