9 Practical Ways to Boost Your SaaS Marketing in 2022
Since 2015, the SaaS industry has grown from $31.5 billion to an estimated $171.9 billion. This equates to around 5x growth in only seven years.
Sure it takes time, effort, and capital to build a new SaaS product but marketing it is a whole different story. It’s time to take a 360-degree look at your SaaS marketing strategies—and find creative ways to promote your new product.
We’re about to break down how new SaaS companies can thrive even in this competitive market.
Let’s talk about what is SaaS marketing, why it is more profitable than conventional marketing, and a few practical ways to promote SaaS businesses in 2022.
What is SaaS Marketing?
As the name defines SaaS marketing is the marketing for any software as a service product. This business model focuses on acquiring leads and retaining customers for SaaS products.
There are about 25,000 SaaS companies in the world according to a?Statista report?on SaaS organizations by country. Moreover, these SaaS products can vary from cloud-based software like Slack and Dropbox to email marketing software like Mailchimp.
?
???????????????????????????????????????????????????Source: Statista
The book “The art of SaaS”,?written by the author (David Rennyson, Dr. Ahmed Bouzid)?states, “SaaS marketing begins at web, search engines, blogs, social media and web forums.
All collectively pushing for one CTA- Prospect filling out a web form or sending out an email.”
The point is to sell in a SaaS market, every customer must be overserviced to :
SaaS marketing has changed over the years. Today, caring about your customers is the best marketing strategy.
For example,?Mersive?is a SaaS company that allows collaboration with a cloud-connected solution for meeting spaces. Any customer can sign up for a live demo or receive a good quote for their company then and there.
That what’s SaaS marketing needs, investment in a core product, and loyal customers who can interact with your service daily.
Reasons to Choose SaaS Marketing Over Conventional Marketing
SaaS marketing and conventional marketing are two different landscapes.
The first one functions on a subscription-based model, where customers need to pay an amount of subscription fee monthly.
The latter is based on a set of activities that satisfy customers’ needs and wants. Conventional marketing includes strategies like ads in magazines and newspapers, TV spots, radios, or business cards.
?Research?states that two-thirds (63%) of small businesses use traditional marketing.?People still use conventional marketing for familiarity reasons.
It’s time to explore the difference between these two for better insights:
Talking about the SaaS marketing sales funnel.
The Pirate Funnel is like a blessing for all the SaaS marketers out there.
It was coined by Dave Mclure (founder of 500 startups) and a well-known startup personality for SaaS marketing.
It involves a six-step marketing strategy where customers need to go through each stage, often described:
????? Source: Growthwithward.com
This funnel helps the new-age SaaS marketers to think through user-behaviour metrics.
You can find out how people found your brand, how many of them took action, and the customers who are willing to pay for your product.
On the contrary, awareness, interest, desire, and action (the AIDA model) had been a staple for advertising agencies for years.
Well, you can notice the difference between the two based on their funnel stages.
???? ?Source: Seobility
The traditional marketing funnel follows a narrow, linear path approach which is not enough to engage consumers or convert them into a loyal audience.
But customers are now way smarter than they used to be. Leads know everything about a brand, they trust online reviews and the usability of any SaaS product.
The best marketing strategy for every marketer is to delight their potential customers at each step which traditional marketing fails to do.
SaaS businesses offer more choices, products, and services. They are available 24*7 for their customers and use technologies like chatbots to engage them.
Not only that, creating digital products based on a subscription model helps them to maintain a long-term relationship with the customers.
On looking back, the traditional method of marketing has little interaction and flawed campaign measurement. They cannot establish a benchmark to gauge the effectiveness of their campaigns or content since they have no access to immediate marketing insight or consumer behaviour.
Due to this, there’s less or no chance of building any customer-brand relationship.
SaaS marketing helps you to position yourself as an authority with thousands of automation marketing tools.
There is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy for a SaaS business. But there are ways to promote inbound marketing growth. Starting from SEO strategies to blogging, ebooks, whitepapers, and email marketing.
Take the example of?Weblium.
It's an online tool that helps people to build online sites without any coding knowledge. Weblium’s promotional emails are one of the best. Their personalized way of email marketing, which is sent to a set of the targeted audiences (as per their buyer persona), is a great inbound marketing strategy example.
Source:?Weblium
On the other hand, conventional marketing takes a “shotgun” approach. Their inbound marketing strategy devours more on demographic information.
They are not that tech-savvy, so they don’t take a look into their readership numbers. They work with tangible goods and services.
This means cloud hosting or data analytics is not a big part of traditional marketing strategy and hence, there’s no concept of automation also.
Everyone loves free products.
SaaS marketing offers a free trial mode which means customers can take a look at your product, see how it can solve their problems, and then decide their further steps.
This helps in the activation of leads in the very first stage. Indeed, one of the best ways to go for customer acquisition.
Traditional marketing will never dip their toes into these types of freemium options.
The reason is it will cost them more than what they have. Also, they will have no control over the timing of their production and goods management.
9 Ways to Promote Your Saas Business in 2022
Saas is not going anywhere.
On average, 38% of companies say that they are operating on SaaS. 80% of businesses plan to make all their systems SaaS by 2025 as per card connect?stats.
If you want full creative control of marketing your new SaaS product, get familiar with SaaS and its marketing operations.
In theory, the wide variety of tools, strategies, and information should give companies better choices to work with. In practice, companies have decision paralysis due to thousands of go-to strategies.
If you’re wondering how you can revamp your SaaS marketing strategies in this SaaS chaos.
So, here are a few refreshing ways to do the same.
Big news: There are more than 25000 SaaS companies as per?statistics.
A big reason why your SaaS company needs a USP or a specific benefit that helps you stand out from the crowd. Your unique selling proposition can determine "What you have that your competitors don't".
The way your customer describes your product, whether it's shoes or shirts, that’s your USP.
Here’s an example: look at how?Web flow?has mastered this. They build websites for e-commerce brands.?Mainly catering to people who don’t have any dev skills.
?Its USP is that it helps users create beautiful and optimized websites without the hassle of coding.
They have a clear message: “Your website should be a marketing asset, not an engineering challenge.” This line tackles customers’ issues and presents a strong USP solution to the same.
Here’s a golden USP rule, focus on things that make your company recognizable rather than salesy.
2. Run A Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaign
领英推荐
PPC or paid search can help your SaaS brand to remarket your products. You can use the formula of educate, engage and then sell.
For example: If your target audience is Fortune 500 companies, then explore ways to showcase your relevance to their brand.
You can include their logo or create a case study that showcases your partnership with that type of brand. Highlight the elevated moments of your work with that brand.
It’s not a surprise that 75% of the people click on ads to find an answer to their queries as noted by?clutch.com. If your target audience has received their desired answer, then your PPC campaign is successful.
This helps you showcase credibility among your target audience. It also helps you to qualify your leads, and optimize your campaigns for your potential customers.
3. Leverage AI
? ?Source: Unsplash
There are various ways to use AI and 10x your SaaS revenue.?Without any doubt, personalization should be on the top of your list.
Modern-day businesses can analyze tons of data with AI and use it to personalize customer interactions.
Kyriaki Raouna, (Content marketer at LearnWorlds) tells us the importance of AI in the content marketing industry:
“If by future you mean now, then yes.?GPT-3?is a revelation for content marketers that use it conscientiously: it can help you create high-quality content fast for all kinds of channels: from long-form blogs to social media posts, AI writers are a godsend. ML is not a panacea; all content should be edited by humans to make sure it provides value to humans and is fit to be read by them and not just bots. LearnWorlds has written an?article on the best current AI writing tools?and how to use them effectively.”
AI enables your brand to be there for your customers ( 24/7) and nurture leads while prioritizing customer service with the help of AI techs like chatbots.
From AI-enhanced PPC advertising to intelligent email content creation (with details and insights), AI can enhance everything.
In the?SaaS podcast, see how Data fox leverages AI to sell the first version of their product for $49 per month. And today their customers pay them anywhere from $10,000 to $200,000 a year.
How? They decided to use AI and machine learning and collected millions of data points about companies and people.
After which, they turned these data points into actionable insights and used them for future marketing strategies.
4? Saas Content Marketing is Still the Deal
? Source: Digitalsevaa
Content marketing is crucial to developing a good B2B marketing strategy.
Creating content is different from promoting your kick-ass content. You need to promote your amazing content in front of your target audience.
So that they can see, decide, and imagine how comfortable their life will be after using your product.
Let’s take an example:
Wise is a company dealing with finances and logistics, here's how they used the magic of content marketing.
1.?They took out time and invested in proper content strategy.
2.?Built a strong foundation with keyword research and content operations.
3.?They created content that their audience craves.
Not only that, they delivered products and content in line with trends. If a customer wants to know "How to transfer money internationally as affordably as possible?”, the answer is "transfer wise?" (the product ).
The best part is they already have a content piece on the same topic.
When your product meets your user needs in real-time and you create educational content around that—it's a profitable recipe for successful SaaS marketing.
5??Develop a Referral Program
A SaaS referral program helps your SaaS products to get referred by your loyal customers. These referral programs can be online.
For this strategy, you do need to make sure your customers love your products because that's when they will refer you.
It's better to decide on your incentive and save the cost of customer acquisition for your B2B marketing strategy.
This can often include:
Ray Slater Berry, director of DSLX (a B2B SaaS content agency) discussed the importance of a referral program for SaaS marketing:
"100% of these referral programs work wonders. Be it formal programs with a rewards-based scheme, or inform word-of-mouth marketing that comes naturally among peers.
At my?SaaS content agency, DSLX, all of our clients have come via referrals. It’s a safe and rapid way of finding new business partners that I’m very grateful for. "
6? Have a “Free Plan” for Your Product
Source: Unsplash
With SaaS,?you can offer a freemium version of your product, acquire customers for your products, and qualify leads on time. Some companies like Trello (a SaaS product that helps you to stay organized) with unlimited tabs and boards are available for free trials.
They allow their customers to use 10 boards per workspace, and power-up boards and charge them when they need upgraded features like integration or unlimited storage.
This does help in collecting feedback from the customers. In the end, you can look into the features that are more in demand and market them more.
?Jacob Hicks, CEO, and Founder at Magnyfi?has a good take on this:
“A freemium plan gives an easy way to try a product. You can also think of it as a way to grow with the SaaS solution. You could have one client that fits the freemium mold, but once you grow, you have to subscribe.
About Social Champ’s freemium plan, This is great and plays right into the reasoning we see as a value add. You can help the little businesses while they are growing. “
7.??Embrace Video Marketing
As per?Cisco Video networking index?forecasts, video viewing figures will grow four-fold from 2017 to 2022.
That being said, video will make up 82% of Internet traffic by the end of that period. These numbers are groundbreaking. SaaS marketers can now jump on the bandwagon and engage customers with attention-grabbing videos.
For instance, uploading explanatory videos of your products can help your customers to engage better with your brand. Your customers can see how your software works and interact and learn about your products even before downloading it.
This helps in building community and increasing brand awareness.
For example,?Ruby?an AI chat company uses an explainer video to share their employee's experiences with the users. Mind it, users cannot take their eyes off this colorful and exciting video.
Here's what you can do next:
You can also include testimonials from happy clients for your SaaS product promotion.
8. Unbundling
Source:?Flickr
In simple words, unbundling is a process in which a company decides to offer products or services separately. This is done to improve SaaS operations, product lines, and acquisitions.
For example,?let’s take X and Y are two products.
The decision to unbundle is only taken if X product is not solving any specific problem of customers.
Since users are becoming smarter day by day. They want to pay for products that have specific outcomes. This means SaaS brands are now focused on establishing one specific feature of their SaaS product.
Unbundling the SaaS products into different verticals (marketing, analytics, support, etc) has allowed users to only pay for the products they use. Hence, it's an easy way to strengthen your client-brand relationships.
Check out how products like?supportive.io?which “API-fied” the features of traditional support software (like Zendesk).
Now customers can create their own support experience without worrying about code.
Moreover, it provides a holistic solution rather than a one-size-fits-all solution to SaaS companies.
9? Flexible Pricing
When it comes to product placement in the market, SaaS product pricing should be a big part of brand strategies.
This means finding out how you want to position yourself in the market.
What kind of customers do you want to target? Whether you’re serving business or direct customers, everything depends on your pricing.
Think of your initial pricing as a starting point, nothing else. The key here is to get feedback from your customers, gather in-demand features, and price them accordingly.
You can do this by reducing the friction of iteration (start with fewer options and then increase, to surprise your customers as per their spending behaviour). See how?Uplers, an email-marketing agency has learned the art of SaaS pricing.
From listing different pricing strategies for different services to charging based on delivery time and add-ons, they attract their target customers with their flexible pricing.
Conclusion
Whether you're a new-age SaaS startup or a Brick-and-Mortar SaaS company, marketing can make or break your stance.
It's important to keep experimenting with different marketing strategies. Now the question is how well you implement these above SaaS strategies for more leads and better customer-brand relationships.
Time to scale your SaaS brand strategy and equip yourself with the best strategy for your business growth.
This post was published at Hackernoon, want SaaS content that drives leads and converts. Click here or D.M. me.