Marketing for software-as-a-service (SaaS) is an expanding subset of marketing. This is because so many programs we once purchased to install and operate are moving to the cloud to be accessed by way of membership only. Like the name suggests, SaaS is unique because there’s no tangible product exchanged. The SaaS model is sustained by its user experience, service, and the support provided to them by technology and tools. In order to make SaaS marketing effective, you need premier software and customer service. The softwares will ultimately sell themselves, but first you need a method to draw in as many users as possible. Below, we will go into more detail about SaaS marketing.
Biggest challenges
There are a few challenges unique to SaaS marketing. The biggest being that you are selling a service and not a physical product. It’s also a crowded market, especially if you’re moving into an already established category. Lastly, you’re competing against other startups.
However, the one unique aspect of SaaS is the way it generates revenue. It’s the heart of every subscription business, and the key reason for the growth of this business model over the past few years. This means that your customer retention is crucial. Your marketing has to cater for a longer customer lifecycle than other industries. You first need to attract customers, but you also need to keep them engaged with your product. Also, you need to convince them of the value you provide them. SaaS marketing is all directed to new, current, and former customers.
Why it’s important
There are 3 main reasons marketing is essential for SaaS companies. For business growth, differentiation, and building trust. When it comes to business growth, you need to grow your revenue. You either need to find new customers or keep your clients to buy more from you. For differentiation, you make any potential customers choose you over competitors. Marketing helps you communicate your unique advantages so they understand that you’re the best option. For building trust, brand recognition is the most important. You don’t want potential clients to be hesitant because they haven’t heard of you before. Branding is crucial and can be the difference between success and failure.
Aside from the reasons above, your SaaS company needs to have a marketing strategy in place to guide your execution. This will help give your marketing direction, make the best use of your budget, and define your success. Marketing should be an integral part of your business plan and should be just as thought out. However, it’s important to note that not all marketing channels will be right for you. You should choose one that offers a mix of long and short term returns.
Top mistakes
There are a handful of top mistakes that can be made with SaaS marketing. By ignoring competitors actions and changes, focusing on quantity of leads and not quality, and having no sales funnel defined are the biggest mistakes.
The hope to stay relevant if you position yourself ahead of your competition. You need to constantly pay attention to what your competition is doing. Also, you can use the behaviors of other brands and user reactions to determine how you can optimize your product.
If you don’t focus on the quality of your leads, you may be wasting your time. Driving a lot of traffic and leads may sound like a good thing, but more poor quality leads means more work for your marketing and sales teams. These large quantity leads don’t mean much for you if they don’t buy your service. Having more quality leads, even if it’s a smaller number is more important to you.
With SaaS companies, sales and marketing are distinct departments. The typical flow with a sales funnel is that marketing creates demand. Then the bottom of their marketing funnel is the top of the sales funnel. You need to have various emails and retargeting campaigns in place to keep people moving forward in the sales process. If this is not defined, you will be losing out on a lot of potential customers.