Crafting an Effective SaaS Growth Marketing Strategy

The B2B SaaS industry is considered an infant industry, implying that the growth potential remains attractive. Hence, entering into the SaaS industry is considered a good investment in times like this as the Return on Investment is expected to be solid.

To remain competitive in the market, SaaS companies must create and maintain high-quality products and services. They should also focus on customer experience by refining their user interface and ensuring that customers have access to top-notch support. Additionally, SaaS firms should strive to create visibility across multiple platforms to reach a wider customer base. 

Nevertheless, there has been considerable growth recently within SaaS that makes entry into this arena quite worthwhile.

• As of 2023, the SaaS space is worth over $195 billion.

• The SaaS industry has increased in size by around 500% over the past seven years.

• The US has approximately 8x more SaaS companies than any other country.

Given what is at stake, both in terms of market potential, the long sales cycle, as well as the need to continuously optimize customer retention and upselling as a way of reducing churn and building the MRR up,  growth marketing is a natural fit for SaaS businesses.

Before we get into why growth marketing makes innate sense for SaaS businesses, let’s briefly provide background on growth marketing. This will serve in order to gradually introduce why the methodology is an organic fit with SaaS-oriented businesses.

What is Growth Marketing?

Growth marketing is the practice of combining customer data, market insights, and creativity to better understand your buyers and amplify every step of the customer journey for them.

 The fundamental tenet to understand from growth marketing is that generating massive revenue doesn’t just come from scaling the top of the funnel and acquiring new customers. It’s about reaching the right customers, getting them to stick around, and using all available insights to drive more engaged customers.  What this involves is creating brand advocates or ambassadors, essentially enabling businesses to gradually build up credibility by using word of mouth to not only generate awareness but also to demonstrate the value that their SaaS business (specifically their software/solution/service) is able to provide prospective customers.

Through testing and incremental improvement, growth marketers not only acquire new customers at an exponential rate, but also drive more cross-selling, upselling, and other revenue expansion opportunities, to both new and existing customers. In short, they use data drawn at all phases of the customer journey to deliver experiences that resonate throughout the entire customer lifecycle, thereby drawing not only additional possible revenue opportunities, but also the insights that can be tested elsewhere, improved on, and revised constantly.

Moreover, the long journey that prospects take to become customers eventually provides opportunities for firms to create content that not only aligns with the sales cycle, demonstrates that they understand customer pain points, but also demonstrates what is involved in the implementation, deployment, training (if needed), support and services that are provided.

Establishing Growth Marketing Fundamentals for SaaS

As alluded to in an earlier blog post, there are 7 elements to ensuring proper growth marketing fundamentals within a business or organization. Just as a reminder they are:

1. Alignment in terms of mission or purpose.

2. Organizational data & analytics needs to be at the center of how an organization functions.

3. Constant experimentation is part of creating a perpetual feedback loop that is at the heart of growth marketing.

4. Customer acquisition

5. Reducing churn

6. Customer Retention

7. Referrals

Now that we have established what is needed for a growth marketing framework within any organization, there are a few additional elements that encompass these yet at the same time are somewhat unique to the long sales cycle, and the lead generation and nurturing processes inherent within SaaS.

1) Marketing Personas:  While in theory, this is not something that is theoretically restricted to SaaS or B2B-based businesses, because businesses (which tend to be SaaS customers) are comprised of people that make decisions with regard to purchases (including what software to buy), creating customer personas is an extremely efficient way of understanding those that make decisions as to what to buy.  Some things to consider when creating customer personas include understanding why they might potentially need your solution, who else in terms of influencers they need to consider,  and how their purchase process works.

What creating marketing personas allows for is the creation of targeted content that demonstrates the understanding of these points, which in time allows for better response rates, better lead quality, and with time, increased revenues. In the case of SaaS businesses whose product provides benefits for different types of organizations, customer personas allow for ways to better understand various market segments and customize their marketing efforts to these different personas. 

2) The AIDA Funnel (Top Middle Bottom):  As mentioned, the typical SaaS marketing funnel is a lengthy one. From the point of view of lead generation and customer acquisition, the process can be described as a four-stage funnel characterized by Attraction, Interest, Desire, and Action, as demonstrated in the diagram below.

What is important of course at every stage of the funnel, is to provide content or material that approximately matches the stage at which the customer might be at in terms of determining what the problem is, and considering potential solutions.  For simplification, the various points can be looked at more simply as the top (ToFU), middle (MoFu), and bottom (BoFu) of the consideration funnel as illustrated in the diagram below.

For the sake of our point of view, we can look at this as a marketing funnel.  As mentioned the content provided at different points needs to be relevant.  We will delve into this more later on, however, for the sake of illustration, the diagram below illustrates this.

Of course, since growth marketing (for SaaS, or any industry really) involves a full-funnel approach, this involves not just the acquisition of customers, but also the activation, retention, and referral of new ones.  We will delve into that in more depth later on as well.

3) Brand Persona (Unique Selling Proposition):  The key here is establishing as Jeff Bezos put it, “Your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room”.  A big part of this involves establishing your unique selling proposition, which essentially involves finding the intersection of what the customer is looking for, putting forward what your business does well with respect to appealing to what the customer is ultimately looking for, and distinguishing your business from what potential competitors offer and represent in comparison.

What does a Growth Marketing Funnel for SaaS entail?

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Now that we have established what some fundamentals of growth marketing involve, in order to craft an efficient growth marketing strategy it is important to better understand what the full growth marketing funnel for SaaS entails.  

As alluded to earlier, the key aspect of marketing in SaaS is deciding what content, and consequently what tactics and channels are appropriate at various points in the consideration process.

Most SaaS content strategies focus on top-of-funnel topics and generating what we call “content conversions” (e.g. email signups, ebook downloads, white paper downloads, etc.), which, notably, is not the same as a product conversion (trial start, demo request, etc.). 

While these are important, the frank reality is that most opportunities to create, let alone nurture leads, occur in the middle or bottom of the funnel. 

Content marketing for SaaS is different than marketing in other industries in a number of important ways:

1. You’re selling both technology and service

2. Your marketing must focus on search engine optimization

3. Your marketing must educate prospects

4. Your sales rely heavily on referrals

5. You must address customer risk

SaaS software is a product, so at first glance, SaaS marketing might seem to revolve around selling a product. However, this is only half of the story. When SaaS customers are choosing providers, a major factor they consider is support. This means that SaaS marketing carries the dual burden of selling customers on both the product itself and the support and the services behind it.

SaaS buyers research products and services primarily through digital channels, making SEO a critical component of effective SaaS marketing. SaaS audiences typically find products through digital resources such as white papers, website reviews and app marketplaces. Your marketing strategy should include an emphasis on SEO content that will attract buyers from these sources.

How to create a content focused growth-marketing oriented strategy for SaaS

A winning content marketing strategy for SaaS starts with marketing research and strategizing, proceeds through content creation, and concludes with campaign performance tracking. This process can be divided into seven major steps:

1. Target audience identification

2. Pain point analysis

3. Keyword analysis

4. Campaign goal setting and tracking

5. Content production

6. Content distribution

7. Campaign results monitoring and optimization

For each step, following best practices will yield better results. 

Discovery: The Top of the Funnel

The first stage of the funnel is all about creating content that improves your brand awareness and organic search visibility.

Here, your audience is using non-purchase intent keywords that indicate their desire to learn about a topic and find actionable advice they can apply to solve their problems.

A typical top-of-the-funnel SaaS content strategy can include the following types of content:

• How-to guides

• Listicles (tips, tactics, trends, examples, etc.)

• Infographics (with supportive blog posts)

• Thought leadership (experience/anecdotes-based content from founders)

• Original research or studies

In all these pieces, the focus is on educating your audience and building credibility and awareness.

Optimize each piece with the right set of head and long-tail keywords. Answer the questions they ask on Google (we’ll cover the tools for these later). Lead them to relevant product/features pages on your website with contextual internal links and CTAs.

Here are a few examples of potential top-of-funnel-content:

• How to Use Webinars to Grow Your SaaS Business

• 10 SaaS Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2022

• Tiktok Marketing 101: The Ultimate Checklist to Send Your TikTok Marketing through the Roof in 2021

Consideration: The Middle of the Funnel

The next stage of the funnel considers the segment of your audience that is aware of the exact problems they wish to solve and researching potential solutions, likely in the form of the following content types:

• Product comparison articles

• FAQs

• Checklists

• Cheatsheets

• Templates

Middle of the funnel content is similar to the top of the funnel content but with a stronger focus on:

• Guiding prospects in their product research phase

• Making them aware of your SaaS offerings

• Turning them into leads by encouraging them to subscribe to your email list, download a free resource, etc.

The same practices mentioned above apply here, and here are a few examples of such content:

•  SEO Checklist for 2022 [DFY Spreadsheet]

• A 25-Point Content Audit Checklist for Better On-Site SEO 

• Decoding SaaS PR in 5 Easy Steps

Conversion: The Bottom of the Funnel

The final stage of the funnel is where your audience is primed to convert. They’re ready to try or buy a SaaS product like yours.

Your content’s purpose is to nudge prospects or leads to sign up for your free trial/plan, request a demo, or contact your sales team.

Your bottom-of-the-funnel content needs to demonstrate with proof and/or success stories exactly how your SaaS product can solve your users’ specific challenges. It could take the following formats:

• Case studies

• Use cases

• White papers

• Features or integrations landing pages

• Alternative lists or product comparison pages (your brand vs. competitor)

How to Create a Growth Marketing Framework for SaaS

Now that we have established what content marketing entails for the SaaS growth marketing funnel or decision-making process, we can now examine SaaS growth marketing frameworks.

A growth marketing framework is a tool designed to help a business achieve strategic growth. At the heart of the framework is a budget-friendly, data-driven approach to marketing that uses rapid experimentation to identify and harness growth opportunities.

The growth marketing framework for Saas that we are putting forward involves 5 steps.

 Ideation, Setup, Testing, Analysis, and Scaling. This framework is key to creating and implementing an efficient SaaS growth marketing strategy.

Ideation

This is the foundation of your marketing plan. It is the time to form relevant targets and KPIs, craft communication ideas, and draw up evidence-based marketing hypotheses to test. 

Research your market and audit current performance. Based on this research, you need to identify the benchmarks and set up the initial targets to reach. In addition, one would need to uncover and discuss compelling insights about your customer and market. This will help you to find the brand connection based on insights to challenge the consumer problem or need. The final step is to identify the core directions to test, build the architecture for each content territory, and then develop a list of content marketing ideas to test

Setup

After receiving basic ideas of your goals and direction for marketing in the first stage, your goal is to prepare your marketing to actually implement your ideas. So, it is time to set up analytics systems and dashboards, bring together all relevant marketing tools, and establish interaction between all your channels. 

Testing 

Result-oriented growth marketing is all about making data-driven decisions, which requires testing the hypotheses, acquired during Ideation, and putting them into practice.  At this juncture, you need to choose a shortlist of marketing hypotheses based on all of your strategic research and validate them through the launching of test campaigns.

Analysis 

You would then need to conduct an in-depth and detailed analysis of the work done and tested to adjust your strategy, relying on the data and results from test campaigns.

Scaling 

Yay, you’ve tested your ideas and got the results! It’s time to scale. It is time to find a final team to implement your marketing initiatives and plan your next steps for future growth.

What to consider when navigating the SaaS growth marketing framework. ?

Metrics:  

• MQL, SQL, HQL, PQL

• Year-to-year revenue growth

• Market share increase

• New markets (new territories) to enter into 

• Increase overall brand awareness

Budget:  How much do you intend to spend overall on a monthly marketing budget, and how much you budget you intend to allocate across different marketing channels?

What  Channels to Focus On:   By identifying your current users and building accurate buyer personas, you’ll have an idea of the channels your potential customers are using. In your plan, you can start to hypothesize how to use those channels best. 

These channels can be anything from slack groups to Linkedin, SEM, Facebook, email to popular blogs, and podcasts. 

A good way to start is to send out an attribution survey to your current user base, asking them where they heard about your business.  Your user research and interviews with existing customers should start to suggest which channels will work best for your marketing efforts. 

However, if you still struggle, look to your competition and do some micro-tests of your own. In those channels where you get more instant results, like social advertising or search engine marketing, running small tests can be a better idea than going all-in with your budget. 

Buyer Personas:  As alluded to earlier, buyer personas help you understand the circumstances of which those who are relevant in your markets of consideration operate.

Growth Marketing Tactics that are Relevant for SaaS:

Once you have a clear understanding of your target customer, competition, and selling point, you can begin crafting your SaaS marketing strategy accordingly. Here are 11 growth marketing tactics SaaS businesses ought to make part of their repertoire in 2023.

1)Content Marketing

Content marketing is one of the most effective ways to attract new leads and convert them into customers. But it's also one of the most challenging and time-consuming marketing strategies to execute effectively. That's why it's important to invest in a team of experienced content marketers who can help you create high-quality content that will resonate with your target audience.

When creating content for a SaaS product, it’s important to keep the following things in mind:

· The target audience: Who is the content for? Is it for businesses that are already using a SaaS product and are looking for ways to get more value out of it? Or is it for businesses that are considering adopting a SaaS solution but aren’t sure which one is right for them?

The format: What type of content will be most effective at reaching the target audience? For example, if the target audience is busy decision-makers, an infographic or a short video might be more effective than a long blog post (which might be useful in turn if details for a particular situation they might face in their position are required).

The goals: What does the business want to achieve with its content marketing? Is the goal to generate leads, or is it to build brand awareness? Once the goals are clear, the content can be created with those objectives in mind.

The messaging: What key messages does the business want to communicate through its content? For example, if a SaaS product is easy to use, that should be communicated clearly.

The call to action: What do you want readers to do after they’ve read or watched the content? Include a strong call to action that encourages them to take the next step, whether it’s signing up for a free trial or downloading a white paper.

2) Implement Account-Based Marketing

Account-based marketing (ABM) is a targeted approach to marketing that focuses on key accounts that are most likely to convert into customers. By targeting your marketing efforts specifically at high-value accounts, you'll be able to generate more leads and close more deals.

Here are a few tips on how to get started with ABM for your SaaS product:

·       Identify your ideal accounts - The first step in any ABM campaign is to identify the accounts that you want to target. This can be done by looking at factors such as company size, industry, location, and more. Once you have a list of potential accounts, you can start to narrow it down further by identifying the ones that are most likely to convert.

Create targeted content - Once you know who your target accounts are, you can start creating content that is specifically tailored to their needs. This could include blog posts, e-books, infographics, and more. The key is to create content that will address the specific pain points of your target audience.

Personalize your outreach - When you're ready to start reaching out to your target accounts, it's important to personalize your approach. This means crafting unique messages that are relevant to each account. Segmented, but not generic template emails will not cut it in an ABM campaign.

Measure your results - As with any marketing campaign, it's important to measure the results of your ABM efforts. This will allow you to fine-tune your SaaS marketing strategy and ensure that you're getting the most bang for your buck.

3) Invest in SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the best ways to ensure that your website and content are visible to your target audience. But it's also a complex and ever-changing field, so investing in a team of experienced SEO professionals is important. They can help you create and implement an effective SaaS SEO strategy that will help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs), drive more traffic to your website, and generate more leads.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

·       Conduct keyword research to identify the right keywords for your business.

·       Optimise your website for those keywords.

·       Create compelling content that speaks to your target audience.

·       Promote your content through social media and other channels.

·       Monitor your progress and adjust your strategy as needed.

4)Leverage Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your target audience and generate leads. Make sure you segment your list and personalize your emails so they're more likely to be opened and read.

Here are some tips to get started:

·Keep your emails focused and relevant - When you're sending out emails, make sure they're relevant to your audience and offer something of value.

Make use of automation - Email marketing can be time-consuming, but there are ways to automate various parts of the process. By using an email marketing platform, you can set up automated drip campaigns that will send out your content on a schedule.

Pay attention to your metrics - It's important to track the performance of your email campaigns so that you can see what's working and what isn't.

A/B test whenever possible - If you're not sure which version of an email will perform better, why not try both? A/B testing is a great way to compare two different versions of an email and see which one gets better results.

5) Offer Free Trials

One of the best marketing strategies for SaaS companies is to offer free trials of their products. This is a great way to let potential customers try out your software before they buy it, and it’s also an effective way to generate leads. Make sure you promote your free trial prominently on your website and in your email marketing campaigns. You should also make it easy for potential customers to sign up for the trial so that they can start using your software right away.

6) Leverage influencer marketing

Although referral marketing is a terrific method to get your brand noticed, word-of-mouth could be ineffective if your product lacks a viral coefficient. This is where the influencer marketing strategy comes into play

Since SaaS items aren’t physical, you’ll need to change your marketing strategy; for successful influencer marketing, you’ll need to recruit industry leaders and influencers in your SaaS niche who can verify your product claims.

Canva has nailed influencer marketing by bringing big names like Guy Kawasaki on board.  Where SaaS is concerned, influencers are more than just people with a lot of followers; you will have to look for specialists with good credentials and industry expertise.

7)  Affiliate Programs:  With all of the communication channels at our disposal, not a lot can match the competency of word-of-mouth referrals. 

In the SaaS domain, this is where affiliate programs come into play. You already have satisfied customers. Ask them to promote their high opinion of your business, and reward them for it. It’s typical to offer a discount or monetary benefit for each referral that becomes a paying customer. 

It’s a win-win situation. Customers receive incentives to sing your praises. You gain new customers without having to expend a “boots on the ground” effort. 

8) Online Advertising & Directories:  Online directories are a  great way to reach online users interested in what you have to offer, who might otherwise not know you exist if your SEO rankings are low. 

Traditional pay-per-click advertising programs run through search engines such as Google. But there are also advertising options on social media platforms and through industry newsletters.

•  G2.com

• Capterra

• Software Shortlist

• Software Advice 

• TrustRadius

9)  Search Engine Marketing:  Specifically focus on long tail keywords. Let's start with a simple strategy that won't require a lot from your end. Using keywords is the best approach here is to use long-tail keywords because they are usually highly focused. The main reason to use this type of keywords is that the conversion rate you get from them is higher. Keep in mind that when someone is searching for someone online using long-tail keywords, it means they know what they want. Specifically, they are at a certain stage where they have done enough research to know what it is they are looking for to solve their issue.

Moreover, remarketing, both in terms of display remarketing and using in-market and affinity audiences allows businesses to reach not only those who have previously interacted with you (and perhaps had a free trial or participated in a demo), as well as those that perhaps had interacted with some of your competitors and may be open to making a comparison.

10) Linkedin Ads: LinkedIn Advertising for SaaS are often going to be most effective when you’re considering how to use them to reach users at different stages of the digital sales funnel.

You may, for example, want to start with brand awareness campaigns designed to start a relationship with your target audience.  Other ads that are more towards the BOFU should be used to generate sales conversations, drive leads, or get users to either start a free trial or book a demo.   In allocating a budget, 70% should be allocated to BOFU, and 30% to TOFU, at most, given what was mentioned earlier about how leads are allocated over the consideration funnel.   

Above all else, send users to relevant landing pages that will give them the information they need at their particular stage of the funnel.  

Moreover, in speaking of Linkedin, one must mention Sales Navigator as an effective tool to reach decision makers and follow up with them, with content at different stages of the decision funnel, and as a way of introducing their solutions and those that have benefitted similarly to these particular decision maker personas that are being targeted.

11) Conversion Rate Optimization:  Certainly, landing pages for different campaigns from different sources need to be created for targeting purposes.  Beyond that, certainly, this is an ongoing matter of deciding between copy, images, text, etc. that needs to be tested and tweaked in order to continuously optimize for lead generation and lead nurturing at different stages.

Crafting an Effective SaaS Growth Marketing Strategy

SaaS marketing tactics are essential to the success of any SaaS company. In order to effectively market your SaaS product or services, it is important to understand what SaaS marketing encompasses, as well as key tactics that can help you achieve your goals.  Implementing these strategies can help you grow faster in the SaaS industry by attracting more users and converting them into paying customers.

It is important to monitor and analyze your SaaS marketing efforts, making adjustments as needed to maximize ROI in totality, as part of an overall effort toward ensuring an efficient growth marketing strategy.

If you need any help analyzing the marketing efforts of your Saas business, why not arrange a meeting with our expert growth marketing consultants? There’s no obligation, and your business will benefit from an outside perspective to see if it can benefit your business.