Get Familiar With These 6 Proven SaaS Marketing Strategies

Since the software as a service (SaaS) market is still burgeoning, it is very competitive. As a SaaS company, you want to outshine your competition with marketing strategies that work. In this case, you want to take a look at your competitors for proven SaaS marketing strategies that work.

1. Know Your Sector

The software and tech sectors have unique concerns. Although you are selling a product, you are selling a service, not a tangible item, which can be challenging to market. In fact, many SaaS companies fail not because they don’t have a good product, but because they lack the marketing know-how to succeed and end up wasting time and money. Since your service may seem vague or confusing, it is important that you thoroughly explain how you can help businesses achieve their goals.

2. The Buyer’s Journey

Since your ideal buyer may not fully understand SaaS or realize that they need you, it is critical that you develop and promote content for the three stages of the buyer’s journey—awareness, consideration, and decision. Once business owners and managers understand what your service can do for them, they are more likely to return for educational materials and become warm leads.

3. Informational Content

If you are a SaaS provider, information is the single most important thing you have to offer. And, how do you educate prospective buyers? Content! Content comes in many forms, such as blog posts, newsletter, white papers, e-books, templates, and case studies. Case studies are a great example of a proven SaaS marketing strategy because they allow buyers to identify with a problem and realize the solution. Again, because you cannot “show” your product, you must illuminate how it solves problems and masters pain points.

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4. Free Trial

When it comes to promoting a tangible product, marketers don’t typically give away the product for free. But, when it comes to marketing SaaS, the single most effective marketing strategy is just that—a free trial.

“Giving away a free product or service is one of the most standard and widely-accepted SaaS marketing strategies. The “free trial” is a strategic marketing strategy for SaaS customer acquisition and onboarding… Free is the oil of the SaaS marketing engine.” (Kissmetrics).

5. Check out Our Competitors

Which SaaS companies demonstrate proven marketing strategies? HubSpot published several examples of SaaS companies that excel at marketing where they highlight the success of HipChat, Trello, HootSuite, and Contently. Another standout in the SaaS marketing realm is Buffer. Most well known for their popular blog, Buffer is using that blog to promote their social media service. But since they are so good at it, doesn’t feel like a blatant sales pitch. Again, it comes back to information… and social media.

6. Social Media Targeting

The infinite potential of social media is proven as a SaaS marketing tool. It is also a primary way to target your ideal customer base. You might think everyone is a potential customer, but casting too wide a net will backfire. Use your LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter pages to target your buyers and drive them to your content.

“Whether it is in the keywords you target with your SEO, the sites you write guest-posts for, or the sales copy you write, if you’re not speaking to the audience who will likely become your customer, then you are wasting your time, energy, effort, resources… and money.” (Sixteen Ventures).

The primary goal of SaaS marketing is to get your product to sell itself. That’s right, experts agree, when it comes to software are a service, more than anything else, you must have an excellent product and great content to accompany it. Once you start with that, you can use content and information to nurture buyers down the sales funnel.

Here is a final thought from software designer and blogger Garrett Moon, who, when describing the only SaaS sales strategy necessary said: “Great products, with a strong team behind them, sell themselves.”