17 Proven SaaS Marketing Strategies That Rock!
Shane Barker
Founder @TraceFuse.ai | Amazon Expert | E-commerce Strategist | Influencer Marketing Specialist | Speaker
SaaS marketing is a tricky task that poses a number of challenges that most other marketers don’t face. Software as a Service, or SaaS, can be described as a method of distributing or delivering software. The software applications are centrally hosted by a service provider. So, you can see how it’s incredibly difficult to successfully market this service. SaaS marketing involves dealing with something that’s not only constantly changing, but also lacking a physical presence.
17 Proven SAAS Marketing Strategies
In this post, I’ll discuss some of the best SaaS marketing strategies to help successfully market your SaaS service to your target audience.
#1 Clearly display the price
Clearly showing how much your customers need to pay is one of the most important points to SaaS marketing. Build the pricing page in such a way that potential customers can quickly decide whether or not they can afford the price. In the example image below, the monthly and annual pricing details for Vimeo Plus can be clearly seen.
#2 Give away free stuff
Unlike marketing physical products, SaaS marketing allows you to give away the full product for free to promote it. In fact, free trials are among the most effective marketing tactics for SaaS services. The key is to have an effective strategy that gets users to make a purchase later. Below, you can see how Ahrefs offers a free trial to visitors.
#3 Offer fewer choices
Too many different choices can confuse potential customers, which may result in them abandoning a purchase. While four is a popular number for the variety of pricing plans offered, three might be better. A case study published on Unbounce showed how a 16.93% increase in conversions after the number of registration options was reduced from four to three.
#4 Make sign-ups easy
When you want more people to try your SaaS product, you need to remove as many hurdles to the sign-up process as possible. Remember that asking for credit card information in a free trial sign-up could chase away potential customers. A case study by Content Verve found that a simplified three-step form was able to increase conversions by 30%. In the old three-step form depicted below, users had to enter quite a lot of information.
However, the new form below requires users to enter just over 10 fields to complete the sign-up process. Hassle-free sign-ups are crucial for SaaS marketing.
#5 Improve customer experience
Even if you have excellent products at great prices, you won’t really get ahead if your customers don’t have a good experience. A great way to ensure a better customer experience is by making your service as personalized as possible. For instance, send them a personalized welcome email once they complete the sign-up process. You could also send out such emails when you notice that active customers are slipping.
#6 Create good deals
For SaaS marketing, getting users to pay upfront for a long period can help with the cash flow. Give customers good deals for a long-term contract like Ninja Outreach does. In the following image, you can see there’s a 25% off discount for a one-year contract. Retaining your customers for a longer term works wonders for your revenue. In fact, Gartner Group reported that 80% of your future revenue will be from just a few (20%) of your existing customers.
#7 Engage users through important milestones
With SaaS marketing, it may be easy to get trial user, but it can be a huge challenge to convert them into long-term customers. This may be simpler if you improve customer engagement. Try creating success milestones like in the case of Hint Health. The company created key events, such as inviting other people to try the app and configuring their email address. After a few weeks, Hint Health was able to get a 10% increase in sales and pricing reviews.
Read the full post on Shane Barker's Blog