Where to find SaaS consultant?

[Briano]

I am looking for a Software as a Service consultant...we get a lot of traffic, but do not get a lot of conversion. I am finding plenty of people that will take my money to give me some advice, but not from people that seem to know what they are talking about. Any ideas?

[Briano]

anyone have any ideas?

[Ted S]

It's not entirely clear what you're looking for in a consultant... Someone to help you find a SaaS solution for your business? To develop a solution your making? To market a working solution?

[Briano]

Okay...I have a SaaS solution for political candidates. I'm looking for someone to help me get more conversions, since we are getting a lot of traffic, but not very many conversions. http://www.mycampaigntreasurer.com/

[Briano]

sorry, just realized that I still was not really specific. I want to pay someone to go to my site, look at it, and provide feedback on why we are not seeing signups for our free trial. We have targeted traffic, and are not even seeing a 1% signup rate.

[shadowbox]

Just a few quick thoughts:

From your terms of service, I'd be concerned that you seem to have an aversion to contacting me to inform me of changes to the service I pay for. Including a change of pricing, which can be changed without any prior notice or warning with immediate effect. Apparently it's my responsibility to continually check your site, just in case you've changed something in the contract.

Any reason why you can't send out an email notification on an impending change of ToS? That's got to be ringing alarm bells for anyone reading those terms.

Also, your bandwidth usage policy seems a bit tight - 500MB a month, and/or some other secret amount as determined by you? And if I exceed that, you reserve the right to cut me off immediately, with no warning? I don't think that would do my campaign much good

Why are the prices all blurred out on the 'pricing' page? Why do I have to watch a video to find out what it's going to cost me after the trial? You're making me work too hard!

The term 'Beta' is used a lot. I don't think many people want to sign up to beta services - pretty sure you could use a different word or phrase. 'Beta' sounds like it doesn't work properly.

[Ted S]

Ok, that makes more sense.

I can see why you'd want some outside advice... your site has a lot going on without a clear message, value or clear design.

You'll have the best success working from suggestions rather than looking cold. But if you don't get, or don't like the suggestions of colleagues, think outcome versus inputs. If you're getting people who don't know what they're doing, chances are you're either giving them too little to work with or looking too far down the ladder.

As a marketer, the more you succeed, the more you get to charge... Trying to save a few bucks and avoid the "expensive guys" generally means more time gets spent from people who know how to tweak, not shift. That's not to say you should pick someone because they're pricey but rather than if you're thinking you'll get a really useful strategy from someone who has been around the block for $50 an hour, you're kidding yourself (or again, were told about some amazing individual who is still working their way up).

But no one, no matter how good they are, can just make it all work. Good strategy means identifying the opportunity and the challenges to address both over time. That's never a quick path, especially when you're looking for initial success.