Brand Awareness, Retention hacks and building inherent virality to a product [live show]

In this week’s episode of “Growth Sessions” (yeah, a new name for the show) we’ve talked about:

1. How to build brand awareness without spending a lot of money on it
2. Is there any process or framework for building inherent virality to the product?
3. What are the best Retention hacks for SaaS product?

I originally thought answering only three questions would make it easier to cut it into a 25 minutes show.

I was wrong. It was whole whopping 56 minutes long live show (!).

What made it that long?
Well, I went over board with the amounts of tactics and tips I shared.Seriously.

I shared:

• 10 tactics to build brand awareness for FREE.
• 12 ways to optimize your product for inherent virality
• 14 Retention hacks you can implement to your SaaS product – today.

All and all: 36 tactics and tips to help you grow and retain users. 

You can watch the full episode here: (Don’t forget to subscribe to our Youtube for more video content):

Don’t have time to watch the full episode?

Here’s a quick recap of what we’ve discussed:

How to build brand awareness without spending a lot of money on it

Remember that nothing is completely free.

You either pay with your money or your time.

Here are my main tips for building brand awareness for free:

1. Start Blogging and focus on outreach-worth content (Think interviews / Ego baits / Lists of influencers)
2. Guest blogging in niche sites (Focus on where your audience reads, not where your ego draws you)
3. Get active on targeted Facebook & Linkedin groups
4. Meetups in your field – offer your experience as a talk at relevant meet ups in your niche.
5. Hold events – Host your community events at your office, or just help to organize.
6. Become a connector – Help people in your niche connect to one another.
7. Repurpose content – 10X time the distribution power, 1/5 of the effort.
8. Podcast interviews – Pitch your expertise in your niche to get interviews on relevant podcasts.
9. Be super active on social media + make a list of influencers to target – Focus on engaging with the right people and creating meaningful relationships.
10. Email outreach offering Value – Find influencers/bloggers you want to engage with and send them an email that provides value (Offer to help in a current project they are working on, further questions on a blog post, etc.).

[bctt tweet=”How to build brand awareness without spending a lot of money on it” username=”roypovar”]

Is there any process or framework for building inherent virality into your product?

Three things you have to remember when discussing virality:

• It’s rare that Virality “just happens.” Virality is the science behind getting more people to choose to share your product, not a mystical trend that might happen.
• You should focus on the viral coefficient. Don’t just focus on the “share my product” – but also on the how your product draws the next user in.
• Only engaged users who love your product will be willing to share it. Segment your viral strategy, based on your most active users.

To the more concrete tips: Work closely with analytics

1. Work closely with analytics – See if people are already sharing your product in some manner, who shares it, when and why.
2. Integrate shares with other platforms your audience already engages with (Think LinkedIn – leveraging your Gmail contacts)
3. Recognize share worthy events – What events would your users want to celebrate? Find them and prompt the share features at the right time (Think level in Candy Crush).
4. Make the sharing reminder visible – Sometimes your users would be happy to share your product, but it’s not on their top of mind. Make the sharing option visible.
5. Promote the share in the right moment – Ask your users to share your product when they are in the right mindset.
6. Connect your product with other platforms they use – Leverage the connection between your product and another platform they are already active on (Linkedin’s – Connect your Gmail account hack)
7. Referal program incentives – Incentivize your users to share with discounts and additional offers (Think Dropbox referral hack and Uber’s onboarding coupon.)
8. Use a gimmick – Grab attention with an eye catching gimmick (Think YO and Shazam)
9. Embeddable features – Create a minimum transferable unit of your platform that can ‘live’ on your user’s website (Youtube / SlideShare widget Strategy)
10. Find your offline channel – How can you create an offline activity that will resonate online (Starbucks case study)
11. Features/discount for shares – Block/offer features for social shares and invites
12. Badges – Give them a reason to display your badge on their site (Hubspot Certified example)

[bctt tweet=”12 ways you can build virality into your product” username=”roypovar”]

What are the best Retention hacks for SaaS product?

Retention is the most important metric for any SaaS product.

After all, this is the main proof that people need your product.

Also, if people aren’t using your product- they will probably never convert into paying users.

So how you get users going back into your product:

1. Read “Hooked” by Nir Eyal
2. Build an email retention plan based on user behavior/intent
3. Focus on FOMO features (Linkedin’s “X people viewed your profile”)
4. Drip campaigns – Create an email sequence that will get them interested in your product’s value throughout the first 14 days after sign ups).
5. Get to the Aha! Moment – Make sure your new users get to the A-ha moment as fast as possible. The best retention strategy is value.
6. Put an element the forces them to come back for update (Engagement notifications)
7. Push for the next engagement already in your on boarding (Set reminders within the product, put a hook they’ll need to go back and check information).
8. Reports and feedback – Send an email with data about their behavior or performance.
9. Changes / new feature strategy – Create a feature roadmap always to have “check-worthy” news strategy.
10. Remind Inactive users – Sometimes people just forget about you. Create a re-engagement campaign.
11. Remarketing – Remarket an excellent case study about your product to you churned users.
12. Create a native community – Where all your clients can help each other with the primary challenge your product aims to solve.
13. Cross conversation funnel – Follow and engage your users on social media as a reminder that you exist.
14. Action required emails – Send an email with urgent action required (your account will be deactivated unless…)

[bctt tweet=”14 Retention hacks for your SaaS product” username=”roypovar”]

In conclusion:

To get the full tips, stories and examples, tune into our Growth Session video on Youtube and watch the full show for free (Including ‘Joy’s World’ founder interview)

Do you have any growth questions about your product? Challenges you’re facing? Send us your questions on FB, Twitter (@roypovar) or Instagram or add them in the comments.