I made the SaaS growth strategy model

I often talk to SaaS founders about their growth challenges.

Especially with those who had initial success with social sharing, cold emailing, and even PH launches but are now staring at stagnation.

When I audit their growth strategies, I always find a lot of 'we don't know why this is happening' kind of answers.

Overtime, I've discovered two truths about growth strategies:

1. A strategy is as good as the insights it is built upon.

2. A bad strategy takes almost the same effort to execute as it takes for a good strategy

Thus the fastest and most profitable way to design a good SaaS growth strategy is to discover impactful insights.

Without shying away from spending most of the time and resources in the pursuit of such insights.

For strategies built on hunches lead straight off a cliff - they fail miserably, when tested in the market.

And then they lead to bewilderment.

Past data is goldmine of profitable insights, and if you are in the business for at least a couple of months with some paying customers, you have access to it.

And unlike general advice in books, blogs, and podcasts, it is specific to your business.

And unlike customer surveys, it is not susceptible to the risk of the respondent's mood.

To discover compelling insights and high impact growth levers, you need four types of past data:

• Website Traffic Data

• Free Plan Funnel Data

• Retention, Renewals and Churn Data

• Marketing & Sales Expense Data

Once you have this data for a few months, say between 2 to 12 months, run following analyses:

1. Compound monthly growth rate of different KPIs

2. Conversion rate calculation at each stage of the funnel and benchmarking

3. Cohort Analysis for retention and churn

4. Anomalies detection

5. Senitivity of paid plans to growth

6. Discover the budget needed to achieve next 12 months target

7. Selection of best-fit channels

8. Downgrades analysis of paid plans

I thought that I can standarize a large part of strategy design process and turn it into a systematic approach so that anyone can DIY.

Thus, I've made a spreadsheet model that uses these analyses and unearths compelling insights and high impact growth levers from the past data. And then, it maps the growth opportunities with the top growth strategies.

Click the link below to check the model:

SaaS Growth Strategy Model