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Nice, Patrick. I love this! Can you do an article on reaching out to SMB's and selling them a SaaS? I know most SaaS that sell to SMB's actually do a lot of sa
by ericabiz 9y ago
Nice, Patrick. I love this!
Can you do an article on reaching out to SMB's and selling them a SaaS? I know most SaaS that sell to SMB's actually do a lot of sales over the phone, but I'd rather not spend my whole day on the phone. (I am thinking about creating a SMB SaaS that solves problems for the retail stores we run now.)
- mlevental 9y agoread zero to one by Peter theil. mostly garbage but in it he makes a good point: smbs are nearly impossible to sell to because there's no SMB marketing channel (as opposed to radio/TV/fb for consumers). you're only option is cold calling.
- pedalpete 9y agoI have a horrible memory about reading, so don't recall this from Zero to One, but I'd suggest saying there is "no SMB marketing channel" means you haven't defined who your customer is. Is there really an "enterprise" channel where you can go and find all enterprise businesses? Or s single "consumer" channel. Look at all the SaaS companies that sell to SMBs. The marketing channels are there, but you have to find the channel that suits your market.
- mlevental 9y agotell me one smb marketing channel? email isn't one (no different from cold calls)
- BartBoch 9y agoLinkedIn, for example, would be one in my opinion. The channels for SMB are smaller and harder to see for businesses with IPO in their minds, but forum boards and business groups are amazing for this. I was testing once an idea and proposed a free package to all SMB's in a certain community. I mentioned, that I was doing this to help the community and give back. Majority of requests (and I have got few dozens of them) wanted to go for the paid plan right away, which was few hundred bucks and took few hours of my time to complete. The SMB marketing channels are surely there, but they are small and distributed, so they require much more manual work than regular channels.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- goatherders 9y agoWhy aren't emails and cold calls a marketing channel? This is how I've done it for years with great success.
- cardine 9y agoHacker News is one. We are all being marketed to by Stripe right now. Startups aren't the only type of business where the people within them congregate in specific areas. So you just have to find those places for your specific customer profile.
- wastedhours 9y agoSmall business forums - there's plenty that are generic and they often have ad units and/or allow you to build up a content marketing following.
- yread 9y agothere is also https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/ https://www.reddit.com/r/smallbusiness/
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cm2012 9y agoI'm a (fairly expensive) consultant that specializes in marketing to small business owners. You can absolutely reach them on Facebook, AdWords, or Direct Mail at huge scale. Source: Grown campaigns with OnDeck, Zenefits, Segment, many other SMB targeters. Here's a recent case study: http://www.kevinlordbarry.com/facebookleadads1.html http://www.kevinlordbarry.com/facebookleadads1.html
- mlevental 9y agocase study would be much more useful if you at least gave a vague description of what the company does (what kinds of widgets they sell). i'm willing to believe that for some sectors this might work but for many others it won't (e.g. pizza ovens to small pizza places).
- goatherders 9y agoThen be prepared for your sales to suffer. There are no shortcuts. Get on the phone and have a conversation.