For marketing success, a solid marketing strategy is a must. Coschedule, for instance, found that:
“Marketers with a documented strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t.”
Your marketing strategy is the blueprint to help your SaaS business attract leads, convert them to customers, and retain those customers for the long haul.
Wondering how to reach the right audience in a crowded market? We created this guide based on our industry experience guiding SaaS clients like you to success.
Otherwise, here are some tips to help you build a better SaaS marketing strategy:
To make sure your target audience finds your business in the first place, you’ll need to start by focusing on search engine optimization. This doesn’t have to be a long and complex process — the foundation of strong SEO is to build your website on relevant, well-targeted keywords.
If you’re not sure which keywords work best for your business, you may want to spend some time on keyword research. Identify what actual search terms your target customers would be likely to enter into a search bar. Don’t forget to consider which terms your website is already being found for — use a web analytics tool like Google Analytics to find out which search terms your existing visitors used to find you.
Once you’ve identified which terms work best for your SaaS product, make sure that you have used them appropriately on your website. You’ll also want to consider other factors that will make your website perform well on search engines — page load time, internal links, and the use of titles and descriptions.
To learn more about best practices for using inbound marketing on your website, watch our on-demand webinar for everything you should know.
Of course, SEO isn’t just something you do to your own website. To perform well on Google, you’ll also need other trusted websites to link to you. And how do you get links back to your site? Create valuable, informative content that other people want to share, and then plan a regular schedule to distribute it. In other words, you need a content marketing strategy.
In his article, “How SaaS Marketing is Different,” Neil Patel flags how fundamental content is to SaaS success:
“SaaS marketing depends on information. It’s amazing how foundational this is, yet how often overlooked...If you are a B2B SaaS marketer, think of yourself in different terms from mere “marketer.” Think of yourself as an industry savant — the one who possesses and dispenses information.”
What’s more, SaaS marketers have a unique advantage in content marketing. By the very nature of your product, you have access to a wealth of data that you can convert into fascinating content — think white papers, infographics, helpful blog posts on user behavior...the list goes on. Great content not only attracts leads to your site; it also helps build your company’s reputation as an authority in your industry.
Referrals are marketing gold dust. HubSpot calls referrals - where existing users recommend your software to their contacts — “one of the most effective types of leads”. No wonder really - nothing builds trust in a product more than knowing it is already being used by someone we know personally. So how can you generate more referrals for your SaaS business?
Firstly, make it extremely easy for your users to refer your company. Simply asking can be enough to drive referral numbers up. At the minimum, add a landing page on your website where people can make referrals. You could also consider adding a referral CTA in the software itself.
Secondly, make sure that all customer-facing personnel know that they should be asking for referrals, and provide templates for them to use.
Finally, consider incentivizing referrals. This is a delicate balancing act. If you incentivize too heavily, you may find that the quality of referrals goes down — people recommend your software to everyone they know, regardless of its suitability, in order to claim the incentive. To reduce the risk of poor-quality referrals, make sure that you are clear on what counts as a referral, what kinds of leads are useful to you, and explain that incentives will only be paid out for real referrals.
No matter how effectively you have designed and optimized your site, no matter how clear your calls to action or how compelling your content, most web visitors will simply look around — and leave again. To get the most out of your hard-won web traffic, consider using retargeting to lure them back to your site again. Retargeting means that you track who visits your website, and then show them online ads on other sites they interact with. You can do this via Facebook Business Manager, Google AdWords, or via a platform like HubSpot. To get the most out of retargeting, consider customizing your ads based on which URL the lead has visited on your site.
Another aspect that gives you a major advantage when you’re marketing SaaS is that you can give away your product for free. Most SaaS companies offer a free trial — a highly effective conversion tool, as your lead can start using your software and see the value it offers for themselves. However, product trials are a subtle art. Overwhelm your prospect with information and features, and you can risk sending them running for the hills but too much handholding can come off as irritatingly intrusive.
To maximize your product trial conversion rate, make sure that people have a frictionless experience using your product. This might mean following up a trial sign-up with a phone call, webinar, or email series. You might want to consider restricting features to simplify the experience. Leads who are demo-ing your software are showing a clear indication of purchase interest, so it’s well worth investing time and effort polishing up your onboarding process.
SaaS has a short sales cycle. Unlike traditional B2B or enterprise software sales, a lead can become a customer on the same day, or within a few days of starting a trial. However, this only works to your advantage if you make it incredibly easy for leads to buy. For instance, make sure that anyone using the demo finds it effortless to click the Buy button at any stage during the trial. Be transparent about the sales process and what the customer gets when they buy. Spend time optimizing your buy page — consider adding a chatbot to make sure that any questions can be dealt with instantly.
SaaS companies are constantly at risk of customer churn. Users sign up, try the product out, decide that it doesn’t provide them with the value they expected, and leave. To prevent churn, you’ll need to do two things:
SaaS business success relies on delighting your users. This, of course, means creating an exceptional product, but it also means backing that product up with fantastic customer service.
Firstly, make your support incredibly easy to find. Customers should be able to easily locate support with one click of a button. For complex issues, people generally appreciate the ease of talking to a person. There’s simply nothing like solving a problem in a short phone call rather than trading several days of back-and-forth emails.
Secondly, provide multiple options for accessing support. Sprout Social advises using social media for customer service — for instance, offering customer service hours on Twitter, or sharing answers to common user questions in your social media posts.
And, of course, last but not least:
Your marketing strategy can only take you so far. Your top priority has to be creating a product that people love to use, that they rave about and recommend to others. This means taking into consideration every interaction users have with your product. Experts emphasize that while “it is important for your product to be 100% technically sound. It needs to be stable and provide scalable solutions to your customers.”
Ideally, your product should sell itself. Ease of usability should be reflected in registration, setting up customer data, reporting, and analytics.
We hope these tips help you build an outstanding SaaS marketing strategy. If you’d like the help of our digital marketing experts in taking your marketing plan to the next level, click here to set up a free consultation call.
