So you’ve built an awesome product, and you can’t wait to see how fast it grows. But what’s the best way to get people to come check it out?

Marketing your new SaaS business can seem like a daunting task, but we’re here to help! The most common question I hear from SaaS founders that come to launch on AppSumo is, “Where do I start?”

There are a million articles on different ways to grow your SaaS business, so how do you know what’s right for you? The answer is that it’s different for every company, but you don’t need to start dumping money into paid marketing to get the best results. In fact, there are several things you should be doing before buying your first advertisement.

So we’ve put together five steps that any SaaS founder can use to make the most of their product launch, and four of them won’t even put a dent in your marketing budget!

1. Hone in on Content Marketing
2. Build an Email List
3. Organic Outreach
4. Know Your Unit Economics
5. Paid Marketing

Plus: Do’s and Don’ts of Growing Your SaaS Business

Product Launch Strategy #1: Hone in on Content Marketing

If you’ve recently launched your SaaS business, it may take some time to get to product-market fit, but you still need to attract new customers. Content marketing can help you do this. Paid ads can be expensive and rarely work without a solid organic presence built-up.

Also, according to the Content Marketing Institute, B2B companies with blogs produced 67% more leads than those without.

So get a blog and become a thought leader in your space. This will help with two things. The first is longterm SEO benefit – the more popular your blog is, the more likely you’ll show up in future searches. The second is boosting the engagement and distribution of your paid ads when you do reach that stage. 

Don’t know what content to start with? Do some keyword research! Google has a free keyword planner tool that you can use to narrow down a list of categories in your space that people are already searching for. This will give a big-picture view – not only of what people are interested in, but the kinds of traffic you can expect if your content starts to rank in search engines.

Our friends at lemlist have a great SaaS blog to check out for ideas.

Starting with great content is also an advantage because you can repurpose content for paid ads in the future. The best way to create awesome ads is to create the content first. Here are a few content ideas you can get started with:

• Facebook boosted posts. These are a great way to test which posts will perform better than others with a very small budget. You can easily track engagement on these boosted posts, then come up with a strategy of which ones are best to promote.
• Monthly live demos/webinars. Live demos and webinars let you offer general training and advice on how your product can help grow your customer’s businesses. Educate first, sell second. Make sure people have a reason to tune-in besides listening to an extended advertisement.
• Show them the money. 89% of B2B Buyers said that the company they chose “provided content that made it easier to show ROI and/or build a business case for the purchase.”

Product Launch Strategy #2: Build an Email List

Grow your email list in the background when you have the blog running. Start with automated sequences that provide value first, but also push for sign-ups to paid accounts. Below are a few ways to grow your list:

• Freemium subscribers
• Content leads
• Giveaways
• Pop-ups
• Webinars
• Content upgrades
• You can pick up SendFox in our store right now for just $49 and start growing your email list today!

Product Launch Strategy #3: Organic Outreach

When you create content, there’s a lot you can do to promote it without spending any money. Think of it as the pricing opposite of everything organic at the grocery store. Here’s a long list of some of the most effective ways to promote your content for free:

• Partnership: Get on webinars, training sessions, and podcasts, then ask the hosts to post a link to your best piece of use-case content in the description.
• Ideal Customers: Put together a list of 100 people that you would love to have using your platform, and reach out to them directly. You’ll have to define your ICP (ideal customer profile) before any paid ads will work, and direct outreach is a great way to do this.
• Word of mouth marketing
• Grow your email list
• Social media/Reddit
• Facebook groups
• LinkedIn Pages
• Submit on Product Hunt and get upvotes
• Create free profiles on Software Advice/GetApp/Capterra: Try to get as many reviews as possible to rank high and get free traffic

Product Launch Strategy #4: Know Your Unit Economics

This is an important step before you start any paid advertising. The easiest way to do this is in Google Analytics. Set up goals to track every step of your funnel, which we’ve outlined below. Important questions to answer are:

1. What’s your cold traffic to free trial/lead sign up conversion rate?
2. Free trial to paid account conversion rate. How can you make it easier for new people to sign up? Levers include removing credit card information from free trials, as well as more focused calls to action and sign-ups
3. What’s your paid account average order value and customer lifetime value (in months and $$)? You need to understand the value of customers before you know how much you can afford to pay for them. Propeller.com has a good post in calculating your customer lifetime value.
4. What’s your customer acquisition cost to customer lifetime value ratio? This is all the money it takes to get a paying customer, compared to how much money they end up spending with you before canceling.

From there, calculate your budget through what you need to break even. For example, if you spend $1000 to get 10 customers, is $100 Customer Acquisition Cost enough to make it break-even?

Product Launch Strategy #5: Paid Marketing

Now that you’ve done your content marketing and you know your numbers, the next question to ask before starting paid efforts is, “What does success look like?”

If you’re devoting $1,000 a month to ad spending, then how many new emails or account sign-ups would you need each month? And how long would it take for you to make that $1,000 back?

At AppSumo, we spend over 6 figures per month promoting SaaS tools to new audiences. These are a few things that have worked for us:

• Start with remarketing (FB first)! Cold traffic is expensive and converts at a lower rate
• Facebook is the cheapest and has the best targeting. Check out the FB ads library for inspiration from other SaaS businesses
• Google Search. Effective, but it can be more expensive depending on how competitive your main keywords are. Use the Google Keyword Planner to get a sense of the cost.
• Go into prospecting after you’ve perfected remarketing and are comfortable with ROI
• Software Advice/GetApp/Capterra. Buy leads if you have a sales team to close, or buy traffic and that could convert on your site. It’s usually very expensive, so you have to be confident you can convert the leads

• Launch on AppSumo! Have to mention it! We’ve featured over 1,000 software companies on our platform, and you’ll have the opportunity to get huge results. Feel free to submit your product here!

Dos and Don’ts of Growing Your SaaS Business

Okay, now we’ve run through all the steps! Let’s recap with some Dos and Don’ts of growing your new SaaS business.

Dos:

• Do the free stuff first! You don’t need to spend money to grow, and actually starting with organic marketing and content initiatives will help with your paid marketing down the line! Build a solid foundation at the beginning, and it will pay dividends in the future.
• You’d be surprised how much free traction you can get at the start by rolling up your sleeves and organically getting your name out there.
• Know your numbers! Data is power. Get an intimate knowledge of each step in your funnel, and you’ll set yourself up for success.

Don’ts:

• Don’t jump right into ads first! This is the most common pitfall we see. Many founders may find themselves with a little bit of cash, and immediately burn a hole in their pockets for ads. You can easily blow through your entire marketing budget within a month or two of misdirected ad spend.
• Don’t rely too much on one channel. If one channel, paid or organic, starts to work for you, it’s super important to reinvest in your business and keep exploring different channels of growth. This is especially true for paid channels. They will get more expensive and less effective over time (check out this link to Andrew Chen’s law of shitty click-through rates for a run-down).
• Don’t forget about Churn and Retention! This post is really about the beginning steps to market your SaaS business. However, once the customers start coming in, you have to be able to keep them around for a long time! This can flip your profitability economics on its head (for better or worse) and is oftentimes the key to long-term success for your SaaS business. Elizabeth Yin (The Hustle Con, Hustle Fund) has a really great recorded webinar about this. Also, some useful tools like Baremetrics and ProfitWell can hook directly into your payment processor to give you real-time churn/retention numbers. Would highly recommend checking these out if you’re serious about maintaining steady, long-term growth for your business!

Keep Hustling

And there you have it: a crash course for marketing your fresh SaaS business. Stay flexible and don’t get complacent. That way, you’ll make sure your marketing keeps paying dividends, especially when you really start gaining traction.

Marketing is much more than having a big budget and spending money, so put in the hard work to take your software business to the next level.

Hey, Sumo-lings! Nick from the AppSumo marketing team here.

A big part of our growth strategy at AppSumo involves Facebook ads, so I wanted to share a few of the things we’ve learned over the past few months. Hopefully, we can provide some actionable insights to take back to your business. 

Now we’re not saying these suggestions will work for everyone, but they’ve been effective for us during these crazy times. You can read more about everything we’ve learned about Facebook advertising over the years after spending $5 million in the eBook linked below. While these lessons have served us well and given us a strong foundation, we’ve had to re-evaluate our entire strategy to adapt to the new rules of the game. 

Get Access to the Free eBook Here

There’s been a lot of talk about how much businesses are pulling back on spending, and marketing or growth are usually among the first cuts. Now’s the time to be defensive, right? Well, in some cases, yes – it’s necessary (e.g. travel and films). But with crisis comes opportunity, and one of those opportunities is Facebook. With so many advertisers reigning in spending on new growth and everyone staying at home scrolling through social media, it’s created a very unique climate for Facebook advertising.

Here’s what we’ll cover in this post:

1. How Facebook Advertising Has Changed During the Pandemic

• • Usage Is Way Up
  • CPMs Are Way Down
  • Different Audiences Are Popping Up

2. Lessons and Takeaways from the Pandemic

• • Testing Is Key
  • We’re Transitioning From Mobile Back to Desktop
  • Ecommerce Spending Is Up
  • Think About Your Lead Gen
  • Reinvest in Video
  • Look at Your Geos
  • Don’t Ignore Messenger Ads

3. How to Apply These Lessons to Your Business

• • What to Avoid
  • What to Pursue

4. Final Thoughts

Why Facebook Advertising Has Changed During the Pandemic

Usage Is Way Up

Facebook Traffic and Messaging are up 50-70% in countries hit hardest by the virus. 

At AppSumo, we’ve seen an increase in overall engagement on our ads in the form of comments, shares, and clicks. Higher engagement doesn’t necessarily mean more sales, so it’s important to think about what paid ads success would look like for your business.

CPMs Are Way Down

We’re seeing a 70%+ decrease in the cost of buying Facebook ads. This allows us to get more quality traffic for cheaper than we ever have. 

Different Audiences are Popping Up

While usage is on the rise, Facebook has also seen its own acquisition skyrocket as people around the world look for ways to stay connected with their friends and family. So you may have more access to older or less tech-savvy people than before. Keep this in mind when making your ads. Now more than ever, you should make it easy for people to interact with your messaging and convert.

How to Scale Facebook Ads During the Pandemic

Testing Is Key

You really don’t know what kind of messaging or creative will resonate with Facebook audiences right now. With so many new and different types of people logging on, it’s more important to continually test what you say and how you say it. In the past 3 weeks, we’ve tested over 100 different copy and creative variations. The one principle that everybody knows, but has been particularly reinforced recently, is be true to your brand. AppSumo has a more lighthearted brand personality, so trying to take an overly somber tone in our messaging doesn’t work.  

Here are some do’s and don’ts based on real-world examples from us. You can take a look at all of our ads here.

1. DON’T keep pushing the same general messaging you had before the crisis. When I said we re-evaluated everything, I meant it. Even some of our best performing direct response ads had to change to highlight more relevant value. This is one example of an ad that was paused due to low performance.

2. DO strike a balance between your existing tone and acknowledging current events. This ad worked because it kept our brand’s lighthearted, humorous tone while still appealing to emotions during the corona crisis. 

3. DO take advantage of the power of helpful freebies. Everyone loves free stuff. From webinars to freebies to blog posts, people are looking for answers. Think about how you can attract new customers with free content that can actually help, instead of just telling them to buy your product.

4. DO emphasize potential savings. Here we focus on how our products (shoutout to Sendfox and Relaythat) can cut subscription costs and highlight the savings or earnings prospective customers can get. It’s an effective way to drive your audience to action in a time when people are cutting their own non-essential spend.

5. DO get creative. Kettle & Fire, Slack, and Autonomous have been killing it with funny and topical ads that contain just the right amount of suggestion. (Not our ads, but we tip our marketing hats to them.)

We’re Transitioning From Mobile Back to Desktop

There’s a major shift from pre-corona surfing done mostly on phones (avoiding work at work) or throughout your daily commutes. Now that most people aren’t commuting (or mobile), social media usage on computers has gone up.

What does this mean for advertisers? It’s easier to buy things on your laptop compared to your phone! You’re more likely to sign up for a newsletter, download a whitepaper, or actually purchase something if you can more easily do research on the product or read about the company.

This is backed by laptop/monitor sales on the rise, while mobile phones and accessories have dipped 14%.

Ecommerce Spending Is Up

With so many people bored at home, retail therapy has been a big part of how many cope (guilty). And as scores of non-essential brick and mortar shops close, many businesses are now looking to digital advertising for better ways to monetize their products. If you didn’t sell your product or service online before, it’s an absolute must now.

Think About Your Lead Gen

Lead gen is about providing value! Just because your business may be taking a downturn in sales, doesn’t mean you have to stop acquiring new customers. Change your messaging to find how your company can provide the most amount of value to prospective customers during these trying times. 

Reinvest in Video

Video ads have long been among our best-performing ad formats, but they work exceptionally well now. Over the past month, we’ve doubled down on our video content as their performance continues to get better. In the pre-corona world, audiences watched 85% of videos on Facebook without sound. It makes sense – you’re at work or in a public setting and don’t want other people eavesdropping on your “Cheeseburger Taquitos” recipe vid. Advertisers adapted to this, and captions became best practice. Captions are still a good idea, but since everyone’s at home, people are watching AND listening to more content now. If you’re able to reinvest in amazing product, testimonial, or interview-style video ads, you’ll be rewarded!

(InVideo can help you here, too.)

Look at Your Geos

We’re all reading the news, and it’s been apparent how different countries are affected by this crisis. Some are on complete lockdown, while others are trying herd immunity. As you might expect, this affects how people are using the internet. Countries like Italy are seeing significant spikes in usage, compared to other countries that weren’t hit as hard by the virus. Make sure to look at ALL your potential geos and test targeting in a variety of ways. 

Don’t Ignore Messenger Ads

Usage is up 50% on Facebook Messenger, so if you’ve never tried messenger ads, now is the time to do it. Think about it as a supplement to your email list, except this audience has an 80%+ open rate.

How to Apply These Lessons to Your Business

What to Avoid

How should your messaging change with this crisis? First, don’t put out half-assed empathy that feels disconnected from your product.

It’s more important now to think about how our brands can first address the situation at hand, then add real value to people’s lives. If you’re not connecting your brand with the biggest problems on people’s minds right now, you stand to risk looking more tone-deaf than ever before. We’ve got an awesome blog post here about how to capture authenticity with your communications during uncertainty.

What to Pursue

First off, be human. What can you do to help? At AppSumo, we’ve created a content hub for all things recession-proof, a software fund to get small businesses the software they need, and a remote work academy to help companies navigate during the crisis.

And it’s all free!

Next, be essential. Just because your product is considered non-essential during these times, doesn’t mean you have to be. Create something that is essential and makes a genuine connection with your audience. Find ways to bring in prospective customers through free and helpful blog posts, webinars, live demos, zoom meetings, and downloads like whitepapers/PDFs/e-books.

Lastly, stay aggressive. Paid media is cheap right now, so take advantage of it. Lowered CPMs lets you take on less risk and allows you to test more. 

Final Thoughts

It goes without saying that this is a very stressful time for everyone. But I do believe there are silver linings to this crisis and hidden opportunities. Facebook advertising is just one of many ways you can start taking action for your business.

For extra credit, here are some excellent additional references to help you navigate Facebook ad strategy during this crisis:

• Andrea Vahl on Facebook Ads During a Crisis
• Edelman Post on Using Paid Media During a Crisis
• Interview with Facebook Ads expert Ali Parmelee
• Facebook Ads Bootcamp with DataDriven [Free E-Book]
• Data Driven Facebook Ads Checklist

It might take some time for you to adjust how you approach your marketing, and it’s not always easy. However, those who are willing to adapt to these circumstances can continue to grow their businesses and come out stronger.

In other words, you got this.

Take care, fam.