Expert Panel with Jordan Gal, James Kennedy, Greg Mercer – MicroConf Europe 2016

  • Q: Greg, you transitioned from Chrome Plugin to SaaS. How did your user acquisition change?
    • We mostly stopped selling directly instead trying to get their email address
  • Q: Jordan, how do you go about identifying where your users hang out?
    • We tried forums, blogs of gurus, and each platform’s support forums. In the end we realized everything happened in closed Facebook groups.
  • Q: James, you increased your exposure on Capterra.com platform. How did that come about?
    • We first did some keyword advertising and tried stuff. But found that Capterra.com delivered much better results.
  • Q: What’s an underutilized acquisition strategy that you have seen?
    • Greg: Facebook Ads are underutilized. Laser-focused
    • Jordan: Webinars to push the annual plan
  • Q: What keeps you up at night as a founder?
    • James: Bringing people onto a team
    • Jordan: I fear being wrong on the product. Building something that people don’t want
  • Q: How do you go about building buyer personas?
    • Jordan: We find our perfect customer, who are desperate to get our product. Then reverse-engineer why they are a perfect fit
  • Q: Have you tried FB lead ads? Did it work?
    • Greg: We tried, but didn’t work for us.
  • Q: Do you still use SEO as a traction channel?
    • Jordan: We are not good at it. We just produce content and hope for the best
    • Greg: We are pretty active with link building & outreach. Travis seems to outrank us on everything
  • Q: What’s your key action item you take away from MicroConf Europe?
    • Jordan: Using the telephone more.
    • James: Build good buying personas.
    • Greg: Gamify the trial. That and being more active about predicting churn
  • Q: What is the biggest pain-in-the-ass thing that has worked in your marketing?
    • Jordan: We lost focus on outbound sales and eventually stopped doing it altogether. I didn’t like doing outbound
  • Q: How did you get your first 5 – 10 customers?
    • Jordan: brute forcing it with cold emailing. When they would reply, I’d hop on the phone with them

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About Christoph

Christoph lives in Munich, Germany and is bootstrapping his own SaaS application as a part-time entrepreneur.

He likes to write on this blog about anything of relevance to single-founder bootstrapped software startups.

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