Unless you have been living under a rock during the past few weeks/months you are probably feeling the effect of the global pandemic that has become COVID-19, aka Coronavirus.
If you’ve been living under a rock, congrats that were probably a safe move. Stay there and don’t move.
in all seriousness, this has become a global phenomenon and it’s having a major impact on both the population and businesses of all kinds.
People say we’re going into a recession, and, unfortunately, I kinda agree. We’re seeing the effect of this first hand at our agency.
I was still too young during the recession in ’08, but this time I’m running my own business and I can see first hand how this shit creates anxiety and panic for people.
So, as I usually do I started looking for help with friends in business, books, articles online, etc.
Looking through my Kindle notes I found this gem:
Successes in business often come down to a tiny moment in time where a decision is made for some reason that drastically impacts the trajectory of the business. From that point forward, momentum kicks in, and success comes far easier.
So much success can be put down to just being there in a situation where something has momentum.
Source: Dan Norris – This Is the Answer (not an affiliate link)
This made me think.
What is momentum? Can we find momentum even when times are bad like they are now?
One of the definitions of momentum is “the impetus gained by a moving object.”
It goes without saying now that something that’s moving has more chances of gaining momentum than something that is still.
Then I thought,
Are there businesses or companies that have been moving and are keeping the momentum high even now?
What kind of companies are they?
Current Situation
Let’s take a look at the current situation online.
A quick search Google trends highlighted a few ideas to explore:
Here’s a screenshot I got from Exploding Topics, a pretty cool new (and free) tool by Brian Dean, which shows you the topics that are being talked about the most on the internet:
It’s pretty clear by looking at these trends what people are looking for in this time of crisis.
Remote work.
This can mean a few different things:
- People looking for remote work opportunities
- People looking for help transitioning from office to remote work.
Aha!
What do people need to work from home remotely?
Software.
Booming topics and companies
Here are a few companies that are literally exploding in popularity right now:
Where are the main opportunities?
From those ideas alone, it’s clear that there are 2 major opportunities and types of SaaS companies that can thrive during this economic and social crisis:
Companies that help businesses go remote
There is a huge knowledge gap between “us” (already working online) and most of these businesses which need help to make rapid changes and allow their staff to work from home without sacrificing productivity.
With this virus forcing everyone to stay at home and off work with a ton of businesses having to close their offices, it makes perfect sense that businesses that until now were years away from working online are having to make the big switch.
Companies that help people learn online
Besides this, most schools and training centers are closing and people still need to learn.
With a ton of people staying home, most with no job at all, smart people want to learn new skills and online learning becomes vital.
Startups in a bad economy
in his 2008 article “Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy“, Paul Graham said:
Startups often make things cheaper, so in that respect, they’re better positioned to prosper in a recession than big companies.
And also:
Another advantage of bad times is that there’s less competition.
I have to strongly agree with both of these ideas.
The assumption here is that most traditional businesses will (finally) realize the many benefits of going remote. Both on their team morale and on their wallet.
Here are just a few areas where software can help companies that decide to go remote:
- Project management
- Team Collaboration
- Cloud Storage
- Productivity
- Time Management
- Video Calls and Screen Sharing
- Employee Rewards
- Accountability and Reporting
- Customer support
Some not necessarily remote-only, but still useful and probably not very well known by most ‘real world” businesses:
- Note-Taking
- Lead gen
Now,
Can you name at least 5 SaaS products for each of these areas?
I think you can.
In fact, there are probably tens of alternatives and different products for each of those.
So which ones will companies decide to go with once they go online and search for “remote working tools”?
I think the answer is:
The companies that will have the best, better positioned and highest-ranking content out there.
Choose to survive or die
Brian Harris at growth Tools recently published a great article about why people should choose to stay on the offensive.
Here’s what he says:
2 ways you can respond as a business owner:
Option #1: Offense Attack. New offers. Rally team. Have the best 8 weeks ever. Double ad spend. Book 100 new partnerships. Kill stuff and bring it home. ATTACK!
Option #2: Defense Victim. Curl up. Layoff. Cut ad spend. Scared. Close your eyes. Hope against hope.
One of these puts you in control.
The other forces you to be a passive observer.
This is a great way of thinking.
As a practitioner of stoic philosophy myself, I can’t help but find a resemblance to one of the main principles in Stoicism, the Dichotomy of Control.
This is nothing more than making a distinction between what is under our control (our thoughts and actions) and what is not (most external events).
In this sense, we can’t control the effect that this virus is having and will have on the global economy, that’s for sure.
What we can control, is what we do in spite of all that.
We can choose to be proactive, to look for ways to help people and provide value.
What better way for SaaS companies to actually provide the means for thousands of people to work remotely and learn online?
Accumulative advantage
I recently stumbled upon an article by James Clear, with a very inspiring story:
Imagine two plants growing side by side. Each day they will compete for sunlight and soil. If one plant can grow just a little bit faster than the other, then it can stretch taller, catch more sunlight, and soak up more rain.
The next day, this additional energy allows the plant to grow even more. This pattern continues until the stronger plant crowds the other out and takes the lion’s share of sunlight, soil, and nutrients.
From this advantageous position, the winning plant has a better ability to spread seeds and reproduce, which gives the species an even bigger footprint in the next generation. This process gets repeated again and again until the plants that are slightly better than the competition dominate the entire forest.
Scientists refer to this effect as “accumulative advantage.” What begins as a small advantage gets bigger over time. One plant only needs a slight edge in the beginning to crowd out the competition and take over the entire forest.
Any decision that involves using a limited resource like time or money will naturally result in a winner-take-all situation.
From this advantageous position—with the gold medal in hand or with cash in the bank or from the chair of the Oval Office—the winner begins the process of accumulating advantages that make it easier for them to win the next time around.
This is very interesting.
What if you could create this advantage for your company now? Wouldn’t you like to come out of this situation as the winner who takes it all?
Sure this might involve risk, fear and failed experiments but at the end of the day, isn’t all of entrepreneurship made of those things?
What’s great is that some companies as shown earlier, are already taking advantage of the situation and choosing to show their strengths instead of curling up and being the victims.
How a few companies are doing it right
Post useful content and get links
As mentioned before, most traditional businesses are in a panic, they absolutely need to transition over to remote work before they run out of money.
What most of them are probably doing is go to Google and look for solutions to their problem.
These are typing searches like:
What I see straight away form this is that most searches have something to do with software tools that people can use.
Why not creating content to answer those questions and get found by your potential customers?
I know most companies are already doing this, it’s called content marketing, duh…
The thing is, now is the time to do it in a way that is more targeted towards the actual needs of people. Going remote.
If you’re one of those SaaS that can help here, you should be creating lots of very targeted content right now and do outreach directly to your potential customers.
here are a few examples from the big players:
Zoom
Zoom created a useful guide stile article with videos and screenshots:
And an official statement kind of page which has been getting a ton of backlinks as well:
Slack
The guys over at Slack published a ton of new articles related to remote working just in the past month:
What seems to be working best here are:
How to guides
People in traditional businesses aren’t very technologically minded, this is your opportunity to show them you are the expert and guide them to the solution (your product) and why they should care.
Interviews
People want reassurance, especially in times of crisis. They want to feel like they are not the only ones who are struggling. What better way of showing you understand and feel for them than interviewing their peers and showing them how you are helping others?
Templates
Templates are quick and easy ways to implement something new for people. Think of SOPs, step by step instructions, remote team meeting agendas, contingency plan templates, etc…
Get press mentions
Zoom is obviously also taking advantage of the whole mess and getting quite a lot of PR mentions:
Here’s what this article says about them:
However, Founder and CEO of Zoom.us, Eric Yuan, added $20 million to his net worth on Monday alone, while his total net worth went on to hit $5.6 billion, keeping him at rank 274 on Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In the year 2020 alone, the founder saw a spike of $2 billion in his fortune. The shares of the company have gone up by 0.4 percent, ramping up its year-to-date gain to 58 percent.
Known for its low latency superiority in the connections, Zoom.us was gradually growing in terms of user traction in the Silicon Valley, only until the coronavirus outbreak. After the pandemic spread, and working from home became the new norm, the San Francisco-based startup saw an overwhelming spike in its traction, which was unanticipated even for the team.
You see,
Now is your time to shine.
Show off (politely and by providing value) where you can and where your unique features can really help people make it through this difficult time.
Use link reclamation
It is also very likely that most companies will get mentioned in a variety of articles around the web without being linked to it.
You can take the opportunity to (always politely) ask for a link back where it makes sense.
After all,
Someone is already using your product and talking about it, why not make it easier for others to find it?
Conclusion
After all is said and done, I couldn’t put this better than Mike Weinberg:
These uncertain times provide an opportunity for you to make a profound impact on your perspective (and existing) customers
- be empathetic about the chaos they are facing and let them know you care, and that you’ll be around as the dust settles. Be likable. Be sensitive. Be others-focused!
- Sharpen your message (sales story) so you are leading with how you help/bring value / solve problems / achieve results.
- Prospects & clients are hurting in new ways, and if you don’t adapt and contextualize your strategy and your words, you’ll get ignored.
I do really believe this could be the time for a lot of great companies to not only don’t die but to absolutely do better than they ever have.
To cite the stoics again,
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
And since I can’t write an article without an 80’s movie reference in it…
So, let’s not get discouraged and try to make the most of what we already have, our willingness to help each other by providing solutions to problems.