What is SaaS marketing? 5 strategies that work
Often seen as one of the most efficient and accessible business models, it’s no doubt the SaaS (software as a service) business is booming.
SaaS applications run in the cloud, and are typically available both through a web interface as well as through mobile apps. But with increased competition, it can be hard for SaaS companies to stand out. Unlike tangible products, SaaS can prove challenging to market when we think about how much of the product or service requires demonstration.
In almost every scenario, SaaS products are intangible. As a result, it’s important to dedicate your marketing towards digital channels and content marketing in order to tell the story.
Let’s dive into a few SaaS marketing strategies that can help:
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a great way to generate leads for many SaaS products. At its most basic level, getting more traffic to your website involves publishing high-quality content. The topics you choose to write about should align with the interests of your target audience. For example, if you had a customer management software (CMS), you could focus your content on cross- collaboration amongst teams, leadership, how to’s, etc.
To that end, a well-thought-out search engine optimization (SEO) strategy is key to boosting website traffic and goes hand-in-hand with content marketing. The premise is simple, but involves some research to truly yield results.
From an organic SEO standpoint, you’re essentially creating and tailoring content so that it appears as high as possible on search engine results pages.
From a paid perspective, Google Ads are your best bet when it comes to driving potential leads to your website through pay per click (PPC) ads. Hubspot has some great tools and resources to help you get started.
Referral Marketing
As a SaaS startup, your clients are often the product experts. Creating user-generated content allows you to engage with your existing customers while also forming relationships with prospective new ones.
It can also serve as a great tool for a referral program. Offering access or discounts to an exclusive feature of your service in return for a testimonial and/or referral is a tried and true example.
Case Studies
By the same token, case studies are a great way to showcase your product and the value it brings to a customer. As a marketing tool, it demonstrates your expertise while offering potential customers a sense of relatability. By comparing their pain points to that of another business, a case study allows them to discover how your product helped solve it.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most useful tools for SaaS companies, encompassing the customer journey with various elements of engagement.
Email marketing can capture lead generation and lead nurturing metrics, to customer retention and support.
There are a ton of email marketing softwares out there. The best ones are those that can successfully integrate all elements of the entire sales funnel together and implement the strategies described above.
SaaS companies often require a full suite of customer features that can easily be embedded into your email marketing suite – from account creation and onboarding to customer service and retention.
Doing so requires built in email automation that allows you to capture more leads. Some strategies include:
- Auto-responders: Automatically respond to email inquiries and interactions – or set up delayed responses.
- Auto campaigns: Send automated email campaigns within certain timeframes.
- Proactive email automation: Advanced email automation that sends messages in response to user actions.
- Personalization: Automatically personalize emails to certain recipients in order to boost relevance and create meaningful call to actions.
Free Trials
One of the many advantages of being a SaaS company is the opportunity to offer free product trials, which can lead to acquiring new customers and increasing your recurring revenue. Depending on your product, there is often little to no cost in allowing a potential customer to try it out for free for a limited period of time.
This allows you the chance to not only demonstrate your product’s capabilities, but your company’s customer engagement and dedication to exceptional service.
The end of a trial period also allows you to gain valuable insight into customer feedback – discovering what potential customers liked and disliked about the product while they were using it. Customer feedback is an essential part of marketing. Not only does it help guide and inform your decision making, but it can also spur innovation and changes to your product or service.
Ultimately, the best marketing strategies for SaaS products are the ones that work for you. Don’t be afraid to test new methods + tools designed to create quality leads and generate more revenue. It’s important to keep in mind that the state of SaaS is always evolving, so it’s important for you and your team to be on top of industry trends and insights to increase revenue and help you reach new customers.
