B2B SaaS marketing is always tougher than customer marketing. And we are not saying that marketing to consumers is easy, but it is more traditional.
Anyone who works in the B2B segment knows that the industry creates its own sets of constant challenges. However, in the B2C industry, the marketing takes place with the customer, the sales cycle is smaller whereas in the B2B SaaS marketing, the sales cycle is quite prolonged. Mostly if you target smaller groups with higher priced products.
The list of challenges for SaaS marketing is much longer and pretty complicated. You need to understand not only about your product and services but also about your customer industries. It is important to create a good rapport and empathy with your customers, without these two factors your business can surely fail.
Whether you’re racing to market with a brand new offering, gaining a foothold and trying to scale, or firmly established and trying to improve performance, there’s no shortage of challenges SaaS businesses inevitably face.
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Still, not selling a physical product already possesses its own challenge and this is not familiar to many people as well. Not to mention, SaaS marketing can be very demanding, where not only growth but also it is more required for a successful business.
What Is SaaS Marketing:
Let’s start with the theory of SaaS first. SaaS or Software as a Service provides users the ability to connect and use the cloud-based application via the internet.
Basically, users or business customers hire this kind of application for their business.
On the other hand, you can hire this kind of application for your business, so your user can get connected over the internet.
And SaaS marketing is simply the process to market this kind of application.
If your company offers software as a service to other businesses, there are several targeted marketing strategies you can use to achieve the highest conversion rates possible.
If you are a SaaS vendor, you must adopt the latest marketing strategies to archive more customers and high conversions.
So how do you get started with SaaS marketing?
Still, before getting started the SaaS Marketing process you may face several challenges.
Challenges Of SaaS Marketing:
SaaS is a logical product. And the mindset of its customers is always different than other targeted customers.
The decision of purchasing a SaaS product would be more logical than emotional, pricing and compatibility like factor must take some part as well.
And the purchasing decision does not lie on a single person.
So, having these facts the challenges become more complicated when it comes to SaaS marketing.
Logically, marketers may have dealt with many physical products but in SaaS is not having any physical presence.
Other Major Challenges In SaaS Marketing:
Demand and SaaS offerings are always changing. The constant update and release of new features can make your marketing strategies chaotic before your previous strategy would make any significant impact.
- Customers are not aware of the use of your SaaS product. So, your marketing strategy and content needs to detail educational
- You need to bring together the SaaS B2B customers and your sales cycle.
- Standing Out from the Crowd
- Build a loyal customer Database
- Targeting your audience
- Dealing with constant changes
SaaS Marketing Strategy:
Statista data shows – “the total size of the SaaS market has increased to $116 billion in 2019 from $105 billion in just one year. And it is expected to cross $135 billion in 2020.”
So, as a SaaS vendor, you must take a deep dive into marketing.
Before jumping into SaaS marketing, you need to learn about the customer journey first. And can prepare your marketing strategy by following the respected journey stages.
The customer journey may consist of the following stages:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Retention
- Advocacy
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Actually, there are countless marketing strategies available to produce maximum results. With a mixed knowledge, I have listed some (would be) impactful SaaS marketing results.
The countless effort without the right directions is totally meaningless. To define a clear and achievable goal is the first step to do for successful SaaS marketing.
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- The goals must be specific and tractable by assigning KPIs and key metrics.
- Figure your overall business
- Figure how marketing and sales team can align to achieve the goals
The goal must be realistic. The bigger goal is always hard to achieve. So break down the bigger goals to smaller with realistic milestones.
The inbound marketing methodology has four phases;
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- Backup your step
- Evaluate how to create an inbound strategy
- Define your buyers’ personas
- Illustrating key traits of the buyers
And the very next step is to create content for them and address their issues and help them by solving those problems.
Content marketing is an important strategy for any business including SaaS marketing as well. You may look at some of the biggest players of the SaaS market; strong content marketing is their key factor.
The content marketing methodology has encompassed two things:
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- Letting your audience know the use of your product
- Establish your position at the related industry
You can extend your approach to social media platforms to provide the same information as well.
Existence, trust, and credibility are an important part of assets in the SaaS niche. And you can prove your existence by spreading the voluble information through content marketing.
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Communicate Value Differentiators Of Their Product
With the rise in the internet, the size of the market has enlarged. Many new and unique SaaS products were emerging daily, with at least ten competitors, who are launching similar products. This gives the customers a variety of options to choose, while purchasing any kind of products or services.
Therefore you need to demonstrate your product and marketise how your product is different from your customers.
You can handle this sales challenge by showing how your product is different and unique. The key is by doing some research on your customer’s industry and addressing their pain points of the future upgrades will be pretty much helpful for you. You need to communicate and concise about your product and how it will help the customers in solving their major issue.
To encourage new customers and let them experience the actual benefits of your SaaS products, a free giving period is the best tactic to focus on.
And alternatively, it can be used for the lead generation as well!
This doesn’t mean you should go blindly without any strategy here;
“Optimizing the conversion rate within the free-trial period should be the focus of any SaaS marketer, and this will also mean one other thing: your product must be good.”
Through the free trial period, you would have the chance to showcase your customer service excellence.
Standing Out From The Crowd:
The shift from On-premises software to a cloud based SaaS took some additional time to get recognised in the market. B2b customers are pretty much apprehensive about their data security, location and many other things.
Things might have taken some turn, however the last few years have noticed a significant development among various SaaS solutions.
However, the global cloud revenue is predicted to reach $ 474 billion by 2022, the ongoing pandemic has increased the demand for digital services and made the cloud a centerpiece for many new digital experiences.
And the last not the least Customer engagement is a goal that must stretch across teams and metrics.
It can be performed at a high level, as the knowledge and tap points of a customer for your product, company, or brand.
It is the relationship between your company and your customers and is closely related to customer loyalty and retention.
The better user experience can make a bold relationship between your SaaS product and customers and closely related to the customer success stories and retention.
Many biggest SaaS companies follow the strategy of building a loyal database for their customers. Under the SaaS subscription model, the costs are recovered along with time when the customers continue to renew the subscription.
New customer acquisition has become the top priority for many SaaS business.
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Salesforce, Houston, Texas
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Customer retention becomes a key point in increasing profit for SaaS business. According to Salesforce desk, with 5% increase in the customer retention will drive profits up-to 125%
The customer experience can be broken down into different stages and can be developed, and implemented separately. Like;
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- Short Signup process
- Send the users through an onboarding sequence
- In-App Chat Feature
- Offer Free Training or Free Demo
- Develop and link tutorial Videos to engage
- Get Feedback for improvement
Warping Words
SaaS marketing is different from other product marketing. If you follow the right path and strategies then you can easily gain success for your SaaS product in a short period.
For every business, becoming successful starts with attracting the right customers. It might take some longer for the SaaS company to grow, but it is achievable by following the right SaaS marketing strategy.
The strategy discussed above will work effectively in successfully growing your SaaS business.
And must make it a point to find regular feedback from your loyal customers and instantly try to improve the customer service.
Also, throughout the marketing methodology focus on retaining the customers as this can be a game-changer in your overall profits.
Thinking of building a SaaS product, let Andolasoft help you. Our Dedicated developers will build excellent SaaS products for your business, by following all the security major and latest features to grow your business.
Happy SaaS marketing!
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