With 101 marketing channels to focus on, which one should you start with?

Mar 5 (edited) in SaaS Growth

All of them!

I’m joking.

Don’t do that.

And don’t listen to what the gurus are saying: especially agencies who specialize in one specific channel (when you’re a nail gun, everything looks like a roof shingle).

Obviously it depends on your stage…

But if you’re under $1MM ARR, I would start with the lowest hanging fruit:

People who are UNHAPPY with their current tool.

Why? Because:

You don’t need to sell them on why they need your app - they’re already sold on it.

You know they have money ( they’re already paying for it)

They have the problem you solve.

They are in PAIN.

The big difference is that the pain they have is around what they DON’T like about their current provider.

NOT about whatever pain your tool solves.

Does that make sense?

So the best place to be is where people are looking for an ALTERNATIVE to their current solution.

All you need to do is put your solution IN this flow of traffic.

(It’s helluvalot easier to find an EXISTING flow of traffic and get in front of it then it is to CREATE your own traffic flow).

A real world example:

Natalie and I were trying to find a parking space at a restaurant in so Cal.

The parking meters there ONLY took coins.

We’re not 87 years old, so we don’t carry a bunch of coins with us, so we had to go to all the restaurants around us and see if we could withdraw money and have them convert it into coins for us.

It was such a hassle.

These were nicer restaurants, so it’s not like they had buckets of coins in their registers.

We spend 30 minutes walking from gift shop to restaurant hoping we’d find someone with change.

Now, if I needed to make some quick cash, you know what I would do?

There’s a constant flow of traffic, trying to get to make their expensive restaurant reservation…

And a BIG pain (people don’t have coins).

All I would need to do is walk around with a sign that says: GET COINS HERE

And have a backpack full of coins.

I’d charge a small fee, and take whatever cash they had and convert it for them.

I could also have a phone that could except Venmo and take people’s CCs and give them coins.

I could get even smarter and make a deal with the restaurants in the area and ask them if I could put in one of those coin machines in their lobbies or whatever, and give them a percentage of whatever fee I charged.

That way I have my PRODUCT (coin machine) right in the existing traffic flow.

And then I could find MORE parking lots where they only accept coins and do the same thing over and over.

Is this making sense?

If you want more traffic, leads, trials, etc…

Find an EXISTING flow and get in front of them.

You might have to pay for it…

You could split the revenue with them…

Sometimes they’ll do it for FREE just to provide value to their existing traffic flow.

Aight, I’m gonna squeeze your brain a bit…

Otherwise this concept won’t stick..

What are some existing traffic streams that you could “place” your product in?

Are there specific Google Searches?