Some SaaS products are growing quite fast. What made the fastest-growing SaaS companies grow so fast? What could be the reason for this? There must be a reason for this because similar SaaS can grow just as fast. A very aggressive growth! In this article, I will examine their common features. But first, let’s go step by step… 😉
Fast Growth
Growing fast is everyone’s dream, but sometimes we may be unable to manage fast growth. This is a topic for another article. There is a term for rapid growth. Growth Hacking marketing!
Growth Hacking vs Marketing in the Fastest-Growing SaaS Companies
Marketing is the general name of this business. Growth hacking is a branch within this general field. Its feature is to output high results in the shortest time.
Growth hacking and marketing, marketing is long-term. Growth Hacking is short-term.
5 Steps of SaaS Growth Hacking
Fastest growing SaaS companies for Growth hacking features are used quite often in these SaaSes. We will address each one individually.
- Acquisition
- Activation
- Retention
- Referral
- Revenue
It sounds like a pirate because the initials are AARRR. The word “hacker” is used for pirate. And a little reference to Indie Hacker.
1. Acquisition:
Fastest-growing SaaS companies have a source of money because it is big. That’s why they advertise aggressively. We micro SaaS founders can learn the importance of advertising here. Also, do not just think of it as advertising, serious content is created. Suddenly a lot of content is made on social media. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Blog, Twitter, Facebook!
They have a good team that can manage this. Generally, people who have received investment or people who can gather good team members do this. This can be a bit difficult if you are a solopreneur.
We learn from this article. First, somehow aggressively acquire users, that is, people, to your own product. Whether this is through advertising or content. How you find it is up to you. But it is to acquire the serious user of the product. This was the first stage. Now let’s move on to the second stage.
2. Activation:
At this stage, you need to wake up existing users. Maybe you are doing churn. The incoming user comes out of curiosity but does not use the product long-term. In the meantime, you should understand the reason for this.
Why don’t they use the product? Why don’t they pay money? Why do people who pay and use it use it?
Keep in touch with your users. The fastest-growing SaaS companies do this by sending emails or SMS. It constantly makes the user feel that they care. Also, support systems are good. But you don’t have to add a support system. Because although some large SaaSes have a support system, this is not a common feature. Some SaaS can also solve it with a simple chatbot or email.
At this stage, you need to mobilize your users and read the data of your product well. This is the reason for the rapid growth of big SaaS. They read the data very well!
3. Retention:
Your users or customers can use you for 1 month but then cancel their subscription. They shouldn’t! You have to solve this! You must retain users. Of course, it is unethical to do this by force. 🙂 You have to be creative.
The fastest-growing SaaS companies can do this by giving things in favor of the user. We can call it a kind of gamification. It offers special opportunities as you use the product. In addition, another strategy is that the user completely internalizes the product.
Example: Notion.so. One of the reasons for Notion’s rapid growth is that it’s not just a note-taking application. They’ve branched out into so many other areas that it’s not desirable to use anything else. Empathise with a user. Try it! I am a user and I keep my notes in one place. If I keep my tables in Notion instead of keeping them in Excel, then I don’t need Excel. In the same way, instead of using photos and videos, productivity tools, etc. separately, using a tool that has them all together is a tremendous thing for the user. Because he will learn only one thing. Notion! This will help him to internalize the product, that is, to establish an emotional bond. This causes him not to leave that product.
Actually, there’s something else that makes it unable to leave the product. The difficulty of moving data! Google does this very well. If you use Drive today, if you want to use MicroSoft instead, you have to download it all and then upload it to MicroSoft. It’s an incredibly long and tedious process! People continue to use Drive because they don’t want to put in that much effort. The same is true for Notion notes. It is hard to go to the alternative because it is tiring to export and categorize all those notes properly, so they continue to use the product.
Of course, this is not a rule. I wrote it just because it came to my mind. Maybe it will inspire you and maybe it can combine with an idea in your brain and open brand-new doors. Who knows? 🙂
4. Referral:
This is my favorite topic. Because I am a solopreneur. I need to make self-marketing products because I am also a serial entrepreneur. This item is included in the self-marketing products section. Involving other users in the product!
The fastest growing SaaS companies also enable the users they bring in through advertising etc. to bring in other users. We can add PayPal, Dropbox, and Notion to this.
The thing that would cause PayPal to grow fast was the reward. Yes, people who used PayPal earned $10 for signing up a new person to PayPal. In this way, people who wanted to make money, even millions of people, became PayPal members very quickly!
For PayPal, it’s a very costly business. Because you’re giving money to people. But if we look at the long-term big picture, it is obvious that it is quite profitable.
Let’s say you don’t have that kind of money. I’m talking about millions of dollars. Is this an obstacle to rapid growth?
Answer: No!
Dropbox, unlike PayPal, did not give money to the person who brought new users. Instead, it gave storage space. For example, you have a storage space of 250 MB. When you sign up a user to Dropbox with your referral, you earn another 250 MB! This is a very important thing for the user, so it will bring new users.
So it’s not about money. It’s about creativity!
If you want to build the fastest growing SaaS companies, then one of the things you need to do is to set up mechanisms that will enable your users to bring new users. This can be a feature, this can be money. Like Affiliate.
Another company is Notion. There are 3 reasons why Notion is growing so fast.
- It’s all in one tool: I have already explained this.
- Duplicate feature: You can duplicate and put a page between your pages. This makes people think, “I wonder what I can do to get duplicated.” Naturally…
- Template Makers: Some people who know what can be done with Notion have created very creative works with them and created brand-new creative economy areas. Easlo is one of them. And these people did marketing to make money under the brands they created. In this way, they promoted both their own brands and Notion. Two birds with one stone! 🙂
Canva can enter a similar creative economy. Although it started as a design tool, it has the behavior that is the reason for its rapid growth. It also has a duplicate feature and now in many stores on platforms such as Etsy, people who earn thousands of dollars a month with Canva templates have started to appear. You can do like the fastest growing SaaS companies.
5. Revenue:
This is the ease of the payment system. The less friction, the easier they pay. Friction means that the user performs a job in the easiest and fastest way. It is incomprehensible if I do not explain this with an example.
For example, consider a membership system. Imagine that the registration form asks for your name, surname, email, password, password repetition, and phone number. The user will click on 5 boxes, write text + click on the registration button + click on the “register” button from the homepage to get here. 7 clicks in total! That’s a lot of friction. Remove some of them instead. For example, name, surname, and phone number are not mandatory. Email is required, but no second password. Email and password are enough. This will cause it to become a member faster. Or you can solve it with 1 click by putting a login button with social media accounts. Maybe you can add a magic link.
The less friction, the faster you grow!
But it’s not easy! It is very difficult to find out which areas have friction. There are some simple tools. Like Hotjar or Yandex Metrica. Let me tell you a story that happened to me.
My SaaS Story
At NotionPlus.dev, members would come in, but then they would stop using it. Churn rate! To investigate why this was happening, I had already installed Yandex Metrica and I went in and tracked users’ behavior. And I saw a huge detail there. There was a huge friction! When someone added a widget, they had to write something in many boxes. The most common error was, you will be surprised, the widget title. People were forgetting to write the widget title! It’s like a joke! 😂 Because they didn’t write the widget title when they filled in the form and clicked the button, everything was deleted and the error “please do not leave blank” appeared. And it was not clear what was left blank! This is horrible for the user!
I added an auto-generated title “my widget” 😂. And the dwell time on the site increased! An incredibly simple solution ldkfldjkgldfg. :))
Final: Fastest growing SaaS companies
So I’m proud to say that as of yesterday I reached $20 MRR on NotionPlus.dev! 😊 It’s all about the AARRR I told you about. It’s all about using the common features of fast-growing SaaS in my own product. Use them too. Grow fast too! Like fastest growing SaaS companies.
I will continue to write articles about such MicroSaaS and SaaS topics. You can subscribe to my newsletter to be informed about new articles. Thank you for reading this far. If you like this article, don’t forget to share it on HackerNews, Twitter, and Reddit. Have a good work and earn a lot! 🙋♂️
