MegaMaker - So, what does work?

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Here's the simple marketing approach we use at Transistor.fm.

I'm not saying it will work for everyone, but it's worked for us, and might work for you too:

1. Have a product that people are searching for ("best podcast hosting").
2. Get traffic from SEO, affiliates, content, and optimize for folks signing up on our homepage.
3. Ask for credit card up-front, and give a 14-day free trial.
4. Track revenue earned from affiliates and other promotions using Rewardful.
5. When people sign up, send an automated email asking them how they found us.

Have a product that people are searching for

Your aim is to to build a product in a category where people are already searching for a solution. If there's no underlying customer demand, all your subsequent marketing efforts will be wasted.

Leah Mazur @leahatloop @mijustin As an advertiser, I can’t tell you how many people want to hire me thinking that traffic will fix a product that people just don’t want. Justin Jackson @mijustin "Driving more traffic" to a product that doesn't already have underlying demand isn't going to produce more results. ✅ You want people who are already searching for a solution. The purpose of marketing is to take that existing momentum, and direct it towards your product. May 27th 2021 0 Retweets 3 Likes

The purpose of marketing is to take the existing momentum of customer demand, and direct it towards your product.

Traffic comes from SEO, content, affiliates

The benefit of having a product people are already looking for? A short funnel.

When people already want what you have, you don't have to spend a bunch of time educating them, convincing them, retargeting them, etc.

Instead, you're meeting them where they're at: they want a product like yours, you just have to let them know you exist!

Here's what the "customer journey" looks like at Transistor:

1. Someone decides they want to podcast.
2. They learn they need podcast hosting.
3. They search "best podcast hosting."
4. They find Transistor, visit our homepage.
5. They sign-up for a trial (with their credit card).
6. They become a customer.

To increase the odds that somebody will find Transistor, we have four main avenues:

1. Content: blog posts, guides, YouTube videos, Reddit posts, tweets.
2. SEO: we optimize our content for search using tools like ahrefs.com.
3. Affiliates: we partner with folks who have built up high-traffic sites in our niche.
4. Word of mouth referrals: a combination of good product + good service + good community outreach makes it more likely that folks will refer you when given the chance.

For tracking page-views, and which content is the most popular, we use Fathom Analytics.

Ask for credit card up-front, and give a 14-day free trial

One thing that really simplifies our marketing at Transistor is asking for a credit card up-front.

We might be able to earn more money if we didn't require a credit card, but it makes tracking conversion rates a lot simpler.

The general rules of thumb for conversion rates in SaaS are:

Credit card upfront:

• Visitor to trial: 0.75% - 1%
• Trial to paid: 40% - 60%

No credit card upfront:

• Visitor to trial: 5%+
• Trial to paid: 8% - 20%

As I mentioned before, I'm highly skeptical of most "visitor to trial" conversion rates. Trials are easy enough to count, but visitor counts are impacted by bots, spam, ad blockers, people logging in, and folks landing on your website by mistake.

At Transistor, I'm only tracking two numbers here:

• How many trials do we get each month?
• What's our trial to paid conversion rate?

Our trial to paid conversion rate is remarkably steady at 75%, so our primary lever for increasing revenue is getting more trials.

How do we know where trials are coming from?

When people sign up, we ask them

We use Userlist to send trial customers an email when they sign up. In that email, we ask:

These answers help me understand how people discovered Transistor. The best part? I don't need any analytics to learn this information; I just have to ask.

Instead of "last-click attribution," I get a full picture of how the customer first heard about us, and what lead them to sign up.

The only tracking we do is in Rewardful

We initially started using Rewardful to manage our affiliate program.

I like it because it integrates directly to Stripe. When an affiliate refers someone to us, it's immediately recorded in Stripe. Once they convert to paid, Rewardful tracks how much gross revenue that particular affiliate has brought us.

But soon, I realized I could use Rewardful as an easy way to track individual campaigns.

For example, whenever I post a YouTube video, I'll link to Transistor in the description using https://transistor.fm/?via=youtube.

I haven't done a lot of ad campaigns, but when I do, I'll create a new campaign link in Rewardful. When people click on a campaign link, I can see how many folks converted to leads, and how many ended up being paying customers.

Focus on the main thing

Jason Cohen has a great article called “The one important thing for startups." In it, he says:

Too often, in startup marketing, I see companies investing in complicated marketing stacks, that don't produce results. Instead of focusing on "all the things" (retargeting, attribution, tracking) focus on the one thing that matters.

For Transistor, the "one thing" is new trials. If we're increasing trials, everything else takes care of itself.

I realize this won't work for every startup, but my intuition is that it's actually the right focus for most indie SaaS companies.

Keep your approach simple, and move the needle.

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
Co-founder, Transistor.fm​
​@mijustin​

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