9 Growth Hacking Ideas for your SaaS Business
9th December 2015
Growth hacking is about investing in more creative ways to get your business talked about. Those who have tried it swear by it and, particularly for technology and SaaS companies, it is becoming an essential part of the overall marketing strategy.
We’ve compiled nine great ways you can utilise growth hacking to grow your user base.
1. Encourage sign ups
Gaining email sign ups is a straightforward way of building your database. There are some very simple ways to encourage visitors to acquire subscribers, including a welcome gate, competitions, a sticky widget, and giving something away. You can also try viral sign up: incentivising subscribers to share the form with friends.
2. Create an influencer list
Quick growth, particularly on social media, is aided by networking with people who already have a large following. Create a list of influential people in your industry and start to engage with them. Once you’ve built up a relationship, share content with them that you’ve created and that they’ll find useful.
3. Easter eggs
Easter eggs worked for Snapchat and Apple, and work well to create buzz around your products. These little extras – games or features, for example – will get discussions and sharing going in the community, helping your brand to shine above the others.
4. Develop great content
It’s time consuming, but great content can help to drive growth. Whitepapers, graphs, webinars, case studies – all can be useful to the consumer and therefore valuable to your SaaS business when it comes to reaching a wider audience.
5. Utilise custom lists
Custom lists are a way of targeting your audience at specific stages of the buying cycle and tailoring ads based on buying behaviour. More importantly for growth, they can also be used to create a list of lookalikes who can then be targeted with relevant ads.
6. Abandoned basket discounts
This is something that works for LinkedIn, and gives some of those consumers who abandon their basket before purchase an extra nudge to convert. Sending an email offering a 10% discount for purchase often persuades people to make the purchase.
7. Stop Press
It’s a little old school, but getting into prominent publications can help you to grow fast. Being featured on a site like TechCrunch can send your traffic soaring.
8. Set up a drip campaign
Previously adopted by WP Engine, drip campaigns enable you to communicate with warm leads via emails, thus keeping your business in their minds. Every so often, give them a reason to convert, such as an exclusive, limited time offer.
9. Focus on experience
Finally, part of growth hacking is giving people a reason to keep using your product, and indeed, advocate it. On-going product development and a focus on customer experience will ensure both loyalty and support.
At Xander Marketing, we work with SaaS businesses to ensure that developing a reputation and marketing strategy that supports growth hacking represents a key component of promotional activity. For your free one-hour consultation on how we can help develop and refine a marketing strategy to support your business, simply contact us today.
