Marketing your business, especially SaaS, is a full-time job. It’s not as simple as telling people on social media or forums that you have introduced a brand-new SaaS (software-as-a-service) and they should subscribe to it.
Nothing happens this way.
Maybe it’s due to the reason that its industry is exploding, and competition is massively increasing in the last few years.
Here are some interesting stats.
Look at this, and then I will tell you the best practices to leverage to market your SaaS product.
According to Gartner, end-user spending is predicted to be a whopping $208 billion by 2023. Look at this trend, SaaS industry growth rate is approximately 16.90%.
Given the impressive number, both large and small businesses are rushing into their offices to produce SaaS products in an attempt to make as much money as they can.
Right now, the SaaS industry is attracting major players, startups, and small businesses with its tremendous forecasted profit in the coming years.
You got it right; this market is getting crowded over time due to its high demand.
So, even if you have a great product and an amazing USP, you can’t win without a solid marketing plan. That’s what I am going to tell you in this guide.
I have also noticed that some SaaS owners somehow get users for their SaaS free plans, but they struggle a lot with getting subscribers.
It’s due to the reason that as they come to know any marketing strategy, they aggressively start investing in it.
They don’t know it’s not the right strategy, but the best strategy is to start with a full understanding of that marketing tool.
The amazing thing is that every marketing tool shares all the information to get optimal results for campaigns, but most people miss that.
The thumb rule: whatever strategies we are going to share here, choose the best one for you.
Then either hire a marketing consultant to build a strategy for you or spend time learning about getting optimal results from that marketing tool.
Got it?
Let’s get started now and discuss the best strategies to market SaaS products.
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Find your target audience:
If you are going to market your SaaS yourself, this is a key step, this is where many SaaS owners overlook it and they never get optimal results for their marketing efforts.
Be very specific about your audience. Define who you’re selling it to. Before anything else, find out who your target audience is. This will define everything else in your strategy to market your SaaS.
Your product can’t help every Indvidual or business, and if you try to do it, you’ll waste a lot of money on marketing.
Therefore, consider who would benefit most from your product and they have enough resources to pay you. Once you figure that out, stick to them like glue.
Now that you know who to sell it to, build a marketing plan around them.
It’s proven that focusing on one market at a time makes things easier and more trackable. Don’t spread yourself too thin by going global before perfecting a local market.
Create a content marketing strategy for your SaaS:
Here is another key thing that you must know to market your SaaS effectively: You must have a content marketing strategy for your SaaS product.
It will not only assist you content marketing but in almost all marketing strategies. You will already know what to share with your audience and what will convert them. There are basically three stages to creating a content marketing plan!
Educating Consumers:
Don’t just think that consumers are simple and don’t deserve the information they need. You would not believe how much more there is to them.
Giving them important information on products can place your brand as a thought leader in their minds. Not only that, but it helps them make better decisions and has a big impact on what they choose at the end of the day.
People don’t just come to your sales team to find out about something you have. They actually spend 27% of their time researching independently online to make a decision.
So, while creating a content marketing strategy, think of ideas that will educate your potential customers about your SaaS. It can include solutions to their problems, the advantages of your SaaS, or how your SaaS stands out from competitors.
Create Brand Awareness:
You should try to be the first company that people think about when looking for solutions in your niche. In order for businesses to engage with your product, they have to know about it first.
Think of it this way, if someone is hungry and wants food and they don’t know any good places around, they’re going to use Google, or ask a friend. But if you had already targeted them and told them about your business, they must be considering you as a first thought.
Isn’t it so?
The same applies here to your SaaS marketing. Try hard to build your brand, keep engaging with your potential customers so that, once they need a solution, your SaaS product should come to their minds first.
Build Trust:
There are dozens of other options for B2B solutions available in many niches you can get into; making yourself stand out is crucial.
The best places for this are social media, your blog section and reviews sites, where you have two chances—one by what you post and two by what others say about you.
These days, customers rely on reviews just as much as if their friend or family member referred something to them, which sits at 85%.
So, make sure to share what others are saying about your brand.
You can also build trust with high quality linkable assets. If you write amazing content that people link to, or share, then it will also develop trust.
Make use of social media for the marketing of SaaS:
Here is the first online platform to market SaaS products.
Just imagine, a little over half the people on earth use social media. So, it makes sense that it has become a key channel for worldwide companies.
Research shows that over 92.1% small businesses are marketing on social media platforms. So, it’s a no-brainer whether you should choose it or not.
In a nutshell, social media must be a part of your marketing plan!
There are two ways to leverage social media effectively for market your startup.
- Build profiles organically.
- Run ads.
Both are important for building an audience, establishing branding, and gaining trust.
Use SEO for lead generation
Search engine optimization (SEO) is still the top way to generate traffic to your sales in the B2B SaaS industry.
If you’re not using SEO to generate leads, others might be passing you up. They’re actively generating leads through search campaigns.
To compete with that, you’ll have to invest in SEO. This include carrying out keyword research, content creation, and link building.
You should first conduct keyword research on your target market. Optimize your site for those keywords, that often includes optimizing your product pages, and writing blog posts.
In SEO, you also work on your technical and off-site SEO. Both has a direct relation with how well your site will perform on search engines (called rankings).
If you work on this carefully, all this will lead you to get organic traffic from Google and all other search engines.
But as you know, it’s a very technical job, and you might not know what to do at any stage or how to do it effectively. You can choose our SEO services to handle everything and rank your SaaS at the top of Google.
Invest money into paid searches or pay-per-click (PPC)
If you’re not familiar with PPC, it’s an abbreviation for pay per click. This is an advertising technique that allows you to place ads in strategic places to drive traffic to your website.
This isn’t a replacement for content marketing and SEO, but it can be an excellent compliment. When you combine all three of these strategies, you’ll notice quick results.
But do not be misled—that does not imply free results.
Any advertising agency will tell you that making ads is a creative process. Give your group plenty of time to work on this. Ads need to be visually appealing and hold the customer’s attention long enough to get them clicking.
To find out what works best for your business, play around with different versions of ad copy and monitor metrics like keyword reach and viewer interest. By doing this, you’ll soon discover the perfect recipe for success.
Offer free trials:
Free trials are a double-edged sword for companies. Sure, it gets you customers, but the conversion rate of free trial users to paying customers is low.
Still, you can’t overlook it as your competitors must be doing it.
The problem is many businesses don’t even sign up for free trials.
The solution to this is: to offer a free trial period with no need for credit card information.
This method has been proven to increase conversion rates and build trust among your target audience.
Here’s how it works:
Create free trial pages on your website to collect emails that belong to genuinely interested prospects. Later on, these emails can be used to gently encourage them to become paying clients.
Leverage the Power of Deals and Discounts:
Deals and discounts can play a huge role in your marketing strategy as a SaaS company. These offers can show potential customers the higher value they can receive from you. They are also excellent for cross-selling and upselling.’
It’s worth mentioning that you should be selective when you choose to offer them. If people are offered deals all the time, it doesn’t feel like a special offer anymore. It starts to look like the regular price to access your service.
So, make sure to wait for special times when people actually buy more.
Referral marketing will help you win:
Referral marketing is an imitation of the classic word-of-mouth but with so much more to offer.
It’s all about getting current customers to recommend your service to people they know. They can do this on platforms such as LinkedIn or even quietly in a corner.
This has proven to be effective and can even be considered a very useful marketing strategy, especially for SaaS businesses.
The idea here is that the chances of bringing in qualified leads are higher since there is already a level of trust established between the customer and business through recommendations. This method can be found helpful by B2B SaaS brands that don’t want impulse decisions where they won’t get another customer.
But here an additional step to get recommendations. That’s a referral program.
Introduce smart incentives and rewards through referral programs. A good example of this is offering users access to more features or upgrading accounts for every person they refer.
A real-world example would be Dropbox, which provides users with additional storage space upon inviting friends.
Leverage email marketing:
You might think of email marketing as something old, but it’s very important to SaaS marketing.
Recall that we previously mentioned the potential length of a customer’s life cycle. Email is one of the best ways to make frequent one-on-one contact with customers.
Here are some examples of typical SaaS marketing emails:
- Onboarding emails (for product demos)
- Announcements about features
- Newsletters about your company
- New content (webinars, blog posts)
- Surveys
- Check-ins
Not to mention, half of SaaS users do not use their product and do not log in more than once a month. However, email is the perfect way to give them a push and also make sure they’re satisfied with your product.
Last but not least, you can also opt for cold emailing to introduce your SaaS. The best strategy is to find the email addresses of your potential customers from LinkedIn, business profiles, and review sites, and then email them with your offer.