Getting your SaaS startup marketing “unstuck”

Are you stuck trying to figure out how to start marketing your SaaS startup? Well, fear not fellow founder!

“But I don’t know where to start!”

By now you probably know that the first step to successfully marketing your SaaS startup is to get it in front of people who have a burning need for what you have to offer.

But such a simple task can seem incredibly daunting to people not familiar with marketing basics, especially if they’re first-time founders:

“Yes, I want to do that — but I don’t know how! I want to tell people about my product but I don’t know where to even start!”

If that sounds like you (at least I know that’s how I used to sound!), let’s get to it and turn that frown upside down!

There’s no need to let that evil Startup Marketing Monster keep you down any longer, because I’ve just put together a list of 12 different places you can get your product in front of people who are actually looking for products just like yours! And better yet — they’re all FREE!

But First: TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU

No, those are not some new-fangled tofu flavors you need to learn about in order to impress your hipster friends. In fact — they’re much more fun than coagulated soy milk — because they’re marketing concepts! (You know, that thing you’re supposed to be studying up on so you can start making money on your startup?)

I’m not going to go into insane depth here since I’m sure you’re much more interested in me showing you the cool places you can promote your startup, but I do need to at least explain to you what they are and why they matter in this conversation.

TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU are common abbreviations for the stages of a buyer’s journey. They’re used to categorize which stage of the journey a person is in when they are evaluating making a purchase. As marketers (yep, we’re gonna make you one, yet!), we tailor our marketing messages to 1) attract people at specific stages of the buyer’s journey and to 2) impact and advance people at specific stages of the buyer’s journey.

Because almost everything we do in the startup world has to revolve around a funnel, we also represent this buyer’s journey as a funnel as well. (If you’re unfamiliar with a funnel, think back to college. Lots of beer goes into the top of the funnel. Some of that beer comes out the bottom [the rest spills over the edges]. If that’s not illustrative enough for you, here’s a Wikipedia article.)

At the Top of the Funnel — or “TOFU” — are those people who are unaware of or just becoming aware of the existence of a particular product or solution. Everyone starts their buyer’s journey at the TOFU stage, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who passes through the TOFU stage will become a buyer (hence it’s a funnel). People who are at the TOFU stage are usually not ready to buy yet. That’s because they’ve just become aware that a particular product or solution even exists. Because of that, they don’t feel that they understand whatever that thing is well enough to make a purchasing decision yet. You bring people into the TOFU stage typically by enticing them with specific desirable outcomes (aka “benefits”) that they are interested in attaining. Effective benefits typically address pains or gains, such as automating a boring and repetitive task (pain) or helping them get more customers, and hence money (gain).

Enter the “MOFU” — or Middle of the Funnel. (Yes, I want to call it MOFO, too. You’re not alone.) The MOFU stage is where potential buyers who have passed through the TOFU stage (becoming aware of a product) start to learn about that product or solution. It’s at this stage that you’re working to educate potential buyers just how a product or solution achieves those benefits that they’re now intersted in getting through said product or solution. Essentially, you’re playing connect the dots for the potential buyer, explaining how (ideally your!) product or solution solves those pains or achieves those gains. At the MOFU stage, you’re tying features to benefits. And here’s a hint: If you have a feature that you can’t tie to a benefit — shut up about it and leave it out. The main goal of MOFU is to educate — and ideally in such a way that you’re setting your product up to be the “obvious” choice :) Again, not everyone that enters the MOFU stage will progress beyond it. People drop out of the funnel (just like beer!).

Last (and as you might have guessed by now) is “BOFU” — or Bottom of the Funnel. BOFU is where customers are won or lost. BOFU is startup warfare incarnate. That’s because by the time someone has passed through TOFU and MOFU and has moved on to BOFU, they should be primed and ready to buy. At this stage, the potential buyer 1) is aware of the product or solution and 2) has educated themselves about the product or solution. The only thing that comes after that is to make the final decision and pick a product or solution. BOFU is exciting because it means a free trial, demo, or even purchase is imminent. But here’s the thing — every single one of your competitors knows this as well — and they’re just as hungry as you are for some BOFU goodness. Because of this, marketing at the BOFU stage can be incredibly competitive territory. It’s at this stage that you have to demonstrate to potential buyers that your product or solution is the best choice for them. This is where you have to differentiate yourself from your competitors in order to make the sale. Because at this stage, your potential buyer is shopping. They’re comparing you and everyone else in your category to try and make an informed decision. You need to do everything in your power to convince them that they should go with you instead of anyone else.

So what does all this talk of funnels have to do with our list of places to promote your SaaS startup?

It has to do with which stage of the funnel you’re targeting by using these places to promote your app.

All of these sites will tend to attract people who are either solidly at the BOFU stage or who are still working their way through the MOFU stage of the buyer’s journey.

In order to get the most out of promoting your app on these sites, you need to understand that you’re playing a hybrid BOFU/MOFU game, heavy on the BOFU side.

Your messaging must appeal to potential buyers at these stages of the funnel in order to effectively convince them to give you a shot. And because a number of your competitors are probably already pimping their product on these sites, you’ll need to study what their messaging is and make sure yours is different and better so that you’re the one who comes out on top as the “obvious” choice.

And now!

Without further adieu!

Enter The List!

Product Hunt

Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past few years, you’re probably more than passingly familiar with Product Hunt — everyone’s favorite shiny red ball finder.

Product Hunt was founded by Ryan Hoover and has massive reach — especially with influencers and early adopters — making it one of the first places you should consider promoting your SaaS startup.

Although it might seem like the obvious choice, it’s amazing to me how few people actually put their startups on Product Hunt — probably out of fear that they’re “not ready yet”. But if you have a functioning SaaS product — even if it’s just an MVP — you should probably just bite the bullet and go for it.

Most people think they’ll get massive coverage and exposure by listing on Product Hunt — and some do. But don’t let the anxiety of that stop you from listing your startup there. Chances are it probably won’t just “take off” (unless you know a lot of people who are willing to “upvote” your app), but it can still give you good exposure over time.

If you don’t have a Product Hunt account just yet, you should get one today. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it used to be that in order to suggest products to Product Hunt (aka, “become a hunter”), you needed to get an invite from someone who’s already a hunter or spend a lot of time on Product Hunt to “unlock” that feature.

Once you’re past the “hunter hurdle”, Product Hunt lets you provide a title and a short description for your product, as well as a logo and a number of screenshots. It’s common form to introduce yourself and your product in long form via a comment on your product page to give people background about your product and to invite them to give feedback. Product Hunt uses “upvotes” in place of ratings (the more upvotes, the more exposure your app gets) and allows other Product Hunt users to post comments and reply to comments on your product page.

Here’s Tamboo’s Product Hunt page if you wanted to see Product Hunt in action:

SaasGenius

SaasGenius really impressed me with the generous product listing they provide to showcase your product with. Founded by Tom Gorski and Dorota Zys, SaasGenius is focused on helping businesses find SaaS software, so it’s a great place to list your B2B SaaS.

SaasGenius’s listing is probably one of the most comprehensive on this list. Not only do they let you submit your product with a link back to your site for ratings and reviews, but they also give you the room to really show off your product. With SaasGenius, you get a true long-form description for explaining your product, its benefits, and its intended uses. You also get to specify up to 12 features your product provides as well as select who your intended audience is. And not just that, but you also get to upload your logo and multiple screenshots. The result is a gorgeous listing that really does your product justice.

Submissions to SaasGenius are moderated and usually take less than 24 hours to get approved.

If you wanted to see what a full SaasGenius listing looks like, feel free to check out the Tamboo listing here:

Capterra, GetApp, and Software Advice (Gartner Digital Markets)

When it comes to software product sites, Capterra is an 800 pound gorilla. When they say “millions of people”, they’re not kidding. Listing with Capterra can get your product a lot of exposure.

Capterra is owned by Gartner Digital Markets, and listing with Capterra means you can also list with GetApp and Software Advice — so it’s really three listings in one!

Like most of the other product sites on this list, Capterra moderates submissions. Approval typically takes less than 24 hours, after which you’ll be able to fill out your complete product listing.

Capterra’s free listing comes with a short and long form description, and also lets you specify your target market and intended audience, amongst other things.

Capterra also has options for driving PPC (Pay Per Click) traffic if that’s something you’re interested in.

Here’s Tamboo’s Capterra page if you wanted to see what Capterra’s listing offers:

Founderkit

Founderkit was built by Ryan Mickle and Ian Hunter, and is focused on helping startup founders find products based on the reviews and recommendations of other experienced startup founders.

You’re free to submit your product to Founderkit, but reviews and ratings are limited to “Contributors” (only experienced startup founders are accepted as Contributors). What that means is that if you want to get the most out of being listed on Founderkit, your target market should include startups and you should also have (or get) some customers who are on Founderkit to give your product a review or rating. Reviews and ratings are important on Founderkit because of the way products are ranked according to rating. If you don’t have enough reviews or ratings, your product won’t show in the category you’ve submitted it to.

Founderkit lets you submit your product’s name and URL for consideration, and then it gets reviewed by a moderator. It takes roughly 24 hours to get a go/no-go decision back.

Here’s Tamboo’s page on Founderkit if you wanted to see it in action:

Siftery

Siftery was founded by Vamshi Mokshagundam and Ayan Barua and is focused on helping people share and discover products that other people are using at their workplace.

Siftery provides a basic listing and short product description for your product like other sites on this list, but it has some pretty cool features that make it a completely different animal.

The first notable difference is that Siftery is focused on customers. The more customers you have, the better (in fact, you’ll need at least 3 customers using your product to even get a listing). Once your product is listed with Siftery, they’ll automatically try to figure out if customers are using your product on their website and will update their profile with that information. You can also add customers manually or upload a customer list if you like. And of course, your customers can also add your product manually to their profile.

Ratings are a little different on Siftery than other sites. They’re based in part on the number of customers you have as well as the number of people who would recommend your product (which is rolled up into an NPS score [Net Promoter Score]). Siftery also has a “signal” rating that tells you if a particular product has any integrations with the products you use at your company.

In all, Siftery is a pretty neat take on the standard product listing site. But be careful — it can be quite addicitive and you might lose a few hours browsing around :-P

Just for reference, here’s Tamboo’s Siftery page if you were interested in an example:

G2 Crowd

G2Crowd is a software review site backed by some pretty serious venture capital — they just recently closed a $30 million Series B round (congrats!).

Like other sites on this list, G2Crowd requires moderation for new product submissions. The first step is to create a G2Crowd account and submit your product for consideration. After you’ve completed your profile, you’ll be able to “claim” your product page. One you’ve “claimed” your product page, you’ll need to wait for an approval, which typically takes less than 24 hours. After your claim has been honored and you’ve completed your product profile, you’ll have to wait for 3–5 days until it goes live on their site.

What makes G2Crowd a little unique is its heavy integration with LinkedIn. In fact, your only option to create a G2Crowd account or to submit a G2Crowd review or rating is to use your LinkedIn account.

That being said, G2Crowd is heavily focused on the business software market, so if you’re running a B2B SaaS, it might be a good fit.

If you wanted to see what G2Crowd has to offer, you can check out Tamboo’s G2Crowd page here:

https://www.g2crowd.com/products/tamboo/details

SaaSHub

SaaSHub was founded by Stan Bright. It offers a lightweight listing for SaaS businesses looking to promote their apps and also tracks press coverage and social presence of your SaaS business, giving a little bit of a Crunchbase or AngelList feel.

SaaSHub submissions are moderated and require approval, usually taking a day or two.

AlternativeTo

AlternativeTo helps people find — you guessed it — an alternative to different products (like I said, this is BOFU territory). AlternativeTo is a crowdsourced software recommendation site that encourages people to submit whatever software recommendations they might have. Because of this, there’s a good chance that your product might already have a listing there that you’re just unaware of (that was the case for me, at least).

AlternativeTo lets you provide short and long descriptions for your product as well as screenshots and a link back to your site. Changes to listings require the review of a moderator.

AlternativeTo is ideal if you’re interested in getting in front of people actively looking for an alternative to any of your competitors.

If you’re curious what AlternativeTo’s listings look like, feel free to check out Tamboo’s AlternativeTo page:

SelectHub

SelectHub is heavily focused on the enterprise software market, and even has built-in RF-x functionality (Request For Information, Request For Proposal, etc.), as those processes are fairly prevalent in the enterprise software purchasing process. If you’re unfamiliar with these processes, they’re basically how a lot enterprise companies choose software vendors for different initiatives. By listing your product on SelectHub, you’re making it that much easier for enterprise companies looking for solutions like yours to find your solution.

RF processes aside, SelectHub offers a fairly comprehensive public product profile for B2B software companies, including a long description, feature listing, and screenshots. It’s another solid choice if your SaaS offering is in the B2B space, and it does not require your product listing to be reviewed by a moderator.

To see SelectHub in action, feel free to check out the Tamboo SelectHub page below:

CabinetM

CabinetM might be a good fit for your product if any of your customer segments are in marketing, as their focus is on marketing tools and technologies.

After you’ve created your company profile with CabinetM, you’ll be able to create your product profile. Unlike a lot of the other sites on this list, CabinetM doesn’t require that you go through a moderation review in order to get your product listed, so you’ll at least have the benefit of some instant gratification :-P

CabinetM’s product listing is surprisingly thorough, including short and long form product descriptions as well as fields for specifying your target markets and audiences, intended uses, complimentary products, and much, much more (it reminded me of a mashup between SaasGenius and Siftery).

CabinetM is also unique in that it encourages it users (mostly marketers) to build out their “stack”, creating a product sharing environment much like Siftery. They also have the ability for their users to add products to “drawers”, which are almost like collections in Product Hunt. It’s a pretty unique and cool site.

And the listing you get for your product is pretty slick, too. Here’s the Tamboo product listing on CabinetM if you wanted to see for yourself:

Tips on tackling the list

Make no mistake, getting your SaaS startup submitted to all of these sites is going to take some time and effort. Each site requires different information and has different restrictions around the length and content of description fields. Not to mention that each site does authentication and submission a little bit differently.

It’s okay to feel exhausted after only having submitted to a handful of these sites. Seriously, it’s okay. Take a break if you need to.

To help make things (hopefully) go a little bit smoother for you, here are some pointers:

1. Open up a Google Doc or Notepad to keep track of the “copy” you’ve been using for the short and long form description fields so you don’t have to start from scratch every time. You may have to tweak the content a little bit based on what’s being asked or trim it down to fit different length requirements. But having that baseline copy in a doc that you can just grab and tweak is way faster than trying to come up with a new pitch every time.
2. Put your logo and the screenshots you’ll be using in a folder that you can just grab them when it’s time to upload. It’s way faster than trying to remember the name of that one screenshot you wanted to use or trying to remember which folder it’s in.
3. Take your time. It’s not a race. If you do even just one or two a day for the next week, you’ll have submitted your SaaS app to 5-10 different websites — in one week! That’s probably a lot more than you’ve been doing, so don’t burn yourself out. Just put in the work and you’ll make progress.

What’s next?

Hopefully this list has given you a good idea of places you can start marketing your startup on the cheap without hurting your brain too much. After you get your startup listed on these sites, you should ask your existing customers to very kindly give you a rating or a review if they like your product to help you out. The more ratings and reviews you have, the better your “social proof” will be to potential buyers (don’t worry, we’ll save that for another day!)

If you’re looking for more help with getting your startup off the ground, be sure to check out my Internet-breaking guide on bootstrapping a SaaS startup, The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch — By Yourself.

Or, if you’re the adventurous type, you might be interested in preordering my upcoming epic full-length book on bootstrapping startups!

And of course, if you’re hungry for more tasty startup goodies, be sure to follow me on Medium or Twitter — but only after you’ve followed The Tamboo Blog, of course!

A special thanks to Tyler King, the founder of Less Annoying CRM, for suggesting a few of these sites to me.