If you’ve ever read any of the SaaS Marketer case studies, you know I really care about sneezing.
Yep - sneezing. Whenever I try to break down growth of a SaaS, I’m always looking at how they empower users to sneeze to their network.
And note that I don’t say “talk to their network” - I say “sneeze to their network”. There is a big difference. When someone “talks to their network” there is more intent, it takes more forethought. This is harder to generate and is commonly known as word of mouth.
Sneezing on the other hand, requires less intent, it’s takes less forethought and is easier to generate, especially in the early days…
- It’s you sending the Calendly link to a prospect
- It’s you sending the Loom video to your team
- It’s you sending the Slack invite to a new freelancer
This is sneezing - also known as User Led Growth.
Anyway, I spent twelve months fantasising about “sneezing“, and only now do I have the opportunity to implement these learnings.
Let’s look at how bCast enables sneezing:
1 - bCast Player
Our users need something to play their audio from… the player is embedded into the websites of our users:
2 - bCast Website
We auto generate a bCast website for all users, this gives a super easy URL for users to share to send people to their podcast and directly to an episode:
3 - Guest Emails
We enable users to automatically send an email with social share links to guests of a podcast episode when published exposing the guest to the bCast brand:
We actually are about to release the ability to send multiple guests an email notification as requested by customers - extra sneezing!
4 - Adding Users
Another feature requested by users… like Slack we will soon allow bCaster’s to invite an unlimited amount of users to their account:
5 - Sub/Master Accounts
We enable our power users to create sub-accounts for people there are managing podcasts for and assign podcasts into those accounts.E.g. a marketing agency running a podcast for a business would invite the business into their bCast subaccount to collaborate on their podcast:
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I hope these examples add context to my passion for sneezing… the one thing that I would like you to do right now is:
A - If you have a product person, take them out for a coffee and start talking to them about “sneezing” - don’t actually sneeze on them though
B - If you are the product person, map out all of the touchpoints your users could have with other people in their network, through sneezing your product
I hope this post was valuable… remember for ALL feedback and questions, just hit me up in the comments below, I read and respond to them all!
Tom Hunt is the founder of SaaS Marketer and bCast (podcast hosting for marketers, by marketers). He lives and works in Hackney, London with his delightful partner Rebecca and little dog called Bear.
