The SaaS Guide to Leveraging The “Powered by” Tactic

First time doing Cold calling?

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follow this step by step guide for a smooth integration

#SAASGROWTHHACK

powered by Aircall.io

‘Powered by’The

tactic

turn a referral technique into a super-power

http://aircall.io/


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The “Powered by” tactic consists in leveraging your existing user base by displaying your logo or your link on a part of your product which is public / visible to

your customers’ visitors or partners. !

Like that


http://aircall.io/


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It has to be user friendly and shouldn’t hurt you brand or your product experience otherwise it will become

your kryptonite!


http://aircall.io/

This guide is meant to be a source of inspiration for you: check what other SaaS players are doing, in which context, and see if you can turn these tactics into your

own superpower.

WE BENCHMARKED THE 5 ULTIMATE ‘POWERED BY’ TACTICS

Find out where it’s efficient to place your ‘powered by’…


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#1 On YOUR companies’ public pages

This works especially well if your SaaS enables users to build and maintain pages they need but for which they don’t want to spend time and internal resources.


• your branding must stay relatively “subtle” (black and white link / small logo in the footer)

• the url can also hint at the service used: the eFounders job page page is located at: efounders.workable.com

• most of the time this branding disappears with more expensive plans

http://aircall.io/


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#1 On YOUR companies’ public pagesWorkable is an Applicant Tracking System which enables companies to build their “career page”

https://www.workable.com/


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Pressking is a PR tool which enables businesses to build their pressroom:

http://www.pressking.com/


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#1 On YOUR companies’ public pagesWistia is a webinar SaaS and it offers a “public page” which centralizes

all the webinars made by a company.

http://wistia.com/


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statuspage lets businesses create their status page for their app or website:

https://www.statuspage.io/


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#1 On YOUR companies’ public pages The majority of “landing pages” software brand their landing pages

with their logo and link. At least for the free or cheaper plan users. ee products like Launchrock, Instapage, Unbounce etc…

http://launchrock.co/

https://www.instapage.com/

http://unbounce.com/


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#2 On products’ Widgets

Widgets are generally part of a product experience and must deliver a great value to the customer and its users, that’s what triggers the ‘Oh I want that’ effect. !• if your widget brings a high added value, do not remove

the “Powered by” link on widgets, even for pro plans. • targeted widgets can have a viral power


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#2 On Widgets

Widgets are generally part of a product experience and must deliver a great value to the customer and its users. The more value it delivers the better the virality. This is a reason why for many high value added widgets you can’t remove the “Powered by” link, even for pro plans.

!The need for high quality customer support / communication tool is so high that whenever

we see a cool support widget we generally want to try it just for the sake of trying it. Intercom and GrooveHQ are the latest which come to my mind.

support/ communication tools

https://www.intercom.io/

http://www.groovehq.com/


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#2 On Widgets


We wanna use Olark and Qualaroo on our own websites because we were impressed by the efficiency and simplicity of these tools while

using them elsewhere.

https://www.olark.com/

https://qualaroo.com/


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#2 On Widgets


At Aircall, voice-based communication system, we also have a pretty cool widget allowing our users to add click-to-call on

their website:

(this feature is still in beta but feel free to contact us on [email protected] and we’ll add

you in line!)

https://aircall.io/


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#2 On Widgets


Another fertile ground for widgets is social media. In this case it’s the targeted crowd (marketers) which is at the heart of the virality.

Ex: Coschedule’s ‘Click to Tweet’ widgets on blogs and a BounceExchange popup asking you to register to a newsletter.

social media

http://coschedule.com/

http://bounceexchange.com/


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#3 during users’ communications

Take advantage of your user’s communication to spread the love. This “Hotmail” strategy, invented back in 1997, can be applied to many channels: !• emails, • voice-conferences, • IRL events • meeting invitations • event tickets • …

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing


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Another “Powered by” classic: take advantage of your user’s communication to spread the love a.k.a the “Hotmail” strategy. And when it comes to highjacking communications don’t forget IRL (in real life) opportunities!

emails

Mailchimp, the newsletter tool, includes their logo at the bottom of each

newsletter sent. !

Front, the collaborative email client includes a “sent with Frontapp” link in every message a free account sends

and this signature is removed for paying customers.

http://mailchimp.com/

https://frontapp.com/


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voice

Every time somebody joins a room in uberconference, a video conference solution, he will hear: ““This call is provided by Uberconference, you are the

first to join etc…”

https://www.uberconference.com/


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IRL

Wisembly is a SaaS solution which enables conference and meeting participants to ask questions and participate more easily through their phone. Real life events were

a big driver in their success as they got exposed to many potential customers during huge conferences.

http://wisembly.com/en/


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anywhere!

Sunrise’s meeting invitations and Eventbrite’s printed tickets contain their

logo.

https://calendar.sunrise.am/

https://www.eventbrite.com/


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#4 on shared documents

Your SaaS enables your customers to create and share documents? Chances are high that you can leverage them to get exposed to more people by adding your logo to tools like: !• electronic signatures, • paperless proposals, • mockups and prototypes !(don’t be too pushy though!)


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#4 on shares documents

Your SaaS enables your customers to create and share documents? Chances are high that you can leverage them in a way or another to get exposed to more people. Most electronic signature SaaS manage to add their logo somewhere. It would be too pushy to do it directly on a customer document. No, it’s probably cleverer to add it on the confirmation receipt for example (since it has to be sent has a proof).

Electronic signature SaaS It would be too pushy to do it directly on a customer document, rather add it on

the confirmation receipt for example, like HelloSign does:

https://www.hellosign.com/


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Many eDocument tools use the trick of redirecting the document recipient to a lighter version of their product (with limited features like visualization). This is what

apps like quoteroller, Pandadoc or Tilkee (paperless proposals) are doing.

http://www.quoteroller.com/

https://www.pandadoc.com/

http://www.tilkee.com/


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The designers’ equivalent of eDocuments are mockups and prototypes: chances are high that the person you’ll send them to will see a logo.

Ex: Marvelapp

https://marvelapp.com/


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#4 the Transparency trend

The last interesting case concerns a very recent trend: startup transparency. More and more startups decide to share what was once very private data and they do it through public versions of their dashboard: • product revenue, • number of signups, • product roadmaps, • customer analytics…

!This is a great way to show you users what’s really going on when they’re using your product and get more feedback from them.


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The last interesting case concerns a very recent trend: startup transparency. More and more startups decide to share what was once very private data (like revenue, number of signups etc…) and they do it through public versions of their dashboards.

Buffer, the social media manager, displays its public revenue dashboard using baremetrics:

https://buffer.baremetrics.io/dashboard


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The last interesting case concerns a very recent trend: startup transparency. More and more startups decide to share what was once very private data (like revenue, number of signups etc…) and they do it through public versions of their dashboards.

More and more companies create public Trello boards (task management tool) for product roadmaps or customer feedbacks.

https://trello.com/b/nC8QJJoZ/trello-development


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you’re a ‘powered by’ tactic superheroe!

congrats!


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#1 on companies’ public pages #2 On Widgets

#3 hacking users’ communications #4 on documents

#5 following the transparency trend

Master the ‘Powered by’ tactic:

thank you. powered by aircall.io

http://www.aircall.io

The SaaS Guide to Leveraging The “Powered by” Tactic

Marketing

Transcript of The SaaS Guide to Leveraging The “Powered by” Tactic