YouTube influencer marketing for SaaS

Software has no box to open. What it has is a screen, and YouTube is full of people watching other people's screens to learn how to do something. That shapes how a SaaS sponsorship should work.

• The product has to be shown working. A list of features read to camera is easy to skip. A creator using your product to do the thing the video is about is not.
• Buyers take their time. A viewer may start a trial weeks after the video, then pay on a different device. Plan attribution before launch.
• The best channels are often small. A channel teaching accountants a spreadsheet workflow may never pass a few thousand subscribers, and many of its viewers may be the people who choose their team's tools.
• Trust is the asset. Viewers follow a tutorial creator's recommendations because they've learned from them before. A poor fit spends that trust.

Tutorial channels

Step-by-step videos on a tool or task. The natural home for a product that does part of that task.

Workflow and productivity channels

"How I organise my week" and "my tech stack" videos. Software appears as part of a real routine, which is the most convincing way to show it.

Niche professional channels

Channels for accountants, developers, designers, recruiters, teachers and other trades. Small audiences, often full of people with a say in what their team buys.

Small-business and founder channels

Owners showing how they run things. Good for tools aimed at small teams.

Comparison channels

"[Tool] vs [tool]" and "best tools for [job]" videos. Viewers are already choosing, and the videos keep getting found through search.

Search YouTube for the problem your product solves, not for your product category. Phrases like these find better channels than "[category] software":

• [task] tutorial
• how I [task] for my business
• [job title] workflow
• my tech stack
• [competitor] alternative
• [task] for beginners

1. 01

   Describe the jobs your product does

   Write down the tasks it handles, who does them, and in which countries and languages. These become your search phrases.

2. 02

   Judge the audience, not the size

   Read the comments. Viewers asking which tool the creator uses, or describing their own setup, look like your buyers. Median views of recent videos matter more than subscriber count. See how to vet a YouTube creator.

3. 03

   Offer something worth trying

   Your trial is free already, so a percentage off a price the viewer hasn't seen means little. An extended trial code, for example 60 days instead of 14, gives viewers a reason to use the creator's link.

4. 04

   Agree on a demo, not a script

   Ask the creator to use the product for a real task in the video. Agree the key points and the call to action, and leave the rest to them. See sponsorship formats for integrations against dedicated videos.

5. 05

   Measure over a full cycle

   Track trials and paid accounts from each creator's link and code for a full trial period plus your usual time to purchase before judging.

A viewer who signs up three weeks after a video, on a work laptop, after a colleague mentions it, won't show up as a click from YouTube. Use several signals together:

• A UTM-tagged link per creator, in the description and pinned comment, to record the visitors who click.
• An extended trial code per creator. People who type your address in later can still enter it at sign-up, and the code tells you who sent them.
• A "how did you hear about us" field at sign-up. Leave it as free text, so people can name the creator rather than just "YouTube".

Then work out cost per trial and cost per paying customer for each creator. Our guide to measuring YouTube sponsorships walks through it.

Nakodo starts from your product's website and writes a brief you can edit before it searches, including the kind of creator that fits, a subscriber range and YouTube search keywords. If your site talks mostly about features, edit the keywords towards tasks. Audience fit compares each channel's subscriber count with your range, so set it low if you want small specialist channels. Each channel gets a score from 0 to 100 with its reasons written out; the method is on how it works.

It finds the business email creators publish and emails the ones you choose on your behalf. Each first email mentions a recent video and states your offer, such as an extended trial, exactly as you set it. It never invents payment amounts, codes or deadlines. Nakodo follows up when there's no reply, brings your team the questions it can't answer, and introduces each creator who says yes by email.

• It doesn't send first emails without your approval, unless you choose to let them go out on their own.
• It doesn't guess addresses or get around YouTube's captcha, and never shows you a creator's address before an introduction.
• It doesn't negotiate, sign contracts or pay creators.