SaaS platforms have grown astronomically over the years. However, this growth has intensified the competition and made it difficult to ensure that your product stands out in a niche segment. But, you needn't worry. Here are smart SaaS marketing strategies that will help you make a bold statement about your software products, strengthening your hold on the market.
1. ABM & Deep LinkedIn Integration
Account-based marketing or ABM is a novel business marketing strategy that helps you focus on the best-fit accounts for your business. ABM identifies high-value accounts where key stakeholders are targeted and then marketed directly through multi-channel, personalised marketing approaches.
For B2B SaaS campaigns, a robust ABM strategy can be the key to optimum business growth. With ABM, the first step is identifying and defining the target accounts using quantitative and qualitative methods. The next step can be identifying customer personas. In this case, core stakeholders in the SaaS industry could be everyday software users, managers, or top-level executives.
The next plan of action is to create custom content addressing their pain points and how your strategies will help them. Another way to amplify your marketing efforts is to leverage deep LinkedIn integration, which offers optimized and high-quality engagement on LinkedIn through ABM.
2. Leverage SaaS Review Sites to Boost Product Exposure
SaaS review sites such as Capterra, Gartner, GetApp, etc. analyze the pros and cons of different competing software products under one roof. They publish customer reviews of SaaS brands and rate different software based on the feedback. The features of the products are compared elaborately. The majority of potential customers rely on the information available on review sites to make informed purchasing/subscription decisions.
Your brand must leverage the influencing power of these sites to build the credibility of your products. For this:
- Send specifications and utility propositions of your software products to review sites’ editors.
- Mention and elaborate on all the features and competitive advantages of your software.
- Consider opting for paid lead generation tools to have the spotlight on your products and more authoritative reviews to endorse their superior performance.
3. Offer SaaS Trials
One of the proven SaaS marketing strategies for roping in more customers is to offer free product trials to leads. Free trials facilitate the testing of features for a limited time and showcase the extent of your customer support and service. When the trial period concludes, you can seek reviews regarding the pros (for leveraging superlative features in the future) and cons (to improve upon shortcomings). These insights will enable you to refine the software and enhance the customer experience.
When it comes to software trials, certain trials can be for a lifetime with an availability of limited features. However, full trials can be for a protracted time so that leads can visualise the benefits derived from your software. Whether to go for lifetime trials or limited period ones can be determined on the basis of habit formation, market competition, software adoption, and long-term vs short-term business strategy, etc. For instance, Microsoft Windows is a classic example of full feature trials for its early versions. However, they started charging users for the post-product loyalty phase.
4. Refine PPC Campaigns
Refining your PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign will drive better qualified organic traffic to your SaaS site. You can accomplish this by:
- Testing ad copy variations to figure out the ones driving optimum traffic.
- Researching strategic short and long-tail industry keywords with relevant variations to display your ads to targeted leads.
- Using popular SaaS digital marketing tools to find highly focused keywords.
- Seeking insights from Google Ad Quality score to ensure that a significant value proposition is offered to prospects.
- Hiring SaaS marketing companies with a proven track record of optimizing conversion rates.
5. Pay Attention to SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) empowers your SaaS site to secure higher placement in SERP (Search Engine Result Page) ranking for relevant, targeted keywords without buying ads.
To leverage SEO’s potential:
- Conduct thorough research to segregate your targeted leads.
- Research keywords facing less competition but driving in more traffic.
- Review the site’s content layout, ease of navigation, intuitive browsing quotient, and metadata.
- Improve the authoritative index of your domain with quality backlinks and referrals.
- Make decisions based on insights offered by marketing data.
- Use a crawler tool to check for SEO blunders on the website.
- Carry out competitor analysis to tweak your strategy.
6. Incentivize Referrals
Your customers will enthusiastically refer others to use your software products if they are adequately compensated for the time and effort taken to carry out word-of-mouth promotion.
You can consider incentivizing referrals by offering customers:
- One month of free service (period can be changed)
- Discounts on software subscriptions
- Access to premium features for free for a certain period
- Bonus cash for each new subscription with a specific referral code
- Redeemable reward points
- Fixed commission based on affiliate program enrolment
7. Make SaaS Sign-ups Easy
The sign-up process for your SaaS offering should be simple, with a minimum number of fields to fill up. Newer customers tend to get distracted by a tedious sign-up process and can leave permanently. Streamline the process by eliminating unnecessary fields seeking redundant information. For example, refrain from asking leads to share their credit card details while signing up for a free trial.
8. Generate Quality Content
The content you publish must be informative and educative. It should be relevant to your overall brand identity and not just software. Quality content plays a vital role in engaging customers and reducing the churn rate.
Quality content can be generated by:
- Sharing useful tricks, tips, tweaks, advice, and details about your software.
- Projecting the superiority of your expertise and product’s features vis-à-vis a competing product.
- Providing information about events or news that can benefit customers.
- Keeping customers updated about global advancements in a niche segment.
- Updating about the latest changes in regulations or standards.
- Offering actionable insights on troubleshooting common product issues.
- Giving a sneak peek at the important features lined up in the launch pipeline.
9. Offer Lucrative Deals
You can motivate customers to associate with your SaaS brand for a longer duration by offering attractive subscription deals they simply can’t resist. Keep increasing the discount percentage on subscriptions in tandem with an increase in the time period. You can also offer other incentives to inspire customers to opt for a longer plan. Showcase the monetary benefit a customer can avail by choosing a particular plan. Consider giving free subscriptions for specific months to reward those who sign-up for a more extended plan.
10. Go Global
You can gain a foothold in the global SaaS marketplace by having an international team seeking out uncharted business territories to expand your brand presence. With cloud technologies becoming affordable and more accessible, demand for SaaS is bound to increase in Asian and other emerging markets.
Although setting up local offices seems like a good idea, the overheads may become a major hurdle. For instance, if your Florida-based company is looking to expand its SaaS business in India, it would be better to hire a local B2B digital marketing agency in India to do the marketing work rather than setting up your own office there. This approach works better as the local agency is better acquainted with cultural nuances and language, where it can follow local news and industry trends to help connect to prospects.
11. Provide Great Customer Service
Customers want personalized attention that caters to their needs and problems. Their positive experience with your efficient service will go a long way in boosting retention and loyalty. You can improve customer service significantly by:
- Empathizing with customers to make them feel that resolving their problems through individualized intervention is your top priority.
- Offering a quick but decisive solution to address the concerns of the customer.
- Interacting with customers in a caring, comforting, and understanding tone; confrontation must never supersede courtesy.
- Listening patiently and intently to customers’ issues without being argumentative or overly persuasive.
- Adequately training the reps about the complete array of your software’s features so that they can offer conclusive solutions to customer problems.
Conclusion
The SaaS market is experiencing phenomenal growth. Your SaaS brand must add a cutting-edge spin to its marketing strategies to survive the stiff competition and grow consistently. Amura Marketing Technologies, the leading SAAS marketing agency, provides technology-driven, actionable, and growth-centric marketing strategies to expand your customer base and increase revenue in the long run.
Amura Marketing Technologies conducts comprehensive research and user segmentation to analyze customers' online behavior to facilitate the nurturing of prospects across the marketing funnel. Advance ahead of your competitors with dynamic SaaS marketing strategies from Amura Marketing Technologies.
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