Stand Out your Unique
& Creative SaaS Marketing Plan
As a SaaS company, you may think fun, creative
online marketing tactics.
Making innovative campaigns will set you apart from
SaaS companies sticking to more traditional advertising tactics.
Use the SaaS marketing strategies discussed in this
post, and monitor your social media accounts to see what resonates most with
your followers.
Every company is different, so be prepared to tailor
each of these strategies to best suit your audience.
SaaS
Marketing: the 17 Strategies That Will Give you Results
Table of Content
Offer a Free Trial. There's a reason free trials are a
long-standing SaaS marketing
tactic: because they work. ...
Share Data-Driven Content. ...
Show Off Good Reviews. ...
Earn the “Very Responsive” Badge on Facebook. ...
Share Behind-the-Scenes Content. ...
Host Q&As on Social Media. ...
Share How You Give Back.
Content Marketing
Product
Trials
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Referral
Marketing
Google AdWords
Co-marketing
Retargeting
The software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model has
been snowballing since
2010. By 2023 -experts predict- the SaaS market will grow by more than $60
billion (yes, billion!). And, of course, SaaS Marketing will
boost too.
If you have a SaaS company, this is excellent news,
but it also means that you can expect more competition.
In this ever-growing market, you’ll need marketing
strategies that make your company stand out.
We’re here to help! We’ve put together a list of seven B2B and SaaS marketing strategies (with examples) that will help you attract your core audience, increase engagement, and show potential
customers why they should work with you.
Here are the SaaS Marketing tactics that we are going to analyze
in this article:
Offer a Free
Trial
There’s a reason free trials are a long-standing
SaaS marketing tactic: because they work. When companies test-drive your
software, the product value speaks for itself. Even if they decide not to
purchase it when the free trial ends, you have a solid lead for future ad and
email targeting.
One of the best ways to promote your free trial is
through Facebook advertising. The social platform allows you to optimize these
ads for clicks and set your call-to-action as “Start My Free Trial,” so you
maximize the number of sign-ups. A Facebook ad can also increase your free
trial’s visibility since users can share the ad with friends and family who
might be interested.
Here at AdEspresso,
we know this strategy works because we’ve tried it! We recently ran a Facebook
ad campaign featuring our free trial.
With this free trial ad, we’re seeing clicks from
people who are actively interested in using our product and move on to sign up.
New to Facebook ads? Check out this resource to
get started.
Share Data-Driven Content
As a SaaS company, you have access to a lot of
first-hand industry data that your customers and potential customers are
interested in. If you have valuable internal data, share it through content
marketing to attract new customers and build an appreciation for your brand.
You might share a recent study your brand conducted or report on trends in your
users’ behavior. For example, Mailchimp,
an email marketing company, shared email
campaign statistics broken down by industry.
Once your data-driven content is published, post
about them on social media and include them in your advertising campaigns. Show
users that you have the information they’re looking for.
Tableau, a
business analytics platform, put its 2020 Business Intelligence Trends report
in its Facebook ad campaign.
Tableau’s post clearly lets customers know what value
they can expect from the report—the latest AI trends—so they’re likely to click
and read about their data.
Show off Good Reviews
Reviews and testimonials are effective forms of social proof. If
people and businesses who work with you are saying good things about your
product, it will make other companies more likely to consider working with your
company.
Spread the good word about your business by sharing
customers’ positive reviews on your social media and Google pages. You can
either share reviews customers post without prompting (after asking permission,
of course!), or you can request reviews directly from customers. For example,
if a user sends you an email saying how happy they are with your product, ask
them to post a positive review and give them a link to your main review page.
Software development platform Clubhouse responds to and shares positive
customer stories on its Twitter
page.
This retweet shows potential customers how happy
current Clubhouse users are. It even describes the product and why it’s perfect.
Earn the “Very Responsive” Badge on Facebook
Being responsive to online messages is a vital part
of SaaS marketing, both for attracting new customers and preventing
churn. All customer communication happens digitally, so customers
rely on your brand to send prompt online replies when they have an issue. In
fact, 42% of
users expect a response time under 60 minutes.
Show customers that you communicate quickly by
earning Facebook’s badge for responsive businesses.
This badge is prominently displayed and shows customers
that their concerns will be addressed promptly.
Earning the badge is simple: You need to respond to 90%
or more of private messages sent to your page via Facebook Messenger, and you
need an average response time of less than 15 minutes. If you have a Messenger chatbot set up, the bot’s responses count
towards your response rate and time.
Make
sure you have Facebook Messenger set up for your business page, and respond
right away when someone sends you a message. If the answer requires time to
address, respond by saying you are looking into the issue and will get back to
them ASAP.
The
e-commerce platform Shopify has
a green badge indicating they are very responsive.
Customers
(and potential customers) visiting Shopify’s page know right away that if they
have questions or concerns, the brand will respond quickly.
Share Behind-the-Scenes Content
SaaS clients are often fun, young, tech startups.
These businesses make an effort to build flexible, supportive work
environments, so they’re going to like SaaS tools that also have a mindful
culture.
Give these businesses a look into your work culture
by sharing behind-the-scenes content. For example, you could share posts of
employees enjoying themselves at a company team-building event. This SaaS
marketing strategy shows potential customers that you’re open and transparent
about the company behind your product. It humanizes your company and shows
you’re upbeat and approachable.
The video marketing platform Wistia has an Instagram full
of their employees having fun at work. It’s very positive and inviting and
gives the company an open, friendly air.
Host Q&As on
Social Media
Directly connect with current and potential
customers by hosting Q&As: meetings where your users can voice their
concerns. SaaS tools are inherently technical, so people will inevitably have
questions. Facing tough questions might not sound fun, but educating customers
and addressing their concerns will help you build their trust in your brand.
Facebook Live and Instagram stories questions are
two excellent platforms for answering questions live. You can either have users
submit questions beforehand or answer questions as they come in during the
Q&A.
Advertise your Q&A session well in advance to
maximize attendance—post about it on all of your social media platforms, as
well as your website. If you’re collecting questions in advance, give users an
email address they can send questions to, or ask them to send them to your
business page via messenger. No matter how you collect questions, always record
the Q&A session so you can post it afterward.
HubSpot,
a customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing platform, hosts
Instagram Story Q&As and adds them to their Story Highlights.
In their “Ask the Pros” story,
HubSpot’s social media editor received questions live from users watching.
Users were able to get their questions answered immediately, and HubSpot was
able to see engagement and interest on their Stories platform. After hosting a
Q&A on Stories, use Instagram
Stories analytics to see the reach of your session.
Share How You Give Back
Studies show that 70% of
people buy from companies that share their beliefs. This
extends to SaaS marketing as well—businesses want to work with and purchase
software from companies that hold their values. Businesses have limited
budgets, and they’re more inclined to pay for software that not only gets the
job done, but is also made by a company who gives back.
Spread the word about the causes your company
supports on social media. Are your employees running a 10K to support cancer
research? Post it on your social media platforms and share live updates during
the event. Just remember that this SaaS marketing strategy is all about
authenticity. Share the true values of your company—not just what you think
your customers want to see.
Online inventory listing tool Sellbrite uses Instagram to show support for
causes the company believes in. They celebrated National Day of Visibility for
the LGBTQ community by wearing purple and spreading awareness about issues
faced by LGBTQ youth.
Seven years later,
his thesis was right -- software as a service (SaaS) companies have and will
continue to takeover or disrupt large parts of the economy.
Clients often prefer being able
to make smaller, monthly payments, while investors like businesses that
generate predictable recurring revenue, which makes it easier to forecast and
understand the business' health.
And when it comes to business
health, growth is critical to success. That's why we've put together a roundup
of strategies SaaS businesses can use to ramp up their lead generation efforts.
Need inspiration for your own strategy? Check out the ideas below.
Other Standout SaaS Marketing Strategies:
Content Marketing
Businesses around the globe are using content marketing to build
their brand, attract visitors to their website, and generate leads. A key
advantage of content marketing is that it has a compounding power of return -- just like a
smart investment, it increases in value over time.
Importantly, content continues
to drive leads, whereas other forms of marketing, like pay-per-click (PPC)
advertising, will only do so for as long as you continue spending. It's for
this reason we think of content as an asset that businesses own, whereas online
advertising is rented. This distinction is important for SaaS marketers to
consider.
Looking for content marketing
inspiration? Here are three SaaS businesses that use content to generate leads:
Dropbox
The file sharing and storage service has many types of potential
customers and attracts them with targeted content at the Dropbox, Dropbox Business, Dropbox Tech,
and Dropbox Developer blogs. They also host a
number of webinars to communicate their credentials to
prospective clients.
Intercom
Intercom's content marketing strategy focuses on product
management, design, startups, and marketing. The customer communication
platform is fast becoming known for the quality of the Inside Intercom blog, podcast, and books, all
of which help build their brand and drive qualified leads.
Moz
Moz has developed a reputation for its thought leadership content.
They publish a blog post each day, as well as create authoritative guides,
and of course, release their Whiteboard Friday videos -- all of which
generate leads.
While content should be a key part of your strategy it's important
not to overlook content distribution. In short, it's no use investing in
content creation if you neglect distribution. Want to learn more? Check out
this post by HubSpot's VP of Marketing, Kieran Flanagan, on why you should
spend 50% of your time on distribution.
Product Trials
The product trial is fast becoming an important
source of lead generation for the SaaS industry. Nothing beats “test driving” a
product and your business should consider making a trial available via your
website if you don't already.
Trials are a particularly
effective lead generation tool if you're selling to a tech-savvy audience that
want to experience the product, rather than speak with a sales rep. Product
trials are typically self-serve, so you can continue to generate leads with
little ongoing marketing investment.
However, it's important to
mention a few guardrails. You need to ensure people have a positive experience
when trialing your product, so you should consider providing some onboarding or
support, depending on the complexity of your product and your unit economics.
This could be either through one-to-one calls, group webinars, automated
emails, or a combination of all three.
The value of product trials is
that they are a strong indicator of buyer intent. A prospect is investing their
time getting to get to know your product. At HubSpot, we know that people
running a trial have a higher propensity to buy -- we call these folks product
qualified leads (PQLs) and we track them very carefully.
The key is to strike a balance
between demonstrating value without overwhelming the prospect and doing it in a
light-touch and cost effective way. This requires some trial (pun intended) and
error, but with ongoing optimization, product trials can become a stream of
highly qualified leads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO works hand in glove with
content marketing by making your content discoverable on search engines like
Google, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. You should think of SEO in two separate yet
complementary categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-Page SEO
The good news about on-page SEO
is that it's entirely within your control. You need to create content that
people want to read, link to, and share, but there are also other factors to
consider.
These include keyword strategy, internal linking, use of titles
and descriptions, as well as page load time and UI. For a detailed look at what
makes a well optimized website, check out this on-page SEO guide.
Off-Page SEO
People frequently think
off-page SEO refers solely to link building, but there's more to it than that.
While links are important, it's the quality of those links that matters.
High-quality links from trusted and authoritative sites trumps quantity every
time. Social media is also important, as shares and links from influential
social accounts are another quality indicator.
The best way to gain links and shares is by creating a
distribution strategy. HubSpot's Director of Acquisition, Matthew Barby, gave a
talk at SearchLeeds called 'There's more to life than "great content"'
which explores this in more detail.
Referral Marketing
There's a growing body of research that shows referrals are one of the most effective types of leads.
Although referrals are typically low cost and close relatively quickly, there's
a referrals mismatch among sales and marketing, with 56% of sales reps calling referrals "very important" yet
only one-third of businesses having a program in place.
There's a lot of debate on
whether or not companies should incentivize referrals. One school of thought is
that you won't generate many referrals without an incentive, while the opposing
view is that if you incentivize too heavily, you may get low value quality
referrals. The best advice is to test which works for your SaaS business and
then optimize for that.
Before focusing on
optimization, the most important part is launching your referral program.
There's software available which can power your referral program from start to
finish, but at minimum we suggest you create a landing page on your website
where people can make referrals.
To ensure you get quality referrals,
explain what makes a good referral. This could the person's job title,
industry, or size of the company they would for. You should also clearly say
if, how, and when people will get incentivized.
Marketing teams can make it
easy for sales, customer success, and support teams to ask for referrals by
drafting templates they can use. The most important part here is making it easy
for sales reps to make the ask, and empowering them to do so.
Google AdWords
While inbound marketing can greatly reduce your AdWords spend, millions of people still
click on search engine ads each day. If you don't want to miss
out on a portion of potential leads you should still continue to invest in PPC,
especially with ads becoming more prominent in Google search results.
PPC remains popular for several
reasons. It delivers targeted traffic to your website and is highly scalable,
meaning you can increase or reduce spend based on the needs of the business on
any given day. It also has a lot of inherent predictability -- both in terms of
cost and results -- which appeals to CFOs or those that have traditionally
controlled marketing budget.
The best advice is to run a
series of tests and see what activity generates the best ROI for your business.
There's a great variation in competition between industries, but the fact
remains you can generate significant levels of traffic and leads from PPC if
you're willing to pay for it.
HubSpot has launched the Ads Add-On so our
customers can run inbound and paid campaigns from within the software.
Co-marketing
Many SaaS businesses decide to collaborate by running a co-marketing campaign with other companies
that either complement their product offering, or share a similar point of view
or approach to business.
There's no hard and fast rule
about co-marketing, but typically the companies involved create a piece of
content, such as an ebook, host a webinar, or publish some research. The leads
generated and the costs incurred are also shared by the companies
participating.
Both companies have the
opportunity to leverage each other's following, and potentially reach a
different audience. If both teams are aligned, co-marketing can be very
effective. However, it's important to ensure both teams are in agreement and
understand expectations from the start.
By joining forces with other
prominent companies, you can create a highly desirable piece of content and
generate leads. Co-marketing, when executed effectively, is a cost-effective
approach to generate leads, increase the reach of your brand, and demonstrate
thought leadership. HubSpot frequently partners with other companies in
co-marketing campaigns, such as this example of HubSpot and LinkedIn:
Retargeting
Regardless of whether your key
conversion metric is an ebook download, online purchase, or free trial, the
fact remains that most website visitors never take the action you want them to.
Using retargeting (also known as remarketing) you can dramatically increase
conversions by re-engaging people that left your website.
Retargeting tracks your website
visitors and then displays online adverts as they visit other sites around the
web. Many ecommerce sites lead the way with retargeting by offering contextual
offers to lure back website visitors. Just think of the time you were looking
at an item of clothing online, left the website, and then saw adverts (often
with a discount) promoting that pair of jeans on your favorite websites or
social media. That's retargeting in action.
Regardless of the industry, you
can (and should) use retargeting to turn hard earned website visitors into
customers. And most retargeting software now enables marketers to target people
beyond website visits. For example, you can launch a campaign based on events
-- such as opening an email or attending a webinar -- while some tools let
marketers target people with similar characteristics that haven't visited your
website yet.
Retargeting is a valuable tool for marketers as it gives your
brand another chance to establish trust, credibility, and familiarity with
website visitors. (HubSpot customers: You can leverage retargeting within the
HubSpot Marketing Platform by using the AdRoll integration.)
These are tried and tested SaaS
marketing strategies to help software companies grow, but as always, we
recommend you test, analyze, and optimize them to see what drives the best
results for your business.