SaaS Marketing for (Laravel) Developers

[00:00] Hello guys, happy new year and in the

[00:02] first video of 2026 I have a gift for

[00:05] you. So before Christmas I released a

[00:08] course building a typical Laravel SAS

[00:10] and the last section of this course is

[00:12] about marketing and sales and I think

[00:15] this will become a crucial topic in 2026

[00:18] because with AI there will be a lot of

[00:21] builders a lot of products from

[00:23] developers but not necessarily also VIP

[00:26] coders will release their own SAS

[00:29] products and probably you will release

[00:32] something as a side project because you

[00:34] will have time to basically prompt the

[00:37] agent to do a lot of work for you and

[00:40] actually implement a project that was on

[00:42] your mind for a long time. But with so

[00:45] many projects on the market, this will

[00:47] be actually crucial marketing and sales.

[00:50] And as developers, we are builders, we

[00:52] are creators, we like starting things,

[00:55] starting new project, doing lot of new

[00:57] and stuff like that. But for marketing

[00:59] and sales, I think I have quite a few

[01:02] insights from my experiments with my own

[01:05] projects and clients project. So I will

[01:07] release three lessons from this course

[01:10] as one YouTube video you will see now in

[01:13] roughly what's 22 minutes. My advice on

[01:17] marketing and sales of your own SAS or

[01:19] maybe that advice could be useful and

[01:22] you can be useful for your client

[01:24] projects and just in general. A lot of

[01:26] that advice may be applicable for

[01:28] example for Laravel package

[01:30] distribution. So yeah, let's talk about

[01:33] how you can promote your product and be

[01:35] successful. And if you want the full

[01:37] course, I will also link that in the

[01:39] description below to our course about

[01:42] technical creation of Laravel SAS and

[01:44] then at the end marketing and sales that

[01:46] you will see right now. I wish to you

[01:48] that 2026 will be productive for you

[01:51] releasing a lot of projects your own or

[01:53] for your clients. And now let's dive

[01:56] into the video. In this video, let's

[01:58] talk about SAS marketing. And this will

[02:00] be different style video as you can see

[02:02] full screen without any screenshots

[02:04] because we need to talk. Marketing and

[02:07] sales are very important for your

[02:09] product for SAS. Maybe more than ever

[02:12] because of AI. So recently Ian Lansman

[02:16] on the podcast of mostly technical was

[02:19] really passionate about AI being better

[02:21] and allowing us to create more stuff

[02:24] faster but at the same time reminded I

[02:26] liked his thought that now we have more

[02:29] software products created that

[02:31] developers are still unable to sell to

[02:34] anyone. So in other words speed of

[02:36] coding was never really the bottleneck.

[02:39] Successful products are about great

[02:41] ideas, great marketing and sales. This

[02:44] is what I want to emphasize. We are

[02:46] builders. We are developers. We are

[02:48] creators. But if you want to earn money

[02:51] with your product, you need to put on

[02:53] the hat of a business guy, a business

[02:56] developer and stop thinking about

[02:58] building features and start thinking

[03:00] about the audience, the distribution of

[03:02] the project and so on. And in this

[03:05] video, I want to give a few pieces of

[03:06] advice structured by topics. Topic

[03:09] number one is idea. A lot of people say

[03:11] that idea is the most important for

[03:14] startup success. But actually I would

[03:16] argue that idea on its own means not

[03:19] that much. What means a lot is the

[03:22] market for that idea. So if you have an

[03:24] idea for a product that you want to

[03:26] build, I would advise to make market

[03:28] research. And that market research

[03:30] should not be from the side of whether

[03:32] someone would use that idea or not or

[03:35] whether similar products exist or not. I

[03:37] would start with the problem. So your

[03:40] idea should solve someone's problem and

[03:42] you need to Google and find out how many

[03:45] people have that problem or similar

[03:47] problems. For example, if you want to

[03:49] create a CRM for I don't know hair salon

[03:52] for example, you need to research the

[03:54] real problems of hair salons. What

[03:57] software do they use now if any and what

[04:00] are their problems with existing

[04:02] solutions? And then from that iterate on

[04:05] your idea to propose a better solution.

[04:08] For that of course you need to know the

[04:09] target audience first and the audience

[04:12] everyone could use that is not the right

[04:15] audience. In my experience everyone

[04:17] means no one. The more targeted is your

[04:20] audience the better you know them and

[04:22] the better you can solve their

[04:24] particular problem. For example if your

[04:26] audience is developers then I think the

[04:29] audience is too broad. Of course, it is

[04:31] possible to get away with it, but it's

[04:33] better to serve not just developers, but

[04:36] for example, Laravel developers or

[04:38] junior Laravel developers who can't get

[04:41] a job. For example, someone would offer

[04:44] a solution for juniors to get job

[04:46] better. That would be a great example.

[04:48] Or for example, Laravel business

[04:51] companies from 50 developers and up.

[04:53] This is a target niche. But basically

[04:55] with the market research your goal is to

[04:57] answer the question of who is the user

[05:00] of that product that you want to build

[05:03] and who is the buyer which may be

[05:05] different things. So for example users

[05:07] of Slack or linear or other similar

[05:11] software are developers or regular

[05:13] employees but who pays for that is

[05:15] usually companies. So yeah, basically

[05:18] you need to find who would pay for that

[05:20] and do they have a problem and is the

[05:22] problem big enough so they would

[05:24] actually pay. Of course, there's another

[05:25] alternative way called scratching your

[05:28] own itch. For example, you want to

[05:30] create a product for yourself with hope

[05:32] that more developers or more people

[05:34] would use the same thing. This may work

[05:37] if you are the target audience. You can

[05:39] probably imagine similar people and

[05:42] solve your problem and their problem in

[05:45] the same software in the same product.

[05:47] But still, I would make market research.

[05:49] Are there enough people like yourself

[05:52] with the same itch or similar itch to

[05:54] scratch? Unless your goal is to actually

[05:56] build the product for yourself to use.

[05:59] So even if you don't have paying

[06:01] customers, you would be happy on your

[06:03] own, then it is fine. But in this video,

[06:05] I want to target someone who want to

[06:07] earn real money. And speaking of real

[06:10] money and ideas and AI specifically, be

[06:13] careful with ideas around AI. So if you

[06:16] want to create a software that would

[06:18] call AI like OpenAI API or claude API or

[06:22] some other API to perform AI

[06:24] transformations like transcribing videos

[06:27] or finding similar text and stuff like

[06:30] that calculate the cost because recently

[06:32] I've seen quite a few stories of

[06:34] startups burning money with such a big

[06:37] speed that their revenue MR it's

[06:40] successful on the surface but the cost

[06:43] of APIs for AI I may be astronomical. So

[06:47] the idea can be good on the surface and

[06:49] AI allows us to do many things but

[06:52] calculate because you may end up paying

[06:54] the providers more for quality result if

[06:57] you want the quality than you would

[06:59] charge your customers. For example, one

[07:01] story of a mobile developer recently I

[07:03] saw on YouTube. His price point for the

[07:06] application is $10 per month because

[07:09] that's how much it costs for him to call

[07:11] the AI APIs and $10 per month is the

[07:15] minimum cost that he can afford to

[07:17] basically break even. So the real cost

[07:20] in his calculation should be even

[07:21] bigger. So yeah, just a word of caution

[07:23] about AI niche specifically. And the

[07:26] final word about market validation and

[07:28] market research is talk to customers.

[07:31] Actually talk. I mean it may be online,

[07:34] it may be on Slack, it may be on

[07:35] Discord, Reddit or whatever. It may be

[07:37] in real life. It depends on your

[07:39] scenario. But actually without talking

[07:42] to real people who would use your

[07:44] software or your product. Do not make

[07:46] any conclusions. Ask that specific

[07:49] question. Would you pay not would you

[07:51] use would you pay for this to exist? In

[07:54] ideal scenario, if you trust your idea

[07:56] enough and if you have enough audience,

[07:58] you may create landing page already

[08:00] pre-charging your future customers to

[08:04] support your product and to kind of

[08:06] prove to you that it's worth building

[08:08] the product. So build a landing page,

[08:11] build a waiting list, build something

[08:13] like Kickstarter campaign and that would

[08:15] be the best proof of your idea before

[08:18] even building that. As developers,

[08:21] again, we are creators, we are builders,

[08:23] and we like to create stuff and be in

[08:25] our cave and then show something to the

[08:28] world. But my advice would be to save

[08:30] some time and do at least some market

[08:33] validation and market research before

[08:36] any coding. Of course, a little better

[08:38] way is to vibe code something with AI or

[08:41] some prototype version 0.1 and then show

[08:44] something to the world already working

[08:47] or already in prototype stage. But it

[08:49] depends on the product. Not for every

[08:51] product. It's possible to show something

[08:53] really minimal. So there's a risk that

[08:55] version 0.1 people would dislike

[08:58] immediately, but that would be maybe

[09:00] false positive. It depends on the

[09:02] project. But basically spend time on

[09:04] market research and talking to real

[09:06] potential customers. The next thing I

[09:09] want to talk about related to marketing

[09:10] your SAS is presentation and positioning

[09:13] of your product. So I see a lot of

[09:15] developers while releasing their

[09:17] packages for example they fail at readme

[09:20] stage basically. So they release a

[09:22] package which has a great potential and

[09:24] they are too lazy or maybe not qualified

[09:28] enough to show what the package actually

[09:30] does visually. A lot of read me files

[09:34] for packages I've personally reviewed on

[09:36] YouTube were too textbased listing the

[09:39] features of the package or the product

[09:42] without emphasizing what the product

[09:44] actually does the package what is the

[09:47] before and after. What is the use case

[09:49] visually as developers we're kind of in

[09:52] love with the features of our products

[09:54] but actually the presentation is even

[09:57] more important because this is the first

[10:00] impression. So for example, I get a link

[10:02] to your product from somewhere and then

[10:04] I go to your landing page and then

[10:07] basically you have like 30 seconds of my

[10:09] attention max. Convince me quickly that

[10:12] what you do is interesting to me. And if

[10:15] on that website or on read me I see a

[10:17] lot of text that I need to read and try

[10:20] to understand myself. So basically I

[10:22] need to turn on my brain on 10x level to

[10:25] even understand what you do. Then I'm

[10:27] out. And I'm not even talking about

[10:29] visual design of your website which is

[10:31] also important but that can be generated

[10:33] by AI these days with pretty good

[10:35] quality. I'm talking about positioning.

[10:38] So basically you need to come up with

[10:40] tagline or even the title of the

[10:43] product. The product name is important

[10:44] if it can explain what the product does

[10:47] clearly. But also the main taglines and

[10:50] the titles and the headers on the

[10:51] website should clearly explain what you

[10:54] do for whom and how exactly. One of the

[10:57] typical kind of framework people suggest

[10:59] is we help the audience to achieve some

[11:03] result without pain or with some other

[11:06] constraints like in 5 minutes without

[11:09] digging deeper or some other condition.

[11:11] So three parts of kind of slogan and

[11:14] what do you actually do? So that should

[11:16] be your kind of first answer clarifying

[11:18] the question of what you do and then the

[11:20] visuals. I cannot emphasize enough that

[11:23] you need to show product in action in

[11:26] video in GIF, in screenshots, before and

[11:29] after. It depends on the product. But

[11:31] there's a golden evergreen rule for

[11:33] hundreds of years which says show don't

[11:36] tell. People buy with their eyes. People

[11:38] buy with their emotions. So as soon as

[11:42] you trigger any emotion and the emotion

[11:45] is triggered usually by visuals, then

[11:48] you are on track to something. Another

[11:50] option for doing that is anchoring to

[11:52] another product or product category. So

[11:54] for example, you may call yourself like

[11:56] cursor for dog owners or cursor for

[12:00] designers or whatever. So you can

[12:02] compare your product to something that

[12:04] people would be familiar with your

[12:07] audience. So for example, your product

[12:08] could be described as for example

[12:10] deployment to server without knowing how

[12:13] to SSH or knowing docker or git which

[12:16] may be the actual problem for example

[12:17] for vibe coders who don't know any of

[12:19] those things but they do need to deploy

[12:21] somewhere right so your main headers and

[12:24] titles should trigger that pain point in

[12:26] other words you need to work on the

[12:28] presentation of your product similar

[12:30] like a slide deck so imagine you have an

[12:32] audience of 100 people and you need to

[12:34] prepare the presentation the talk about

[12:36] the product so they would not fall

[12:38] asleep and you have only like brief 5

[12:41] minute slot of that audience or

[12:43] so-called elevator pitch of 60 seconds

[12:46] or so. Get to the point and impress your

[12:48] audience because so many ideas

[12:51] especially by developers actually over

[12:53] my career I've seen potential good ideas

[12:56] presented in such a poor way that they

[12:59] didn't take off. Now let's talk about

[13:01] distribution of your product. How do

[13:03] people find out about your SAS? And

[13:05] there are so many ways here. And this is

[13:08] probably the number one problem for

[13:10] developers. Again, we are creators. We

[13:12] are builders in our own cave. And to

[13:14] distribute the product, we need to get

[13:16] out of our cave and tell the world. And

[13:19] of course, you probably realize by now

[13:21] that the approach build it and they will

[13:23] come does not work. Unless you are

[13:25] already very popular startup or

[13:28] household name like for example in

[13:30] Laravel if you are spotty and you create

[13:32] a new package that would get immediate

[13:34] traction but not everyone has such a big

[13:38] audience right so basically what are the

[13:40] options how to tell the world of course

[13:42] the classic is SEO so for example you

[13:44] can blog about your product on your

[13:47] website and then hope that you would

[13:49] target keywords and people would Google

[13:51] and land on your website but this is a

[13:53] very long term And with AI SEO becomes

[13:57] really risky because AI overviews and

[14:00] chat GPT give the answers to people

[14:03] without visiting any websites at all. So

[14:06] posting on your website with hope that

[14:08] someone would come is not what I would

[14:11] advise in 2025. The next approach is to

[14:14] post something on platforms on social

[14:16] media. The classical would be Twitter or

[14:20] Facebook or LinkedIn where you just

[14:22] create a post, a video or image and then

[14:25] try to catch your target audience. That

[14:28] approach is fine but also probably long

[14:31] term because if you have zero followers

[14:33] today, the Twitter and LinkedIn

[14:35] algorithms would not necessarily show

[14:38] you on their feed automatically. Then of

[14:41] course you can cold email people find

[14:43] the target audience and try to basically

[14:46] spam them so to speak. So direct sales

[14:48] via email or on social media maybe

[14:51] LinkedIn direct messages but you

[14:53] probably hate them yourself right if you

[14:55] get such emails of like I have a product

[14:58] for you right it's kind of like

[14:59] doortodoor salesman it's sleazy it's not

[15:02] really what developers even do in their

[15:05] heart again we are builders where

[15:07] creators were not direct sales people so

[15:10] yeah this is something that I would not

[15:11] advise but what I would advise instead

[15:14] of direct messaging people is reply

[15:17] replying to their social media posts.

[15:19] So, you need to find people with the

[15:21] problem you're solving and reply to

[15:23] their tweet, to their LinkedIn post in

[15:25] not a salesy way. Just explain the

[15:28] solution that you suggest and then maybe

[15:31] post a link to your product or maybe

[15:33] just leave it as it is and your product

[15:35] will be in your bio somewhere and then

[15:38] they would discover that. But also, of

[15:40] course, don't do that for the posts

[15:41] which are like months long. It should be

[15:43] relevant. It should be hours ago. Fresh

[15:46] natural conversation. In general, what

[15:48] works is participating in discussions

[15:51] around your problem, around your target

[15:53] audience, replying with valuable advice

[15:56] to a lot of people, and then someone

[15:58] would discover you. To be honest, what

[16:00] worked for me back in the days, like 20

[16:02] years ago, on forums when I was not

[16:05] really looking for developer job, but I

[16:07] was a developer freelancer at the time,

[16:09] and I was helping people with

[16:11] development advice. And then suddenly

[16:13] people started DMing me on that forum

[16:16] asking for like real paid help with

[16:18] coding. That happened not overnight

[16:20] after like hundreds of posts. But then

[16:23] you get so-called karma points on forums

[16:25] or on social media. You get followers.

[16:28] Again, this is a long game. But that's

[16:30] what may actually work in 2025. human

[16:33] contact, genuine value on social media,

[16:36] not posting at people, but participating

[16:39] in their world where they are on their

[16:42] posts, on their feed. The next option is

[16:45] to go to paid ads and go for Facebook

[16:48] ads, LinkedIn ads, Google Adwords, and

[16:50] stuff like that. But this is a game of

[16:52] numbers. I know so many people who tried

[16:55] ads on whatever social network or

[16:57] Google, burned a few hundred dollars,

[17:00] got a few hundred people and only a few

[17:03] signups and then they don't know what to

[17:05] do next. Of course, it may be because of

[17:07] the ad content and the whole funnel of

[17:11] converting to paid user of the product.

[17:14] That may be also leaky bucket but still

[17:16] typically you would turn on ads on

[17:19] already working product to amplify the

[17:22] sales to amplify the SEO results on

[17:25] Google to be on the first page on top

[17:28] but the product should be already having

[17:30] sales even without the ads at least

[17:33] that's what I've seen on the market and

[17:35] finally where I'm getting at is what

[17:37] works in 2025 is video so the same

[17:40] thought that I mentioned in the previous

[17:42] video about positioning and

[17:44] presentation. Presentation of your

[17:47] product is the key. You need to

[17:48] demonstrate the product on your homepage

[17:51] but also outside of it. You can shoot

[17:54] videos on YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram

[17:56] reels or longer form. Any social network

[18:00] now can accept longer videos including

[18:02] Twitter, LinkedIn. So you can repost in

[18:04] many places resize and recrop into like

[18:07] one minute demonstration or 15-minute

[18:09] demonstration or full presentation. But

[18:12] basically again show your product in

[18:14] action but not in a way like here's my

[18:17] product the title. No the title should

[18:19] be I can solve this problem here's my

[18:22] process and then during that process you

[18:24] show the tool. And getting back to the

[18:26] idea of SEO is getting down. I heard so

[18:29] many marketing people now talking about

[18:31] SEO is down. Social media algorithms are

[18:34] unpredictable especially Twitter and

[18:36] many of them bet on YouTube as the

[18:38] platform to go. I know a lot of

[18:41] entrepreneurs who started or got back to

[18:44] YouTube channel to video after 10 years

[18:47] of being off camera with successful

[18:50] business. But now a lot of founders,

[18:53] CEOs, and entrepreneurs go on camera and

[18:56] go on YouTube. Of course, maybe I'm

[18:58] biased because I'm a YouTube creator

[19:00] myself, but it took me like 10 years to

[19:03] be more comfortable on camera. And it's

[19:05] not necessarily that you need to be on

[19:07] camera, by the way. You can hire someone

[19:09] to make a video. You can do a video with

[19:11] AI. You can do a faceless video. It

[19:13] doesn't necessarily have to be you. But

[19:15] of course, human touch does help.

[19:18] Getting back to previous points around

[19:20] human touch. So people still want to buy

[19:22] from people, not from faceless channels.

[19:25] But basically what I would advise in

[19:27] 2025 is start with video post in a few

[19:31] different places. By shooting that

[19:33] video, you would have also presentation

[19:35] material for your website. If you're

[19:37] lucky, you will get comments on your

[19:39] videos from real people who would be

[19:41] interested. Then you follow up with

[19:43] second video showing some other features

[19:45] of your product and then it goes in

[19:48] circle. And then the most important

[19:50] thing, it rarely works with one or two

[19:53] videos. It needs to be a consistent

[19:55] effort of new videos, new pieces of

[19:58] content showing different features or

[20:01] even better different use cases for

[20:03] different problems for different niches

[20:05] of your customers. So for example, when

[20:08] I was trying to advertise our quick

[20:09] admin panel generator 10 years ago for

[20:12] Laravel, I made a video about how to

[20:14] create a sports league website with

[20:16] quick admin panel, how to create a CMS

[20:19] with quick admin panel and it targets

[20:21] different audience. Each video was like

[20:23] 30 minutes and I was very bad at videos

[20:25] back in the day, but it helped a lot

[20:27] actually. And each video is kind of like

[20:30] a lottery ticket. It's not necessarily

[20:32] going to work. It may not work for many

[20:34] reasons. It may be quality of your

[20:36] video, but you need to kind of keep

[20:38] shooting in like basketball analogy. And

[20:41] at some point, you get better at video.

[20:44] You get clearer on what you want to

[20:46] present on those videos. And then

[20:48] usually what happens for YouTubers

[20:50] basically after like 30 videos, 31st

[20:53] videos suddenly unexpectedly goes viral.

[20:57] You never know if it does and you never

[20:59] know which one. Sometimes it's very

[21:01] random but you need to keep shooting.

[21:04] Also important in your content in your

[21:07] video don't really sell. Teach people

[21:09] something. Show how to solve the

[21:11] problem. Talk about the problem. Talk

[21:13] about the idea behind the solution. tool

[21:16] should be kind of in the background

[21:18] selling itself if they want the result

[21:21] faster but they need to believe in you

[21:23] as a founder in your philosophy in your

[21:26] solution first before buying the product

[21:28] around that solution I like the phrase

[21:30] don't remember who said that that sales

[21:33] and marketing is basically debugging

[21:35] customers problems in live mode for them

[21:38] so if you take that approach and work on

[21:40] the problems of the clients find the

[21:43] angles the storytelling way to convince

[21:46] them that you know what you're talking

[21:48] about and again video is the best way to

[21:51] explain that to impress people visually

[21:54] then you have a good chance the final

[21:56] note kind of as an example I talked to

[21:58] one founder of one plug-in one package

[22:01] and I told him I asked him did you post

[22:04] any videos recently showing your package

[22:07] and the answer was no why should I post

[22:09] because it's on my website it's on

[22:11] YouTube it's on GitHub everything so I

[22:13] basically showed everything why would I

[22:15] bother repeating myself and this is a

[22:17] very wrong approach for the same idea

[22:20] for the same product to showcase that

[22:22] you need to find different angles. You

[22:24] need to not be afraid to repeat yourself

[22:26] with a bit different keywords, different

[22:28] words, different phrasing, different use

[22:31] case scenario. So for example, if I have

[22:33] a Laravel plugin, I can demonstrate that

[22:35] in different Laravel projects, totally

[22:37] different niche, but the same plug-in

[22:39] powering that. And that would already be

[22:41] different separate videos to target,

[22:44] maybe different audiences with the same

[22:46] problem, just different use cases and

[22:49] different keywords for SEO as well. So

[22:52] yeah, these are my pieces of advice for

[22:53] marketing your SAS. Probably the

[22:56] overarching message is don't expect it

[22:58] to be quick. It rarely works from the

[23:01] first demo or first video or first email

[23:04] or first Reddit post. Most often it's a

[23:07] long game and even if you do get first

[23:09] traction from like Reddit or Product

[23:11] Hunt or whatever, it's usually the first

[23:13] spike and then no one buys immediately

[23:16] because they need to think and then it

[23:18] dies down and then your goal is to keep

[23:21] it up with some traction, some traffic

[23:25] until it slowly goes up again or until

[23:27] the next spike with some post but then

[23:30] that spike does again and then it goes

[23:32] in kind of spiral. This is the typical

[23:35] trajectory I've seen for SAS products

[23:39] over the years. But of course, there are

[23:41] exceptions. Of course, you may get lucky

[23:43] or the other way around. You may get

[23:45] unlucky and you get zero traction, which

[23:47] may mean that your product is not good

[23:50] enough as a business. You may admit that

[23:52] too. I've had quite a few failures over

[23:55] the years with that, but that could be a

[23:57] topic for future videos. For now, I

[23:59] consider this Laravel SAS course as

[24:02] finished both from technical and

[24:04] marketing side. But I'm happy to

[24:06] continue with any other topics or

[24:08] related questions. So be active in the

[24:10] comments and see you guys in other