From social media marketing to the Internet of Things (IoT), technological advancements have revolutionized the way businesses are conducted today. One such tool that companies can use to grow their businesses is SaaS.
In this article, we’re going to provide all the key benefits and details around SaaS and how you can leverage this growing tool for your business.
But first, let’s just make sure we’re all aware of what SaaS is, then we’ll dive into more details…
What is SaaS? SaaS or ‘Software as a Service’ refers to using internet storage, or the ‘cloud’, to provide software delivery to clients, anywhere, anytime. This achieves advantages such as reducing the costs of the product for the host and provide an easily delivered, ongoing – often subscription-based service to clients.
SaaS is often associated with Cloud computing. In this style of computing, users access the software using a client such as a web browser. SaaS has been adopted by a majority of the leading entrepreneur software companies.
Customers are usually required to pay a subscription fee for permanent access to the software available through the SaaS network.
A SaaS company has a lot of potential for growth in today’s digitally driven world, but of course, in order to achieve a certain level of success and growth, it’s necessary to incorporate appropriate strategies.
The key here is to identify the main problems that might arise in growing your SaaS company. These include the growth of your client base – those that are attracted financially to your solution, and that will use the product being distributed.
Or that perhaps creates an easier solution than what is currently available. One example of this is how graphic design products provided by Adobe and similar companies, became more accessible by users and provided a better solution than buying a boxed product – on an annual subscription basis.
So how does this relate to your business? Well, here are 7 Secrets to Grow your SaaS Company.
1. Focus on the client’s needs
When launching any business, it’s essential to ensure that there’s an appetite for the product or service you’re offering as an on-demand delivered service.
For this, conduct research before putting your plans into practice. It’s best to carry out focused small-scale tests when releasing a product as a service, and not dive headfirst into large business amenities that are untested and unknown.
Ideally, your product needs to be flexible and should focus too on multiple aspects. If your customers find your product difficult to use, it won’t be as popular or successful as you want it to be.
The SaaS system provides a fluid way to perform long term business growth, but in order to be successful you need to maintain long-term relationships with your clients, it’s important, therefore, that you keep them happy.
You can achieve this by setting out good quality products and a value proposition, provide timely support and minimize problems as much as possible.
2. Fast Recovery Versus Fast Release
It’s advantageous to be the first movers, But, also be aware that the first innovators to market are not always the first to the monopoly. Take the example of first movers myspace, who was eventually overtaken by Facebook. The business world is littered with similar examples.
However, don’t just make something and leave it. Nurture and grow your offering. If you see a need for a new product, and there’s a large number of clients willing to use it.
Then develop, test, launch and nurture your offering. Being relentless is largely the key here – or you may find yourself overtaken by those taking on your idea with greater purpose as they learn from your mistakes.
What helps here is gathering responses from your test client base and early adopters regarding any positive or negative issues in your product that you can improve upon.
You can use the information you gather to continually improve your product further and release updates. This will also make sure that your product is at pace with the rapidly developing industry.
3. Attention to Detail
You don’t need to make products that already exist. Focus on expanding your reach to new and improved ideas. Customer feedback will generate new ideas. Using a modular-based product like CommBox enables you to bring all that feedback together in one place and analyze it.
The software doesn’t have to be perfect at first release, Microsoft rarely (if ever) release a perfect first version, they follow it up with numerous updates, fixes and improvements.
But you must be sure to release a stable enough product to gain sufficient reputation and traction in the SaaS market. People will only want to use your software if it’s fit for purpose, and has ease of use, and is “gremlin free”.
Make sure you’re also targeting carefully and investing in the right kind of products. Experiment with your price ranges and reduce the complexity of your sales. If your product is easy to manage, more people will want to use it. Use your loyal customers to grab new ones. You can also try marketing using social media in order to expand your work.
Use innovation to help your business grow. Maintain a balanced workflow and explore new ideas for your future business. It’s crucial for your company’s improvement process to bring forth new and improved products and introduce them to the market as a way to improve profitability.
4. Keep Track of Your CAC and Churn
It’s very important that you find a way to manage your cost and resources in accordance with the number of customers that are using your product.
If you can scale your client, it will help expand your reach further into the industry. In order to do that, you must be aware of the key terms that need to be worked on regarding business.
● CAC
CAC stands for Cost of Acquiring Customer. Understanding CAC is crucial in order to perceive how your SaaS is cost-efficient and how much success it can bring in the future.
It’s a key metric term that can determine how much your company spends in the market. It provides a clear picture and a better perspective and provides a guide as to how to balance costs while slowly guiding you towards a profitable revenue.
CAC is calculated by dividing all the costs spent on acquiring more customers by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent.
For example, if a company spent $100 on marketing in a year and acquired 100 customers in the same year, their CAC is $1.00.
Keeping track of CAC will allow you to manage your expenses properly and will help you avoid spending too much without the return of anything profitable. This an area where increasing productivity and reducing touchpoints is useful. CommBox has out of the box features that enable you to scale while maintaining lower costs. Why not ask us how CommBox can help your SaaS business.
● Churn
Churn means the percentage at which customers are canceling their subscriptions to your software. The percentage is your churn rate so the lower the churn rate is, the better your software is doing.
The longer your customers are subscribed to your product, the more important they are for your company.
Keep track of your churn and make sure it stays at the lowest possible rate. When your churn value is reduced your LTV (lifetime value) automatically increases – which means that your average revenue of your customer staying in your client circle is increased.
Your customers are basically what keep your company going …so even if you’re unable to gain new customers for some time, your long-term clientele will make sure the money keeps flowing.
5. Teamwork with the Management
The success of a company isn’t based on one single person. Every single person of the company needs to work as a united organism so that their product may succeed no matter the numbers.
A huge reason for failure in the SaaS business is that management teams lack strength in areas like faith, persistence, and conviction. Your management should be smart, efficient, creative, and productive in order to drive through change and product implementation and overcome challenges.
They should be aware of what they’re working towards and be able to adapt to all manner of changes that are required to be made in the product.
The direction in which your SaaS business grows depends heavily on the management. It seems clear that the developer team looks like they do all the work but that is not the case.
It’s the management team that uses their skill to understand and operate the target market, execute strategies in order to acquire more customers and find out ways to ensure the growth of the company basically ensuring the health of a company.
If you have a good management team, they will hire great employees. Good employees mean good products and therefore, good business.
6. Find a scalable way to acquire new users
With SaaS being a flexible and relatively easy startup model – alongside the successful ventures of this method make people assume that acquiring new customers will be easy.
Having a good and useable product does not necessarily mean that customers will merely show up and sign up.
While it’s true for a small number of companies that have started, it’s not the norm, the process of getting customers for your product can prove to be the most difficult, and the most expensive one.
Of course, you’ll need to attain a continuous customer base for your company to grow. Customers will want to know if what they’re getting into is worth the cost.
To aid in this process, you can offer trials along with a satisfaction guarantee. This guarantee may include a refund during a specific period after the original purchase.
This is for if the customer isn’t satisfied with what your product has to offer. Although it sounds like a disadvantage, it will attract more customers as they’ll feel that it’s a safer purchase – especially if your product is introducing something new into the market
You must also give plenty of attention to your pricing. Customers can be savvy, and many will want to know just about all the details down to the last feature.
Looking at your pricing from a third-person perspective can help immensely. Maybe you need to up the quality? Or perhaps your product appearance needs further modifications?
An “out of the box” thinking approach can prove very useful when it comes to improving your business. Anything that can help attract more customers to your product must be carefully considered and put to the test.
7. Advertising is key
Use of marketing strategies like advertisements can prove to be extremely helpful when it comes to attaining more clients.
Goes without saying, advertising is essential to help a business grow …by attracting new customers and generating awareness, therefore, allowing you to sell more products.
The more people that look at your product, the more will buy it and that, in turn, should provide a significant increase in profits.
Demonstrating an ROI on advertising is difficult, so use your team’s knowledge and gauge product uptake to understand if an advertising route is working.
Advertising, marketing and general promotion can also help you attract possible business investment that may help your business reach levels you did not realize were possible. It’s also a good sharing platform. If your product is as good as advertised, people will be talking about it …letting other people know about it which therefore wants to use the product as well.
You can use various methods of advertisement. Video ads can help your customers know how to use your product for example, LinkedIn ads can be used to target competitive company audiences.
Companies that use Ad tech are more likely to succeed in attaining long term clients, therefore, increasing the overall revenue.
To finish…
If you’re ready to scale your SaaS business and need to incorporate all the platforms that you’re leveraging to attract customers, then you can easily combine them all together in CommBox, bringing the power of a single platform to your business, reducing costs and being more responsive to your potential customers.