I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
Where are these signups coming from?
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Every day in Transistor's #marketing channel in Slack, we track our new trial signups: Like most SaaS companies, our growth relies on new people finding us every day. Whenever I see these numbers, I ask myself: "Where are these signups coming from?" There's this idea in marketing that we'll be able to find a magical channel that brings in thousands of customers. But, when I look at where these signups come from, there's never one dominant source. Here's what we saw in August: Search (40%):
Word of mouth (35%):
Content & community (25%):
While organic search is our biggest single channel, what's striking is how many signups come from small, consistent efforts:
Each of these wins started as a simple daily task: sending that partner email, recording a podcast episode, attending Laracon, or answering questions on Reddit. The myth is that you need to find one magical marketing channel. The reality is that sustainable growth comes from many small, consistent efforts. Our job (as founders, makers, marketers, and bootstrappers) is to wake up every day and do something that pushes the ball forward. That's it. As I was finishing writing this, I thought: "Justin, a lot of the channels you mentioned play to your strengths (content, community, SEO). I wonder if readers are finding success with other channels you aren't doing yet. I'm curious: what's your "marketing sweet spot" when it comes to channels? Cheers,
PS: Transistor is doing a Black Friday sale. 40% off 4 months of podcast hosting! PPS: Bluesky - wow. I got a bunch of (mostly positive) replies to my last newsletter about Bluesky (and many of you signed up!). I also received several questions like: "Is it really better than Twitter?" I made a video for those folks here: In the video, I share several of my favorite apps for Bluesky: a Tweetdeck clone, analytics apps, and a Nuzzel-like link aggregator. |
Justin Jackson's SaaS marketing experiments
I'm the co-founder of Transistor.fm (podcast hosting and analytics). I write about SaaS marketing, bootstrapping startups, pursuing a good life, building calm companies, business ethics, and creating a better society,.
I didn't expect the last newsletter to generate so much debate! It ended up getting posted to Hacker News. Aaron and Ian talked about it on Mostly Technical, and many other folks responded in comments and emails. Some folks felt the tone was too pessimistic/defeatist. Others felt like I was discouraging older founders from starting companies. (I also had quite a few folks who responded and resonated with the spirit of the post). I recorded a response to all this feedback here: A few...
I recently listened to three podcast episodes, all with bootstrapped founders over the age of 40: Paul Jarvis has retired from Fathom Analytics Matt Wensing steps down from Summit, takes job with Customer.io Brian Casel and Jordan Gal talk about building SaaS at this stage of life It's interesting to see how differently this stage of life is compared to our 20s and 30s. (I'm 44). An Evolving Definition of Success: "I've been at Summit for 5 years. My last company took 15 years, and I didn't...
tl;dr – I've decided to delete all my Twitter posts, lock down my account, and leave the platform. And I'm going all-in on Bluesky, which (in the last month) has become 1,000x more fun than X. I've been on Twitter since 2008. Since then, I gained 40,000 followers, posted over 50,000(?!) times, and built countless relationships. Twitter was my favorite place on the internet. It felt like where everyone hung out (bootstrappers, creators, tech people, devs). It was our water cooler. BTW – this...