Marketing tactics for your SaaS: how to get the word out
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Justin:All of this is a 100% free. Just go to the homepage podcast insights.com and sign up there. Everyone, welcome to build your SaaS. This is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019. I'm Justin Jackson, one of the cofounders.
Justin:John Buda is not here today, but I've got a great episode for you. Wanted to talk about marketing. How do you get the word out about your SaaS? This is a question I got from Nirav Mehta. He asks inside of Slack, how how do you get the word out about your SaaS?
Justin:Should you pursue partnerships? How do you get distribution for your product? I feel like this is the hardest part. So we're going to go through kind of a number of steps, a number of things I've learned over the years. I've been doing product marketing for different startups and different SaaS companies since 2,008.
Justin:And I've picked up a few things along the way. So hopefully this is helpful for you. Number 1. And feel free to write these down, take out your notepad, or just go to the show notes, saas.transistor.fm/41. I'll have all of this written out there.
Justin:The biggest opportunity many folks miss is building up anticipation before they launch. So that's step number 1. Build anticipation before you launch. Here's a few examples. My friends, Adam Wavin and Steve Schogert just released a book called Refactoring UI.
Justin:It's done incredible. They've they've, I think they talked about it on the art of product podcast. You can hear all of their sales figures and things there. This was a mega launch, but it didn't just happen overnight. They have been sharing design tips on Twitter and on their Medium blog for months.
Justin:I think it's been at least 6 months, but maybe it's even been up to a year. And every time they shared something online, every time they shared something with their audience, they were building anticipation for the launch of this book. They're saying, hey, it's coming. It's not here yet, but it's coming. And remember, people need to be primed to a certain extent.
Justin:You know, people don't just can't just get hit once with a launch and then just buy right away. They need time to let it simmer. They need time to anticipate this thing that's coming. And so these little micro tips and, blog posts and things on Twitter, they helped build anticipation. It's kind of like, you know, getting the the customer salivating for the product before it's even released.
Justin:And these tips that they were sharing were so good that people just could not wait for the book and the course to get launched. So great example there. Another good example is Derek Rymer, with level dot app. He allowed people to claim their username before he launched. And, you know, that's a common one.
Justin:It's been done before, but very effective. So far, 5,787 people have gone to level.app just to reserve their handle. And now he's got this launch list that he can announce the official launch to, or I think he's doing this right now, start accepting beta customers. In a similar vein, Ben Orenstein talked about Tuple dot app, his new product on podcasts for months before they launched. And so you can see it like building anticipation before you launch is, is the thing.
Justin:It's often we try to, you know, crank up anticipation after the product is out. But you've missed this great opportunity to get people thinking about it before the product's released. Apple and Steve Jobs, they are masters at this. Pixar is a you know, movies do this all the time. They release the teaser before the actual movie, and it builds anticipation.
Justin:A lot of people are waiting for that new Avengers movie to, you know, to find out what happens next. The second thing, and it's similar, is that you need to build a reputation for being helpful. And this is something you should be doing now, whether you have something to sell or not. All those folks I just mentioned, Adam, Steve, Derek, and Ben, they have something else in common. They've been consistently helpful to their respective audiences for years before they launched anything.
Justin:And being helpful now in forums, on Twitter, in podcasts, on your blog, in your mailing list, at conferences, at meetups, in, you know, email when people email you with questions. This isn't an investment in your future. It's an advantage. You know, this good reputation is an advantage that can't be easily copied or replicated by your competitors. And so this is I often give the advice, you know, to aspiring entrepreneurs or aspiring product people.
Justin:Just start being helpful now. Don't wait for a great idea to come to you. Reach out to folks that need help. You know, maybe you need to go on indie hackers and answer a bunch of questions. Maybe you need to go to Quora and answer a bunch of questions.
Justin:Maybe you just need to make yourself available, as a mentor, Or maybe you need to go to a local meetup and be known as that helpful person with a certain expertise. So Steve Schoeder has been really helpful on Twitter with design advice. Adam Wathan has been really helpful with advice for developers. Ben Orenstein has been really helpful teaching people how to pair program. You know, these are things that you can do now regardless of, you know, like I said, if you have anything to sell.
Justin:So those are the ones I always lead with. Those are also always the ones that people don't really enjoy. They're not, you know, they're not that sexy. They're they're they're not that helpful if you've already launched. And so now I'm gonna go into some tips for folks who have already launched a product or at the very least they have a marketing site.
Justin:So the big one, and I've had a reversal on this. I used to focus on this less than I do now, but this is one of my primary marketing activities now. And that is to bake SEO, search engine optimization, into everything you do. This is the most underrated and often nowadays under pursued growth strategy. And there's a lot of folks that are coming around to this.
Justin:Ryan Hoover in a recent interview said, SEO is the biggest growth lever that you have, and it's something that you should prioritize. And if you think about it, you know, when people have a desire to solve a problem, what do they do? They Google it. If your product is the answer to people's question, you want to make sure they can find it in Google. This is just another way you can be helpful right now.
Justin:So here are some quick SEO tips. First, I would just start with a site like answer the public.com. This allows you to type in for example, I would for Transistor, I would type in a keyword like podcasting. And what it's going to do is give you a visual a visualization of the types of questions people are asking on on Google. So for example, they have kind of, key starting words like will, can, which, where.
Justin:Will podcasting kill radio? Where does podcasting go next? When did podcasting start? These are all questions that people are asking on search engines. And I could write authoritative blog posts and articles and pages that answer these questions.
Justin:So this is a really good place to just kind of visually explore some of the topic ideas for your website. That's sometimes where people get stuck. You know, how do I start, you know, ranking for certain keywords? How do I find good topic ideas? Well, this tool does a really good job of visualizing it.
Justin:They also have, prepositions, comparisons, you know. There's a a lot of ways they visualize different things that people are searching for. I would definitely recommend that tool, answer the public.com. Another tool that you can use is Ahrefs.com. And it's a really expensive tool actually.
Justin:But one thing you can do is you can search for your competitors inside of this tool and see which keywords people are using to find their site and which, of their landing pages are the most popular. So for example, if I type in briefs.fm, which is another podcast hosting company, I can see all of the backlinks that Briefs has, like all of the the sites that have linked to Briefs. So kentcdodds.com has a link to the site, and Kent is a well known JavaScript programmer that works for PayPal, does lots of open source work. So that's a really valuable backlink to have. I can also see what keywords people are using, the top keywords people are using to find this site.
Justin:One of them is 3 minutes because Briefs focuses on 3 minute podcasts. So lots of really good competitive information you can get from Ahrefs. And these will give you ideas on where you should start. You know, if someone is getting a lot of really high quality backlinks from a certain website, maybe you can approach that site as well or find other sites like it. If, you know, they're really competitive and getting a lot of good results for certain keywords, then you will want to start creating content that, you know, target those keywords.
Justin:So and actually has tons of other stuff, but those are the the 2 big ones. A 3rd SEO tip is to make sure you have Google Search Console set up for your website. Ages ago, Google took out, keywords from Google Analytics, and they've moved them over to Google Search Console. And there's a brand new, performance report inside of there that will allow you to see which queries people are using to find your website, what pages you're ranking highly for, your average click through rate. So when people land on your, you know, search for sorry.
Justin:A given keyword. What, how many of those clicks do you get? So for transistor podcast, for example, in the last 3 months, we get 58% of those clicks. When they search that on Google, we get 58% of those clicks. So it's helpful to know what searches people are using to find your website.
Justin:It's also helpful to know what position you are for those search terms. And, you know, in for certain terms, you might want to move up. And the way to move up is to write better content for those keywords. Alright. So podcast hosting, for example, is one that transistor is going to be going after.
Justin:That's something we're going to want to improve. We wanna have more folks clicking through on us when they search for podcast hosting. Right now, we're only getting 1.4% of those clicks. We could do better. Now in terms of running content, and again, this is a really quick overview of SEO, but, and I've got lots of other resources in the show notes, but when you're creating content on a page, there's a few areas you should focus on.
Justin:The the main one is your main title, your h one in, you know, in terms of HTML. Your main title should feature the focus keywords preferably at the beginning of the title. So if I'm targeting podcast hosting, that should be at the beginning. Podcast hosting for brands. That's the main title.
Justin:The subheader or first paragraph is an expanded description of the page or the solution you're offering. And it should also feature those focus keywords, those keywords you're going after with this piece of content. Another thing people forget about is alt text and images. So if you've ever seen images in search results or videos for that matter in search results, it's because folks are targeting certain keywords in the alt text of those images. So alt text is the it's designed to show text when an image doesn't load properly or if someone has to use a screen reader.
Justin:But that text is also read by Google, just like any other content. And, you know, often when we're putting images into our websites and, inside of WordPress or something else, we forget to say, oh, here's the alt text. And not only is this good for accessibility for folks that need to use a screen reader, but it's also good for search results. And finally, the meta description. This is a short, concise, usually 300 words or less description of a web page, and it's shown in search results underneath your main title.
Justin:So this is what you're going to use to entice people to click through when they've searched for something on Google. And you wanna, again, make sure that has the focus keyword in there and, you know, something that's going to give people an idea of the type of content you have after the click. Alright. So that's kind of what matters on each page. I also recommend that you keep a document on blog post title ideas.
Justin:I've also called this a keyword content planner, and I've got a a free example of one that you can use in the show notes. So the way you would use this is, let's say, you know, through all my research, I can see that podcast distribution is a good keyword combination to pursue. In that case, I could write a blog post with the title, podcast distribution made easy, 5 steps. Well, I'm going to put that into my keyword planner. I'm going to use this as, you know, an idea for a blog post title later on.
Justin:And so I'll often have, you know, here's the the keyword I'm going to target. Here's the landing page. You know, which page I'm gonna create this on. What kind of interest there is in that keyword based on all the research I did and when I published that post. Alright.
Justin:Two more tips for search engine optimization. The next one is write an authoritative guide on a topic. So Ben Orenstein noticed that there wasn't any good pair programming guides. And so he wrote one. It's called learntopair.com.
Justin:And these guides, when they're really comprehensive, they get shared a lot. You know, if someone's like, hey. I I'm trying to figure out how to learn how to pair program. Where should I go? People will say, oh, learn to pair dot com.
Justin:They have great word-of-mouth. They get passed around in Slack and on Twitter quite a bit. And this means you'll get high quality backlinks to your site, which is what you want for search. The more high quality backlinks you have, the higher you will rank when in Google. One final tip.
Justin:People search for competitor name alternatives quite a bit. So, you know, you might be looking for an alternative to the iPhone. So iPhone alternative, and those are great keywords to target. If you have a competitor and, you know, people are looking for an alternative to your competitors product, you want to be one of the search results. You wanna be at the top of that page.
Justin:Right? And so you can create those pages. And, companies like podia.com have used that technique, really successfully to attract new customers because people are looking for alternatives to other products on the market. Like I said, I have lots of these resources listed in the show notes. Once again, s a a s sass.transistor.fm /41.
Justin:Let's go into another ad right now because my friends at elite2.com have again sponsored this episode. They've been so kind, and I love talking about them because they make producing and recording and editing a podcast easy. They just remove all of the hurdles. And I can tell you from I've been doing this for a long time. I haven't tried any other tool that makes it easier than alitoo.com.
Justin:Go check it out. Alitoo.com. Alit u.com, and tell them that we sent you if you sign up. There's a little chat widget. Say, hey.
Justin:I heard about you on the build your SaaS podcast or Justin sent me or just go on Twitter and thank them. Really happy to have them support the show. I wanna finish off with just a big list of marketing channels because these are often the things people have on a list and they'll try a bunch of these or they'll try one at a time. And I just wanna make sure you have the the the comprehensive list. So here they are.
Justin:Number 1 is ads. Facebook ads, Google AdWords, LinkedIn ads. You can run ads. You can you can pay to promote your product online, And these are worth experimenting with. The bit of advice I would give you is to really focus on one ad platform at a time.
Justin:And you're probably going to need to spend, a lot of money in a short period of time if you want to learn anything. So if you're going to do Facebook ads, I would set aside, you know, 100 or even 1,000 of dollars depending on what the the product is to really spend on a bunch of different campaigns and then see which campaign variants perform the best. That's the quickest way to learn and the quickest way to figure out what works. What a lot of people do is they'll just put a little bit of money in a campaign, you know, 5, $10, and they'll just let it kind of go forever. And it's harder to learn that way.
Justin:But if you're spending a lot of money each day on a bunch of, you know, maybe a handful of campaigns, you can log in every day and see what's working. So if you're gonna use ads, I would try to, you know, spend more money and learn fast. And then, you know, after a week or 2, you'll probably have some good data there that you can, you know, then basically choose the winning campaign and just go that way. The next channel is partnerships. That would mean finding influencers that have a similar audience to you, finding other companies that are similar to you or have a similar audience to you, and partnering up.
Justin:You know, this could be creating an integration with someone else. There's all sorts of ways to do this, but partnerships, building relationships with people, doing shared campaigns with other people and other companies. That's a great way to go as well. I already mentioned search engine optimization. Then there's content marketing, which feeds into everything really.
Justin:That's blogging. That's, you know, creating videos. That's podcasting. That's anything anytime you're creating original content. And the key here is it has to be helpful.
Justin:And don't try to create content and then get the sale right away at the end of the the article. What you wanna do this is a long term play. You're trying to create a reputation for being helpful, like I mentioned before. Then there's platform marketing. This would be things like engaging in Facebook groups, on forums, and comment threads.
Justin:Hacker News is a platform. Product Hunt is a platform. Indie Hackers is a platform. And certainly, you can get a big boost from some of those. I don't think you should rely on a product hunt launch, but it's definitely helpful.
Justin:It gives you a really high quality backlink. It gets, you know, makes a big splash. It gets people interested. So platform marketing is great. Direct mail.
Justin:Now here's this is an old one. Oldie, but a goodie. Sending your prospects stickers, postcards, or letters by post. I've done this a few times with t shirts. And, you know, one fellow, Derek, was wearing, one of my t shirts.
Justin:And that YouTube video that he created just took off. And now that's been seen by, I think I can't remember how many people, 30,000 people or something. So sometimes giving away things is a good way to do marketing. Because if your sticker lands on the right laptop or your t shirt lands on the right YouTube video, you're just creating awareness for your brand. Again, a bit of a long term play, but all of these things help.
Justin:In fact, I had this one quote from Natalie at Wildbit where she said, basically, the more things you do in terms of marketing, the more you invest in marketing, the more you get out. And so it doesn't always make sense to just, like, try everything at once. But really the more you put into this, the more you're going to get out. And if you're able to get, you know, send out some stickers just as a regular habit that will help you in the long run. People are going to recognize your brand and that's a good thing.
Justin:And then the final marketing channel is events. This is attending trade shows, conferences, meetups, handing out business cards, sponsoring events. A lot of folks just make events their main focus. They'll just go to tons and tons of events, and they'll talk to people. They'll especially if your customers are there, it's a great way to, you know, get the word out.
Justin:It's a great way to start that relationship. It's a great way to, you know, maybe send some follow-up emails and start a sales process. So that is the big list. Hopefully, that's helpful for folks. A few things to remember.
Justin:Marketing doesn't work like a jackpot. You're not going to hit that one thing that works and create an avalanche of sales instead of, you know, putting it all on black. I it's better for you to diversify your marketing investments. You'll get customers from a variety of channels and tactics. For example, I think Transistor gets about 30% of its leads from search right now, from, you know, people typing searching for something on Google.
Justin:We get a lot of referral traffic. We're getting some, you know, quite a few sales from our affiliates, transistor.fm/affiliates, by the way, if you wanna sign up for that. You're gonna find customers from different channels and you might need to try a few things before you figure out something that works for you. Number 2. Marketing is a lot like physical fitness.
Justin:Small gains every week will give you the biggest gains in the long term. Right? It's like, you don't wanna just hit the gym once January 1st and expect to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. You've got to do something every week and every day, really, to get good results overall. So keep investing in this.
Justin:Keep tweaking your homepage. Keep tweaking your ad copy, keep working, working, working, and eventually, this will pay off assuming that your product is good. And this is my favorite startup quote of all time, Paldi from Balsamic. He says, you know, if you create a great product, everything else kinda just takes care of itself. The marketing kind of takes care of itself.
Justin:When you create something that's really helpful for people and it's well executed, people are going to talk about it. So none of this advice will work if your product isn't good. And, you know, I know that for a lot of you, this is what you do not like at all. You don't like marketing. You maybe are really into writing code or really into design.
Justin:The best way to deal with a big overwhelming challenge is to break it into smaller pieces. So if this is confusing for you or challenging for you, just pick one tiny thing you can do today or you can do this week. Try one little thing and, you know, break it into small pieces and just build your habit that way. Alright. So let's do a little bit of follow-up responses to the last episode.
Justin:There was one on smart speakers. Casio or Casio says, I was listening to the latest episode, and I thought I could add a data point regarding smart speakers. I have multiple Google smart speakers around the house, so they are usually available in every room. Listening to music on Spotify, adding stuff to our grocery list and calendar, setting timers are the most common use cases, but I also listen to podcasts. So in the morning, when I'm making breakfast, I'll say play the news, and it will play the latest episodes of hourly news shows from NBC, CBC, whatever else you set up.
Justin:I also like to listen to podcasts on smart speakers for the sound quality, especially when you have multiple speakers in a room and the convenience of not having to pick up my phone to control it. That's a good data point. Neither John nor I have smart speakers. And so we were like, is this smart speaker thing going to be big for podcasts? So far, the analytics say no.
Justin:They're not showing up in any great number in our analytics, but maybe we'll see. Maybe this is just the beginning. And like Casio, more folks will be doing that. Now the biggest piece of feedback we had was how to pronounce Worcestershire. Worcestershire sauce.
Justin:So I'm gonna play a few of these. Here's Marcus Clear Spring.
Speaker 2:Hi, John and Justin. The famous sauce is pronounced Worcester. Worcester. I know it's totally counterintuitive, but I guess that's because the pronunciation has stayed the same while modern spelling has changed. It's similar to Leicester, which is spelled Leecester or Lycester, but pronounced Lester.
Speaker 2:There are lots of British place names that are pronounced totally differently to the way they're spelled, at least according to modern spelling. If you spelled it using modern spelling, it would probably be w, double o, s t e r, like the character Bertie Wooster in the famous Jeeves comedies.
Justin:Now this was we must have really hit a chord with folks from the UK because all of the voice responses to this episode were from folks in the United Kingdom. Here's Johnny. Here's his answer.
Speaker 3:Hi, John and Justin. This is Johnny from the UK. Longtime listener, UK is home of Worcester and Worcestershire. I can confirm that the pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce is in fact Worcestershire sauce. Worcestershire sauce.
Speaker 3:Thanks.
Justin:Wust Worcestershire. Worcestershire sauce? I'm probably still saying it wrong. And then here's Tristan, also from the UK.
Speaker 4:Hey there, Tristan. It's Tristan from the CliffNotes podcast. You were just asking recently, how to say the name of a source to go in a Bloody Mary. It's Worcestershire, not Worcestershire. Worcestershire.
Speaker 4:Thank you. Enjoy the show.
Justin:Worcestershire. Worcestershire. So hopefully I'm saying that right now. I'm probably not. Also from the UK, Tim Abel had a question or a comment about partnerships.
Speaker 5:Hi. It's Tim Abel here. I'm a software developer from Reading in the UK. I'm a contractor by day. I'm working on SQL schema explorer as a side project by night, as you know.
Speaker 5:I have a question about the relationship, between, yourself and your partner on transistor. So I occasionally come across people who think it would be nice to have a software developer as a partner for their idea. And one of the things that has always worried me is that I'll end up in a situation where we start building things, and then I get, no offense to you, a steady stream of harebrained ideas that don't move the needle with the expectation that, hey, software developer just built those in unrealistic timescales. Now, obviously, you know a lot about software development and management, but, I was wondering how you, between the 2 of you, you manage that dynamic. Cheers.
Speaker 5:Thanks again for the show to build your sass and everything you're doing for podcasting. I'm a great fan of the podcasting. Thanks.
Justin:Alright. So that's a good question, actually. Basically, Tim is worried that he'll partner up and the other person will be a pain in the ass. So there's a few different ways you can address this. One, hopefully the person you're partnering up with has some experience with the software development process.
Justin:So I've been a product manager since 2008. I understand the development cycle. I understand how to write a user story. I understand, you know, how, you know, sprints work. I understand all of those things.
Justin:And so I've learned over now 10, 11 years of working alongside developers, how to, you know, work professionally alongside developers. I've learned how to be respectful. I've learned, you know, how to write really good user stories with the right details. And additionally, I bring something else to the table, which is a really in-depth understanding of the customer that comes from doing research, that comes from doing customer support, that comes from recognizing patterns. Those are things that I've learned and I've gotten better at over my whole career.
Justin:And that's the kind of person you want to partner up with. In the same way, if you are a if you're a marketing person and you're really good at marketing, make sure you're partnering up with a developer that knows their stuff. Make sure that they write, you know, they're covering their code with tests. Make sure that they are up to speed on, you know, like, if they're doing a lot of front end development, they understand, you know, the latest in JavaScript development. If they're, you know, going to be doing any design, make sure that they understand how to use the latest thing in CSS or the most effective thing at least.
Justin:This is something that goes kind of both ways. Right? You wanna be able to respect the person you're working for. And the only way to figure that out is to spend time with people, to build lots of relationships, and you will see who the professionals are. They you'll see them.
Justin:They'll rise above the rest. That's my advice there. Hopefully, this episode has been helpful to you. I try to, you know, still put out a show even when John can't be around. I wanna end by thanking our Patreon supporters.
Justin:These folks contribute over $600 a month and make sure that we can edit this show. So thank you to Colin Gray atalitoo.com, Darby Frey, Samori Augusto, Dave Young, Brad from Canada, Kevin Markham, Sammy Schuichert, Brand Shouter, Mike Walker, Adam Duvander, and say it with me, Dave Junta. And then there's also podcastinsights.com. Thanks again, folks, and I will see you next week.
