Analyze your SaaS funnel to know where the problem is.

Bonus: Social proof on sign-up page & Ultimate Product Hunt Launch Guide 2024

Alexander Estner

May 12, 2024

Hey - it’s Alex!

Today we cover:

1️⃣ Analyze your funnel to know where the problem is

2️⃣ Growth Tactic: Social proof on your sign-up page

3️⃣ Bonus material: Product Hunt Launch Guide 2024 by Matteo Tittarelli.

1. Analyze your funnel to know why you’re not growing - Find out where the problem is

2 weeks ago we covered reverse engineering your sales funnel.

That way you know what you need to achieve every week, month, and quarter.

Your funnel will look more or less like this:

1️⃣ Website Traffic

2️⃣ Signups

3️⃣ Demos / Trials

4️⃣ Won

5️⃣ Churn

Yours will be slightly different.

Depending on if you’re sales-led or product-led. But that’s not the point.

But if you’re not hitting your goals. How do you know what’s working and more importantly what’s not?

That’s when you need to analyze your funnel.

Do you have a:

❌ Acquisition problem?

❌ Conversion problem?

❌ Activation problem?

❌ Retention problem?

Here’s a quick checklist to analyze your funnel and identify your problems.

Analyze your funnel

#1 No traffic and a low outbound response rate

If you don’t get any relevant traffic on your website and also see a low response rate on your outbound campaigns, then your problem might be:

❌ Messaging problem

—> People don’t respond to your outbound campaign. Your messaging isn’t resonating. Most probably they don’t understand/feel the problem you are trying to solve for them.

📚 Helpful resources: The Ultimate SaaS Messaging Framework

❌ Channel problem

—> Might be that the messaging is not the problem, but you’re not where your ideal customers hang around.

📚 Helpful resources: 16 powerful B2B SaaS Channels & 100+ SaaS Growth Tactics

❌ Not solving a problem?

—> Might also be true that you’re on the wrong way and there is no market for your product. Are you sure you’re solving a real problem? So you’re a true pain killer and not just a nice-to-have vitamin?

#2 Traffic, but low sign-up rate?

❌ Messaging/ value proposition problem

—> Your website messaging is the problem. Not clear what problem you’re solving and how you’re solving it. No reason/urgency to click the CTA.

📚 Helpful resources: The perfect SaaS Homepage + The Ultimate SaaS Messaging Framework

❌ Positioning problem

—> People don’t get what you’re doing and how you’re different than other solutions in the market. Important positioning elements are: Target audience, usecase(s) and product category.

📚 Helpful resources: 6 types of SaaS positioning & 3 types of competition

❌ Homepage design & structure

—> It can also be the case that your messaging itself is not the problem, but your website is just not good. Competition is huge and if you don’t grab the attention of visitors in the first 10 seconds, you’re lost. They scan your website, so make sure you have all the relevant sections of a powerful homepage & your headlines are on point.

📚 Helpful resources: The perfect SaaS Homepage

#3 You have sales demos with prospects, but a low win rate (for SLG)

❌ Sales Demo problem

—> A lot of times demos are 1-way presentations of features. That’s not how you will win prospects. Instead powerful demos follow a 9-step demo process.

📚 Helpful resources: The Ultimate Sales Demo Guide & Sales Demo Cheatsheet & Sales Discovery Cheatsheet

❌ Sales Process

—> Another common mistake. You don’t have a clear sales process. So you can’t guide prospects from the first touchpoint to signing the contract (and onboarding). And most common is that the sales process is broken after demos.

📚 Helpful resources: Mutual Action Plans

❌ Sales Messaging

—> The way you present your product is feature fucking. You can’t explain why your product is important, what it does, what they get using it and how you’re different than the competition.

📚 Helpful resources: The Ultimate SaaS Messaging & The 1-sentence value proposition

#4 People trying your product, but a low trial to paid conversion (for PLG)

❌ Onboarding problem

—> You make it too hard for users to reach the aha moment of your product. So they never experience the value of your product and ultimately don’t convert to paying customers.

📚 Helpful resources: 8 tips to activate more leads & 13 SaaS activation tips & 8 free trial fundamentals

❌ Pricing

—> Or the problem is not onboarding, but your pricing. The relationship between the value of the product and the price you charge is not in balance. But the pricing is more than the pure € you charge. It’s about the right value metric, packaging, and payment terms.

📚 Helpful resources: The Ultimate SaaS Pricing Guide

#5 High churn in the first 1-3 months after paying

❌ Onboarding problem

—> It’s important that your sales process doesn’t stop with ‘contract signed’. Customer Success is responsible for getting all new customers to ‘active’, to reduce the risk of potential churn.

📚 Helpful resources: 8 tips to activate more leads & 13 SaaS activation tips & The role of Customer Success

❌ Product problem (no product-market fit)

—> Customers realize that your product is not solving their problem. The product is not delivering what you promised them in your marketing. Without product-market fit, you’re not ready to scale.

📚 Helpful resources: The 3 ready-to-scale indicators & how to measure product market fit

🚨 Before you read on:

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2. Growth tactic: Add social proof on your sign-up page

Lots of startups see a high bounce rate on their sign-up page. It’s the page where new users try to create an account (e.g. free trial).

Adding social proof like

✅ logos,

✅ testimonials,

✅ or case studies

is an easy yet powerful tactic to improve conversion.

Here are a few examples

The same is true if your main CTA is to book a demo.

This growth tactic is one of the 131 growth tactics that are part of the 90+ actionable SaaS growth tactics database that already helped 200+ SaaS leaders.

3. 💪 Bonus material (software, content, news) - The Product Hunt Launch Guide 2024

A guide on how to launch your product on Product Hunt and get #1 Product of the Day, Week, and Month. Created by Matteo Tittarelli.

The guide covers:

Gather your key strategy assets
1. Set your goals
2. Find your Top Hunter — a notable Product Hunt member who’ll vouch for you
3. Set your launch date
4. Gather email lists — customers, investors, friends and family, collaborators
Create your Product Hunt profile
1. Copy assets
2. Creative design assets
3. Technical assets
Create distribution assets ahead of and for launch day
1. Emails, social, and community messaging
2. Timetable for the team to manage launch day
Create distribution assets for post-launch day to keep momentum
1. Product Hunt newsletter
2. Post-mortem posts
3. Creators & niche PR
4. Advertising

👉 Get the Product Hunt Launch Guide 2024 for free.

Happy growth 🚀.

Alex

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