SaaS product launches are a little interesting because they’re not like a commerce product launch. You don’t have a big launch party, physical stores to introduce new products in, and your crowd isn’t likely surfing Instagram influencers’ profiles for your latest. Cheaper? Sure. Easier? Absolutely not.
You have to be present when your customer looks for a solution to their problem, present your value right away, and teach them how to use your product. And do all of this, seemingly, at the same time.
The success of your product’s launch is dependent on how well you do these things. And not just during your launch, on a continuous basis. It’s highly likely your product will develop and go through several changes and stages.
As a team, we’ve launched three SaaS products now.
Here are our top five tips for successfully launching a product:
Collect feedback and user data at all points.
Product launches shouldn’t be a finite process. You should be constantly updating your approach, your user experience, and even your product as you do to ensure you’re positioned right and are what potential customers are looking for. Be sure to be tracking and actively checking data from all points of the process to determine where you can improve and where problems are so you aren’t dumping money into driving traffic to an ineffective site. If you can, also collect users’ opinions. One tool you can use to do this very easily is Beamer, a newsfeed for updates that sits within your site or app interface. In a Beamer feed, users can leave comments and reactions like Facebook. It’s a really easy way to test the waters on just about anything. Early visitors and users are a wealth of information and you need to take advantage of what they’re directly and indirectly telling you for a successful launch and continual growth.
Reward your initial customers to build loyalty.
As mentioned, your initial customers are of indisposable value to you. Loyal customers are your best marketing tool for organic growth. Their recommendation to other potential users just like them is something you should be consistently encouraging. One happy customer can create up to nine referrals. It takes little effort, really, on your part to reward users and get them on your team. A few companies have successfully launched and grown quickly organically by putting effort into this. For example, Dropbox rewarded initial users for the first few months after launch with extra storage space for inviting other users to sign up. It’s a small gesture that sparked literal thousands of high quality referrals for no cost.
Provide substantial support and a personal touch.
Especially with a SaaS product launch, the likelihood is that you’re not launching a perfect, final product. You may be working with a beta version with room for improvement. Users will get frustrated if you are not there to help with questions or if there is not ample information available. Be prepared to have the capacity to take questions and handle personal communication with customers and potential customers when you launch and as you grow. Being know for going a little extra to provide support and personally help out helps demonstrate the value in just not your product, but your brand. In fact, 82% of customers are willing to pay more if they know there is ample and personal support.
Have a resourceful and relevant site ready for traffic.
If you take a look at some of the top SaaS companies websites and you’ll see so much more than just pricing and CTAs. Your site should not just help potential customers in buying your product, it should prove that your company is authoritative in your industry and can help them solve the overall problems they’re seeking help with. Your website should be a place for truly valuable information and solutions. You can do this with a focused content strategy and building up content based on your potential customers biggest questions and problems. An example of a site that does a great job at this is Hubspot. Hubspot has an archive of content to help users not only use their product but tackle their overall sales and marketing problems. They’ve become a trust source for all things sales and marketing. The other benefit is that potential customers spend much more time on your page when there is helpful and relevant content which gives you a better shot at getting them to click through to purchasing and improves your bounce rate.
Update users and provide relevant information with Beamer.
When users first get to your site, even a well designed landing page can miss important information. Especially when you’re constantly putting in effort to marketing and directing traffic to your site, you want to make sure that you’re engaging potential customers as well as possible. Provide them with interesting content, updates, etc. to keep them engaged. As mentioned before, Beamer is a newsfeed that sits within your site or app interface where users can go for new interesting information and updates anytime. Use Beamer to create a feed of updates and helpful information for users with photos, video,s GIFs, links and CTAs to keep them exploring your product. It’s perfect for tutorials and sharing tips on how to use your product with users to improve the onboarding process. The more familiar with your product and the value the more likely they are to adopt and stay on board long term. You also get a ton of data on what users like and what users don’t like with Beamer Analytics.
Making sure to cover a few of the bases mentioned here can help your product launch be successful. For a way to provide your potential customers with updates and information in one central place, try Beamer on your website.
Ps. Did you like this post? If so check out this blog “A Product Launch Communications Plan in 5 Steps”.
