How to market a SaaS when you just want job security

When you’re building a SaaS with background thoughts of “This is the exit plan” 
then you should have a background marketing channel.

Aka part of your marketing you can set and forget so you get paid in your sleep.

Why not make this marketing all the time? 
Because like with all things in life, consistent, strong growth requires iteration, engagement, and a crap ton of work.

But incremental nudges are nice.

Especially when you’re exhausted and have a day job or two kids or are just burnt out refreshing the news. (ugh)

the short fix for this? marketplaces.

I’m not talking about the cesspool that is G2.
(If you can get it to work for you, great, having tried at least 5x with as many products, i wouldn’t bother)

i’m talking about making your SaaS findable in marketplace ecosystems, like App Stores.

Marketplaces can give you effectively pre-qualified traffic searching for exactly the problem you solve.

And you mostly have to build, optimize your listing and then return every-so-often.

Insert tired happy dance here 💃 

Here’s how to choose a marketplace to put your SaaS (or service taste tester) based on the skillsets you’ve got.

If you’re a front-end dev/can visually build products

Code a free complementary tool to drive traffic to your site or unlock one specific feature for free for a limited time, and then require an upgrade to a monthly plan to continue using after.

To quote Vance Lucas, who has a $5K/mo Chrome extension,
“The trick with this extension is that you want the trial time to be long enough to where the user is used to using it all the time and is then annoyed when they can't anymore and have to upgrade (so they are more likely to pay for it).”

And KISS your problems away: Gumroad has a feature that generates license keys for each sale to make the payments part simple for this.

if you have an existing SaaS: This is great for selling the cheapest monthly plan you have or for a low-price annual B2C or prosumer tool (Vance’s tool, BudgetSheet, is $59/yr).

If you’re a back-end dev/can build complicated products

There’s two paths forward here i’ve seen, you can:

build integrations with smaller niche tools that your audience already uses 
Be the only option in the integrations library for a very specific function (for example, the only option for a CRM that syncs with Poplin for service pros (i’m making this up)

Or

build app versions of your tool that specifically work in different ecosystems 
Like being the only app for showing live laundry delivery times for logged in users on a Shopify site (also making this up)

If you think in systems

Marketplaces don’t just extend to apps and integrations.
There’s marketplaces for how-to’s and DIY’s too.

Aka “info products”, which, when done well, are really more of a cross between a course and a system. (and zero sleeze)

Is there a component of the problem your product solves that could be fixed with better organization? or a thought process?

Then build those as organization tools and how-to’s and put them on info-product marketplaces with the keywords in the title and description.

If you’ve peeped my profile on Figma Community, you’ll see I’m a huge fan of this. Here’s the Marketing Plan template i posted in 2022 and have updated every year since. It’s got 100+ users and gets a new one every week.

Two ways you could do this from a monetization standpoint:

1. cold hard cash: sell that system for money. use that money to power your SaaS that needs marketing dollars.

2. pay now, have later: have a pricing option with the digital product + a month of the SaaS you’re building once it launches. generate a user license key so that they’ll have access once it’s launched.

I’ve done both on Gumroad.

You can also see these as leads in the bank. 
collect emails from the free purchase and get them on calls for user interviews. include a CTA in the guide to try the product to fix their problems at the root or in greater scope than an info product could. (this is how i use them, with a few paid exceptions)

I actually did this with Tangram, a marketing plan generator i hacked together that ~100 people on the waitlist and 15 active users before ChatGPT made it hella irrelevant. 😅

Some of y’all are reading this becasue you were on that waitlist. (hiiiii 👋🏽 😁)

In any case, those emails are the gold bars here, plus any cash you make as well.

⚡️ Marketplaces Cheat sheet + Guides to get you going⚡️

Here’s a table of marketplaces to try ranked by monetization potential and skills required.

I’ll be updating it regularly, with links to documentation and successful creators in each niche, so save that link!

If you’re not sure where to start, check out Trends.vc for reports on opportunities, successful creators, and

• Side project marketing (also a common phrase around this)

• Wordpress Plugins

• Shopify Plugins

• Chrome Extensions

• Mobile Apps

• Digital Products

To quote my old roommates bumper sticker “What a time to be barely alive” 😅 

it’s wild out there.
But that’s no reason to lose our (marketing) heads. 🙂 

To quote my mom (who worked in news in the 90’s, so she’s seen a thing or two)

“Once you’ve lived through a few of these kinds of shocks, they each get a little less scary.”

Thanks Mom. 🥰

We’ll see you and your inbox next week!

Cheers!

Sophia ⚡👩🏽‍💻 & Aelia ✨🧕🏽

Powered by remembering that Thai Tea exists 😍 & visiting Chitral on Agency Spring Break (!!) ⛰️

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