SaaS marketers have a difficult job. Marketing is tough. Developing an effective SaaS Marketing Strategy is an even tougher task. A slew of questions enters your mind while marketing your product.
How can you advertise something that doesn’t have a physical presence? Aren’t you promoting something that is always changing? Are you promoting something with a ridiculous name? Is it a good idea to sell something that approximately only 20 B2B firms will be interested in? Are you promoting something that makes no sense to the ordinary person?
You get the Picture.
The world of SaaS marketing is not for the faint of heart. It’s difficult. And it is fundamentally distinct from almost every other form of marketing that the world is aware of. In this essay, we want to highlight some of those distinctions. But we’d also like to do something different. We would like to emphasise some of the inherent benefits of a SaaS marketing strategy, which may help you execute your marketing job a little bit better. These are some of the key distinctions between SaaS marketing and other types of marketing.
Important Features of SaaS Marketing Strategy
1. Giving out free things is a fantastic thing
If you were selling physical merchandise, you would not give away a ton of free stuff. A few free samples for the retail store? Maybe. A direct mail promo with a sliver of a sample? Maybe. But giving away the full product? Never!
But that’s exactly what SaaS marketing should do. Giving away a free product or service is one of the most standard and widely accepted SaaS marketing strategies. The “free trial” is a strategic marketing strategy for SaaS customer acquisition and onboarding. The free model has dozens of iterations — free trial, trial-to-paid, trial with credit card information, trial with no credit card information, freemium model, 90-day free trial, limited version free, etc. The common feature is free. Free is the oil of the SaaS marketing engine. You’ll see this just about everywhere you look. If you want any type of SaaS product, chances are, you’ll see a free trial option somewhere. Giving away your product for free — as long as you have a SaaS Marketing Strategy — is a great approach to building a SaaS Marketing Strategy.
2. The sales cycle is remarkably short
Long sales cycles are synonymous with “B2B sales”. We deal with businesses that view a 12-month sales cycle as a quick procedure. However, in the world of SaaS, a year seems like an eternity. Rapid sales are essential in SaaS sales. You should definitely keep this in mind while building your SaaS Marketing Strategy. When a SaaS client needs a solution, they conduct online research, possibly consult with a colleague, try the product or watch a demo, and then buy. The entire procedure could take several days or only a few hours. There are no lengthy sales engagements, RFIs and RFPs, “bake-offs,” contract discussions, or the like. Customers find it, see it, like it, and buy it. Done.
There will be no chitchatting, costly sporting events, sophisticated wine tastings, or networking at a pricey golf club. Purchasing SaaS is a rapid, transactional, and immediately-completed procedure. The type of software is one of the factors that contribute to the speed of the process. Software is a constantly changing field, with continual developments, advances, and setbacks. If a sales process lasted six months, the software would go through at least twelve revisions during that period.
Self-service SaaS is also a high-speed purchasing environment. The cheap cost and low complexity of most modern SaaS allow for simple decision-making. This is what makes for an excellent SaaS Marketing Strategy.
Faster sales cycles lead to increases in revenue, value, and profit. However, some customers may be wary of a fast sales process, especially if they are used to a slow sales process. Don’t be concerned if you lose a few transactions because the customer “isn’t ready.” There are plenty of other customers who are ready to make a decision in five minutes or less.
3. Your information is your most valuable asset
Information is essential in SaaS marketing. It’s remarkable how fundamental something is, yet how frequently it goes unnoticed. Consider some of your favourite blogs and information sites for a moment. Do you aware that most of that information originates from either SaaS vendors or SaaS providers? That’s right, and it’s important to know about the Product Adoption Curve so that your services become improved and remain impeccable
Consider yourself in words other than “marketing” if you are a B2B SaaS marketer. This will greatly improve the way you look at SaaS Marketing Strategy. Consider yourself an industry genius – someone who has and disseminates information. If you’re writing, tweeting, chatting, publishing, thinking, speaking, or performing your work in any other way, you should be spreading knowledge. The majority of SaaS is meant to provide information. As a result, the primary responsibility of the SaaS marketer should be to give information that leads to a source of further information – the SaaS product.
4. Your consumers are loyal
The majority of your income comes from current SaaS clients. A whopping 80% of all future income will come from only a small percentage (20%) of your present clients. If you boost client retention by only 5%, you may raise your company’s profitability by 75%.
Customer retention is more important in the SaaS sector than in any other. Understanding your client retention percentages and lifetime value is important to SaaS marketing success. Customer retention is the crux of the SaaS Marketing Strategy. When you tabulate and analyse this data, the actual power and worth of client retention become abundantly clear. There is strength in retention, and you will want to prioritise retention above client acquisition. This is one of the many reasons you should invest in developing an email marketing strategy for the best results.
5. You’re not so much selling a product as you are a service
SaaS is an abbreviation for “Software as a Service.” We suggest that you place a premium on service. Yes, the program must be significant, faultless, powerful, and amazing. However, service must be held up as a model of virtue.
When developing your SaaS Marketing Strategy, keep in mind that your chosen business model is a fully integrated architecture in which all parts of the business — product, support, revenue model, and marketing — are tightly connected. SaaS frequently bows to the mighty developers and programmers. Those folks are unquestionably significant. However, the service providers — help desk, sales, bloggers, marketers, and so on — make up the SaaS’s front-facing service component.
This has far-reaching consequences for how you spend your time and money. By advertising your service, you may sell your SaaS. Keep client happiness at the forefront of your mind when planning and strategising. Maintain a high level of contact with existing consumers. You could even send them a cake if you wanted to.
Conclusion
You now have a solid idea of the SaaS Marketing Strategy. It all depends on how successfully you can integrate it into your current marketing initiatives. Depending on your organisation, you may require a complete overhaul or simply a few minor changes to your marketing strategy. Check out our post on marketing ideas to boost your sales now!
