Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share 22: SaaS Pricing - Is The Price Right?
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
22: SaaS Pricing - Is The Price Right?
Links from this episode:
- Whitespark Local Search Summit
- Summit Beast
- Pricing expert Patrick Campbell on Twitter and his company ProfitWell
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 22, SaaS pricing. Is the price right?
00:16 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:41 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:44 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And I think summer has just about set for me as we are in the last week of August here, and soon enough, hopefully, we'll be enjoying long weeks of Minnesota falls and then the inevitable winter abyss, but...
01:04 DS: Yeah.
01:05 AW: So so far, I've been doing a pretty good job this summer on spending my weekends up at the family cabin, and out in the boat with the kids, and on the water and things like that, which has made my July and August feel really great, much different than how like March, April and May felt. And how has that been for you, Darren, since... We haven't really talked in well over a month on the podcast anyway.
01:30 DS: Yeah, it's been a while. The summer's been nice, we've been trying hard to get our backyard all nicely set up, so we got things like a new swing, and we got a hammock. We just recently invested in a nice projector and a screen, so we can do backyard movie night, and so...
01:46 AW: I saw that.
01:47 DS: Yeah, we're trying to take advantage of the summer, and because this particular summer is the summer of COVID, we're mostly staying home. We're not going anywhere and so we're trying to make the most of our backyard, and enjoy being outside because we have such a short period here in Edmonton. It's getting cold, I'm wearing a sweatshirt right now. It gets cold the end of August. September is our only month of fall, we start seeing snow in October, so yeah. We've tried to cram it in, as much as we could.
02:19 AW: No, we're not there yet. I do... Fall's my favorite season, but we've still been doing 85-90 degree days last couple or so.
02:27 DS: Yeah, yeah it's getting cold here already.
02:30 AW: No, no good. Well, I know you have been extremely busy, Whitespark is putting on a local search Summit with 30 speakers?
02:41 DS: Thirty-three or 34 in total. So yeah, basically, if you are a somewhat known local search speaker or writer, like you kind of write about local search, you're mostly speaking at our... You're pretty much gonna be speaking at our conference. So I'm so excited about that, we have a huge lineup and yeah, it's been busier than ever trying to get all of these talks recorded, so the whole thing's gonna be pre-recorded, so I've been really busy with that. I'm also super busy trying to set up the local search ranking factor survey for 2020. That's getting put together right now. Aaron, you should get an email in your inbox this afternoon with an invite to take the survey, that's what my talk is gonna be on so I've been busy trying to put that together. And also another thing is, we have three different, sort of mini product launches that we're trying to time with the Summit, so...
03:37 AW: Oh. Wow.
03:38 DS: Dev is busy and yeah, it's been busy as hell.
03:41 AW: Yeah, what would you say, what's your weekly time commitment to the Summit so far?
03:47 DS: Yeah, over the last couple of months, it's probably been 20 hours, 20 hours a week for the last eight weeks-ish.
03:54 AW: Wow. Yeah, a considerable...
03:56 DS: But I would say the return on investment is going to be huge 'cause it's already big, we are already feeling it and it's because we're doing the marketing for the Summit, and so that ends up generating a ton of buzz. All the speakers are talking about it, everyone's sharing it, everyone is seeing the Whitespark brand everywhere, and so our business is better than ever right now, and we're seeing really good growth right now. And I think it's just gonna continue to grow up until this sort of pinnacle of the conference, and then we'll have a really good drop off from that, but then it's evergreen content, we're gonna keep using it. We'll do it again next year, and then we have like a year's worth of content we'll be pulling out for more marketing, so I think it's gonna be kind of nuts. I really think this is gonna be a great Whitespark.
04:43 AW: That's awesome. And I think that's a great little marketing tidbit in there, even... You can look and see right, the event itself, the day it's carried out and you play all the presentation over those days, that's the marketing and that's the buzz, but just as you alluded to, it's like it's all of the pre-marketing with it right, where you guys are... It gives you a ton to post about socially on Twitter, I know you guys have been using LinkedIn and seeing great traction at LinkedIn, and then you have 30 plus speakers that they're all putting it out on their channels, there's some really great ripple and carry effect on this, and you're still a couple of weeks away from the event itself.
05:27 DS: It's just kind of amazing, and I'm gonna have to give a shout-out to Summit Beast. We've been working with this company called Summit Beast, run by Matthew Hunt and Edyta McKindsey. And they've been really instrumental in helping us put this together in terms of getting organized, what we need to do, helping us develop our ads, our sponsorship packages, our outreach, everything, it's... They've been really great to work with. So if this is something you're thinking about, I couldn't recommend them more. They're awesome.
06:00 AW: Yeah, well, I think I heard through the grapevine that Traject, who is our kind of group of products for GatherUp is likely gonna be a sponsor.
06:12 DS: It's gonna be great. Yeah, I had a talk with Katelyn about that, and we're looking at a sponsorship program with them. That's actually another marketing vehicle too, because these sponsorship packages, they end up getting the Whitespark brand in front of their audience too, right. And so... And then what we're doing is any sponsorship dollars we get, we funnel right back into advertising for the Summit 'cause our goal is to get as many attendees as possible, so it's not a money-making venture in its own right, we don't care to make cash from the event, but it's the brand building and authority we'll build through doing it.
06:51 AW: Well, make sure you take detailed notes on some of this stuff 'cause I think this would make a great topic of conversation after everything wraps up when you're able to do a post-mortem on it. Kind of break down all of those things and to see like, "All right, what did the 30 or 60 days after the event look like as well as pre, for how it impacted our marketing and sales and things like that. I think there's a lot there.
07:17 DS: Totally will do. What's going on with you these days?
07:20 AW: Probably, if anything, right now, just kind of sitting in this holding pattern 'cause the kids start school the second week of September, and my two oldest ones are in the high school, so they're on what's called a hybrid, so they'll be in school two days a week, and then they alternate an additional Friday every other week, and then the other days they distance learn. And then my third daughter, ...
View all episodes
By Aaron Weiche
5
1010 ratings
Links from this episode:
- Whitespark Local Search Summit
- Summit Beast
- Pricing expert Patrick Campbell on Twitter and his company ProfitWell
FULL SHOW NOTES:
[music]
00:10 Aaron Weiche: Episode 22, SaaS pricing. Is the price right?
00:16 [INTRO]: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast, sharing the adventure of leading and growing a bootstrap SaaS company. Hear the experiences, challenges, wins, and losses shared in each episode, from Aaron Weiche of GatherUp and Darren Shaw of Whitespark. Let's go.
00:41 AW: Welcome to the SaaS Venture podcast. I'm Aaron.
00:44 Darren Shaw: And I'm Darren.
00:45 AW: And I think summer has just about set for me as we are in the last week of August here, and soon enough, hopefully, we'll be enjoying long weeks of Minnesota falls and then the inevitable winter abyss, but...
01:04 DS: Yeah.
01:05 AW: So so far, I've been doing a pretty good job this summer on spending my weekends up at the family cabin, and out in the boat with the kids, and on the water and things like that, which has made my July and August feel really great, much different than how like March, April and May felt. And how has that been for you, Darren, since... We haven't really talked in well over a month on the podcast anyway.
01:30 DS: Yeah, it's been a while. The summer's been nice, we've been trying hard to get our backyard all nicely set up, so we got things like a new swing, and we got a hammock. We just recently invested in a nice projector and a screen, so we can do backyard movie night, and so...
01:46 AW: I saw that.
01:47 DS: Yeah, we're trying to take advantage of the summer, and because this particular summer is the summer of COVID, we're mostly staying home. We're not going anywhere and so we're trying to make the most of our backyard, and enjoy being outside because we have such a short period here in Edmonton. It's getting cold, I'm wearing a sweatshirt right now. It gets cold the end of August. September is our only month of fall, we start seeing snow in October, so yeah. We've tried to cram it in, as much as we could.
02:19 AW: No, we're not there yet. I do... Fall's my favorite season, but we've still been doing 85-90 degree days last couple or so.
02:27 DS: Yeah, yeah it's getting cold here already.
02:30 AW: No, no good. Well, I know you have been extremely busy, Whitespark is putting on a local search Summit with 30 speakers?
02:41 DS: Thirty-three or 34 in total. So yeah, basically, if you are a somewhat known local search speaker or writer, like you kind of write about local search, you're mostly speaking at our... You're pretty much gonna be speaking at our conference. So I'm so excited about that, we have a huge lineup and yeah, it's been busier than ever trying to get all of these talks recorded, so the whole thing's gonna be pre-recorded, so I've been really busy with that. I'm also super busy trying to set up the local search ranking factor survey for 2020. That's getting put together right now. Aaron, you should get an email in your inbox this afternoon with an invite to take the survey, that's what my talk is gonna be on so I've been busy trying to put that together. And also another thing is, we have three different, sort of mini product launches that we're trying to time with the Summit, so...
03:37 AW: Oh. Wow.
03:38 DS: Dev is busy and yeah, it's been busy as hell.
03:41 AW: Yeah, what would you say, what's your weekly time commitment to the Summit so far?
03:47 DS: Yeah, over the last couple of months, it's probably been 20 hours, 20 hours a week for the last eight weeks-ish.
03:54 AW: Wow. Yeah, a considerable...
03:56 DS: But I would say the return on investment is going to be huge 'cause it's already big, we are already feeling it and it's because we're doing the marketing for the Summit, and so that ends up generating a ton of buzz. All the speakers are talking about it, everyone's sharing it, everyone is seeing the Whitespark brand everywhere, and so our business is better than ever right now, and we're seeing really good growth right now. And I think it's just gonna continue to grow up until this sort of pinnacle of the conference, and then we'll have a really good drop off from that, but then it's evergreen content, we're gonna keep using it. We'll do it again next year, and then we have like a year's worth of content we'll be pulling out for more marketing, so I think it's gonna be kind of nuts. I really think this is gonna be a great Whitespark.
04:43 AW: That's awesome. And I think that's a great little marketing tidbit in there, even... You can look and see right, the event itself, the day it's carried out and you play all the presentation over those days, that's the marketing and that's the buzz, but just as you alluded to, it's like it's all of the pre-marketing with it right, where you guys are... It gives you a ton to post about socially on Twitter, I know you guys have been using LinkedIn and seeing great traction at LinkedIn, and then you have 30 plus speakers that they're all putting it out on their channels, there's some really great ripple and carry effect on this, and you're still a couple of weeks away from the event itself.
05:27 DS: It's just kind of amazing, and I'm gonna have to give a shout-out to Summit Beast. We've been working with this company called Summit Beast, run by Matthew Hunt and Edyta McKindsey. And they've been really instrumental in helping us put this together in terms of getting organized, what we need to do, helping us develop our ads, our sponsorship packages, our outreach, everything, it's... They've been really great to work with. So if this is something you're thinking about, I couldn't recommend them more. They're awesome.
06:00 AW: Yeah, well, I think I heard through the grapevine that Traject, who is our kind of group of products for GatherUp is likely gonna be a sponsor.
06:12 DS: It's gonna be great. Yeah, I had a talk with Katelyn about that, and we're looking at a sponsorship program with them. That's actually another marketing vehicle too, because these sponsorship packages, they end up getting the Whitespark brand in front of their audience too, right. And so... And then what we're doing is any sponsorship dollars we get, we funnel right back into advertising for the Summit 'cause our goal is to get as many attendees as possible, so it's not a money-making venture in its own right, we don't care to make cash from the event, but it's the brand building and authority we'll build through doing it.
06:51 AW: Well, make sure you take detailed notes on some of this stuff 'cause I think this would make a great topic of conversation after everything wraps up when you're able to do a post-mortem on it. Kind of break down all of those things and to see like, "All right, what did the 30 or 60 days after the event look like as well as pre, for how it impacted our marketing and sales and things like that. I think there's a lot there.
07:17 DS: Totally will do. What's going on with you these days?
07:20 AW: Probably, if anything, right now, just kind of sitting in this holding pattern 'cause the kids start school the second week of September, and my two oldest ones are in the high school, so they're on what's called a hybrid, so they'll be in school two days a week, and then they alternate an additional Friday every other week, and then the other days they distance learn. And then my third daughter, ...