8 Common SaaS Marketing Mistakes

Why working with a SaaS business is fun

Working with SaaS clients is one of the most rewarding gigs our digital agency can do. Why?

1. SaaS companies are naturally receptive to self-improvement.
2. SaaS leadership are digitally literate and take a scientific approach to systems and processes.
3. SaaS employees embody this same combination of receptivity and scientific curiosity, reducing barriers to change management.

Here are the most common issues uncovered when we engage with SaaS clients in digital marketing and business consulting.

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1. SPRAWLING YOUR PRODUCT LIKE YELLOWSTONE RANCH

The show, Yellowstone, has spawned a universe of characters and other series. Your SaaS business is not Yellowstone, not yet.

Ideally, your SaaS company was a lemonade stand perched on a shady corner within a warm, sunny village. That's how many SaaS startups find success. They do the right minimal viable product (MVP) at the right place, at the right time. Scaling that lemonade stand into Jamba Juice is an entirely different playbook.

Common among many SaaS products is that they can do a lot of things for a lot of people. And that's good. You eventually want to serve many industries and use cases. However, listicles of features and benefits tempt the founders and product managers to jump at every shiny thing in the sea.

More about why you first do a business case before expanding into new markets later.

Defining your product begins with identifying the ICP who buys it, the ideal customer profile. That is a data-driven exercise, not an off-site meeting where drinking may be involved. While many of us have opinions, it is past sales data and customer propensity to buy that matters. And that is a fact-based exercise. You corral the business plan in just that: a fenced corral...not the entire Yellowstone ranch.

Once you can clearly say in a few words where your highest quality ARR has taken root, you may be ready to pivot into new spaces with your product. But first things first: know who is paying the bills and who keeps the lights on. That is your ICP, here and now. Not the 12 other personas you think are promising.

Have you fully exploited the ICP with the product as-is? Avoid technology debt by sticking to your knitting.

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The decision-maker is the person who matters. They opened the purse.

2. WHO IS THE TARGET MARKET?

We just talked about the ICP, whom you identify by looking at customers in your database and finding the most profitable profiles. That can be by job titles, geography, industry, use case. More likely, it is a profile reflecting multiple variables from those kinds of demographic tags.

From there, you might need to do customer interviews or a customer advisory board to engage first-hand with people who write checks and buy the product. The buyers may be users—but the buyers also may be the executive champion who sent folks out to find and source a product like yours. That decision-maker is the person who matters. They opened the purse.

Later, you can get into advanced user needs, so you can reduce support tickets and address churn or win-loss reports from sales. But once again: first things first. The one who pays the bill is the most important voice at the table.

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3. ESTABLISH BRAND CREDIBILITY

Many continue to think of branding as a logo, colors, or the website. Branding is the entire experience of the brand. That means your SDRs, BDRs, and support walk and talk from the same playbook in a unified voice.

Your people are the brand. To establish credibility, you need a great logo and website. But you also need cultural alignment and product knowledge down to each individual employee. The experience after sign-up should be special, efficient, and perhaps have touches of flair as to who you are.

The experience along with some sparklers that delight or surprise establish credibility and differentiate the SaaS product. Digital stuff feels human, and people today yearn for human interaction in a world of bots and flat design look-alikes.

Social proof is integral, which means not only testimonials, but customer stories. The case studies are done methodically, picking use cases, industries, and job titles that speak to your ICP. While many may be willing to be featured in case studies, it is often the busiest, least available customer who is most valuable to your social proof.

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4. GENERATING LEADS

Demand generation is a major sore point, and often an organization becomes hyperventilated on dips in MQLs.

The trust is, if the first 3 points above are not in order, all the SEM and SEO in the world is not going to profitably grow the business. Lead generation also entails day-to-day study and management of your paid ads and monthly enhancements to SEO to remain leading edge.

Also note, SEO has changed dramatically. It is about usability, and Google’s Helpful Content Update in 2022 was a major shift. The days of churning out blogs is bygone. Try searching some of your keywords on Google or Bing. Do you see blogs showing up?

Probably not. So, think again about what SEO entails today. The cheese has moved.

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Directly address the patterns of objections not being satisfied in the mid-to late-stages of the funnel.

5. SO-SO SALES SUPPORT

Struggling SaaS companies may have a beautiful product. If they struggle with bookings or churn, it is often caused by over-confidence in the product while competitors outflanked it overnight. They fail to invest in the voice of the customer and the customer journey—and what sales and support need to maintain a well-oiled machine.

Also, salespeople get impatient if they can’t make their numbers. Listen to them, then tweak or produce new materials that directly address the patterns of objections not being satisfied in the mid-to late-stages of the funnel. Many tend to discount their salespeople, who cannot win by discounting a buyer's objections.

Some of the most vital materials for SaaS sales include:

• A clean, differentiated web site, where you have invested tons of hours on the H1, the pricing page, product walkthroughs, and use cases per persona.
• Next, sales need a battlecard per product and per segment. If you do not know what a battlecard is, Google it or ask an agency like ours.
• From there, organize the content to the buyer journey. Deliver content via emails or the salesperson to address the buyer’s expectations—from liking and preference into conviction and close.

Customer journey mapping is nice. Going back to map and stage how and when specific content gets delivered along that journey is what changes good SaaS marketing from stellar SaaS marketing.

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Competitors just as smart as you are already in the market. Respect them, or they’ll crush you.

6. POORLY PLANNED NEW MARKET LAUNCHES

According to Gartner,?a key step is to understand your target market and what it needs from a SaaS solution—that is not already being delivered by competitors. That sounds kinda,“Well, duh,” doesn’t it?

The next steps are not: write a press release, put up a new web page, do a webinar. Nope.

Instead, you form a small team to research and write a business case. Treat the new market like it was a new company.

1. Who is the ICP?
2. How are we different to this ICP?
3. What will be the costs to get to the beachhead?
4. What do we define as a beachhead?
5. Can we put that into a proforma or forecast?
6. Did we research and put into sprints features to fill gaps?
7. Will we need additional services for successful onboarding?
8. Do we have the right people dedicated to this “business”?
9. What one person owns this market entry—who is the “CEO” of that new market or business line?

Failures are too many to count, in our experience—and they always thought they would crush it. When we are called into fix a SaaS company, few if any answered the above bullet points. They tried to sneak into a new market, and they drank a wee too much of their own Kool-Aid.

You cannot sneak into a market. Ever. People just as smart as you are already in that market. Respect them, or they’ll crush you.

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7. LACK OF REAL DIFFERENTIATION

Not only are their tons of SaaS products out there—there are tons of substitutes and workarounds for what you think is so special.

Differentiation—or “positioning”—is a real thing. It is not the founder saying, “No one else is doing this.” Let’s be frank, your opinion while interesting is irrelevant. The bravado that got you this far is not always what gets you to the next level.

All that matters in the end are people seeing the website, watching a demo, and getting you. They either get you or they don’t. So, what exactly is so special, so different? Having a patented feature or being really cool—well, once upon a time, MySpace was cool, AOL was cool. Today, no one cares.

Positioning is a time-honored process that product managers or experienced software executives have learned hands-on. It is not from a book you read and foist upon your staff. It is not your opinion or the co-founder’s opinion. An executive with EQ will know if and when they have moved into an operating role, becoming twice-removed from direct customer knowledge.

Seek a third-party expert. Avoid the trap of falling in love with your own cooking.

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8. CLV and the nuts and bolts

When we first engage with clients, we do an audit of the marketing and sales that is very grueling and painful. The client quickly either loves us or hates us or both.

Part of that is sitting with management to look at their agreement (and disagreements) about the most important metrics or KPIs in SaaS.

Those include:

• CLV
• Churn
• MQL to bookings ratio
• SQL to booking ratio
• Advertising cost of sale (ACOS)

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There are a handful of others. We focus on these because, frankly, if you are telling yourselves the truth about how you derive those metrics, you’re well on your way to success.

If you have complex workarounds to report those numbers, that is a yellow flag.

If you do not track them monthly, or you take a long time to explain how they are calculated, reflect on that. When time comes for the sale or acquisition of your SaaS company, PE and strategic buyers are really smart—smart or smarter than any three of us put together.

If they sense tactics and tricks that inflate your metrics, making them ridiculously high or low vs. industry standards, that’s a major yellow flag. Do you know industry standards in your space? You should, so you can referee what finance or marketing is doing if the numbers are ridiculously high, but EBITDA doesn't add up.

Keep it simple. Then, ensure you have methodologies marketing and sales to do:

• Upselling:?introduce customers to new services or add-on that increase CLV and stickiness.
• Cross-selling:?mature your partnerships and affiliates, so you create a community that wraps its arms around customers—and enables cross-selling that creates loyalty and conveys value.
• Customer loyalty:?offer rewards or discounts, or introduce gamifications that award badges, so customers feel like you care and notice they are part of your brand.

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How to improve your SaaS marketing

You spend a lot of sweat (and pay some very talented employees) to run and build a SaaS company. Consider a tune up or an audit of what you are doing to stay a step ahead of competitors.

We use a process that is agile and unturns every stone. In about 30 days, we do comprehensive audits of SEO, SEM, website analytics, competitors, and more. With an outsider’s look at your SaaS marketing and sales, you emerge with a burndown list of ideas and findings that impact the business topline to bottom.

Give us a shout at?mertonway.com.