founders, VC's, mentors and startup experts.
So, should you require a Credit Card to get started in your SaaS Free Trial? TL:DR - By asking for a Credit Card up front, you will get fewer prospects into your Free Trial with no guarantee of converting more paying customers. Now, if you'd like to know why that is, read on ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
In my first couple of startups, I built things in the traditional order: product first, then audience. With Think Traffic, I started blogging first, then figured out which products and services to deliver. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of Think Traffic. Creator of Fizzle: Honest Online B |
I mentioned "Expansion Revenue" and "Negative Churn" in my post SaaS Churn Rate: What's Acceptable? and I wanted to expand on those concepts a bit. I honestly believe that fully grasping the power of these two concepts could change your SaaS business forever. No pressure, but you might want to read this post carefully. ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
I deliberately let this commonly repeated statement be the title without qualifying it. Of course statements like these, (this particular one made famous by Loyalty Effect) cannot stand by themselves regardless of how popular the Guru who said this is. Let us look at this closely. ...
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Via: Iterative Path
Practicing Effective Pricing |
Problem: You've launched your product, it's getting plenty of coverage. People are signing up, but no one is actually using it. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
To create an anxiety relievable only by a purchase... that is the job of advertising. Advertising is used to increase... Advertising increases familiarity, reminds consumers about your product, and spreads product news. We covered all that before. Today we're looking at a fourth job advertising does: it defeats inertia. ...
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Via: The Intercom Blog
COO at @Intercom. I speak & write about UX, Customer Acquisi |
Today I want to respond to the #1 concern I hear from early stage startups: how to get people to find out about your product without having to pay for it. In this post, I'll cover some of the best growth hacks that I've discovered for the acquisition stage of the lean marketing funnel. ...
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Via: GrowHack
Startup polymath, serial entrepreneur, growth hacking expert |
Profitability is one goal that most of the SaaS CEOs who ask me for help all share. Though, while they're all focused on achieving profitability, how that is measured varies from company to company. For the sake of this post we'll consider profitability to be achieved once the Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) have been paid back ...
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Via: SaaS Marketing
I help SaaS and Cloud companies acquire - and keep - more cu |
Let's face it, if you're starting a business, one of your main concerns is going to be growth. It won't matter how great your idea is if you fail to gain any traction. In today's world, there are countless strategies. IN this post 8 Startup Founders Reveal Their #1 User Acquisition Tactic. ...
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Via: Treehouse Blog
User Growth Team Lead @treehouse |
Great marketing is based on a solid understanding of target customers. Here I've shared a customer worksheet that I've used in the past to help me track what is known and not known about my target buyers that I use as a foundation for building a marketing plan. ...
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Via: Rocket Watcher
Co-founder of RocketScope http://rocketscope.com a marketing |
Over the past few months I been fortunate enough to give over a dozen talks at various events and companies about user acquisition, virality and mobile distribution. One of the best parts of the experience is that, without fail, every talk yields a new set of questions and insights that help me learn and refine my own thinking on distribution ...
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Via: Psychohistory
Inevitably optimistic |
Many consumer Internet business executives are loyalists of the Lifetime Value model, often referred to as the LTV model or formula. Lifetime value is the net present value of the profit stream of a customer. This concept, which appears on the surface to be quite benign, is typically used to compare the costs of acquiring customers. ...
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Via: abovethecrowd.com
VC @Benchmark (investor @Twitter), blog: AboveTheCrowd, BOD |
I'm sure you've heard it before, traffic isn't important, targeted traffic is. In this post I'm going to give you some very specific results that show how much you would be missing if you focused solely on traffic volume and not at the type of traffic you are getting. ...
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Via: Think Traffic
Founder of http://webcontrolroom.com (launching soon) and ho |
When I started Visual Website Optimizer, my sole focus was on selling to small to medium businesses (SMB). However, since last two years, we started getting interest from a lot of enterprise prospects. Of course, if a Fortune 500 company contacts your fledgling startup showing interest to purchase your product, you will be very excited about this mini-validation of your product. However, dealing w ...
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Via: Paras Chopra
Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
Growing a business is no easy feat. Every dollar counts. But what if we could “hack” our growth? Instead of paying $20 to acquire a new customer, we could focus on projects that continue to bring us new customers long after we’ve finished the improvement. Paying for the hack once and enjoying growth long after [...] ...
As an entrepreneur, you should assume none of your customers is like you, yet I find that most entrepreneurs assume just the opposite. Customers don't have your technical base, the passion, and interest in your solution. In fact, even if they did, they couldn't find you in the clutter. An underrated portion of every startup effort must be about communication and marketing. ...
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Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
Illustrates graphically why churn is a huge problem a SaaS company gets larger. It also looks at a very surprising factor that can massively accelerate SaaS growth: negative churn. (This article is applicable to any recurring revenue business, not just SaaS. ...
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Via: For Entrepreneurs
Serial entrepreneur turned VC. - Author of forEntrepreneurs |
The idea that customers can't or shouldn't participate much in the innovation process is one barrier to creativity that companies are rapidly knocking down. Many firms are rethinking their businesses, envisioning themselves less as providers of internally-created products and services, and more as platforms that allow customers to create their own experience and value. This new view and way of ope ...
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Bill Lee is a business consultant and professional speaker w |
It was tough deciding to stop working with this customer especially because we could see that other companies were able to meet this customer's needs. They could do it and we couldn't. It is a tough, tough reality to face, but an incredibly valuable one. ...
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Via: vcdave
Investor, operator, and entrepreneur |
Native applications generate organic traffic, at scale. Yes, I know this sounds like a contradiction. In my first blog post on the five sources of traffic, I wrote: The problem with organic traffic is that no one really knows how to generate more of it. Put a product manager in charge of "moving organic traffic up" and you'll see the fear in their eyes. That was true... until recently. ...
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Via: Psychohistory
Inevitably optimistic |
You can't succeed in your new startup if you can't win customers, and the new Internet-empowered customers are tough. They are in control, and they no longer care where or from whom they buy, so here is your chance to win. They do have a specific purchase progression with key milestone moments that determine your win or loss outcome in every transaction. ...
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Veteran startup mentor, executive, blogger, author, tech pro |
It's About Users Touching Non-Users. Look at your product and ask yourself a simple question: which features actually let a user of your product reach out and connect with a non-user? The answer might surprise you. ...
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Via: Psychohistory
Inevitably optimistic |
Here's a very big secret - if you get this it will change your life - there's a very, very small amount of everything you do each day that matters. Figure that out, focus on that and you'll never go to work the same way again. Only a handful of your clients matter when it comes to making money. Figure out who they are and how to amplify what they mean. Make your products, services, processes and v ...
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Via: Duct Tape Marketing
I actually tweet at @ducttape, but I have this account to us |
In my first post in this series I listed a number of criteria I use to evaluate startup ideas. The very first was user acquisition. It and the second one (revenue model) are closely related and, I think, are the easiest way to at least disqualify an idea upfront. ...
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Via: MattMaroon.com
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Often when I meet new SaaS startups they tell me proudly that they have grown their user base without "spending a dime on marketing". While that is a great accomplishment and a testament to the quality of the product (product = marketing for great web services), it does lead me to ask why! ...
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Via: Mark MacLeod
Seed investor for SaaS, e-commerce and other awesome startup |
There's a way for you to make more sales by asking a few simple questions. This strategy is based on some surprising research about the human brain and how it works... and when I share it with you below, you'll realize just how powerful it is for making more sales. ...
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Via: Passive Panda
Entrepreneur. Travel Photographer in 17 countries and counti |
Q: I've read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organization as the first customer for your software. I'm putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I'm developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? 2. How you convinced them to pay up when code review at that stage was nonexistent? ...
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Via: A Smart Bear
Keyword, buzzword, half-truth, adjective, hey look at me! |
This is an interview I've been waiting to do a long time. When I first talked to this guest, I urged him not to do an interview and we both agreed. Now I think it's time to do it... ...
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Via: Mixergy
Startups and Online Marketing enthusiast |
If you think that you are a proud owner of your own online business, think again. We are often ignorant of this harsh truth, yet it’s there – lurking behind like a thief at night. This truth hit me on the head a few weeks back when Twitter shut down my empire of some 130K followers. Then, as… Read the rest of this entry » ...
I pitched a TV show and they loved it. I was going to mike up tables in a restaurant and tape record dates. I would [...] ...
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