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SaaS Go-to-market Framework

2009 August 19
tags: ,
by Coach Wei

OK, you are building a great SaaS company that will change the world. How do you actually get there?

Ok, so we have to think really hard about how to go to market. What is the framework that one should follow? Here is a list of things that I have been thinking about  as a guiding framework – really look forward to comments and appreciate feedback (I admit that I’m an idiot and are still learning the basic grammars):

  1. Market Visibility – you want your firm to be heard and to be known in its target marketplace.  Traditional marketing would aim for visibility as well, though the means to get there may be different. So what are the means that you are going to take to make your SaaS service visible?
  2. Positive Branding – you want your firm to be associated with a positive reputation, thought leadership, and credibility. If someday customers start to “verbalize” your company’s name, and if it is done in a positive way, you are doing a great job here.

    Again, traditional marketing would aim for the same as well,  though the means to get there may be different.

  3. Lead Generation – of course, you want to generate leads. Further, you would want to develop “some auto filtering mechanism” that would hopefully produce qualified leads. A key indicator of a well designed sales and marketing machine for a SaaS company is the capability to (continuously) lower  customer acquisition cost.
  4. Close New Business – Yes, you want to close business. Hopefully you can do so without sending an army of sales people and using up 50% of Boston lawyers.
  5. Retain customers – monitor customer renewal rate closely and make sure the company understand and invest resources to compel your existing customers that they always come back and want more.
  6. Virality - This may not be relevant to all SaaS offerings, but it is something totally worth thinking about. If your offering is viral, leverage the hell out of it. If your offering is not viral, think of viral ways that can help you do all the above.

from → software business model, startup

  • http://NA Mark

    1) Market visibility is going to be a function of context. This is something to think about as a traditional approach ( perhaps many years old at this point ) would be to make sure your service was AVAILABLE thru various marketplaces ( StrikeIron ) – but, more importantly, make sure your adding value where you are contextually relevant …

    2) Positive Branding – Well – you called it out. Thought leadership via whitepapers, ACTIONALBE/USABLE docs/frameworks that actually HELP your customers success WITHOUT YOU. Yes, that seems like the WRONG way to go, BUT when you are trying to capture marketshare, if you help others – you help yourself

    3) Emmmm … Coach, you already know this one. Its “Community”. To lower the cost of customer acqusition you need to “package” either products or services as something “easiler consumable”. If a customer understands and can easily adopt/consume your solution – you’re in. Period. Everything, and I mean everything is a product and you need to price it, market it, of even ‘give it away’ as a product. More to follow …

    4) I’m going to sire a very old EMC logo that I saw on their wall in 1987-8-9 ( somewhere around there ). The motto, at that time, was “It’s the product”. Screw the marketing. Screw the advertising. If the dam thing WORKS, it will sell itself. Now that’s an engineer talking :-) – but THAT WORKS!!!!!

    5) Its called “value”. When you can “add value”, you’ve got a customer for life. When you legitimatly invest in your customer, your return will far outweigh your ivnestment.

    6)Emmmmm … applicable in the B2C space. More difficult to attain in the B2B world.

  • http://www.RTMAsia.com Jeremy Geiger

    I will respond with respect to global sales.

    Many US SaaS vendors think that with SaaS anyone in the world can find their solution (Google), get a demo (WebEx) and purchase (PayPayl). This is a simplistic view. Let’s give a couple of very basic comments with respect to 2nd and 3rd largest economies in the world (Japan and China).

    LANGUAGE: If your target users is searching for a product, they are going to enter search terms in the own local language. Furthermore, they probably can’t(or dont want to) read an English web-site and they are not going to want to listen to an English demo.

    SUPPORT: If you were a buyer, would you put your reputation on the line by recommending to your boss, a product which had no presence in US had no English documentation and no English support? I don’t think so and the same is true (if not more so) the other way around. So what are your options? You could invest in setting up a local subsidiary in every local country, rent office space in each country, hire staff in each country, deal with local regulations and taxes, etc. or you can use a local partner.

    This post is already getting long, but indicates that the myth about being SaaS and hence immediately having a global market, is not completely true.

    Jeremy Geiger
    http://www.RTMAsia.com

  • http://www.coachwei.com Coach Wei

    Thanks Mark. In particular, I haven’t thought of “HELP your customers success WITHOUT YOU” – I guess the point there is help customers succeed, and in turn, hopefully they will need you at some point of time.