SaaS Marketing Strategies to Make Your Web App Dominate SaaS Marketing Strategy Focus: Scalable Customer Acquisition Through scalable SaaS Marketing practices, Sixteen Ventures lead by Lincoln Murphy, provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web App companies everything they need to acquire customers, improve retention, and grow the lifetime value of those customers. New Challenges – and Opportunities – Require an Optimized SaaS Marketing Strategy The cloud introduces new challenges for traditional Independent Software Vendors (ISV), but even for those who are building new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Web Applications (Web Apps) from scratch, many challenges exist, with marketing being one of the biggest. The Goal of Your SaaS Marketing Strategy: to Quickly Create Profitable Customers Because Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web Apps are very often sold on a recurring revenue, monthly basis – without a large upfront payment like traditional software – the key to successful SaaS Marketing is efficiency and scalability. Payback Customer Acquisition Costs Quickly with a Great SaaS Marketing Strategy Regardless of the type of sales process, SaaS Marketing requires you to leverage scalable methods to attract the right audience up-front, to get the customer to try before they buy, and the methods used to convert your prospect to a paying customer. SaaS Marketing ultimately breaks down to a per-customer cost and should be paid back as quickly as possible in an effort to turn new customers into profitable customers. But, when your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do! You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business. So I’ve put together a list of 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success... how to turn your SaaS Marketing efforts - your sales process - and your Free Trial - into a Customer-Creating Machine. This is SaaS Marketing / Free Trial Domination Secret #1: No More Evaluations

1. Lincoln Murphy Presents...
The 7 Secrets to
Free Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy http://sixteenventures.com

2. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #1:
No More Evaluations
Lincoln Murphy

3. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If you believe people sign-up for your Free Trial
to do any of the following:
- Evaluate your product
- Try before they buy
- Kick the tires
- Poke around
- Explore
- Play around
You've already lost them!
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

4. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You have to believe they are there to start
using and then to buy your product.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

5. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They might think they’re there to do
those things but you can’t think that.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

6. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They might have 8 products to evaluate - all
with feature parity - so they sign-up for your
trial as a part of that evaluation process.
How can you ensure that yours is the one they
end up paying money to use?
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

7. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Get them to use your product rather than
evaluate / try / kick tires / etc.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

8. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It starts with a mindset switch from
thinking like the customer who says “I am
supposed to be evaluating products...”
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

9. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
To thinking like a vendor who says “I’m going
to get this person to start using my product
and become so engaged and invested that
they don’t even evaluate the other products
on their list and just buy mine”
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

10. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
That is a MASSIVE mindset shift, but that
is how your Sales Process - and your
Free Trial - can actually become a
Competitive Advantage.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

11. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Sure, they have 7 other products to
evaluate, but they don't even get try to the
others because your Free Trial strategy
actually pulls them in and gets them to use
the product rather than simply ‘evaluate’
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

12. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
While your 7 competitors wonder what’s
going on... all your products are pretty much
the same, right?
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

13. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Low-touch sales process or high-touch,
it doesn't matter... this is the way it
should work.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

14. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Remember, even though it’s a
“Free” Trial, there’s no such thing as
“free” from the customer perspective
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

15. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They are “investing” time and resources
into your product
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

16. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The more they “invest,” the more likely
they are to convert
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

17. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It’s your job to get them invested as much
as possible during the Free Trial
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

18. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
People don’t invest much in “evaluations”
so you need to move them away from
evaluation and toward “use”
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

19. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
You do this by designing a Free Trial
strategy - an experience - around the
goal of initial use (Engagement) and
deeper use (Investment) to make
Conversion the logical choice.
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

20. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
This might seem like a simple concept on
the surface, but for most of you, it will
require a complete mindset shift...
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

21. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
but a mindset shift that is totally worth it!
Secret #1: No More Evaluations Lincoln Murphy

22. For the Ultimate Free Trial
Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide