2 years in but still struggling to get any users - Any advice?

[fizh]

So I posted here around 9 months ago but I am still kind of in the same position unfortunately.

I started working on my project around July 2022 and have had a working MVP from summer 2023.

My Saas product helps businesses see and reply to Google reviews and also sends out bulk e-mails to customers to ask for a review. The idea is to improve online reputation and Google ranking for businesses. It utilises AI to give relevant reply options to reviews, streamlining the process for business owners.

Here is what I've done so far:

• Cold E-mail: Created 3 email domains and warmed them up using instantly.ai. I am gathering emails by scraping apollo.io and have so far sent around 1000 emails. Open rate is around 50% so spam is not an issue. The CTA is to book a call with me on calendly. I am currently targeting restaurant owners, CMOs etc.
• Face to face: Admittedly I only spent one day doing this as its a bit of a daunting task for me. I visited around 12 local restaurants and explained the product and handed out a leaflet with more information.
• Video demo: Created a video demo of the product and released on LinkedIn. Barely any traction as I have no followers on LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn messaging: Currently trying to directly connect with restaurant owners explaining the saas and offering a free trial

Here is what I believe I need advice
on:

• Balancing 9-5: I'm sure many of you are working on your SaaS along with your day jobs. How do you guys balance the two and find the motivation to work on your SaaS?
• Cold E-mail: I feel like I've followed the best practice when it comes to cold e-mails (multiple domains, warrm-ups etc) but it's still not succesful. Any tips on what worked for you would be great.
• LinkedIn + Social Media: I have started from scratch so I have no presense on any social media channels. If anyone has expereince in growing these from scratch, especially LinkedIn, it would be greatly appreciated.

Any advise on how to push through and gain the first cutomers would be great!

 

[jesusreigns777]

@fizh You need to adopt the “3 - 6 rule”.

If you don’t have any customer interest after 3 months, do something else.

If you don’t have any paying customers after 6 months, do something else.

It’s been 2+ years. It’s time to do something else.

 

[fizh]

@jesusreigns777 Apprecicate this and I can understand where your coming from but I really think theres a market for this. There are many players in the reputation manaagment space like reviews.io, birdeye.com etc. and they dont seem to be utilising AI.

 

[luke22_42]

@fizh best form of reputation a restaurant can have is, google reviews. It's the first thing that I look for a restaurant before visiting it.

I am curious why are restaurant owners not interested to increase the number of reviews

 

[forgivenandloved]

@fizh First question: what happened when you approached restaurants directly?

Second question: why isn’t this something I can manage within google itself? What alternatives are you competing with?

Third question: what evidence do you have that your product can provide the value it claims?

General thoughts:
Restaurants are a notoriously tough nut to crack from a software standpoint because most operators aren’t spending time in front of a computer (nor do they want to). They’re cooking or managing or otherwise busy.

I’d target smaller/regional chains that have someone in a director of operations or similar role who oversees multiple locations. They’ll likely be in a better position to see your platform as a value add. I’m speculating of course, but multi-site businesses seemingly have more budget for tools due to economies of scale.

One other approach could be reaching out to agencies that specialize in restaurant websites/SEO and leveraging their network for channel sales. You could give them a referral fee for new customers or let them white label your platform for a monthly fee.

Lastly, if you’re not currently embedded in the communities where your ICP can find, try, and recommend at this point, it probably makes sense to hang it up as someone else mentioned. If your product is functional, you can sell it for non-zero amount which I’d count as a win.

 

[fizh]

@forgivenandloved

1. 1 out of fhe 12 seemed genuinly intrested and said she would pass on my leaflet to her manager. The others were mainly waiters/staff so were not really a key decision maker
2. Business owners are able to reply to reviews through thier Google My Business account but what differentiates my SaaS is the AI aspect which will allow them to reply to longer reviews much quicker as it comes up with a response for you. In the future I hope to add other review platfoms like Yelp, Trip adviser etc.
3. No real evidence yet as I need customers to actcually try it to validate i properly.

Thanks for the advice!

 

[phoenixrisinggirl17]

@fizh Did you ask for the business owner's contact details??? Don't hand the power over to some random person. You always must ask immediately for the email and name of the owner.

 

[fizh]

@phoenixrisinggirl17 Yhh not really tbh. Will do in the future

 

[anxiousonthebrightside]

@fizh Sounds like you've been knocking on closed doors for a while and that's difficult. It's especially difficult when you've put in quite a bit of effort into an MVP and did all the things you thought you should be doing in terms of marketing and aren't seeing any results.

Most of the things you've tried are forms of cold outreach (even you going to restaurants yourself despite your discomfort - kudos for that!) Cold outreach works best when you already have paying customers, because you need to know exactly how they think and what you need to say in order for them to be interested.

It sounds to me like you don't quite know what problem you're solving from their perspective. You know what you product does, but what it is for is a different matter.

You need to get into a few conversations with your target audience - not about your product - but about the problems they are having. In fact, you need to find a way to talk to business owners without mentioning you even have a product.

Replying to google reviews is a proxy to a problem. It's not the actual problem. The actual problem is probably bad reviews or what they feel are "unjustified" reviews. The businesses who need you would be in deep doodoo, but you need to understand how they think about their problems in order to be able to offer them a solution.

 

[fizh]

@anxiousonthebrightside Thanks for the advice mate, appreciate it! I think the problem it will solve from their perspective will be improving their ranking on Google as if they have more reviews that they are getting and interacting with, ranking will improve. But you make a good point about talking to my target audience directly. Do you have any advice on on this or would it simply be turning up to restraunts and having a chat?

 

[anxiousonthebrightside]

@fizh I got plenty, but this is an excellent way to get started. It would be especially potent if you can find a bad review on Google about them and get into a chat about that!

 

[araina]

@anxiousonthebrightside Well said.

 

[vinod367]

@fizh Restaurants often don't have customers emails. I could see this working for many businesses, but I'm not sure about restaurants. What feedback have you received?

 

[phoenixrisinggirl17]

@fizh Don't just throw in the towel brother. 99 times out of 100, it's your marketing that's wrong.

So please answer these questions:

What's your target audience?

What problem do you solve?

How do you help them solve it?

What's the big end result your audience receives from solving that problem?

 

[fizh]

@phoenixrisinggirl17 Thanks!

1. Target audience in general will be any business that relies on reviews like restraunts, dentists etc so audience can be quite broad but right now I'm focusing on restraunts.
2. Improve Google ranking and reputation management.
3. The product will allow business owners to keep on top of reviews an reply quickly to every single one which will improve ranking. They will also be able to gain more reviews by bulk sending emails to their customers from the platform
4. The end result will hopefully be more customers through the door form them as they have a better star rating an google and are ranked higher.

 

[phoenixrisinggirl17]

@fizh Thanks for taking the time to respond . So for starters, your audience "any business" is way too broad and won't allow you to craft a proper marketing message. You need to pick only one and stick with it for now.

Secondly, "Improve Google ranking and reputation management." is not a problem, it's a desired outcome. The problem could be "Bad ranking on Google" but you have to figure that out before even trying to sell anything. So please let me know what problem you do solve.

Thirdly, "Getting more customers through the door" is a pretty shallow end result. You need to go deeper than that like when they get more customers, they earn more money, and when they earn more money their business grows, and because of that they can finally live the life of their dreams.

The big end result must be something that changes their lives, otherwise people won't buy it.

 

[araina]

@fizh With your cold email a few questions. First thing that comes to mind if you have a %50 open rate there seems to be interest. If you’re asking THEM to book in your calendar after the first email it’s a hard CTA as opposed to a soft CTA, such as, “Can I share more?” In which case you could send a PDF document or even a 30s video explaining your product if the response is yes from your email.

A hard CTA IMO should be further down in an email sequence because there isn’t much/any trust built. If you could share your email I’m sure myself and others could give some pointers too.

Are you cold calling, or doing any other form of outreach in between your cold emails? How many emails are you sending? It takes on average 6 touches to book someone. However you want to dice that up ex: 2 calls, 3emails and 1 LinkedIn msg.

Are you targeting private or chain restaurant owners?

Also curious about targeting owners versus restaurant managers. In my experience in restaurants over the years restaurant managers do have pull in the budget. I would need more context to understand your product situation better.

Personally, I don’t see many restaurant MANAGERS on LinkedIn, owners may be different.

Restaurants are all over Instagram. I would def start something on that channel.

Basically I’m trying to decipher what’s missing: Your offer, your messaging, your channel, or maybe it’s your product. Can you provide more context?

 

[613jono]

@fizh I do hate giving advice because I have an app I need to work on and market and I haven't, so I should look in the mirror!

You didn't mention target market at all. Do you know who you are going after? People with x amount of reviews or some? Companies that rely on reviews more than most? Is there a wayto merge in yelp?

One industry I know that literally build their businesses on Google and Yelp reviews is moving. Maybe take a swing at approaching these guys.

Sweeping generalization but tech SaaS people may overlook blue collar industries, where cold calling and demo's don't work. These guys rip and run and are on the road all day, barely use email but make millions.

Maybe door step a few local moving companies, dropthe demo and SaaS talk and sell the advantages like you are talking to a 10 year old

Also, will you measure results? Can you make them a no brainer offer?

 

[drakem29]

@fizh First, your deliverability probably isn’t good. You think you have “50% open rates“ but that’s probably not true.

Open tracking isn’t accurate (especially after Apple’s privacy updates a few years ago), so you shouldn’t trust Instantly’s open rate data.

Also, don’t use Instantly’s warm up feature, since email service providers can easily detect when email accounts are sending fake emails to each other in these warm up pools, and they’ll blacklist/shadow ban your email accounts / domains. There are also spam traps in these warm up pools.

You should still gradually build up your sending volume, which happens automatically if you use a cold email software like Emailchaser (not Instantly).