Over the past few years, the SaaS industry has experienced massive growth. This sector is predicted to reach a total value of $623 billion by 2023, which is a huge increase compared to its 2018 total value of $270 billion.
As a matter of fact, the market is getting a little bit crowded, so it is becoming harder to reach your target audience and make a successful sales pitch. Moreover, it is more challenging to present SaaS products than physical ones, which is why it can sometimes be tough to find the right way to promote them properly.
No worries though, as we have come up with some ideas for marketing strategies that will help you improve conversion rates, drive traffic to your website, and simply make your potential customers more curious about your brand.
What is SaaS?
To design a proper strategy, it is a good idea to first step back and think about the core of your products. SaaS stands for software as a service. In this distribution model, a cloud provider hosts apps on their systems and makes them accessible over the Internet to end-users. Under this model, a third-party cloud provider will host an application on behalf of an independent software vendor (ISV) and implement, e.g., cloud logging to monitor performance. Cloud providers are often also software vendors in large companies.
It is also wise to take a closer look at giants in your industry and how they cope with promotion. Some SaaS kings are Microsoft, Salesforce, Dropbox, and Slack.
Now you have gone back to your roots, it is time to focus on those marketing tactics that might be very useful when promoting your SaaS solutions to your existing and potential customers.
Top SaaS marketing strategies for 2021
It is high time to get to the point: how to promote your SaaS effectively in 2021.
Let’s collaborate
Co-marketing could hit the bull’s eye. This iis when two or more brands cooperate with each other to promote an event, special offer, or other type of content. Such cooperation allows you to expand horizons and reach a larger group of recipients. You can work with other SaaS companies, stores, service providers, or non-profit organizations. If the cooperation has a coherent overtone and makes perfect sense in the eyes of recipients, there are no limits to who you should work with. A contradictory example would be the case of cooperation between athletes and sweets manufacturers, as the images of these entities are not consistent and so they make such collaborations unreliable. Ensure yours are the opposite. By combining strength with a company that works in a similar area, you can profit not only from reach but also knowledge and market experience.
Make your customers your partners
Once you have a happy customer, go with the flow and encourage them to share a good opinion about your product. To persuade them to do so, you need to design a referral program for your users. Moreover, this will also support customer retention and speed up the growth of your customer base. But enough theory, let’s make it happen.
First, choose a referral marketing software solution. EarlyParrot is a very handy, powerful, and user-friendly tool that supports all communication with your clients. First choose the goal of your program, focus on the right incentives, and create your communication – share pages and emails, etc. After launching your program, you can follow its performance from the tool’s dashboard.
Referral marketing is about sharing. Your happy customers will spread the word about your brand by recommending you to people they know and sharing referral links at the same time. The use of these links or codes can be profitable for both sides of a referral – the referee and the referrer – the terms are up to you.
EarlyParrot automatically detects which new users came via referral links and sends rewards accordingly. Such automation makes this type of marketing strategy effortless.
Use the power of video marketing
Video marketing is the next solution that could turn your advertising into special. But before you launch your short film clip, you need to take care of the following aspects and questions:
- What type of video content should it be – for example, product demos, customer reviews, or educational content?
- Should it be a series of short clips or one long video?
- You need to write (or employ someone to do it) a proper script.
- It’s essential to hire professionals for your video production – video crew, actors, makeup artists, etc. Only this way can you be sure of decent results.
Video marketing can make up a significant part of your whole content marketing strategy. It should go hand in hand with email marketing, blog posts, or social media marketing efforts as part of a coherent overall strategy that provides a great customer experience for each of your customers.
Focus on your pricing strategy
Price matters no matter on which market you operate. This means that you need to be extremely detailed about what your customers are paying for. However, it is a little bit harder to explain the price of a digital solution than a physical one.
When it comes to providing your pricing, first you need to put it in a highly visible place on your website. Then you need to give your customers the ability to choose. Suppose you offer three paid plans, then be very conscientious. Present the prices, included features, and durations. Providing details of all plans comparatively lets your prospective customers choose the best option for them with clarity. If you offer free trials, do not forget to mention it next to each plan.
You should also strive to offer tailored plans for each client. You should be able to understand their specific needs and cater to them, so be sure to allow potential customers to set up a meeting with you and develop a personalized strategy.
Moreover, remember that the prices include not only features, but also post-purchase services such as 24/7 customer service, guarantees, and product-related webinars, etc. Highlight this in your communication.
Provide some data-driven actions
The information your current customers share with you has a significant impact on your business. By having this data, you can organize all of your SaaS marketing activities better, which in turn allows you to lower customer churn, increase the average customer lifespan, and engage clients more in the sales cycle.
If you have email addresses, use them to send relevant content like white papers or online event invitations. Your loyal customers will also appreciate receiving notifications about upcoming product premieres or sales. This also applies to B2B companies. If you have worked with them for a while, you should know what they are up to and what types of solutions they may need. So prepare them a special offer with your new offerings and provide a great user experience!
Use the power of Google
Organic traffic is important for your business. You need to make yourself visible on search engines and let people find out about you for themselves.
Organic search traffic can make the customer acquisition process less expensive and more efficient. To use the full power of Google, focus on the content you share – social media posts included. It is also crucial to keep your finger on the pulse when it comes to online reviews. When people type a brand into the Google search engine, 57% of them read the reviews that appear. Take a closer look at all SEO rules. Apply them, and get a rank tracking software to measure the impact. If you do not feel comfortable with this topic, there are a lot of marketing tools to help with this matter.
Implement native advertising
Nowadays, it is hard to make use of digital ads. Most Internet users have ad-blocking plugins or simply close them as soon as they pop up. And here, native advertising comes in handy.
How does it work? A native ad is a kind of marketing that is an integral part of the website’s style. The promotion is integrated so perfectly into the layout that, at first glance, users may not even realize that it is an advertisement. Examples of native ads are, for example, sponsored posts on blogs or social media platforms.
Do native ads work? Here is some evidence:
- Trust in native recommendations is 27% higher than in social advertising.
- By the end of this year, spending on native advertising in the US is projected to reach $57 billion, which means an annual increase of 21%.
- Native ads engage consumers 20-60% more than banner ads.
Sometimes less is more, which is why promoting is often better when it is done in a subtle way, especially in the case of the customer experience.
Take care of the mobile experience
The average Millennial spends about 3.7 hours per day on their mobile, and generation X only a little bit shorter time of 3 hours. These numbers demonstrate that mobiles are a big part of our lives. So if you have not already done so, it would be wise for you to make your website mobile friendly. Although you don’t need to redesign your SaaS solution to be a mobile app right now, it might be a good idea to do so for future products.
Even if customers do not purchase your products often via mobiles, they may still use them to take a look at your offer and check the features or pricing. If your site is unresponsive, they will probably give up and continue to search for other providers. Additionally, a poor mobile experience might be interpreted as unprofessional – since your site does not work, why should users trust you that your product will? It will not encourage people to explore your brand or pay for your products, and, consequently, it will increase your bounce rate.
Focus on creating a responsive design, simple navigation, and site architecture. It should be easy to find whatever the client is looking for. Additionally, search engines on your webpage should work seamlessly and show appropriate results.
The site must also respond quickly and without any lags. Its capacity must be tested, especially before sales seasons like Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
To recap
SaaS marketing isn’t a piece of cake. It can be hard to promote your products effectively enough and provide a high-quality customer experience in order to improve client retention. Above, you can find some marketing trends that may be helpful for working on your advertising strategies. They are not rocket science, and you won’t need separate marketing teams to manage these tasks.
Focus on providing high-quality content and general customer relationship management. Rethink your marketing funnel and maybe choose a few of the ideas above to design a unique, comprehensive solution to make your SaaS grow.