In the middle of the summer of 2023, we launched on two large well-known marketplaces – AppSumo and SaaSMatra. Of course, we can’t say that our experience was a failure, because we did find customers and received a lot of useful feedback. However, we realize that everything could have turned out much better for us if we had not made some mistakes and thought out some things better.
We want to share our experience and possibly make it easier for you to grow in the global market.
1. Evaluate your resources and capabilities sensibly
It may sound crazy for a startup or small business looking for every possible way to enter the market and access a large audience, but don’t grab every opportunity.
As always, we started with a market analysis and managed to select 13 target marketplaces for us and we immediately started applying (by the way, most of them have not responded even at the time of writing the article). SaaSMantra was the first to get in touch, but as soon as we received a positive response from Mantra, AppSumo responded at once. We didn’t dare to refuse one of the offers, couldn’t make a choice in favor of one or the other and started cooperation with both of them. But we didn’t assess our resources. First, we were faced with labor-intensive preparation, which in this case was double the amount. And then the launch on both sites on the same day! Just imagine the level of workload that came down.
That is why we advise you to realistically assess your abilities and capabilities first and foremost, rather than give in to enthusiasm.
2. Carefully select the program on the marketplace that will be most beneficial to you
We chose the programs whose levels, as it seemed to us at the time, were most suitable for us and… missed out.
We saw ourselves as a fledgling startup with a product that was less than six months old and a fairly modest traction. We came to AppSumo with the Marketplace program, which meant that we were only provided with an ad-free platform. But at that moment we didn’t expect more than that. And actually the result on that marketplace was very good for us, but it could have been many times better if we had given it more time and effort and could have gotten into a higher level program – Select.
The bottom line is that modesty can ruin even the best endeavor. You should always soberly assess your opportunities and chances, but you should also take ambitious risks in good projects.
3. Discuss all issues with managers beforehand
Communication with SaaSMantra managers was a negative experience for us. After the contract was signed, the excellent communication deteriorated sharply – waiting for answers from several days to almost two weeks, getting duplicated answers or simply being ignored. It was this neglect that led to the fact that we were forced to launch on two marketplaces at the same time. After all, we had originally planned to launch on SaaSMantra much earlier than on AppSumo so that we could separate the campaigns and give everything enough attention to get the expected results in terms of sales, activations, feedback, and reviews. And to be honest, this ended up directly affecting the success of our launch on SaaSMantra, or rather the failure of our launch on SaaSMantra.
Of course, Proposals are always more or less standard, but we advise you to feel free to ask to expand the contract and put specific terms and conditions in it to avoid misunderstandings and uncertainty.
In addition, if the site assumes any obligations for your promotion, we recommend that you thoroughly discuss the terms of these processes too – when, in what form, in what volume and under what conditions this promotion will be carried out.
4. Formulate the marketplace offer cautiously
In preparation, we collected a large number of references on texts from the introduction to the founder’s address, on graphic materials, on AI-generated videos. But the big challenge for us was the formation of the price and its correlation with the offered features. LTD marketplaces are a place where everyone wants lots of benefits at the lowest possible price. It’s important for them to realize that they hit the jackpot.
For example, we went to a marketplace with a basic plan and only casually mentioned an advanced plan with really cool and useful for business features, but existing only in development plans. It worked in such a way that we fell into the trap we had built for ourselves. Interested potential customers started demanding the plan that didn’t exist, with features that were only in the plans and all at a 3 times reduced price for a regular plan. So it turned out that we are now selling something that doesn’t exist yet, for the future, so to speak. But we must admit also a positive side – feedback helped us to prioritize the most demanded features by real customers.
Therefore, formulate every word of your proposal with the utmost care so that you don’t find yourself in a situation where you are forced to go with the flow. Changing your offer on the fly, inventing promotions and at least some justification to get out of this situation can cause skeptical and distrustful attitude of the audience and cause a wave of negativity from those who bought your product on other terms.
5. Take time zones into account
We entered international marketplaces and faced the necessity of almost round-the-clock tracking incoming requests, questions in comments on the marketplaces and on external resources, where we also advertised the promotion. Considering that our team lives and works in give or take same time zone, we had to urgently set up some form of shift work to have time to talk to the customer while he is active, and not 12 hours later, on their next day.
If you are planning to enter marketplaces with a wide geographical reach, allocate your time and efforts competently and in advance in the first weeks of the launch so that you don’t miss out on interested potential customers.
6. Onboarding in all possible forms
Of course, we created a text onboarding guide previously and just before the launch we had time to finalize the guide inside the product for the first use. However, this was not enough, as one AppSumo user politely pointed out. People need the tutorial videos, because it is really much more convenient and easier to perceive than the text format.
So whenever possible, prepare all forms of onboarding to give your customers a choice of what they are more comfortable with to get started.
7. Take care of social proof before launching on the marketplace
The mere fact that marketplace managers let your product on the market can be enough proof that it is not a scam. However, customers trust nothing so much as the feedback of other customers. Therefore, find relevant sites with reviews and ratings in advance and apply. Believe us, getting there turns out to be almost as long as launching a product on a marketplace. When you get listed and ask current customers to write their honest opinion about the product. Sure, many people start writing reviews themselves, but this is highly noticeable and is more likely to repel than attract customers to you. Two live real comments about your pros and cons will be much more valuable and effective than 15 fake ones.
8. Fully prepare a media plan for at least 2 weeks in advance before the launch
Launching on a marketplace is not a miracle that will just let your new customers drop on your head for nothing. You need to think about publishing with promotion both through your social networks and on external platforms. For example, find and join relevant Facebook groups ahead of time and get approval to publish from the moderators. If you want to publish articles about your offer on resources like TechCrunch, TechTimes, Betapage, etc. you need to have a signed contract and brief of the article at least 20 days before the planned publication date.
Why is it so important to do everything strongly in advance? Because the way the world works is that something always doesn’t go according to your plan. And even though we’ve done everything on our own advice, we’ve had glitches with post moderation, publication dates, and everything else. This means that in addition to your main resources, you should always have a backup plan – to be able to move the publication somewhere or to have an additional planform open for your advertising.
9. Work out a feedback collection system
Feedback from customers, real opinion, their expectations from the product and working with you – all this is in some way even more valuable than profit at the stage of product development. However, how to get all this, if in most cases marketplaces assume some anonymity of customers. So, for example, we could only see email addresses of customers who bought codes.
We realized that constant communication via email could look like spam and irritate newly arrived customers. Inviting them to follow FB and LinkedIn business pages doesn’t make sense either, because they don’t provide direct contact with the audience. Therefore, after analyzing different options of platforms, we realized that perhaps Slack is the most suitable for our audience and created a chat with channels of different purposes from system updates to feedback. The most important thing is to make this chat live, i.e. even before the start of the campaign to throw in weekly-updates, conference photos, etc.
Wrap Up
We hope you found this article useful and will help you optimize some workflows on your way to launching on marketplace. And if you need to optimize and automate workflows related to billing and subscription management, Rainex is what you need.
If you run a subscription-based business, Rainex can help you seamlessly receive payments from all over the world thanks to its multiple payment gateways.
With the most flexible rate plan builder and multi-currency, you can cater to the needs of different segments of your target audience.
Automatic invoice generation, automatic VAT calculation and automatic sending of payment notifications to customers will save you from routine billing tasks.
Deep comprehensive built-in data analytics will allow you to build the most effective strategies for business growth. And much more with Rainex.
