Ask HN: If you had 7k to spend on a SaaS launch, what would you do? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If you had 7k to spend on a SaaS launch, what would you do?

We're a small, bootstrapped company whose SaaS product has been in public beta since 2016. We're finally about to launch commercially and have been advised to spend real money to try to capitalize on the launch. We've set aside 7k.

I've contacted a few boutique PR firms in my area (Sweden) and my distinct impression is that they don't get what we're trying to do and lack the connections necessary for us to get placement where it matters. (Our product is "Excel for apps," a web service enabling anyone with spreadsheet skills to create line-of-business web apps.)

If you were in our position, how would you spend the money? Would you hire a PR firm or would you try to do the work yourself and spend the money on advertising? Or do something else entirely?

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Do you consider your product to be B2B or B2C? A fundamental aspect of marketing is knowing who your audience is. Narrow it down to a sliver that you think will be the most enthusiastic adopters; then figure out how one gets the attention of those particular users.

That's great advice. We have a B2B product and, as you say, we need to get our message out to these specific users. Frankly, I don't think that our "launch" will matter much down the road, but we have been advised to not let the "newsworthiness" of the event go to waste, meaning that we should take the opportunity to get some press. It probably isn't worth 7k, though.

If the PR firm doesn't get it, chances are that your customers won't get it. I'd personally spend a good amount of money to work on your core messages and brand.

After that, advertising is one way to go if you have a clear = small market that you want to attack first (unclear from your comment, you say "anyone with spreadsheet skills")

Finally, you could invest in blog posts/tutorials to showcase how your SaaS can solve problems in different domains. I find this very useful because if you try to write a 3 steps tutorial and you find out it's 10 pages long, then you may be encouraged to simplify your product from a "new user experience" point of view.

The product is horizontal in the sense that it is applicable in a variety of domains, much like spreadsheets. Most of the ~10,000 apps that have been created with our beta relate to pricing and other economic calculations, often created by small business owners. These are the users we primarily need to get out in front of and create content for. I'm looking into advertising on blogs related to this demographic.

(We spent years doing contract work in the health care industry, creating drug dosage calculators and the like using our own app builder, so there are definitely other verticals as well.)

If you can’t explain it to a PR company how will you explain it to random small business owners.

There’s something wrong with your messaging.

The idea seems to be "spend a bunch of money and then launch will succeed".

But, what if it doesn't succeed? What then?

Better approach is "how can we reach potential customers repeatedly". Because that way if first launch doesn't work as well as expected, you have second launch, and third launch, and fourth launch.

(Mostly learned from https://stackingthebricks.com, though I don't see direct article about this at first glance.)

I have little feedback for you, other than don't spend 7k on a PR firm. Maybe someone will hold a different opinion, but for the most part they are useless.

You're probably better investing that money in advertising. Or flying out and meeting new clients. It really depends on the industry and how 'niche' your product is, and how you can connect with your customers.

Conferences can sometimes be interesting as well, if they allow you to connect with people in your industry.

Thanks for the feedback, that makes sense.

Do you have any data to show that PR would be an effective channel?

If you're manpower limited, you could double down on marketing channels that are already effective for you, or spend the time and money testing channels.

Check out the book 'Traction' by Gabriel Weinberg (of DuckDuckGo).

The book looks great, I've ordered a copy. Thanks!

As I mention elsewhere in the thread, we have been advised to not let the "newsworthiness" of our launch go to waste, meaning that we should take the opportunity to get some press. It probably isn't worth 7k, though. E-mailing a select few publications ourselves and spending the money on advertising on blogs of interest to our demographic is probably a much better use of the money.

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