I grew a SaaS company to $190K ARR by putting this playbook into use
You've worked hard to build your product idea. Your product is out in the world. But no-one is paying to use your SaaS. The MRR is... recurring at 0. Sound familiar?
I've been there too.
When I launched my company, we toiled and ground it out for years on a direct sales only model and it was gruelling.
We got to $9K MRR after working crazy hard. But the growth was slow. I knew we needed to do something. So I learnt how to use channels that we had never used before to acquire new customers.
We had a Slack bot that played 'Tuscan Leather' by Drake whenever someone signed up. After implementing this, we had to turn it off because it played too often
When I started working out how to move away from the sales only model, the challenge was daunting.
But bit by bit I put into place the fundamentals of the early stage growth playbook for my company.
And here's a couple stats from that period:
Increase revenue from low or no-touch sales 17%
Organic signups up 1330% overall
4x organic signups from content
Pain point content converts at 20% organically
I actually managed to 4x the signups from organic content during this period
My business was generating cash while I slept...
And the acquisition cost was decreasing all the time:
Plus, when I got a better and better understanding of what my customers' pain points were, I was able to create new features that aligned to those clearly.
Here's the result of understanding the customer pain points better:
And the best part is that once the system was up and running, people were converting while I slept
I barely had to speak to anyone to help them turn from free into paid in over 18 months
I mean, look what happened to my funnel:
The best lessons from that period of fast growth are in this playbook so you can print cash too
When there's so much information in the world and growth ideas that you could try, how do you know which ones to use and which ones to skip?
The Early Stage Growth Playbook is a distillation of the best advice I have gathered, tested and seen working in growing an early B2B SaaS company.
Growth doesn't need to be tough. You just need the right strategy. This playbook will help you get it.
Marc Thomas
I'm a marketer with years of experience of growing B2B SaaS businesses.
I work in growth at Podia – that's the platform you're currently using.
Previously I was Head of Growth at a well known B2B SaaS marketing agency. Before that, I ran growth at doopoll where I grew organic conversions by 1000% in 12 months.
Validate your product or you'll waste the most previous commodity – your life
Why validation is genuinely important
The 2 deadly validation mistakes
Running user research interviews that don’t suck
Turning user research into useful stuff
Questions you can ask that don’t lead your interviewees
Tool: User Research Feedback Collector
Tool: Example of User Research Feedback Collector
Narration – Validation
Value Props
Value propositions that are clearly defined are the foundation of your growth in early stage
Why value props matter more than positioning at early-early stage
What’s the difference between value propositions and positioning?
The 4 components of effective value propositions
How to create value propositions with examples
Tool: Value Props Template
Tool: Example of Completed Value Props Template
Narration – Value Props
Message testing
Before building a landing page, test out your message with actual customers
Why you don’t need a website yet
How to test your concept in less than 20 minutes
How to get your first customers at this stage
What to do if you don’t get a good response
Tool: Simple cold outreach template
Narration – Message Testing
Early stage landing pages
Ignore the common wisdom, build a simple landing page
Components of early stage landing pages
Tool: Copy for early stage landing pages
Narration — Early Stage SaaS Landing Pages
Tracking conversion
The least sexy but second most fundamental concept in growth - analytics
Why you should care about tracking conversion
What events you should be tracking
Where you should track progress
Tool: Funnel Data Template
Narration – Tracking Conversion
Getting strangers to buy from you
You've got close contacts to buy. What about people who don't know you?
How to find the places where your prospects are
How to pitch to them without being salesy
Narration – Getting Strangers to buy from you
Tracking conversion: The funnel strikes back
Now that you've got some people going through the funnel, let's start optimizing
Revisiting your conversion tracking is really important
3 real world examples of why this matters
Narration — Tracking conversion: The funnel strikes back
Pain Point Content
If you're getting customers with cold outreach, let's add in some pain point content
Why pain point content works so well
How to come up with pain point ideas
How to write pain point content
Tool: Pain point content blog outline
Thread: How to 10x your value as a marketer with pain point content
Narration – Pain Point Content
Bonus resources
Good stuff that you should check out that didn't fit neatly into the structure of this course
Twitter Summary Thread
Marketing experts you follow on Twitter bought this and here's what they said:
Dev Basu, CEO at Powered By Search (where I'm the Head of Growth) who is responsible for $100Ms of revenue for SaaS companies said:
Alan Silvestri, the link building expert trusted by all the startups you idolise said:
P.s. If you're reading this you're definitely too late for that $80 price tag. Get it today before it goes up again!
Kris Russo bought this course and before he'd even finished it, he said:
$79
Early Stage Growth Playbook
Course
45 Lessons
Getting customers for your early stage B2B SaaS doesn't need to be hard. Walking through the simple to replicate steps in this course will get that MRR number going up and to the right.
