What is SaaS Marketing?

Software as a service (SaaS) marketing concentrates more on developing awareness and promoting web-based Software and offering it to customers through lead generation strategies. It differs from other types of marketing since the services are intangible and require the customer to continually access them for a more extended period through paid subscriptions.

With the growth of digital marketing platforms, there are plenty of methods to market your products and services. Among the best is SaaS Marketing which stands for Software as a Service marketing which deals with subscription-based technology services.

SaaS gives customers a connection to different applications that boost the growth of their businesses by providing solutions to problems through the internet. These types of internet services can be in the forms of Blog posts, infographics, videos, ebooks, and webinars.

What Are the Benefits of SAAS Marketing?

• Promotes Inbound Marketing
• It Creates Brand Awareness
• Help To Reduce Configuration Time
• Compels Customers To Make Decisions
• It Is Easy To Upgrade Your Products
• Easy to Access

While SaaS marketing involves creating and selling beneficial services to captivate prospects and turn them into paying customers, the critical target of SaaS marketing is to satisfy a client’s needs and help them increase productivity in their businesses.

Unlike traditional marketing, SaaS marketing has a longer sales cycle where prospective customers can learn about the services by accessing the website. Here are some of the advantages of SaaS marketing;

Promotes Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing attracts prospective customers and makes them users and leads for your SaaS company. If a SaaS company creates and deploys content that interests and adds value to a business. People will continually seek it out, thus developing a constant and reliable lead generation. 

It Creates Brand Awareness

With a wide range of SaaS solutions, SaaS brands must raise their awareness for people to purchase their products. By sharing your product through different channels like google ADs, and blog posts, you will attract more readers to your website, eventually turning into potential customers.

Help To Reduce Configuration Time

Since the Software is accessible through SaaS data applications, you can get the services to a wide range of customers. Eventually, you will reduce the time and money spent on configuring resources. Also, you can set up a server in the cloud within a short time to reach the desired audience. In addition, you can change a blog post into a video or podcast to reach more people.

Compels Customers To Make Decisions

Customers will quickly reach out when you publish reliable information through Calls-to-Action (CTA’s). Those interested will sign up and access the SaaS application giving you a chance to make a sale. 

It Is Easy To Upgrade Your Products

when you market Software, competitors with similar products might outsource. To make the product unique, a SaaS provider can upgrade by inputting additional features and enhancing security. It also enhances work performance when customers access the recent software version.

Easy to Access

SaaS marketing is web-based, which makes it accessible from anywhere in the world. It helps to centralize productivity, especially in projects with people from different regions.

The Key Components of an Effective SAAS Marketing Strategy

• Establish your target audience
• Choose your marketing channels
• Develop your content
• Track your metrics
• Create brand awareness
• Provide maximum value to retain clients
• Attract and nurture leads
• Build customer relationships

Any SaaS marketer understands that promoting subscription-based Software differs from other types of marketing. Most sales depend on inbound marketing and the ability to track successful prospects through conversions and subscriptions.

Though SaaS marketing relies more on your Software, some B2C SaaS providers tend to market their products better than enterprise subscription platforms. Most SaaS providers rely on an oversaturated market. Despite the quality of the product, it is imperative to identify with the market and create a proficient marketing strategy.

Establish  Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience and identifying their pain points is essential before you get your products out in the market. Creating personalized customer relations through marketing campaigns can attract many prospects through your sales funnels.

You should optimize your marketing strategies by targeting the customers’ shortcomings and providing them with valuable solutions. If the potential prospects require more convincing, work on strategizing your marketing by taking a different approach.

Focus your SaaS marketing campaigns on your buyer persona more than the product itself, increasing your opportunities to reach potential prospects.

Choose Your Marketing Channels

Choosing the proper marketing for your SaaS marketing strategy is an ideal way to reach the expected target audience. Most SaaS marketers get the products out in the market before they understand the intended user persona; hence the products fail to attract prospects.

According to Cloud Computing Market (CCM), SaaS marketing rapidly increases software sales through different platforms. Such platforms include organic search engines, paid ads, TV, radio stations, email marketing, and paid social media platforms. SaaS providers should target more high-edge internet users worldwide to reach and interact with their leads.

Develop Your Content

Most SaaS marketers focus more on content conversions like email signups, white paper downloads, and ebook downloads which differ from product conversion. It is crucial to strategize your content development to work for different types of customers.

Product conversions like free trials and demos are more likely to grow product sales than content conversion. It is important to include product conversions in your SaaS content marketing. It will guide potential prospects through each stage of their customer journey and enhance awareness and consideration for your product.

With different content on specific sales funnels, you can follow up on who shows up on your platforms, the types of pages they will review, and the content format they prefer by analyzing their landing pages. Run campaigns and analyze your clients through social media posts, testimonials, blog posts, ebooks, emails, and blog posts.

Track Your Metrics

SaaS marketers must rely on specific metrics to help them understand the return on each investment. Though the metrics are defined by the marketing channels, type of Software, and pricing, some basic ones can help track a product’s revenue.

• The average monthly revenue incurred per customer.
• The rate at which the customers drop and cancel the subscription.
• The total marketing cost it takes to acquire new prospects to sign up.
• The number of prospects that your website attracts to check on your products
• The customer lifetime value per subscription.

Create Brand Awareness

To increase your brand awareness, implement SaaS marketing campaigns to give your subscribers more information on the product and its value. Create short videos detailing your brand benefits, achievements, and solutions to your client’s problems. In addition, run informative advertisements on the product feature on different sales funnels.

Market your SaaS company on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, where most potential customers spend their time browsing. Also, create affiliate programs or SaaS referrals. Encourage your current users to refer the products to others by giving them referral discounts, which will also help retain them for longer.

Use paid Ad campaigns to get your products to the market. Make sure you give outstanding customer care services to clients to encourage them to stick with the product. Focus more on what the customers want and give them the solutions.

Provide Maximum Value To Retain Clients

Once your leads become paying subscribers, the most challenging part is to retain them. In software marketing, the most significant revenue is earned through recurring payments from subscriptions; thus, building a relationship with your clients is very important.

Use different strategies to continue nurturing your clients to use the products through tutorials on added features. Respond to your client’s complaints and improve the solution to their problems. Commitment and attention is the key to retaining those potential clients.

Attract and Nurture Leads

SaaS relies more on inbound marketing models; free trials and demos will help attract more subscribers to sign up for your Software. Most people are cautious about new products and how they work before committing.

Allow the users to test out the softwares and see if they cater to their needs through limited free trials. The SaaS providers should follow up with the free trial users to generate quality leads. Product demos are also a suitable solution to generate SaaS leads.

Contact the leads through your platforms and let them see your credibility. Make use of the free trials to converse with your clients. Offer tutorials on different product features.

Build Customer Relationships

Ensure long-term relationships with customers by offering them new and upgraded versions of your Software. By upselling your products, you will retain the customers and disallow them from running to your competitors.

Existing customers are more important in the software business than in acquiring new customers. Once you give them quality services, they are bound to stay longer. These will save you on acquisition costs.

Metrics To Help You Measure SaaS Overall Performance

• Traffic rate
• Conversion rate
• Lead quality
• Cost per lead (CPL)

Most SaaS companies use different resources to shape and succeed in their products in the market. SaaS businesses should focus more on data metric growth to analyze their success. Here are some essential metrics to guide you through;

Traffic Rate

Focus on the number of customers who visit your app regularly. Those are the people who tend to be long-term subscribers. Compare your subscriber figures to the number of users to determine the number of subscribers who are not using the Software.

Create a group for users to help you engage with them and study their experience with your Software. Identify the specific features they prefer and upgrade them to turn them into your recurring clients.

Measure their usage rates to determine whether the Software is a success; different apps work differently, e.g., people are more likely to visit your social media platform than log in to your website contents.

Conversion Rate

Here is where you calculate how many people subscribe to paid services. Check the number of people who run your free trials or those freemium users and test how many paid for the entire package.

If you have a high conversion rate, it proves that the signup process was successful. If it is low, focus on improving your product and use different strategies to increase the revenue input.

Lead Quality

To develop a lead and have a user continuously engage with a software requires more convincing. When you track your potential leads, you see how many people are interested in your product.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

Measurement of the cost per lead is how much it has cost to get the lead. By calculating, you will gather information on how the customers are satisfied with the quality of the product you are offering. Check the lead’s feedback and determine if your product fits their needs.

Essential Metrics To Help You Measure Customer Success

• The Customer Churn Rate
• The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
• The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
• Customer Acquisition Cost(CAC) to Cost of Lifetime Value (CLV) Ratio

SaaS marketers use different metrics to analyze the success of software products. Some of those metrics are the key to creating successful SaaS market growth strategies;

The Customer Churn Rate

Customer churn helps identify the number of subscribers or accounts dropping your product services per month. It also assists in calculating the loss of revenue incurred monthly.

Most SaaS providers track their revenue stream using the number of recurring clients; thus, retaining clients is more important than finding new subscribers.

The Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is the total revenue a subscriber generates over their account’s lifetime. The value of a client’s lifetime is essential in determining the value of customers over a specific duration. In addition, you get to know the strategies to implement to keep your customers more engaged with your product.

The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

The CAC calculates the amount spent to acquire new subscribers through marketing, sales, and other costs like money spent on demos and free trials. To get an accurate total, take the total amount spent on the marketing process over time and divide it by the number of paying customers acquired.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)to Cost of Lifetime Value(CLV) Ratio

When you compare the CAC to the CLV, you can analyze whether your product can sustain its expenses. For instance, the business is not sustainable if the cost of acquiring a new customer equals the revenue generated within their lifetime.

You should at least spend a third or lower on acquisition than the amount generated by a particular subscriber over their lifetime. Focus on expanding your revenue by introducing more expensive versions of products to clients.

Important SaaS Marketing Channels

• Inbound Marketing
• Content marketing
• SEO
• Email marketing
• Podcasting
• Review sites
• Social media marketing
• Paid marketing advertisements

While SaaS Marketing strategy focuses more on software sales, different digital funnels help strategize and get the products and services to the market. To run a successful market campaign, a SaaS provider needs to set goals and determine their ICP. The following channels are essential in SaaS product marketing strategy;

Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing provides customers with value. Each time they use your website, they develop a relationship and gain trust in your products through your content. Through inbound marketing, you will easily turn prospects into paying customers.

Content Marketing

You can use different sites for marketing your content, like blog posts and SEOs. Make sure that every content you write is relevant to your intended audience. Also, include a call to action(CTA) at the end of each content.

To attract more traffic, ensure the content can add value to the buyer and nurture them to want your product.

SEO

Once you post your blog posts, optimize them to make your website rank well for google. The primary purpose of using SEO content is to increase traffic on your websites. Once you post quality SEO content, you will create sufficient requests for your SaaS products.

Email Marketing

A SaaS marketing team can build a relationship by sending marketing emails to leads generated on other websites. Once you trace an interested buyer, send them newsletters on your products and services to nurture them into purchasing the product.

You can also create promo Ads and send them through emails. Email marketing is the most significant way to communicate with prospects and learn more about wants. Send them your webinars and ebooks. 

Podcasting

When you create podcast channels, you give your listeners a genuine understanding of what your product offers. In addition, you can quickly educate people on the benefits of your SaaS products.

Social Media Marketing

When running a B2B SaaS marketing model, getting your products on different social media platforms can quickly create awareness. Posting videos and content on LinkedIn, Facebook, quora, Twitter, and Instagram is a great way to generate brand awareness. Social media marketing is also the cheapest marketing strategy to promote SaaS products.

Paid Marketing Advertisements

Paid marketing advertisements are essential for creating brand awareness. According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI) statistics, the highest percentage of people who invest in SaaS products or services have yet to learn of the brand they want to invest in. Hence, they usually search for quality in online advertisements. Such paid advertisements include:

1. Google Ads
2. Facebook Ads
3. Linkedin Ads
4. Youtube Ads

As SaaS businesses evolve, the concept of creating web-based solutions is becoming more and more complicated. Learning the key elements to make your Software easily acquired in technology-dependent markets.