SaaS Marketing: Its Unique Approach and Differences

Undoubtedly, marketing is hard – whether online or offline. But do you know marketing has no physical behaviour? And it is what that swiftly changes?

It’s a technique that encourages users to take subscription-based SaaS products. It is also known as Software as a Service, in which businesses sell their products in cloud-based applications with frequent updates and added functionality.

Compared to traditional marketing techniques, SaaS businesses offer an intangible product. They must continually prove to their current and potential customers that their “rented” or subscription service is worth the fee.

SaaS Marketing Strategy: Strategy Before Execution

Before implementing its best strategy, research what it is and how it can benefit businesses.

Before implementing any marketing plan, you should have proper strategies and tactics by your side. These strategies will help you achieve your desired goals. As a startup owner, in the initial stage, you need to focus on the following primary strategies:

• Increasing brand awareness.
• Building your credibility.
• Establishing the product/market fit.
• Finding your costs to acquire lead (CPL) and customer acquisition.

Product/market fit is a crucial sign of investor confidence. It happens when your product solves your targeted customers’ problems well, and there are many more customers to come from where your first few came from.

If you’re an emerging SaaS that has proven your product/market fit, then your strategy should focus on:

• Channel Optimization: Quickly developing strategies upon proven channel, persona, and message sequences.
• Marketing Expansion: Identifying new channels to increase reach while keeping acquisition costs in mind.
• Reducing Acquisition Costs: Using traffic, conversion, and lead quality analytics to classify and decrease acquisition costs.
• Conversion Funnel Optimization: Improving the on-site experience on chat and landing pages to improve lead conversion rates.
• Brand Amplification: Using highly targeted PR to stay at the top for your target audience.

Leveraging SaaS marketing services can be a game-changer for your SaaS. With the right experts, you can develop tailored campaigns that resonate with your target market and propel your business towards sustainable growth.

How SaaS Is Different From Other Marketing Techniques?

Now you have a glimpse of what the best strategies for SaaS marketing are, you might be wondering how it is different from other industries. We’ve got you covered.

Below is a quick rundown of what defines SaaS versus other industries.

1. SaaS Is All About Long-Term Customers

SaaS companies are looking to acquire and retain customers for the long term. After acquiring customers, SaaS companies must communicate with them consistently so that they don’t drop out of their company.

SaaS companies differ from traditional companies in their approach to transactions. While traditional companies may treat a transaction as a “one and done,” SaaS companies are focused on long-term retention after a demo or download.

This is why SaaS companies often give a free version of their product to build customer trust. Once someone becomes a customer, SaaS companies are responsible for consistently communicating and marketing to prevent churn.

The SaaS customer journey is complex and can take anywhere between six to eighteen months to close an enterprise deal. SaaS content marketing is an important step for SaaS companies to stand out in an ocean of similar SaaS companies.

It is different from marketing in other industries because it carries the dual burden of selling customers on both the product itself and the support behind it. Successful content marketing for SaaS requires thoughtful planning and careful execution.

2. SaaS Customer Journey Is Challenging

During the initial stage, SaaS marketing requires a company to strategically leverage digital marketing for SaaS companies, creating and promoting content on various platforms to increase brand awareness.

For example, suppose you are selling an SEO tool. In that case, you will have three different types of customers. When it comes to customers, there is no one-size-fits-all.

Some may be unaware of SEO, while others may compare your tool with your competitors. Additionally, some may be ready for a trial.

It is important to target your content to users at different stages of the customer journey. For instance, top-of-funnel content should be informative and educational, while bottom-of-funnel content should be promotional and helpful.

To stand out in the crowded SaaS market, deepening your knowledge of your target audience and creating a content promotion strategy that reduces waste and eliminates inefficient spending is crucial.

By identifying and monitoring your competitors, you can see where their exploitable weaknesses are and what threats they pose to your business.

3. The SaaS Industry Is Flooded With Competition

The SaaS industry is highly competitive, with many companies vying for market share. As barriers to entry continue to fall, competition in most B2B SaaS verticals is intensifying as categories mature and various market entrants compete. 

It is easier than ever to build a product and get early traction, and the first hundred customers and beyond can come at a lower cost. 

VC cash has flooded into B2B SaaS, largely due to the attractive unit economics of SaaS business models as they scale and the depressed interest rates in major markets.

Finding good SaaS talent is a well-known challenge, especially for critical roles such as product managers, software developers, and data scientists. 

To succeed in this crowded market, companies need to focus on winning in crowded markets, and the playbooks will vary depending on the context and position in the market. 

Companies can tailor or create SaaS product features to be responsive to customers, even testing and trialing them to see how customers respond. 

Launching new SaaS businesses needs to become a priority for nontech incumbent companies looking for new sources of growth.

What Are The Channels Of A SaaS Marketing Strategy?

There are multiple channels and tactics that successful SaaS brands have proven to work time frequently. Let’s discuss some of them.

1) Email Marketing

Email marketing is often overlooked, an old-school technique, but it plays a crucial role in SaaS marketing.

Email is one of the best approaches to satisfying customers with your product. It remains one of the best channels for frequent, one-on-one touchpoints with prospects. That said, here are some typical SaaS marketing emails that most companies send on a regular:

• Onboarding personalized emails
• Feature announcements
• New content (blogs, videos, images)
• Company newsletters
• Surveys
• Check-ins

2) SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Blogging is a great way for SaaS companies to target keywords and attract leads. By creating SEO-friendly blog posts with relevant keywords, companies can improve their search visibility on search engines and gain exposure to thousands of search queries.

This is why many companies invest in a solid SEO strategy, including creating their own blog content and getting featured on “best of” lists.

SaaS SEO success is deeply ingrained in creating great content, and companies need to create better content than their competitors to outrank them. Blog content typically ranks for discovery-phase queries, designed to drive awareness of the business and position it as a familiar option further down the funnel.

By investing in SEO, SaaS companies can scale their growth exponentially and reduce their investment in acquisition channels that are too expensive.

Launching new SaaS businesses needs to become a priority for nontech incumbent companies looking for new sources of growth.

3) PPC And Social Media Marketing

PPC is effective for SaaS and other marketing techniques as well. Most companies today with decent budgets run PPC ads to increase the visibility of their website on search engines. PPC campaigns can be run without involving SEO.

On the other hand, social media ads have become more popular for SaaS in the past few decades. It allows business marketers to advertise directly to potential customers.

For example; checklists, case studies, and webinars are primary content for social media ads.

However, Facebook has its own slew of SaaS marketing success stories, such as Big Commerce, which saw a 3X boost in trial conversions from its ad campaign.

4) Organic Social Media

Social media marketing has become essential to SaaS marketing as a whole.

Most software companies may not prefer to use social media; however, many SaaS brands are leveraging the power of some prominent social media platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Social media is the best place to:

• Announce new features and products
• Curate feedback and ideas
• Communicate directly with customers
• Show your work environment
• Highlight industry accolades and earned media

5) Webinars

Webinars and online events are great for driving demos, showing off your product, and promoting thought leadership.

Webinars can either be conducted live or downloaded “on-demand,” which is ideal for prospects and current customers alike.  

On-demand webinars are pre-recorded webinars that can be accessed anytime, allowing users to watch them at their convenience.

They are a great way to reach a wider audience and provide valuable information to prospects and customers who may not have been able to attend the live event.

On-demand webinars can educate prospects and customers about your product or service, provide thought leadership content, and answer frequently asked questions. 

Additionally, they can be used to generate leads by requiring users to provide their contact information before accessing the webinar.

Overall, on-demand webinars are valuable for any business looking to educate and engage with their audience.

Additionally, replays and broadcasts can be uploaded on YouTube to help build out your channel and score search traffic simultaneously.

What Should Be Your Top Priorities For SaaS Marketing?

Now you know which channels to use for SaaS marketing, it’s time to discuss some best strategies.

Streamline Communication With Your Customers

It is always a best practice to respond to a SaaS customer as quickly as possible, regardless of whether it’s a product issue, pricing question, or even praise.

Allocating resources and keeping a close eye on messages and notifications across multiple marketing channels is crucial to ensure no customer is left unattended.

Streamlining communication with customers and leads is essential to convert leads into long-term customers.

Successful SaaS brands have proven that a combination of channels and tactics work best to generate leads cost-effectively.

Email marketing is still one of the best channels for frequent, one-on-one touchpoints with customers.

Social customer care is becoming more of a priority for SaaS companies, and channels like Twitter allow customers a quick and simple place to ask questions.

The right channel sales strategy helps SaaS companies quickly expand their business, and smaller, more frequent events can also be effective customer engagement, education, and closing tools.

It is important to note that there is no “best” distribution channel for all SaaS apps, but rather “best” distribution channels for each Ideal Customer type.

Therefore, getting to know customers and prospects better than they know is critical to determine the best channels and tactics.

In conclusion, responding to SaaS customers quickly and efficiently across multiple channels is crucial to converting leads into long-term customers.

Curate Reviews And Customer Success Stories

Positive feedback and reviews from customers are key to successful SaaS marketing. Research says that testimonials and social proof correlate with higher conversions.

SaaS marketers can focus on case studies and authoritative publications from renowned businesses to help enhance their brand perception.

Today, SaaS companies have a wide array of options to choose from when it comes to integrating social proof.

The most common are statistics, user reviews and testimonials, expert endorsements, and case studies.

You need to solicit customer reviews at the right moment to get optimal results from your strategy. Consider asking for reviews at strategic moments in the customer’s buyer journey, such as when the customer has the first moment of realization of value (e.g., the first time they used the product meaningfully).

Social proof and positive reviews are key to SaaS marketing, generating a sort of digital word-of-mouth.

According to data from Groove, testimonials and social proof go hand in hand with higher conversions. This speaks to the importance of being featured and regularly reviewed on sites that aggregate customer feedback for SaaS products, such as G2 (formerly G2 Crowd), Product Hunt, and Capterra.

Meanwhile, their testimonials and case studies break down specific metrics and performance data. The ability to show off actual numbers is much more compelling than just praise for a job well done.

Curating reviews and customer success stories is crucial for SaaS marketing, as it provides social proof and drives new business.

Create And Promote Content

Creating and promoting content is crucial for businesses to attract potential customers.

Most people engage with at least eleven pieces of content before making a purchase, so having a different content calendar that includes blog posts, case studies, and videos that raise awareness of your product and the problems it solves is essential.

These types of content are perfect for social media and work as a way to both educate and stimulate your audience.

Social media content calendars are the best way to plan and organize your content. You can use a spreadsheet, Google Calendar, or a social media management tool to keep track of your activities.

A content calendar is a resource that helps you organize what you’re going to publish, when, and where.

It simplifies collaboration between team members, saves time, minimizes errors, and streamlines processes.

To create a content calendar, you must define your goals and audience, choose the right social media platforms and scheduling tool, plan a content strategy, schedule and automate posts, and measure results.

You should regularly review and adjust your social media calendar to ensure your messaging and content resonate with your target audience.

A content calendar can help your publishing team see the trajectory of the story you’re trying to promote for your brand and company.

It’s important to have a field that states not only the title of the content but the form it’s in, too. A content calendar is a useful tool to help you create a consistent publication schedule for your company’s content.

Not only does it keep you and your team organized, but it also ensures that all workflow is running smoothly.

Dig Into Your Customer Data & Analytics

It’s essential to dig into your customer data to better understand your customers. Here are some key points to consider:

1. Average churn rate
2. Customer lifetime value (CTLV)
3. Landing page conversion rate(s)
4. Organic traffic and conversions
5. Top-performing ads and marketing messages

Empower People To Use Your Products

Empowering people to use your products is crucial for SaaS companies. A knowledge base and repository of resources can help customers reap the benefits of your products while reducing the time spent on customer service and questions. Here are some ways to empower your customers:

1. Create a comprehensive knowledge base that is easy to navigate and search.
2. Offer video tutorials and webinars to help customers learn how to use your products.
3. Provide a community forum where customers can ask questions and share tips.
4. Offer personalized onboarding and training to help customers get started.
5. Provide excellent customer support through multiple channels like email, chat, and phone.
6. Use customer feedback to improve your products and services.
7. Offer free trials and demos to help customers evaluate your products.
8. Provide documentation and guides that are easy to understand and follow.
9. Use analytics to track customer usage and identify areas for improvement.
10. Continuously update and improve your knowledge base and resources to keep up with changing customer needs.

Empowering your customers can build a loyal customer base and increase customer satisfaction. This can lead to increased revenue and growth for your SaaS company.

Summing Up

SaaS marketing is a unique field that requires a different approach than traditional marketing. It focuses on selling solutions to customers’ problems, and marketing efforts are tailored to educate and inform customers. SaaS marketing channels include social media, content marketing, and product marketing. The B2B SaaS marketing funnel and buyer’s journey differ from traditional B2B marketing. The future of SaaS is the personalized product experience.

SaaS marketing represents a dynamic and evolving landscape that requires a strategic approach tailored to the unique characteristics of software-as-a-service (SaaS) products and their target audiences. By embracing innovative strategies and leveraging digital channels, SaaS companies can effectively reach, engage, and convert prospects while fostering long-term customer relationships.

In summary, SaaS marketing requires agility, creativity, and a deep understanding of customer needs and market dynamics. By embracing these principles and adopting a customer-centric mindset, SaaS companies can unlock new growth opportunities, drive user adoption, and build sustainable businesses in the digital era.