How to Scalably Grow a SaaS Startup?
The initial stage of your SaaS startup is the most crucial and challenging part. You will face many difficulties and there is a high possibility of getting failures in the beginning.
This article will highlight what aspects you should focus on when trying to scale a SaaS startup.
We will also highlight various things you should do in order to make your startup more scalable.
What You Should Focus On
1. Sales Strategy
Different customer segments have different buying cycles. You should know your customer and target customer segments before you decide which strategy to follow.
It is also important to know your competitors and the customer feedback you receive from them.
There are many factors you need to consider when choosing the right sales strategy for your SaaS startup:
a. Channel selection
If you are planning to expand the company and make your sales channels wider, you need to consider the costs of each channel.
You also need to select a channel that has the right customer base.
b. Territory management
You should know your target territory and the customers in it. You should also know how much time it will take for you to reach your target customer base.
It is important for you to plan for how much time you will need before reaching your target customers.
c. Pricing strategy
It is essential for you to understand what kind of pricing strategy you want to use before starting your SaaS business.
We can use this as a basis for determining the sales cycle length, channels, etc.
2. User Journey
Customer experience is the most crucial aspect of your SaaS startup.
Your customers should not have to go through any kind of complicated procedures or lengthy forms.
They should be able to signup for your SaaS in just a few clicks and access the product instantly. They should be able to do all their tasks with the least amount of effort and time.
They should also be able to engage with you more frequently, share feedback and discuss issues they face.
This makes your customer stick around with your product, not some features you added later on.
The best way to ensure this is by having a user-friendly design and interface that allows them to do everything with little hassle or confusion.
You can use user experience design (UX) as an integral part of scaling your SaaS startup as well.
3. Retargeting Campaign
Product-market fit is a stage in your startup’s life when you have the best product and users.
However, it is also a time when you need to keep in mind what your customers really want and how they interact with your product.
The first thing that comes to mind is user acquisition, but this is not the only way to grow your startup.
There are other effective ways that can help you scale your SaaS startup as well. One of them is Retargeting Campaigns.
By retargeting campaigns, you will reach the people who have not visited your website yet. You will also be able to keep your target audience engaged with your product.
4. Customer Retention
Your growth journey will be pointless if your customers leave you in the end. It is important that you keep your customers happy and engaged with your product and services.
Set up a feedback mechanism in your product or service.
Make sure that you handle all the negative feedbacks professionally and promptly. You can set up a live chat system to talk to your customers.
There are also various other ways of engaging with customers, such as using social media and community forums, etc.
You should have clear pricing policies so that you do not overcharge for certain features in the product or service, which may make your customer feel cheated.
Ensure that you have an easy-to-use payment gateway in place so that customers can easily pay for the products or services they are buying from you.
5. Intuitive Landing Pages
Whether you’re offering enterprise software or simple utilities, the landing page of your SaaS startup is a crucial part of the sales process.
The success rate of the landing page can directly affect your revenue and conversions. The better your landing page, the better the conversion rate will be.
A viable product will provide an instant value to customers, which is why your landing page needs to clearly explain the problem you solve and how you can solve it.
With a concise description and clear calls-to-action, your SaaS startup’s landing page should be easy to navigate and will effectively direct users towards the purchase process.
How to Scalably Grow a SaaS Startup?
1. Understand your SaaS product and its potential
Revenue growth can only happen if you build something people want.
Building something that’s not valuable to customers is pointless and will make you lose money.
Every SaaS startup faces a crucial question: what are you building? What are your goals? How do you make it work?
The best way to answer this question is by understanding your customers’ needs and providing a product that solves their problems.
As a result, you will get great traction and high retention, which allows your company to skyrocket.
You’ll learn more about your customers and how they interact with your product.
This is the right approach when building any SaaS business because it will give you valuable insight into how to improve your product and generate more leads for the future.
2. Focus on customer onboarding process
Scalable growth contains more than just increasing user base and usage volume. The biggest growth of a SaaS startup is about the customer onboarding process.
It’s about creating and growing the trust among your users that would lead to customer retention and high customer value.
If you want to grow your SaaS business, then you should consider the onboarding process as a vital part of your growth strategy.
A customer needs to be informed about what they will get for their money: features, support, value-added services or free trials.
They need to be convinced that you can deliver what you promise, and they need to feel good when they do the first purchase.
After the sale, the success of onboarding depends on what happens next: getting them on track with their ongoing use of the product.
3. Use PPC ads and create high-value content
Market demands change over time. And so do people’s buying habits. What worked for one SaaS product in 2021 might not work in 2022, let alone 2023.
For example, people are now more aware of the risks of clicking on any ads and also, they are recognizing the value of high-quality content over low-value content.
As a result, they avoid low-value content and look for higher quality content from credible sources.
If you want your product to reach its maximum potential and gain the attention of potential customers, focus on delivering quality content.
And for that purpose, you need to hire experts who can create and curate content that will help your product stand out among competitors.
4. Monitor social media platforms
Common mistakes businesses do when they’re first starting out are to not pay attention to social media and, especially, ignore the growing importance of it.
As it is today, a good part of your customer base is already on social media (at least for your product or service).
It’s important that you know about this group in order to monitor what they say about your brand.
Influencers are key players in the growth of a startup’s community.
They have more power than regular customers do when it comes to generating awareness and building a strong brand.
To find them, conduct a search for people who have relevant experience and/or expertise that can help promote your product or service.
Search through Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google+ for people with relevant accounts that have influence in their field or community.
5. Provide value for users in order for them to stay loyal
In any development stages, it is crucial to understand the users and the services that they are using. It will help you create a product that caters to their needs and gives them value.
During the first stage, focus on solving minor problems and creating value for your users.
To keep your users loyal, make sure that they feel a need for your product, as they will not want to use anything else.
Once you are ready to scale up, then you should look at user engagement and conversion rates.
To increase user engagement, provide tools for them to use and personalization features for them.
Make sure that you have features in place that allow users to easily find what they are looking for.
This will make it easier for them to convert into customers by helping them find what they need quickly and efficiently.
Does Scaling Up Requires Business Model Changing?
More often than not, when a SaaS startup is getting ready to scale up, it will have to change its business model.
But what is the right way to do it? How can you avoid losing money? And how can you make sure that your product is sustainable and profitable?
It all depends on your goals. The key is understanding the different ways to grow your business, and then using the one that fits you best.
The tips in this article are just the basics of scaling up a SaaS startup.
To get the most out of this post, you should have an idea about the business model you are going to adopt.
The best way to learn is by reading different articles and taking notes on what works and what doesn’t.
About the Author
I hope that my post has helped you know more about Remote Collaboration. Feel free to leave a comment and tag me and I will answer them. Follow my profile to get the latest content I post to stay ahead of the curve.
I am the Founder of Cudy Technologies, a full-stack EdTech startup helping teachers and students learn better. I am also a mentor and angel investor in other Startups of my other interests (Proptech, Fintech, HRtech, Ride-hailing, C2C marketplaces, and SaaS). You can also find me on Cudy for early-stage Startup Founder mentorship and advice.
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