Common Characteristics of the Largest SaaS Companies

The largest SaaS companies share certain key characteristics. These findings apply to partially public SaaS companies. I identified nine common characteristics. Let’s examine them all.

The Largest SaaS Companies About?

Hi, I’m Ugur KILCI. As a personal challenge, I’m trying to write a total of 1,000 articles related to micro SaaS. In this section, the reasons why the fastest growing SaaS companies have grown into large companies over time are similar.

1. Largest SaaS Companies: Everyone

The largest SaaS companies are generally built to be inclusive. They start as niche businesses but eventually become accessible to a wider audience.

For example, if you look at Intercom‘s landing pages, you’ll see that they aren’t long landing pages. They’re very short. Why? Because people’s attention spans have shortened due to vertical content.

The easiest way for everyone to understand or appeal to everyone is through visuals. That’s why there are plenty of visuals on Intercom‘s https://www.intercom.com/suite page.

If you notice, there are visuals that everyone can easily relate to. Lakes, skies, people, working, animating their systems, meadows, and fish.

2. Largest SaaS Companies: Reputation

To become big, you need to build a brand. Building a brand brings trust to your product. With trust, you gain corporate partnerships, which is something large companies always emphasize. High growth SaaS companies are fundamentally built on having sales teams. The sales team distributes growth hacking mechanisms to the product.

For example, if you look at Salesforce‘s landing pages, you’ll see that they immediately highlight the brands using their product right below the hero section. This builds credibility for you.

But what if you’ve just launched your product and no one is using it yet? What should you do for social proof? Marc Lou has a strategy for this. I’ll share it in tomorrow’s post. Don’t forget to subscribe to the newsletter to be notified when I share it.

3. Largest SaaS Companies: Retention

This is where it gets really important! The main reason big companies are big is that they keep users engaged with their product. If you’ve built your product and set up your sales systems, but it’s not selling, then there’s a problem with the product.

The main issue is UX and the user journey. You can analyze user behavior using tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity. I’ll dedicate a separate section to this topic. But first, I need to update my own SaaS to version 2.

4. Largest SaaS Companies: Sales Team

The reason large SaaS companies are large is that they have sales teams. Not marketing, but sales. These are two different things. In fact, the reason many shops go out of business is because to sales.

Such as when a local cafe opens, the reason it goes out of business is simply because it invests in the shop and the content. They never hire a marketer or salesperson. Their shops go under because they don’t sell.

In sales, it’s all about making offers. I did some research on why dating apps sell more than most other apps. In that research, I clearly saw that they understood the user journey well. They would bring up the offer screen just before the user got bored with the app. One day, I might publish this research on my personal blog or here.

When I say sales team, people shouldn’t immediately think of humans. At least not in today’s world. Robots are now part of your team, too. In other words, sales automation should be set up. At this point, personalized emails should be sent automatically to users on days 7, 14, and 30 to gauge their status. Upsellers should perhaps be created with offers such as web push notifications.

5. Largest SaaS Companies: Yüksek Teknoloji

Being big means being able to work with many technologies. I remember Facebook had an app called Facebook version 1.0 (Facebook Jar). I’m talking about a time before the iPhone had even been invented. You could access it with a Nokia or a Samsung phone. It was free!

Such as, if you look at Adobe‘s products, you’ll see that they have products on almost every platform. They even have products that are Chrome extensions. They literally try to be everywhere. They make sure everything works together seamlessly.

6. Largest SaaS Companies: R&D Culture

From time to time, Bell Labs and Edison’s invention lab come to mind. They had founded a company to develop products. Looking back from today, I can see that Edison actually founded the first startup studio. That’s fascinating.

Names like Edison and Graham Bell placed great importance on R&D. That’s why they became companies that have been profitable for centuries. Yes, you heard that right. For example, one of the founding partners of General Electric is Thomas Edison. This company has been in operation for 133 years. Because it values R&D!

7. Largest SaaS Companies: Being Part of the Ecosystem

If you take a closer look at Shopify, you’ll see that it can be connected to many other tools. You’ll see that it can be integrated with IFTTT, Zapier, or Make.

Integration allows you to use it harmoniously with other tools. This way, you become part of the ecosystem. Of course, you have to advertise this.

You should say, “We have integration”! Otherwise, no one will know you have it. Look, Shopify has done this. https://www.shopify.com/developers/tools/integrations Likewise, creating an API can also make you part of the ecosystem.

8. Largest SaaS Companies: Building a Community

Big brands have huge fan bases. This is essential for them to become big. If you look at the footer of any company’s website, you will see its social media accounts. For example, Zoom has it in its footer. This is because they try to establish an emotional connection with the people there and turn them into brand advocates.

HubSpot does this very well. For example, HubSpot also has a Reddit community. They also have pages on their website called “community.” https://community.hubspot.com/

They strive to become a lovemark. I recommend researching the concept of lovemark. Big companies have huge fan bases. In fact, this is essential for them to become big. If you look at the footer of any company’s website, you will see its social media accounts. For example, Zoom has it in its footer. This is because they try to establish an emotional connection with the people there and turn them into company advocates.

HubSpot does this very well. Such as, HubSpot also has a Reddit community. There are also pages on its website named “community”. https://community.hubspot.com/

They strive to be a lovemark. I recommend researching the topic of lovemark.

9. Largest SaaS Companies: Optimization

The most important common theme among the largest SaaS companies is that they strive to optimize every aspect of their products!

They conduct A/B testing on their landing pages. They measure maximum conversion rates. They conduct A/B testing on their dashboards and measure maximum usage. Measurement is very important, but measuring alone is not enough. The important thing is to be able to convert this into meaningful data.

I’m talking about optimizing every single aspect. This includes the pricing page. Even a parameter like which packages the mouse hovers over on the page can give you a lot of insight. You also need to optimize within your code.

Such as, if your traffic suddenly increases, database operations can cause hosting issues every time. That’s when you need to learn about caching. This way, you can earn more while spending less. So, I’m talking about optimizing everything.

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