LAUNCHING YOUR SAAS PRODUCT USING 10K MICRO INFLUENCERS

No matter what type of Software you’re developing, you need to drive product awareness where your customers are searching for your solution. Creating discoverable content is key to educating potential customers about your software and generating high intent traffic to your software landing pages. But how do you create content and get it visible where people are searching for it? The answer might seem a bit counterintuitive but if you stick with me, I think you’ll agree that Micro Influencers hold the key to your successful SaaS launch. WHAT THIS GUIDE COVERS This growth hacking guide will cover the following topics: An Introduction to Micro Influencers Learn how to Acquire Thousands of Niche Specific Influencers Learn how to growth hack social account authority for Increased visibility in social search engines Learn how to generate hundreds of topic specific videos optimized to reach and engage your potential customers about your SaaS product Learn how to manage thousands of Micro Influencers using a “Spokesperson Contest” to drive engagement Find Beta Testers to use your SaaS product and get feedback Learn how to get your blog content ranked in Google Search Learn how to build communities targeting your target audience Learn how to get your App ranked in the App Stores Learn how to market your App using Micro Influencers WHY MICRO INFLUENCERS? In order to understand how Micro Influencers can help you launch a B2B software product, we first have to understand what Micro Influencers are and how they can help you reach customers looking for your solutions. Micro Influencers provide an enormous amount of potential value to SaaS companies looking to create discoverable content and get it ranked on keywords your customers are searching for to find the solutions that your software provides. On average, Micro Influencers have 2200 followers and deeper connections with these followers, compared to a Macro Influencer with millions of followers but little interpersonal connections. The value Micro Influencers bring to your SaaS product isn’t their follower reach, it’s their ability to help you create content, increase account authority and get your content ranked in the search engines your customers are using to find the solutions your software provides. For instance, if your customers are searching YouTube for Graphic Design software, your Influencers can create topic specific videos about your software product and how it relates to your customers problem or needs. When you utilize thousands of Influencers and help them craft content your customers are searching for, you’ll have hundreds of quality videos driving those customers to your SaaS sales pages. This is just one way Micro Influencers can help you promote your SaaS product. HOW TO ACQUIRE NICHE SPECIFIC MICRO INFLUENCERS When you’re launching a Micro Influencer campaign to promote your SaaS product, you want to utilize Micro Influencers who actually have an interest in your niche. For instance, if your SaaS product is designed for Graphic Designers, you could target “Graphic Designers” in your ad targeting to ensure that the people helping you promote your SaaS product would also have an interest in the Software itself as a potential user. When I acquire new Influencers for a campaign, I run Facebook and Instagram ads to find them. I’m able to target by Interests, Job titles, Income Brackets and Age/Gender filters. I’m also able to target by country. To make sure you get the best Influencers, I use conditional targeting that first targets people who I think would make great Influencers… Models, Actors and Actresses. These people are typically more active in social media, are used to creating content and open to spokesperson opportunities. Targeting Influencers in your Niche Within Facebook Ad Targeting, there is an option to further refine your audience by adding a secondary conditional targeting filter. This is where I add additional Interests that target people by Job Title (Graphic Designer in our scenario) and Interests (Graphic Design, UI Design and so on). Creating Ads that Convert Once you’ve targeted people who are more likely to have an interest in your Software solution, it’s time to create your media and ad descriptions. When I run ads to acquire Influencers, I use an image with a black gradient (semi transparent overlay) that makes the text on the image pop out (See example below). I then add the following text over the gradient overlay: Graphic Design App Spokesperson Search $5,000 CONTRACT The reason I do it like this serves a few purposes. First, it identifies that it’s a Graphic design app that my target audience will have an interest in. It then promotes the fact that we’re looking for a Spokesperson and offering a large enough monetary contract to peak their interest and make them click on the ad. In the Ad description, I add more reasons for them to fill out the lead form that captures their contact info and then leads them to my website where they fill out more information about themselves to complete the registration process for the campaign. Lowering your Influencer Acquisition Costs When I run Influencer ads for a campaign, I’m able to generate new Influencer sign ups for as little as .34 cents each. Facebook goes through a learning phase where it measures the effectiveness of your audience targeting and fine tunes it by developing a “Look-a-Like” audience of people who have filled out the lead form. As you sign up more Influencers, your cost per lead continues to drop as more conversions are gained. Here are a few tips on lowering your Influencer Acquisition Costs: Adequate Ads Budget You need a minimum budget of $2,500 to get your cost per lead down in the .34 cent range. In the beginning of your ad run, your costs might be a couple dollars per lead. Don’t let this spook you into stopping your ad campaign, your costs will eventually drop lower and lower as Facebook further refines your audience targeting. Facebook Ad Sets Only set up one campaign and one Ad Set with three no more than 3 ad variations. Multiple Ad Sets will compete against each other and raise your cost per lead. It will also split the amount of servable impressions between the adsets and your ad delivery will suffer. This will result in a longer “Learning” phase and increase your cost per lead as a result. Minimize Lead Form Questions When setting up your Facebook Lead Form, you want to limit it to the very basic contact information. Your form should only ask for the following contact info: First Name Last Name Email Address Phone Number This data is auto-filled in the lead form so all the Influencer has to do is click the submit button and they are now added to your database. Adding additional questions leads to higher form attrition rates and raises your cost per lead substantially. You can ask for additional information once they click on the link after completing the lead form. REJECTED AD SOLUTION Your Facebook Ad will more than likely be rejected by Facebook’s algorithm because it will be construed as an employment ad. When this happens, you will need to request a “Manual Review” of your ad and in the notes explain that you are running a “casting call” for a spokesperson and that your ad is not an offer for employment. Employment ads require a specific ad designation that prevents people from targeting people using discriminatory filters and targeting. You are not running employment ads so these restrictions do not apply to your ad. This is by no means a complete guide to setting up and running Facebook ads to acquire Micro Influencers. If you’re serious about running Facebook ads to sign up Micro Influencers, you can DM me for a more complete guide on setting up your Facebook ads. This topic requires way too much explanation for the purpose of this guide. Now that we have a basic understanding of setting up and running ads to acquire Influencers, lets dig into how you can use Micro Influencers to promote your (Add Content Focus Here) SPOKESPERSON CONTESTS When I run an Influencer campaign, I use a Spokesperson Contest as the basis for my interactions with Influencers. My contests last for three months at a time and I offer a contract worth $5,000 to the Influencer who I choose to be my Spokesperson. Influencers earn points during my contest, at the end of each one month period, the top 70% of point earners move on to the next round. At the end of three months, the Influencer with the most points earns the contract and gets paid. This setup allows me to leverage 10k+ Influencers who are all helping me promote my SaaS product for three months without having to pay each one of them for their efforts. Because I’m targeting Influencers who are models, actors and actresses, they are able to create higher quality video content and are more active in social media with more engaged followers and existing social media account authority. MAXIMIZING INFLUENCER ENGAGEMENT When I run Influencer campaigns, I use Gamification to increase engagement and get them taking actions that provide the most value for my SaaS product. Influencers earn points for doing things like following my social media accounts, engaging with my content, creating content, posting shoutouts and using my software to create a software review video about it. All of these actions help create and syndicate my content across social media where people looking for it can find it. Point Tracking Software I utilize some point tracking software that I then supplement with custom Zapier integrations that help me track and manage what my Influencers are doing to help spread the word about my Software. Automated Content Drips and Incentivized Notifications When setting up a campaign, I use content calendars with notification triggers that share newly posted content with my Influencers that ask them to like, comment and share my new post to earn points. This get’s my most important content ranked in social search engines where my customers can find it. You want to utilize Text Message Notifications for your most valuable content as they have a 95% open and CTR. This will result in thousands of Influencers engaging with your content that guarantees it will get ranked in the social search engines. Automated Personalized Email Encouragement When Influencers are personally engaged with, their level of activity increases. However, when running an influencer campaign with thousands of Influencers, it’s impossible to add these personal touchpoints. Setting up an automated email drip with specific action outreach can have a huge impact on engagement. For instance, you could send out an automated personalized email for each of the following actions: Email Influencers after creating a video review of your Software Email Influencers after they earn x number of points Send random encouragement emails GROWTH HACKING SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT AUTHORITY When your startup is brand new and you create social media accounts for your SaaS product, you’re starting from scratch with no account authority. You might be scratching your head as to why your social media posts aren’t generating any engagement. The reason for this is because your post isn’t visible in the search results because you have an account that isn’t authoritative. Thus, your visibility is very limited. Account/Post Authority is calculated using the following metrics: Follower Engagement (The number of followers who engage with your content) Follower Authority (The amount of account authority your followers have) Follower Post Engagement (Posts are first ranked according to how it’s engaged with from your followers) Organic Post Engagement (Platforms measure how well your post performs when viewed organically in the search feeds) These are the most important factors that determine how well your content ranks in the Hashtag search results. INCREASING ACCOUNT AUTHORITY When you run a Micro Influencer campaign, the first thing your Influencers should do is follow your social media accounts. They should then like, comment and share your social media posts. This is one of the ways they can earn points during your campaign. This results in very high follower engagement and generates enough likes, comments, shares and saves to make your content rank in the Hashtag search results. Once your content is ranked, it can generate more organic followers to your account as your posts are more discoverable to people in your niche looking for your content. Social Account ShoutOuts Another way to boost account authority is to have your Micro Influencers create a post about your product, App, website or brand and mention your username in the post. This provides additional authority when thousands of people take this step during your campaign. TURN INFLUENCERS INTO BETA TESTERS Generate thousands of new users by asking Influencers to Beta Test your software. Because they are already interested in your niche because of how we targeted the Influencers with your Ads, they will be more receptive to Beta Testing your Software. Here are a few ways to maximize your Beta Testing initiative with Influencers: Offer more points for Beta testing your Software - This is the quickest way to generate more Software users. Your Influencers will gladly use your software and hopefully like it so much that they will pay for it or use it long term. You should offer Influencers who Beta Test your software an extended free trial that lasts as long as the campaign is running. Ask for Feedback using a form - Discover what they liked and didn’t like about using the software. Ask them what features they wish were included but aren’t. Ask them what could make the software better and if anything didn’t work as it was supposed to. Incentivize App Sharing with the Influencers Phone Contacts - Your software should include some internal growth hacking mechanisms like making it possible for users to invite their friends or colleagues to join or follow them. This will allow you to generate more organic users of your software at no cost. It also gives you metrics you can use when building out your pro-forma for growth projections after the campaign is over. Software Review Videos - The most valuable asset you can create with Influencers is a software Review video. This allows you to post the videos on multiple social media platforms and optimize the videos to appear in the search results to find new customers looking for software solutions like yours. You can also use these review videos on your sales pages or in a “testimonials” page on your website. INCREASE VISIBILITY WHERE YOUR CUSTOMERS ARE LOOKING FOR YOUR SOLUTIONS Think about the ways your potential customers are searching for solutions to their problems that software solves. If your customers are using platforms like ProductHunt to find software startups to follow and support, you could have Influencers create an account on their and vote for your Software, leave reviews for it and share your ProductHunt listing in social media. This will increase your visibility on their platform and drive more organic downloads of people who will use your software. Here are a few ways people find solutions that software products can solve YouTube Search - YouTube is an amazing product discovery tool that works particularly well for problem/solution based videos. Google Search - You should have an amazing content marketing strategy that employs proper SEO techniques that make ranking your websites content easier. When you utilize thousands of Micro Influencers, you can easily have them share your content in social media to help it rank in the organic search results. If you have a brand new website with zero authority, you can utilize other platforms that allow you to get content ranked on Google much easier and drive search traffic to your landing pages. A few of these are listed below: Medium.com - This is one of the easiest platforms to get content ranked in Google search extremely fast. Utilize long tail keywords with a decent amount of search volume that your customers are searching for to find your software solutions. If you intend on using Medium as a ranking tool for content marketing, you should add “Medium” as an Interest in your Influencer Targeting for Facebook ads. This will ensure your Infleuncers have accounts on Medium and can clap for your content in exchange for earning more points. Reddit Posts - Adding article content to relevant subreddits can help you get your content ranked in Google Search. Don’t link directly to your App but you can mention it by name so people can search for it and find it. Industry Focused Groups & Forums - You can find and join Industry related Slack Groups or forums that people in your Industry frequent. Adding content that provides value to members of the group can lead to new software clients when you do a good job of pitching your software as a solution to your Industry's challenges. Here are a few ideas: BUILD COMMUNITIES YOUR CUSTOMERS CAN FIND ORGANICALLY Because you have targeted your Influencers by interest in your industry, you can invite them to join communities that you create on different platforms. These platforms give you access to their user base and allows you to acquire new members organically you can engage with long term. By inviting your Influences to join these communities, you can seed them with enough users to make the group more appealing for organic users who find your groups. Here are a few platforms where you can build niche communities: Slack - Slack is a great place to manage a group of people who are in a specific Industry or have a relevant Interest in your Softwares Industry. LinkedIn Groups - You can find and join specific groups for your Industry on LinkedIn and engage with users, post relevant content about your software and message users who show an interest in your software. Subreddits - Start your own Subreddit and add content to attract new members in your niche. Facebook Groups - Create a Facebook group for your Industry and add content they can consume. These are just a few examples, but depending on your Industry, there might be better or more options where you can build your own communities of potential customers. IS YOUR SOFTWARE AN APP? If your SaaS is an App, there is an entire strategy for using Micro Influencers to get your App ranked in the App stores. Check out this section for learning how to generate thousands of App downloads organically by ranking in the App store using Micro Influencers! APP MARKETING & APP STORE OPTIMIZATION Launching a software App can be exciting, it can also be expensive to scale your Apps success using paid marketing. The average cost to generate an App download using paid marketing is between .93 cents to $5.28 cents depending on a few factors. Generating enough App downloads to rank in the App store can be very expensive. Your goal as an App owner is to get ranked in the App store where you can generate organic downloads at no cost and at scale. Once you’re ranked, your cost per App download goes down with each organic download generated. Getting your App to rank in the App store requires several things to come together all around the same time. Here are the main ranking factors: Number of new Downloads Download to Review Ratio Quality of Review (Sentiment and Rating) Diversity of External Links driving new Downloads Search Query to App Selection in the search results Frequency of all the above actions The difficulty of getting your App ranked in the App store also depends on where your App is getting ranked like the “Recently Trending” section or “Most Popular” section of the App store for your category. The more important areas to rank though are for your Apps Category and Subcategories and popular keywords people type in to find Apps like yours. Micro Influencers have the power to generate a massive number of App Downloads in so many unique ways. USING MICRO INFLUENCERS TO GET YOUR APP RANKED Now that we understand what advantages Micro Influencers have over Macro Influencers, let’s discover how to utilize Micro Influencers to get ranked in the App store! There are a few ways you can utilize Micro Influencers to help get your App ranked in the App store. These strategies focus on the key ranking factors listed above and help you overcome competitive barriers to help you get ranked and drive more organic followers. Time your campaign so that Influencers take all the actions below around the same time to get a high frequency of actions in as short a timeframe as possible: App Downloads - The first thing you’re able to do is drive a huge number of new App Downloads when you use enough Micro Influencers for your campaign. App Reviews - Once your Micro Influencers download your App, have them leave a positive review for it in the App store. App Internal Sharing Mechanisms - Your App should include some internal sharing functionality that allows users to invite their phone contacts to download the App from within the App’s interface. This allows you to turn 10k Influencer downloads into 400K App downloads by incentivizing Influencers to share the App with as many phone contacts as possible. Hopefully a minimum of (40 contacts). Social Sharing - Your Influencers should share your App’s download link on their social media accounts. These links will generate new App downloads from unique referral link sources. The App stores love this type of external traffic to their App stores and rewards your App with more visibility as they consider your App more popular than other apps not driving traffic from external sources. Keyword Hacking - Another tactic you can employ is to utilize Influencers to help you rank better on specific keywords (You must already be ranked on these keywords) to rank better on these keywords. Influencers should open the App store, type in the desired keyword, find your App and download it. The more people who download your App on these keywords, the better you will start to rank on that keyword. This will help you drive more organic downloads that have zero cost to them. With enough Influencers, you can easily get your App ranked in the App store and generate organic downloads at no cost. As your number of organic downloads increase, your blended cost per download consistently gets lower and lower. When you start to see a dip in your organic traffic, just run a new Micro Influencer campaign and gain that competitive advantage again. Looking for a Mentor for your Startup? The Author (Me) has over 17 years of entrepreneurial experience. I was Mentored by Hall of Fame Quarterback Fran Tarkenton in early 2002 and it changed the course of my life forever. Now that I'm semi-retired, I want to pay it back and mentor other entrepreneurs who need help launching their company's. I have a tremendous amount of experience growing and scaling SaaS companies, CPG products, Apparel Brands and everything in between. I have over 25+ exits from companies I've either founded, Invested in (I own a VC firm) or partnered with over the years. I also own an Influencer marketing platform with over 200K Micro Influencers so I can help scale your business up in social media if it's ready to launch. I'm not looking for anything out of this, just to help other entrepreneurs avoid some of the mistakes I made early on in my career. I've ran a massive number of ad accounts over every marketing medium you can think of and consider myself a pretty experienced performance marketer and growth hacker. Let me know what you need help with and what you're working on launching!