Top 3 Major Challenges SaaS Startups Face

If you have the right work ethic and drive, the potential major challenges of growing a Saas start-up and having success won’t get in your way!

However, you can’t be oblivious to the struggles you will inevitably face. You have to figure out marketing strategies, go through the hiring process, deal with budgeting issues, and much more. In a recent podcast with Billy Bateman,Jackie Hermes, Founder and CEO of Accelity, shared some great tips on how to grow your start-up company.

Let’s tackle three of the challenges that come along with starting a business.

1. Awareness

As a new business, you need to get people aware of your brand. You need people to start hearing about your product or services. This will come with great marketing strategies.

Jackie shared something very interesting that not many people realize. She said, “When marketers use landing pages, they are consistently gating content that they shouldn’t be.” Now, what exactly does she mean by this? Well, she’s saying that a lot of the time, marketers gate their content, or limit access to it. Gating content allows the prospect to receive a piece of content in exchange for their contact information, therefore giving you a lead. However, not every single piece of content needs to be gated. In fact, a lot of it doesn’t need to be! People shouldn’t have to give you their email just to check out a case study or a recent blog post!

Some argue that ungating your content can increase the number of people that want to have conversations with you.

Get Active On LinkedIn

Another crucial aspect of growing your business is to get connected on LinkedIn. Find influential people in your industry and make genuine connections. Don’t be afraid to reach out and even ask them for feedback. LinkedIn is meant to help you spread awareness of your product and brand, as well as gain expertise from experts in your industry. (Find out more about leveraging LinkedIn to optimize your networking here!) 

2. Testing

Here at ChatFunnels, we are firm believers that testing is the path to success! We recently launched our new testing platform, the ChatFunnels Experiment to help our customers test and optimize their chatbots. 

So, as mentioned, running tests on your website is extremely important. And this is a major challenge for Saas start-ups because you don’t have a lot of web traffic to begin with. In order for tests to be effective, there needs to be a decent sample size. If the sample size is too small, you won’t get any useful information on what’s really working. 

Marketers are all about split testing, which is good. But, what we’re saying is that you don’t need to stress about testing if you don’t have much web traffic. Focus on getting that web traffic up, then you can conduct A/B tests to see how the traffic is paying off. 

3. Hiring 

Another one of the many challenges is the hiring process. How do you go about it? How do you know if someone is the right fit for your team? 

In a small start-up company, hiring someone who will really work well with your existing team is more important than it is for a larger company. The key is looking for more truth throughout the whole hiring process. 

Jackie shared some great insights by highlighting the fact that the references people write down are almost always useless. Of course, the applicant will choose someone who will say wonderful things about them; but you, the hirer, don’t need superficial information. To get a genuine glimpse at how the applicant has performed in past jobs, ask them about their previous coworkers and bosses, and find out what they liked and didn’t like about working with them. Then, you can be the one to ask for specific references. For example, you could say- “That was interesting what you shared about your former coworker Karina and how you two overcame different work ethics to be able to work as a team. Would it be alright if we gave her a call.” This way you can get more honest feedback. 

The people you hire impact your company as a whole, and you need to ensure that impact is going to be positive and beneficial. 

Conclusion

Don’t let any of these major challenges of growing a Saas start-up discourage you. It’s a hard process. We get that. But you have to be aware of potential challenges and establish a game plan for when you come face-to-face with each one.

We would love to hear your insights on overcoming the challenges of starting a Saas start-up. Chat with us on our website or message us on LinkedIn. 

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