Nuts and Bolts of Marketing & selling SaaS products to US customers from India for First Timers

Nuts & Bolts of selling to US customersfrom India

Suresh Sambandam, OrangeScape, KissFLOW

Phase Relevance● After Product-Market Fit ( $1K to $5k MRR)

● Until getting to 'Growth Execution'($50K to $100K MRR)

● Essentially getting to the next 10X growth

B2B Customers Categorization● SOHO: Small office Home Office - 1 to 10

employees● VSB: Very Small Businesses - 10 to 50 employees● SMB: Small & Medium Sized Business - 50 to 500

employees● Mid-Market : 500 to 5000 employees● Enterprises: 5000+ employees

B2B Product Category Relevance● SaaS B2B SMB/Mid-Market - Yes

● SaaS B2B Enterprise - Partial

● SaaS B2B SOHO/VSB - Partial

● Classic Enterprise B2B - No

Role of Product

Marketing Product Sales(New / Repeat)

Customer Success

Bring Engage Convert Succeed

Marketing Product Sales CustomerSuccess

The Model

1)Category Creator

2)Novel Approach to an existing well understood category

3)Low cost alternative

Freemium vs Free Trial

Pricing

Website - Website is your core asset - Strong in house team needed- Say ‘NO’ to outsourcing of website- Minimum Team

- Developer- Creative Designer- Automation Engineer

- Perpetual A/B- Multiple Landing Pages- Self Ads

SEO- Do it Slowly but Steady- Don’t alert Google- Build Backlinks (Naked and Anchor)- Directory Listing- Identify and track the keywords that matter- Improve Google Crawl Frequency

Adwords- Needs one dedicated person- A specialist and someone with number crunching

/ finance background- Potential Hires can be found at eCommerce

companies

Adwords- CPS = Cost Per Signup- $10 to $25 (for Search Ads)- $2 to $10 (for Display Ads)

Adwords - Target countriesAustraliaAustriaBahrainBarbadosBelgiumBrazilCanadaSri LankaChileTaiwanColombiaCook IslandsCzech Republic

DenmarkEthiopiaFranceGermanyGhanaHong KongIndiaIndonesiaIrelandIsraelItalyKenyaKuwait

LebanonLithuaniaMalaysiaMexicoMoroccoOmanNetherlandsNorwayPeruPhilippinesPolandPortugalQatar

Saudi ArabiaSingaporeVietnamSouth AfricaSpainSwitzerlandThailandUnited Arab EmiratesEgyptUnited KingdomUnited StatesUruguayVenezuela

Content Marketing- Develop a theme - One that can sustain for long time- A fresher can do it after 1 month of training- 10:80:10 Principle- Have a simple metric to track- Link it to performance- 2+2+2+1

Sample Internal Email

Email Marketing- Show using LinkedIn - Database Creation can be Outsourced- Not using Email Marketing Software

Tools we are using- ChargeBee- Intercom- Mixpanel- Pipedrive- Google Analytics- Full Story- Sidekick- Zapier- IFTTT- KiSSDrip (Internal)- KiSSSync (Internal)- Various AppScripts (internal)

Multi-language - Have the framework in place- We stayed with English for 12 months- Then Spanish based on demand- Then Brazilian Portuguese - Hindi / Tamil - Say “NO”! (this is not the palace to show your passion)!

This might be different for your product!

Other Marketing activities- Re-targeting

- Content Re-marketing using OutBrain

Sign Up QualificationA contract between - Marketing- Product- Sales

Define it without ambiguity!

Channels we ignored- Events- Road shows- Reselling Partners- Referral Partners- Affiliate Marketing

Founding Team Commitments in Early Days

Role Definition- Catching

- Coaching

- Closing

Opening the communication- ‘Welcome Email’- Improved ‘conversation’ by 10X

Email Type # of Email # of Replies % Conv.

Welcome Email 582 16 2.74%

Alternative to Welcome Email 560 131 23.39%

http://kissflow.com/kissu_kissu/ditch-your-welcome-email/

Data Mining● First name● Last Name● Title● Company Size (SOHO / VSB / SMB / MidMarket /

Enterprise)● Board Phone number

- Done by a outsourcing company- Found through Elance- Costing around Rs. 5 - 10 / signup

Region Mapping● 3 Shifts

o 7pm to 3am o 9am to 7pmo 11am to 1am (Founding team timezone)

● Lead Assign done programmatically - no manual

● Based on Timezones

Sales Funnel

Sales Team needs one Tool

Recurring Billing

Payment Gateway

Related Party Transaction

Monthly Metrics Review● Conversion Ratio● Organic Traffic Growth w/wo spikes● Conversion through Paid vs Organic● Conversion by Online Assets● Organic Traffic by Source● Signup Trend Paid vs Organic vs Source● Paid traffic by Source● CPS for Paid and Overall● CAC fully loaded● MRR Growth with New and Repeat split● Customer Count and User Count growth● A-ARPA trend 12 months