How to sell SaaS?

Based on experience.

Karol Pokojowczyk from Colibri.io

• 2013 is definitely a year of new

opportunities. It doesn’t matter if

you are selling your services

online, developing e-commerce, or

advising.

• It doesn’t matter if you are

freelancer, a start-up, an SaaS

seller, or if you are providing

accounting services.

• Analysis, drawing conclusions, and

growth are the common

denominators in all of them.

• It’s called Growth Hacking.

• A key to success lies in measuring

the correlation between:

size and source of Web traffic

SEO indices

customer retention

conversions and goals

Here are ten

“commandments” to help

you achieve success:

1. Let people find you

• There is no business without

customers.

Being on the first page for a

keyword that our customers don’t

search for is neither useful nor

profitable.

• Searching for as many as possible

phrases that bring traffic with little

competition level is crucial.

• Positioning is not a disposable act;

it works for many weeks, or even

months.

• If our website is not popular, and

we don’t have many strong

backlinks, then even good

keywords won’t help us. We can’t

hope to be listed on the first page

of search engines in such a

situation.

2. Measure SEO indicators

• Measure search engine positions

with the help of specialist SEO

tools in every single country you

are targeting.

• Measure the quality of your

backlinks with the analysis of

internal/external links and phrases

to which they link.

• Measure the quality of your own

websites – density of keywords you

target, semantic codes, loading

speed, etc.

3. Acquiring paid traffic makes sense,

but only if it leads to reasonable

conversion rate

• Examples of traffic sources:

– Facebook Ads

– Adwords Ads

– Retargeting– advert for our

already existing visitors. A very

efficient tool for an acceptable

amount of money.

4. Advise, help, expand the coverage in

networking and social media. Chase

your customer

• Examples of page with discussions

which can help expanding your

range:

– Pinterest

– Quora

– LinkedIn

5. Measure Customer Retention

• Retention is the most important

index for businesses that sell

products or services for

subscription.

• Measuring how useful our

product/service is absolutely vital

in this case. It helps us to answer

the needs of our customers more

efficiently.

• One of the best tools for measuring

retention is Mixpanel.

6. Measure conversions

• The second most important index

is Goal Conversions – efficient

budget allocation.

• These tools can be very helpful:

– Google Analytics

– Kissmetrics

– Colibri

7. Work on the best price for every

group of customers

• Test different prices (A/B test), but

never change prices for existing

customers.

• If possible, implement a

subscription model or SaaS that

will allow you to estimate revenues

much more easily.

8. Your customer is the best salesman

• Create affiliate programs, loyalty

programs and recommendations –

customers recommending your

product to their “friends” will

always be more efficient than you.

• Create content and make yourself

easy to reach.

• Go viral!

Can you create viral content? – it’s

one of the hardest tasks, but also

one of the best methods for

expanding your range.

9. Monitor your competition

• Spyfu will help you find your

competition’s Adwords.

10. Learn more and supplement your

knowledge

• The Internet is filling up with

helpful knowledge. But sometimes

paying for it is a better idea,

because it will be much more

complex.

• I can recommend:

- Mixergy – over 90 courses and

800 interviews with people who

have succeeded.

- Sixteen Ventures– advanced

course for businesses based on

free trial models.

Get all of these actions

working every day, every

month, and don’t stop.

Good luck!

This article was originally published on GrowthHacker.am.

Find out more: How to sell SaaS? Based on our

experience.

Author: Karol Pokojowczyk

CEO Colibri IO

@KarolPokojowczy

@Colibri IO