When you launch any Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business, you try and do as much research beforehand into what worked well for other businesses in your position and what tactics to avoid. In this article, I aim to share what happened with our product launch and hopefully you can learn from our experience.

Tip 1

Engage your audience before you launch

The old adage “Build it and they will come” is completely false. Content marketing has been a big focus for us from day one. When we created the business in March of this year, we were straight into writing blog posts to build up our organic traffic to the website. We also offered whitepapers and guides to all kinds of pricing strategies.  This meant that we had a ready-made database of contacts to target during our product launch who were interested in the world of pricing.

Tip 2

Launch your product in stages 

There does come a time when you have to push the button and show the world your product, but I don't agree with initially launching to your entire list - and this view "saved our bacon"! We opted to release our product in six stages before activating the ‘Start Your 30-Day Free Trial’ button on our website. 

We initially sent our product sign-up email to a small group of contacts. It was a good opportunity to get some early feedback from people who have your best interests at heart - before launching to our entire list.

Using this approach we were able to spot an issue with the sign-up process. If we had not used this staged launch approach, we most certainly would have had a large user base try and fail to get an account, which is something you don’t want.

Tip 3

Be prepared to experiment with your pricing

As a pricing company, we often preach that pricing is a journey and you need to be prepared to test different pricing options. When we launched, we tried to keep things simple with three pricing tiers to reflect the value our product provides. The price points were also backed by knowledge I had gained from selling pricing technology earlier in my career.  However, from the feedback we received from early adopters of our product, its simplicity also meant we were alienating certain user groups.

Therefore, we updated our pricing page to give customers more flexibility - a smaller, scaled base price dependent on how many products you would be managing and how many users you have.  This led to an increase in conversions and conversations who wanted to know more about our product.

Tip 4

Have video instructions

We launched with an online text manual with accompanying screenshots - all available on our online training academy.  However, it's a lot easier to show than tell!!  After some initial fedback, we launched videos alongside the text instructions, demonstrating how our software worked.  This resulted in happier customers who progressed further along their trial.

If you are launching your own SaaS business we hope that some of these tips are of help.  Please do share your own experiences with us at @blackcurveHQ. We’d love to hear from you!