The SaaS ecosystem, on one hand, is flourishing with a CAGR of 27.5% for the period of 2021-2028. On the other hand, most startups are failing because of no market need, getting outcompeted, flawed business models, or not having the right team.
This poses the question, how can your SaaS brand survive in this competitive market? An even bigger question is how can you achieve the desired growth for your SaaS brand?
The short answer is: An aptly designed and implemented SaaS marketing strategy. It can help you accomplish all your ambitious goals.
This requires using modern tactics and techniques to promote your product and change the status quo to become a highly profitable SaaS business.
While you are enroute to becoming one, it’s essential to understand the basics of SaaS marketing and how it's different from regular marketing. Let’s get that out of the way:
What is SaaS Marketing and How It’s Different?
SaaS products are intangible, meaning they have no physical presence and are constantly evolving with the addition of new features and functions. While the basics of marketing like traffic, leads, and conversion generation are still the same, the fundamental tactics used for each differ greatly.
The other factor that differentiates SaaS marketing from the rest is that the industry is based on a subscription model which generates recurring revenue for SaaS brands. However, generating such revenue and sustaining your SaaS brand is a challenge in itself.
Because first, you need to build awareness about your product, personalize, and enhance the experience for each user touch point, and amplify outcomes using growth-focused marketing strategies. Here’s how you can create a growth-driven SaaS marketing plan:
How to Create a Growth-Focused SaaS Marketing Strategy?
1. Embrace Content To Amplify Your Growth
SaaS content marketing should be your primary weapon to amplify business growth. It’s also closely tied to improving SEO for your SaaS brand.
One way you can approach this is by creating crisp and to-the-point content for customers in each stage of the funnel. Moreover, instead of focusing only on product features, go deeper into the likely outcomes and benefits your target audience will experience.
Also, SaaS products tend to be complex and need thorough guides and tutorials that dive deep into explaining each aspect of your product.
Doing so increases your chances of getting found on the internet through organic ways like SEO. Further, you can even take help from SEO experts to bolster your SaaS brand’s digital presence using content marketing. You can also hire a virtual assistant to help implement your content marketing.
2. Improve Customer Experience at Every Touchpoint
While great content can persuade users of how great your product is, offering an excellent customer experience can help differentiate your brand from the rest. It's the key to unlocking and maximizing the customer lifetime value. Achieving such a feat requires you to improve your experience at every touch point beginning with your website.
Websites are often the first point of contact for customers that can level up your user experience. So, consider going an extra-mile to help users with other touch points like hosting a webinar, sharing templates, and providing information guides.
3. Boost Conversions with Free Trials/Freemiums
The SaaS business model has an ability to generate recurring revenue for you, which for customers, is a recurring investment. Before making such a hefty investment, your customers are bound to think twice. They need a little push that convinces them that your product is worth all their money.
That’s where free trials/freemiums come into the picture. Free trials or a freemium SaaS model can boost conversions like never seen before. The only thing you need to ensure is to make signing up for your product effortless for customers.
Also, it’d be best if you don’t ask for credit card information and make it a risk-free deal for customers. This is beneficial for you because as per our statistics, SaaS companies that do not require users to provide credit card info for the sign-up process generate twice as many paying customers.
4. Implement A/B tests for Growth Expansion
A/B testing includes analyzing certain aspects of your SaaS marketing strategy by creating different versions to check their effectiveness. Some of the most common yet important elements to run A/B tests include CTAs, landing page copy, heading/subheadings, and others.
A/B testing essentially refers to creating two or more versions of a page to see which one brings more traffic, leads, and conversions. Before running an A/B test, clearly define the goals you want to accomplish. Doing so will help you keep all your efforts focused on improving key metrics of your SaaS product.
5. Attract Customers with Remarketing/PPC Ads
Paid search ads like Google PPC Ads, remarketing ads, social ads, and others are effective in helping you get in front of your target audience. Leveraging the power of paid ads, you can reach the right kind of customers and scale your marketing efforts faster and easier.
However, not all paid channels are worth putting in your hard-earned money. Also, extensively research and find what keywords and their variations your target audience mostly uses. Getting your hands on such data will enable you to run better ads that bring more customers to your SaaS product.
6. Leverage Affiliate and Referral Marketing
Affiliate and referral marketing acts as a digitized version of word-of-mouth marketing. First up, affiliate marketing is a method to leverage the popularity of niche bloggers, marketers, publishers, and others to promote your SaaS product and offer a commission in return for each sale.
Referral marketing is where your existing customers refer to your product and bring in new leads and customers in return for an appropriate incentive. This could include a free month of service, an extended trial period, or anything appropriate just for referring your SaaS product to a friend or a colleague.
Leveraging referral and affiliate marketing strategies guarantees you’ll get a steady stream of new prospects and potential customers that are interested in your SaaS product.
7. Use Smart CTAs to Trigger Conversions
Smart CTAs are extremely effective in triggering users to take action by showing the right message. According to HubSpot, personalized and targeted calls-to-action see 42% higher clicks than the CTAs that are the same for all the users.
Creating such smart CTAs requires you to first analyze what steps you want your target audience to take when they click the CTA button. Without having such specific knowledge, your CTAs will likely show ineffective results. Also, ensure your CTAs are placed in a visible location for users to easily access them.
8. Onboard New Customers with ABM
Also known as target account selling, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is great if you want to close bigger deals and onboard new clients efficiently. Here, you can tailor your marketing content and deliver a personalized message that increases the likelihood of conversion.
ABM works on first identifying the target accounts, researching them, and developing a personalized marketing plan. If executed shrewdly, it can be an unmissable weapon in your arsenal. Furthermore, you get valuable insights about your customers that help you make necessary modifications to your other SaaS marketing aspects.
You may also add dynamic QR codes to track, analyze, and retarget your customers. All you need is a dynamic QR code generator.
Wrapping Up
Adopting these SaaS marketing tips and strategies is a surefire way to improve your lead generation and SaaS conversion ratios. However, remember that the marketing sphere is constantly evolving and is greatly influenced by the changing user habits and needs.
Thus, you always need to continually review your marketing plans to build a growth-focused marketing strategy for SaaS business. Define essential benchmarks and key performance indicators for your SaaS marketing growth and start improving them at once.
FAQ's
1. How is SaaS marketing different from other marketing?
SaaS products have no physical presence and are constantly evolving with the addition of new features and functions. Also, the SaaS industry is based on a subscription model, which generates recurring revenue for SaaS brands.
2. How can I create a growth-focused SaaS marketing strategy?
Here are some top tips you should follow to create a growth-focused SaaS marketing strategy:
- Use content marketing to amplify your growth
- Concentrate on improving customer experience at every touchpoint
- Offer free trials/freemiums to boost conversions
- Expand your growth by implementing A/B testing
- Leverage remarketing, PPC ads, affiliate marketing, and referral marketing to attract customers
- Create smart CTAs to drive conversions
- Onboard new customers with Account-Based Marketing.
