Growth Hacking isn’t a set of tactics or just about getting cheap traffic to your website… Growth Hacking is a mindset. It’s not just about getting traffic on the cheap; it’s about understanding and exploiting customer behavior, technology, and distribution. Real Growth Hackers use their imagination to pull all of that together to drive growth, however growth […]
SaaS Free Trial: Feature or Time-Limited?
October 5, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Freemium is free-forever, Free Trials have time limits and the psychology of the two COULDN’T BE MORE DIFFERENT! I got this question from some random person and I thought you might be interested in in my response. Feel free to comment if you have similar experiences and would like to weigh in. Q. What are […]
Web Apps use Customer Support to Increase Revenue
October 4, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
SaaS vendors know getting the sale is just the first step; keeping the customer means keeping them happy and that a happy customer will generate more revenue over time! A client that I am working with on their Pricing Strategy just sent me the following question (you can send me questions, too): Lincoln – This […]
Does Goldilocks Pricing Work for SaaS?
September 15, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
A Pricing Strategy for SaaS built for the sole purpose of nudging customers away from a decoy price to the middle version can work. I was asked for my thoughts on this question someone posted on Quora: “Based on your real-world experiences, does Hal Varian’s ‘Goldilocks pricing’ result in most buyers choosing the middle option?” […]
As SaaS Matures, so will SaaS Pricing
June 21, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
The common SaaS per-user, per-month subscription revenue model is rapidly evolving. From time to time I feel I must remind everyone – buyers, sellers, pundits, commentators, & analysts – that SaaS is not a pricing model or pricing strategy. From the vendor side, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a unique Software Business Architecture where service is the […]
SaaS Pricing: Please Learn From the Zendesk Fiasco
May 18, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
It is time for SaaS & Web App startups to sit up and pay attention. SaaS Pricing is very important to your venture but not just to ensure you make a profit or cover expenses. It is so much more than that and you should seek to get it as right as possible out of […]
SaaS Distribution: Time to Change the Channel
May 12, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Do SaaS products require, or can they benefit from, distribution through a 3rd party? I’ve written in the past about SaaS channels and how most people are doing it wrong, and there seems to be renewed interest in this topic. Unfortunately, things haven’t changed much. Since this is “software” as-a-service, people cannot get away from […]
SaaS, Web Apps, or Just ‘Apps’?
April 20, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
On my last trip to San Francisco I sat down with Matt Childs of DreamSimplicity to talk about the state of SaaS. We shot some video as we talked about how Google & Apple have changed the distribution landscape for SaaS & Mobile making App Stores & Marketplaces a new reality for SaaS vendors and […]
SaaS Pricing: Commodity Metrics and the $240 GB
March 31, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
SaaS pricing strategies that use low-value commodity metrics – like storage – to differentiate tiers force customers to make price comparisons that shouldn’t be made. Updated for 2014 This topic came up with a client who wanted to pass on the storage costs associated with the use of the system to their end-customer. We quickly […]
SaaS Pricing: Versioning for Market Segments
March 5, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Rags Srinivasan posted a great article titled “The Science of Optimal Versioning in SaaS” to his blog that talks about SaaS pricing. In the article, Rags talks about taking apply SaaS pricing to through different bundles of features at different prices for various market segments. The whole article is great, so I encourage you to […]
Free Trial Success Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium and Free Trials
February 16, 2010 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Free Trial Success Secret #3: Stop Confusing Freemium and Free Trials
SaaS Network Effect: Companies Should Exploit Aggregate Data
September 21, 2009 Article by Lincoln Murphy
SaaS providers must understand the difference between consumers of their apps, producers of SaaS network effect data and how to monetize both. ADP: A Case Study in Network Effects A quick update for 2013: ADP now processes payroll payments for 1 in 6 American workers. Because of this massive “network effect” they’ve created, ADP has […]
SaaS Success Requires Dropping the Legacy Baggage
August 26, 2009 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Don’t try to force an on-premises, packaged software product to the cloud. Legacy software is a square peg and SaaS is a round hole. No matter how hard you try, forcing legacy, on-premises software to fit into the “SaaS model” is at worst not going to work and at best, requires cutting corners. It is […]
SaaS Companies Should Learn from Netflix
May 19, 2009 Article by Lincoln Murphy
Web Apps with Proactive Customer Service will win more – and keep more – customers than their competitors and Netflix should be the model. I often extol the virtues of the SaaS Business Architecture for vendors beyond just the typical “cost savings” and “operational efficiency” that most pundits and analysts like to talk about. I […]
