Forem: Omar Ben.

5 Strategies for Business Growth with SaaS Marketing

Omar Ben. — Tue, 15 Mar 2022 18:06:36 +0000

Marketing for a traditional company is pretty easy at this point, but if you’re a saas company, that’s a whole other ball game as a saas marketer, you have to follow a completely different business model.

That also means adapting to different digital marketing strategies. If you ever want to reach customers and convert them.
In this article, I’m gonna show you 5 simple tactics that you can use to create a solid saas marketing strategy:

1. Create content for your audience

One of the best ways to reach your audience is through a search engine, but if you ever want to claw your way out of the phantom zone, that is page 2 of Google you’re going to need to write some content, but here’s the catch. It’s got to be optimized content that your audience actually wants to read.

This isn’t a big secret and it’s something your competitors are already doing so you’re not going to beat the rest of the world to the table. Your only hope is to create better content. That’s optimized for both nurturing and lead generation.

So how do you do that? here are a few suggestions:

Create resources that appeal to your customers, these can be blog posts, videos, ebooks, free courses, and even interactive quizzes. Case studies can also be an effective method that gives social proof to your customers.

Every one of these options will help you create some really good content, but with so much competition out there creating content. That is good, isn’t good enough anymore. You need to put in extra time to find unique angles that work with your brand.

2. Boost your acquisition with free trials

Everyone wants something. That’s free and saas. Companies are in a perfect position to offer free trials to interested prospects.
Saas trials are perfect because at the end of the trial period, there’s nothing to return a customer either decides to move forward, or they don’t make sure you’re hyping that trial. A lot include it everywhere that you can your home page, your emails blog posts, literally everywhere before that trial, you’re an unproven commodity.

There’s no trust between you and your customer. But if you let them take your system for a test drive you can improve your quality and secure their business, and all of this costs you nothing ( I know, it varies from product to product. For example, Odown uses multiple servers to monitor uptime, so a trial user costs a little bit of money ).

3. Encourage activation

Getting someone to sign up for a free trial is only a first step if they don’t actually use that trial, then they’re not going to buy from you. You have to gently, encourage your free trial users to actually get to know your service to do that, you’re, going to have to figure out what actions make people more likely to become paying customers at the end of their trial, then create a strategy around pushing those actions- just don’t be obnoxious about it, something like in-app user prompts could help you do this.

Another idea is to use email marketing automation, to reach out to your trial users at set intervals, something as simple as

Hey, welcome to your trial, you should do this thing can go a long way

Then a week or two later follow up with

How are you enjoying your trial? Have you tried this thing yet

It may be a bit more eloquent than that, but you get the picture.

The goal is to make your user feel as familiar with the product as possible, while it’s still free that will show them the value of your service and lead to more purchases.

4. Experiment with pricing

Everyone wants to get the most value for the least amount of money. You need to figure out what your audience is willing to pay for your saas product and that only comes through trial and error.

Studies show that companies who consistently optimize pricing have a lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio six times higher than those who don’t. But the most effective pricing isn’t always the most obvious one. This is where understanding your saas audience comes into play big time, it’s always better to get users to subscribe to a service on a yearly basis rather than month to month.

As you can see below, in my Odown product, I offered 2 months free on the annual plan, so with this little trick, I can maintain the servers and guarantee the charges for a long time and it allows me to focus on the product itself to build strong new features

So try to prove the value of this by telling them that they get a free month of service by paying for the year in advance.

Since most people don’t immediately understand the value of a percentage using a phrase like free month can make a huge difference in your conversion rate.

5. Get those referrals

More than 82 percent of Americans ask their friends and family members for recommendations on products and services, but getting customers to actually brag about your service is a lot easier than it sounds believe it or not.

Most of your customers have lives outside of their interactions with your saas product and they don’t spend their free time talking about it. So you might need to sweeten the pot a little bit offer a discount or even a free gift to subscribers who refer their friends.

Incentivize the referral show your customers what they can stand to get when they send their friends and family your way.

Some businesses take this a step further and create affiliate programs, that’s when your user essentially becomes a brand ambassador earning a commission on anyone that they refer.

Yes, we said that saas marketing was a totally different animal, but it’s still marketing, while it might look different you’re still addressing the main three parts of your sales cycle:

Lead acquisition
Monetization
Retention

Invest some time and energy into understanding your saas audience and you’ll be able to create strategies that will draw them in sell your product, and keep them coming back for more.

3 Hacks to Quickly Attract Customers!

Omar Ben. — Mon, 14 Mar 2022 18:43:28 +0000

When launching a new business, there isn't a way to get a shortcut for success. You know it requires a lot of work to build the right product for the correct type of customers that can help them so that they are willing to spend their money on it.
However, there are three relatively quick hacks. You can apply once you're confident enough to ship your product and attract new customers.

1. "Alternative to" pages

You're likely launching a product that already has some competitors in the same space right well.
This first hack is focused on leveraging the authority of those competitors by creating alternative two pages you're going to write blog posts or landing pages, where you compare your software through those already existing products.
As you can see in the example below, StatusCake is the competitor of our Odown product, so we have added a clear and transparent comparison that convinces the user to use Odown.

This way, when people search for alternatives on Google, they hopefully end up on your site, which is an excellent opportunity for them to check out your product, and who knows, if you're good enough, they'll stick around. And you have a new customer, a similar approach.

2."Alternative to" Ads

You can do it with ads; this will give you much faster results, so go and sign up to Google Adwords and create "alternative to" ads, which you then target on your competitors' keywords.
It can be one of the following:

Brand names

A combination with keywords such as "switch from X" or "alternative to X" or even something like "cheaper alternative to X".

3. Product Listing

The last hack is to get your product listed on sites where your competitors are listed already.

These can be sites where they compare different products in your space. Another great hack would be finding high, ranking blog posts and asking the author to include your product in the article.

You often need to pay for it, but besides the traffic, you'll get, you'll also gain brand authority because you're listed with other well-known brands.

You'll also get a backlink from a high authority domain URL, which will benefit yours overall.

This is a big win, so there you have it. These three hacks are what I would do right away when launching a new product today.

If you are interested in these articles, please follow up to get my up-to-date blog posts!

Why 2022 will be Exciting for Developers

Omar Ben. — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 12:24:03 +0000

It's hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but that's exactly what we'll try to do in this article 2021 was a strange year.
There was a significant regime change, we finally beat the pandemic, and everybody took off their masks and went back to the office.
That was the original plan anyway. Unfortunately, it's your conspiracy theorist uncle on Facebook who keeps making the correct predictions, but as developers and entrepreneurs, we don't care about these externalities.
We figure out ways to make money writing code with the environment. They give us. We thrive in the chaos, then we'll start things off by looking at primary trends that will influence the developer landscape in 2022.
For each trend, I'll give you one of my personal, weird app ideas that you can use to build a quadrillion-dollar startup. The first trend we need to talk about is web3 or the decentralized web.

Web3

Some people think web3 is the point where all modern technology converges, out of which new unimaginable technologies will diverge in the future. Other people, though, think that web3 is just the latest buzzword to pump crypto scams, but what is web3 exactly.

A completely decentralized version of our current internet, with no firewalls, no tolls, no government regulation, you want to build a new internet…

It's basically a vision for the internet, where everything is decentralized and regulated with smart contracts and crypto. Instead of the current status quo, where everything is controlled by Google, Facebook, and Amazon.

In a decentralized app or dapp, the user owns all their data instead of an email, password identity users are identified by a blockchain wallet address that usually connects with a browser plugin like MetaMask, while the app itself is code that lives on the blockchain in the form of a smart contract,

The idea is really cool because it gives people absolute control over their own slice of the internet as opposed to using services that are mediated by a central ivory tower like a big tech, corporation, or government,
On the other hand, there are a ton of ways one might criticize web3:

It's chaotic hard to develop quality apps with current toolchains.
It doesn't benefit most mainstream businesses in any practical way.

Most of the tokens are owned by silicon valley insiders, so it's not really decentralized at all, and you really don't need cryptocurrency to build a decentralized app in the first place.
If crypto prices collapse, for whatever reason, I think a lot of the excitement for web 3 would disappear. I could go on, but one of my favorite quotes is

Building a decentralized internet is not an easy thing to do. There's a huge opportunity for developers who are willing to tackle the problems in this space. A big part of success is timing.
Facebook, Google, and Amazon were all in the right place at the right time to capitalize on web 1.0 and 2.0. I think you should be skeptical about web3, but if it does go mainstream, you'll be happy.

Here's my web3 startup idea. The corporate media is dying. Not many people in the key demo actually trust or watch the mainstream media.
They can continue to force-feed us this content by making it artificially rank high on platforms like Twitter and YouTube, and even by removing things like the dislike button to limit our ability to point out harmful content.
I think an entirely decentralized news network would be awesome, where journalists could upload video articles and other reporting and be compensated based on its reach. It would incentivize good journalism and eliminate the possibility of the top-down propaganda machine. Journalists win, consumers win, the only one who gets **** is the establishment.

The metaverse

The metaverse you likely saw mark Zuckerberg's ultra cringe. I mean inspiring vision about the metaverse. I totally agree that the vision was dumb because I would never want to be involved in any kind of metaverse run by Facebook, a company with a terrible track record of abusing our data and violating our privacy. That being said, Facebook is not the only company building a metaverse; they're just trying to hijack the name.

The general concept is to build an internet-based platform that has multiple access points like your phone, VR, and AR.

Then you have a single profile that you can use to interact with different businesses and apps within that platform and communicate with other users in a virtual environment like you would in VRChat or an old school app like second life.
The concept is actually really cool, but I don't think the VR aspect of it will ever go. Super mainstream VR has been around for a long time now, and the technology is excellent, but most people just don't like using it.
We already know we're addicted to social media and video games. The idea of strapping on a headset to further detach from the real world just doesn't seem like something that humans will do; that being said, metaverses are being built, and there will be opportunities there for developers.

If you want to get into it, learning something like unity or the unreal engine would be an excellent place to start or 3d modeling software like blender,

Here's my startup idea, there's a lot of hype and investment going into the metaverse and during a gold rush. It's a good idea to sell shovels. The idea is to create something like a Squarespace or Shopify for the metaverse.
A platform where any business can build a digital metaverse experience and VR apps is extremely hard to develop. If you can give brands a way to get their foot into the door of the metaverse, there are likely millions of potential customers out there.
That will want to interact with customers on the metaverse but don't have the technical skills to get the job done now.

Artificial intelligence ( AI )

AI has come a long way in the last couple of years, and in 2021 it affected us, developers, personally with the release of GitHub co-pilot, which is a tool that uses ai to automatically write code for you, It's not to the point where it's going to replace developers, but I'm sure we'll get there someday.

The one thing that's a little disappointing about ai is that it's kind of dominated now by big companies that have control of these algorithms like GPT-3,

It would be challenging as an individual or startup to train ai models that can compete with it. For two points:

You won't have the massive amount of data needed.
You won't have the computing power.

The second point will become especially true. If quantum computers ever become helpful and can train an ai model, then it's pretty much game over. That being said, it's still a good idea to learn data science because it's still very difficult to process and analyze huge amounts of data, which means there are many high-paying jobs out there for that role.

Here's my startup idea: join them if you can't beat them. Microsoft has exclusive access to GPT-3, but there's still a public API where you can use gpt3 to build a product. Many people like to interact with psychics, but that business model doesn't scale very well because you need to meet each client individually.
What you could do is use GPT-3 to create an ai driven psychic hotline where customers could interact with lost loved ones, and gpt3 would automatically generate responses that come from the other side.

Databases

Now I want to take a minute to talk about something, a little more boring databases; a trend that I've noticed is that relational SQL databases are back in vogue.
SQL has always been the most widely adopted type of database, but now it's a cool technology to use again. We're also seeing ai being implemented into databases like MindsDB to make machine learning workflows much more accessible.

n addition, you have tools like PlanetScale and Supabase, which are making relational databases much easier to work with.

At the same time, you have NoSQL databases like MongoDB becoming more and more powerful, which can now be deployed in a serverless way and supports full-text search.

Then you have Redis becoming a multi-model database to support graph time series and full-text search features.

Then you have Firestore from Firebase, which really didn't change in 2021, but I'm going to keep my fingers crossed for some new features in 2022. If not, the serverless SQL platforms are looking very appealing,

Javascript

The next big trade I want to talk about is Javascript always bet on javascript. If you learn Javascript,t you'll never go hungry. Last year, I predicted that we're mostly done seeing changes to the big frameworks of React, Angular, and Vue, and that prediction has held true.

The core frameworks are pretty much the same; react concurrent mode is still experimental, just as it was last year, while Angular and Vue remain solid and stable. All the exciting stuff is happening with the META-Frameworks.

NextJS is the leader in the space, and its parent company Versel is now a multi-billion dollar company. Over the last 20 years, what we've done comes full circle originally; we had server-rendered applications. Then we went to client rendered applications, and now we have things like NextJS, which provide the best of both worlds.

Nuxt version 3 and the view ecosystem look absolutely incredible. Still, it does not feature complete; we also have React-server components around the corner, which led to new frameworks like Hydrogen from Shopify.
There's also Remix, but the most exciting development, in my opinion, is the fact that Rich Harris, the creator of Svelte, was hired by Vercel to work on Svelte full-time.

-- iframe

Everybody knows that Svelte is the most excellent UI framework ever created, but it came a little too late in the game and never had the financial backing of a big company.
That's about to change, which makes me feel very optimistic about the future of Svelte kit, a framework for server-side rendering, in addition to meta-frameworks.

You'll also want to keep your eye on meta-meta-frameworks; one example is Blitz js, which is built on top of next and makes it much easier to build a database-driven application.

Another excellent javascript tool worth mentioning is Astro, which allows you to build a website using multiple frameworks. At the same time, without sending any javascript down to the client.

Build tools for front-end developers also improved a ton in 2021. The best example is Vite, which provides a far simpler developer experience than Webpack. It's much faster and way easier to work with.

Here's one way that you, as an independent developer, can make money around meta-frameworks. You might be familiar with sites like ThemeForest that sell premium WordPress templates, many of which are based on react, Vue, and Angular. However, these themes aren't beneficial if you're building a server-rendered application with a meta-framework. I think there's an opportunity here to create custom server render templates that can help other developers get things done faster, like next already has an e-commerce template. Still, there's an infinite number of variations.
You can make on this and provide other templates for e-learning, small businesses, enterprise dashboards, real estate, and different industries.
Now, because NexJS is server-rendered, you can do things beyond the UI like integrate stripe as a payment solution or include SendGrid for transactional email.

Other Trends to Know

Here's some other information that you'll want to know going into 2022 JetBrains is releasing a new lightweight ide fleet that could compete with VScode. The VScode itself is better than ever, and you can now run it directly in the browser by visiting the link vscode.dev .

TailwindCss is becoming more and more popular, and it got incredibly awesome in 2021, thanks to just in time mode.

Typescript is also more popular than ever, and we have some cool new features coming to the Javascript language, like "at" to get a negative index or the last element in an array.

[1,2,3].at(-1)

We have top-level weight standardized.

await fun()

And a much more ergonomic way to use Object Prototype has its own property.

Object.hasOwn(object, "foo")

In 2022, Graphql is still not going to replace rest, and the hype around it seems to have died down quite a bit.

WebAssembly will not replace Javascript, but it is quietly changing the world. One example is stack blitz, which brings server-side capabilities to the browser.

No code is still a trend to keep your eye on, but it's still not going to take your job as a developer, just like it hasn't for the last 50 years.

Flutter and react native will continue to dominate the cross-platform space when it comes to mobile development.

You might see brain interfaces like Neurosity, where you write code; they can react to changes in your brain waves.
Aws will continue to release many products you don't need, while google cloud and azure continue to play catch-up.
The only prediction I'm 100 confident of, though, is that things will change, and when that happens, I'll be right here on your computer screen with a new article about it.

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4 Hand-Picked Open-Source Status Page Tools

Omar Ben. — Tue, 26 Oct 2021 15:17:40 +0000

Having a status page is essential. If something happens, you're going to have a place where users can go and find information on what's going on and what to expect.

Here's a list of 4 hand-picked open-source status page tools you can use to stay in touch with your customers during downtimes.

Cachet

Cachet offers responsive status pages which are easy to understand. Cachet is a well-built solution if you're looking to create and manage status pages. As a bonus, you can easily integrate with their API and customize it for your needs.

Moreover, users and other stakeholders have the option of scheduling maintenance and being notified quickly.

Anyone seeking extra security will appreciate that Cachet supports two-factor authentication, which is compatible with Google Authenticator.

Benefits include:

Any metric can be displayed in a chart
Supports two-factor authentication

Upptime

Upptime provides users with a cost-effective, hassle-free solution to carry out processes on their repos on an automated schedule. A 5-minute interval is the shortest that can be allowed.

According to Upptime, the status page updates every five minutes based on automatic website checking.

Upptime is a real-time site monitor that provides fast and detailed insights into your site's response time and uptime. Upptime offers several options for customizing your site, including the ability to change the logo, copy, and graphs.

If you're looking for a tool that can help your company run smoothly and allow you to focus on more important things, you should check out Overall Upptime.

Benefits include:

Works reliably with GitHub Actions
Excellent design and many customization options

LambStatus

LambStatus is a revolutionary new way to host status pages. Rather than paying a fixed monthly cost for hosting, you pay only when someone uses your status page by hosting it on Amazon AWS.

Benefits include:

You only pay for what you use.
Good admin dashboard.
Metrics can be integrated.

Statusfy

Statusfy is another tool that could be useful if you need to announce something in advance. Statusfy provides different incident status announcements with tagging, timestamps, categories, and timelines, unlike other tools on this list. Using a status page as a primary way to communicate with your users comes in handy when you want to use it.

Statusfy does not provide charts, which is a significant drawback if you wish to broadcast uptime or incidents data.

Additionally, there are few options for subscribing to the notifications, with only Web Push, iCalendar, and Twitter.

Benefits include:

Optional advanced announcements

You might also consider these open-source tools:

Feel free to check out this list from awecomeopensource if you want to explore more tools. You might not be able to use some of the tools on this list commercially because they are no longer maintained.

Are you unsure about open-source options?

It is possible to create a nice status page with many open-source program options. In addition, there are a few free and comprehensive hosted solutions worth considering. Let's have a look at some status page providers that offer a status page on their basic cheap or even free plans:

Odown

Using Odown, you get real-time status updates, uptime monitoring, and incident management in one intuitive interface.

The status page is available from the basic cheap plan and can even be published to a custom subdomain with HTTP (s).

Getting a status page quickly and for free is one of the best things about Odown. Uptime monitoring and incident management is a bonus, which is handy if you want to avoid costly dedicated uptime monitoring solutions.

Main benefits:

Beautiful status page design for all users on a custom domain
Uptime monitoring built-in
Incident Management build-in ( coming soon )
SSL monitoring

And other providers like :

Atlassian Statuspage
Better uptime
Instatus

How to Integrate a Health Check Endpoint into Your App

Omar Ben. — Sat, 29 May 2021 12:00:18 +0000

As your client base grows, so does your responsibility to provide a reliable service at all times. Let's look at how you may achieve piece of mind by adding a few lines of code.

What is the purpose of a health check endpoint?

To begin with, making one is really straightforward and does not need a great deal of technical knowledge. Google "How to create a [insert language] health check" and you'll get some code you can copy/paste in no time!

The following are some possible causes:

SLA — You may be forced to adhere to a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that outlines the amount of uptime you must commit to.
Money loss – a minute of downtime may cost tens of thousands of dollars in some businesses. What would you lose in terms of money and business if you had a minute, an hour, or an entire day of downtime?
Reputation – a history of downtimes tarnishes your company's image.

We'll explore how to use Node.js with the most popular framework ( Express ), to build a health route that can be checked using an uptime monitoring service and ensure that your application never goes down without warning

const http = require('http');

const app = express();
const router = express.Router();

router.use((req, res, next) => {
  res.header('Access-Control-Allow-Methods', 'GET');
  next();
});

router.get('/health', (req, res) => {
  res.status(200).send('Ok');
});

app.use('/api/v1', router);

const server = http.createServer(app);
server.listen(3000);

Other connection tests, such as the database or redis, might be included as well. You should also perform a health check for each micro-service you're using!

Automate the checks

Now that we have a fresh new endpoint to check the health of our app, let's monitor its uptime as well as other data like response time, and make sure we're alerted when the fan goes off. You may use a dedicated service like Odown to track the availability of websites and APIs in real time. Build an account and you'll be redirected to a page where you may create your first monitor.

The new endpoint's availability is continually checked by simply adding it to Odown's app without any extra configuration. Its uptime and response time are displayed for the given date period across a specified number of regions (London, Amsterdam, Toronto, San Francisco, and more), and historical data is displayed after a few minutes.

Furthermore, it interacts effortlessly with alerting technologies like Slack, Webhook, or sending SMS to you and your teams!

Conclusion

This was a really basic and uncomplicated method of performing a health check! This will provide you with additional piece of mind and will only encourage you to improve your app's functionality.

I hope you found this useful; please tweet @me if you set up anything else, and please share your code snippets in other languages like Go, Python, or Laravel!