How to Create a SaaS Marketing Strategy that Drives Business Growth

In the past seven years, the SaaS industry has increased in size by 500%. Organizations are using SaaS solutions more than ever before as nearly 70% of total company software used are SaaS applications. As SaaS solutions continue to make their rise in the market, your solution must stand out. One way to do that is through powerful marketing. A SaaS marketing strategy tailored to the unique interests of your audience can help you drive business growth and increase revenue.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

A SaaS marketing strategy cannot be successful without first understanding your audience. Here are a few tips to ensuring your target audience is clearly defined for marketing efforts.

• Uncover Common Challenges: People seek out solutions when they are faced with a challenge. It is critical to know what those challenges are as this helps you address pain points in marketing activities such as messaging and content. Be meticulous when uncovering the pain points prospects are experiencing. There might be some lesser-known ones that your team can capitalize on that can make your product or service offering stand out amongst the competition.
• Research Ideal Customers. Identifying ideal customers starts with research. Conduct surveys and polls with current customers, prospects and lost deals. Each of these groups has valuable insights into their experience with your product and their overall experience throughout the buyer’s journey.
• Define Buyer Personas. With information and data into pain points, challenges and buyer journey experiences, you can define your buyer personas. Be mindful of how many buyer personas you create. Ensure each one has specific, unique needs and obstacles. Doing this helps guide marketing strategies toward specific personas, making them more targeted and overall effective.

Step 2: Position Your Solution with Strong Messaging

With a comprehensive outline of your target audience, you have paved the way for positioning your solution with impactful messaging. A SaaS marketing strategy driven by powerful B2B messaging can make a huge impact on lead generation and conversion opportunities.

• Create a Unique Value Proposition (UVP). This differentiates your company from competitors by highlighting how your solution offerings can benefit customers. It should sum up why prospects should choose your company. For example, Salesforce’s UVP is “The World’s #1 CRM Platform.” It showcases their leadership in the CRM space and positions them as the top choice across the globe.
• Highlight How it Solves Pain Points. A prospect is looking for a solution because they are experiencing obstacles that are keeping them from achieving a goal. Your messaging and positioning should clearly state how your product or service addresses those pain points and helps them reach the goals they strive for.
• Showcase What Customers Are Saying. 90% of people trust what a customer says about a business, proving how powerful customer testimonials are. Highlight customer testimonials and proof points from case studies within messaging components. To do so effectively, consider the persona you are targeting. If you are targeting an executive, show them stats about how your offering can boost ROI. If you are targeting a mid-level manager, present stats that show how your offering can increase productivity. Tailor your message and customer proof to the persona you are targeting to make the most impact.

Step 3: Create Personalized and Targeted Content

The powerhouse of B2B marketing is content. With a target audience defined and messaging elements in place, you can create content that is personalized and includes specific messages that will resonate.

• Develop Content that Addresses the Buyer’s Journey: Content that is targeted to a prospect at a certain time in their sales experience is poised to engage and draw action from them. Think of the buyer’s journey in three stages, awareness, consideration and decision. Each of these requires different content to educate and advance them to the next step.
  • Awareness. Make it apparent to your prospects that they are experiencing a challenge that needs resolution. Easy-to-consume content that boosts awareness of a prospect’s obstacle, such as blogs, articles and infographics is most effective at this stage.
    • Consideration. This is where they weigh their options for providers. At this stage, eBooks, white papers, guides and comparison charts are most impactful. Going more in-depth on a topic, showcasing your expertise and differentiating your brand compared to others builds a sense of trust.
    • Decision. Prospects are ready to decide the provider they are going with. Content shared with them at this stage should be around pushing them to a favorable decision. Give them a free demo or trial. Share use cases and success stories to tell them what types of benefits they can achieve. Create videos that highlight product functionalities.
  • Create Relevant Content. It might seem obvious, but creating relevant content is instrumental in a marketing strategy. Content needs to relate to something the audience is dealing with. Whether it be a pain point or persona data points, you must put something out there that they can connect with. If there is nothing that they relate to, there will not be any engagement and they will move on to the next company that can offer them what they are looking for.

Step 4: Capitalize on Segmented Email Marketing Activities

Email marketing continues to be a staple in B2B marketing, which solidifies its necessity in a SaaS marketing strategy. It is more important than ever to utilize the email channel effectively.

• Build Segmented Email Lists. Email segments can be divided in several ways, but think about the groups, or segments, of your email database that would make sense to personalize communications for. Maybe it is specific industries, so create email segments that are for the different industries you might target. Maybe it is specific job titles that you want to target as your product might have features that would specifically help their role.
• Nurture Leads with Drip Campaigns, Product Updates and Educational Content. Nurturing leads is just as critical as generating them. A powerful drip campaign should include a variety of content and keep leads engaged with your brand. Offer product updates, new features or educational content. Share new blogs, articles or other gated content they can get first access to. Provide exclusive access to various offers. Always provide them with a way to reach out to you, such as through a request demo button or phone number to contact, if they are ready to take the next step.

Step 5: Incorporate Social Media Tactics

Social media has become a more active channel for B2B marketers. Consider these tips to ensure your social media is set up for success in a SaaS marketing strategy.

• Be Active on Platforms Your Audience Engages On. Be where your audience is. Interact with them on the platforms they most engage on. For B2B and SaaS, that is LinkedIn. Engage in LinkedIn groups. Respond to comments. These seem trivial, but they go a long way.
• Share Content. Social media is all about sharing content and information. Use this to your advantage. Strategically share a mix of third-party and internal content. Educate your audience but also showcase your brand. User-generated content is also valuable. This can be a picture of a customer with your product. It can be a customer testimonial or review. Anything that comes from your customers and can show others what your product is like. It also shows that your brand truly values customers.

Step 6: Showcase Your Product in Demos and Webinars

A part of a SaaS marketing strategy that deserves a standout mention are webinars and demos. These can be valuable and utilized in ways that can subtly show your brand but also provide highlights in ways other marketing components cannot. Use these tactics to elevate your webinars and demos.

• Host Webinars to Showcase Your Product. Webinars are informational. You can cover a range of topics but also subtly mention your product or service. Many webinars cover different industry challenges. This can be an opportunity for you to say “our product addresses these challenges by x, y, z.” This is where you can touch on features or functionalities that set your offering apart. With the variety of SaaS solutions out there, competition is fierce. Any chance for your brand to differentiate your product from others is critical.
• Conduct Live Demos. Live demos are an ideal opportunity to answer questions from the audience. Attendees want to learn more about your offering and often have questions about aspects of your product or your brand. Hosting live demos gives them a chance to ask these questions and get direct answers from someone at the company who knows the product in and out.
• Capture Leads During Webinar or Demo Sessions. The webinar and demo sessions are putting potential leads in the palm of your hand. Require attendees to sign up before the event, so you can gather their information. You can do the same when offering the on-demand version. With the leads, you can then start to nurture them with related content or even offer them a free demo for their attendance at the live event.

Step 7: Offer a Free Trial or Demo Model

Sometimes, for someone to decide on a product, they have to try it out first. Here are a few tactics to incorporate into your SaaS marketing strategy to help push leads forward.

• Offer a Free Version or Trial of Your Product. Offering a freemium or trial version of your product can help prospects get a sense of what it is like. This time can also allow them to ask questions or provide comments on features or functions they would like to see, only improving your solution as a standout in the SaaS industry.
• Encourage Upgrades to Premium Features. Free versions of products are a great option. Most premium plans have more features that can improve productivity or other goals even more than the free version. Sprinkle in customer results or quotes that show the benefits of upgrading.
• Ask For Feedback to Improve the Product. It is always in your best interest to try to improve your solution. Asking for feedback from your customers can help you take it to the next level. Ask for honesty. Even if the feedback is negative, it is only something to improve upon and resolve so other customers can achieve more.

Remember, SaaS marketing is about attracting and retaining customers. Adapt your strategy based on data, stay agile and continuously optimize your efforts to drive more demos, purchases and customers overall.

Ready to get started with creating your SaaS marketing strategy? Contact us today or request a free marketing consultation. Learn more about our B2B SaaS marketing services and see our successes with SaaS organizations.