(2024) Getting The First Users for Your SaaS Startup
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Have you finally launched your Saas product? Congratulations, that's no easy feat! Now what are you going to do? Well, the answer should be simple; go out and acquire my first 100 clients!
But how?
Well, we need to make sure we have the basics prepped and ready to go. What are the basics you ask?
Let's start here:
Do you have a good value proposition in place to help you succeed?
Is your customer journey (product funnel) fully optimized to begin taking on new clients?
Are you open-minded, and flexible enough to provide your initial customers with a bespoke experience? This is also a perfect time to get testimonials and case studies!
Also, don't worry. At this stage, you won't need an advertising budget (not yet). In fact, many Saas founders are turning to The Growth Checklist as a new way to drive traffic to their websites using proven strategies on their favorite platforms such as Reddit, X (Twitter), Linkedin, Pinterest, Quora, and more!
Finding the first customers for your SaaS
Your first batch of SaaS customers will provide you with amazing feedback about your product. The first 100-1000 customers are likely to give you feedback that will help you scale to the next stage, which is to obtain an additional 1,000 - 10,000 customers. Yes, we'll eventually get to 10,000 - 100,000, but let's be patient (ha)! The value of having an early adopter helps you to identify the following (list).
Bugs, and broken features.
Refine your customer service, and support ticketing workflow.
Your brand voice. How you ultimately communicate with your customers.
What success will look like for you and your Saas(y) team
Customer success requires you to proactively help your customers achieve their goals, not solely your own! You may be required to spend time with a few customers teaching them about your current feature set, and even shedding light on your future roadmap.
Not only will your SaaS customers know exactly how to use their product, but they will also begin to feel like one of your own internal team members, which is a great way to generate referrals! Don't be afraid to spend that extra time, it goes a long way, and this is vital to your success early on. I advise you to put on your "consultant" hat with your first 100+ customers. Do what isn't scalable, until you can no longer do it.
Your personal relationships will go a long way. These people will write about you on forums, they will share your product with their friends and family, and if the use-case is truly viral like Loom, it will save everyone time and pain. The Loom example is gold. They're a company that is so viral, it almost hurts! If you want to have that kind of success, work to deeply understand your clients pain points!
This process isn't the "sexy" way to go about growth, but you can't get to 2, without 1 happy customer. Work to make 100 customers happy, achieving everything that they desired because of [your tool]. Keeping this mindset early on will create a massive distance between you and your competitors. This is the secret formula to growth that will take your SaaS to the stratosphere!
Leverage your professional network on LinkedIn and Offline
One of the best arguments for going to University is building a strong network. So if you're on the fence about which college, or university you should attend, just do it! The education is valuable, but the network is essential! As you build your network, eventually many of your colleagues will go on to work for larger enterprises, some perhaps right within your space.
For many young entrepreneurs, it's almost painful for them to reach out to their friends and family, asking for them to be one of the first customers for their Saas. Yes, there is a high likelihood that your family members aren't a good fit for your product, but they will give you feedback, and who knows, they could potentially make introductions for you.
Don't be afraid to leverage your existing professional network, as there could be a full herd of clients just waiting for you to reach out to them. Reddit and Linkedin are great platforms to seek advice about your product as well. For instance, we asked about which features would be the most valuable in a dating app. This post went viral, garnering well over 3 million views (and counting), something that I know dating apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, or any of the products over at Match Group would die to hear! I'm sure they would also save a couple of million dollars with their market research teams as well!
AskReddit Post
Ask Reddit Post
Be ready for feedback as it comes in. There will be a lot of noise, but you still must prioritize the signal. It's very easy for us to disregard information, but in reality, if a client is in a position where they think something is not intuitive, the chances are that they are actually correct. Building intuitive SaaS products is not easy. In fact, the more intuitive something is, the higher the chances that someone spent a lot of time, and money re-iterating over something hundreds of time. We also wrote about this in a lovely piece you should read another time.
Your close "working circle" on Linkedin, or just through friends in your text iMessage / Whatsapp group will be happy to test out your SaaS tool. This can encourage word-of-mouth, and referrals, which create a feedback cycle of you getting organic referrals from one in-network relationship to another. Understand what they desire, and their true pain points to really create something viral (again, Loom).
Understanding the needs of my own network led to more growth on my Reddit account. I grew from 100 Karma to over 100,000 followers in just a few short weeks, and also gained 9,000+ followers on Linkedin, just by sharing what I "knew" was valuable to my network
If you don't know what resonates with the audience you're targeting, try engaging with influencers in your niche and analyze what makes their content worth sharing. Try creating a list of their top-ranking posts, and identify which elements are working for them. Do what's easy for you, you're not going to beat them at their own game, but you may be able to copy and apply it to your own SaaS marketing strategy!
Organic Social Media Strategies
Organic and viral social media marketing is an incredible tool if placed into the right hands. Below I am going to break down a small list of the platforms that I use to grow my software design agency.
Reddit.com - Best for driving traffic immediately (done safely). Daily averages can range from 100 visits to 2,000 visits driven from appropriate communities. This is just by engaging with others, not even creating posts. Creating posts can generate many thousands of visitors, but good look finding the appropriate subreddit that will let you do this!
Quora.com - Second best for driving traffic immediately. With a similar blogging style to Reddit, your questions, and posts will live in the Quora ether forever. As long as you tend to your content, updating it frequently, there's no reason that it will not rank on the front page of Google. Bringing an immense return to your SaaS product.
X.com (Twitter) - Content can really go viral here on X, but the platform has changed quite dramatically since the takeover by Elon Musk. There are still many potential customers that exist on the platform, but you will have to swim through a whole ocean of difficulties to build up your brand. If you like the platform, it can work really well for your company, but many startups are keeping their distance from the platform for the time being.
Linkedin.com - This one is my personal favorite. LinkedIn is what I recommend to 100% of SaaS entrepreneurs in terms of personal branding and long-term growth. It's not as fast, takes a lot of consistent content creation, and if you're lucky, you might even catch the wave of a "consumption cycle" which is a working theory that content will get pushed out to many "out-of-network" connections, given the right circumstance.
Pinterest.com - Might be the darkhorse of the decade with high amounts of exponential built into its pin creation system. Many SaaS entrepreneurs do not consider Pinterest as a go-to-market to share their platform, but with a little creativity, and a high posting rate (around 200 before the rate limiter), you can create hoards of helpful content that answer the most distressing questions that your product ultimately resolves. Within 4 months I was able to scale a Tattoo Brand on Pinterest to 1.5 Million monthly views on content. Each piece of content has a direct link back to our website. Don't forget, these links live forever, and can generate traffic to your SaaS product for years to come!
Pinterest Organic Marketing
Creating a landing page for your SaaS
Landing pages are extraordinarily vital to the success of your SaaS marketing campaigns. Using the right analytics tools like Hotjar, and Google Analytics, you can gain valuable insights about how people interact with your value proposition and call to action.
The best landing pages have the same winning formula to succeed:
A simple and concise way to communicate your value proposition
Utilize social proof like testimonials, or reviews to show the best examples of SaaS customer success
Create a bold call to action that stands out from the rest of the page and draws attention to it
Add frequently asked questions to resolve any concerns immediately
A small "attention ratio", is a strategy preventing users from "accidentally" leaving your site with too many links available to choose from. This enables them to leave without the desired results you seek
A needed product that solves problems, not something rich in features
Pro-tip: Many of the items within the formula can be obtained in the early stages of your product's life cycle. Outside of your friends, and family, or launching on Product Hunt, you can achieve similar goals by constantly testing and scaling. Generate 10,000 to 20,000 monthly visitors to your landing page with our simple organic marketing checklist. No ad budget is required!
Daily website traffic example generated through organic content engagement methods!
Understanding your sales funnel
Increasing the conversation rate of your Saas landing page should be a top priority for you and your team. From the onset, you can control exactly where your potential customers will arrive.
Let's break this down based on how someone may have been "warmed up", as they now arrive at the top of your funnel:
Warm Lead (Aware of your SaaS Product)
Cold Lead (Unware of your SaaS Product)
Your visitors are much more likely to purchase from you if they are made aware of your product before arriving, but if this is their first visit, it's less likely they will become customers today. This does not mean they won't down the line, but it's considered more of a risk in their minds. If you offer them a free trial, or a product demo of your services, they may change their minds!
Create your brand SaaS brand website
Not to be confused with your landing page, which is created to help you optimize your sales funnel (this should be separate), your company website will host the majority of your marketing efforts. This includes your main hub for email campaigns, content, SEO, customer support, partnerships, and much more. This should be a top priority.
You can also treat your brand page as a landing page for users who are aware of your product already. If that user lands on your homepage, chances are they arrive through organic search methods, and your sales strategy doesn't need to be the same as used through alternative landing pages (other ways to generate traffic to your SaaS). Use common best practices with the exception of your menu and navigation links. Remember when we discussed "attention ratio"? This is an okay location to contain these helpful links so people can learn more about your company, and its ethos.
SEM Rush Landing Page
SEMRush's home page is a fine example of how your home page should "act" like a landing page for your SaaS.
Provide content that displays your value proposition above the fold, separated from the industry sector. Your content should feel personalized, with a display of client success people can relate to will always be a conversion battle.
Content Marketing
A great content marketing strategy should be used as a tool to find and target your ideal customers at different stages of the buying decision. Placing relevant information in front of your audience raises overall awareness (that you exist) and helps you to build trust in your vertical.
Being a founder of a SaaS startup, you'll find yourself engaging with other players more often than you think. As the leader, who else would know more about your SaaS than you? Content can range from comparison content (with competitors), content to keep current customers happy (through retention efforts), posts that display your value proposition (not that we forgot), and outreach content.
Competitive analysis
Understand your strengths compared to your competitors. Analyze where they have failed, and work to fill in the gaps. It's hard to stand out in a crowded niche, but positioning can lure away competitors with a promise of a superior customer experience. This doesn't have to even mean features, it can just represent your customer support strategy. Do your customers feel like they are appreciated, not just money mules?
Content that shows your value proposition
Every day billions of people are looking for solutions to their problems online. When you create content that shows how your SaaS can be the Tylenol for a business owner's headache, you create more opportunities to be the preferred solution. Make sure to provide helpful content that clearly articulates your value proposition.
Posting content to retain clients
Your SaaS startup needs to create content for your current user base, not just for prospective clients. Retaining SaaS customers is just as, if not more important as finding new ones. Watch how your customers engage with your platform. Use available tools, and organic traffic (without SEO) to optimize onboarding. Prioritize the experience for your high-paying customers. FAQs, Guides, Webinars, Loom clips, YouTube videos, are all great ways to help your clients navigate your solution.
Comparing to competitors
Larger competitors give you an opportunity to quickly scale in your niche if done correctly. Leverage your content creation strategy with comparison articles that contrast your SaaS products to theirs. There is an entire segment of potential SaaS customers who are on the lookout for something different from the mainstream choice. This could be due to price point, experience, or a need for change.
Posting content for outreach
Mainly used for SEO, leveraging a content creation strategy for outbound is a great way for a new SaaS brand to enhance visibility and organic search traffic. Could there potentially be a competitor, or another influential organization willing to allow your startup to publish on their channels? We call this a backlinking strategy, which at times can be expensive, but if available, you should certainly take it. Large organizations like Forbes, Techcrunch, Inc.com, and others would be a great fit for a new company. Yes, even Youtube videos and influencer channels with great write-ups on their videos can provide a big boost in search rankings thanks to updates to the Google search algorithm.
People love to consume media, especially video content. Publishers love to publish content, especially content that they don't have to write themselves. This will open up your product to an entirely new audience that you didn't have reach to at the onset.
SEO (search engine optimization)
SEO is the gun in a knife fight. It's an extremely powerful tool, but the downside is that it takes time. Many SaaS founders don't see results for 3 months, 6 months, or years, depending on their strategy. Focusing on SEO alone to acquire initial customers would not be recommended. It's important to understand where to best spend your time early on. My suggestion would be to have someone dedicated to driving traffic if not yourself, then focus on iterating on your website and helping users to engage with your content strategy.
Once you've built a strong customer base, and have achieved product-market fit, it's the perfect opportunity to use SEO to help you scale to new heights!
Once you have a loyal customer base and have reached product-market fit, it’s time to use SEO to enable flywheel growth and scale your SaaS platform to stratospheric heights.
Get your first 1,000 customers!
This article will single-handedly provide you with the links and resources needed to build a customer base within your first 6-months of launch. Within 2 - 3 months you could even exceed the 1,000 user mark. For some 100 customers is also great, it just depends on who you're targeting (B2B vs. B2C). Make sure to focus on customer success, get those testimonials, and establish dominance by giving your loyal clients a bespoke experience!
If you found this article helpful and are ready to continue executing, feel free to grab a copy of our book The Growth Checklist. It's the only book around that guarantees growth within 30-days, or we'll fully refund you the value of the book. If you've already purchased a copy, and are struggling to execute any strategies, you can simply book a meeting with me here.
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