Boosting SaaS Growth: 39 Strategic Tactics for Brand and Pipeline Optimization

After about 4-6 months of collaborative marketing campaigns, clients often ask me what additional strategies they should implement to amplify the progress we've achieved. This is a valid question. By this time, their content or paid efforts have started to pay off, and they are looking for more channels or different formats to reach a wider audience.

At this point, I always ask them one question: “What do you want to do next?” Are you looking to further build your pipeline, or are you looking to start working on building the brand? The tactics you use will vary drastically based on the goal.

Now, you may be thinking that breaking down all marketing activities into two buckets—Branding and Lead Generation—is oversimplifying the complex nature of the domain. So why do I do it? I do this mainly to understand the client's main objective and mindset. I am fully aware that both buckets overlap and that if you do either of them well, the other will automatically benefit. For example: Optimizing SEO not only boosts organic traffic (Pipeline Building) but also enhances brand visibility and authority (Brand Building).

Let's take a look at some of the tactics that are available in both the buckets.

When I share this table with clients I often get questions about a few tactics being in this bucket. For instance, why are ads on social channels like Google, Twitter, Linkedin, and Meta in this bucket and not in the pipeline bucket? Well, the answer is simple Display ads and Sponsored posts on Social channels are just digital versions of your OOH ads. Similarly, I often get pushback for Free tools, Webinars, and even Events being in this bucket and my response in this case is simple they have not signed up for your product but rather shown interest in your content. At this point, you can count them as prospects at best (I would not even include them in the MQL bucket, let alone consider them as SQL).

Now let's take a look at some of the tactics available in the pipeline-building bucket.

Each of these 39 tactics plays a critical role in unlocking SaaS growth. By understanding their use cases, strengths, and weaknesses, you can strategically implement the right mix of strategies to build an amazing brand, create a defensible GTM moat, and attract users at every stage of the funnel.

What are your thoughts on these tactics? Which ones are you planning to add to your channel mix next? Share your experiences and questions in the comments below or reach out to me directly for a personalized consultation!

P.S. I have made a Google sheet of all these tactics which you can access and keep for your reference here.