In this article, we'll explore the universal marketing techniques that accelerate the growth of SaaS product customers. What should sales managers focus on first of all? How to get small businesses to use SaaS?
SaaS Products As A New Level Of Technology For Business
Software as a Service is an excellent opportunity to use all sorts of business tools in the digital ecosystem. You don't have to create your product, reinvent the wheel, or maintain expensive hardware. The beauty of using off-the-shelf software is that customers don't have to worry about supporting or even improving it on their own. Instead, for a subscription fee, their business gets access to ready-to-use tools, without which it is now challenging to compete and scale businesses. Furthermore, once a tool is no longer needed, it can be immediately discarded. It is an added benefit.
The SaaS model emerged as an extension of the software development business. However, already at the first stage of its development, it turned out that this business model requires a fundamentally distinct organization of activities and a new sales and marketing model. As a result, the SaaS market has turned out to be perhaps the most exciting industry to monitor innovations in digital marketing.
SaaS is a method of selling products through cloud-based applications that receive regular updates and new features.
Since this product is something that is not tangible, when selling, companies must constantly prove to their current and potential customers that their rented or subscription-based service is worth the monthly fee. Therefore, industry representatives have to compete in the ingenuity of marketing strategy, be savvy, adjust to the market, be flexible and develop more new solutions.
And indeed, for entrepreneurs to grow and scale their business, they need to take full advantage and try to study beforehand the mistakes in a strategy that one can make.
Marketing Techniques For Selling SaaS Products
Here you have to upfront understand the purpose of a particular SaaS product. For example, some audiences like numbers, others are motivated by someone else's success, some seek to use a clear and accessible service, others are oriented toward content consumers, etc. Thus, they try to focus on specific sore spots.
Focusing On Audience’s Needs
Any business thrives upon audiences, their loyalty, and growth. SaaS products increase customer retention, build brand loyalty and maximize customer service productivity. Appeal to that. Customers prefer those companies that provide top-notch customer service. Flawless omnichannel customer service software has become the standard for attracting, supporting and retaining customers. SaaS is a tool that helps you speak the same language to your clients, literally and figuratively. The main reason to use SaaS help desk products is that it allows you to find and employ every method available today to respond to your customers' needs.
Appealing To Numbers
Clients of SaaS products are interested in numbers: how to boost traffic, generate leads, increase conversions and sales. Therefore, companies carefully calculate their budget to ensure that the income from innovations should exceed the expenditure on their implementation. SaaS products such as POWR will help squeeze the most out of the e-commerce site, stimulating High-Velocity sales for a reasonable investment.
Optimizing Content
SaaS developers should work closely with the content department and copywriters. Articles, videos, infographics, guides, and other engaging content are a great complement to the core service because they emphasize professionalism and expertise, hold users' attention, and consistently integrate your product into the customer's daily life. Content marketing is now the most effective tool for attracting customers to SaaS products, yet many companies still misuse this asset.
To effectively harness the power of content marketing and boost SaaS product visibility, SaaS developers should collaborate closely with content departments and copywriters, leveraging resources like Skale's comprehensive SaaS SEO guide to ensure professionalism, expertise, and product integration into users' daily lives.
Audiences want to see the product in action. Having demo content on your Website, YouTube channel, and other places that Google likes to push into search results allows you to rank higher in search results. Also, there are 4 options to turn off comments on Facebook, Instagram, and other social handles to remove spam and trolls. With a sound strategy and proper execution, you can create articles that will provide you with a good ROI over a long period. Today, such a strategy includes:
- content with expert practices,
- educational content,
- content that encourages readers to move from research to action,
- content that describes your product and explains to users why they need it.
By quantifying buyer persona, you'll get a better idea of exactly how your audience needs to be presented with this or that content (via email, social media, paid channels, etc.).
Using Reference
Other people's successes inspire many entrepreneurs to follow their example and study the thriving development strategies to apply them on their own. Fortunately, there is a lot of open data on the web that one can explore. If there are certain software development benefits, small business owners will want to use them.
The word reference in a narrow sense means a list of customers, products, and services available. In a broader sense, it is a reference of deals completed. As a SaaS product representative, you will be willing to share your customers' successes with others. Use case example and reviews as a significant component of your marketing. Moreover, this will later help do a single tenant vs multi tenant comparison and find out which one your audience prefers so that you can make the right adjustments. Small and agile companies can borrow the experience that comes from competing giants. Borrowing some ideas doesn’t mean stealing but trying them out and coming up with something new.
Appealing To Simplicity
Corporate CRM software are notorious for being overly complex and overwhelming. Appeal to the fact that your software solution is as simple as it can be. Even though the company's product integrates giant user collaboration spaces, human interaction is a complex process. The goal of the marketing strategy is to simplify it. And that intention should run through your style, design, products, and user experience. A perfect example of simplicity and clarity is POWR pricing page.
Improving SEO
SEO for SaaS is a whole range of activities that includes more than just researching the semantic core and creating content. For a SaaS product to be profitable and steadily increase its audience, the process of SEO promotion must be continuous, and for that reason, you should definitely think about working with a SaaS SEO agency. If competitors outperform you by offering more favorable terms for a lower price, you will lose constant, not one-time income sources. Increase brand awareness online and offline, research your competitors, look for your tangible competitive advantages, create a unique selling proposition, revise pricing, and generate product-related content.
Improving SEO requires an objective assessment of the effectiveness of existing optimization and promotion measures. SEO promotion of any SaaS product involves setting clear goals, monitoring effectiveness, and creating a clear customer image.
Exploring The Buyer's Journey
The buyer's journey is a natural, almost automatic process of identifying a problem, considering different options for solving it, and then choosing in favor of one of them.
The buyer's journey exists on its own. The consumer determines its route. Why, in this case, should marketers spend time and effort analyzing it? It is necessary to understand the buyer's route to provide the necessary support at each stage.
Pricing Transparency
Proper pricing has a significant impact on a company's income. Some teams don't know what pricing model to choose, how many plans to include in the pricing, whether to give discounts on certain packages, how long the optimal trial should be and whether it is needed at all. You can get more clients and, therefore, more revenue if you offer different plans with different feature sets for different target audiences.
In addition to forming a transparent pricing policy, it's also important to quote prices on the site. The biggest sin is hiding the cost of a product or plans and directing the customer to the "find out the price" button instead. You can turn away a good portion of potential customers. Also, an excellent strategy would be to use a free trial version, which will familiarize the client with the interface of the product and make operating dependent on the effective use of the product.
Conclusion
Convincing to integrate software is much more complex than selling anything physical. For this reason, SaaS marketing requires a careful approach.
The rapid growth of competition complicates this task. Customers don't want to spend their time figuring out what exactly another service does. Information should be presented to an already heated audience, providing users with transparent pricing, an intuitive and accessible interface, and 24/7 customer support.
The product should offer an obvious benefit to the client in the first place.
Invest time and money into developing your marketing strategy, look for opportunities to partner, explore new ways to make current products run smoother.
Never stop experimenting, stay patient and over time, you will find the tactical tools that work effectively to scale your business.
It is known that bigger things start with tiny steps. Sometimes, being small means being flexible and able to adapt fast to market changes and trends.
Author Bio: Kyle McDermott is a web developer, blogger, blockchain enthusiast, and business analyst. He loves to write about new technologies, business news, and sports events. Kyle is also a proofreader at Computools.
