Free Trials - 8 fundamentals about free trials for early stage PLG startups.
8 fundamentals about free trials; Small 'yeses' to close more deals; Combine GTM strategy & growth tactics.
Hey - it’s Alex!
Today, I will share with you:
1️⃣ 3 Actionable SaaS growth tips
👉 Free Trials: 8 fundamentals to make them work for your SaaS
👉 The combination of GTM strategy and Growth Tactics
👉 Getting small ‘yeses’ to close more deals
2️⃣ 1 Bonus tip by an experienced founder/VC/SaaS expert - this time by Dominik Rapacki (Co-Founder of meetergo)
3️⃣ 1 Bonus material (software, content, news) - this time ARRtist Summit 2023 (The B2B SaaS Event in D/A/CH)
… that will help you quickly grow your SaaS product 🚀.
👉 Before you read on:
✅ Create your own powerful SaaS Growth Strategy with my FREE Workbook (helped 2000+ SaaS professionals) and GTM-strategy 1-pager Notion template (helped 750+ SaaS professionals)
✅ Unlock your growth potential with 90+ actionable SaaS growth tactics (helped 150+ SaaS professionals)
✅ Work with me 1-on-1 in my 12-week SaaS GTM Coaching program for early-stage SaaS founders on their way to hitting the first €1 million ARR.
1. Free Trials: How to make them work for your SaaS (PLG)
PLG SaaS companies offer the product (or some part of it) for free and bet on the fact that users will experience the value of the product and then make their purchasing decision.
So the fundamental challenge you will face in PLG is that you can’t communicate your product’s value proposition in a 1:1 sales demo (as there is no salesperson involved) - new users need to understand the value of your product in a self-service way.
Your primary goal: make sure that you effectively communicate the value proposition, and remove the friction so new users can experience the value in a short amount of time (time to value).
If you choose product-led growth (PLG) as your primary growth motion, you will ultimately think about free trials.
Here are 8 Free trials fundamentals to make them work for your SaaS.
1️⃣ Value proposition and 2️⃣ social proof on the sign-up page
Your first goal is to get website visitors to sign up for your product and create an account.
The sign-up page is a page where lots of startups see a high bounce rate.
Use this page to re-emphasize why they should sign up for your product, and what’s in for them.
The following aspects can/should be highlighted on the page:
Social proof (testimonials or logos)
The main benefit/capability of using the product
Objections-handling (e.g. Set-up in under 10 minutes, No credit card required)
3️⃣ Survey new users in the sign-up flow
Asking new users couple of questions has multiple benefits. First, you will gather a lot of insights about who they are (to sharpen your ICP) and about their motivations and goals (what they want to achieve with your product).
This information helps you later on to convert them to paying customers (e.g. with personalized onboarding emails or even in-product paths).
I would recommend asking the following:
The usecase (What will you use XYZ for?)
The role and team-size (how many will use XYZ?)
4️⃣ Ask about the lead source
Tracking lead sources is hard. One way to overcome (or at least get some good insights) this is self-reported attribution. It basically means that you ask new sign-ups how they hear about you.
5️⃣ Onboarding checklist (to get them quickly to value)
Once you have them in your product, your job is to make it super easy (and fast) for them to experience the value. A great way is to show/tell them what they need to do.
6️⃣ In-Product tours & contextual guides (to get them active)
There are 2 ways to do this:
After sign-up give the user a (high-level) tour through the product
contextual tours: once users click (the first time) on a new feature
Miro is doing this really awesome. Also Airtable is a great inspiration.
They literally have a whole learning center (that they also use for content marketing).
7️⃣ Highlight the CTA to Upgrade
Make it easy to upgrade. Your CTA should be always visible in the product. It helps if you add the info when the trial ends.
8️⃣ Implement a 'Reverse free trial'
Reverse free trial means that you give full access to all features for a limited time (trial period). At the end of the trial period users have the option to continue using the product (convert to paid plans) or downgrade to a free plan with limited features.
Check out the Guide to Reverse Trials by Openviewpartners.
Now you know the 8 fundamentals of Free trials.
Bonus tip:
Make it super easy to get other users on board. Invite and sharing features are super powerful here.
2. Combine GTM strategy and growth tactics
I work a lot with early-stage founders on their journey to hit €1 million annual recurring revenue (ARR).
One of the things that we discuss most is the importance of a powerful GTM strategy and the tactics and activities you are doing on a daily basis.
And honestly, both are equally important.
The best GTM strategy without the operational tactics doesn’t bring you anywhere.
But also doing the daily activities without having a proper strategy will only burn your cash and don’t drive any relevant revenue. You will attract 0 clients, your conversion rates will be very low and ultimately burn your money. 🔥
GTM strategy and growth tactics belong to each other. One only works in combination with the other.
🚨 Coming soon…I’m launching a new program in Q3 2023 🎉
You know that I’m helping early-stage B2B SaaS founders to grow from 0€ to 1M€ ARR with a powerful GTM strategy.
At the moment I do this in two ways: Advisory/Sparring & Consulting.
As many of you ask for it, I’m now launching a 3rd way 🎉.
A 12-week 1-on-1 SaaS GTM coaching program for early-stage B2B SaaS founders and leaders on their way to €1 million ARR.
The program will help you:
✅ to identify the key drivers for your business growth
✅ to build and run an effective and scalable GTM strategy
✅ to do the right things at the right time (proven frameworks)
✅ to hold yourself accountable to get things done
👉 Interested? Apply HERE for my waitlist (Limited to 10 founders).
3. Getting small ‘yeses’ to close a deal
Winning new paying customers can be a very long way. Knowing this can negatively impact your motivation, but also your confidence in closing new customers.
That’s why it’s better to break down the long journey into multiple small steps. Each of the steps is way easier to achieve. I know it’s just a mindset thing - but believe me, it will help you close more deals faster.
Here is how to do it:
Don't try to close in the first step (Sales is a marathon, not a sprint)
don’t think about '1 transaction', think about multiple small transactions.
Your job is to get the prospects to give you 1 small 'yes' after each other.
Signing the contract is just a small Yes at the end of the marathon.
In the end, it is not 1 BIG YES, but rather lots of small incremental 'Yeses'.
💡 Best tip, failure, and learning by Dominik Rapacki (Co-Founder of meetergo)
There are no growth hacks that work forever (laser focus on what’s working).
We have realized that exploring new acquisition and distribution channels can indeed be done relatively quickly. However, the true challenge lies in finding the right features and ROI positive channels. We spent months developing and refining them, only to find out that they didn't resonate with our target audience. It made us realize that spending too much time and resources on building features without validating their value can be detrimental to our growth. Learning from this failure, we came up with a 3 step process to evaluate demand and messaging.
1. SEO & Email Marketing (Lead Generation):
Before building out a feature. We write content around what our ICP is searching for and provide valuable and helpful insights. If this doesn’t work we know that there is not enough demand for them or that we need to do more education. Both are very expensive to scale.
2. Personalized Journeys:
We believe that every user and deal is different. Therefore we take the inbound/outbound leads and start interacting with them on a personal level by providing helpful insights and building rapport. In this phase, we can gauge how big the impact and demand of our solution is for each lead.
3. Eat your own dog food:
While our leads get to know meetergo they can interact directly with our features like the resource hub and book a discovery call straight out of it. In that way, they can see the value while also gaining trust in the solution and company. We are our most critical customer.
At meetergo we strive to be as helpful as possible to every visitor, lead, or customer. We offer free video courses on lead generation and conversion tactics as well as advanced techniques in SEO or E-Mail Marketing. If our clients can’t generate a positive ROI why would they be paying for our tool?
🧠 Do you want to be next and share your best tip with 1400+ SaaS professionals? Reach out to me via Linkedin.
💪 1 Bonus material (software, content, news) - this time the ARRtist Summit 2023
ARRtist Summit is a high-profile networking conference for founders, senior executives and investors in B2B SaaS in the DACH region. The ARRtist Summit 2023 takes place on 12.10.2023 in Berlin and brings together accomplished unicorn founders, top investors, ambitious early-stage founders and savvy bootstrapping founders.
Get your Ticket (and meet me in person, I will join too 🎉)
Happy growth 🚀.
🚀 Whenever you’re ready, 3 ways I can help you:
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Unlock your growth with 90+ actionable SaaS Growth Tactics and download your FREE copy of the SaaS Growth Strategy Worksheet.
Work with me 1:1 to grow your B2B SaaS business:
1️⃣ Advisory/Sparring - We’ll have regular 1:1 sessions deep-diving into your most important challenges.
2️⃣ Consulting - We’ll work together hands-on to grow your business
Send me a DM on Linkedin or book a free 15min virtual coffee to learn more about my offering.
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