SaaS Marketing Strategies to Make Your Web App Dominate SaaS Marketing Strategy Focus: Scalable Customer Acquisition Through scalable SaaS Marketing practices, Sixteen Ventures lead by Lincoln Murphy, provides software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web App companies everything they need to acquire customers, improve retention, and grow the lifetime value of those customers. New Challenges – and Opportunities – Require an Optimized SaaS Marketing Strategy The cloud introduces new challenges for traditional Independent Software Vendors (ISV), but even for those who are building new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) or Web Applications (Web Apps) from scratch, many challenges exist, with marketing being one of the biggest. The Goal of Your SaaS Marketing Strategy: to Quickly Create Profitable Customers Because Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Web Apps are very often sold on a recurring revenue, monthly basis – without a large upfront payment like traditional software – the key to successful SaaS Marketing is efficiency and scalability. Payback Customer Acquisition Costs Quickly with a Great SaaS Marketing Strategy Regardless of the type of sales process, SaaS Marketing requires you to leverage scalable methods to attract the right audience up-front, to get the customer to try before they buy, and the methods used to convert your prospect to a paying customer. SaaS Marketing ultimately breaks down to a per-customer cost and should be paid back as quickly as possible in an effort to turn new customers into profitable customers. But, when your Free Trial fails to convert customers, it’s probably doing exactly what it was designed to do! You need to design your Free Trial to actually sell your product if you want to make any money in the SaaS or Web App business. So I’ve put together a list of 7 Secrets to Free Trial Success... how to turn your SaaS Marketing efforts - your sales process - and your Free Trial - into a Customer-Creating Machine. This is SaaS Marketing / Free Trial Domination Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium and Free Trials

1. Lincoln Murphy Presents...
The 7 Secrets to
Free Trial Success
Turn your ‘Free Trial’ into a Customer-Creating Machine!
Lincoln Murphy http://sixteenventures.com

2. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Secret #3:
Stop Confusing
Freemium & Free Trials
Lincoln Murphy

3. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
Freemium is when you have a free-forever
version of a product that never expires -
allowing the user to have the expectation of
never having to pay - coupled with an upsell
path to a premium version of the same product.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

4. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
A Free Trial is a free, time-limited (and
sometimes feature-limited) version of a
product with two possible outcomes for the
trialist; buy the product or stop using it.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

5. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
The lack of an expiration date - and therefore the
idea that the user will never have to pay for the
product - is the KEY PSYCHOLOGICAL
DRIVER behind Freemium and the MASSIVE
differentiator between Freemium and Free Trials.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

6. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
No one signs-up for a Free Trial with the
expectation they'll be able to continue using it
past the end of the trial.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

7. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
They know they either pay or stop using it.
Period. It is a Try-before-you-buy-or-go-
away situation.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

8. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
If you think that Freemium is an extended
“try before you buy” situation you will end
up with sub-optimal (read: horrifically
business-killing) results.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

9. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
It is well documented that the most
successful Freemium companies have
overall conversion rates in the low single-
digits, around 3-5%.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

10. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
This has led many SaaS & Web App
vendors with Free Trial conversion rates of
5% to think they’re doing just fine.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

11. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
What they don’t understand is that a 3-5%
conversion rate for Freemium is actually
pretty good considering the huge barriers to
conversion the underlying psychology puts
up, but for Free Trials, it is HORRIBLE.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

12. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But it isn’t their fault for thinking that; when it
comes to Freemium and Free Trials, people
don’t understand the fundamental - and
psychological - differences like you do now.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

13. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
But these misunderstandings around
Freemium and Free Trials shouldn’t
be surprising.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

14. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
With Freemium, the concept of survivor
bias is alive and well in ‘media’ coverage;
you rarely hear how many used the same
strategy and crashed and burned!
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

15. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And Free Trials have been used in SaaS
and Web Apps since the beginning and
have been around in one form or another
for over 100 years... so they aren’t new.
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

16. 7 Secrets to Increasing Conversions with Free Trials
And yet it is very clear that, even though they’ve
been used for years, that how to successfully
use Free Trials is still very unknown and few
companies take full advantage of the power of
Free Trials... until now, right?
Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium & Free Trials Lincoln Murphy

17. For the Ultimate Free Trial
Resource Guide, visit:
http://sixteenventures.com/free-trial-resource-guide