Hey y'all,

I've been working on SoloSync, which syncs changes from Salesforce to Notion. I'm scratching my own itch, so I wanted to test demand prior to writing too much code.

Can I acquire a customer for less than one year's contract value ($99 * 12 months)?

The number we're chasing here is called ROAS or return on ad spend. The higher ROAS is, the closer you are to an infinite money glitch.

Here's how I tested demand.

Step one: MVP

My MVP is:

1. A landing page (built with TailwindUI & Next.js App Router)
2. A Node app that sync Salesforce Account changes to Notion

The app is not finished, but it's finished enough that I could demo it to a customer. The important learning here is to do this test before you write tons of code.

Step two: Create ads

I created a Google Adwords account, crafted some copy, and set a budget.

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Step three: pause and analyze results

While $385 was more than I wanted to spend, I learned a few great things here.

Drew Bredvick @DBredvick You should validate a SaaS with customer interviews, but _actually_ testing your ability to acquire customers at scale at a reasonable price is a good idea too. At a CPC of .35 and conversion rate of 2%, I can pay $35 to acquire two customers at $99/mo each. Look for infinite… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… pic.twitter.com/8Xvo1t2oF6 March 8th 2023 1 Retweets 25 Likes

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1. I can get a cost per click (CPC) of around $0.35
2. A lot of this traffic came from YouTube (I should make video content in the future)
3. If I convert at "industry standard"* numbers, I can make Google Adwords work as an acquisition channel

*I’m ball parking in my ability to convert 2% of traffic into paying customers through a trial. I’m estimating that on converting 10% of traffic to a trial and 20% of those trials into paid. The 10% is based on my gut but the 20% is an industry standard-ish number.

Overall, am I willing to trade $35 once for $198 per month? Yes. Solid deal.

Even better if I can push folks to annual billing which is super common in B2B land.

Adwords is one of two main acquisition channels for SoloSync. Because I'm building a tool for Salesforce, I can list it in the Salesforce AppExchange (app store) for free.

Getting into AppExchange is my current top priority now that I've validated demand to some degree.

LFG,

Drew