SaaS is about introducing a new product with useful features for work or personal use. SaaS (Software as a Service) brands differ from other domains, and so are SaaS marketing strategies. Therefore, a SaaS startup needs to adapt a marketing strategy that highlights the best sides of the solution.
With little interest in in-person events, digital marketing is a valuable route to promote SaaS startups. Marketing strategy in particular should include analysis of data about prospects and customers.
We do a comprehensive analysis of SaaS marketing strategies with the aim of lead generation and lead nurturing. So, you will learn about the methods that have been proven to deliver excellent results when you bring your SaaS to market. Hopefully, they will come in handy as you plan your effective SaaS marketing strategy.
Features of the SaaS market
The cloud solutions market is continuously growing. Statista estimates that the SaaS market is expected to grow at an annual growth rate of 9.80%. Therefore, the market volume is projected to reach $330.60 billion by 2027 from $207.20 billion in 2022.
The SaaS market is diverse and adopts a large number of devices. For example, a SaaS search on Capterra reveals 3904 products.
Unlike other industries, SaaS marketing focuses on establishing long-term relationships with customers. Therefore, your marketing approach should be based on the specific features that comprise your product. Also, a successful SaaS marketing strategy must consider the new markets and audience you aim to reach.
Furthermore, the boundaries between SaaS marketing, sales and support are unclear. These aspects have a strong connection and work together to present your startup to users.
5 Key Steps to Keep in Mind When Creating a SaaS Strategy
1. Use your knowledge of the target audience
A buyer persona is a research-based description of a specific customer that your mother-in-law can buy. This type of profile shows the background and personal traits of the buyer. In addition, the description presents the challenges and decisions a buyer makes to buy your mother-in-law. Below is a sample buyer persona that can help you plan your SaaS marketing strategy.
Creating a buyer persona is a step that usually comes with product discovery. At this stage, you explore the potential of your SaaS business model. One of the aspects of search is presenting your target audience which includes specific buyer personas.
With search results in mind, you can create useful content for your target audience, such as blog posts, videos or social media posts. Plus, you can optimize your website and personalize emails and ads.
2. Understand Your Competitors
To see what your competitors are doing, you can find information on how to improve your SaaS marketing strategy. Analyze their marketing efforts and learn what they do well and where there is a way to get better. Thus, you will know what aspects to highlight in your SaaS marketing campaign to reach the target audience.
The following are best practices that will help you learn more about your competition:
Study their content on websites, blogs and social media. This will give you an idea of what message they convey and how they present themselves. So, you can determine the aspects where you can highlight your strengths or improve your weaknesses.
Review content on your niche trends and news. Monitoring the development of your domain will help you stay informed about changes in the SaaS market. Thus, you can implement new features and use recent research to improve the customer experience with your SaaS.
Learn from case studies of other SaaS companies and how they succeeded. Case studies reveal the obstacles SaaS companies faced and how they overcame them. A case study can be a tool to highlight your expertise.
See how your competitors appear in public. His speaking in the media or at special conferences can become a valuable source of information for you. In addition, you can look into the functions of top individuals in the company such as the CEO or the sales manager.
3. Create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
A unique selling proposition, or USP, is a distinctive feature or approach that sets you apart from similar solutions. USP is one aspect that shows how you solve the pain points of your target audience. The following are the key USP elements that need to be highlighted in your SaaS marketing strategy:
- Highlighting the value of your product. Your SaaS customers should be sure that the product is helpful to them. Also, showing customers that you will support them as they use your product is important.
- Avant-garde solution. Implementing a new technology that other solutions don’t offer attracts your potential customers. Such a unique technical approach can be important to your potential customers when they choose between offers in the marketplace.
- Delicate offer. The way you present your USP should be delightful and gentle. Suggesting a product should build a SaaS company image that respects users’ preferences.
- A unique selling proposition will help you become the focus of your SaaS marketing strategy and compete with similar products.
4. SaaS Customer Journey: From a Prospect to a Customer
The goal of effective SaaS marketing is to attract customers for the long term. This means converting prospects and building qualified leads and relationships for years to come. To reach that goal, SaaS companies need to communicate with potential customers and leads. Such a relationship makes for an efficient nutrition strategy.
Usually, industries have a steady flow of users that change like e-commerce. Unlike them, a SaaS development company has to focus on long-term customer retention.
The SaaS customer journey is different than in other industries. The cycle of building awareness and trust in your brand takes longer and more effort. The main reason is that the customer needs to evaluate the features, price and support you offer. Factors can include anything that makes your product a successful competitor. For example, it can be a user-friendly interface.
To help users learn about your product, you can use multiple marketing channels to showcase the benefits of your SaaS. If you are willing to put in more effort, you can provide live demos and short videos to make customers aware of your product.
After the company has tried your product, you can offer them flexible plans and additional features that suit their needs. Also, think about paid plans based on your different SaaS users, premium features, and services. The list is endless as companies are eager to pay for convenience. For example, it can be an interface customized to the specific needs of a company.
5. Use SaaS Sales Funnels to Attract Your Potential Customers
A sales funnel is a multi-step process of making your potential customers aware of your product. The sales funnel is based on the AIDA principle, which stands for:
- Awareness
- interest
- decision
- action
These are the stages your prospects go through until they become your customers. What do these steps mean?
Awareness is the stage when a prospect discovers your product for the first time. After that, a prospect will show interest in your product and compare your tool with others. Then a prospect will dig deeper and learn more about your pricing. This leads to the action of buying your product. Thus, you lead your prospect to become a client and then become your mother-in-law’s advocate.
Below is a video of Funnel giving a concept of how the sales funnel works.
There is also a new sales cycle approach that you can consider for your SaaS marketing strategy, a flywheel. Compared to a sales funnel, a flywheel shows how your existing customers recommend your product to people they know.
Therefore, you focus your marketing efforts on generating reviews on relevant platforms and social media. Such reviews help you build long-term relationships with clients and cut down on customer acquisition costs. This approach is widely used for marketing SaaS products.
Below is a comparison of the sales funnel and flywheel by HubSpot.
In Conclusion
How Waffle Bytes Makes SaaS Products
Our team builds custom software including SaaS products. Typically, we start with product discovery when we discuss the business opportunities, requirements, and risks of the project. This stage forms the basis for the product’s design, development and marketing strategy.
At the development stage, we can add a technology stack that is essential for working with SEO, email marketing, and analytics. Thus, our customers get stable, fast-loading and scalable solutions that users enjoy.
For example, this is how we created a SaaS solution for real estate with complex architecture. While working on the project, we used the Jamstack approach and Gatsby as one of its technologies.
Since the client requires fast-loading SaaS to handle a lot of data, we used techniques to implement such a feature. The excitement of the solution is the 3D tours showing the assets to the users. So they can preview the real estate before visiting it.
SaaS helps to connect home owners, agents and tenants through an intuitive interface. The menu is organized to see all the possibilities of selling, buying and renting the property. Check out our portfolio for more SaaS and custom software products we build.
