Many famous brands started as MVPs before developing into great products we know and love today.

The article below shows you how a minimum viable product can help you grow and deliver a successful fully-fledged project.

Why is MVP important?

MVP, or a minimum viable product, is the central concept of the lean startup approach created by Eric Ries. MVP means an early version of the product including the core features that users can test. It gives the minimum value for customers proving business assumptions about your product or service.

Let’s discover the advantages of an MVP for business ideas.

Testing a Project

According to the lean startup methodology, there are two main hypotheses to test:

• The value hypothesis: does a product deliver value to customers when they use it?
• The growth hypothesis: how will the product evolve if customers accept it?

The main point of the lean startup loop is to create the preliminary version that can be tested. So, MVP testing is simple and focused. 

Also, the test brings measurable results on the hypotheses you check. The outcome supports the assumptions of how your service or product serves users’ needs.

Getting Early Feedback

Feedback from customers gives you insights into what is valuable in your product. You can see how people use your MVP and discover what appeals to them.

The feedback to MVP differs from regular feedback in that it is inclusive. The reaction is related only to the features included in the MVP. Discovering the practical result of how the MVP is used helps you understand the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service. 

Also, your customers will feel a connection with you if you introduce changes that they suggest. Thus, you build a community that values your product and potentially can grow in the future.

Spending Fewer Resources

As an MVP includes only basic features, you need less effort for creating a solution. It’s easier to form a team with dedicated specialists for MVP development.

Also, the development team delivers only the core features, so they need less time. As a result, the cost of MVP development is less than a solution with complex functionality.

Attracting Early Investors

The first thing why startups fail is the inability to raise capital. Investors wouldn’t contribute to a project without proven payback. They see the product in work, so it’s easy to understand the problems your product solves and its market fit.

Also, an MVP shows the potential of your product. If the MVP was successful, the fully-fledged solution is likely to succeed, too.

Scaling

MVP allows incrementing new features. Testing the core functionality shows the value that your customers see in the MVP. Knowing that you can add the features gradually and check if it resonates with your users.

Now that you know why an MVP is essential, let’s see prominent examples of MVPs that grew in successful businesses.

Uber

Though it is hard to believe, at the very beginning, Uber was just an MVP with a plain and simple design and limited functionality. The only feature available was connecting iPhone users with taxi drivers and enabling passengers to purchase their ride with a credit card.

Despite the simplicity of the offering, or maybe driven by it, the brand successfully entered the market, enhanced its application, and got the first loyal customers. How did Uber make it big? The company focused on a small category of users located in San Francisco. Their valuable feedback allowed the brand to add to their app such exciting features as driving cost estimates, split fares, scheduled rides, multiple drop-offs, etc.

That’s how Uber looked like in their early days.

Instagram

The story behind Instagram development is a perfect illustration of the main idea of the MVP approach. It is clear why choosing one particular feature is a more wise solution than building extensive functionality.

Before starting Instagram, Kevin Systrom worked in marketing and learned to code at night. He created a prototype app allowing people to check in their locations. After the first meeting with investors, he raised $500,000 for the prototype and quit his job. 

At this phase, Kevin Systrom needed a team to improve his solution. Mike Krieger agreed to join him. They removed all unnecessary features, leaving only images uploading, commenting, and liking.

The initial version of Instagram was called Burbn, and below, you can see its interface.

Zappos

With an MVP, you can test the feasibility of your business without paying through the nose. This statement was proved by Nick Swinmurn, the founder of Zappos. Today it is the largest shoe store that started with an MVP.

Nick Swinmurn assumed that shoppers might want to buy shoes online. He did not invest in purchasing shoes or developing expensive software. Instead, he went to local stores and took photos of items on offer.

Swinmurn created a simple website and uploaded photos to see if somebody got interested. When a platform visitor clicked the Buy button, Swinmurn bought the requested pair in a shop. Then he sent the order and handled payments.

The early version of the Zappos website looked like the following way

Conclusion

MVP created as a core notion of lean startup method helps discover the viability of your product or service. MVP tests if your idea is feasible. It is a working version that users can try. They will provide you with valuable feedback that leads to insights on how to improve your MVP.

As an MVP includes only key features, you spend fewer resources for developing it. Also, showing the workable version of your product or service helps you prove to investors that your idea has market potential.

I hope that the examples showing the core aspects of the MVP approach will inspire you to check the potential of your idea.

Follow Techdee for more!

The post What Does MVP Mean and Why Do You Need it? appeared first on Techdee.

Steps to Follow: Creating Technology Startup Business Plan

• Executive Summary

Before we go deeper into it, we must clarify what the business plan itself represents. It may be the case that a person who would like to start it doesn’t know much about it but yet is eager for its creation. This is not something recommended for clear and proper reasons. Getting involved with something you are not familiar enough with can only cause trouble. That’s why we are here to explain to you in short what’s business plan generally is. To simply put, it is a piece of document that consists of all the necessary information about the business you are interested in. It is like an outline for writers. A business plan has the same value and purpose. This document exists to summarize all the ideas, goals, and objectives that your technology startup should focus on. Now, without further ado, let’s get back to our first step. An executive summary is perhaps one of the most important things you should take care of. The point of it is to make it persuasive. Your business plan should be attractive to investors, right? That’s why it has to be written with high quality and all the details necessary. If you don’t have this kind of summary, the rest of your business plan will not gain suitable attention too. Here, you must emphasize facts why your business plan tends to be successful and why investors should put their money in it and not somewhere else. If we have in mind that the executive summary should be accurate, you should know what other parts it includes. Those are:

• Your Targets of The Market
• Marketing Strategy
• What Are Your Goals?
• Who Or What Represent a Competition to You?
• Business Model

Once you gain knowledge about them, your summary will be the best possible.

• Summary of the Company

After writing a persuasive summary of the business plan, another summary that you will need is related to the company. This is a simple task that can bring you many benefits. What is it about? Well, you have probably seen how every successful company has a headline stated beneath their brand. And that’s what the company summary is. Just make sure to write an interesting sentence that will persuade people to believe in your project. A single sentence will be enough for it. You don’t need to write an entire novel, of course. The only thing that matters here is to highlight what opportunity people can get in the market through your company. Focus on what your company refers to and state it in this headline.

• Describe Your Services & Products

It is clear as daylight that technology startup companies need to be totally open to their possible future clients. What’s the purpose of it if they don’t know what you are offering to them? It is the same as with relationship students-essays, for example. How? They are often using online services related to their essays. PaperHelp is just one of them. And if they don’t know what this website exactly offers them, they will have questions like: “Is PaperHelp worth it or not?”. That’s what you must bear in mind in order to gain credibility and allow people to rely on you as a reliable partner. You must prove that people can buy your products or use your services without hesitation. 

• Take Care of The Management Staff

We can freely state that if something makes a technology startup company successful, it must be its management crew. After all, people who work behind the scenes have the biggest impact on its progress and development. So, try to hire the right people in every section of the company. Seek their education and make sure they have enough experience in the business. Your entire operational structure depends on the people who are responsible for it. The best scenario would be to have a team made of several professionals whose characteristics are aligned. It means that they can support each other when necessary and make their team be one unit. Just explore what positions are vital for your startup company. Usually, such facilities have graphic designers, coders, .net programmers, electrical engineers, sales & marketing experts, etc. Remote type of work also gives big chances for companies to find and create a powerful ’dream team’. If you make a team like this, success will never come to question.

Conclusion

Hopefully, our steps will help you to understand how technology startup business plans are functioning and which elements are the key to avoiding failures. Like everything in life, sometimes you can run into issues but with good organization, it will vanish soon. If you follow these few steps, reaching the top is just a matter of time!

Follow Techdee for more!

The post Creating Technology Startup Business Plan: What Steps to Follow? appeared first on Techdee.

To help you with the answer, the article enlists 7 tips to create a successful marketing funnel. However, after learning the tips you might want to collaborate with a marketing agency to help you with the execution of the steps in a more organized and calculated manner.

For example, you can simply search for a ‘marketing agency Melbourne’, and pick a suitable agency for your assistance. But first, you must go through these tips to get an idea about some principle tactics that can help you create your marketing funnel.

Let’s begin!

1. Customer Centric

It is an obvious fact that if you want your customers to stay loyal to your brand and buy your products, you need to ensure that you meet the general demands of your customers.

For that matter, you might have to explore customer details and outline their common interests, requirements, and approach towards shopping.

2. Customer Feedback

No matter how hard you try to impress your customers with your strategies, not necessarily all of them are going to work well. Hence, it becomes important to take general feedback from your customers.

To know what’s going in the mind of your customers you can make use of emails, online surveys, etc. on a periodical basis. Let your customers share their buying stories, improvements, suggestions, or even experiences.

Seeking customer feedback is one of the easiest ways to understand the requirements of your customers while simultaneously earning their trust and loyalty.

3 .Customer Goals

Once you have taken note of the feedback from your customers, you can simply start with setting your goals based on their reviews and feedback stories.

The goals will make your steps more organized and target-oriented which is obviously a smarter move towards creating a successful marketing funnel.

4. Create a Landing Page

The landing page of your website educates the customers about your brand, the products, the benefits, and all the other information about your business. This is exactly where you can impress your customers.

Thus, it becomes important for you too to draft impactful content for your landing page that communicates with the prospect and not at the prospect. The landing page should represent what you want to convey to your customers whenever they come across your product/service digitally.

5. Keep the Process Going

Stay in touch with your customers even when the whole buying process is over. Now that you have access to their email, keep them updated with your current stocks!

The communication ensures that your customers don’t feel ignored/forgotten. As a result, you develop a stronger bond with your customers.

6. Loyalty Offer

Do not hesitate from offering your customers some tempting discounts that are difficult to turn down. This step helps in regulating the cycle and bond that your brand shares with the prospects.

You may consider referring to what other brands have in offer, to make sure that you do not leave unnecessary gaps in the competition.

7. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategies

While creating engaging content for your brand you must not forget that the content has to be search engine optimized. All the pivotal information of your brand and products must include important keywords to make sure that they appear in common searches of people.

The success of your Marketing Funnel definitely relies on the frequency of appearances that your web page makes on such search engine platforms. This guide breaks down SaaS SEO which can be a helpful start for marketing your SaaS or tech business.

Over to You

Along with these tips that can make the game of your marketing funnel to a level up, it is also important for you to keep a check of previously overlooked conditions that are holding back your company from delivering a proper output.

Last but not the least, do not expect these tips to work overnight like a magical wand.

For any or all of the above-mentioned steps to work at their best, it is crucial for you to be consistent with the process and keep reviewing its success at every step.  

Follow Techdee for more!

The post 7 Effective Tips to Create a Successful Marketing Funnel appeared first on Techdee.

This is because it brings a unified way of collaborating on projects no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have an internet connection.

Usually, the software is delivered via web-based platforms, i.e., you can access the products on your browser instead of going through a series of tedious processes to install the product.

Every activity you carry out on a SaaS product is stored in the cloud, allowing you to pick up from where you left off.

SaaS products are highly on-demand, with over 73% of companies already using mostly SaaS software rather than On-premise software (the type you have to install onto a computer).

If you’re a startup just venturing into the world of SaaS card, you need an effective marketing strategy to help you top the crowds of already existing products. This way, your product will always be the preferred choice among the maze of others.

To begin, let’s take a look at what exactly a SaaS marketing strategy entails.

What is a SaaS marketing strategy?

Every business needs a marketing strategy. To effectively promote your new business, you need to first carve out the steps, strategies, and tactics to help you achieve your goals.

There are typically three stages of growth for a SaaS startup.

• Traction,
• Transition, and
• Growth

In each of these stages, you should have a general overview of how you plan to boost your business. That is your marketing strategy. Let’s examine the main components of each of these stages and what you should focus on for your SaaS startup.

1. Traction:

In this stage of your business, you should build a credible brand name in your industry. Establish yourself as a credible authority while working to retain the customer base you have acquired.

You should focus on brand awareness and campaigns to get word of your business out there and help you gain traction. You should also focus on confirming that your product fits the market you intend to sell to using certain user-feedback techniques and platforms.

42% of startups don’t succeed because they offer products the market doesn’t need. Product-market fit simply means that your product should solve the needs or problems of your customers; this is often a beacon of light for potential investors.

2. Transition:

When you have created a steady buzz through your traction marketing strategies, it’s time for the transition stage.

In this stage, you should focus your strategy on expanding your proven marketing channels quickly.

By aligning your target customer persona with the message your strategy seeks to pass, you will be able to reach more potential clients where you got your first few.

You also need to employ lead analytical tools and conversion techniques to reduce the costs of acquiring customers.

3. Growth:

With the above tactics in place, there is assured growth. However, the work does not stop there as there is still room for market expansion and brand amplification.

You can begin to explore and maximize new marketing channels to reach other categories of clients who fit into your target market.

With the aid of a good PR strategy or marketing agency specialized in SaaS, you can remain at the fore of the mind of your customers and even reel in more.

Why do you need a unique marketing plan?

One of the most important reasons for a marketing plan is to ensure that everyone involved in the marketing process is on the same page. Organization in a startup increases efficiency and productivity greatly; poor team organization causes up to 23% of startup failure.

Also, when you have facts and figures carefully mapped out and properly strategized, there is less room for errors. You make decisions based on facts and true market analysis. It also ensures that you are strategizing for the right set of customers and not just randomly.

Your marketing plan helps you truly know your target customers and ensures that your team is employing the most effective marketing combos that work and can convert.

How do you create a SaaS marketing plan?

Now that you know the importance of your marketing plan, here’s a 5-step process to help you get started on building one.

Identify your target audience

This step comes first because failure to identify your target audience will waste your time, effort, and resources trying to market to the wrong people. It’s like trying to sell the latest Playstation video game console to a group of 80-year-olds.

You can almost be sure that no one will indicate interest to buy. The product is useless to them and offers no value. Now, try selling a neck massaging device to these same people and see how much more of their attention you get.

A good marketing plan must first and foremost identify who you want to sell to so that you can strategize on the most efficient method of reaching them.

Without identifying your target market, the rest of your digital procurement will yield little to no result. To begin, you can first create your ideal customer persona. Think about the problem your SaaS product is going to solve and the categories of people who may have this problem.

Once you have gathered enough information about this demographic, you may proceed to the next step.

Align your content with your audience

This step works hand in hand with step one above. The type of content you present to your audience is a great determinant of how well you can convert them to customers.

Who makes up the bulk of your audience? Millenials? You may want to try short explainer videos that give an overview of the benefits of your SaaS product for them. A techy audience will like numbers and statistics of how your product works presented through infographics or fact sheets.

Another audience category may prefer podcasts to listen to on the go. When you understand your audience, you can provide them with content that they can relate to, which will help you pass across your message better.

Use the preferred social media channel that matches your target audience

Like different categories of content suit different classes of your target audience, the platform through which you present this content also matters.

To effectively get your message across, you need to use a medium they relate with, constantly engage on, and understand how it works.

A one-size-fits-all approach will not be effective and not produce the results you are looking for. For example, if you’re looking to post how-to videos, Facebook may not be a veritable tool for this purpose.

YouTube is a better fit and works for those categories of your audience that enjoy surfing this social media. If you’re looking to spark a discussion about a topic related to your SaaS startup and the services you offer, Facebook might be a better fit.

Short and catchy infographics on Instagram would suit a younger audience, while busy business professionals may prefer a direct, and impactful post on LinkedIn.

Leverage personalized email marketing

Many startups forget to leverage the power of email marketing in their strategy and planning and lose the benefits derived from the technique.

Almost everyone has an email address; your customers and clients do too. One effective way to build your mailing list is by offering potential users a free product or service which they have to sign up to accept. This product has to be juicy and relevant enough for them to not want to miss out on it.

Once they sign up to receive your content, they join your mailing list. Now, you can send appealing personalized offers to every member of your list. This will prove more effective in converting leads because they believe your product provides a solution to their problem.

Create a referral program

Word of mouth has always been a very effective means of advertisement for startups. If your product works excellently for a client, the chances are that they know one or two more people who need your service.

If you offer an incentive to these satisfied customers to refer their friends or colleagues, you will build a network of customers who are like brand ambassadors for your product.

Some effective referral incentives include discounts off a purchase, a couple of months or weeks subscription-free, and in some cases, cashback rewards.

Recommendation: Expert tip for promoting a SaaS product after launch

The SaaS Carrot is one sure-fire way to get potential customers to sign-up for your products. It enables users to get a first-hand glimpse of your product to help them decide faster to use it.

There are many SaaS Carrot techniques you can try to convert potential customers to full-time brand ambassadors. Offering them a free trial or freemium experience is one. You can also create a full-experience demo to help them see your product at work and how it can help them.

Your SaaS marketing strategy is what you need to keep your business alive in the long run; the SaaS Carrot, however, will help customers take the first step and give your product a try. Make sure you wow them enough to make them stay!

Follow Techdee for more!

The post 5 Effective Steps to Create a Marketing Plan for a SaaS Startup appeared first on Techdee.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the unique challenges it brought have accelerated SaaS adoption, and this trend is not going to slow down. Gartner predicts that the total SaaS spending will increase to $117 billion in 2021; already in 2022, this figure will equal $138 billion, and the growth will continue even after the crisis subsides. 

So why are enterprise managers continuing to invest in SaaS even at a time when companies tend to cut their IT budgets and cancel tech projects and hires? The reason is that in the pandemic, the SaaS model turned out to be more viable than the on-premises one, and here are some reasons why.

SaaS Provides Advanced Flexibility And Scalability

The pandemic is a great disruptor, but paradoxically, it didn’t only wreak havoc but also made some things more apparent; for example, it became evident that only those businesses that can adapt to rapidly changing market conditions can survive and succeed. 

For many companies, SaaS has become the key to that continuous transformation. The point is that SaaS products are very flexible by nature, and companies can quickly adapt them to changing business requirements. Developers can easily add new functionality and integrate their software with other services or systems. 

Companies can achieve even greater SaaS scalability using multitenant architecture (this is when multiple users use the same software instance simultaneously). For example, at Itransition, we rely on this architecture type to help clients rapidly expand their user bases and quickly deploy updates and patches. 

All of the above, in turn, gives enterprises the ability to target new customer segments and quickly turn them into paying users — quite a convenient capability, especially during the pandemic when companies strive to find new growth points or revenue sources. 

Even when the crisis is over, and the global economy stabilizes, enterprises should have an opportunity to grow rapidly to mitigate the COVID-19 aftermath; in this case, the SaaS technology may remain as relevant as it is today.

SaaS Keeps Remote Work Productive

Establishing adequate conditions for telecommuting became one of the most significant challenges for many enterprises that hadn’t been used to remote work before the pandemic. Entire marketing, sales and IT departments had to leave offices, which meant companies had to build collaborative, transparent and secure work environments. 

Those who had already had SaaS infrastructures at the core of their businesses could survive the transition relatively painlessly. The rest had to act on the go — either by implementing third-party products like Slack or Zoom or investing in the development of corporate SaaS-based solutions. 

We can see that enterprises that leveraged SaaS could establish a wide range of remote workflows. Now team members may utilize cloud-based solutions for real-time data and file sharing, communication, lead generation, and even closing deals; all this wouldn’t be possible with the legacy on-premises model. 

Likewise, the migration to SaaS helps companies ensure smooth IT infrastructure management and productive corporate software development. For example, if some internal software project requires specific skills, managers can quickly allocate a relevant team member there; thus, teams can instantly acquire the engineering resources they need. 

In general, despite that some employees are already returning to the office, many of them don’t desire to do it; 39% of employees would consider quitting their jobs if not allowed to work remotely after the pandemic. It means that remote work is here to stay, and that SaaS may remain in demand for a relatively long time.

Saas Helps Cut Software Management And Development Costs

Even though companies began to cut IT budgets and curb non-critical projects, the need for software development hasn’t gone anywhere, and here the SaaS model also came in handy. 

Building SaaS-based software, companies can implement only a minimum feature set (developing the so-called minimum viable product) without spending money on engineering full-featured solutions right from the start. Thus, developers can test their product in practice and add other components only when they are really required. Eventually, the fewer features built, the lower the costs. 

Another advantage of SaaS for those who want to survive the pandemic is that cloud-based development involves using cloud computing capabilities that provide potentially unlimited computing power and data storage. So, even if a solution is experiencing an increased load or an influx of new users, IT teams don’t have to worry about the physical maintenance of their own servers and storage. 

Thus, SaaS enables companies to reduce IT costs, which in turn allows executive managers to reallocate the savings to business development and growth initiatives.

Final Thoughts

The pandemic has shown that flexibility and adaptability are the main qualities for any business to survive and adapt to new market and working conditions. For this reason, the SaaS delivery model was perfect for enterprises striving to maintain effective remote work processes. Even when the crisis is over, enterprise managers will have to deal with a different business reality, which makes the SaaS concept even more viable and future-proof.

Follow Techdee for more!

The post How SaaS Helps Enterprises Address the Pandemic appeared first on Techdee.