To be a profitable SaaS business, companies must meet the needs of their audience and ensure that their services provide exceptional convenience and functionality. SaaS business owners know that it is easy to gain free trial users but challenging to retain enterprise subscribers. Here are five tips to help you formulate an effective SaaS marketing strategy to increase your audience reach and chance of success.
Five SaaS Marketing Tips
1. Create Compelling Content
Content is one of the primary pillars of digital marketing. Creating content that is relevant, interesting, and valuable to your audience will help your brand and its services to appear more credible and trustworthy. Prospects will share your content and be more likely to convert. Furthermore, content created with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind will rank on search results, improving brand awareness and increasing organic traffic to your website.
2. Offer a Trial
Most SaaS companies offer a trial for good reason; It is harder to convince a customer to commit to a long-term subscription compared to a one-time purchase. To earn a paying subscriber, a SaaS service must prove its worth. That said, trials do not have to be free. You can offer a trial at a discounted rate. Another option that allows customers to try before they buy is the freemium model where access to basic services is free but premium services are limited to users with a subscription.
3. Improve The Customer Experience
If your brand has a trial or freemium offer, you must ensure that the customer experience is outstanding enough to convert the prospect. The customer experience begins from the initial sign-up through to the onboarding process and actual usage of the service. The entire process has to be smooth and systematic. Having clear documentation and responsive customer support helps to improve the customer experience as well.
4. Encourage Promotion
Referral marketing is one of the most powerful methods of promotion. Numerous statistics show that consumers trust peer recommendations more than brand advertising. Provide incentives such as extra storage space or additional credit to encourage your customers to share your service with their contacts. However, note that your customers must be satisfied with your service for them to have a beneficial net promoter score.
5. Market to Your Audience
With the wide range of channels and promotional options available, companies can easily squander their marketing budget. An effective SaaS marketing strategy should not only look to increase overall traffic but focus on attracting the segment of the market that will most likely convert. For instance, B2B SaaS providers should market to high-level business decision-makers instead of generic employees.
Five Successful SaaS Companies
1. Salesforce
Salesforce is a SaaS powerhouse that has built its business around its flagship platform. The Salesforce concept stemmed from CRM and now encompasses a range of services such as team communication via Slack and process automation with Einstein AI. Salesforce’s comprehensive range of services has earned it a top place in the market and a market cap of $185.13 billion as of April 2022.
2. Microsoft Office 365
Microsoft has become one of the largest and most lucrative SaaS companies in the world since moving its office productivity suite onto the cloud. Office 365 now far outsells the client software version. Although the company was slower than Google to launch its SaaS office suite, Microsoft has become the leading cloud vendor in terms of revenue, boasting a revenue of $17.7 billion in the third quarter of 2021.
3. Google Workspace
Formerly known as G Suite, Google Workspace is a collection of enterprise solutions that build on existing free Google services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. The enterprise subscription comes with custom business emails, cloud storage, video meetings, enhanced security, and support. According to Statista, Google Workspace was the market leader in the U.S. in October 2020, holding a 59.41 percent share.
4. Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe set the standard for desktop creativity software in the last two decades and has continued to reinvent itself by boosting its creativity suite with cloud-based SaaS integrations. The Creative Cloud suite offers subscribers access to collaborative tools, a library of design resources such as typefaces and software updates. According to Statista, the Creative Cloud suite generated $9.55 billion in revenue in 2021.
5. Zoom
A SaaS company that made its mark during the Covid-19 lockdowns, Zoom is an example of a company that focused on perfecting a singular service. From its original basic video conferencing service, Zoom has expanded its capabilities to hosting virtual events, webinars, and conferences for up to 500 participants. Zoom generated a revenue of $4 billion in 2021 from its enterprise subscribers, a 53% increase from the previous year.
The SaaS industry is forecast to continue its rapid growth. SaaS companies are multiplying by the day and brands must work hard to stand out from the rest of the competition. To increase reach, target the right audience, and earn subscriptions, brands must employ a tailored SaaS marketing strategy instead of a basic digital marketing plan. With a strong marketing strategy, your brand could be the next big name in the SaaS scene.