Over the years, Software as a Service (SaaS) has become an increasingly widely used business model that is gaining more traction. Some statistics project that by 2023, the value of the SaaS sector could reach as much as $623 billion. What this means is that those companies in this sector need to realize they are in a booming industry and take maximum advantage of it. However, it also means these businesses face higher levels of competition, and that competition will even get stiffer over time. 

To remain profitable and still command their desired market share, SaaS companies must devise ways to be better than the competition and stand out from the many players they are competing with. This calls for effective SaaS marketing strategies. These strategies must enable the companies to sell their services to potential customers. Moreover, the tactics that such businesses employ in their SaaS marketing must be well crafted because the companies do not deal in physical, tangible products, and that means that providers differentiate them through attractive packaging. 

Most SaaS companies offer a free trial to their potential customers, but getting these leads to convert to premium can be challenging. If you want to improve free trial conversion rate, you need to employ strategies that would increase their motivation to subscribe to the premium package by improving the user experience.

SaaS marketing defined

SaaS marketing is a kind of marketing with a focus on promoting as well as generating leads for software products that are subscription-based. Generally, companies in the SaaS sector offer their products as cloud-based applications that are accessible to users on demand. In addition, these businesses could also tailor their software products, and provide upgrades to match the customer organizations’ specific needs. 

The SaaS businesses house the software applications that they offer on their servers and customers pay subscriptions to access them. The goal of SaaS marketing strategies is to help the companies stand out from rival service providers to attract new clients who will subscribe to the applications in the long term.

Marketing SaaS products need to be tailored to fit your target audience.  This is important so you don’t waste time and effort on campaigns that won’t translate. Since SaaS is very specific, understanding your target market’s pains is crucial.

Top SaaS marketing strategies

Before SaaS businesses develop and implement various SaaS marketing strategies, there are a few things they need to consider carefully. The key things these companies should have in mind include:

• Understanding their target audience or customers—identify their needs and seek to address their pain points
• Understanding their rivals—know what the competitors are doing and use the information to position the business as a better choice for prospective users or customers
• Crafting a unique selling point—the company needs to know what makes its software applications unique and appealing to the customers. 

Having understood its customers, competition, and selling point, a SaaS business can employ the following marketing strategies:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SaaS product marketing has two main aspects: driving the highest organic traffic possible to the site, and showing off and promoting the service effectively. Employing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) assists a SaaS company to boost organic traffic to its website. To generate traffic, there is a need to invest in on-page SEO and off-page SEO. It is vital to tweak a website so that it has the highest possible rank on as many search engine results pages as possible. The higher the ranking of the site, the more traffic it receives so the company has to identify or work with experts to identify the SEO tactics that work best for SaaS sites. Luckily companies in this industry can use the top-notch marketing services of Rocket SaaS to help them succeed in their marketing efforts including SEO. 

SEO is important for SaaS companies because it can help increase the visibility of their product in search engine results. This leads to more website traffic and potentially more customers for the business. A strong SEO strategy can also help establish the company as a credible and trustworthy source, boosting customer confidence and trust.  

Content marketing

Businesses in the SaaS sector have a unique advantage in utilizing content marketing as a basic strategy to promote growth. SaaS marketers who can offer solutions to customers’ pain points online through content marketing will be better placed to win customers’ confidence. This explains why most SaaS marketers, especially in the B2B sector, have resorted to taking a different approach. They avail relevant content to answer the key questions that prospective customers ask in their SaaS buyer’s journey.

Content marketing for SaaS companies can come from blog posts, articles, videos, infographics, and other formats. The goal of content marketing for SaaS companies is to educate potential customers about the benefits of the software and persuade them to sign up for a free trial or purchase a subscription. The right content can magnetize and educate the right audience.

Below are some crucial things that SaaS companies should observe when coming up with their content strategy:

• endeavor to create high-quality, engaging, and relevant content
• ensure the content appeals to the target audience and makes it possible for them to sort out specific issues
• optimize all content for the search engines to enhance the businesses’ visibility

Social media strategies

SaaS companies, whether B2B or B2C, can make the most of social media marketing to enhance their brand awareness, reach their target audience more effectively, boost customer loyalty and increase sales. unfortunately, SaaS marketers sometimes overlook social media despite being a powerful marketing tool for these products. 

Here are some tips that can help SaaS marketers leverage social media marketing strategies:

• posting captivating content to encourage potential customers to interact with the brands. 
• finding out the social platforms that the target audience uses and concentrating efforts there
• optimizing influencer marketing and having partnerships with social platforms users to promote SaaS services or products
• using social media ads to have a wider reach of the target audience.

Offering product trials 

Because SaaS companies are constantly seeking ways to generate leads, offering a trial of the product is an effective and crucial lead generation strategy. It is said that customers love “test driving” software products and this means that any serious SaaS company should consider offering a trial on its site if it has not done so already.

Product trials are an especially effective tool for lead generation if your potential customers are tech-savvy because they prefer interacting with the applications instead of speaking with sales reps. The beauty of free product trials is that they are generally self-serve thus allowing SaaS companies to keep generating leads without much marketing investment.

However, SaaS companies must keep in mind a few things for product trials to be an effective SaaS marketing strategy. One key thing is to ensure users trialing the products enjoy a positive experience. This means offering some support and onboarding assistance be it via automated emails, one-to-one calls, group webinars, or a combination of the methods. 

One significant benefit of product trials is that they are a strong sign of a person’s intention to buy because people will rarely spend their time on a product they are not interested in. The SaaS company should track people who use the free trials because they are product-qualified leads and highly likely to buy. But businesses must balance cost-effectiveness and offering value to potential buyers without overwhelming them.

Conclusion

Software as a service Companies can use the above SaaS marketing strategies to help them grow their software business. However, every business must test, assess and optimize the marketing strategies it adopts to find out which ones work best, and then consider using them to achieve its goals.