tammyfish12
New member
Hi,
I have noticed that a large problem that stops B2B SaaS companies have a large problem of generating leads and converted paid users.
This is a large problem because you want to scale your B2B SaaS companies and when your company is not scaling faster, that is another day that your potential customer is onboarded by your competitor.
This makes things harder because when you finally reach your potential competitor, you now have an uphill battle of getting them to switch over to your service.
So, you have free trials of users that start with such fervor in the beginning but midway in the free trial, they......just drop off the face of the Earth.
This can be because of a lot of factors but below I have found 5 common reasons why many B2B SaaS companies have trouble converting potential leads and even free users into paid users for their B2B SaaS.
Luckily, I have proposed solutions that you can actively test out for your B2B SaaS so you can scale and grow your user base faster.
Before I go on, let me introduce myself.
"I'm LinkedSaaS."
You Don't Know Your Audience or Your End User Personas Well Enough (and how to use Linkedin to Find the Right Audience)
Unless you have started a few projects in the past, you are not going to notice this problem until your (4th or 5th or 6th) project.
One critical problem (especially in the tech industry) is that techincal people love tech (more so than people - and I can understand why honestly...)
However, when you are starting a B2B SaaS company, you have to deal with people (not numbers on a screen). This means that you must have a strong idea of who you are speaking with as an overall End User Persona.
For me personally, I never work on an unvalidated product.
This is because if you spend a long time working on a product with no valudated user market (or worse, a validated user market that is not worth converting: i.e. they want all of the features of the world but their overall ARPU (annual revenue per user) doesn't justify their demands),
....now all you have is a B2B SaaS that you have put months of your life that you can never recapture again....
If you do not have a product, then you are in a great position to start looking for market problems to solve. In fact, finding market problems is the best way to ensure that you are building a product that people want.
There are many ways to accomplish this:
Because I am speaking with B2B SaaS makers, I recommend using Linkedin to target the ideally the professionals that your SaaS is target.
Do user interviews with them (after collecting from them from Linkedin) so that way, you can build a product that solves a CORE problem. CORE problems are important because it means that your product is less likely to be replaced by another product if their workflow changes.
You Priced Your B2B SaaS Either Too Low or High for Allow for Faster Onboarding
The second problem that I have noticed that your B2B SaaS product is either priced too high or too low.
I cannot take full credit for this. My growth career sits on the shoulders of Brian Balfour's Channel-Model Fit.
You can read more about it (but I can "hopefully" save you a click - still a recommended read, though).
Basically, you can price your B2B SaaS super low to allow for super fast transactions - allowing for quick purchases. However, Retail/Transactional Growth needs scale to achieve any sustainability. So using ads is a great channel for you to generate fast growth for your B2B SaaS if it is priced $20/mo. or below.
However, when your B2B SaaS is priced at $50/mo. - $100/mo., using ads for quick purchases is not going to work. You can still use ads but you must have an onboarding campaign to convert people into trusting you first and then buying from you later.
In fact, the Channel-Model Fit "fits" well with sales cycles (more money that is required to be paid requires a longer onboarding time for that sale to go through).
So, a $5/mo. plan is easier to sell (because the cost of investment is so low) versus a $50/mo. plan (because the investment requires more time).
In addition, you have to think about the buyers at those plans.
A $5/mo. plan (from a B2B SaaS) is prime for someone starting their business versus a $50/mo. plan where you are targeting seasoned professionals who want to make sure that you know what you are talking about.
If you have a pricing model that is $50/mo. (with a set of features that is targeted to the seasoned professionals), you can use Linkedin to find those seasoned professionals to start talking with them.
With enough data generated from Active Conversations, you can then build a content marketing campaign that includes Linkedin so you can better onboard those seasoned professionals into your funnel.
You Are Using the Wrong Growth Channels for Your SaaS (even if you are using Linkedin)
The third reason: you are just in the wrong place - even if you are using Linkedin.
You are just in the wrong place. It happens but it can be corrected. How do you know that you are in the wrong place? When the Total # of Your New Users is not growing at the Growth Rates that you actually want them to.
With Linkedin, you can use hyper-targeted ads to find the right professionals on that Linkedin. Linkedin is a large professional network that you can use to onboard end users into converted paid users for your B2B SaaS users.
However, maybe your B2B SaaS startup is better suited for early entrepreneurs. Then, you can find smaller micro-communities of starter entrepreneurs. On the other side, you can find crypto communities on Discord if your B2B SaaS startups serves those markets.
This requires experimentation and recording the data available so you can find the right growth channels for your B2B SaaS startup.
You Do Not Have a Clearly-Defined End User Persona
"LinkedSaaS, didn't you mentioned this already?" (Yes, I did but I wanted to address this from another angle.)
I have noticed another problem with B2B SaaS users (most builders but this content is address strictly to B2B SaaS builders).
I saw this query earlier and I thought it was worth addressing:
For example, if you are building a consumer marketplace (not my audience but still), you would prioritize that you build a mobile smartphone user interface for your end users.
If you are building a B2B SaaS, while it can be assumed that you should build a desktop interface, you should research your End Persona enough to know who you are building for and what interfaces that they are using.
57% of Linkedin user base use the platform from their mobile phone, according to FindStack.
This means that your Linkedin profile should favor a mobile-first UI to onboard end users of that platform so that you can drive more conversions into your B2B SaaS user base.
Do user research so you can streamline your B2B SaaS product development roadmap for easier onboarding.
I am just Saiyan.
Your Overall Outreach and Growth Strategy Is a Mismatch (and how Linkedin Can Solve That)
Sometimes, your overall outreach strategy is a mismatch.
For example, you have a content marketing campaign for a B2B SaaS product that costs $10/mo. when you need to invest in ads to generate more end users.
On the opposite, you have ads running for a B2B SaaS products that costs $50/mo. when you need to have a content marketing onboarding/education campaign for your campaign where you have to onboard subscribers first and then convert those subscribers into converted paid users.
How do you know that your overall outreach and your growth strategy is a mismatch?
On the other side, you can use SEO and content marketing to generate subscribers (over time) into paid users who stay with your B2B SaaS startups as recurring revenue as you scale your company further.
Again, this depends on who your User Persona is. If you are targeting seasoned professionals with high seniority, then LinkedIn Sales Navigator is your best friend to first get qualified marketing information from them before scaling outwards with your education onboarding campaign.
"Linkedin is Not the Only Channel" - coming from a biased source
Please take note: I am biased to mentioning "Linkedin" as a qualified source because I run a "Linkedin Growth service for B2B SaaS startups (for $300/mo.). I also run a productized growth service that is much more expansive and more expensive ($1k/mo.).
Linkedin (as a growth channel - as a productized service) helps me streamline growth marketing to a simplified focus: "leveraging Linkedin to drive converted paid users to B2B SaaS").
If anything, you should be incorporating multiple growth channels within your growth strategy (not just Linkedin - despite it being so incredibly obvious).
Besides, Linkedin is not a marketing strategy but a marketing channel. Incorporate other growth channels to where you find your market at.
Keep reiterating based on the successes and failures of your strategies and those channels.
You will find that growth channels that once worked in the past will fail and you will have to migrate to a new growth channel.
Just keep reiterating on whatever growth channel that you are driving converted paid users from.
If you are interested in more content on how you can use Linkedin to drive more converted paid users to your B2B SaaS company, subscribe by clicking this link: https://airtable.com/shrEN09lDFKOapvgQ
I have noticed that a large problem that stops B2B SaaS companies have a large problem of generating leads and converted paid users.
This is a large problem because you want to scale your B2B SaaS companies and when your company is not scaling faster, that is another day that your potential customer is onboarded by your competitor.
This makes things harder because when you finally reach your potential competitor, you now have an uphill battle of getting them to switch over to your service.
So, you have free trials of users that start with such fervor in the beginning but midway in the free trial, they......just drop off the face of the Earth.
This can be because of a lot of factors but below I have found 5 common reasons why many B2B SaaS companies have trouble converting potential leads and even free users into paid users for their B2B SaaS.
Luckily, I have proposed solutions that you can actively test out for your B2B SaaS so you can scale and grow your user base faster.
Before I go on, let me introduce myself.
"I'm LinkedSaaS."
- I run a "Linkedin Growth service" where I generate converted paid users for B2B SaaS companies. In my spare time, I am building a few tech projects (1 in SEO, 2 are NFT marketplaces: (1 is social eCommerce and the other one is crypto gaming). If you are curious about the service or have any questions about "LinkedSaaS", feel free to DM me.
You Don't Know Your Audience or Your End User Personas Well Enough (and how to use Linkedin to Find the Right Audience)
Unless you have started a few projects in the past, you are not going to notice this problem until your (4th or 5th or 6th) project.
One critical problem (especially in the tech industry) is that techincal people love tech (more so than people - and I can understand why honestly...)
However, when you are starting a B2B SaaS company, you have to deal with people (not numbers on a screen). This means that you must have a strong idea of who you are speaking with as an overall End User Persona.
For me personally, I never work on an unvalidated product.
This is because if you spend a long time working on a product with no valudated user market (or worse, a validated user market that is not worth converting: i.e. they want all of the features of the world but their overall ARPU (annual revenue per user) doesn't justify their demands),
....now all you have is a B2B SaaS that you have put months of your life that you can never recapture again....
If you do not have a product, then you are in a great position to start looking for market problems to solve. In fact, finding market problems is the best way to ensure that you are building a product that people want.
There are many ways to accomplish this:
- You can look at market trends and design a product around this. (This is perhaps the most dangerous way to use validation to build a product because you are partially removed from your audience).
- You can speak with your audience and user market. (This is the safest way to validate your product concept: especially with you speak with multiple people so you have a better idea of what your product offers to your B2B SaaS users).
Because I am speaking with B2B SaaS makers, I recommend using Linkedin to target the ideally the professionals that your SaaS is target.
Do user interviews with them (after collecting from them from Linkedin) so that way, you can build a product that solves a CORE problem. CORE problems are important because it means that your product is less likely to be replaced by another product if their workflow changes.
You Priced Your B2B SaaS Either Too Low or High for Allow for Faster Onboarding
The second problem that I have noticed that your B2B SaaS product is either priced too high or too low.
I cannot take full credit for this. My growth career sits on the shoulders of Brian Balfour's Channel-Model Fit.
You can read more about it (but I can "hopefully" save you a click - still a recommended read, though).
Basically, you can price your B2B SaaS super low to allow for super fast transactions - allowing for quick purchases. However, Retail/Transactional Growth needs scale to achieve any sustainability. So using ads is a great channel for you to generate fast growth for your B2B SaaS if it is priced $20/mo. or below.
However, when your B2B SaaS is priced at $50/mo. - $100/mo., using ads for quick purchases is not going to work. You can still use ads but you must have an onboarding campaign to convert people into trusting you first and then buying from you later.
In fact, the Channel-Model Fit "fits" well with sales cycles (more money that is required to be paid requires a longer onboarding time for that sale to go through).
So, a $5/mo. plan is easier to sell (because the cost of investment is so low) versus a $50/mo. plan (because the investment requires more time).
In addition, you have to think about the buyers at those plans.
A $5/mo. plan (from a B2B SaaS) is prime for someone starting their business versus a $50/mo. plan where you are targeting seasoned professionals who want to make sure that you know what you are talking about.
If you have a pricing model that is $50/mo. (with a set of features that is targeted to the seasoned professionals), you can use Linkedin to find those seasoned professionals to start talking with them.
With enough data generated from Active Conversations, you can then build a content marketing campaign that includes Linkedin so you can better onboard those seasoned professionals into your funnel.
You Are Using the Wrong Growth Channels for Your SaaS (even if you are using Linkedin)
The third reason: you are just in the wrong place - even if you are using Linkedin.
You are just in the wrong place. It happens but it can be corrected. How do you know that you are in the wrong place? When the Total # of Your New Users is not growing at the Growth Rates that you actually want them to.
With Linkedin, you can use hyper-targeted ads to find the right professionals on that Linkedin. Linkedin is a large professional network that you can use to onboard end users into converted paid users for your B2B SaaS users.
However, maybe your B2B SaaS startup is better suited for early entrepreneurs. Then, you can find smaller micro-communities of starter entrepreneurs. On the other side, you can find crypto communities on Discord if your B2B SaaS startups serves those markets.
This requires experimentation and recording the data available so you can find the right growth channels for your B2B SaaS startup.
You Do Not Have a Clearly-Defined End User Persona
"LinkedSaaS, didn't you mentioned this already?" (Yes, I did but I wanted to address this from another angle.)
I have noticed another problem with B2B SaaS users (most builders but this content is address strictly to B2B SaaS builders).
I saw this query earlier and I thought it was worth addressing:
- "Do I build for desktop or for mobile for my MVP?"
For example, if you are building a consumer marketplace (not my audience but still), you would prioritize that you build a mobile smartphone user interface for your end users.
If you are building a B2B SaaS, while it can be assumed that you should build a desktop interface, you should research your End Persona enough to know who you are building for and what interfaces that they are using.
57% of Linkedin user base use the platform from their mobile phone, according to FindStack.
This means that your Linkedin profile should favor a mobile-first UI to onboard end users of that platform so that you can drive more conversions into your B2B SaaS user base.
Do user research so you can streamline your B2B SaaS product development roadmap for easier onboarding.
I am just Saiyan.
Your Overall Outreach and Growth Strategy Is a Mismatch (and how Linkedin Can Solve That)
Sometimes, your overall outreach strategy is a mismatch.
For example, you have a content marketing campaign for a B2B SaaS product that costs $10/mo. when you need to invest in ads to generate more end users.
On the opposite, you have ads running for a B2B SaaS products that costs $50/mo. when you need to have a content marketing onboarding/education campaign for your campaign where you have to onboard subscribers first and then convert those subscribers into converted paid users.
How do you know that your overall outreach and your growth strategy is a mismatch?
- When you are losing money. (You are spending more money to acquire each user than what they are paying you or not enough of your ad impressions / incoming visitors are converting into paid users for your users.)
On the other side, you can use SEO and content marketing to generate subscribers (over time) into paid users who stay with your B2B SaaS startups as recurring revenue as you scale your company further.
Again, this depends on who your User Persona is. If you are targeting seasoned professionals with high seniority, then LinkedIn Sales Navigator is your best friend to first get qualified marketing information from them before scaling outwards with your education onboarding campaign.
"Linkedin is Not the Only Channel" - coming from a biased source
Please take note: I am biased to mentioning "Linkedin" as a qualified source because I run a "Linkedin Growth service for B2B SaaS startups (for $300/mo.). I also run a productized growth service that is much more expansive and more expensive ($1k/mo.).
Linkedin (as a growth channel - as a productized service) helps me streamline growth marketing to a simplified focus: "leveraging Linkedin to drive converted paid users to B2B SaaS").
If anything, you should be incorporating multiple growth channels within your growth strategy (not just Linkedin - despite it being so incredibly obvious).
Besides, Linkedin is not a marketing strategy but a marketing channel. Incorporate other growth channels to where you find your market at.
Keep reiterating based on the successes and failures of your strategies and those channels.
You will find that growth channels that once worked in the past will fail and you will have to migrate to a new growth channel.
Just keep reiterating on whatever growth channel that you are driving converted paid users from.
If you are interested in more content on how you can use Linkedin to drive more converted paid users to your B2B SaaS company, subscribe by clicking this link: https://airtable.com/shrEN09lDFKOapvgQ
