Editor's Guide: Most of SaaS belongs to the vertical field, the user scale is relatively small, and may be relatively scattered. So, how should such a SaaS brand be promoted? The author of this article has analyzed this and hopes to help you.
Many people say that they don't know how to promote SaaS, in fact, the main reason is that many SaaS are vertical, the user scale is relatively small, and may be relatively scattered. Using types of products is actually better to promote, such as DingTalk, and the volume of enterprise WeChat users is very large.
The vertical field itself is not large in terms of users, such as education, real estate, catering, technology, etc., each field has many points, and a product may only do one of the points, so it is very subdivided. Like general products, the effect is often very unsatisfactory.
Vertical field means that there is a threshold, not everyone understands this field, it is difficult to recruit people, the right people are few, many companies recruit people as long as people in this industry, without this industry experience, resumes can not pass. Also compound talents, such as the recruitment of market departments, for products with low thresholds, if you recruit people, you only need to have market skills, you don't need him to have industry experience, but for products in vertical fields, recruiting people not only needs market ability, but also has industry experience, and even requires resources.
There are very few people in the industry and the requirements for skills are high. If you are a product with a particularly high threshold, then you are very difficult to recruit, I have met many friends, some of them are difficult to find the right person when starting a business, such as some databases or technical products, they even need these market operations to understand technology, often recruited for several months can not be recruited, in fact, there is no such person in the market!
A friend is doing technology SaaS is a very niche product, is a vertical industry within the subdivision of the field. They did a very poor job in the market, because the market did not understand technology, could not recruit people, so they asked me what to do? So today, let's talk about how to promote vertical products?
Vertical product promotion has several problems:
The first problem is that their users are also relatively vertical, and it is difficult to obtain them on a large scale like the C-side. In some C-end traffic channels, it is like finding a needle in a haystack, and it cannot be fished for half a day, and the effect is very poor.
The second problem is that customers are demanding of the product, and if you can't meet their needs well, then they will leave your product very quickly. If there is a substitute, they will choose a substitute, if not then they do not use the product. One of their core points is specific scenarios, and if you don't understand these scenarios, then your product is a failed product.
So how exactly should vertical SaaS be promoted? Let's see what is done abroad! A SaaS expert abroad conducted a statistic on the traffic data of the top 50 SaaS product websites in the United States.
The largest source of traffic is generally direct login, this part is actually mainly a smorgasbord of traffic that cannot be well counted, branding or content marketing and other aspects of traffic.
Secondly, in order of traffic share: organic search, recommendations, email marketing, social media, sem, digital advertising. This ratio doesn't really make much sense, because different product channels may be completely different, and the actual effect is difficult to match this ratio, but if you try it, it may be effective.
For example, the domestic and foreign environments are not the same, and mail is doing better abroad, but it is basically not doing particularly well in China.
After my investigation and my own experience, this is basically some of these promotion methods in China, after all, we are all scholars. But there are still some differences between the proportion of domestic and foreign, the main domestic channels are mainly: content marketing, SEM, SEO, advertising, exhibitions.
These channels, can do a good job is already very good, some companies do everything, but all do very badly. A friend said that their company's market mainly does SEM, but the SEM jump rate is as high as 70%, it can be said that the money is spent in vain!
Briefly talk about these channels:
Content marketing is a top priority, arguably the best and most cost-effective way! But it is also a difficult path, to understand the product, understand the user, have the ability to output text, understand the platform traffic logic, if the content marketing is done well, there is no problem in doing other things. ps: For content marketing you can check out my previous article.
SEM many companies are doing, but many say that the effect is not good, the domestic and foreign environment is different, foreign Google is still relatively good, a certain degree in the country I will not say it! How to say it? If you understand it, you can do it, if you don't understand it, there is really no need to do it, it is completely adrift.
SEO is a very important channel, do a good job of official website to do a good job of content, the traffic of this channel is very large, and the quality is very high, the most important thing is that this is basically free.
Advertising channels, if you are a very vertical product, you can go to the vertical website to advertise. There is no need to go to the C-end platform to advertise, a few of my friends told me that they are advertising on Douyin, advertising in the headlines, filling out the form is basically the wrong user, with a local accent basically can not communicate. However, in the C-end, such as vibrato, headlines do content marketing, it is not bad to spend money.
The exhibition is a partial offline channel, if your product is really good, or you have connections, go to it is not bad. If there is none, it is to hit the soy sauce, the basic effect is 0!
Speaking of connections, this is too important for b-end companies, there are many things that can be very simple on the B-side, and some companies make money by networking. China has always been a humane society, and the b-end is relatively closed, many things will not be made public, and without connections, many sales will become a foil.
These channels can be tried by everyone, but one of the core of promotion is the cost of customer acquisition. If your customer acquisition cost is relatively low, then you can do these channels, if the cost of customer acquisition in these channels is relatively high, you must consider it carefully, can you reduce costs, and how about the quality of the clues? If it really doesn't work, stop. Generally a channel, test 1-20,000 can know how the effect is?
After the acquisition of customers, the core consideration is the input-output ratio. It is necessary to verify whether it can be profitable at an early stage of the product, which determines whether the product has a future. If the output can cover the input, then the channel can be invested for a long time; if the output is much smaller than the input, try to optimize the advertising investment or can not achieve the input coverage output, then you have to consider stopping the channel!
Of course, many domestic products will continue to burn money for financing in the case of output far less than input. A phenomenon often seen is: a foreign product development is good, domestic imitation, products have become an outlet, and then domestic imitators crazy money burning but the effect has not been good, or get a lot of investment!
But I dare to say that this kind of product is not far away, many products burn money to seize the market, but found that they can not be profitable, can only step by step to die. Because the SaaS product itself has a low unit price, various operating costs will become very large after the number of users is large, especially those products with low customer unit price cannot afford it.
Sometimes you will find that a good product is really too important, and a good product is first and foremost a product that is welcomed by the market, not a product welcomed by capital. A good product is the best place to start, polish your product well!
This issue says so much, I hope it is useful to everyone! Welcome to like comments and forward!
Author: Traffic Planet, WeChat: yyxmw007, focusing on SaaS growth case sharing, content marketing practical experience.
This article was originally published by @Traffic Planet on everyone is a product manager, and reprinting without permission is prohibited.
The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.