Marketplace Marketing: Getting Traction on AWS and Azure

The Hidden Power of Cloud Marketplaces

When Sarah founded CloudSecTools, a security monitoring solution for cloud environments, she faced the classic startup challenge: how to get enterprise customers without a massive sales team. Her team had built a solid product that helped businesses detect unusual activity patterns across their cloud resources, but sales cycles were painfully long.

"We were spending months on each enterprise deal," Sarah recalls. "Our sales process was killing us - security reviews, procurement processes, and contract negotiations were eating all our time and runway."

The turning point came when a potential customer asked if CloudSecTools was available on the AWS Marketplace. This seemingly simple question led Sarah to discover a game-changing distribution channel. Within three months of listing on AWS Marketplace, CloudSecTools had closed more deals than in the previous year combined.

"The marketplace completely transformed our business," Sarah explains. "Enterprises that already had AWS commitments could purchase our solution using their existing cloud budget. The security and procurement hurdles basically vanished because AWS had already handled those concerns."

By the six-month mark, CloudSecTools had expanded to the Azure Marketplace as well, opening up a whole new customer segment. Today, over 70% of their revenue comes through cloud marketplaces, with minimal sales effort required for each new customer.

Sarah's story highlights how cloud marketplaces can be a powerful channel for indie developers and SaaS founders looking to break into enterprise sales without the traditional enterprise sales machine.