Everyone wants to be a SaaS company. With the high valuations and exit-multiples that accompany recurring revenue models, the SaaS industry is a good one to be in these days. But that means more competition. So to stay ahead of the game, companies need to adapt their marketing strategies. Below are our top 5 marketing strategies that SaaS companies can utilize in 2019 for better performance and growth.
1. Active Content Marketing
When it comes to content strategy, published text is not the only way to get in touch with your existing customers or obtain new ones. Guess which type of content has higher chances to attract people more and impact their decision? Images? Audio? Video? Images and text are easily understandable, but they are everywhere!
So what type of content should you create? The answer is nicely reflected in one of Neil Patel’s recent videos on content marketing trends in 2019. According to him, it’s becoming imperative to share content based on audio or video. Video helps you relate with your customers, explain functionality, and help people remember for of what you’re teaching them. Below are some tips for great video:
- SEO Matters. Use the same research techniques and tools for video that you do for written content. Research a keyword, target it, and deliver best-in-class content around that keyword.
- Don’t share the same content across all platforms. Some subjects are best for video, others for text. Don’t just repurpose content across medians. Different SaaS marketing strategies should be applied for different medium.
- Teach people something! People watch videos to learn something they don’t already know. So don’t just pitch your product, teach your views something new and they will remember you for it.
2. Free Trials
Free trials are a no-brainer, and one of the oldest SaaS marketing strategies in the book. First and foremost, it allows you to show off your great product, and let users experience it first-hand.
Second, you have to keep up with competition. If your competitors offer free trials and you don’t, you’re giving your competitors the first opportunity to win the competition.
Lastly, free trials become a data collection source. Prospects are willing to provide their personal information, like name, email, and company name in order to get a free trial. Once you have data, you can market to them.
According to HubSpot, 25% of free trial sign-ups prefer to purchase your service and become customers. That conversion rate can grow even higher if SaaS companies avoid some mistakes, like offering a long free trial period or not promoting the free version properly.
3. Customize Customer Service
This is not just a SaaS marketing strategy, but a strategy for any company. Customer care starts from your website, continues on social media or via phone calls and never ends. If you are offering a software service, it means your customers are not average citizens, but mainly owners or managers of a company. Your communication must be as professional as your service.
First, try to satisfy your customers by answering their questions before the question is even asked. FAQ sections on your website are a nice way to answer questions in advance. Your prospects and customers will save time finding necessary information, and you will save time providing answers that are demanded.
In regards to human-to-human customer service via phone, email, messages, chat, the secret is being natural and following a system. A good system is the L.A.S.T method. The abbreviation stands for Listen, Apologize, Solve, Thank. Having a framework like this make customer service personnel less defensive, if they know it’s their job to apologize and solve problems, not to defend their company. It also makes customers feel great.
4. Market Research and Analysis
One of the most overlooked SaaS marketing strategies is competitive analysis. It’s a must to know who your competitors are, what kind of content they publish, on which channels, what type of campaigns they organize, what prices they offer, etc.
Classical tools like Google Analytics and Google Keywords Tool are not as sleek and sexy as other tools, but they do provide a lot of information. You can also invest in tools like SEMRush, Moz, or Ahrefs. There is also no substitute for good old fashioned detective work. Go on your competitors websites and social media platforms and learn what they’re doing!
The trick is not to simply copy what your competitors are doing, but to understand where they are weak. See what opportunities they are ignoring, and spend your efforts winning those spaces.
5. Use Freelancers
You probably have an in-house team consisting of developers, designers, writers, and marketing specialists. But a SaaS company is only as strong as the ideas generated by the team. Cooperate with remote employees both domestically and abroad because their ideas and context will be different than your own. Do not limit yourself to the opinions of your in-house team.
Any working with freelancers is easier than ever before. Project management tools allow you to communicate with specialists from all over the world via online tools like Asana, Slack, Teamwork, Trello.
And best of all? If you work with freelancers, you spend more time on building your product, interacting with clients, and growing other parts of your business.
We hope you can utilize some of these SaaS marketing strategies for your business. Let us know in the comment section below what SaaS marketing strategies you find to be the most effective.
Artashes Arakelyan
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