It’s hard to argue, the SaaS industry is picking up more and more mainstream notoriety. And the bigger spotlight means more content. But more content can be both a blessing and a curse.
Chances are, you’ve clicked on something with a decent title hoping to get a quick and actionable post and—not so much.
To help our fellow SaaS community, we’ve compiled our top blogs across the board that won’t waste your time. These blogs are valuable and varied to cover a wide array of relevant topics including sales, metrics, finance, hiring, and growth.
We’ve also included a synopsis and a few stand-out posts from each blog to give you an hour or two of reading material. (Here are handy links to Pocket and Instapaper—trust us, you’ll want to save some of these posts for later.)
Let’s dive in.
Crushing Your Sales: Predictable Revenue
You can wrap your head around metrics and hiring great people, but without sales you really don’t have a company. And we’re all in sales.
Some people just do it better.
Aaron Ross is one of those people doing it better than most. Ross specializes in helping companies (usually B2B tech) learn how to setup and run (or outsource) their outbound sales teams that can triple revenue. If you’re serious about growing your company to exit, attracting VC dollars, or just improving the health of your operations— sales is often the best way to accomplish goals.
The blog of Predictable Revenue works as a sales motivator through insights, tips and motivation to get back on the phones (or webinar software).
Posts to Get You Started:
- 3 Reasons You Need Salespeople to Scale
- 3 Things Every Enterprise Customer Wants To Know
- Top 5 Things a Great VP of Sales Does
- 9 Ways To Build Lists
- How to win your prospects’ trust
High-Octane Analytics: KissMetrics
KissMetrics is an analytics tool for online companies (e.g. SaaS, ecommerce, and agencies). However, the blog that attracts those clients is a heavy-hitter amongst pros in the internet company space. For starters, there are over 1,500 posts. Most of the content is evergreen, but not all (like their in-depth look at the Facebook game Mob Wars).
These data-driven articles can be an incredible resource for improving the on-page experience for your visitors. It’s a master-level guide for conversion optimization and intel-gathering.
In addition to their blog, everyone has access to some higher level content. One page hosts over 50 infographics (all incredible). If videos are your thing, there are a backlog of over 100 webinars full of value.
No matter what type of content fits you best, you’ll find it here.
Posts to Get You Started:
- Infographic: Email Marketing is Changing – The Rise of Mobile and Triggered Emails
- How to Track the ROI of Your Social Media Campaigns
- What the 1960s Can Teach You About Growth Hacking
- 4 Tools to Turn Your WordPress-Powered Website into a Growth Engine
- 10 Quick and Easy Email Marketing Segmentation Strategies to Try Today
Humor-Packed Value: Close.io
In a world full of metrics, it is a breath of fresh air to see someone try to add a little laughter. The blog at Close is hilarious and useful. Sharing from what seems like the personal struggles of being a SaaS company themselves, you’ll find an incredible amount of things they hit “on the nose”.
(This gif is from a recent piece on HR.)
Don’t let the comedy fool you. The content is high-value, often passing the 1000+ word mark. The posts are full of actionable advice on topics that you really need to know: cold-calling, company culture, and staffing.
Posts to Get You Started:
- Spot bad fits early: 20 red flags for sales hiring
- Start dialing: Why you should call your competition and how to do it
- 10 prospects that are wasting your time and how to spot them
- How to fire a B2B customer
- How to close a deal: Ask early, ask often and embrace the no
SaaS Economics with: Bradford Coffey
HubSpot is a….ok, we probably don’t have to explain what HubSpot does. However, Brad Coffey may be able to do it with more detail. He’s the Chief Strategy Officer of the Inbound giant and offers his insights into the SaaS industry overall on his personal site.
This one is great because it doesn’t seem to be regularly updated. While that sounds counterintuitive, it’s really not. Some camps feel that you have to update blog content regularly for things like SEO, momentum, and marketing efforts. But if you aren’t trying to sell anything and you only want to provide value, infrequent updates can be refreshing.
That seems to be the case with Bradford Coffey’s blog. If there is a new post, there’s a good chance it will make you re-think how you run your business.
Posts to Get You Started:
- Quality vs Quantity when Defining Business Metrics
- SaaS Unit Economics – Calculating COCA by Segment (and why its hard)
- Pricing Model Lessons: Matching the Timing on Value & Price
- Sitting on a pile of information Gold?
- Management through Inspiration
Super Charge Your Growth: Growth Hackers
SaaS companies don’t market the way B2B’s of years past. We aggressively test our marketing efforts to continually improve upon them and the result tends to be rapid growth.
While it’s an easy idea to grasp, it’s difficult to put into practice. So why not go to the resource started by the guy who coined the term?
Growth Hackers is a powerhouse of Growth Studies, curated by Sean Ellis, who growth hacked Dropbox, Eventbrite, and Qualaroo, among other companies. The funny thing is, they don’t publish their own blog posts. But you’ll gain a ton of value from their AMA’s (Ask Me Anything sessions) with prominent SaaS execs/founders, and a forum of their 150,000 members.
If blogging is your bag, they do curate content and have almost 50,000 of the best growth posts from around the web. Enjoy!
Posts to Get You Started:
- All of their growth studies are incredible. Check them out!
- 5 Steps of Validating Your SaaS Business Idea
- What tactics do you recommend to re-engage lost users?
- AMA with Polina Raygorodskaya, CEO & Co-founder of Wanderu
Think Like an Investor: For Entrepreneurs
David Skok is a serial entrepreneur. He’s founded or been involved in five companies (three having gone public). When David isn’t starting companies, he is backing them as a part of Matrix Partners as a VC. He also started this blog to provide additional help, drawing on his experience running all of those tech companies.
One of the most valuable things we’ve seen from this blog are the annual SaaS surveys. Skok uses data gathered from other founders in the trenches and puts the insights into infographic form for easy consumption.
The full SaaS studies are available as well. Usually around 300 or so SaaS companies pony up their details and participate.
Posts to Get You Started:
- SaaS Metrics 2.0 – A Guide to Measuring and Improving what Matters
- The Key Drivers for SaaS Success
- SaaS Sales Compensation: How to Design the Right Plan
- Scalable Pricing: A Key Tool For SaaS Success
- SaaS Inside Sales: What you need to know
You’ve Already Subscribed: SaaStr
If you haven’t heard of SaaStr, by all means start here. In fact, start with their academy. It’s essentially all of their posts subdivided into categories and laid out to help founders learn the ropes.
There are four main categories that most of the posts fall into. They are “Early”, “Growth”, “Scale”, and “Exit”. If you run a SaaS (or if you’re thinking about starting one), you’re in one of these four stages.
Posts to Get You Started:
- SaaStr is 4 Years Old. What We’ve Learned
- Everybody Lies 2016: SaaS Revenues in the Inc. 5000
- 3 Ways to Mitigate Stress In Your SaaS Start-Up
- 4 Tips To Earn Respect as a Young CEO
- Why The LinkedIn Acquisition is So Important to SaaS
Question for the comments: What Saas blogs are you reading lately?
