Work Life Adventures

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Last week, my friend Manish referred me Zite. He told me to go meet her once. I told him that I am currently with someone named Flipboard - she is extremely good looking and I love the way she turns. He still insisted that I go meet Zite atleast once.

By now you already know that I am talking about the two hot social magazines - Flipboard and Zite :)

Today, I am a convert. Zite is truly very intelligent and gets smarter as I spend more time with her. Love the way she just knows what I want. 

I have to say that Zite's functionality and self-learning capabilities beats Flipboard hands-down. Flipboard might have a kick-ass UI but at the end of the day I want intelligence in software. Software should self-learn, know what I like and show me stuff that is relevant to me. I trust Zite to help me fight information overload.

Design is extremely important (Zite's UI needs a bit of work but it doesn't come in the way of consuming content) but what is more important is the intelligence built into the software. Knowing that it will get better over time (a good viral strategy too!).

Now, if I can let Flipboard know which articles interest me then it would be the best of both worlds - brains as well as beauty. 

2012 is going to be a year where we fight information overload. There are too many things floating around on the Web to consume - articles, blog posts, videos, tweets, pictures, slideshows, etc. I have decided that I am going to make ONE big change this coming year:

Drastically minimize the amount of stuff that I read online. 

I have realized:

1. Most of the stuff I read just gives me short term gratification.

2. It is easy to forget the contents of the article if it doesn't relate to your short-term goals/projects. If I am not raising money then do I really need to read about "8 Myths on Fund Raising?"

3. Reading is NOT the same as working. Being on Twitter is a leisure activity rather than being productive. The question to ask is - "Am I doing this at the cost of being productive?"

4. Consuming information leads to procrastination. I have caught myself bribing myself to a half-hour of reading before I start actual work. oops!

5. A lot of articles are repeat articles. KISSMetrics recyle their tweets with similar articles "3 ways to do this..." or "5 SEO tricks..." that make you feel you need to know the all this stuff or else you won't be able to increase visitors to your site. Bullshit.

I often think about the times before social networks became popular. I think we spent more time on our businesses doing productive things than get distracted by tips that will help you get a million signups for your SaaS business!

Too much of anything is detrimental. 

Ask yourself - are you consuming more than you are producing?

One of the best Inbound Marketing videos I have seen by Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz (see, they posted awesome content and I gave them a link!). If you are a startup then this is a must watch - every minute of it!

My takeway: you don't need to spend 1000's of dollars on marketing and even raise VC funding to get your startup/company/business off the ground. Build great content that people want to share with their friends. Get recommended. Spend that $$ on building your product that people will love. 

In fact, I have a section in my book, The SaaS Edge on how the Internet is changing the way we market our business.

Anyways, put aside 86 minutes and check this video out. Well worth the time.

I was having a conversation today with a friend and this person mentioned that "I need to build a big business with lots of people". Earlier, this might be true. Today, with the Internet, a small team can build a very successful (profitable) business. Look at Wordpress, 37Signals, Craiglist etc.

In the afternoon I came back to DeskAway HQ and started jotting down some points that came to me (in random order):

1. Businesses are shrinking (in people) thanks to technology. What 3 people could do yesterday can be done by 1 today. 

The TiE Mumbai group and Seedfund got together to host a breakfast brainstorming session on Software As A Service today at Mocha Mojo, Bandra. BTW, great location for meetups of up to about 45 people. For evening meetups: This place serves booze too :)

Thanks Anand for inviting me and allowing me to share my thoughts and experience on growing and marketing a SaaS business. I have been in the business for 4 years now and honestly have learnt a pot-load on various issues that startups go through when building a pure-play SaaS business. It is a different game altogether. 

I recall the following points that we discussed and also thrown in a few of my thoughts. If you attended the session and have something to add then please use the comments below.

On Target Market Focus
Unless you are Google (or started a SaaS business in the early 2000), SaaS businesses that market to everyone will have a harder time acquiring customers. You need to have a focus and a small group of people (Designers, Accountants, Freelancers etc.) that you are selling to. Win those over and then move onto the next group.

On Handing Feature Requests
"Please add just one more feature" will keep coming. Especially, if you try to sell your SaaS app via offline means. That is a big no no. Remember that you are not building an app that everyone in the world can use. Learn to say no to feature requests. Historically, people only use around 20% of the features of a given product. You need to make sure that your first release is a working solution and then build upon it slowly. Your first few customers (if you know your right target audience) will help you build the next version of the product. In India, people are used to buying customized products with lots of features. They treat SaaS vendors as web developers. They will soon realize the buying something out of the box with a few less features (being very cost effective) solves their need. 

Cardinal rule of SaaS: You can't please everyone. Learn to say no and build for a smaller audience.

On Freemium
Giving away your product for free is good but trial plans work too. They give a sense of urgency when the trial period comes to an end. Whether to go freemium or not highly depends on your industry type and target audience.

On Design
The overall user experience holds a lot of importance. People are getting used to consumer technologies like Facebook, Twitter etc. and will want similar experiences when they ask for an enterprise tool. There is absolutely no room for poor UI. A positive experience will differentiate one app from another.

On Self-Service SaaS
Ideal SaaS is creating a friction-less, self-service model. Sell to the SMB and then gradually move up. Marketing SaaS to large enterprise customers in India is difficult but not impossible. Workday did it by selling 200,000 seats to Flextronics.

On Product Development
Building for yourself is the best way to build a product. Get your version 1.0 out, gather feedback and iterate. It is important to get something out the door then sit and plan for weeks. 

In my experience, forward-thinking Indian companies/entrepreneurs are getting ready to power their business with SaaS. They understand the cost-savings, reduce overheads and always-on access that comes with a SaaS product. They understand that it is wise to concentrate on what is core and outsource the rest by using SaaS/Cloud services.

Next 2-3 years will be very interesting to see how all of this shapes up here.

B2B SaaS businesses work along the conversion funnel. The more topped up they are the better chance of converting more people to paid conversions. If traffic decreases, so do conversions. So, the game is in keeping the traffic coming and being topped up. Always.

Besides Organic Search, Social Media and our Affiliate Program, we also try out paid SEM from time to time to see what CTR and signups they give us. It is exciting to see Adwords compete against Blog traffic and get amazed at how Blog traffic has such a lower bounce rate and conversions. Then at the end of the month I analyze everything for every traffic source - Renewals, Churn, Conversions, CAC, Customer Aquisition Costs etc.

We had tried out LinkedIn Ads in July without much success. I tried to give it another shot last October.

I like LinkedIn Ads targeting options. We know who buys a DeskAway account (CEO, IT Managers, Marketing Managers, Project Managers, Founders) so running a lazer-sharp LinkedIn campaign to zero-in these people might, just might work.

Here are the campaigns I ran:

CPC Campaign #1
CTR - 0.008% (eeek!)
Average CPC - $11.82 (ouch!)

I then did an awareness campaign just for brand building. I read somewhere that the CPC costs are much higher for a CPM campaign in the B2B space.

CPM Campaign #2
CTR - 0.025% (eek!)
Average CPC - $8.63 (ouch!)

I then switched back to a CPC campaign and broadened my target audience, removed groups, added more countries and revised the ads a bit.

CPC Campaign #3
CTR - 0.017%(eek!)
Average CPC - $3.11 (better but still ouch!)

The last CPC campaign I ran was with one more ad and tweaked the older ads. I also lowered the max CPC to $2.5. Earlier, I think it was around $3.5. 

CPC Campaign #4
CTR - 0.015% (eek!)
Average CPC - $2.31 (better but still a little ouch!)

Somehow, this last campaign gave the most clicks and hence a lower CPC. I believe that as the audience got broader, more impressions were made and more people saw and clicked on the ad. But, then that is not focussed marketing.

*Confused*

Google analytics displayed a few Goal conversions (people who signed up to any of the DeskAway plans) from the LinkedIn campaign but none of them have converted to a paid plan yet. 

I am not completely giving up hope on LinkedIn Ads. I will read up more, talk to a few more people and try out a few more campaigns (before that I'll probably buy some LNKD stock). LinkedIn Ads (or any other SEM strategy) will vary depending on your industry, price of product, time to close a sale, CAC etc. A good approach for SEM is to try out with small budgets, document the changes, learn and move along. 

Though, one thing that I keep thinking about is - how do people measure ROI running a CPM campaign that builds awareness? What if people saw the ad, remembered DeskAway and then signed up later when they really needed a project collaboration tool?

Have you tried LinkedIn Ads? What is your take on it for B2B sales?