Early access. Does it work?
Are you familiar with running early access strategies for B2B SaaS? If so, what has been your experience? Did it result in successful lead generation? How did you go about getting the first early access requests? How did you manage the leads? Or was it simply a way to validate your assumptions?
I'm asking because I'm considering using this strategy to generate leads for demo calls, but I'm not sure if it will be effective. My plan is to target customer support managers through LinkedIn ads. They will be directed to a page with early access to the product, which will help support teams increase their communication speed and quality. If they provide an email, I will send them a cheat sheet of the best communication quality practices, as well as demonstrate how the tool can help. The ultimate goal is to set up a demo call.
What do you think?
In my experience, an early access strategy can be an effective way to validate assumptions, generate leads, build buzz, and test marketing and sales tactics. However, it's important to approach early access strategically and ensure that the product is of high quality and meets the needs of the target audience.
I think that if you let users in sooner than later, you will get better feedback from the beginning. You won't waste time to develop things your users won't even use.
Have done this for Flezr NoCode Builder and grew to 80 subscribers on waitlist. It's both B2B and B2C. Even now its invite only and runs via Tally form.
Then request them to get on a 1-1 call. Not easy but needs some good work.
I would highly recommend building waitlists and talking to users.
Yes, it mostly works, but it matters how you target your customers and which platform you use. We tried using one tool, but it failed. However, for another tool, it worked well (like Churnfree, which is a B2B and B2C membership business growth product).
We use LinkedIn, Indie Hackers, Quora, and Twitter to engage with our target audience. We share real statistics about our product, the problems it solves, and how it can help them. Paid ads also work well for this.
But it does not mean everyone fails or succeeds. You should test what works for you. If you have an idea, do a little research, measure the results, and start working on it for your brand's growth.
I'm currently doing early access for https://icyowl.io the best cold outreach tool for twitter, in my opinion of course :)
The reasons being, I took everyone's advice and launched wayyyy before it was ready.
Bugs, angry support dms, time zone issues, feature requests out the wazooo, terrible UX... the list of short comings keeps going.
But, the saving grace is that the few brave users that are using it, they understand that this is early and they then get to personally see their feedback get incorporated into the app.
It's a magical feedback loop.
I tried it for my SAAS startup https://www.githired.io/, didn't work really well :(
Yes, it can work. But you really need to find a way of saving (not wasting) your time, money, and energy. Imagine having more than 4 business ideas and not being sure which one will make money...
I built earlyAccess.to for that specific issue: I wanted to test and validate as many business ideas as possible.
Feel free to reach out to me, I can help you out :)
Yes, but does it have to be that complicated?
When I had an idea for my Twitter DM tool, I started DMing people, found a few who agreed to pay for it but wanted to see it first, then built a prototype, then got the first paying customer. What I'm doing now is listening to his feedback and improving the product so that others would pay for it, too.
You're probably much better off DMing your target niche right away than wasting time on cheat sheets. If you're just validating the idea, you need to listen to their problems, not sell your solution. If your idea is validated, you don't need any freebies to convince them. Just tell them you're giving them access to a prerelease tool with a 30% lifetime discount.