First of all, Software as a Service (SaaS) provides software on a subscription basis. “On-demand software” or Web-hosted software also refers to SaaS. That said, SaaS marketing is bringing that software to market and selling the subscriptions.
If you’re in the SaaS business and need some marketing advice, the experts at Digital Authority Partners have put together this guide for you. Be patient; building a robust marketing strategy will take time. But ultimately, an intelligent SaaS marketing plan will keep your software enterprise solid and stable.
Build a Content Network
Rather than simply hosting a blog on your main website, consider building a network of online magazines related to your software. Each of your online magazines should focus on a topic for potential searching software users.
For example, if you host real estate software, your magazines should focus on topics of interest to real estate agents. That could include individual real estate markets. But at least one magazine needs to focus on real estate technicalities and legalities, a problem that your software can solve.
Essentially, build a network of online magazines that appeal to different buyers that could use your software. Each magazine should be an attractive, unique, standalone entity. The content should not be a sales pitch but rather valuable to the reader.
Of course, these magazines will have links and possibly display ads for your product. Also, these magazines can provide a source of passive ad income from non-competing sites. For example, in the case of real estate software magazines, they could host ads from sites like Zillow.
Content Marketing Strategies
Content isn’t just blog posts, magazine articles, newsletters, or videos. Other types of content can benefit technology companies, such as:
· Podcasts
· Case Studies
· Infographics
· Industry news articles
· E-books and E-courses
· Webinars and live streams
· Influencer marketing
· Whitepapers
· Testimonials
· Calculators
· Polls, surveys, and quizzes
· Audiobooks
· Real-world, offline events
· Resource libraries
Decide what will work for your niche and what will appeal to your potential subscribers. Whatever you decide, your content needs to stand out from the competition. Place these content marketing techniques on your social media, landing pages, blogs, magazines, and newsletters.
Create Videos and Place Them on Popular Video Platforms
Video marketing is highly successful, especially for SaaS companies. However, a quality video takes time to put together. So, to keep it simple, you can use your videos to answer frequently asked questions for your niche.
YouTube is free, and it has more than 2 billion active users worldwide every month. So creating video titles that contain possible questions related to your software can bring you a lot of views.
But don’t limit yourself to YouTube; upload your videos to other platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Rumble, and Bitchute. New video and social media platforms are launching all of the time. It can be time-consuming, but upload your videos to the places your potential subscribers are likely to be.
Also, embed your videos on your landing pages, across your network of online magazines, and in your newsletters.
Build an Online Community
Your SaaS brand needs to have a user forum for your subscribers. A fun, informative, and engaged community of customers bolsters the connection between users, developers, and potential subscribers.
Not only that, your company should host groups on social media. These serve as a place for users to share ideas and as a place to gather valuable marketing data. However, you may need a dedicated moderator to keep your forums and groups free of spam and trolls.
The goal of hosting a community is not to promote your company’s latest products or agenda. Instead, it’s to create a sense of pride and belonging to your industry niche and software. Of course, your community is also a valuable resource for your subscribers and potential subscribers.
Building a community is only the first step; managing and keeping the community alive is an entirely different challenge. Ensure that your community members have ways to connect and receive notices that their questions and posts have received a response. Encourage and reward user-generated content with different levels.
Your SaaS brand depends on loyal subscribers. One way to encourage that is to rely on their basic need for community.
Hyper-personalized, Targeted Marketing
Cutting-edge tools like AI and machine learning make highly targeted, hyper-personalized marketing possible. Hyper-personalization leverages AI, big data, automation, and analytics to create targeted, real-time experiences for potential customers.
When done well, hyper-personalized marketing is beneficial for both consumers and SaaS companies. It engages consumers in a more meaningful way by building positive relationships and improving the customer experience.
Research shows that:
· 86% of companies using hyper-personalization see a measurable increase in business.
· 90% of consumers like hyper-personalized ads.
· 40% of people who have responded to a hyper-personalized ad say they” buy from that brand again.
So your targeted personalization needs to be thorough, from your PPC campaigns, magazines, and video marketing, to subscriptions.
Keep in mind that there’s a difference if you’re marketing to companies rather than individuals. For example, an employee who sees your ads may need to get more than one approval to subscribe to your SaaS product.
Decide How You’ll Measure the Success of Your Marketing
Success can mean different things, but most of all, it means an increase in revenue. Therefore, there needs to be a return on investment with your SaaS marketing. For a SaaS company, that means more subscribers.
However, there are other ways to measure marketing success, such as customer acquisition cost; this calculates your campaign’s average price per customer. Customer acquisition cost needs a measurement against the customer lifetime value, which is how much the average customer will spend. For example, achieving a 3:1 LTV requires a formula to determine a CAC ratio or making 3x from a new subscriber compared to what it costs to acquire them.
Customer Churn Rate measures the number of existing customers at the beginning of a period compared to the number of existing customers at the end of the period. You’ll want to see an increase in existing customers rather than a decrease. If your company offers a free version of the software, measuring free to paid conversion is another measure of success.
A good SaaS marketing plan is sustainable, taking into account your company’s sales cycle and your average customer life cycle. But, that is only half of the equation. Finding yourself quality, trustworthy SaaS marketing agencies is the other half of successful SaaS marketing.
