📆 Monday, 30th October 2023
Hi, and welcome back to SaaS Espresso. Your one-stop destination for 👏 everything 👏 in the SaaS industry.
In this edition, find:
💰 X is launching two new subscription tiers, including a ‘Premium+’ ad-free plan
🤖 Startups Versus Incumbents: Who Will Win the Go-to-Market AI Race?
🚀 Nine Ways to Grow Your SaaS
💰 X is launching two new subscription tiers, including a ‘Premium+’ ad-free plan
Read the full story at TechCrunch
💡 Key insights for you:
X, formerly Twitter, has launched two new subscription tiers to increase revenue.
The Premium+ tier, priced at $16 per month, offers enhanced reply features, ad removal from specific feeds, revenue-sharing, and creator tools.
The Basic tier, costing $3 per month, provides functionalities like post-editing, longer text and video posts, and a modest reply boost.
These introductions follow Musk's efforts to counter ad revenue loss due to controversial changes, including ads next to undesirable content, which led to a 60% year-over-year decline in U.S. ad revenue as of August.
🤖 Startups Versus Incumbents: Who Will Win the Go-to-Market AI Race?
Read full story at Stage 2 Capital
💡 Key insights for you:
AI's Enormous Disruptive Potential: AI's disruptive potential is forecasted to be as significant, if not larger, than the advent of the Internet, reflecting a major shift in technology and societal impact.
Hype Stage and Startups' Disruption Potential: The current AI landscape resembles the early stages of the internet era, with startups emphasizing iterative advancements rather than disruptive products, while the market undergoes a hype phase.
Market Correction and Efficiency Focus: Recent market corrections have pivoted tech strategies from growth-at-all-costs to a focus on efficiency, favoring AI experimentation and adoption, especially in the technology sector.
Incumbents vs. Startups Dynamics: Startups possess high-quality AI talent but lack extensive datasets, while incumbents boast vast datasets but might lack superior AI expertise, reflecting the ongoing battle between expertise and data richness in AI development.
🚀 Nine Ways to Grow Your SaaS
Here are nine strategies to grow your SaaS products to $10K MRR, and beyond.
Let's jump in!
1. Build a free tool
Build a separate free, but highly limited, version of your paid product. This is a way to spin off a key feature of your product, and get your value proposition directly in front of the customer the moment they hit your site.
This full guide explains why this strategy works, and how to start using it for your SaaS.
2. Start a referral program
Offer your existing customers, ambassadors, and social media followers the chance to earn rewards for referring customers to you.
Referrals naturally have a low customer acquisition cost, as the hard work is done by the referrer, not you. Platforms like ReferralRock and Reflio make this super easy to set up.
3. Socials
Building in public has always been one of the best ways to get your customers excited about your product roadmap.
4. Engage in forums
Places like Reddit, Hacker News, Facebook Groups, and Discord and Slack channels are magnets for solution-orientated conversations.
Contribute to discussions, help others, and mention your product as a solution to someone’s problem.
Here's how to find relevant subreddits and engage.
5. Blogging
Create informative blog posts around:
Pain points your SaaS solves.
Comparisons to your competitors.
Product updates.
Make sure to include a CTA to sign up in each post.
6. Launch on Product Hunt
Product Hunt continues to be the holy grail of social proof for SaaS founders.
7. Attend conferences
Meeting industry professionals or like-minded individuals is a great way to, not only gain insight on how to improve your product, but also find new customers.
This is especially important if you’re in the B2B space, where relationships are key to closing sales.
8. Be a podcast guest
Podcasts are hot right now, and being a guest is a great way to reach more customers.
Talk about your product and how it solves people's problems. Ask the host to share a signup link in the podcast description and show notes.
9. List in SaaS directories
Listing and directory sites are trusted places that potential customers visit when looking for new or alternative solutions to their problems.