4 Tips that Will Help to Align Your SaaS Customer Acquisition Strategy
To say that SaaS businesses are “complex” is an understatement.
SaaS businesses are extraordinarily complex, nearly defying the limits of believability and surpassing the skills of the most analytical and brilliant minds.
In the arena of customer acquisition, this complexity may seem completely indomitable.
If your SaaS marketing is always in 5-alarm mode, you need some way to simplify, systematize, and generate revenue.
This article explains one method that I've used. Simply stated, this is what it is: I align my SaaS customer acquisition strategy with my customer’s needs, product purpose, business goals, and marketing methods.
1. Acquire SaaS customers who need the product.
Let me start off with a brutal reality of selling.
Not everyone needs your product.
As Joel York put it,
Selling to everyone is one of the biggest causes of poor SaaS customer alignment.
In other words, your SaaS customer alignment spins out of control when you attempt to pawn your product on every unsuspecting buyer whom you think might at some point desire your product.
The fact is, not everyone wants, needs, or should buy your product. Even the world’s biggest SaaS by revenue (Salesforce, at 3.05 billion) doesn’t go after everyone.
You will succeed at customer acquisition as long as you define your target audience and focus on them. Pursuing everyone else will only waste your marketing resources and spin your operational wheels.
2. Acquire SaaS customers who want the product for its intended purpose.
There are two sides to the customer acquisition coin — the customers and the product itself.
On the one side, potential customers should need the product. On the flip side, the product should match the customer’s need. It works both ways.
You designed your SaaS for a purpose. In your attempt to acquire customers, you must insist upon the unique selling proposition (USP) for your SaaS. Your SaaS won’t solve every problem, fix every situation, and match every desire.
Your SaaS has an intended purpose, and you must acquire customers who want and will use the product for its intended purpose.
And what if you don’t do this?
Churn.
A high churn rate is the silent killer of SaaS customer acquisition. As important as your customer acquisition rate is it will continue to be misaligned if you are not marketing towards the specific use of the product.
When customers realize that the product is not meeting their needs, they will discontinue the service.
The result is a churn rate that cannibalizes revenue and compromises your customer acquisition process.
Retention Science makes this salient observation:
As long as customer acquisition keeps consuming marketing efforts, customer churn will continue to rise.
Should you continue to focus on customer acquisition? Absolutely! But in order to be truly aligned, you must keep one eye on the churn rate. To keep churn rate low, seek to acquire customers who are in it for the long game — who want the product for its intended purpose.
3. Acquire SaaS customers in a rate and quantity that helps you to achieve your business goals.
The rate at which you acquire customers is vitally important to the success of your overall acquisition efforts.
As typical thinking goes,
We want to acquire customers as fast as possible.
Actually? Maybe not.
Why not? It’s not quite that simple. First, you need to determine your CaC (customer acquisition cost) to determine a realistic rate of acquisition. Second, you should calculate the LTV (lifetime value) of each customer.
Most importantly, you should calculate these numbers in relation to your overall cash flow and forecasts.
Keeping your acquisition strategy in line with business goals is virtually the only way you can stay sane and maintain perspective.
4. Acquire SaaS customers in methods that are in keeping with your marketing methods.
Marketing method is where a lot of SaaS customer acquisition goes off the rails.
Here’s why.
SaaS marketing can be extraordinarily complex in the morass of free trials, trial duration, conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and the whole jumble of methods, metrics, and analytics.
I get that.
Admittedly, there is no easy way to do SaaS marketing. However, once you align your customer acquisition strategy with your marketing methods, you’re well on your way to sleeping better at night.
What kinds of marketing methods work best for SaaS customer acquisition?
- SEO - The tried-and-true principles of SEO should be included in any SaaS marketing strategy.
- Content Marketing - Content marketing is incredibly broad, but incredibly effective. SaaS marketing requires content in many forms and in high quantity. Make sure that a robust content marketing strategy is part of your approach.
- Growth Hacking - The methods within “growth hacking” vary widely. At its core, growth hacking is about a mindset that leads to methods that are cost-effective, massive, and progressive.
Conclusion
Achieving alignment with your customer acquisition strategy is an important part of the business building process.
Getting alignment is about creating a strategy that fits these parameters:
- I will acquire SaaS customers who need this product.
- I will acquire SaaS customers who want this product for its intended purpose.
- I will acquire SaaS customers in a rate and quantity that helps me achieve business goals.
- I will acquire SaaS customers in methods that are in keeping within our marketing methods.
How have you accomplished a streamlined customer acquisition strategy?