SaaS marketing is a different beast from traditional marketing, especially when it comes to B2B selling. In SaaS marketing, you’re not trying to sell a product to a customer—you’re trying to pitch a solution to a problem. Acquiring new B2B clients can be a challenge, but it’s completely worth it.
B2B SaaS marketing specifically caters to selling products or services to businesses on a subscription basis. This form of marketing focuses on creating demand and selling SaaS (or software-as-a-service) products.
For a successful SaaS marketing, you need to understand the customer’s business and buying process. This article will introduce you to some popular SaaS marketing strategies that you can use to acquire new B2B customers for your SaaS product. We will also provide some effective tips, examples, and case studies to help you gain control over B2B digital marketing strategies.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud-based application specially designed for businesses, freelancers and professionals which allows them to deploy and use it from any device anytime. involves promoting a cloud service to solve the existing problem of any business.
B2B marketing strategy is entirely different than advertising a product or service directly to consumers. B2B SaaS selling is an ongoing relationship, and the sales cycle is longer due to specific business needs, account requirements, and pricing models.
One of the biggest challenges with B2B SaaS marketing is to find the exact niche market as not everyone is going to be the right fit for your software solution.
Solution: Focus only on the best leads that fit your model
With technology constantly expanding, your software is bound to change. Hence, you will have to upgrade and adapt to remain relevant in the market.
Solution: Anticipate and be aware of the latest changes
It is possible that your leads are visiting your website, contacting the team concerned but aren’t turning into pay customers at the end of the day.
Solution: Focus on a well-rounded SaaS marketing strategy
You are already aware of the high competition among the SaaS community with new innovations popping up every year. Hence, it is important for you to look at the big picture and offer more than just software.
Solution: Provide exceptional quality service along with the knowledge base
The SaaS industry is growing and evolving fast. To keep up with the ever-changing consumer needs, you must introduce modifications, upgrades as well as new features from time to time in your product.
By focusing on the key SaaS marketing strategies, you can streamline customer onboarding, scale customer acquisition, and further reduce customer attrition. Moreover, there is this ever-growing competition that you need to keep pace with.
This makes B2B SaaS marketing complex where companies strive to stand out. And to get ahead of the competition, the right SaaS marketing strategy plays an important role.
The top SaaS marketing strategy may include creating engaging and interactive social media content, launching targeted email campaigns, offering free trials and more.
The marketing techniques used by the best SaaS marketing companies are often well documented by experts and researchers. The successful marketing approaches are posted online and used as Case Studies for students and marketers. Here are some successful B2B SaaS marketing strategies and approaches.
Knowing your ideal buyer is extremely important for selling software services. You need to figure out your buyer’s personas and their pain points. It is important that your software brings certain value to the existing processes of your clients.
Also, collect all information sales cycle, the key factors that trigger sales, and industry standards. Once you know your buyer persona, you can now develop your marketing campaign to better pitch your SaaS solution to businesses.
For example, if your company is selling a CRM solution to dentists, you can conduct some basic research on the specific needs of dentists for managing their clinics. Patients need 3-4 visits for an RCT procedure. Suppose your CRM offers features such as automated recall notices and text reminders. In that case, you can position your software as a valuable solution that can save dentist’s time and money while providing their patients a greater degree of satisfaction.
Suggested Read: What Is SaaS? Find the Latest SaaS Examples & Trends
Targeting business owners is more complex than you think. Any business owner won’t recognize your brand or follow you through your channels unless you provide something beneficial for their growth.
So, creating marketing content that matches the buyer’s interest and pain point is the key to attracting and converting potential customers.
While creating any campaigns, make sure you pitch high-quality and relevant content to your ideal buyer persona. Your marketing pitch must mention blog posts, infographics, eBooks, case studies, etc., that addresses your buyers’ needs.
The purpose of your campaigns should not be to sell your SaaS but to help your potential buyer grow in their business. Think of content as an investment in the long-term B2B SaaS marketing plan.
Take for example Canva. Canva is an easy-to-use online graphic tool that doesn’t require specialized hardware or software installation on your device. However, most online graphic designing tools offer the same. So, what makes Canva different from competitors?
The founders of Canva saw a massive gap between existing graphic design tools and business owners’ needs: The Knowledge base. The founders of Canva invested a lot of time and resources to create a comprehensive and detailed tutorial for graphics designing. It made detailed videos on how newbies can easily make excellent graphics, images, banners, and logos.
As a result, Canva gained over 400 thousand potential customers who wanted to learn basic graphic design tactics. Within a few months sales went up, as the learners were gradually turning into customers. Canva currently stands at a valuation of $6 billion, a feat no SaaS company could achieve by boosting ads on Facebook till date.
Suggested Read: Compare Best Canva Alternatives for PC and Mobile
One of the most common mistakes SaaS providers make is going after the client. Instead, let the clients come to you. The buying habits of business owners and purchase managers are entirely different. Goods like t-shirt and phones could be sold by product visibility and brand marketing, but for business owners, don’t go after your product visibility.
Business owners trust their own research rather than being influenced with reappearing ads. Keep creating and boosting valuable content, that indirectly persuades the reader for your solution, but don’t approach with forced aggressive marketing of “Buy Now”.
A business would buy your SaaS solution, if and only if it addresses any operational hassle. Spreading your marketing channels in the right areas is essential to ensure that customers reach out to you. This is one of the impeccable B2B digital marketing strategies.
A few tips you should try for SaaS inbound marketing
Offering a solution or a software as a service is great but not enough. Wonder why? Because everyone on the internet is already offering it. What would make your SaaS business different?
The key here is not to sell a software/solution but also provide additional services that would engage your ideal buyer persona. It can include offering statistics, industry data, additional tools, consultation, customization, support, or anything related to the pain points of your potential customers. This is and integral part of go-to-market strategy in B2B SaaS selling.
How does the B2B content strategy approach help? Here’s an example:
There are hundreds of free logo designing SaaS providers who take your email/ phone number and let you design brilliant logos. Since you are using free software to design your logo, probably, you have recently started a new small business with a website.
Although they do not charge you for the logo, they know you are a potential client for web designing companies and SEO service providers. So instead of directly trying to sell you a service, they engage you with something valuable for your business.
What can you offer to your potential clients?
Providing high-value tools and software for free is not everyone’s cup of tea. It requires a high amount of investment, but there are a few things that you can offer to engage potential buyers of your SaaS subscriptions:
Suggested Read: Top SaaS Companies in India That are Going Global
“The biggest challenge to social media marketing in B2B is engagement (63%), followed by measuring social ROI (55%).”
Customer engagement would give you the strategic edge over your competitors. If the customers see your brand on their feeds, emails, and notifications, they will prefer your service over others. Engagement is the most critical phase of the buying journey, where the buyer decides if you are relevant to their business.
Small companies and start-ups are the primary beneficiaries of this strategy. It helps them implant their brand name in their customers’ mind and then convert potential customers in the SaaS sales funnel into loyal customers of the company.
Case Study: HubSpot
For instance, HubSpot received a massive number of leads and queries for their CRM and other software. However, the conversion rate was shallow with those prospects who were planning to invest in CRM after a certain period. Either the customer had already opted for other software or were not interested in HubSpot CRM anymore.
Soon, analysts found out that disengagement was the primary reason for low conversion rates. After filling in the leads, the clients didn’t hear much about the brand. So, HubSpot changed its digital marketing strategy.
Instead of capturing pixels and showing them ” Buy Now” ads continuously, they started showing them quiz posts, certification courses, tips, and tricks on their social media handles. They asked questions, suggestions, and opinion from their followers.
Social media handles of HubSpot are drawing everyone’s attention and there has been a significant increase in terms of followers, likes, comments, and shares. Although it did not make much impact in the short term, it changed the overall game. The conversion rate improved by 53%, and HubSpot became a familiar name.
The biggest difference between marketing to individuals and to businesses is “Consumers buy the product while businesses buy the logic.”
If you cannot communicate why their business needs your software service, there is no way you can convince a business owner or purchase manager to consider your product. You must inform them why they need your SaaS and how it would solve their problem.
Tips for you:
Suggested Read: What Differentiates PaaS from SaaS – PaaS Vs SaaS
B2B marketing works with the simple term “Quad Quid Pro” or “something for something.” To sell any SaaS license, you would need leads. As we know, paid marketing isn’t the best way to get qualified leads. It would be best to offer your potential customers something that will benefit them.
In return, you could receive valuable information like their contact information, business information, etc. Once you engage your customer, you can upsell all your services. This is called a “Win-Win” offer which is a proven go to market strategy for B2B SaaS company.
Example:
WIX gives the offer of developing an entire website on their subdomain for free. While they do not charge you initially, they charge further purchases for themes, customizations, and additional pages. The customer gets a website for no cost, while WIX gets a valuable lead to upsell their services.
You can create a win-win situation for your SaaS lead generation by:
If you are a start-up or a small company, it is crucial to integrate your sales and marketing teams. If your marketing team is working independently, your company will get a lot of unqualified leads. The major reason is that the marketing team knows who could be looking for your software while the sales team knows what exactly your customers need. If these two pieces of information are not brought on the same page, the entire marketing effort is likely to go off track.
These two teams must collaborate to reap synergic benefits. The marketing team can run campaigns on specific pain points and challenges identified by salespeople, while the sales team can use insights about every prospect to give a personalized solution.
Let’s face it, the SaaS world is a competitive one. There are a lot of software products out there, and it can be tough to stand out. That’s why it’s important to get more exposure among your target audience.
There are a few online SaaS marketplaces like techjockey.com to boost your sales and marketing strategies and achieve higher conversion. Listing your product on this B2B marketplace will help you to attract, engage and acquire more customers.
Plus, it provides an online portal exclusively for sellers, eSellerHub. This platform makes it easy to manage your enquiries, leads and sales in a centralized manner.
Suggested Read: Marketing Vs Advertising: Which Will Work for Your SaaS Product
Other benefits of listing your SaaS products on Techjockey
Contact Techjockey Team today to learn more about how we can help you grow your business.
All in All
“Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman – not the attitude of the prospect.” - W. Clement Stone
Here are a few points that you should understand about go-to-marketing strategy in SaaS businesses.
B2B SaaS marketing needs an entirely different approach than other marketing plans. Businesses need to focus on long-term marketing vision and build a customer-centric business model to survive and grow. A bold marketing approach and out-of-the-box ideas are the only approaches that can make you stand out in the crowd.
All the SaaS marketing techniques mentioned above are quite beneficial but won’t work out if you don’t personalize it with a human touch.
Suggested Read: Tips to Reduce Customer Acquisition Cost and Increase SaaS Conversion
FAQs
SaaS companies focus on growing their user base through marketing activities. Some of the major marketing activities include paid advertising, content marketing, retargeting, and offering free trials.
SaaS is a software or application deployed on cloud that allows users to avail the service without installing any software in their device. While B2B is a business module in which a business sells their product or service to other businesses.
There are various marketing channels that can be used to market your product to B2B buyers. These channels include content marketing, lead generation campaigns, trade shows and partner programs.
SaaS B2B marketing is a marketing strategy that is focused on promoting a software application or service to businesses. This type of marketing is different from other marketing strategies as it focuses on building long-term relationships with customers.
One of the most effective SaaS marketing techniques is content marketing for long-term engagement. Other effective SaaS marketing techniques include free trials and reverse marketing.
There are various methods that can be used to grow SaaS sales. Some of the popular methods include content marketing, building a strong sales team, partnering with other companies and conducting market research.
The B2B SaaS market is huge and is growing at a rapid pace. It is expected to reach $170 billion by 2022.
There are various ways in which you can promote your SaaS product. Some of the popular methods include content marketing, search engine optimization, lead generation campaigns and social media marketing.
When setting up your marketing strategy for a SaaS product, first you need to identify your target market, and figure out what needs and what your product can address. Then determine marketing channels to reach them effectively, create compelling content, track your results and improvise your strategy as needed.
Some effective go to marketing strategies for SaaS products include content marketing, inbound marketing, search engine optimization, and social media marketing.
Related Categories: Saas Backup Solution | Desktop as Service (DAAS) | Data Backup Software | Cloud Management Service | Cloud Security Services | Cloud Analytics Solutions
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