Hey, it’s KP 👋
A common theme I keep noticing across my indie hacker and bootstrapped founder circles is the relentless struggle in figuring out marketing.
I’ve recently finished reading Rob Walling’s incredibly actionable book “The SaaS Playbook” and learned a ton about various marketing approaches. I figured I’ll summarize his insights in a simple guide which I can pass around to some founder friends. This is just a tip of the iceberg, and I highly recommend grabbing a copy of the book. It’s brilliant!
Here are the wide range of MARKETING APPROACHES (per Rob Walling) along with some of my own commentary and notes:
THE BIG 5 SAAS MARKETING APPROACHES:
These are the most reliable tactics that work for B2B SaaS companies
S NO | MARKETING TACTIC/ APPROACH | EXAMPLES |
1 | SEO | Rank highly on Google and Youtube etc. Pat Walls (Starterstory) is a great example |
2 | PPC (pay per click) | Buy traffic through keywords on Google (AdWords) or on IG, X, Youtube etc |
3 | Cold Outreach | Email, DMs on Linkedin/ X etc |
4 | Integration Marketing | Cross promote with your integration partners |
5 | Content Marketing | Social posts (X, Linkedin etc), blog posts, videos for Youtubet/TikTok etc |
Apart from the above 5, here are some other ways Rob recommends founders can expand their marketing reach:
S NO | MARKETING TACTIC/ APPROACH | EXAMPLES |
1 | Affiliate Marketing | 30% MRR as commission (Ex: Senja)
https://senja.io/affiliates |
2 | In-person events and Trade Shows | SaaStr or SaaStock etc (make sure it’s relevant to your ICP) |
3 | Free Tools (Engineering as Marketing) | Hubspot’s Website Grader and many others: https://www.hubspot.com/resources/tool |
4 | Hangouts | Private Slack groups, online forums, subreddits like r/SaaS or r/startups |
5 | Q/A Sites | Quora, Stack Overflow etc |
6 | Virality | Calendly, DropBox etc |
7 | Other People’s Audiences | Guest blog posts, podcast tours etc |
8 | Daily Deal Sites | Appsumo, PitchGround etc |
9 | Launch Sites | Product Hunt, BetaList, Show HN,etc |
10 | Building an audience/ community/ movement | Pieter Levels, Daniel Vassalo (“Small Bets”), KP (build in public podcast and newsletter etc) |
11 | Display Ads | Pay per impressive (view) vs clicks |
12 | Viral/ Stunt Marketing | Red Bull and other big brands |
13 | Speaking Engagements | Rob Walling and Rand Fishkin etc |
14 | PR | TechCrunch, Verge etc |
15 | Offline Ads | Billboards, radio ads, bus stop benches etc |