Ep14: Raven Tools Co-Founder Jon Henshaw Talks About The Importance of ‘Participation Marketing’ & Affiliate Marketing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Today’s interview is with Raven Tools co-founder Jon Henshaw. Jon’s company made the transition from a service based company to a SaaS product and talks about the challenges he faced while making the pivot. You’ll learn about what participation marketing is and how you can acquire your first 300 users by doing it. Lots more in this episode – enjoy!

Key Takeaways

• Use ‘Participation Marketing’, which is attending industry events and building relationships with people to establish a name for yourself.
• Affiliate marketing is massively helpful, especially for SaaS products, if the pricing is right. Not a lot of startups like doing affiliate marketing. This is due to a lack of understanding. Raven Tools uses ShareASale. Affiliate Program Management: An Hour a Day is a highly recommended book for marketing people to learn about it.
• Jon stays up to date with his industry by knowing how to spot trends and what ‘really’ matters, such as Schema from Google. This takes experience but in general, SEO hasn’t changed much for people that have been in the field for awhile.
• Transitioning from a service company to SaaS is difficult because sometimes people are just no longer a fit – you’re going to have to let people go. Don’t drag it.
• Service based businesses are very up and down. SaaS based businesses take time (7 years) to get going.