Picture this: you’ve got a fantastic B2B SaaS product, a beautiful website, and a brilliant team just waiting to give your customers the best possible service. But those customers aren’t flooding in. What’s going on?
Well, it could be that your lead generation strategy isn’t working properly.
Don’t worry, we’re here to help. In this post, we’ll take you through everything you need to know about B2B SaaS lead generation, from what it is to how you can build your winning lead generation plan.
Article Shortcuts:
- What Challenges Do B2B SaaS Companies Face with Lead Generation?
- Proven Lead Generation Strategies to Bring in More Qualified Leads
What is B2B SaaS Lead Generation?
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B2B SaaS lead generation is the process of attracting and bringing in new customers for B2B (Business to Business) SaaS (Software as a Service) brands.
Lead generation is a very important part of any B2B SaaS marketing strategy. At any given time, B2B SaaS sales teams will be working on bringing in qualified leads and coaxing those leads through to conversion.
Good lead-generation strategies will keep your business vibrant and growing. While customer retention is arguably where the big bucks lie in the SaaS world, you can't retain customers without bringing them in in the first place.
All in all, lead generation is very important for B2B SaaS businesses. But it's not without challenges. To get that all-important conversion rate up, you will need to overcome some issues:
What Challenges Do B2B SaaS Companies Face with Lead Generation?
Here are a few of the most prominent challenges that B2B SaaS companies face with lead generation:
- Outreach. Even with the strongest SaaS marketing plan, it's not always easy to determine the most cost-effective and scalable channel for outreach, and smaller B2B companies may struggle to find the time or staff to do direct outreach.
- Qualifying leads. Subscription-based models have a 'delayed gratification' problem in that you won't know how good a lead is until they renew or upgrade their subscription. So, you may end up bringing in a huge number of leads only to discover, some months later, that none of them are of high enough quality.
- Digital Transformation. Embracing digital transformation is crucial for B2B SaaS companies looking to stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market. Leveraging technologies like AI, machine learning, and advanced analytics can transform traditional lead generation processes, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
- Lack of data. B2C brands are spoiled with the amount of data available to them. Their huge potential audiences are constantly pouring numbers into their analytics platforms. That's not the case with B2B brands, which may have to work much harder to gather useful data.
- A crowded market. To grab any market share, B2B SaaS brands have to stand out in an incredibly crowded market. This isn’t an easy task.
So, how can you get past these issues, improve your lead generation process, and attract a wealth of satisfied customers?
Proven Lead Generation Strategies to Bring in More Qualified Leads
These lead-generation strategies will help you to overcome the challenges associated with B2B SaaS lead-generation:
1. Ramp up email marketing
Email is often underrated, but it's among the best marketing channels available. It consistently beats other channels regarding reach, ROI, trustworthiness, and conversion rate. If you're not already making the most of your email marketing, now's the time to start.
One of the things email excels at is B2B SaaS marketing. There are several reasons for this:
- Unlike the more general approach of social posts, email gives you direct access to the specific leads who could most benefit from your product. Even cold emails give a more direct approach than, for example, posting ads on social media.
- Email is checked frequently, especially in a business context. 88% of those asked in a ZeroBounce study reported checking their email multiple times a day. That figure rises for work emails, checked multiple times an hour during the working day.
- Email is a versatile format which allows for a wide range of media and marketing formats.
- Email marketing automation plays a crucial role in streamlining these processes, allowing businesses to automatically send personalized, targeted emails based on specific triggers and customer behaviors. This not only saves valuable time but also increases the relevance and effectiveness of each campaign.
- Post lead generation, email is great for maintaining close relationships with customers. This is especially important for B2B SaaS businesses, which rely on persuading customers to renew their subscriptions year after year. So, generating leads via email sets B2B SaaS businesses up for a good email relationship in the future.
All in all, email marketing is useful in general, but it's very useful for B2B SaaS marketers in particular.
2. Use lead magnets
Lead magnets are exciting, enticing things that encourage people to look closely at your business.
Typically, lead magnets tend to be gifts or discounts, but this isn't always possible or feasible in a B2B SaaS context. If you cannot offer significant discounts or gifts, there are plenty of other things you can use as lead magnets.
Staying updated with the latest cloud computing trends can provide valuable insights that serve as compelling lead magnets, such as offering webinars or whitepapers on how these trends are shaping the industry. Examples of lead magnets in a B2B SaaS context could include:
- Free trials of your software
- A subscription to your newsletter or knowledge hub
- A password to get into gated content
- A free consultation with your experts
- Exclusive industry-related content (webinars, how-to blogs, expert interviews, etc.)
3. Focus on SEO and content marketing
Search Engine Optimization is a powerful tool for any business.
A huge amount of organic traffic comes through search engines, and the 'consideration' stage of almost every marketing funnel involves a search engine at some point.
So, getting your SEO right is likely to be a game-changer for any kind of lead generation.
This is especially true for B2B. According to research by Gitnux, an astonishing 57% of B2B marketers say SEO generates more leads than any other marketing channel.
So, SEO should be a big part of your marketing efforts, which means doing a lot of SaaS content marketing.
Modern search engines prioritize high-quality, valuable content over low-quality pieces stuffed with keywords. So, in order to boost your SEO, you need to consistently create great content.
'Content' can be anything from blog posts to videos - the important thing is that it's accessible and enjoyable for your target audience. With this in mind, make sure that your content is:
- Designed to raise your profile with your specific customer base. Highly optimized content not only boosts your search engine rankings but can also help to position you as a trusted authority in your industry. As your reputation rises, you'll automatically attract the attention of more potential customers.
- Posted on the right platforms. We'll go into this in more detail later, but it's important that your content is distributed where your target audience is likely to see it. For example, if your target audience is CTOs, you might try to get your content into industry tech publications.
- Accessible for your target audience. If your targets aren't tech-savvy, avoid software dev jargon where possible. Similarly, make sure that your content is accessible on a physical level - avoid hard-to-read fonts, make sure that your content can be easily translated by text-to-speech apps, and so on.
- Interesting and engaging for your target audience. The B2B SaaS market is incredibly crowded and competitive. A good content strategy is one of the very best ways to stand out from the crowd. So, make sure that you thoroughly research your target audience to craft the kind of content they will find interesting and engaging.
- Useful in a B2B context. Fluff pieces that aren't particularly relevant to your industry can be fun and engaging, and the right brand with the right tone can find a use for them - but most of B2B content should be focused on the needs of the business. Case studies, for example, are fantastic B2B content because they give potential clients insight into how your solution could help them.
4. Consider your social selling strategy
Many of your potential customers are on social media, so it's important that your sales and marketing team focus a good proportion of their lead generation efforts on social channels.
Social media platforms are useful for researching your target market and getting to know your ideal customer profiles. For B2B purposes, LinkedIn is traditionally considered the most useful platform, but you shouldn't neglect platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Apart from anything else, the Meta platforms are bigger than LinkedIn, so B2B SaaS marketing on these platforms could catch the attention of potential clients even outside of work hours. You can also use social media to raise your profile by commenting or offering your expertise on relevant posts.
5. Form co-marketing partnerships
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Your SEO, reputation, reach, and more all hinge on the extent of your online network.
Backlinks (links to your website/content from other sites) are fantastic for building your reputation within your industry and beyond.
When your target customers see a link to your site from another similarly reputable site, they will understand that you are considered an authority within your industry with valuable, trustworthy, and linkable content.
Potential leads generated through backlinking are likely to be high-quality leads who've researched and know what they want. In addition, the more backlinks you have dotted around the internet, the more impressed search engines like Google will be. Your search engine rankings will get a welcome boost as a result.
How can you get your content linked across the web? Well, a good way is to form co-marketing partnerships with like-minded (but not directly competing!) brands. Backlink to one another's sites in relevant content, and raise both your profiles in the process.
Another is to employ an agency with a wide network of connections that can give your lead generation process a huge boost by seeding your links in relevant sites across their network. The right agency will ensure that all content your links appear in is relevant, high-quality, and likely to pull in your ideal customers.
Optimize Your B2B SaaS Lead Generation Strategy and Grow Your Business
Lead generation is very important for B2B SaaS growth.
With the right B2B SaaS lead generation tactics, you can not only attract new customers, but also high-quality new customers that are likely to stick with you and renew their subscriptions repeatedly.
Use the tactics recommended here to boost your B2B SaaS lead generation efforts, grow your brand, and capture the market share you deserve.
Author Bio
Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate agency, the SaaS SEO agency. Nick has launched several successful online businesses, writes for Forbes, published a book and has grown accelerate from a UK-based agency to a company that now operates across US, APAC and EMEA.
