Best Way To Advertise SaaS? Your Competitors!
Very few SaaS tools use their competition to build KPI around what it has already done. Paradoxically, many founders are running away from the competition, trying to use new niches by force, hoping for rapid growth and expansion. The truth is, however, that statistically it is easier for you to develop your tool in the market that has been already settled than to create a new niche, but more on this in another entry.
This entry is dedicated to all Indie Hackers who develop side projects because this will enable them to quickly validate their projects and acquire paying customers. All this with a minimum of marketing activities – the way India Hackers like it the most 😎.
Warning: Even if you are not a typical Indie Hacker and your tool is not a side-project, you can still take advantage of these tips! Especially if you don’t use sales building or other marketing activities that use your competition in your marketing strategies.
Why competition?
Building a strategy of growth based on competition has its pros and cons, below I will present them briefly to provide the context and prove the validity of this strategy.
Key aspect:
We aim to attract our target audience with the least effort.
We have limited resources in the form of a budget and we want quick effects of our activities.
Other aspects:
Pros:
+the cost of reaching a new customer
Considering all marketing activities – comparing time, cost and scope – competition-based activities will have the best ratios because we get everything ready-made and handed to us, and we try to win a customer whom our competition has already educated, not having to deal with all the hardship, time and tons of other problems that our competition had to go through.
+quality lead we get
Lead, which we will try to acquire, has previously used a tool similar to ours, therefore a larger percentage of acquisitions will be successful, e.g. by paying for a subscription. In the case of acquiring customers who have never used a tool of our type before, a much higher percentage of acquisitions will fail.
+customer acquisition time
This is the subpoint of the point above but is just as important. Turning that type of lead into a paying customer takes the least time compared to all of the possible ways. This is because we don’t need to worry about the whole process of education.
Cons:
-limited customer volumes
The number of leads is limited depending on the competitiveness and development of the market in which you operate, but I have never encountered a situation where this number would be insufficient. In addition, remember that building sales through competition is designed for a startup entering the market to catch the wind in its sails, and not to complement the strategy of an already operating saas tool or be the final strategy 🚀.
-non first-mover advantage
The problem of building growth on competition is the fact that we are creating a new market segment (the so-called blue ocean), which means that the dynamics of growth is very limited because of the creation of a new prospective industry, but I will say it again:
Remember that building sales through competition is designed for a startup entering the market to catch the wind in its sails, and not to complement the strategy of an already operating saas tool or be the final strategy 🚀.
Three levels of competition
Below I have prepared a simplified division of competition. In our activities, we primarily include direct competition, because such marketing activities will be the most effective. While indirect and further competition are also worth considering, for these you would have to strongly modify the strategy that I have described here, as it will not be effective.
1. Direct competition
This is a competition that has very similar products to ours.
For example, for Evernote, direct competition is Microsoft OneNote.
Direct competition is a twin tool to ours, i.e., a competitive tool for storing text, graphic or voice notes for Evernote is Microsoft One, because it contains a twin functionality, and tries to solve the same problem.
2. Indirect competition
It is a competition that offers different solutions than ours but focuses on solving the same problem. And so for Evernote, indirect competition could be either Notion or Airtable. These tools do not directly offer the same functionality, but they both also focus on managing, i.a. notes.
3. Further competition
It is a competition that is neither similar to us nor focuses on solving the same problem as us. Usually, it provides a tool that is used (against the authors’ original idea) to solve a problem that we are also trying to solve. For example, tools like Microsoft Word, Google Docs or Windows Notepad are in such a competition with Evernote. These applications are text editors, but they are also used by many people to take notes.
[Don’t forget] Stand out or die out
When trying to “pick up” customers from competitors, you must remember to make your tool stand out from the competitive solution. Speaking of distinguishing features I do not mean a 180 degrees change, or reinventing the wheel. It can be a more attractive graphical interface, better (not necessarily cheaper!) price plan, or new mini-functions allowing better use of the tool, for the sake of which customers will be willing to migrate to a new solution.
The Five Best Ways To Advertise SaaS
OK, since I bored you with the basics because I want you to understand the idea of the following activities well, we can now move on to specific strategies that you can use today in your projects.
P.S.
The order is not random 😎
1. Prepare a special landing page
If customers are looking for an alternative, similar solutions to those they currently use, they usually type in the search bar phrases like:
– “app name alternative”
– “app name competitors”
– “app name similar …”
The first step is to prepare the appropriate landing page (preferably one landing page per tool), in which you can easily and clearly explain why your solution is the one worth choosing. Below are three examples of well-made landing pages that will serve as inspiration:
https://www.notion.so/evernotehttps://usersnap.com/alternatives/hotjar-alternative
https://www.drift.com/drift-vs-intercom/
Then this type of landing page will be promoted through four sources:
a) Google Ads Through Google Ads, we will be able to set campaigns for selected keywords redirecting to our landing page. Thanks to the preparation of a special landing page, the quality of our campaign will be evaluated very high by the Google algorithm. That, in turn, will make the rate for clicking on the advertisement much lower than if we were to direct the advertisement to the main page, etc., not to mention the conversion itself.
b) SEO In addition to paid search engine results, we will also use our landing page in SEO to make it appear in organic results. Search Engine Optimization, compared to Google Ads, is a more complex process, so consult it with your SEO specialist.
c) Other paid ads activities In addition to Google search, the prepared landing page usually uses ads in GDN (Google Display Network), as well as social media, directing the ad by keywords such as:
– “tool name” + “alternative” etc.
– “tool name” + “similar” etc.
– “tool name” + “competitors” etc.
d) Customer communication
Personally, I also use the prepared landing page in communication with the client, as an additional sales material, if in the conversations with the client the name of a competitive tool is mentioned, etc. This point is so cool because I have consistency in marketing and sales materials, as opposed to several different versions for individual departments.
2. Add SaaS to the tool directory
Recently, catalogs and comparison tools for saas tools have become very popular.
Luckily for us, very few tools have a well-optimized profile in these types of catalogs, which is another niche for us to take advantage of.
Top 4 catalogs by traffic and visibility on Google:
https://www.producthunt.com
https://alternativeto.net
https://alternative.me
https://www.slant.co
Why these four catalogs?
a) their results most often appear in phrases by entering phrases such as:
– “tool name” + “alternative” etc.
– “tool name” + “similar” etc.
– “tool name” + “competitors” etc.
b) they have a very visible alternative module for a given tool
You can find the entire list of popular catalogs here:
https://www.saasydigital.com/saas-directories/http://www.demandgenerationpro.com/list-of-software-review-directories/
https://www.saasgrowthhacker.com/2018-best-saas-directories-and-review-websites/
How to use such catalogs?
a) add your tool along with a complete description and photos
b) complete the profile with appropriate categories and competitive products
c) regularly remind customers to add comments and vote on your product
d) over time, your tool will appear in the first positions as the most recommended!
3. Follow mentions of your competitors
Another good practice is to monitor mentions of competition through such tools as Mention or Google Alert. They add appropriate passwords that we will monitor, thanks to which we get up-to-date information on the results found, which include the passwords we monitor.
For example, typically in my actions, I monitor such phrases as:
a) “tool name” For this type of entries, the results that appear are most often associated with press notes, mentions, etc. I always try to find opportunities to put there the product of the client that I support, e.g. if it is a ranking of tools for taking notes, etc.
b) “tool name” (“similar” | “alternative” | competitor “)
For this type of entries, there are results most often associated with questions about “what tool to choose” etc. Here the best practice is to register in a given forum and objectively, without excessive self-promotion, answer the question and win customers 😉
4. Activity on Quora, Facebook Groups, LinkedIn, etc.
Another point is the continuous activity in social media in key groups for our product, on such portals as, Quora, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. For this type of groups, I choose not to promote my product directly. I just participate actively in these types of groups, answer questions asked by users, thus building the image of an expert, and if a user happens to need a service with which I am related, sooner or later, they will use it themselves and recommend it further (the so-called win-win principle).
5. Get inspired through the competitors feedback board
Many SaaS tools have their own public community to report improvements etc. For example, aHrefs) uses the canny) tool, which lets you set up a community. Other tools often use boards on trello).
In cooperation with many clients, we carry out regular analysis of competition development boards and we search for ideas that will help to develop our product and allow us to use this feature as a bargaining chip in advertising messages, etc.
Some competitor does not want to implement a given functionality, despite many requests from its users (probably due to a different vision of the product etc). I have seen this multiple times with my clients and we used it as an edge over the competitors. In those situations, when introducing a new tool to the market, we communicated those functions that we implemented before the start of the campaign, while the idea for the functionality was taken from the client’s open roadmap 🐯. Needless to say, the effectiveness of this type of activity was very high.
Summary
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