Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies offer essential services in an increasingly digital world. Businesses rely on SaaS companies for things they do every day. If you’ve sent a newsletter, updated your blog, managed payroll, or chatted with your team on Slack or Zoom today, you’ve used an SaaS product.
Of course, if you’re running a SaaS company, you don’t need anyone to tell you how valuable your service is. What you might not know is how to communicate that value with your audience.
SaaS companies face increasing competition. No matter how incredible, ground-breaking, or just really, really useful your offering is, it’s not going to sell itself. You need to have a strategy that can help get your product in front of the right people, with the right message, at the right time. You need a robust marketing strategy.
But where do you start?
If you’re a DIY, or if you want a framework for bringing in a marketing strategist, these are the seven essential areas any SaaS marketing plan needs to address.
Social Media
Whether it’s organic or paid, getting in front of the right people on social media is a key factor to your success. Your strategy should cover the best social media channels for your brand, how to target the right audience, and how to leverage your following for the best results.
SEO
Your product solves a problem. When the people who need your solution turn to Google for help, how likely are they to find you? When you implement SEO tactics into your strategy, you help Google and other search engines understand what you offer, what your site is about, and how useful your site is for those looking for what you offer. Do it well, and over time, you’ll perform better in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Paid Media
Whether it’s Google Ads, social media ads, or both, you need a way to get your product (and your company) in front of your audience. Not everyone will find your business through organic means. Ads allow you to get in front of the right people at the right time through careful targeting (and retargeting). They’re an essential part of any sales funnel, and help with reach and awareness, affinity, and the actual conversion.
Reviews
No one wants to be the first to try out your product. You need to be able to prove that you have happy customers in order to gain more happy customers. Encouraging reviews and testimonials provides you with social proof, one of the key elements to successfully marketing your SaaS business. Once you get a few customers who have seen incredible results from your product, build case studies to increase your business’ authority.
Referrals
Related to reviews, having a referral program allows you to leverage current happy customers to make more happy customers. When you think about the customer lifetime value (or CLV) of a new client, what is that worth to you? How much are you spending, on average, for customer acquisition? Developing a referral program can reduce acquisition costs, help keep current customers happy (by rewarding their loyalty), and should absolutely be a part of your marketing strategy.
Lead Nurturing
Most people won’t sign up the first time they come across your business. They need to make sure that you’re the right solution for their problem, and that takes a bit of effort on your end. As potential leads work through the sales funnel, you need to guide them towards the next step. That takes knowing what information they need at each stage and then providing it. This could be in the form of website content, reviews and case studies, emails, podcasts, trials, or any number of other tactics that build trust and affinity and remove objections.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
So, you got someone onto your site, but they bounced within 10 seconds. Or you’re getting people to sign up for your lead generator, but no one is following the funnel long enough to convert. It’s frustrating, but it’s fixable.
Conversion rate optimization involves taking all of the steps along your sales funnel, from first awareness to conversion, and fine-tuning it for better results. Having an idea of what to look for and what improvements can bring the biggest impact definitely helps here; if you don’t have that experience or knowledge, this is something you can bring in a professional to help with.
Of course, ideally your SaaS marketing strategy will be a bit more robust than this, but if you’re just starting out, focusing these seven high-impact areas can get you headed down the right path.
Not a DIYer? Contact us for a complimentary discovery call to see how we can help!