How to Launch a SaaS Product? A Step-by-Step Guide

Whether you are a SaaS owner or looking to buy a SaaS company and do a relaunch, this article will guide you through the different stages and tasks that will help you build solid ground for a successful launch.

Learn the basics on how to launch a SaaS product step by step!

Related: What Is A Micro Saas? A Guide & 4 Examples

How long does it take to launch a SaaS?

There's not a specific number of months or years for a SaaS product launch. It depends on the state of the product, and factors such as the complexity of your service, features, team expertise, and available resources can influence the time it will take from development to go-to-market.

Some start-ups only take months to reach a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), while other products that need more planning will take up to a year. The most complex ones may take years to develop.

Additionally, testing, compliance, and more activities can extend this period.

According to a 2019 survey from Gartner, only 55% of all product launches take place on schedule.

“A product launch that meets all internal targets is seldom achieved. The survey showed that only 11% of organizations reported that all of their products met 100% of defined internal launch targets,” says Adrian Lee, senior research director at Gartner.

Find the step-by-step and stages of the SaaS product launch.

Step-by-step for a SaaS product launch

A SaaS product launch has three main stages. Each one includes different activities that will help build the product for the next step.

1. Pre-launch stage

In the pre-launch stage, the team works on planning the product, doing market research, creating a pricing strategy, and developing a marketing strategy to attract sales. Here, team members learn more about what the user needs and what problem the SaaS product will solve for them. This is when the efforts are focused on developing the product.

The key points at the pre-launch stage are:

Researching competitors and competitive advantage

Learn about your competitors and understand what makes them unique. This will help you get clarity on your competitive advantage and what will make your product stand out, as well as understanding if you are solving an unmet need the market has.

Knowing your competitive advantage and value proposition is essential for any future communication you want to send to clients, potential employees, shareholders, and any other third party who wants to understand more about you and your product.

Defining the target market

By doing market research, you'll learn who your target audience is. Getting to know your customers will help you understand what they want, how they think and feel, and understand their needs. Learn about the solutions they've used and their thoughts on them, this way you'll be able to easily identify how your product can bring them more value.

If you don't have the resources to do your own research, you can do some secondary research with external tools. Some of them offer free versions. Here are some options:

• SEMRush's market explorer
• SparkToro audience research tool
• Statista

Defining your brand

Once your competitive advantage is clear, it's time to create your brand story. Brand identity and voice goes beyond a logo or colors, it's about communicating your value proposition clearly so the user can understand what you offer and choose you over someone else.

2. Launch stage

After all the hard work put into planning, researching your target market, and developing your product it's now time for the product launch.

During this period, you choose a date to reveal your SaaS product, set in motion your marketing and sales strategies, onboard new customers, and keep an eye on your technical infrastructure to make sure everything runs smoothly.

These are the main points from this stage:

Choosing marketing channels

Choosing the right channels to promote your SaaS product launch depends on your available resources, target preferences and team expertise, among other factors.

Usually, SaaS use a mix of content marketing, paid advertising, influencer and email marketing, affiliates and PR, to name a few.

Lenny's podcast is a great resource to learn more about go-to-market strategies from people who have experienced this process.

Creating a product demo

Showing how your product works can boost your marketing efforts. You can create a recorded demo of how your SaaS product works or grant them access to a time-limited personalized one. The former is an easier option for you to create, while the latter needs a bit more technical expertise but can provide a more complete experience to your leads.

If you don't have the resources to create a full product demo, you can offer product screenshots throughout your page and even detail the features that your product offers with visuals, so your target audience gets an idea of how your SaaS works.

Establishing goals and KPIs

A successful SaaS product launch will be reflected in the number of conversions. Additionally, you will want to learn the visitor-to-sign-up rate, the sign-up-to-qualified leads rate, the qualified leads-customer rate, and the sign-up-to-customer rate. These four KPIs will help you identify where you are losing leads throughout your marketing funnel.

Related: 16 SaaS Business Metrics: What Matters For a High Valuation

Post-launch stage

Your job isn't done once lunch your SaaS product. Post-launch, you'll have to track your product's performance to make sure it meets your client's expectations. At this point, you'll have to look for potential issues to fix, gather customer feedback, and work on the necessary changes to improve the product.

You can expect a change in your marketing strategy based on your users' behavior and on new opportunities identified along the way. Also, in this stage, the customer success team becomes highly relevant because they are the direct line with the client.

At the post-launch of a SaaS product, this is what matters:

Optimizing the onboarding experience

Customers need a seamless onboarding experience to fully understand the value of your SaaS product, and how you can solve their problem.

That's why it's essential to optimize your onboarding process constantly. Automating steps it's beneficial both for the users and your team's efficiency.

See where you can add welcoming messages to the platform, include tutorials or videos on how to use the product or emails with guides. This is important if you don't yet have the resources for a customer support area.

Gather user feedback: Before your SaaS product launch, you should already have a setup strategy to gather your customers' feedback. Doing so will help you find any issue that can be easily resolved and, therefore, improve the relationship between you and your clients. You can learn more about what your users think about your SaaS product by sending them surveys or calling them.

Tools like Userpilot, Hubspot or Hotjar can help you set up surveys for customer feedback.

KPIs of a successful SaaS product launch

A successful SaaS product launch strategy will be noticed through the following KPIs

1. Conversions

The number of users who subscribe to your SaaS product will let you know how successful your marketing efforts were or how much of an impact your product demo had on the leads who accessed it. You can track your conversions through specific tools, tracking pixels, or the analytics features from your SaaS platform.

2. Sign-up rate

The sign-up rate will let you know how many users are signing up to use your SaaS product. Reviewing this KPI will help you understand your landing page's performance or sign-up form. If the number is high, it's easy for users to leave their information on your site to gain access to your product.

3. CAC

CAC stands for Customer Acquisition Cost, and it includes all the money spent on marketing, sales, advertising, and other activities focusing on attracting new customers. The lower the CAC, the better since the strategies the business uses for getting new clients are cost-effective.

4. LTV

The Lifetime Value (LTV) is the total revenue you expect from a customer throughout their whole relationship with you as your client. This KPI will give insights into how profitable and loyal your customer base is. Also, you can compare your CAC with your LTV. If the former is lower than the latter, you can generate more revenue from your customers compared to what it costs you to convert them.

Tips for your SaaS product launch

1. Start with a problem

It's easier to focus on solving a problem and, after that, develop your SaaS product than to look for a target audience with an unknown problem and, therefore, an unmapped solution for you. Solving the problem first has a higher chance of success than tapping into an unshaped market.

2. Try selling before (officially) launching

Reach out to potential customers. If they're willing to purchase a product that's still in development, then it means that the solution you came up with can easily enter the market.

This is not possible for all types of products or industries, but it is worth trying if your product allows.

3. Explore personal outreach

Directly reaching out to potential customers can give you more insight into their problems, how they wish they could fix it, and their ideal scenario once that issue is gone from their lives. Besides, you get to build a close relationship with these leads, that may or may not become your clients eventually. Personal outreach can help you see things from a non-product perspective and shift your focus to a customer-centric approach.

Buy an existing and profitable SaaS business

If you don't want to start from zero, you can buy an existing SaaS business and apply some of these tactics for a relaunch.

At online business marketplaces like Boopos, you can find businesses ready to be bought. In case you already own a SaaS and want to explore selling it, you can also join Boopos and list your company.