Can you suggest a couple of good apps for developing clickable prototypes?

The best way to build an MVP for any SaaS product is to create a landing page that looks like a real product. Here's an example of one I built. http://www.happiily.com In this case, it advertises the primary features of the product and invites people to sign-up. When they do, they are asked for information which qualifies the person and then sends me an email. I built this quickly and very inexpensively and started getting inbound leads from it shortly thereafter. I got on the phone with each person who signed-up and explained the features I wanted to build and was able to do a lot of customer learning based on that. Happy to talk to you in a call if you'd like to talk more about customer development with SaaS products.

Create an ideal customer profile. Create some questions that will allow to you survey a potential tester to determine if they fit your profile. Design simple landing page with very clear value proposition that speaks to your ideal customer. Ask for a minimum of information up-front (email), but ask for more info after they commit by submitting the first piece of info. (KISSmetrics does a good job of this on their current website trial signup). Use the their answers to these profiling questions to put the applicants into buckets. Let in the most ideal bucket first, or split them into groups if they're big enough. Try and measure engagement the best you can. Measure qualitative and quantitative data. Schedule calls with your beta testers to find out more, especially with the ones who's user behavior seemed to indicate that they didn't get value from your product. Find out why. Make sure they are indeed your ideal customer. Pick up the phone and get to know your customers inside and out. Meet them in person if possible. Incorporate their feedback quickly and get more feedback. Rinse repeat.

It depends a lot of in the skill sets and experience of both people but in most cases the ux designer should be controlling the developer pretty heavily in order to make sure his ideas come through properly. The UX designer may just need to work on his approach so people don't feel bossed around and more like they are working together. In an ideal world, there would be a project manager who makes sure everything is communicated well and keeps the dynamic feeling great.

You should try to engage people using social networks, it is easier to spread than email. The conversion rate on emails are low but is still a valid tool for that. Send and email with a simple and objective message that will make people want to try. The best way to have feedback from users is to watch them use the app. You should put them on the hands of everybody that you can and without any instrucions and just watch, don´t even say that the app is yours. Try to do it a lot. If you want feedback from others, you can include the feedback form inside the app and suggest users to answer occasionally. I would also strongly recommend to use a tool as Flurry Analytics. Is the best way to get data from how is the use of the application. Pay attention to those data and be open to change your app a lot, you may need more features or cut some off to make it easier to use. If you need more help please contact me.

For software development business LinkedIn ads, content marketing and Google Adwords don't work well. The best and most cost effective method is email outreach. Try to find the contacts of key decision makers in Bay Area from your target companies. You want to present yourselves as custom mobile and web development specialists and highlight your core competencies to get an initial call to discuss their mobile strategy or software development needs. Attaching your case studies how you helped other similar businesses and your portfolio can be extremely helpful as well. Try to always focus on the benefits in you pitch that they can get by working with you and point their missed opportunities of not having certain types of software or apps for their business. Clients love that software development companies have not only strong execution but also ideation skills. Hope this helps. If you have any questions I am also available on call for your convenience.