How to Get Noticed in the Digital Marketplace: The Ultimate Guide to SaaS Marketing
According to Statista, the global software as a service (SaaS) market is projected to reach $171.9 billion by the end of 2022. This figure represents a $51.2 billion increase since the end of 2020. All this growth encourages competition between SaaS developers, which leads to higher quality products for end-users and businesses.
However, the rapid expansion of the SaaS market has also led to this industry becoming inundated with developers. As you have likely experienced firsthand, this flood of SaaS developers can make it incredibly challenging to stand out from the crowd and connect with clients.
In order to help you overcome this detriment to growth, we have created this SaaS marketing mega guide. Below, we identify top SaaS marketing challenges, outline some must-know trends for the coming year, and provide tips for improving the efficacy of your digital marketing efforts.
What Is SaaS Marketing?
At its core, SaaS marketing is a specific type of digital marketing. The term “digital marketing” refers to advertising and marketing your products via digital mediums. Common examples include social media platforms, your own website, search engines, and third-party websites.
While SaaS marketing, and digital marketing in general, was initially geared towards internet-based advertising, that is no longer the case.
Modern SaaS marketing strategies go far beyond simple advertising and should be carefully crafted to build your brand, nurture trust with your target audience, and expand your reach in the digital marketplace.
B2B vs. B2C SaaS Marketing
SaaS marketing can be divided into two broad categories, business to business (B2B) and business to consumer (B2C).
As the name suggests, B2B SaaS marketing strategies are designed for software as a service providers that offer their products to other businesses. Conversely, B2C SaaS marketing efforts are designed for businesses that serve consumers directly.
There is no question that B2B and B2C companies have unique needs when it comes to SaaS marketing. However, the challenges outlined in the next section are commonly encountered by companies operating within each sector.
Likewise, you can leverage the majority of the tips and trends highlighted in this guide whether your company engages in B2B or B2C sales. The messaging and delivery will simply need to be tweaked so that it resonates with your audience.
Top SaaS Marketing Challenges
Before your company can improve the efficacy of its SaaS marketing efforts, you must first identify what challenges you are facing and work to resolve them. A few of the top SaaS marketing challenges that you may encounter include:
Underwhelming ROI
By far, one of the most frustrating SaaS marketing challenges that you may encounter is an underwhelming return on investment (ROI). However, this is an incredibly common occurrence, especially for businesses that do not have a cohesive digital strategy.
In order to remedy this pain point, you will first need to revisit your SaaS marketing strategy. Have you clearly identified the goals of your campaign? What are you hoping to accomplish, and how do you plan to do so? Who are you targeting, and what mediums are you leveraging to connect with your audience?
After you have refined your SaaS marketing strategy, the next step involves tracking the performance of your campaign. We recommend tracking vital metrics such as conversion rates of free trials, churn rate, customer lifetime value, average order value, and customer acquisition cost, just to name a few.
You must track these performance metrics for the duration of your SaaS marketing campaign. If any of these metrics reveal that your campaign is underperforming, then it is time to make adjustments to your outreach efforts.
A Lack of Traffic
Whether your company is a new entrant to the SaaS sector or you are trying to break into additional markets, generating traffic can be tough.
This difficulty is particularly pronounced if you are targeting the same audience as a larger, more established developer. Even if your product is superior, you will not drive any traffic if clients never see your content.
Overcoming this hurdle will require a multi-faceted approach. One way to increase your visibility is to leverage paid search campaigns, which we will explore in greater detail below. However, paid search is not a viable solution in the long term unless it is paired with other tactics, like creating search engine optimized (SEO) content.
Cumulatively, these efforts will allow you to get noticed so that you can start gaining traction within your target audience while also setting the stage for continued growth.
You will need to be diligent, as you will likely be competing against companies that have been building their digital presence for months or even years. While you can certainly catch up or even eclipse these brands, doing so will take time.
Inability to Stand Out
Getting noticed is only part of the equation. Sure, seeing your site traffic increase exponentially can be a huge confidence booster, but all of your efforts are for naught if you are not driving conversions.
This consideration leads us to the next SaaS marketing challenge that you will encounter, which is an inability to differentiate yourself from competitors. Modern consumers and B2B decision-makers are not won over by flashy sales materials and catchy slogans.
While these things can certainly help keep your audience engaged, you must follow up great marketing content with material that speaks to your clients’ needs. Show how your SaaS offering adds value to your client and highlight what features set it apart from other options on the market.
In order to create more effective SaaS marketing content, you should first build several different buyer personas. Each of these fictitious personas should outline the characteristics and attributes of a segment of your target audience.
In the B2B world, common buyer personas include C-suite executives and IT department directors. B2C buyer personas may address different demographics, such as older audiences and millennial consumers.
By creating buyer personas, your SaaS marketing team can develop better-targeted advertising content. You can develop specific campaigns and content for each audience segment.
Sharing Your Values with Your Audience
According to LinkedIn, nearly two-thirds (62%) of consumers are drawn to businesses that demonstrate a high level of authenticity and showcase positive values. In light of this fact, it is essential that your SaaS marketing efforts effectively convey your company’s values to your target audience.
While this may seem like an easy task to accomplish, sharing your company’s beliefs and values requires finesse and nuance. Otherwise, you may inadvertently alienate segments of your customer base or appear disingenuous.
When deciding how to incorporate your company’s mission, values, and beliefs into your SaaS marketing message, make sure to use common language and a genuine tone.
This stage of marketing is not a time to demonstrate your technical prowess or depth of software knowledge. You should leverage this opportunity to forge a powerful connection with your audience.
While there are many ways to connect with your clients, some effective tactics include highlighting community outreach efforts, discussing your company’s commitment to sustainability, or creating employee profiles of your top staff.
These strategies will make your company feel less like a large corporate entity and more like a trusted resource that the client can turn to when they need quality SaaS solutions.
Poor Client Retention
As you are undoubtedly aware, acquiring new clients is a costly endeavor. Conversely, retaining existing clients by providing them with quality service and timely support is far more cost-effective. Poor client retention can derail your long-term growth aspirations and negatively impact your bottom line.
In order to gain insights into client retention, you should continuously monitor your customer churn rate. Churn occurs when a consumer or business stops using your SaaS services. The churn rate is a particularly useful metric for SaaS businesses due to the subscription-based payment model that this sector typically uses.
A high churn rate is not necessarily a SaaS marketing challenge. However, you can leverage SaaS marketing to reduce churn, retain customers, and increase the average lifetime value of each client.
For instance, you can launch a re-engagement campaign. These campaigns are aimed at past clients that have either stopped using your services altogether or downgraded to a lower subscription tier.
During re-engagement campaigns, you should emphasize how you have improved your SaaS solutions in response to feedback from past clients. This information will demonstrate to new and existing customers that you are not only listening to their concerns but taking action as well.
Rigidity and Inflexibility
Since the outset of 2020, businesses across all industries have been forced to overcome unprecedented hurdles.
If these challenges have taught us anything, it is that businesses must be flexible and agile so that they can adapt to changing market conditions. Increasing organizational flexibility is particularly important in the SaaS marketing space.
Your clients expect SaaS providers to be on the leading edge of software and technology. You must use SaaS marketing tactics to showcase your latest creations and demonstrate how your company is striving to be a trailblazer within the industry.
In order to increase your marketing flexibility, you must deploy new tools and solutions. Additionally, you should monitor what your competitors are doing in terms of both software development and marketing.
Most importantly, communicate with your clients regularly. Find out what they love about your products, what improvements they would like to see, and how you can improve the user experience.
High Customer Acquisition Costs
Traditionally, customer acquisition costs (CAC) in the SaaS industry are quite high. While acquiring big B2B contracts or making a major splash in the B2C sector will yield a strong return on your investments, you should still strive to minimize your CAC.
While there are many ways to cut down on CAC, ditching ineffective SaaS marketing tactics for more targeted ones is a great place to start.
Review your last few SaaS marketing campaigns. Identify what strategies yielded the biggest return and which efforts underwhelmed. Use this information to create a more focused strategy for your next campaign. Invest more heavily in what worked and ditch what didn’t.
In addition to improving your SaaS marketing strategy, you should also consider investing in new advertising technologies.
By automating redundant and time-consuming processes, you can drive down the cost of acquiring customers. For example, email marketing tools that allow you to automate email campaign management responsibilities can streamline your digital marketing process.
Lackluster Conversion
One of the biggest sources of waste in the SaaS marketing realm is devoting time and resources to unqualified leads. Targeting unqualified leads will cause your conversion rate to plummet.
An unqualified lead is an entity that is not ready to purchase your services. Unqualified leads may have just entered into a new agreement with another SaaS provider, might not be a good fit for your products, or could simply not be ready to commit to your brand.
In order to improve conversion rates, you will need to implement a better lead qualification system. This approach will allow you to target leads that have a high likelihood of becoming paying clients.
Additionally, you can develop tailored nurturing campaigns that are designed to draw leads deeper into the sales funnel. Lead nurturing campaigns are great for targeting prospects that have a need for your products but have not decided which company they want to partner with.
When addressing the issue of low conversion rates, you should also focus on creating higher-quality content. The best content clearly identifies what your SaaS solutions do, who they are designed for, and how they provide value to your clients. If your SaaS marketing content leaves clients bewildered, then you have missed your mark.
10 SaaS Marketing Trends You Need to Know in 2022
Once you have identified any SaaS marketing challenges that are hindering your company’s growth, you are ready to take advantage of the latest trends and developments within this exciting market. In order to help you do just that, we have outlined 10 SaaS marketing trends to watch for 2022. These include the following:
1. Product-Centric Growth Strategies
SaaS marketing, and all digital marketing efforts for that matter, are shifting away from advertising-centric tactics in favor of product-focused strategies. What does this mean exactly?
The answer is simple. Instead of becoming fixated on acquiring and managing leads, you should create content that emphasizes the value of your SaaS solutions. Modern consumers and B2B purchasers want to be presented with factual data that demonstrates how a particular product will benefit them or their business.
Transitioning to product-centric growth strategies can lead to lower customer acquisition costs, reduced marketing expenses, and higher conversion rates.
2. Increased Emphasis on Client Engagement
SaaS marketing teams are making a concerted effort to engage with their clients. In the B2C space, these individuals are getting more active on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook. They are responding to messages, replying to comments on marketing posts, and interacting with prospective buyers.
On the B2B front, SaaS marketers are using LinkedIn to connect with C-suite executives, stakeholders, IT professionals, and others who may have a need for their products.
Marketers now have unprecedented access to their target audience, which allows them to stay up on the newest trends and gain insights from organizational leaders.
If your organization is not actively engaging with its audience on social platforms, then you are missing out on an excellent opportunity to build your brand. Consumers pay attention to which companies interact with their target audience and are more prone to develop feelings of loyalty towards those brands.
Your team should also be leveraging social media platforms for other SaaS marketing efforts. You can use paid search, post links to your on-site content, and host polls. These simple but effective strategies are great ways to expand your online presence and gain traction with your target audience.
3. Specialized Products
Does your team offer a niche product that is designed to meet the needs of a highly specific market segment? Want to fuel new growth by tapping into previously overlooked markets? If so, then SaaS marketing will play a huge role in the success of your endeavor.
Creating a product for an underserved industry and then showcasing your work with a high-quality marketing campaign is an excellent way to differentiate yourself from the competition.
You can demonstrate that your company goes above and beyond to meet the needs of your clients. This strategy will open the door for new and lucrative business opportunities while also allowing you to gain a foothold in the crowded SaaS industry.
4. More Education, Less Sales Jargon
Think back on your last few SaaS marketing campaigns. Was the primary goal of that content to educate your audience or sell your product? If the majority of your marketing content is sales-oriented, you run the risk of alienating your target audience.
B2B clients and individual consumers understand that you are running a business and are interested in selling your solution. What they want to know is what your product does, what features it includes, and how it is beneficial to them.
Therefore, educating your audience should be the primary goal of your SaaS marketing campaign. If you provide your prospective clients with materials that are informative, entertaining, and enjoyable to interact with, then they will be drawn deeper into the sales funnel.
Educational content allows you to increase awareness of your products and open the door for formal sales activities in the future.
There are many different ways to educate your clients. You can create written guides or blog content, produce explainer videos, or host a webinar. Webinars are especially useful in the B2B space, as you can field questions directly from organizational decision-makers and highlight the value of your solution.
Depending on the complexity of your product lineup, you may also want to create a suite of online training courses. These courses will allow current clients to access self-paced educational materials while also providing leads with a preview of what your product does and what it is capable of.
5. Listening to Client Feedback
SaaS marketing materials should be tailored to address the unique needs and pain points of your target audience. However, it is impossible to truly understand what challenges your clients are facing unless you actively gather and listen to their feedback.
In 2022, SaaS companies are going to spend more time analyzing client feedback and using this information to improve the user experience. In order to do this effectively, SaaS organizations must create a closed feedback loop.
This loop means that feedback is efficiently collected and distributed to the appropriate teams, such as sales, marketing, product development, etc.
Listening to client feedback will aid marketing efforts while also allowing you to create a higher-quality product. However, you must acquire the feedback before you can leverage it for these purposes.
Gathering feedback is often easier in the B2B world, especially if your team has developed a strong relationship with key decision-makers within your client’s company.
If your company operates in B2C, then you may have to actively lobby for feedback. Examples include sending your customers emails, encouraging them to provide product reviews, or following up with them via phone or text.
6. Implementation of Data Enriched Content
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing the quality of existing data by supplementing it with other information that you have acquired from other sources.
For instance, let’s say that an executive from a company you are targeting filled out a contact form on your website. Another member of that same organization has previously interacted with your brand on LinkedIn.
The information gathered from either interaction may provide a good starting point for digital marketing and outreach efforts.
However, combining the data gathered from each interaction will allow you to create more tailored marketing content for that client. This approach will allow you to better connect with your audience and increase the chances of generating a conversion.
Data enrichment is also essential for qualifying leads, especially in B2B SaaS marketing. You can precisely target the highest priority accounts while simultaneously minimizing waste.
7. ABM
Account-based marketing (ABM) is a highly effective advertising strategy for B2B SaaS companies. Instead of targeting a broad audience, ABM involves zeroing in on a select group of high-value accounts. In 2022, look for a large number of SaaS companies to double down on ABM efforts and transition away from traditional marketing tactics.
If you would like to launch your own ABM campaign, you must start by identifying your top accounts. From there, you will need to create tailored content for each account. The content must be highly personalized so that it speaks directly to the recipient and addresses their unique needs.
Account-based marketing offers a higher ROI than broad-spectrum advertising. This approach is focused on forging relationships with B2B decision-makers so that you can maximize the lifetime value of each account.
After you have successfully acquired your tier 1 accounts, you can turn your attention to tier 2 and tier 3 prospects. These lower tiers should include accounts that are either less likely to convert or do not have as much revenue-generating potential as tier 1 clients.
However, you should use the same custom content creation approach when attempting to connect with them.
8. Flexible Pricing
While your organization undoubtedly weathered countless challenges over the last few years, remember that your clients endured similar plights. As such, many businesses are searching for ways to reduce overhead expenses while still providing their employees with essential software and tools.
You can leverage this trend by adopting a flexible pricing model and advertising it in your SaaS marketing campaign.
Flexible pricing models are very appealing to small-to-medium-sized businesses in the current fiscal climate. These models allow them to purchase precisely the services they need without overpaying for SaaS solutions.
B2C SaaS providers can take advantage of this strategy as well by offering additional subscription tiers in order to make their products more accessible.
When altering your pricing model, you could consider several approaches. One of the most common involves unbundling your various solutions. This approach will allow your clients to purchase a niche SaaS product to resolve a particular problem instead of buying all of your solutions.
Another approach is to offer your clients an extended free trial. A longer trial (e.g., a month instead of a week) will give your clients an opportunity to familiarize themselves with your solution. During this trial period, your SaaS marketing team can win them over by providing support, guidance, and educational content.
9. Reliance on Video-Based Marketing Content
SaaS products can seem complex, confusing, and downright intimidating to your target audience. Unfortunately, it is difficult to explain what your product does using written content, much less outline what benefits it provides to a client.
In order to overcome this common challenge, many SaaS marketing teams are turning to explainer videos. An explainer video is a short piece of video content that is designed to describe what a product is and how it functions.
SaaS explainer videos are typically animated, as this approach gives producers the creative freedom necessary to adequately explain software solutions.
Video-based content is not only being used to explain SaaS products but is also widely employed for general marketing purposes. This video content can often keep your users more engaged when compared to written materials like blogs. Video marketing materials are particularly useful when advertising on social media platforms.
10. Omnichannel Advertising
There is no question that the days of single touchpoint lead nurturing are long gone. During the average buyer journey, a B2B client or general consumer will likely interact with your SaaS marketing content across multiple channels.
In response to this trend, businesses in the SaaS space are focusing on diversifying their marketing efforts. They are becoming more active on social media platforms, investing in paid search campaigns, creating SEO-friendly content, and striving to meet their audience on the mediums where prospective buyers are most active.
As you strive to broaden your own SaaS marketing efforts, keep in mind that simply being active on multiple channels is not enough. In order to engage in true omnichannel advertising, you must publish consistent, on-brand content across all mediums.
The tone, style, and messaging of your marketing materials should reflect your values, regardless of where it is being displayed.
In order to maximize the efficacy of your omnichannel marketing efforts, you must conduct research and determine which channels are most popular among your target audience.
For B2B SaaS providers, LinkedIn is always a top option. In the world of B2C, social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook will likely be some of your most valuable resources.
Proven Tips for Enhancing Your SaaS Marketing Strategy
Now that we have outlined some of the biggest SaaS marketing challenges that you may encounter and identified the top software as a service advertising trends for 2022 let’s turn our attention to improving your company’s digital strategy.
Be Transparent
Skepticism is a staple in the mind of today’s consumers and business leaders. Therefore, your business must strive to foster feelings of trust from the outset of any new client relationship. This strategy means being transparent about your product offering, your brand values, and your pricing.
For many clients, pricing will be a pivotal deciding factor when determining whether to do business with your company. Being less than forthcoming about pricing can cause customers to seek out other SaaS solutions.
When marketing your solutions, clearly display your pricing model upfront. This approach will prevent you and your prospective clients from wasting one another’s time.
Those who are comfortable with your established price point will be interested in exploring your product further, while those who are not will quickly decide that your offering is not for them.
If leads are routed to your site from paid search advertising, social media links, or other sources, it is important that they can readily locate pricing information.
Therefore, pricing information must be prominently displayed on your website. If you cannot offer flat per-user pricing, create a “request a quote” form so that prospective clients can easily obtain additional pricing information.
Don’t Neglect Your CTAs
A call to action (CTA) is one of the most important components of any SaaS marketing content. You can occasionally omit a CTA from educational content like blogs and guides.
However, even these “less salesy” forms of content should include a CTA most of the time. All service or landing pages should always include a CTA and perhaps even more than one call to action.
With that being said, calls to action do not have to be forceful. The tone and messaging of your CTA should be consistent with the piece that it is being included in. For instance, purely educational content that is designed to inform customers should include a gentler CTA, such as “Check out this blog to learn more” or “explore additional resources here.”
A call to action is essential for SaaS marketing because these prompts provide your audience with clear instructions as to what they should do next. Whether you want them to visit other pages of your site, contact your sales team, or sign up for a free trial, make sure to relay this information in your CTA.
Leverage the Power of Paid Search
One of the most powerful SaaS marketing tools at your disposal is paid search. By leveraging paid search, you can display your marketing materials on the search engine results pages (SERPs) of search engines like Google.
Paid search should always be a component of your digital strategy but is especially useful as you strive to grow your online presence as it allows you to display your ads above the organic results.
When setting up your paid search campaign, you will get to set a bid budget and choose which words you want to compete for. The more popular the keyword or key phrase, the higher your bid will need to be in order to win.
Paid search campaigns, and more specifically, pay-per-click (PPC), is a very popular advertising method because you are not charged for your ads unless a user actually clicks on them. This feature gives you better control over your marketing budget and ensures that you only pay for interactions, not views.
In addition to paid search, you should also use paid social advertising in your SaaS marketing campaign. When setting up your paid social campaign, you can target specific audience segments with advertisements, make your organic posts more visible, or both.
Cumulatively, paid search and paid social SaaS marketing will help boost brand visibility. These strategies can facilitate lead generation and client acquisition while you work to build your SEO ranking.
Create Dynamic Content
Did you know that the average consumer’s attention span is less than 10 seconds? This figure means that you have only a few seconds to captivate your audience with your SaaS marketing content. Otherwise, they will keep scrolling and move on to the next piece of marketing material that catches their eye.
In the B2C world, creating dynamic content means using a combination of intriguing videos, captivating images, and expertly-crafted written content. Using various types of marketing content will allow you to nurture leads more effectively across multiple channels.
On the B2B front, your content should demonstrate how your products add value to prospective clients. B2B decision-makers consider factors such as cost, ease of deployment, ROI, and product features when determining which SaaS solution to implement.
If your content speaks to a client’s specific needs and pain points, it is much more likely to resonate with your audience.
Don’t Neglect SEO
Every business needs a comprehensive, long-term SEO strategy. Investing in SEO will help your company climb the search engine rankings and move ever closer towards page one of your SERPs.
When seeking to improve SEO rankings, many companies focus on creating keyword-optimized content. While this is certainly a component of SEO, there is much more to it than that.
In addition to incorporating keywords into your content, you will need to frequently add fresh materials to your page. You should aim to add at least a few blogs per month to your website. This tactic will not only increase your online visibility but also give you an opportunity to rank for new or emerging key phrases.
Google’s ranking algorithm will also analyze other factors when assigning page rankings. One such factor that Google’s algorithm searches for is backlinks. A backlink occurs when content on another site includes a hyperlink to one of your pages. When striving to acquire backlinks, remember that quality is more important than quantity.
Search engines like Google, Bing, and others frequently alter their ranking algorithms. Fortunately, these entities typically announce these changes and outline how they may impact rankings. Anytime search engines update their algorithms, you will need to reevaluate your SEO efforts so that you can maintain your ranking.
Implement a Reward Program
The majority (78%) of B2B marketers state that referral programs are effective at generating excellent leads. Unlike other SaaS marketing efforts, referrals put your sales team in a prime position to succeed.
When a client refers another professional to your company, that individual will likely be operating in the same industry as your newly-acquired account. This proximity means that they will likely be facing some of the same pain points and have a need for your services.
However, far too many SaaS marketers do not know how to go about acquiring referrals. They either wait too long to ask for a referral or neglect to address the topic altogether.
You can remedy this issue by implementing a reward-based referral program. These programs are effective in both B2B and B2C SaaS marketing.
Creating a rewards program will give your sales team the perfect ice breaker to solicit referrals after deals are closed. After your sales agents have sealed the deal, they can outline your offer and ask your client if they know anyone else who would benefit from your products.
Common referral rewards include extra cloud storage space, discounted rates, or access to auxiliary products. For example, you could offer a 5% discount on a B2B client’s next monthly bill for every referral that leads to a conversion.
Encourage Clients to Review Your Products
Client reviews will provide invaluable insights into how your customers perceive your product. Acquiring positive reviews will also assist with lead generation, as many consumers conduct research on third-party review sites before making a purchase. However, the majority of customers never leave product or service reviews.
In order to remedy this issue, you must actively solicit reviews from clients. This approach does not mean paying for reviews. Instead, remind your clients to leave you a review when you conclude a transaction. You can also remind them to complete a review by sending a follow-up email several days after a deal is closed.
Once you begin to acquire a fair number of customer reviews, make sure to highlight this feedback on your website. Creating a testimonial page or inserting reviews onto other web pages can boost the perception of your brand and help build trust with your target audience.
You can also create testimonial video content. This content can be used as standalone SaaS marketing materials or incorporated into other videos, such as explainers.
Reach Out to Review Platforms
Modern consumers not only turn to their peers to guide purchasing decisions, but they also seek professional product reviews from top websites like G2 or Capterra.
If you are searching for a way to generate buzz about your new SaaS offering, consider reaching out to one of these platforms. Send them information about your product, highlight its top features, and ask them to review it.
You can also connect with various SaaS publications or related organizations and ask them to publish guest blogs. When inquiring about guest blogs, find out what the publication’s rules and requirements are so that you can adhere to them.
For example, many publications will restrict how much self-promotion you can include in the piece. Some sites prohibit almost all self-promotion but will allow you to include links to your website within the content.
The type of content that you will be asked to create might include how-to guides, informational blogs, listicles, etc. For example, you could be tasked with writing a guide on the “Basics of SaaS” or outlining the “Top 5 Trends Shaping the SaaS Industry in 2022.”
Guest posting is a great way to start building backlinks, even if you are not allowed to drop the name of your company directly in the article.
Offer Deals and Free Trials
Offering a free trial is one of the best ways to increase interest in your product. However, be careful not to make your trial period too long or too short. Whereas a three-day trial period will not give clients enough time to fully experience your product, users may take advantage of a 90-day trial while they explore other solutions.
Generally, 30 days seems to be an optimal trial period time frame. During the 30-day period, prospective clients will have the freedom to explore all of your product’s tools and features. They will also have an opportunity to learn more about your company, review educational resources, and interact with your support team.
In addition to free trials, consider offering seasonal deals or bundling discounts. For example, offering clients a 5% discount if they sign up for your largest product bundle may slightly cut into your profit margins. However, this new account will still generate more revenue than if they had purchased your cheapest offering.
Make Buying Easier
If you want prospective clients to take advantage of your trial period and self-service tools, then you must remove potential hurdles from the purchasing process. Try to keep the sign-up process to only a few steps and minimize the amount of information that you collect during this initial interaction.
If possible, avoid asking for payment information during the trial sign-up phase. Acquiring payment info so soon will discourage many leads from signing up.
The easier your trial sign-up and purchasing processes are, the more likely people are to use them. The same goes for your contact forms. Do not attempt to gather too much prospect data during the first interaction. Stick to the basics like a name, phone number, email address, business type (B2B), and job title (B2B).
By acquiring some rudimentary information, you will give your marketing team something to work with without alienating prospective leads.
Condense Your Product Offerings
The Software as a Service industry can be quite confusing to less tech-savvy clients. This issue is exacerbated when SaaS companies offer a seemingly endless lineup of products and service bundles.
In order to avoid this common pitfall, strive to condense your product offerings to a few software bundles and a handful of standalone solutions. Be clear about what features each offering includes so that prospective clients can quickly identify which solutions best align with their needs.
If your firm offers customized SaaS solutions, emphasize this on your product page. Explain that you can provide a tailored bundle in order to meet the needs of your clients and encourage your audience to contact your team for additional information.
This approach will allow you to streamline your products page while also keeping the interest of niche companies that need specialized software.
Partner with a SaaS Marketing Team
From the first paragraph to the last, this guide is overflowing with invaluable SaaS marketing information designed to help you get noticed in the crowded digital marketplace. However, putting all this information to use can be challenging due to the ever-changing nature of the digital marketing landscape.
Therefore, the best way to regain your edge over your competitors is to partner with an experienced SaaS marketing firm like Insights ABM.
As a full-service digital marketing and consulting firm, Insights ABM has helped countless brands realize their true potential by providing them with timely guidance, great content, and a cohesive online strategy.
If you would like to learn more about Insights ABM and our suite of services, contact our team today. We look forward to helping you shatter growth barriers and achieve your business goals by leveraging a multi-faceted SaaS marketing strategy.