Getting your marketing efforts right can be challenging, no matter what kind of SaaS company you are. Competition is getting more and more fierce each day, and when it comes to digital marketing, there is simply no room for error.
Now is the perfect time to analyze your 2019 marketing efforts in order to improve your 2020 marketing strategy. There’s no better time than now to make positive changes in your current marketing efforts. Here are the seven most common SaaS marketing mistakes that you should be aware of so that you can iron them in your strategy now.
1. Not Focusing on SEO
Unless your brand is already a household name, then chances are, most of your site visitors come straight from the search engine. So, if you’re not spending the time (and resources) to improve your ranking, you’re going to lose out to your competitors.
Aside from keywords, compelling visuals are crucial, too. Sites that have a wider variety of images end up ranking higher on search engines as well.
Videos are also great in helping you secure a higher spot on search results. It’s because this 2019, it makes up at least 80 percent of the total search traffic.
2. Neglecting Marketing Automation
Even if your site is the best lead capturing machine in the market, your budget will still go to waste if you couldn’t effectively qualify leads and nurture your prospects into paying customers.
Without a formal system in place such as marketing automation to help connect with your prospects, your marketing spends will be wasted. Your lead nurturing efforts don’t have to be complicated- however, you need to align them with the sales cycle of your business as well.
3. Targeting a Broad Audience
While other campaigns might benefit from taking the “broad” approach, the best approach here is to align your strategy with your target audience. Doing so helps you save more time and money, and you’ll be converting more people in return.
Don’t try to promote your campaigns to everyone- otherwise, you’d end up getting no one.
4. Not Investing in Content Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes a lot of SaaS companies make is adopting an approach to content marketing wherein it extends merely to inbound marketing. A solid starting point is coming up with a compelling content marketing strategy that will draw people more to your business.
Content marketing should be an important part of your whole SaaS marketing strategy, carrying your prospects down to the path of establishing a solid long-term customer relationship with them.
5. Having a Complicated Pricing Information
Pricing is important, especially in the SaaS world. Let’s take a project management tool for instance. You’re offering the tool for free with paid options that around for about $10-20 a month. You also have tools that have no freemium model and are charging for approximately $249 a month.
Keep in mind that the pricing of your products should be based on how broad the audience of that particular product has, and what your unique proposition is.
Some SaaS companies have complicated pricing options that are too much on the page. If you have a lot of information that you want to convey to your customers, here are some ways to condense it:
- Condense your options to be fewer
- Create a tool that allows customized pricing
- Have a toggle between annual, quarterly, and monthly options
6. Underutilizing Social Media
It’s surprising that some businesses, especially SaaS companies, underutilize the power of social media.
But this day and age, you shouldn’t be ignoring social media anymore. It’s one of the most effective ways you can remind customers that you’re still relevant in their lives. Give them information about your products’ upcoming features and other updates.
7. Not Considering UX
Your website should have an excellent user experience and show to your prospects that you know what you are doing.
Also, if you’re serious about optimizing your website, then you need to regularly check and collect data. Here are some of the most common elements that you need to test:
- Call-to-action
- Headlines and USP
- Font color and text size
- Other elements in your site such as testimonials, and social proof
Apart from that, your blog should also provide users an excellent user experience. Here are some ways company blogs creates a poor user experience for their users:
- The font is hard to read, making the long reading session uncomfortable for the user
- It contains images, but it isn’t relevant to the topic, so it’s kind of distracting
- There is no whitespace between your content and the rest of your site, and in the blog post itself
- There are a lot of broken links that don’t link anymore or link to outdated information
Final Thoughts
Chances are, you already made these mistakes in the past. But it’s high time that your SaaS company to stay away from these mistakes. You can turn these mistakes around to propel your digital marketing strategy into high gear.
The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.
- 7 Common SaaS Marketing Mistakes to Avoid - January 6, 2020
- How Startup Businesses Can Grow Effectively with Social Media Marketing - April 29, 2019
