Bootstrapper's Paradise

There's a HUGE difference between solving your own problem and solving someone else's when you are trying to succeed in building a B2B SaaS.  Let's talk about the pros and cons of each approach.

Build a profitable B2B SaaS using AI for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode what I want to talk about is why I'm such an advocate for solving your own problem with your B2B SaaS, especially if you're doing this for the first time. Now, if I'm gonna start by describing what happens if you don't solve your own problem. There's a huge challenge that a lot of people that want to build a B2B SaaS to bring a potential solution to market.

If they're building for a target market that they're not intimately familiar with, I've done this too, so I can explain what some of the limitations will be if you attempt that strategy. Now, what you're probably not realizing when you begin this kind of venture of this journey is all the things you don't know about that target market.

Like whatever it is problem wise, you want to try to solve. If you're not in it all day every day, or you haven't been in it four years, there's so much nuance you're going to miss and not understanding all of that detail is going to cause problems for you. The product, everything along the way is just gonna take longer and be harder.

So, Number one, whatever you're building for in terms of a target market, if it isn't one that you live in on a daily basis, you're gonna need to be really passionate about it because there's a lot you need to learn. You almost need to become whoever it is you're building for. And I'll give you an example.

So I've built products and human resources. I built products in marketing. We, I talked about my podcasting tool. Now evaluating, bringing a tool to market for the legal industry. One for the accounting industry, right? I like exploring different target markets, but I haven't professionally worked full-time in most of these industries.

And the big difference is for the ones in which I have, especially the ones I've built businesses in, the amount of understanding that I have. Of all the level of detail that I need to know in order to build products for that industry is significantly higher than it is in some of these other industries, and that makes all the difference when it comes to figuring out the problems that I wanna solve, how I wanna solve them, how my tools expected to provide that level of value for that target market.

Because it helps you move significantly faster. So if you're trying to achieve greater success and less time, a better place to start would be your business, as in what's the biggest problem or challenge you need to solve as opposed to someone else's business or an industry that you haven't spent as much time in yourself.

So, If you're considering where to start and you have the opportunity to choose between solving a problem for your own business or the industry in which you work versus something that you don't have an intimate level of understanding in, I'm always gonna recommend you choose the former because that's gonna enable you to move significantly faster and achieve greater success and less time than if you need to go learn everything about a relatively new industry to you.

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When starting out, you may want to capture research to better understand your target market.  This can be super informative.  However, not all forms of research are created equal.  Let's talk about the different types and when to leverage each so you don't get bad data.

How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS business for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk to you more about a topic that comes up quite a bit as it pertains to the research that you wanna do to figure out which problems you wanna solve for your B2B SaaS customers. Now, there's different ways to gather feedback from a target market.

For the most part, those break down into two categories. There's qualitative and there's quantitative types of data that you can collect. For the most part, the qualitative data usually takes the form of interviews or conversations for you to learn more from a target market. And there's different ways to gather that, which I'll talk about next.

The second or quantitative is usually some form of asynchronous method of capturing information from a similar target market, like surveys, for example. Now, In the beginning, I hugely favor qualitative over quantitative, and I'm gonna explain why. But what I want to inform you of is that most people are often very interested in collecting survey data, and there's for various reasons for this, I'm sure, but I believe that to be a trap in the beginning because it can severely limit what you can learn, and it could also be misleading, pointing you in the wrong direction.

Here's why. Because in the beginning, if you don't know your target market intimately well enough, as in if you haven't had a decent number of conversations with them in one-on-one capacity, then it's gonna be really difficult to create an effective survey because you're not necessarily gonna know which questions are more relevant than others.

As such, this is why I'm a huge favor in, in huge, in favor of the qualitative conversations and capturing that type of data first, because that's gonna enable you to learn some of the most important and relevant information. And it will also inform your ability to create the best surveys as well. So let's talk about the different types of qua qualitative information that you can collect when performing this research.

Now, there's two different methods that this breaks down into as well. Also, There's one-on-one conversations, really a personalized approach. There's also different types of group conversations, like focus groups, which you've probably heard of before. You may have been part of one on either side as well.

Also, I'm also not a huge fan of focus groups. I. Also, especially in the beginning, and the reason for that is it's susceptible to a number of different problems. Two that I can think of right away is what I call group think. That's where the consensus of the room seems to be heading in a direction, but that other people in the room are more than likely just.

Gravitate or want to kind of go along with the flow in terms of where the room is heading, if a few, and that can be misleading because it could be a few people in the room dominating the conversation and taking it in a direction that other people in the room don't agree with, but are kind of unwilling to just fight that what seems to be inevitable or just natural so far in the dialogue that's happening in the room.

Groupthink is a big problem with focus groups. Uh, the other one is the loudest voice, which is related to that, where someone's being adamant about something or maybe combative, whatever it is. Other folks in the room may not feel comfortable speaking up or fighting that momentum for whatever reason. So, You can get a lot of misleading information.

Now. It sounds great, it sounds efficient, and it sounds like you could kind of do everything all at once. But that's like, uh, which I've said the other day, 10 women making a baby in a month. It's not really, that might be possible from a theoretical perspective, but in practice it doesn't work like that.

So instead, hu, I'm a huge advocate for personalized one-on-one conversations, especially in the beginning. Uh, a qualitative nature so that you can figure out what type of information's most relevant, what questions work best, and how to get the information that's gonna inform all of your decisions from here.

Do a series of those and then you'll get better at them along the way. Plus, you'll learn better information as you get a better understanding and what you should be asking. And where the areas of opportunity are. So that process will naturally become more efficient and more effective. And then from what you learn, investing in that process, that can inform other more efficient methods you might wanna leverage at scale.

And that's where you can consider some quantitative methods that will have a high impact as well too, like issuing surveys because now you know how to design that survey because you've had enough one-on-one conversations to understand the patterns.

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Now that AI tools can help us more further much faster, it's easier to lose the thread on who we're building for and get excited about building for consumers.  Let's talk about why this can be a big problem for your B2B SaaS and how to avoid the trap.

How to build a profitable B2B SaaS product for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode what I want to talk to you about is avoiding the consumer trap. Now, when I'm talking about building SaaS businesses, what I'm talking about is b2b, which is why I combine the two building B2B SaaS businesses. And the key part of that is the B2B element. As in business to business, you're building a proper business and you're selling the proper businesses.

This makes a big difference when it comes to the success, the trajectory, figuring out the problems we're solving, the features you want to build. All of those elements become more straightforward, in my opinion, if you're building for businesses and not consumers, however, these days with the capabilities of AI and how quickly and easily you can produce something.

Much more capable than we used to be able to in a previous generation of the tools we had access to. It can become a little bit enticing or more so to also go after a consumer crowd. I'll give you an example. So I'm building tools for B2B podcasters and really that's podcasting agencies. Not just people who have their own podcasts, which might be about whatever, cooking, sports, something like that.

That's more of a hobby. It's probably not a revenue stream for them. It's probably not affiliated with the business, at least not yet. If that's the case, I don't really want them to be part of my target market. I want the agencies that are helping people. Build and set up podcasts, but doing so for business, like one that I have as well called Podcast Chef.

And the reason why I want that is because those businesses have clear long-term goals. They have revenue stream, they have budget set aside for ensuring that they can solve certain problems. And the more faster, the more effective and efficiently they can solve those problems, the more successful, the more potentially profitable their business can become.

I can work around that set of parameters because those are consistent usually from business to business. However, when you fall into the consumer crowd, it's like herding cats. There are. Things to chase. There are an unlimited number of things you can chase and places to get stuck because consumers, they, everything in their lives, there's so many variables that they're managing.

There's so many combinations as well too, that it could be much harder to detect the patterns because there's just that many different types of consumers. Businesses, on the other hand, are a little bit more stable in that way, which makes things quite a bit easier for you as a potential B2B SaaS builder to solve their problems.

So this is why. I want you to ensure that you are consistently focusing on building for businesses as opposed to consumers. And to be careful not to fall into the consumer trap because it's easy to do. I, I should say, it's easier to do now that AI is so capable and will enable you potentially to solve their problems too.

Now, if consumers are purchasing your product and it's built for businesses, that's okay. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about if you are beginning to. Update and influence your product roadmap in the direction of consumers as opposed to businesses. That's going to be a challenge and create problems for you in the future.

So make sure you are building around businesses, especially if you are looking to be successful in the B2B SaaS world. And I think it's a lot easier to succeed when you're building for businesses as opposed to when you're building for consumers. But don't let yourself get caught into what I consider to be the consumer trap cuz that can mess up your roadmap and jeopardize the long-term success for your SaaS business.

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Once you've verified that your B2B SaaS can produce a return on investment through paid traffic, you'll want to develop a strategy to improve that ROI over time by investing in SEO.  Let's talk more about what it is and how to do it.

Launch a profitable B2B SaaS product for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk to you about how to start making progress against performing well from an SEO perspective, which is gonna help continue to drive traffic and leads at your B2B SaaS applications landing page Now. As I've talked about building the podcasting tool that I'm working on now, I talked about early testing using ads to really evaluate the strength of that value proposition.

However, once you get to and through an important milestone there, which is being able to verify that you can go from. Basically people you know, driving traffic to your landing page, to people, reaching out and beginning a potential free trial that you may be offering with your product. And then ultimately converting into a paying customer.

You're going to want to look for other channels you can invest in, which will over time send you more traffic. One of those is a longer term investment. G, I can produce excellent results as long as you maintain it, and that's. SEO or search engine optimization. Now that means to produce content so that you climb the search rankings for relevant keywords, but do so in organic fashion, as in the initial test that I was just mentioning is essentially a shortcut for you to get to the top of those results of the search engine when people are searching for relevant keywords and phrases related to what it is your product does.

But that's obviously paid traffic, so you're investing in driving that traffic to your site. However, if you ultimately have the domain authority or content that boosts that authority relevant to those specific keywords, then you will climb the rankings to inevitably, ideally be on the first page of Google search results at or near the top, which will be similar to paid traffic.

You'll be ideally right under. Where those paid traffic links are at the top, but you will receive potentially similar levels of performance, but you won't have to pay for the traffic. So that's the major advantage of. Being able to climb the SEO rankings, which is something I believe worthwhile in investing.

After you get to and through that milestone, if you can't get there yet, then you have other things to figure out before it makes sense potentially to make that an investment. The other thing worth knowing as well is that improving SEO performance is a long-term commitment, usually as it's typically not something you could do.

Immediately. It's something that you need to start on and need to work on typically, at least for months in order to climb those rankings and then wind up on the first page of Google, cuz that's the idea. But you can use tools like from companies such as S scm Rush ah Res, in order to track and monitor your progress.

Four relevant keywords, which isn't just for you. It can also be for your competitors as well too, so you can see what they're ranking for, what you're ranking for, and you can get a better idea in terms of what are the keywords that you should be focusing on in order to climb those rankings yourself.

But if you've made it to and through that milestone, this is a worthwhile investment. That will ultimately produce significant return in the long run. But keep in mind that it is a long-term investment so the results won't materialize overnight. Versus with ad traffic, you can essentially turn that on whenever you'd like and throw a budget at it, and that will produce results.

If again, you've verified that you've made it through that milestone, and you have the ability to convert those prospects and eyes on your landing page to trials and then customers, but over time, that investment makes sense because it's gonna be a potentially better. Return on investment in the long run.

So for a period of time, as you're waiting for those SEO results to improve, you can essentially manage both if that's possible. Ideally, you will be able to do that as you've converted new prospects and trial users to paying customers. Then as your SEO results start to ramp up, your ad budget can ramp down, and then you can ultimately increase your return on investment in MA maintaining that as a channel.

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Not all industries are created equal.  Some will have ridiculous PPC budget ranges for you to compete over traffic.  Let's talk about what to do when this happens.  Hint: it's not spend more.

How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS or less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode what I want to talk to you about is what to do if you ultimately find out that whatever your primary channel is, let's say it's driving traffic via ads, doesn't end up being as effective as you wanted it to be for various reasons. But in this episode specifically, I'm gonna talk about budget.

If you find out what you were going to do with ads ends up being significantly less cost effective because ads are. Maybe for example, way too expensive, what to do instead. So the first thing to note is that I don't want you to force that, as in, if you've built SaaS applications before, like I have, oftentimes there can be keyword opportunities that might be a dollar per click, for example, which I think is entirely reasonable and can work really well at low budgets in order to do effective testing.

But in certain industries, the paper click could be. Dozens of dollars per click. It could even be hundreds of dollars per click. Some of them get ridiculously expensive, A lot of big companies, mostly making a lot of money, but that drive the ad budget up to these astronomical levels, which means that.

It's really not great at that point for early stage testing. You don't wanna pour that much budget into just a landing page in order to try to determine whether or not your product that's being advertised on your page has a strong value proposition. So the question then is what to do instead? Well, number one is I don't want you to force it, right, as in just ramp up budget, because I think that's just not cost effective.

The second is, I want you to remember that we're working backwards from. The end result that we're trying to achieve, and that's to validate your value proposition. So in order to do that, all we really need to do is have a programmatic, systematic way, or at least a way, it doesn't even have to be either of those two to gain access to enough target market users in order to determine the viability and the potential that your product has.

So what are some other ways that we can do that? Well, some of them can be more manual, others can be more automated. I have a tendency to prefer the automated options, but not exclusively. I balance oftentimes with a few of those other strategies as well as in myself personally. I've done everything from leveraging my own network and folks that I can meet locally or even in person, all the way to and through something like a code email outreach or an outreach on LinkedIn.

So now this is gonna depend on your target market, as in where are they, where are they paying attention, how can you gain access to them? All of those options. And for each of them, you can leverage different automation strategies to make this process a little bit easier to manage. But remember also in the earlier stage, we're trying to get what I consider to be quote, like a wave of prospects or customers to really test the value proposition of your product.

So you don't need a. An unlimited number of prospects as part of this phase. What you really need is you need enough. You need a decent subset of customers in order to determine how much viability your product ultimately has. So don't worry about gaining access to an unlimited number of prospects at this point.

As such, any of those strategies can work effectively as well, and you can substitute those in for what might have been your primary strategy before, which is my personal favorite in trying to drive traffic with ads. Now, if that doesn't end up being cost effective, like some of these use cases I just mentioned.

Then instead, you can leverage some of these other strategies to essentially do the same thing. But in the end, what we're ultimately going to do is once we verify and validate all these things, we want to establish your brand. We want to establish your domain, and we wanna try to drive as much organic traffic as possible.

And that's where SEO comes into the mix. And I'll talk more about that in another episode, perhaps tomorrow. But as far as for now, what I really want you to walk away with this from is, It doesn't have to be paid ads, as in if the early homework you're doing is showing that that's not as cost effective as you're expecting it to be, then I want you to consider switching up your strategy to achieve the same thing as opposed to just continually pouring good money after bed or wasting too much in the beginning of testing your product.

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Measuring the value of your B2B SaaS can be tricky.  Your customer showering your product with praise often isn't enough.  Let's talk about where to look for and how to find REAL value from the perspective of your customer.

How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS product for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk about how to determine the value of your B2B SaaS from your customer's perspective, because that's really what matters. Now, this is an element that's gonna help you better understand how sticky your product can become, as in how easy is it gonna be for your customer to essentially incorporate your product into their routine?

That means longer ltv. And an opportunity to generate more value for ultimately what becomes your business. Now, I've talked a bit about how to start soliciting and gathering feedback from the usage of your product, from your paying customers as they're using it more frequently and they've got requests for new features and kind of open up that communication channel as well as potentially build a subset of what I might consider to be quote like beta testers.

That's an excellent place to go to, to start collecting feedback in terms of what does their experience actually look like in terms of value Now, and there's a couple different ways to potentially measure this, but from my perspective, my favorite and the one that's probably the most defensible is the ROI or return on investment element where I'm looking for the ability to be able to measure and quantify in terms of dollars and cents.

How much value they are getting out of the product experience. Now, this isn't always straightforward and sometimes it's also not easy, but it is very important cause it is hard to argue against hard costs and savings in terms of value if your product is ultimately translating to them, being able to save money, generate money, save time.

All of those things are what I consider to be associated with hard costs that they had to spend before. And they potentially don't need to do now or. New revenue they're able to generate now that they're crediting back to your product. Now, if you're able to determine this, that's a great long-term predictor of value.

Stickiness, increases in LTV or lifetime value of the customer, and a few other metrics as well too. And this is arguably the most important one. So that's what I'm always looking for when I'm asking for feedback from my users, from my customers, I'm asking them for. How is the product valuable for you, and can you articulate?

Some of those details, I'll continue with that conversation until I have what I feel is a full picture of the actual value my product is providing for them in terms of dollars and cents to them and their business. So that's where I would recommend focusing. To get a better understanding in quantifying the actual value your product is providing for them.

This will help you figure out whether or not your product is nice to have or a need to have, and also based on the language that they use, you'll get a real understanding relatively quickly how valuable they feel your product is and how important or integral it now is to their entire process.

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Founders often talk about "beta' as a concept anywhere from their product to users.  I want to share with you what I've found that works (and doesn't work) when it comes to the concept of "beta" strategies related to your B2B SaaS.

How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS business for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and in this episode I want to talk about the beta concept, and I'm doing air quotes since you can't see me now. People talk about having beta version of their product using beta testers and users for their product. Bunch of different concepts, and I wanna talk to you about. What I think works here and what I think doesn't work.

Number one, I don't love the concept of a quote beta version of your product, especially if you haven't launched it. A lot of people talk about that in the very early stages. They try to find a handful of folks to test it with. I, I say skip, although that that just adds, in my opinion, unnecessary time to the process.

Just launch your product to whomever's, willing to use it. And those can become your, your first wave of users, beta users, if you wanna refer to them as such. But anybody can sign up. I think that saves time and gets you feedback a lot faster. I think the whole process is more effective if you approach it in that way.

Now, what I think does make sense is after you have a wave of users and you have verified again that you can turn prospects into users and then users into paying customers, once you've validated the fact that you have essentially a funnel or a process for that, That's a big checkbox. Once you've done that, you want to engage with them a bit deeper.

And potentially a subset of them to engage a bit deeper, to learn more about the direction in which your product should go. What problems should your product be solving beyond what it does currently? That way you can continue to make it better so folks are continually getting more value out of it, and that return on investment for you should look like an extended LTV or lifetime value, as in how long your users and customers are paying for access to your product because of set investment.

Now, I think this is where it makes sense to entertain this as a process, but again, not before you launch your product, after you launch your product. So flip that around. But once you have and you verifi verify the fact that you're able to process through those phases successfully to a certain percentage and keep track of your baseline there, then what you could do is start engaging with folks that have expressed interest beyond the typical user.

They're reaching out to your support channels. They're asking questions. Maybe they have ideas they've shared with you. Those folks are perfect for creating essentially a subset of users to get a better understanding in is the actual persona, as in the people that are using and paying for your product, same as you had initially designed it and built all of your positioning around great testing to be done there.

Beyond that, look for additional ways that you can engage with them to better understand. Okay. You know, what has your experience been like with a product? How are you getting value out of it? You can even capture some social proof or some quotes to share on your website, to encourage others to sign up.

But beyond that, you can work with them to learn more about, okay, what's next? Like, what do you, what else do you want this to do? How else could it be better? So I'm getting that feedback now from my podcast product, and I'm getting a ton of positive feedback. So folks are reaching out, they're engaging with me, I'm asking them these follow up questions, and I'm getting so much helpful information.

Back through the channel and I, I'm getting that because I just straight up released my product. So I released my product. People are paying for it, people are using it, and they're sending me ideas in terms of how to make it better. This is something I've talked about quite a bit, uh, in theory. I'm using it now, obviously in practice with this example so that you can see how it works as well too, and it's also something that I want you to do.

So if you're thinking about how to leverage beta concepts for your product, this is where I think it will be great to start and where I think you'll get the most value.

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If you don't manage pricing tiers for your B2B SaaS correctly, it will make validating your value proposition harder and growth slower.  Let's talk about if and when to introduce different pricing tiers to your B2B SaaS application.

How to launch a profitable B2B SaaS product for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here, and today what I want to talk to you about is how to price your product after you have a number of users and customers that have converted plus regular usage with your product. Now, one of the things that's hard to know in the beginning is what is regular usage and demand on your product ultimately going to look like.

One of the things I wanted to know to figure out how I would kind of accurately gate my free trial. Was, what did the typical usage look like during that period? So I know essentially how much I may essentially be giving away, or how aggressive I want to be in providing free value before I expect a user to convert into a paying customer.

So, Ultimately what I did was I looked at and I measured what that average usage looks like and then figured out what the cost may be range wise with a level of confidence in terms of what that's ultimately going to cost me. So now I've got an idea how much more I'm theoretically investing into converting those users into paying customers.

Cuz I'm already, I already have paid channels, which is driving those. Kind of views, impressions, and clicks to my site. I know what that costs. Now I need to figure out, once they convert into using the products, once they begin a free trial, how much are they using the product at that point? And what is that costing me to then try to get them over the next milestone, which is going from just a free trial user to a paying customer.

So if you haven't done this exercise before, figure this out by. Getting a better understanding of what average usage in your product looks like, and then attempting to add up all of the costs associated with what essentially that free trial period may be costing you based on where you draw those lines.

So how you gate, essentially the free trial, that'll give you an idea of how much more budget is being invested into attempting to convert those users into paying customers so that you can figure out where you wanna draw that line and how aggressive you want to get. Now there's a certain amount of value in.

Kind of this somewhat lost leader mentality, or investing a couple of extra bucks or whatever it may be for your product in order to try to get your users to become paying customers, um, without essentially, you know, giving away all of your budget or putting your product at risk financially. That is because first impressions are important, and if you can convert someone successfully into a paying customer, obviously they're seeing value, especially if they've used your product through a free trial.

Plus, if you have converted them, then they're essentially yours to lose, meaning that if you're driving the product in the direction that they want to go, then more than likely a solid percentage of those should remain paying customers, which is the name of the game here. So, Those are a number of things to keep in mind when you're figuring out how to price your product for success, but a more data driven way to think about it so that you're not, so that you're being responsible with the budget in terms of how you're leveraging it to try to get your users past those activation points to become recurring paying and happy customers.

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Besides the obvious technical issues, there's a deeper meaning behind your users providing you with feedback that your product "doesn't work".  Let's talk about what that might really mean and what to do about it.

How to launch of profitable B2B SaaS business for less than $750 - https://nxtstep.io/b2bsaas

Episode Transcript
 Hey folks, Sean here and today What I wanna talk to you about is the other reason users and customers might claim that your product quote doesn't work. Now, the first one's probably pretty obvious, and that's because it doesn't technically as in something's broken with your product. That one's probably pretty straightforward.

The other reason is that in terms of how I would interpret it, is really what they mean is that your product is too hard to use as in what they're trying to do with it. The output or the outcome they're trying to generate from it is too hard for them to figure out how to do. Now, this falls into any number of different categories, but regardless, your users and customers are gonna treat your product the same way.

Now, especially if you're starting out or launching a B2B SaaS application, you might not get this precisely right on the first try, and that's okay. What's important is for people to. Jump through the hoops to be able to use it so that you can get the feedback in terms of what doesn't work. Right. So don't immediately think that someone reporting something not working means that your product can't do it technically.

That's what I'm trying to explain is, and that may or may not be the case. More than likely it's probably not. But uh, at least if it's only a few people reporting that feedback, if it's consistent across the board and it's tons of users, then yeah, you may have a legitimate technical issue, but, The deeper meaning behind people giving you feedback about product and not working, especially on a case by case basis, is probably more than likely a usability issue.

So what you want to do in that case is you want to really figure out where people are getting stuck. Why are they giving you that feedback? How does your product work in terms of what it is they're trying to do, and why do they feel that that's suboptimal? If you can dive deeper into that and start to figure out why you can more than likely see the patterns.

Because the challenge when we're building products, especially new, and then also if you aren't in your own target market, is there's so much context to learn. Terms of bridging that transition from what I call the existing solution, or however your users and customers were solving that problem before, to getting them to ultimately using your product that you may or may not have.

And oftentimes, if you're not in that target market, as in, if you're not literally in the shoes of one of those users and going about the same type of daily routine that they are, it can be difficult to capture that feedback. That's why it's important to have tools like Hot Jar in there and other analytics tools, plus ways to capture feedback from them so that you can learn more about how they are using the product.

When you see how they're using the product, you'll see what comes intuitively for them. Then you shouldn't be looking at potentially designing around what's intuitive for you, but more than likely what's intuitive for them, because that's gonna be an easier user experience for them, better usability, and make it significantly simpler for them to get more value out of the use of your product.

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A lot goes into pricing your B2B SaaS.  Let's talk about the free trial stage and what that may be costing you so you know how to properly 'gate' it and just how much to give away to try and convince users to become paying customers.

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Episode Transcript
Hey folks, Sean here, and today what I want to talk to you about is how to price your product after you have a number of users and customers that have converted plus regular usage with your product. Now, one of the things that's hard to know in the beginning is what is regular usage and demand on your product ultimately going to look like.

One of the things I wanted to know to figure out how I would kind of accurately gate my free trial. Was, what did the typical usage look like during that period? So I know essentially how much I may essentially be giving away, or how aggressive I want to be in providing free value before I expect a user to convert into a paying customer.

So, Ultimately what I did was I looked at and I measured what that average usage looks like and then figured out what the cost may be range wise with a level of confidence in terms of what that's ultimately going to cost me. So now I've got an idea how much more I'm theoretically investing into converting those users into paying customers.

Cuz I'm already, I already have paid channels, which is driving those. Kind of views, impressions, and clicks to my site. I know what that costs. Now I need to figure out, once they convert into using the products, once they begin a free trial, how much are they using the product at that point? And what is that costing me to then try to get them over the next milestone, which is going from just a free trial user to a paying customer.

So if you haven't done this exercise before, figure this out by. Getting a better understanding of what average usage in your product looks like, and then attempting to add up all of the costs associated with what essentially that free trial period may be costing you based on where you draw those lines.

So how you gate, essentially the free trial, that'll give you an idea of how much more budget is being invested into attempting to convert those users into paying customers so that you can figure out where you wanna draw that line and how aggressive you want to get. Now there's a certain amount of value in.

Kind of this somewhat lost leader mentality, or investing a couple of extra bucks or whatever it may be for your product in order to try to get your users to become paying customers, um, without essentially, you know, giving away all of your budget or putting your product at risk financially. That is because first impressions are important, and if you can convert someone successfully into a paying customer, obviously they're seeing value, especially if they've used your product through a free trial.

Plus, if you have converted them, then they're essentially yours to lose, meaning that if you're driving the product in the direction that they want to go, then more than likely a solid percentage of those should remain paying customers, which is the name of the game here. So, Those are a number of things to keep in mind when you're figuring out how to price your product for success, but a more data driven way to think about it so that you're not, so that you're being responsible with the budget in terms of how you're leveraging it to try to get your users past those activation points to become recurring paying and happy customers.

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