The SaaS market is promising but it also brings incredible competition. With new software products getting launched every day across every vertical, building a viral product is harder now more than ever.
No matter how challenging and saturated the market may look, it is not impossible to gain the attention of your audience. With the right mix of product-market fit and smart email marketing tactics, you will witness the ball to be at your side. This is what we are exactly going to talk about in this blog post.
We take a deep dive into the 10 marketing tips that can create the foundation of your marketing success for your SaaS business in 2021.
10 Marketing Hacks To Skyrocket Your SAAS Start-up in 2021
No matter what marketing technique you use to acquire customers if your product does not meet the demands of your target audience. In other words, build something that people want.
This makes developing a unique selling proposition the heart of every growth hack technique.
Yes, you heard that right.
If your product is just like your competitors then no one is going to care about what you build. Did we tell you that you can use your audience research data here?
Finding the bridge to connect what your audience want and competitors fail to deliver is going to make you unique. The best part? Your perceived value in front of your audience will grow. But once you have developed your USP, the rigorous part comes in; marketing.
Ideally, you would have to undergo multiple experiments and iteration in your strategy to find out what works and what doesn’t but we make that easier for you so here are some examples of a good marketing plan.
The following 10 tips can streamline your SaaS customer base in no time.
1. Adopt a freemium model
If there is one strategy that opens up your software adoption rate like no other, it is the freemium model.
In an oversaturated market, where your customers are overwhelmed with product choices, a freemium model makes it easier for them to make the final decision. You empower them to make their own decision.
There are multiple strategies to experiment with here. From a 30-day trial window to lifelong freemium access, you can sample tests on real audiences.
2. Word of mouth marketing
There’s a good reason why word of mouth marketing is so popular amongst the SaaS startup community. More than often, SaaS startups include this model to gain their first customers.
It is the most effective, sustainable, yet low-cost strategy to gain loyal customers. But all its sweetness comes in one condition.
You need to deliver a superlative customer experience to your early customers. If your first customers do not find you valuable, there is little chance that they would tell their community about you.
This means to turn your customers into brand evangelists you would not only need to satisfy their expectations but exceed them. Be obsessed with customer delight. No matter what you have to do, be it give discounts, create a hyper-active response team, be there in there to answer their needs.
3. Viral marketing
Creating a viral effect with one marketing technique is often hard yet not impossible.
All you need to do is look closely into your process to identify the growth lever that can make it possible. Infact, there are a few established ones already available in the industry. The best part?
They always give results.
From referral schemes, loyalty programs for existing customers to giveaway contests any of them can give you results. It can not only give you the opportunity to establish new relationships with customers but improve the total value of your existing customers.
4. Content marketing
There is so much value that content marketing can bring to your SaaS process.
Content is king after all.
But while you get invested in developing the heart of this scalable marketing strategy, do not forget to market your content.
There are so many methods to do so. From microblogging, SEO optimized knowledge base, webinars, infographics, time-sensitive promotions, to lead magnets, you can test all. For promotions, you can consider guest blogging or sponsor the content for an influencer to do so. Another cost-efficient way would be to use user-generated content.
5. Branding
Building a successful SaaS product is almost impossible without building a brand. Unsure why?
Here is the answer.
A successful branding venture can bring multifarious benefits to your SaaS product. From faster adoption rate, strong community, higher retention, optimized marketing costs, and the best part, market capture.
You can basically become synonymous with the category of product you are building. Does that suddenly sound like Google?
There are so many ways to do this. From SEO optimization, press review, authority review, influencer marketing to affiliate marketing. But to ensure performance, you need to keep in mind your unique situations. The budget, constraints, and goals.
6. Optimize all the time
In business, there is no such thing called maximum sales. Ideally speaking, even if you have reached the saturation point of your total market size, it doesn’t mean your growth potential has reached the roof. You can always work on improving the perceived value of your product in the eyes of your target audience.
But to do so, you would need to optimize your processes which makes it so valuable to realize your startup potential.
There is so much you can do here. From aligning the micro-level factors like landing page elements to macro-level factors like product-market fit there is always room for improvement. The best part? It will help you yield better results without investing more resources in your marketing.
What follows is a significant improvement in the LTV (lifetime value), CAC (customer acquisition cost), and the final ROI (return on investment).
7. Create API integrations
APIs are the best scalable customer acquisition techniques you can integrate into your marketing operations.
It can not only open doors to new audiences but reinforce the foundations of strong partnerships with your collaborators. The best part? You automatically gain the position of authority in the market.
But here’s a word of caution.
Partnerships can make or break your brand’s reputation. While the right partner can fast pace your growth by years, the wrong choice can deter your speed by many years. An effective way to think about it is to ask a vital question. Whether your collaborating brand is an extension of your product’s value? If yes, then it is often the right choice.
8. Paid marketing
Although there is no substitute for what you can accomplish with organic marketing in time, only depending upon organic growth will slow down your SaaS startup significantly. This makes paid marketing and campaigns incredibly vital. But here’s a thing.
Before you jump into paid marketing, ensure you have a complete strategy laid out. With the increasing expense of paid ads, chances are you will invest significant resources with little to no returns.
There are so many techniques to do this right. Use FOMO (fear of missing out), time-sensitive offers. Campaigns that are contextual and personalized on the basis of audience profiles and channels of distribution tend to perform better. But the best piece of advice is to develop a mindset of testing and optimizing.
The more you are open to A/B tests and campaign optimization, the better your long-term results will be. Chances are you can even witness exponential growth.
9. Invest in building trust and authority
Trust is one of the most crucial elements for your SaaS product to succeed. No matter how promising your product may appear, if your target audience does not trust your brand, they will not engage with your brand.
This puts authority building as one of the top priorities for your marketing team.
The best part is there are many cost-effective ways to do so.
Use social proof like customer testimonials and peer reviews to do so. Platforms like G2, Quora, and ProductHunt are great ways to kickstart this. You can later integrate the best reviews of your clients on your website too. But this is not all.
You need to make sure the payment gateway is safe and secured. Using end-to-end encryptions and third-party vendors like Paypal is a good strategy to do so.
10. Collaborate with experts
Collaborations and partnerships are undoubtedly one of the most sustainable strategies for building a robust SaaS business. But if you thought that your partnerships are limited to indirect competitors, influencers, and authorities, then think again.
There is so much value that a domain expert can bring to your SaaS startup.
A SaaS growth marketer brings their domain expertise. Some of the best SaaS marketing agencies can optimize your growth levers to unleash the true potential of your product. From reducing marketing costs, finding new sales opportunities to improving customer acquisition and retention, there is so much a specialist can do.
They can prove to be your biggest asset when it comes to growth in the long term.
Conclusion
Building a successful SaaS product is hard and going to be even harder in the future.
But that doesn’t mean there is no room for winning. All you need to do is shift your mindset about the development process. Think of disrupting the existing process even in a small way possible.
Keep on reiterating and evolving your product-building methodologies and even your product if required.
This dynamic landscape makes the requirement of a nimble marketing plan incredibly important. Sure, the above tips are to give the foundational speed for today. But to sustain that growth you need to optimize the process and make changes from time to time.
Only then can you see true success with your SaaS startup.
Author bio
Atreyee Chowdhury works full-time as an Instructional Designer and is passionate about writing. She has helped many small and medium-scale businesses achieve their content marketing goals with her carefully crafted and compelling content. She lives in Bangalore, India with her husband and parents. She loves to read, experiment with different cuisines, travel, and explore the latest content marketing and L&D trends in her free time. You can reach her on Linkedin or write to her at atreyee.c@gmail.com for any content writing/marketing requirements.