9 things about the cloud marketplace for growth with SaaSify
ISVs across the globe have identified 9 things or facts about the cloud marketplace which they consider integral for the growth of their SaaS products and services. If you are aware about these, chances of your success in the cloud marketplace will grow exponentially.1. Organizations have pre-committed cloud spends
How SaaSify helps: You can easily leverage pre-committed spends in cloud marketplaces by creating unlimited transactable offers with SaaSify. You don’t need to make any engineering changes to your product and can take your transactable offers live in a few days, to access pre-committed cloud spends for faster deal closure. To begin with, you must know that almost every large organization that partners with a cloud provider has pre-committed cloud spends, against which they get several benefits and incentives. As an ISV, selling in the cloud marketplace, you can capitalize on these pre-committed spends and make your sales cycle shorter and even receive deals for a longer duration. Since these spends are already committed and you are transacting through the cloud marketplace, the process of due diligence is much shorter and you don’t have to wait for additional budgetary approvals. In a nutshell, you must focus on accessing pre-committed cloud spends of your customers to build a healthy revenue pipeline.2. Balance old and new customer acquisition
How SaaSify helps: SaaSify offers a white-labelled solution to create your own brand experience. This can help you create instant brand recall for your existing customers and attract them in cloud marketplaces. At the same time, you can create different types of offers including public and private, contact me or transactable to offer flexibility to any potential customers, for new user acquisition. You will be surprised to know that many of your existing customers through other channels are likely to have presence in cloud marketplaces and might even increase your contract or deal volume/ duration if you give them a chance to transact through cloud marketplaces. At the same time, you must focus on new customer acquisition. Towards this, experimenting with offers like Free Trial, Test Drive, etc. can be extremely effective. With this, you will give them a real life experience of how your SaaS solution can address their business needs, either in their work environment or a simulated environment that you have curated. Furthermore, you need to focus on getting your marketing and sales pitch right to suit the cloud marketplace audience.3. Demand for SaaS solutions is growing
How SaaSify helps: As a truly self-service platform, SaaSify enables ISVs to quickly list their SaaS solutions on cloud marketplaces. You can seamlessly list, optimize and transact your offers on your preferred cloud marketplace to address the growing SaaS need. One of the main reasons that moving to the cloud marketplace is an interesting proposition is the potential demand that is likely to increase exponentially. If you look at any survey, you will realize that most LOB buyers and business decision makers are increasing their investments in SaaS solutions, especially the ones that can be procured through cloud marketplaces. Research shows that organizations with more than 1,000 employees use 150+ SaaS applications. Furthermore, as of 2022, the SaaS space is worth over $170 billion. This clearly illustrates the scale at which SaaS applications are in demand and how if you sell your solution to the right audience, your business scope will increase significantly. As a SaaS ISV, there is immense potential for your growth with expanding digital transformation goals for organizations.4. Investments in cloud marketplaces continue to expand
How SaaSify helps: With SaaSify, you can go live on cloud marketplaces within days, without making any engineering changes to your product. This can help you leverage the rapidly increasing cloud investments. At the same time, you can capitalize the sentiment among businesses to consolidate their software purchases from cloud marketplaces with your marketplace presence. With cloud becoming the center of digital transformation for most businesses, it is likely to attract volumes of investments from angel investors, private equity firms, capital markets, etc. Thus, as an ISV, if you are creating a cloud marketplace compatible solution, many investments are likely to come your way. Most investors today are looking to diversify their portfolio from traditional technology investments to contemporary solutions in the cloud. You can capitalize on this opportunity by creating a thriving presence in cloud marketplaces. Not only will this move give you an entry to new markets and pre-committed spends, it will also give you the chance to compete for significant investments and funding opportunities to scale your ISV business exponentially.5. Partnerships will boost opportunities
How SaaSify helps: You can leverage SaaSify’s functionalities like automation, deal assistance and others to unlock opportunities for partnerships across different stakeholders and seamlessly create private offers for them. In addition to selling your SaaS applications on your own, you can also collaborate with other partners in the cloud marketplaces to boost your sales. For instance, you can partner with Microsoft CSPs who sell Microsoft licenses and subscriptions to their customers, as well as, sell third party solutions. You can easily partner with them to create private offers exclusively for their customers. This way you can expand your network through a partner network instead of doing all the heavy lifting on your own. Such partnerships will help you take your solution to new customers who are already using cloud solutions and have a vested interest in transacting through the cloud. While this is one example, there are several other partners you can reach out to, to expand your business.6. Uncertainty and ambiguity is on the rise
How SaaSify helps: With SaaSify, you can easily capture pre-committed cloud spends or budgets and safeguard your businesses from uncertainty and ambiguity. The pre-committed cloud spends shorten the sales cycle and help you realize revenue faster. With the impending threat of recession, political unrest in countries and other socio-political and economic uncertainties, relying on traditional channels of your business in a limited geography may not be the wisest decision. You need to ensure that you have multiple channels of revenue as well as customers from diverse geographical locations as well as industries. Selling through cloud marketplaces can help you navigate through these uncertainties effectively and facilitate business continuity. First, you can easily use cloud marketplaces as another revenue channel. Second, you can leverage the same to reach customers across the globe, and expand your geographical footprint. At the same time, you can connect with organizations from different industries through cloud marketplaces.7. Cloud GTM strategy is a must
How SaaSify helps: SaaSify offers comprehensive GTM advisory and consultation to help you get started. With co-selling campaigns, content resources, account based marketing, organic sales opportunities, etc. SaaSify can help you craft and scale your cloud GTM strategy effectively.A cloud GTM or a Go To Market strategy is a must for you if you wish to expand your presence to the cloud marketplace. A GTM strategy involves every step you will take right from when your SaaS app is conceived to the time you start selling effectively. Start by identifying who the right customers are for you and which cloud provider they preferably use as well as their business pain points and how your solution will address the same. This will help you establish a product-market fit and create a unique value proposition for your customers. Based on your customer persona and USP, you need to build a marketing plan of how best you can take your solution to your customers. In the cloud marketplace, you need to create a brand of your own, use the right keywords and ensure you check all the marketing essentials. The right strategy will enable you to reach the right customers who have the intent, the capability and the authority to become a customer for your SaaS solution.8. Transactable offers vs Contact Me listing
How SaaSify helps: SaaSify enables you to create both contact me and transactable listing in cloud marketplaces. Whether you want to capture customer data in your CRM and connect with them as per your process or want to leverage marketplace spends and use the commercial marketplaces for transactions, SaaSify’s experts can help you in both the directions. A key consideration for the cloud marketplace for you to ponder upon is the type of offer you wish to go live with. When it comes to generating revenue from your SaaS solution, you can either have Contact Me or Transactable Offers. The former have a Contact Me button on your listing, which when clicked will help you capture customer data into your preferred CRM. The idea here is to collect data of interested customers who you can contact subsequently and make an elaborate sales pitch, which can lead to revenue realization. However, you can also publish Transactable offers in the cloud marketplace. Here, your customers can directly access your offer, buy and pay for it through the cloud marketplace and start using it instantly. One of the biggest advantages of this type of offer is the instant revenue realization. Your customers don’t have to wait for you to get in touch with them and you don’t lose out on the prospect against others in the market. Furthermore, publishing transactable offers also gives you the option of accessing pre-committed spends that customers might have.9. Co-selling brings new avenues
How SaaSify helps: SaaSify’s Salesforce Applications enables ISVs to automate the process of private offer creation for seller partners across Channel Partner Private Offers (CPPO) in AWS and Multiparty Private Offers (MPO) in Azure. With this you can significantly reduce the time, effort and learning spent on creating private offers and power co-selling with automation. As a channel for boosting sales for your ISV business, cloud marketplaces not only provide you a platform to sell, but also become an integral part of your sales process. The top cloud marketplaces have co-selling programs in which they help you in generating and nurturing leads based on your business requirements. They help you get connected with their large customer base, depending on the needs and enable you to close the deals, by sharing insights as well as convincing customers at their level. Co-selling is an effective tool to get access to new customers who already have a cloud presence and some pre-committed cloud spends. Furthermore, when such leads come from the cloud provider, they already have a sense of confidence and faith in your solution, making the sale a little easier.Get started in cloud marketplaces as an ISV with SaaSify
Once you are aware of some of the top facts and points to know about cloud marketplaces, you are all set to start your journey. Selling in the cloud marketplace can help you:- Navigate uncertainties due to market, geopolitical and social conditions
- Scale your business to serve new geographies, industries and segment of customers
- Accelerate revenue realization and bottom line impact with transactable offers, partnerships and co-selling
- Leverage expanding digital transformation priorities and investments in the cloud
- Publish your SaaS offers within a week without engineering changes
- Build your own brand in cloud marketplaces
- Publish private and public offers seamlessly
- Create transactable offers for instant revenue realization
- Manage all customer communication from a single dashboard
- Monitor usage and sell solutions the way customers want to buy
