Did you know that there are over 15,000 SaaS companies on the planet according to the data available on Crunchbase?

Now, that's a whole lot of companies!

On the flip side, 77 percent of businesses use at least one SaaS application.

In essence, this means that there's a market for your product as long as it can solve your prospect's pain points.

It isn't as straightforward as it sounds.

Your marketing strategy has to be on point to make your mark on the SaaS arena.

Not to worry, though.

In this post, GrowthGenerators insiders reveal what it takes to propel your SaaS business to the next level using focused, realistic, and time-bound marketing strategy. 

#1 Define Your Target Market

Sounds pretty obvious, right?

It sure does – until you learn that 50 percent of marketing campaigns don't reach their target audience.

Also, you will generate 80 percent of your future SaaS revenue from 20 percent of your current customers, according to Gartner.

The long and short of it is that you must study your potential audience from the get-go to become successful with your SaaS marketing efforts.

You don't want to create an excellent product and market it to the wrong people, do you? Of course not!

How To Identify Target Market For SaaS

Analyze Your Prospects' Pain Points

What problems is your product or service trying to solve?

For instance, if you sell electronic invoicing software, it would be best to reach small businesses, procuring departments, and independent freelancers looking for a quick and more efficient way to send and receive invoices.

When you know your prospect's pain points, you will know how to package your product as the best solution.

Dig Deeper– How to position your brand in your market successfully 

Analyze Your Competitors

List your competitor and look at their target audience. There's a likelihood that they connect with people who could be interested in your product or service.

Further, look for loopholes that you can leverage to outperform your competitors or win a significant portion of their business.

Dig Deeper – How to beat your competitors

Gather Insights About Your Current Customers

Think about your best customer for a second.

• What is their line of business?
• What motivated them to buy your product or service?
• What do they think about your product?
• How has your product/service made them better?

Finding answers to these questions, you help zero in on who is likely to buy your product.

Dig Deeper – Tools you can use to research your target audience.

#2 Create An Action Plan To Reach Your Target Audience

You've figured out who your SaaS prospects are.

The next step is to establish strategies to place your product in front of your customers.

Ideally, you want an action plan that is smart, time-sensitive, sustainable, and realistic.

As a B2B SaaS company, your goal is to have a positive ROI for your marketing efforts.

Therefore, you must choose the right marketing channel to attract your prospect and, most importantly, make a sale – which brings us to our next point.

Marketing Channels For SaaS 

Content Marketing

A ProfitWell study revealed that SaaS companies that content marketing report a 30 percent increase in growth and a 5 to 10 percent improved retention rate.

On top of that, content marketing can generate an impressive ROI of 647 percent for SaaS companies, according to a Nectafy case study.

Content marketing should be at the center of your SaaS marketing efforts. When done right, it can bring in tons of business and conversion.

Content marketing allows you to take a less "sales-y" approach to reach your prospective and existing audience.

The best way to do content marketing for SaaS is to have a blog. Up to 36 percent of the biggest SaaS companies in the world use blogs to share educational content and generate leads.

Besides, 47 percent of B2B buyers read about three to five blogs before speaking to a salesperson.

In essence, this means that you're missing out if you're not creating content and distributing it to your prospects. 

The trick is to create evergreen content that will remain relevant years after you hit the publish button. That way, it can continue to earn you leads and revenue for years.

Be sure to create content that your target audience cares to read. To generate content that won't prospect to sleep, you must;

• Do thorough keyword research.
• Cover all the stages of the customer value journey
• Create better content than your competitors
• Show some personality with your writing.
• Repurpose your popular content.

Are you looking for content marketing inspiration? Here are brilliant examples of SaaS companies to borrow a leaf.

HubSpot

HubSpot generates millions of unique traffic every month primarily to writing valuable, actionable content across multiple channels

Moz

Moz is without-a-doubt one of the best content marketers.  The company focuses on search and SEO. The one thing that sets Moz apart is their ability to produce "technical content" regularly without overwhelming their audience.

Zendesk

Zendesk is all about providing a better customer experience for its target audience, and its content reflects the same.

Product Trials

Product trial is a serious lead generation and marketing for SaaS companies. Still, you must create your trial in a way that gives the results in conversion.

How To Convert SaaS Prospects Into Buying Customers After The Trial Period

The best SaaS companies convert 25 percent of trial sign-ups into purchasing customers according to research. Here's how to achieve such success with your company.

Offer a Reasonable Trial Period

Sure, most SaaS companies offer a 30-day free trial. Even then, that doesn't have to be the case with your company.

For instance, Salesforce has a 7 day trial period for its entry-level Contact Manager edition, while the premium Performance edition attracts a trial period of 30 days.

The best approach is to find a trial period that will bring you the most conversion.

Offer a Demo

A demo, when offered together with a trial, goes a long way to increase your conversions.  More specially, a demo allows you to showcase your product to prospects and how it can help solve their problems,

Think of the demo as a tool to educate your potential customers about your product's capability or service even before they try it out themselves.

Leverage Email Marketing

A solid email marketing campaign will help you reach out to as many potential customers as possible before, during, and after the trial period.

Automate your email to send follow up pieces such as detailed guides after a prospect downloads content at the top of the funnel.  Put differently, use emails to keep people engaged and interested in your product.

#3 Start A Podcast

Podcasts are popular these days.

When used correctly, they will help catapult your SaaS startup to new heights and bring in new customers at the same time.

Statistics indicate that 80 percent of podcast listeners stay tuned for a better part of all the episodes.

Plus, 54 percent of podcast listeners say that they're more likely to consider buying from brands they hear advertised on podcasts.

There's no entry barrier to podcasts, which makes it an attractive SaaS marketing strategy. All you need to get started is a portable mic and a computer, and you're good to go.

Of course, your target audience comes into play when we talk about recording podcasts for a market interested in SaaS products.

When recording your podcast, stick to what makes your product stand out when pitted against the competition.

You should showcase the mastery of your product or service. The last thing that you want to do is to fumble through your podcast in a way that would indicate you don't understand your product thoroughly.

Consider hosting experts if you want to discuss technical issues. The idea is to give your target clients a reason to tune in whenever you're hosting a podcast.

And yes, podcasts may not be the most uncomplicated SaaS marketing strategy but one of the most effective.

It takes a while to get people to subscribe to your channel and become loyal listeners, so you should be patient.

This post by Harrison Baron is a good starting point if you're looking for motivation to start a successful podcast. 

#4 Ace SEO

Search Engine Optimization and organic reach are essential to the success of your SaaS marketing campaign.

Repeated research shows that organic traffic brings a significant portion of leads and traffic for best-in-class SaaS companies.

Besides, a Gartner study reveals that your potential customer is doing more and more independent research before buying a SaaS product.

That explains why many companies are doing all they can to get featured in the "best of lists."

How To Do SEO For SaaS Companies

Figure Out Your Most Valuable Keywords

This is where your SEO campaign should start. You must pinpoint keywords that your target audience is searching for and those you want to rank for in SERPs.

The most important thing to remember here is that some keywords are harder to rank for than others.

Easy-to rank keywords apply to a smaller group of prospects.

These are what SEO experts call long-tail keywords. Examples of long-tail keywords for SaaS include "best SaaS provide for income tax filing" or “best SaaS company Long Beach area.” 

Your SEO campaign should include harder-to-rank for keywords as well.  While it will take you time to rank such keywords, it would be best to include them in your strategy for long term gains. Examples include email SaaS companies, SaaS companies, etc.

Be sure to use reliable keyword research tools to help you mine gems that are easy to rank for and with some good search volume.

Dig Deeper – Best free and paid keyword tools you can use.

Create Informational Content Around Your Keywords

Armed with a list of keywords, it is now time to create content that revolves around these keywords.

The trick here is to analyze what your competitors have written about your target keyword and make it better.

For instance, you can use the skyscraper technique to create better, more in-depth content than your competition. Ideally, your content should be more valuable and actionable to stand a higher chance of outperforming what's ranking for the targeted keyword in search engines.

Your content should take a prospect through the customer value journey. Your content should move a prospective buyer from awareness, engagement, subscription, and conversion.

Dig Deeper – How to create content that takes a prospect through buying channels.

Create An Excellent User Experience

Even with your content right, you will not get as many leads if your site's user experience sucks.

In fact, 39 percent of prospects will stop engaging with your content if images take too long to load. And as if that's not depressing enough, 88 percent of users are less likely to visit your website if they had a bad experience the first time.

For starters, your website should be easy to navigate. A potential customer should know where to go a few seconds after landing on your site.

Of course, the better the user experience, the lower the bounce rate. When the bounce rate percentage is low, Google knows that visitors are spending time on your site. The benefit is that your website gets rewarded with higher rankings – and that's good for business!

Growth Generators Is A Top SEO Company

At Growth Generators, we understand that getting your SaaS company off the ground isn't the easiest of tasks.

That’s why we have a team of dedicated experts who will not only help customize your SaaS marketing campaign and create a sustainable SEO campaign.

And no, we're not talking about trial and error here. We're talking about tried and tested tactics that will generate leads and help you grow your business.

Our job is to help your SaaS company stand out and reach the right target audience.

If you're ready to start your SaaS marketing and SaaS SEO campaign, be sure to hit the contact us button, and let's discuss how we can help you achieve your goals.