Posted by drvroom 1 day ago
Ask HN: Why there is no demand for my SaaS when competition is killing it?
I posted to all channels (except HN) yet I don't see much demand. We clearly see how businesses, small and large, could benefit from our SaaS saving their staff at least 10 hours for real. Our initial testing shows it works great.
Is there slump in SaaS selling or are we doing something wrong. I am pretty sure it is the later.
Why businesses, especially marketing/sales leaders or product managers, won't show interest in our SaaS. My competition research shows they are growing fast.
Yet, I can't get anyone to use it for free when we clearly add more value for 1:1 feature comparision.
Am I missing something? Has all marketing changed to paid campaigns on Google or Influencer marketing on X, TikTok? We don't have a big (or even medium size) budget.
How do I sell my SaaS to SMBs and large corporations when they don't even reply.
A few jobs ago, I worked for a struggling startup that was trying to pivot and we had one large customer that kept the lights on. I was over the project that kept the lights on and survived every round of layoffs.
The customer was hesitant about giving a small struggling startup money and made us put our code in escrow that they would have access to under certain conditions. The startup failed, they got the code and the company that acquired us for scraps added an addendum to my severance agreement that released me from my non compete and allowed me to have access to my work laptops and work for the client.
A few years later I was the dev lead at another company and I found the perfect SaaS product for our needs. But the CTO wasn’t comfortable basing our entire project around a one man startup. I suggested an escrow agreement, the lawyers got involved and we signed the contract and we were now 80% of his business.
I’m not suggesting you so an escrow. I am saying that many businesses aren’t going to trust a no name one person startup until you have some referenceable clients, provide an easy migration path if you go tits up and they know you aren’t a fly by night company.
Personally, I’m in the camp of “no one ever got fired for buying $WellKnownIndustryStandardProduct”
But I don’t have too much actionable advice when it comes to top of the funnel sales. I’m a “post sales architect” as part of my job. The next step below sales.
Your product is almost irrelevant, as long as it is at least mediocre at what it does.
What matters is your marketing and your positioning. From how you describe it, it sounds like you’re selling steak, not the sizzle - you say what it is capable of but not what it does for you. You mention that it could save “ten hours for real”, and this is the point you need to drive home - this will save you money, make you money, make you more attractive to investors, give you time and peace of mind.
As to channels - social media rules the roost. Pay YouTube and TikTok influencers to shill for you. If you don’t believe enough in your product to pay for marketing, why should they believe in it?
Push out hype-laden press releases. Thump your chest. Drop emails to journalists in the space, with pre-written soundbites and a link to the release. Make it easy content for them to sling up on their platform. The bar is low.
Pick a vertical. Work it, target it, saturate it with your product. If you can find a vertical that’s underserved, then start there.
Finally, make sure your landing page speaks to the above, and hammers the point home right out of the gate. “Vidlify will help you get that Ferrari you always wanted. Here’s how:”
Save jargon for the “I’m excited, tell me more”.
Then, either it will fly, and you can progress to a broader market, or it won’t, and you either accept your loss and move on, or tweak and try again - but don’t get caught in the sunk costs fallacy - just because you’ve already spent X time and Y money, it doesn’t mean you have to commit more.
Good luck.