SaaS Growth business leadership by Richard Gorulay

What makes A Successful SaaS Business

by Richard GourlayBusiness culture, content strategy marketing, start-up advice, StrategyPosted on No Comments

Successful SaaS Solutions Start with a Minimum Product Viability (MPV)

Achieving a successful SaaS Business starts not with a perfectly formed SaaS platform, but by achieving a Minimum Product Viability (MPV) SaaS platform. That is the essential first must have goal for any successful SaaS business. But an MPV SaaS solution is not just a working model: but one that delivers the real value proposition which your SaaS solution promises.

The ‘real SaaS MPV goal’ is not often fully understood as to what it must achieve to avoid pre-launch failure for SaaS businesses. Too often SaaS MPV’s are half hearted aspirational “nice to have features. Compared to a successful SaaS solution of ‘must have’s’ SaaS solutions. That’s what makes a successful SaaS business, they always start with a robust MPV.

Business leaders’ are often told that shifting to a SaaS model ‘build it and they will come mentality,” but they won’t come, if you don’t achieve a robust SaaS MPV. You won’t compete within your chosen market.  Just being an online SaaS product does not make your business achieve success. If the SaaS MPV does not actively compete, then it will not succeed. So MPV is often a misunderstood or omitted market entry goal. MPV means your software as a service actually wins target audience customers making you a player within the market. Once you get this right then you can look at your SaaS pricing model. 

Launching without a MPV

Too many companies start trading without achieving a clear MPV. They build it, launch their marketing and sales plan and start trading and hope. But their SaaS fails to deliver to their target audiences. Pressure on SaaS businesses is to get there quickly. That often leads to trials which do not convert. Channel partners do not actively resell, Uncertain customer acquisition plans and confused pipeline management. All resulting in SaaS metrics such as cost per customer acquisition continually increasing. That leads to high burn rates of cash and pressure on leaders to chase customers. Pressure to play catch-up replaces ensuring the SaaS delivers its fundamental goal, that of real tangible value to the customer.

The alternative risk in not looking to achieve a robust MPV is that effort, resources and personal energy are lost in developing the wrong elements of the SaaS business. Rushing to market, often means that the marketing and sales drivers forward leaving the core offering behind. This leads to over promising and a confused set of priorities. for the company. Resulting in leaders trying and patch together into a coherent product or service offering.

SaaS Require Robust MPV

SaaS MPV metrics must be clear. MPV must be a tangible goal with a viable product offering. If you take your service online is must do more than just exist. Now I am not saying it needs to be perfect. But a over-polishing a SaaS solution is one of those very dangerous assumptions we will come onto shortly, but simple migration of a product online is not a SaaS MPV.  

For Minimum Product Viability to be achieved, a SaaS solution must successfully compete within its market(s). It must win new customers for it to achieve MPV status. Too often the model of lower cost looks good on paper, especially to the accountant, investors and banks. Which is supported by competitor analysis and trend analysis but without any evidence of actually being able to win target segment customers.  

Don’t Hit and Hope with SaaS

The built and they will come mentality often leads to the knee jerk reaction from companies to offer discounts to customers to gain traction right from the start. The downside of that tactic is that the predicted customer revenue targets aren’t met if you give it away. Giving it away also means that customers do not value your SaaS offering resulting in:-

1. Poor customer quality

2. Low engagement and low retention rates.

3. Poor product development which damages the core SaaS product.

4. False success metrics driving poor service and innovation

5. A SaaS business with short term mindset

The other major challenge of giving it away on day one to gain traction is that once the opening price perception is set it is difficult to reset. Initial target audiences are typically early adopters who usually are your target premium customers, they expect certain valuable features within the MPV that tie them in, which if not immediately available mean that they will abandon the SaaS solution. It is also difficult to recover your market or premium market price unless you have large marketing budget to support the opening offer discount.        

Measuring MPV requires leaders to not only check it works (and that is never a given with IT) but also that it achieves MPV as an offering. Does it do what it needs to do for the customer.? Does it meet the complete customer requirement of the value proposition? So do not just focus on the pure IT but on the whole value proposition to measure the MPV status. Test it with pilot groups, measure not only it looks good, but does it replace what they were doing? If not it needs to do more.

Over-polishing your SaaS MPV

I have worked with several SaaS start-ups and migration SaaS brands who face the eternal problem of over polishing their MPV. Failing to set a MPV goal with a timeline means that many companies keep playing and tinkering with their SaaS product rather than get it out there.

The challenge is that everyone has thoughts, features and layouts they want to see, so the more people involved the more the pull and push from 3rd parties to meet their expectations or perceptions. The nature of every increasing committees is to tinker and therefore delay. Continuing to over-polish is a major issue for many SaaS businesses. They ask too many people to review it and each has a view, but continual reviews and tweaks delay the acid test ill it work in teh real world.

Everyone has an opinion and no matter how valuable it is the MPV goal must define the MINIMUM, not the optimum or the ideally would like. These should be in secondary releases onwards as upgrades and add-ons. An MPV must to have a launch deadline in place with clarity of what that SaaS will deliver and how it will be upgraded over time to meet specific needs. A soft Beta test launch to a target audience will test and validate the MPV objective, which if you have followed the classic MPV creation model (below) will enable you to get to market with a credible SaaS solution.

SaaS Business model

What makes a successful MPV? One that delivers the SaaS value propositions’ core elements. When entrepreneurs or leaderships teams are building their SaaS businesses model they must start by thinking through what are the core elements we MUST HAVE rather than those we would LIKE to HAVE. Those core elements must engage with their target audiences both directly and through whatever channels to market they intend to operate with or through.

That MPV, what you go to market with to prove the concept and launch your business with has to contain the MUST HAVE‘s that both challenge and disrupt the market your SaaS model is entering, if it is to succeed.

So the MPV must be robust, not aspirational. It must do deliver the core value proposition, not be full of we will do this at a later stage. The phrase “You never get a second chance to make a great first impression.” Defines the need for a robust SaaS solution MPV within any market. If it is not robust in delivering those core value proposition elements then it won’t challenge or disrupt the existing players whether they be physical or SaaS competitors. Lets look at how to create a Robust MPV.

Create A Successful SaaS Business

1a. Firstly identify the success criteria that will indicate whether or not the SaaS solution will be successful

1b. Then identify the business needs of the sector today and over the long-term.

2a. Map out the customer / user journey(s)

2b. Then segment the core user groups (called the actors)

2c. Clarify the journey end point (end goal)

2d. Then mark all actions the user must take to meet that end goal, and then simplify them as much as possible, less is more.

3a. Write down the action the user completes when using the product

3b. Write down the pain points for each action

3c. Write down the gains for each action

3d. Summarise the pains and gains into opportunity statements

3e. Use “How might we” statements or a similar method to summarise the pains and gains you have identified, prioritise and

4a. Use opportunity statements to finalise your core “must have” features and ensure they are built into a coherent MPV model.

4b. Provide a breakdown of the features to include in the product roadmap, identifying each feature element.

4c. Use a prioritisation matrix (or similar method) to prioritise features creating a complete MPV customer journey to build and launch with.

4d. Identify other features to be launched as 2nd phase onwards and use target customer audience or beta test launch feedback to validate these feature in subsequent launches.

4e. Identify Key SaaS metrics including UX, channel partner and disputer effect metrics to measure your MPV launch with.

Successful SaaS

Get your MPV wrong and it is difficult to make a comeback. Understanding your core audience (it may not be big but it must be defined and reachable). Many SaaS MPV are done below the radar, with soft launches to target audiences either directly or through selected or exclusive channel partners to provide validity of model and ensure MPV has been achieved.

Going big too soon is often appealing but rarely successful. Think about achieving viability then scaleability with a proven model to solve a tangible issue for a target audience and you are more likely to succeed. Research your target audiences’ specific needs and plan points and ensure that your MPV focuses on delivering the results they need, rather than trying to do too much. Add value and then keep on adding more value is what makes a successful MPV for a SaaS business.

Richard Gourlay

Richard works with SaaS entrepreneurs in developing their SaaS solutions, to learn more and contact Richard Gourlay click here now

Content Strategy: The future of marketing

by Richard Gourlaycompetitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Marketing, Selling skills, UncategorizedPosted on Comments are Disabled

The future of marketing is all about inbound marketing: Content strategy

If you can see a trend you have missed it!

In a world of continual change seeing what is happening is often difficult to understand until the paradigm shift has occurred. Many companies are struggling to stay ahead or even in the game of online marketing. Many companies are moving towards online marketing content strategy or as marketing people call it inbound marketing. This major shift in culture and one needs to be fully understood.

 

I have just had an old-fashioned marketing communication from a well-known brand, asking me to make an immediate purchase offering me a FREE upgrade for a new phone, my automatic response is not to be interested, at all because they have not demonstrated that they understand my specific needs. That made me thinks and write this article to explain why in today’s online world that old marketing technique is now as un-effective as a double glazing salesman offering me 50% off!

It’s a complete shift not just an add-on

In a world where everyone is online all the time, the amount of information is drowning people, from Linkedin to Facebook and Twitter the rise of smart phone connectivity has promised much change to marketing but until recently only early adopters, high value and niche players could see what it meant to the marketing process.

Like many changes, it is not until the change becomes tangible does its impact become visual to many marketing departments that enables them to successfully influence a company’s marketing policy. This is considerably harder to convey when there is no tangible evidence of marketing results attributable to hard to track invisible marketing shift. Unlike the shift to direct marketing where direct connectivity between outcome and result can be seen through a transparent return on investment, online inbound marketing is struggling to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Pace is outstripping understanding

Currently content marketing relies heavily upon invisible and poorly understood online activities. Simply put, the rate of change is outstripping the knowledge base of the marketing industry, creating a gap between the understandings of marketing by decision makers. The routes causes of this is that not only are customers sourcing information in newer ways but the platform they are using, the Internet indexing is also changing ever faster, Goggle will make over 600 changes to way it scores content. Rapidly changing customer preferences, coupled with changing technologies and an ever changing platform results in the lack of certainty of what is working and why. By the time you’ve worked out what works it has already changed.

That speed is creating problems for social media to be able to convert this rate of change to make money. This continual change, both step and continual upgrading, makes it difficult for the industry to understand how to build sustainable pipelines of business.

Content Strategy also creates confusion.   

Content strategy marketing process, one that now focuses on creating online and open platform engagement, online PULL; rather than internally controlled PUSH marketing methods, traditional marketers often struggle to understand the process let alone feel uncomfortable with the concept. This is not unreasonable, given the history of marketing in the last 50 years has always focused on the traditional pipeline of generating and then controlling customer decision-making, content marketing turns that on its head. People investing in inbound marketing are asked to spend money on losing control of the potential customer by letting them make an open decision about how and when they engage with your brand.

In the mid 1990’s I remember designing a website to support a brand. No one was interested until it was live and people could see something online. A director then said, “That’s great let’s print it off and send it to all our customers”     

Dialogue NOT monologue

The inbound marketing process is about generating an open dialogue, rather than a structured marketing process. It lets potentials, prospects and suspects move in and out of your control while they select you, rather than being controlled by you.

The Content Strategy Process

  1. Listening – Online is now the first port of call for 78% of web users.
  2. Creating – Great content that answers need and demonstrates expertise.
  3. Engaging – Is about being talked about and developing a dialogue with audiences
  4. Transforming – Is about continual engagement, moving them from suspects to purchasers
  5. Growing – Requires creating perpetual momentum developing new and developing loyalty

 

Source: www.tomorrow-people.com

Traditional marketing models of developing engagement such as AIDA are still highly valid but instead of just focusing on a immediate winning proposition through a grabbing hook, attach a liner and sink them in a simple linear model for winning customers. Content strategy marketing demands  multiple engagement tools which include cross referencing other parties creating competitive collaborative working to generate awareness, giving away FREE content in white papers coupled with fast and slow acquisition tools in decision making.

The strategy needs to be explained better 

Moving to a content strategy is about moving from PUSH to PULL, not about the Internet platform, it is about understanding the importance of open unrestricted dialogue rather than material generation and in reality it is not just about the Internet although this is where its impact is being seen today, but equally will encompass every marketing platform and process. The growth of mobile technology will further the pace and realisation of content strategy.

Like to learn more? Then see article What is Content Marketing or contact us at RichardGourlay.com or see our website or social media channels for more about Cowden::-

 

Richard Gourlay Website – Linked in – Twitter – Facebook – Blog

 

 

Richard Gourlay services: business planning, strategic planning, business development, strategic marketing, Return on Investment, director development, director mentoring.

Cowden is based in Galloway, Scotland and works with businesses throughout the UK.

The way forward in business, clear vision and direction supported by a supportive culture and a clear business plan, by Richard Gourlay

Content Strategy: The future of marketing

by Richard GourlayBusiness culture, competitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Innovation, Marketing, opportunity, StrategyPosted on Comments are Disabled

In a world of continual change seeing what is happening is often difficult to understand until the paradigm shift has occurred. Many companies are struggling to stay ahead or even in the game of online marketing. Many companies are moving towards online marketing content strategy or as marketing people call it inbound marketing. This major shift in culture and one needs to be fully understood. The importance of content as a strategy is the future of marketing.

Content Matters

I have just had an old-fashioned marketing communication from a well-known brand, asking me to make an immediate purchase offering me a FREE upgrade for a new phone. My automatic response is not to be interested, at all because they have not demonstrated that they understand my specific needs. That made me thinks and write this article to explain why in today’s online world that old marketing technique is now as un-effective as a double glazing salesman offering me 50% off! 

Content Strategy: It’s a complete shift not just an add-on

In a world where everyone is online all the time, the amount of information is drowning people, from Linkedin to Facebook and Twitter the rise of smart phone connectivity has promised much change to marketing but until recently only early adopters, high value and niche players could see what it meant to the marketing process.
Like many changes, it is not until the change becomes tangible does its impact become visual to many marketing departments that enables them to successfully influence a company’s marketing policy. This is considerably harder to convey when there is no tangible evidence of marketing results attributable to hard to track invisible marketing shift. Unlike the shift to direct marketing where direct connectivity between outcome and result can be seen through a transparent return on investment, online inbound marketing is struggling to demonstrate its effectiveness.

Content Marketing: Pace of change is outstripping current understanding

Currently content marketing relies heavily upon invisible and poorly understood online activities. Simply put, the rate of change is outstripping the knowledge base of the marketing industry, creating a gap between the understandings of marketing by decision makers. The routes causes of this is that not only are customers sourcing information in newer ways but the platform they are using, the Internet indexing is also changing ever faster, Goggle will make over 600 changes to way it scores content. Rapidly changing customer preferences, coupled with changing technologies and an ever changing platform results in the lack of certainty of what is working and why. By the time you’ve worked out what works it has already changed.
Content Strategy can create confusion.   
Content strategy marketing process, one that now focuses on creating online and open platform engagement, online PULL; rather than internally controlled PUSH marketing methods, traditional marketers often struggle to understand the process let alone feel uncomfortable with the concept. This is not unreasonable, given the history of marketing in the last 50 years has always focused on the traditional pipeline of generating and then controlling customer decision-making, content marketing turns that on its head. People investing in inbound marketing are asked to spend money on losing control of the potential customer by letting them make an open decision about how and when they engage with your brand.
In the mid 1990’s I remember designing a website to support a brand. No one was interested until it was live and people could see something online. A director then said, “That’s great let’s print it off and send it to all our customers”    

Dialogue NOT monologue

The inbound marketing process is about generating an open dialogue, rather than a structured marketing process. It lets potentials, prospects and suspects move in and out of your control while they select you, rather than being controlled by you.
The Content Strategy Process
  1. Listening – Online is now the first port of call for 78% of web users.
  2. Creating – Great content that answers need and demonstrates expertise.
  3. Engaging – Is about being talked about and developing a dialogue with audiences
  4. Transforming – Is about continual engagement, moving them from suspects to purchasers
  5. Growing – Requires creating perpetual momentum developing new and developing loyalty
Traditional marketing models of developing engagement such as AIDA are still highly valid but instead of just focusing on a immediate winning proposition through a grabbing hook, attach a liner and sink them in a simple linear model for winning customers. Content strategy marketing demands  multiple engagement tools which include cross referencing other parties creating competitive collaborative working to generate awareness, giving away FREE content in white papers coupled with fast and slow acquisition tools in decision making.
Content strategy needs to be explained better
Moving to a content strategy is about moving from PUSH to PULL, not about the Internet platform, it is about understanding the importance of open unrestricted dialogue rather than material generation and in reality it is not just about the Internet although this is where its impact is being seen today, but equally will encompass every marketing platform and process. The growth of mobile technology will further the pace and realisation of content strategy.
Like to know how we can help you, then get in touch, just click this link
Leadership in business is a challenge we can help with.

Have you felt the full power of the Internet Tsunami Yet?

by Richard GourlayBusiness Identity, competitive advantage, content strategy marketing, Innovation, Marketing, opportunity, VisionPosted on Comments are Disabled
Has the world moved for you, or did you miss it? The world of business has shifted but many businesses don’t seem to have noticed the great shift in power away from companies to the customer. The internet is not a fixed service, it is growing and evolving rapidly and with it so are the tools and uses it delivers. What was once a way to replace your Yellow Pages has become the most powerful source of information the world has ever seen.  Have you felt the full power of the internet tsunami yet?
We all see the impact of the Internet in every market sector.  We see the growth of online shopping or the growth of smart phones and the online move of insurance and music online.  That shift and the corresponding growths of new consumers are just beginning to be understood, this is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The next stage of the internet revolution has yet to be felt.

The Great Paradigm Shift: Internet Tsunami

As our understanding of this shifting paradigm slowly emerges and evolves.  It takes time for its impact to be fully understood and its impacts to be really appreciated. In the same way as the impact of the introduction of domestic electricity which subsequently facilitated the introduction of the radio, which spread communication did in previous generations. So the rise in power of the Internet is more than just our ability to look stuff up and buy consumer goods online.
This paradigm shift has certain key features, which makes the rise of the Internet generation far more dramatic in its impact to business today.
Unlike many previous innovations, the move online has been done in an infinitely scalable way.  Making markets financially accessible to company’s of any size and dimension using low cost everyday technology. The whole plethora of internet software platforms provide total engagement opportunities for businesses to reach specialist or global markets. Rather than being a premium service only open to the super rich, such as the introduction of the car, airline or a global consumer product range. A good idea, service or product can now be provided through the internet instantly. The availability of multiple open software technology platforms, has lowered cost and created universal access by braking down barriers across all areas of a global market.

The Internet is a Global Movement

This global shift, supported by governments and industry to reach and penetrate all and every strata of society and on an almost global reach is a new global phenomenon creating a universal shift.
Whether in New Guinea or Newfoundland, you can get a 3G signal.  Many countries like India and China just leapfrogged the copper wire landline systems of the 20th century through large parts of their country’s moving straight into the 21st century, avoiding unnecessary cost and rapidly accelerating progress throughout their country.  The Arab spring was not achieved by any three letter acronym news agency or Rupert Murdock’s media empire, but by new young mobile online generation who created, sustained and drove the rolling revolutions.

The POWER of the Internet Tsunami

The result of the internet revolution is that the world has made a huge step forward almost overnight.  That has changed more than just the way we buy some products, it has in fact changed the way we think, and act.  This universal overnight movement has also solved the adoption dilemma for new technology.  For companies to achieve a launch of a new product or service they had to achieve a critical volume and this can now be achieved without geographic boundaries.  The internet creates multiple new routes to market, bypassing traditional routes to market, achieving profit without having to invest huge amounts of capital in awareness marketing.
The sign you've been looking for that values matter in business

Internet Empowered Intelligence

This paradigm shift has moved the way we think to such an extent that everything has changed. When in 1906 Admiral Sir John Fisher invented the Dreadnought battleship in 1906, he changed naval world overnight. At the time the Royal navy had 1,000 ships of the line, the introduction of the Dreadnought made them all redundant overnight. Suddenly, to be a superpower it was not the number of ships you had but how many Dreadnoughts you had and a new arms race had begun as every other battleship become redundant.
In the same way, the introduction of always available high speed broadband has made so much of business thinking redundant, not just in the collapse of use of directories such as yellow pages, dictionaries or our communication. Today people have empowered intelligence, the ability to become informed by scanning a QR code, or connecting to a highly rated source they can become more than informed, they can become actively empowered.

Internet Tsunami Continually Evolves 

The internet is now driving people to think and do things in different ways across many age and economic cohorts. Its not just the young buying music or consumers doing their shopping online, although both have delivered huge shifts in culture to these markets.  People’s first mental response to knowledge and decision making is now to click, look-up and become informed.
No-longer relying on our embedded historical mental heritage or through experts’ advice, people are now researching and networking their knowledge and our learning, widening knowledge and creating expert communities on almost every subject matter possible. For example to become an expert on social media you could do an online course or you could click onto Mashable and become an expert within hours. Anyone and everyone can become an expert, exposing consumer and business choice to new forces and opportunities.
You may have heard the old adage that there is more computer power in a simple watch today than on the Apollo 11 spacecraft which took man to the moon. People have at their finger tips more knowledge about companies than even the most informed company is aware off. Users groups, expert forums and review sites empower and drive decisions, in a far more effective way than traditional marketing channels can persuade customers.
In just in the same way that the Arctic Monkeys pioneered the music online community following, rather than through the plugging and playlist approval to get on the radio. Today the same today is true of consumer both in consumer and business markets.
The power of the internet is yet to be fully understood. For some it has been like a Tsunami, just as a record shop or an insurance salesman. To many others though it is an unseen force, they know its there but not what or how it operates and effects their business. But it is and it will. The sooner business wakes up to these changes the better placed they will be to compete without feeling they have one hand behind their back.