Q:  What Strategies Are Working Now?

Many of us are struggling now; a minority are “Covid Beneficiaries”; and most are somewhere in the middle in SaaS.  Parts of your businesses are struggling, but other parts are doing OK, and some segments are even doing well.

What are some strategies that are working now in this new environment?  5 thoughts to maybe think about:

  1. Real Free Editions.  SaaS has sort of come back already, even if the economy overall hasn’t.  The world is different, however.  Buyers have more time for discovery now.  But in many cases, budgets are still in transition or on hold.  What can work well now when buyers have more time is a great Free Edition.  Not crippleware.  Not a free trial.  But a truly awesome Free Edition that a ton of your pipeline can use right now, even if they can’t get budget yet.  If they love it, and use it … they will convert.  At some point.  It’s worked for Zoom and Slack.
  2. Focusing on Segments That Are Thriving.  Not enough SaaS companies have segmented their sales teams and marketing efforts into Green, Yellow and Red market segments.  Maybe not even most of you, not really.  Customers in travel and events are deeply hurting, and maybe there isn’t even a point in charging many of them right now.  But customers in collaboration, e-commerce, communication, fintech, eLearning, telehealth and other segments are growing faster than ever.  Lean in there.  For real.  Both for marketing and sales.  Do you have an E-Commerce Edition?  Are you doing digital events just focused on your top customer segments?  Maybe you should be.
  3. Marketing Spend is Returning.  Marketing spend isn’t back, but it’s coming back from the lows of late March and April when everything was paused.  Marketers now have new goals for 2020 and 2021 that have to hit.  Sometimes with lower budgets, but with budgets nevertheless.  Be that product that helps them hit it.
  4. Better Onboarding Helps Even More in Stressful Times.  Even customers and prospects in strong segments are still under stress.  We’re all stressed.  It’s hard for all of us to process so much information.  So make it even easier to onboard.  Your app likely can be far easier to deploy.  Pick a target activation rate of at least 90% in as short a time as possible (e.g., 1 week).  And drive that rate up.  Usually, once folks start measuring activation rates more carefully, they see they are lower than expected.
  5. Help Builders More.  Everyone is stressed, but we also somehow seem to be building more.  Twilio is on fire, for example.  So make it easier for builders.  Improve your API and documentation.  Add more support for folks building on your platform — now.  Answer tickets in real-time.  Do whatever you can to make folks that want to build on your platform … get there faster.

A deeper dive here:

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