What is SaaS Marketing? SaaS marketing stands for Software as a Service marketing. It is a type of marketing that focuses on subscription-based software products. These products are hosted through the cloud so they can be updated regularly for improved functionality. As such, marketing for SaaS products is different than it is for other, more static products. If this sounds like your business, this article can help you learn how to market and advertise your SaaS so you can garner more subscriptions and no longer need to ask, “What is SaaS marketing?”
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SaaS Marketing
The first step for any marketing campaign is to create your strategy. That stays true for all businesses, not just SaaS businesses. While there is a lot that makes SaaS marketing different, this stays the same. Decide what your goals are and how will you achieve those goals. Goals will shift depending on how big and how old your business is. A SaaS business just starting might focus on increasing brand awareness or defining market fit while an already established, growing SaaS business’s goals might focus on expanding marketing into new channels. Whatever your goal is, it must be as specific as possible so measuring success is easier in the long run.
Due to the nature of SaaS, how you market SaaS needs to be different than it would be for other products. The product, customer, and price strategy will be very different from other product marketing.
Product
An important consideration to make while designing your SaaS marketing strategy is the product itself. SaaS is intangible and often complex. You can not just show a potential customer what your product looks like. And product demos are difficult to be done quickly when the software has a lot of features and functionalities. The messaging in your SaaS marketing campaign needs to be simple enough for your audience to understand and remember your product while still espousing all the benefits that your customer needs.
Customer
Most SaaS products are sold to other businesses. Business-to-business, B2B, companies must target the decision-makers. Businesses are comprised of many people, some of which might never need to use your product, and most who have no say in which product is ultimately bought. You need to cater your SaaS marketing to the person or group within the company that will ultimately choose which purchase to make.
There is another consideration you need to make in regard to your SaaS customers. SaaS products are not one-time purchases. Usually, they are subscription-based. Long-term customer retention will be one of the biggest focuses of your campaign. The rate at which customers cancel SaaS subscriptions is called churn. Businesses with physical products can get away with reducing marketing efforts once they earn the customer’s loyalty, but SaaS companies need to continually foster a relationship with their buyers lest they choose to cancel the subscription and their churn rate goes up. While purchases of physical products feel like a choice, subscription-based products can end up feeling more like an obligation if SaaS marketing is not effective.
While learning what SaaS marketing is, something to keep in mind is that no matter how you choose to market your SaaS products, you must stay in contact with your customer. SaaS products tend to be very complex. As such, customers are likely to have many questions. They need to make sure your product is right for them and something that they can figure out how to use. The more the customer feels like you want to help them and fit your product to their needs, the more likely they are to buy a subscription.
Price
Take advantage of a tiered pricing model. Unlike tangible products, SaaS products can be offered at a variety of price points with varying levels of complexity. This allows you to provide offerings to businesses of varying sizes and budgets. A small business might only need the most basic features while a large business might need all the advanced features offered at the highest tier. If you only offer one high subscription price with all the features, a small business might not be able to afford your product. If you only offer the minimum amount of features, but at a low price, the large business is likely to need more features to reach its goals. By offering more features as the subscription price increases, you can cater to businesses both small and large and earn more revenue than you would have by only offering one rate with all features.
Saas Advertising
Now that you know the answer to, “What is SaaS marketing” and know how it differs from traditional marketing, you can start adding the most beneficial SaaS advertising features to your SaaS marketing campaign.
Free Trials
Give your customers the option to try your product before they commit to the subscription. Most of the time, SaaS customers will only need one software of a certain type. Without a free trial, customers are making purchases based on limited knowledge. If they make a purchase and are not satisfied with it, they might need to buy another software and waste money. Without a free trial, a customer might not even consider your product. Free trials allow your customers to try your SaaS product to make sure that it is right for them or their company before they sink any money into a product that will not work for them and allow your business to show off your product to customers who will love it and might not have tried it otherwise.
Be sure to highlight the free trial on your website and subsequent SaaS advertising. Customers need to be aware that the free trial exists to increase sales. Free trials are one of the most effective ways to market your SaaS business.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click, PPC, advertising is an advertising avenue where businesses pay every time a customer clicks on one of their ads. A common type of PPC advertising is the ads that appear at the top of Google search results. To make the most effective PPC ads, research keywords commonly used by SaaS customers when searching for products like the ones your business offers. Creating effective PPC ads might take a bit of trial and error, but if you do your research before, during, and after launching your ads you should see an uptick in traffic to your SaaS business website.
Email Advertising
A big part of learning what is SaaS marketing is learning the importance of keeping your current customers engaged. Email advertising is one of the best SaaS advertising techniques. Inform your customers of updates and new features to keep them interested and from canceling their subscriptions.
Digital Marketing SaaS
Digital marketing SaaS products can be very effective. For a software-based product, an online presence just makes sense.
Create Content
While being helpful to your customers is important for any business, it is especially important for SaaS businesses because they lack a physical product. You should employ a content marketing strategy. For example, you can keep a blog. Your articles do not have to be and should not all be about your SaaS products. Identify the problems your customers face and give them tips on how to solve them. Post case studies that show customers hard facts. How did your company help solve this specific customer’s problems? From there, customers can conclude how your product would help them. Video and image-based content are eye-catching and more attention-grabbing than other content. Take advantage of multiple content forms to establish credibility and foster relationships with your customers that will keep them subscribed.
Social Media Marketing
A social media presence can help you connect with customers and share content created on other websites. There are many social media platforms to choose from, so do some research before you settle on the ones you will use. For SaaS businesses, you could post short and engaging content that urges your customers to look further into your product and updates about new features or products.
You can also pay for advertising on most social media platforms. They can help you target the right audience who is most likely to engage. As always, it is vastly important that you keep track of the advertisements that are working and the ones that are not so you know which advertisements on which platforms you should continue to invest in.
Search Engine Optimization
If you want to utilize digital marketing for SaaS, you need to make sure that everything you post online is search engine optimized. Search engine optimization, SEO, refers to the process of improving a website or content to be more easily found online. Usually, this means pushing your content to the top of search engines like Google.
Learning what is SaaS marketing includes learning SEO. As a SaaS company, you need a website and that website needs to be search engine optimized. Customers will come to your site to learn about your product and pricing options. If you use the right keywords in the right places, external, internal, and backlinks, and organize your website logically, you will build credibility with Google’s and other search engine sorting algorithms and get pushed to the top. More customers will find your website and be able to learn about your SaaS company.
What Is Your SaaS Marketing Campaign?
Now that you have learned the answer to the question, “What is SaaS marketing” you need to start designing your campaign. SaaS marketing is not the same as the marketing required by tangible products. You must consider that as you design the individual SaaS advertising components.
FAQ:
- How is SaaS marketing different from other marketing?
- What are SaaS products?
- What is SaaS B2B marketing?
- How to reduce churn?
- What is churn?
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