Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software delivery model in which users subscribe to a central version rather than buying it directly and installing it locally. So, SaaS is a way for companies to sell their products on cloud-based applications with regular updates and additional functionality.
Google Docs, the cloud version of Microsoft 365 or the SEMrush platform are examples of why cloud-based applications are the future of software. Their advantages, most notably their lower price than the local version, are pushing companies from all walks of life to re-evaluate their models and move to the cloud. While traditional businesses follow traditional methods to grow, SaaS follows a very different path. They need different marketing strategies to match.
Many successful SaaS companies already developed methods to reach and convert customers. Compared to companies with physical products or one-time purchases, SaaS companies must demonstrate to their current and potential customers that their "rented" service is worth a monthly fee.
What is SaaS Marketing?
The low initial investment and the growth potential that this type of business has is a great attraction for entrepreneurs. Indeed, with the advancement and popularity of Internet technologies, such as cloud computing and SaaS, many startups are emerging and new service models start to appear. With a digital product, you can go global from a laptop. And yes, SaaS companies can reach a broad customer base that spans borders and industries without the traditional barriers.
Creating a marketing strategy for SaaS companies is essential to gain visibility in the online market. So, it’s necessary to have the best data analysis, planning and documentation tools.
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How do you market your SaaS solutions?
What tactics should marketers implement to prove that a subscription service is worth the monthly investment?
1. Offer a free trial
The key to your customers' hearts lies in a sample of your products. By allowing site visitors to try your product first-hand and work with it using their data will help them to determine if they buy or not and if it's worth the money.
2. Personalize and segment emails
The higher the level of familiarity you have with your target audience, the better the results. For SaaS email marketing, sending customized messages based on users' location in the sales or post-sales cycle will close more deals.
3. Develop a solid content marketing strategy
By knowing your audience well, examining what your competitors are doing, delving into keyword and backlinking opportunities, writing high-quality content and knowing how to share it, you’ll get on your way to a solid content strategy.
4. Get Feedback and take action
Your customers know and expect changes in your SaaS product. But what if you took their experiences and criticisms and used them in your product updates? Or even in your marketing efforts? Knowing what customers love or hate about your product can help you enormously when writing blog posts, advertising texts and social network messages.
5. Find influencers who can spread the word
If you watch videos on YouTube on a daily basis, you'll notice that some of your favorite YouTubers started to include promotions in their videos. And SaaS companies like Audible already took advantage of this new form of influencer marketing. In fact, SaaS marketing has similarities to other types of marketing. However, it includes multiple strategies, channels and tools. And this is useful to provide SaaS companies with the best and fastest results. It comes down to offering excellent products and excellent services.
Best SaaS Marketing Tools
There are several marketing tools for SaaS available in the market, but we will concentrate on the most important ones so that you don't lose focus and soon achieve the results you want. The most important ones are:
Google analytics
If you want to boost marketing results, Google Analytics is an indispensable tool, as it guides your campaigns. Besides, it provides resources that allow you to trace the origin and analyze the interaction of the leads on your SaaS pages, it’s easier to know the profile of the public and discover what they want to consume.
At the same time, you can create campaigns with a focus on what really brings results. And that's not all. There are countless metrics to measure your campaign results and you can use Google Analytics to attract customers, increase conversions and generate loyalty strategies.
Unbounce
Unbounce is the best creator of high conversion landing pages to add to your site. The templates are super easy to use and edit to build the perfect landing pages. Everybody can use it to generate a new landing page for any promotion you’re launching or a new group of customers you’re targeting. Unbounce also allows you to perform A/B testing and provides a wealth of data so you can constantly work on improvements as quickly as possible.
Hubspot
Hubspot is perfect for nurturing potential customers with continuous tracking and communication automation, and for making sure your team doesn't hesitate during the buying process. A responsive team will help you gain customer loyalty over the competition. So, Hubspot is a great lead capture tool that brings together all the necessary functionalities from a single platform. As they say: an all-in-one software. With it you can:
- Have a website
- Have a Blog
- Create CTAs and landing pages
- Generate campaign
- Creation of forms
- Database with a history of interactions with our brand or platform
- Analytical tools
- Lead nurturing tool
- Lead scoring tool
- and much more.
Zapier
Zapier is the easiest way to connect different applications and platforms to create automated processes that you can set up and forget. For example, if you publish a new article on your Twitter and publish it on Facebook. It's an easy way to automate marketing efforts across all platforms, so your team doesn't need to waste time making sure everything is up to date.
Google drive
Google Drive is a cloud storage resource and the sharing of documents, images and videos online. This tool is ideal for remote workgroups by sending and receiving material through the internet. In the free version, you’ll have up to 15 GB of available space. If you need more, simply choose a paid version and you will have access to improved resources.
Kissmetrics
Despite being similar to Google Analytics, Kissmetrics is more specific, analyzing not only the volume and most visited pages, but also tracking the individual actions of each user who interacts on the pages of your SaaS product. That is, you accompany the visitors and users of the product and not only the visits. This is of great help for the marketing team, as they can understand the user's profile.
Amplitude
Amplitude is a tool that allows the marketing team to verify visitor behavior while browsing, helping the development team in the creation and modeling of products and services that are more appropriate to the interests shown. Many startups use Amplitude to analyze the acceptance of new ideas and validate or abandon the launch of new products and services.
Crazy egg
Crazy Egg is also a bit reminiscent of Google Analytics but focuses on demonstrating more visual results. That is, instead of numbers and percentages, the tool invests in colorful graphics of various formats, heat maps with the most visited areas and pages, scrollmaps, and much more. All this works to discover how far visitors go on the page before leaving them. You can access this report in the overlay tab that shows the volume of clicks in a specific location and much more.
SEMrush
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is not a trend. It's a mandatory strategy for those who want to highlight the business on the web. So, you need a tool that helps you in the configuration of the layout, URL, internal and external links, positioning of written and visual content on the pages, use of the correct keywords, creation of attractive buttons, etc.
It analyzes your pages and shows what you need to adjust and improve your ranking in Google searches. It also shows the ranking of keywords on your pages and those of your competitors, making it possible to export them to an Excel sheet. Finally, analyze the authority of your pages on the Internet, the backlinks and the display of Adwords ads.
Asana
If you have a team of professionals responsible for planning, creating and developing ad campaigns, Asana is the tool to assist you. It helps you form and coordinate workgroups where projects and their tasks from the initial stages of planning to the final stage of completion and delivery. With it, you can plan and add tasks organized chronologically, make comments within each job, open individual or collective windows of conversation with the team. And the best of all is that if you have a team with a maximum of 15 members, and it is free.
Trello
Trello is also a team management application. The difference is that it focuses on simplicity and efficiency. It helps you create digital marketing strategies such as content production and it works based on a framework with cards (cards), dividing tasks by named columns. For example, you can create a letter for a specific task and leave it in the initial column with the name “Available”. Whoever will take on the task should move the letter to the next column, called “In progress”. After finishing, you should move the letter back to the next column, labeled "Finished" or "Delivered."
Klear
Klear is a tool that helps you perform a quick analysis of your accounts in social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. In this way, you can find out what content has been most influential, the number of new followers or friends, those who have "abandoned" you, etc. Also, it allows you to locate the most influential users of the networks, according to their skills or their location. In addition, you can analyze profiles on Twitter, Instagram and even analyze business profiles on Facebook.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social network management platform that covers almost every aspect. On a single platform, users can select interesting content and schedule postings. But also other complex tasks such as measuring ROI.
There are several different plans to choose from, ranging from a single user plan to a customized business account more suitable for large organizations. Despite the potential for profitability, the business won’t develop by itself and entrepreneurs need to use adequate tools to measure performance, as well as optimize processes and increase the productivity of work teams. This will improve and generate accelerated growth for the company.
Slow and steady wins the race
SaaS business model is innovative, disruptive, breakthrough, value-added. So, if you're going to do SaaS marketing, stop and think if your brand identity reflects all these things.
Contact us and we’ll help you get in the cloud and surprise your users!
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