A guide for SaaS founders

Follow the steps in the right order. The first step is the most important. The better you execute it, the more effective all your other marketing activities will become. It also makes it much easier to delegate your marketing or use AI tools effectively.

Step 1: Make your SaaS attractive

You need to present and position your SaaS in a way that makes people instantly think, “This is exactly what I need right now.” When you achieve that, your conversion rate can increase significantly. If you ignore this, no marketing channel or tactic will perform well. The SaaS market is highly competitive, and attention spans are too short for solutions that feel like a nice-to-have.

Target the highest-value use cases

To make your SaaS more attractive, you need to focus on the most valuable use cases. For example, if you offer a chatbot that answers website visitors’ questions, you could target life coaches who receive around 20 to 200 visitors per month, or e-commerce stores that attract tens or hundreds of thousands.

The difference in value is significant. The same SaaS might help life coaches gain a few additional clients per year, while it could help e-commerce businesses generate a few additional clients every day.

Your website has seconds to convince

Your website is a key driver of customer acquisition. It needs to capture attention within seconds, then build trust and address any potential concerns.

Go deeper with our free e-course

If you would like to learn more about making your SaaS attractive, you can subscribe to our free e-course. We will send you one lesson per week by email, including a video and step-by-step instructions.

Step 2: Build relationships and learn from your target audience

Many founders want to generate revenue as quickly as possible, so they immediately try to scale their promotion. They send thousands of cold emails, run ads to large audiences, or fully delegate marketing to freelancers or agencies.

The problem is that they often lack a deep understanding of their target audience, their language, and their real needs. As a result, they end up wasting significant resources on ineffective campaigns.

Learn before you scale

A better approach is to start small and learn. Talk to prospects directly. Send fewer, highly personalized messages based on real interactions.

You will learn much more about what works and what does not. Later, it becomes much easier to create scalable messages that perform well.

Here are the optimal channels for step 2:

Get the system behind hundreds of successful SaaS launches

We dive deeper into that topic in our free course. Sign up in seconds and immediately receive your first lesson. I share the steps that have worked for hundreds of other SaaS startups.

Step 3: Be where people are already searching for products like yours

The easiest sale happens when someone is already looking for a solution. Converting someone who searches "chatbot for my website" is far easier than interrupting someone on social media.

Here are the optimal channels for step 3:

Get a curated list of the best software directories

As part of our free email course, you will receive a curated list of the most authoritative software directories. You can submit your SaaS to gain free exposure.

Step 4: Cold outreach as a fast alternative

Cold outreach can be very effective for software startups with limited resources and a clearly defined target audience. While it often has a negative reputation due to spam, it can work well when done correctly.

But most startups do it wrong. Cold outreach carries the least trust. You cannot ask a stranger to spend their time on you, even if the product is free. Start small: give value, build a little trust, then gradually work toward bigger asks like a free trial or a conversation.

Here are the optimal channels for step 4:

The tools you need for cold outreach

You do not need to figure out the tools on your own. In the free course, we include a curated list of proven cold outreach tools. From finding prospects to sending personalized messages at scale. We cover what works, what to skip, and how to connect the pieces.

Step 5: Build authority for people who are not searching yet

Not everyone is looking for a solution right now. For those people, you need to plant the idea, build trust over time, and stay visible. When they are ready to act, you want to be the product they think of first.

The mistake most startups make is trying to reach as many people as possible and hoping some will sign up. For most of those people, your brand is one of hundreds they saw that day. Forgotten in minutes. A better approach: stay in touch with a smaller group of the right people and engage with them regularly over time.

Here are the optimal channels for step 4:

Turn strangers into buyers, step by step

Getting attention is one thing. Earning trust is another. In the free course, we dive deep into both: how to build relationships off your website through outreach and content, and how your website itself can turn visitors into customers.

Dive deeper with our free course

On this website, I provide a clear overview of the most important steps in SaaS marketing. If you want to go deeper, fully understand the concepts, and implement everything step by step, I recommend signing up for our free course.

Each week, you will receive a lesson by email with a video and practical instructions to help you apply it.

The goal of this course is to give SaaS founders a real chance of success, regardless of their resources or marketing experience.

Our course helps you with the following: