How to Find Early Adopters For Your New SaaS Startup

Intro

Getting people to use your new service in the market as a SaaS business is hard. You want to get prospects to start using your business services as soon as you launch the business, right?

Many SaaS brands need help finding the right people who need their business software offers to solve their pain points. As a new SaaS startup brand, you can look for early adopters to use your new software in the market and attract more target customers to your brand.

This article gives you ways to find those early adopters and get them to try out your new software or features and help you market your brand to other prospective customers.

What Are Early Adopters?

These are product or service users who are ambitious and love to try out new business features once they are launched. They love to test a product or service at its early stages of running even when they’re not sure how the business will deliver the best value to them in helping effectively solve their pains.

Types of Early Adopters

Innovators. They first adopt a new technology and are motivated to try it first no matter the risks involved. They may have resources and tools to try the features and are excited to try new software or products. They invest in the products or services even at a high cost of launching and are not bothered if the product will work for them or not.

Early Adopters. This class of adopters is influential in their market niche. They are thought leaders and have financial resources but they are more reasonable about making investments in new technology and don’t love taking risks. They like to first get all the information they need about a new software or product and make informed decisions when investing in the new SaaS business.

Early Majority. As the business keeps growing and markets its new software, the early majority takes over the adoption process. They don’t have many resources to spend and often want to work with a tool that others have tried and proven. They have average social media status and most of the time use the thought leadership feedback from influencers in the market to make their decisions about software.

Late Majority. They hate taking risks with new software in the market and only try it once others have used it, and given their feedback and reviews about the product. They always want to ensure they get a good return on their investment once they decide to invest in the software.

Laggards. They have little thought leadership opinion and only try software once it has been in the market for some time. They love doing things traditionally and hate taking any risks. Most of the time. Laggards are older people and have less to no technology knowledge.

Presented graphically, here is what the different groups of adopters look like.

Source: On Digital Marketing

The blue curve shows the different adopter levels and the yellow represents the market share each group holds.

Characteristics of Early Adopters

They are Risk-Takers. The first three classes of adopters love to take risks. They invest in software even when the odds are not in their favor. The innovators are prepared for any unforeseen setbacks from the new software investment if the software doesn’t give them the results they want.

Exited by New Ideas and Products. Adopters love new ideas in the market and are happy to test new things. They like investing in new ideas and trying them out for their businesses.

They are Visionary. Early adopters have a vision of the future and like to try things in the market as they visualize how those new products or services will help them grow their businesses in the future.

Look for a Competitive Edge. Early adopters give a business an advantage over its competitors. The feedback about the software helps a business understand its customers and market the software more to drive more customers. For the testing of a new service at its launching, the customer can constructive feedback to the business to improve on the software features and deliver even better results to customers.

The Highest Degree of Thought Leadership. Adopters are thought leaders and give their opinions on the development and the improvements of the software to deliver much better value to other customers.

Benefits of Early Adopters

Give Early Software Feedback to Improve. When a new software is released in the market, it’s still in its testing phases. The early adopters give feedback when using the software that helps the business owners and developers improve the value it offers the customer.

Help in Brand Marketing. New software users can spread the word about the features your SaaS business has released in the market and get more target customers to know more about your brand and the software it is offering. For example, a video production company can produce different videos marketing their brand, showing the target audience how their video features work and how customers can solve their pains using those features.

Drive More Business Revenue. Early adopters don’t try out the software for free. At its launch, some software is very expensive which is why innovators can spend lots of money to test these few solutions. The revenue from the early innovators helps the SaaS brand to grow the business. They can also use the finances to improve the software features with the help of the early adopter’s feedback on the business software.

Attract New Users( Referral Marketing). As a business, you can offer referral marketing to new users and give them a commission for any new customers they bring. Once they test and use the new software, they can refer others to the business keep building more brand awareness, and get others to use the business.

How to Find Early Adopters

1. Use Trade Shows and Conferences

Trade shows are great places for brands to network and connect with aspiring businesses and customers. Research by Statista shows the average trade shows exhibited by brands and professionals across the US.

Source: Statista

The data shows a growing regional exhibition of trade shows as more brands display their offers at trade shows.

As a new startup, attending these events and showing prospective customers can get them to try your new softwares and engage with it. You can give them insights about your new software, the challenges it solves, and how it can help them too. Another research shows that 79% of attendees use trade shows to know what to buy.

Source: Conference Source

2. Check Out YouTube Comments

Prospective customers are always on the lookout for content to address their pains. Since prospects love videos, you can look out for their engagement on YouTube through the comments they leave. That information can give you insights about your customers and even get those users to try out your business features.

3. Forums and Communities

Target customers share their minds about their pains and frustrations on forums and communities. You can use social media communities and groups to learn more about your prospective customers and in the process get adopters for your new software. You can also use sites like Quora and Reddit to engage target customers. Here are some places you can find early adopters on Linkedin.

Source: LinkedIn

4. Understand What Customers Need

You’re in the market to offer solutions to audience pains. Understanding customer pain points what your customers need, and their experience will help you know how to engage them and get them to try your new SaaS software features as they solve their pains. Once you create a new software feature that can solve their pains, you can invite them to test and try it out as you market it to more prospective customers.

5. Have a Responsive and Quality Website Design

As a new SaaS business, it’s essential to have a well-designed website. You can do your best to drive users to your website but if they can’t easily navigate the website and get the information they need, they will try out your competitors. It’s also essential to optimize your website for mobile use. Websites are areas for user engagement as research shows 90% of brands use their websites for their content distribution.

Source: CMI

6. Blog Post Comments

Keep creating thought leadership content and optimize the content based on the keywords your target customers use in their search. When prospective customers read the content, they will leave their comments and thoughts about the topic.

You can use those insights to get new people to try your new business solutions. You can also guest post on sites where your target audience hangs out. Show your thought leadership give them great content, and lightly introduce your new software to them. Research by CMI shows that 47% of brands are hiring more content producers.

Source: CMI

That shows more and more target customers consume blog content as they engage with brands. Creating quality content and following up on how the prospects consume the content and their feedback can give insights into early adopters you can engage once you launch a new feature.

7. Post on Social Media

LinkedIn and Twitter are the best social media options to engage and capture early adopters. To start, ensure you have a great social media profile showing what your SaaS is and what it offers to customers.

Create content that aligns with your target user's pains and promote it. Ensure you create content, especially explainer videos, and consistently publish it. You can also use paid ads in video content to market and reach more prospective customers to try your new software. Research shows that LinkedIn and Twitter are sites many users visit to learn about new products or services.

Source: Smart Insights

8. Get Featured in The Early Adopter Platforms

There are platforms you can get listed on that many adopters use to learn about new products or services in the market. Featuring your new SaaS start-up in these platforms will place your new software before the eyes of adopters who can try it out.

1. ProductHunt

2. Hacker News

3. Betabound

4. IndieHackers

5. Betalist

6. Use Influencer Marketing

If you want to get the word out that you have new software that can help prospect's challenges, why not partner with an influencer in the market to get the word out for you? Search for influencers in your market niche and partner with them to help you build trust with leads and get them to try out your software.

Your target customers are in different phases of their journey. Understanding your customers better their buyer process will help you know the right influencers to partner with and how to interact and engage with prospects at different levels.

Why Not Try These Methods to Get Early Adopters For Your Business?

SaaS business competition is rising, and getting new customers for new software you launch that is not popular in the market is hard. As a SaaS start-up, getting prospective customers to trust your business and use our features can take time and resources.

Take advantage of these ways to get early adopters who will try out your business software, get more people to trust your brand, and grow your client base. Keep reaching out to target customers, engage them, build their trust, and get them to know your new software and use it to solve their pains.