There’s a lot that goes into modern SaaS marketing, and while many would still say that SaaS marketing is a copy-paste of traditional B2B marketing, it’s important to note that it takes a lot more to succeed in the millennial-driven SaaS sector. Boring websites and conversion-heavy content will not cut it anymore, because SaaS marketing in 2021 is all about personalization, the customer’s journey, and using your customer data to its maximum potential. If you want to market effectively as a SaaS business, you will need to focus on the right channels as well, but you will also need to create omni-channel experiences to appeal to various buyer groups.
You will also need to avoid some of the most common SaaS marketing mistakes, like poor-quality SEO, inconsistent content production, poor personalization and targeting, and more. Let’s explore all of these important facets of SaaS marketing and give you the best tactics you can start using right now to build a winning marketing strategy in 2021.
Know What Metrics to Track and Prioritize
Digital marketing can bring you the success you’ve dreamed of, or it can be the biggest financial pitfall of your career. If you want your marketing to generate the desired results, then you have to act on relevant industry and buyer data, and you need to know which metrics to track, prioritize, and optimize. If you’re not tracking the right metrics and KPIs, you’re just throwing money away, so make sure to monitor your:
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC). While it is important for people to renew their subscription to your product, you also need to keep inspiring new leads to sign up. Acquisition is more expensive than retention, though, so you need to monitor your spending.
- Customer lifetime value (customer LTV). Not all customers bring the same value to your company. Make sure to invest in the ones that have a high potential to keep using your product and upgrade their package.
- Your marketing ROI. Don’t waste money on your acquisition and retention efforts, instead, use your ROI to identify opportunities and threats, and optimize your approach for maximum conversion.
These are your most important metrics that will tell you how much you’re spending to acquire a new customer, whether or not that customer has a high LTV potential, and the kind of ROI you’re generating with your combined marketing efforts.
Study your Competition
As a growth-oriented SaaS business, you need to keep a watchful eye on your competition. Your idea is probably not new, and it doesn’t need to be for you to achieve success, but it does mean that you’re probably facing some stiff competition in your field. To stand out from the crowd, you need to mirror and improve upon the best practices in the industry.
You should also use this opportunity to avoid the common mistakes made by your competitors, but also to gain a better understanding of your own customer data and how you can better capitalize on the needs and wants of your target demographic. Chances are that your competitors are targeting the same audience, so use their success to your advantage and strive to improve on their own solutions.
Start Personalizing your Digital Presence
Personalization plays a vital role in modern SaaS marketing, and it can impact your sales strategy in a big way. SaaS companies cannot come off as overly corporate nowadays, or they risk alienating a modern consumer demographic that needs a personal touch, and a humanized brand experience. That’s why it’s so important to start personalizing your online presence, beginning with your domain name.
Make sure to choose a domain name that isn’t too corporate, but more importantly, choose a TLD like a .me domain that will introduce a more personal feel to the website, and attract the younger millennial and Gen Z audience. Once you have personalized the domain, you can start humanizing your website with personalized content.
Your goal should be to lead visitors on a journey, to make it easy for them to understand your product, and to be as transparent as possible. Make it a seamless experience, and generate leads by inspiring them to get in touch and ask any question that comes to mind.
Build a Powerful SEO Strategy
SEO ties directly into the personalization aspect, but it also serves a vital purpose of putting your SaaS business on the online map. This is a highly-competitive field, and having a comprehensive SEO strategy is one of the best ways to stand out, build brand authority, and inspire people to reach out.
With that in mind, make sure to:
- Craft content for engagement and conversions.
- Optimize all content and pages with relevant keywords.
- Improve website performance and speed.
- Optimize your website for seamless mobile browsing.
- Build a backlink portfolio and earn do-follow links on other authority sites.
Optimize your Website for Leads and Conversions
When people land on your site, your priority should be to turn them into leads, not sell your product immediately. Sure, some people are ready to sign up, so you don’t need to worry about them – they have already converted.
Your focus should be on the majority, the people who are looking around and are just getting to know your product and brand. Only through seamless product tutorials, personalized CTAs, and amazing follow-up emails can you hope to convert them into paying customers. Therefore, you should focus on capturing emails.
Most people are going to leave your site without buying anything, you be sure of that, so you need to inspire them to leave their email address, and then hit them with a personalized email bearing an offer they can’t refuse.
Over to you
The SaaS industry is a competitive one, and you need a powerful marketing strategy to beat the competition and maximize the potential of every customer. Be sure to combine these tips with your PPC and social media campaigns to build a more comprehensive marketing approach that will generate qualified leads, save you money, and maximize the lifetime value of every person you convert.
Image Credit: Kurve
The original version of this article was first published on V3Broadsuite.
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