The Ultimate SaaS Marketing Playbook - 20+ Tactics, Examples, Metrics & Tools
A SaaS Marketing Guide For Startups Wanting To Grow Their Business. In this article, we'll explain why marketing matters for SaaS businesses and how to use a few different strategies
Sonu Kalwar
Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is the future of business. The digital age is upon us, and the software we use to run our lives is being digitized at an accelerated rate. In fact, according to statista, the SaaS market will reach $208 billion by 2023. Here are some of their most recent findings:
1. The average number of SaaS apps being used by various establishments has increased from 8 to 110 between the years 2015 and 2022.
2. The average cost of SaaS subscriptions per employee was $2,884, which is higher than the cost of buying a new laptop (an Apple MacBook Pro at $1,299).
The B2B SaaS industry is booming. In fact, it's expected to grow at a steady rate of 8% for the next few years. That said, this market segment is highly competitive and requires a specific marketing strategy in order to get ahead of your competition. In this guide, we'll go over some digital marketing strategies, and tactics that are quick to implement, require little upfront investment, and can be scaled up rapidly as your business grows!
What is a SaaS company?
SaaS businesses are organizations that use software to provide customers with a service. These businesses create, develop, host, and update the product themselves. SaaS businesses have immediate access to an unrestricted global market and can scale without increasing product delivery costs.
The benefits of adopting SaaS are numerous. SaaS companies can provide customers with a better experience because they have direct control over their products. They also benefit from improved security since they don't need to rely on third parties.
In addition, SaaS allows companies to focus on their core competencies while outsourcing non-essential tasks like hosting and maintenance of their software which helps reduce costs associated with hiring additional employees or renting office space in order to accommodate more employees.
SaaS Delivery Models
So, SaaS Models can be categorized into two main types: Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).
In the SaaS delivery model, the customer purchases access to an application or software. The vendor hosts that application on its servers and delivers it to you through the web. That way your IT department doesn’t need to worry about maintaining server infrastructure in order for you to use their products or services. The difference between SaaS vs PaaS vs IaaS:
SaaS is a software delivery model.
PaaS is a platform for building and deploying software applications.
IaaS is an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that allows the customer to create, manage, and terminate virtual machines as needed.
SaaS Customer Journey
A customer journey is the series of steps a customer goes through before they buy. It’s different for every customer, and it’s different for every product, industry and stage of your business.
It can be tricky to figure out what the journey looks like in your business—but here are some common steps that most customers take along their way:
Pre-purchase (initial research) - Top of the funnel
Purchase (making purchase decision) - Middle of the funnel
Trial period (using the product/service) - Bottom of the funnel
Post-purchase (upgrades, referral, retention tactics) - Upsell
SaaS Marketing Strategy
As a SaaS marketer, you have to understand the importance of getting as much organic traffic to your site as possible. You need to build up your audience and get people interested in what you are offering them. We've arranged our 12 tried and tested SaaS marketing strategy points by breaking them down into two parts of the process.
Let's start with how to get more traffic to your SaaS site.
SaaS content marketing
Content marketing has become an indispensable part of our everyday life. It's how we learn about the latest movies, how we find new restaurants in town and how we keep up with our favorite sports teams. But what about SaaS? How does content marketing apply to SaaS companies? In this article we'll explore how you can create a strategy for your business that includes content as part of your overall digital marketing efforts.
Types of content marketing
Blog posts: Blog posts are a great way to build your brand and establish thought leadership.
Infographics: It's all about the visual experience with an infographic. They're easy to digest, highly shareable and make you look like an expert in your field (even if you're not).
Case studies: Case studies bring your content to life by showing how others have benefited from using your product or service. They also help support lead generation efforts because of their credibility boost and ability to drive qualified traffic back to your website after the initial read.
Podcasts: This is such an underutilized form of content marketing that it's baffling! Podcasts are so much more than just audio versions of blog posts—they can be used as interviews, roundtable discussions or even live events where guests come on air together for an hour-long show every week (like this one). And people love listening—just think about how many podcasts there are out there right now! The fact that they're so popular means we should start taking advantage of them immediately before someone else does first :)
And what better way than by creating some ourselves?
Tips for creating a SaaS content marketing strategy
Before you start creating content, you need to understand your audience and define your goals and objectives.
Who is your target audience?
What do they want from you?
How can you help them achieve their goals?
Once you've defined your audience, build a value proposition for them. Then create messaging that speaks directly to them by using their language (the words they use) and focusing on their pain points. Finally, develop a strategy that incorporates all of the above elements into a cohesive plan. It's important to keep in mind that this process takes time—don't expect results overnight! Once created, determine how much content is needed per channel (we recommend at least two pieces per week). To make sure it gets done on schedule, we recommend hiring someone who will manage the process for you; see our blog post on how to find an effective content marketing manager for more information about this role.
The first step in creating a content marketing strategy for SaaS companies is to define your objectives and the target result. This may sound obvious, but so many people fail to do this. They jump into writing content without defining their goals and results.
The problem with not setting clear goals from the beginning is that it’s easy to lose focus when you don't know where you're going. You might get distracted by shiny objects or have someone tell you that what you're doing isn't effective enough, and it's hard to defend yourself against those things when there are no solid numbers attached to them (or even worse, if the numbers aren't real).
When starting out with your content marketing strategy, start by thinking about:
What is my goal?
What am I trying to achieve here?
How will I measure success?
The answers should be tied together so they form one complete picture of how everything fits together into one cohesive plan.
Content marketing example by Drift
Drift's Account-Based Personalization Playbook is a guidebook for B2B sales teams. It helps them understand how to work together with marketing teams to create personalized, account-based experiences that improve the buyer experience, increase pipeline, and accelerate revenue.
The playbook covers everything from listening to a prospect's needs, using data to inform strategy, building out your team's skillset, and creating a consistent experience across channels. It also provides examples of how companies like Salesforce, Oracle and Zendesk are doing it right—and how others can follow their lead.
What we think?
We love this ebook because it's filled with practical advice on how to make your B2B marketing and sales teams work together to create a personalized, account-based experience. The author lays it out in an easy-to-consume format so you can learn as you go.
Content marketing tactics by Digital First AI
Explore the step by step process here
Gating your content behind a contact information capture form, whether it’s an email field, a full blown contact info form, or a landing page, is a great way to collect the information you need from someone before you give them the information they want. You can give something away up front and hide the rest of the content or entirely gate the content
SaaS SEO strategy
If your company is in the SaaS industry, you know that it can be challenging to build your brand and attract new customers. However, with a little SEO strategy and effort, you can optimize your pages and drive organic traffic to your website. The following are some of my best tips for optimizing your SaaS website:
Optimize keywords into blog content
Keyword research is the first and most important step to take when creating a new blog post, as it will help you understand your target audience. In order to do this, you'll need a keyword research tool. There are many available online, but Ahrefs is one of the most popular and effective ones out there.
When using Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer tool, you can input a single keyword (e.g., "SaaS") or multiple keywords (e.g., ["SaaS","Software"]). Then, it will go through all of the pages on those sites with those terms in their metadata and pull up any related results from its database of more than 14 billion domains and 100 million web pages—including domains that aren't even ranking yet!
You can use these results to find long tail keywords that might not be on page one for your main keywords but could be relevant for other pages on your site or even future blog posts which may not have been written yet (but should be!).
Produce high-quality, long-form content
Long-form content is something that your audience will love to read, and you'll be able to rank higher in search results.
Here's an example of long-form content: "How To Do SEO For Saas Companies." This is an article about how to do SEO for SaaS companies. If you had this article on your website, it would have the words "SEO" and "SaaS" in it. Because those two words are going to be important for people who are searching for them, this article would be good for ranking on Google and other search engines.
Speak the language of your audience
Be yourself, but also be aware of your audience.
Your brand should represent who you are as a company, but it's important to remember that the people who will be interacting with your brand are not exactly like you. They have different interests and priorities, and they may even speak a different language. So when creating content or designing products, it's important to think about how your intended audience will perceive them. If their language is more casual than yours (for example), then make sure all of your marketing materials reflect this tone so that they feel comfortable engaging with them.
Likewise if there is jargon or acronyms used in their industry that aren't present in yours—it might be worth using those terms while making sure they're defined somewhere close by so that audiences can understand what they mean (e.g., "We'll build out a PPC strategy for you" versus "We'll build out a paid search optimization campaign").
A/B test your website copy, and meta titles
You can use split testing to optimize your website copy for better SEO results.
Split testing is a method of comparing two versions of a single element or page, then measuring the performance of each version against one another. The theory behind this technique is that you are able to collect data on which version performs better in real-world scenarios and make changes accordingly. For example, let's say that you have two pages on your website: A and B (version 1). You want to know which one will perform better in terms of generating leads.
So you create a variation of page A and split test it against page B by changing something small, such as an image or headline. You then compare how many people click through each page during each week over the course of three months until they reach equal traffic levels. This allows you to determine if there was any statistical significance between those who clicked through either one first (in this case likely because they saw something more appealing).
Put together a quality backlinks strategy
Your link-building strategy should be focused on attracting high-quality links from high-quality sites. This is the best way to ensure that you get the most out of your SEO efforts and don’t waste time trying to build links from low-quality sites.
To accomplish this, you will need to build links from your own site, social media accounts, guest posts on other blogs, and more.
Monitor trends & be flexible
Google Trends is a great tool for monitoring the trends and interests of your audience. It can help you see what terms are trending, how they're trending over time, and how popular those terms are compared to others. You can also use Google Alerts to monitor search volume. This will allow you to see when certain keywords are searched most often in your target market.
Google Analytics is another helpful tool that tracks traffic on your website or app. This will enable you to know when people are visiting—and their IP addresses—which helps you better understand where your customers come from and what marketing strategies are working well for them (or not).
Google Search Console tells how many pages have been indexed by Google for any given site or app, which gives insight into how visible it really is in SERPs (search engine results pages) compared with its competitors'.
Google Webmaster Tools provides information about indexing status of individual URLs/pages on your site/app by Googlebot - whether they're live now or if there's an error preventing them from being read by bots; plus tips on improving page load speed."
Get reviews on third-party platforms
One of the most important aspects of marketing for SaaS companies is getting reviews on third-party platforms. If you have no reviews on third-party platforms, then potential clients will assume that you have no reputation and will be less likely to sign up for your product.
There are several ways to get reviews:
Make it clear in app store descriptions that users can leave a review if they enjoy the software.
Offer an incentive like upgrades or free services if they leave a positive review.
Offer an incentive like discounts or refunds if they leave a negative review (but only do this if you're confident that your product really is as bad as they say).
Ask existing customers who didn't think highly enough about your product during their trial period but now love it so much that they want other people to know about how great it is too!
Write high-quality guest posts
Guest posting is a great way to get your name out there, but it's not enough to simply write an article for a publication. You want that post to be good. Here are five steps you can take to make sure your guest posting efforts are effective:
Write a high-quality article. Your articles should be well researched and well sourced, with evidence from reputable sources (like the New York Times or Harvard Business Review). The piece should also be written in an engaging manner that gets people excited about what you have to say—not just another text-heavy listicle about how AI can improve customer service!
Make sure the topic of your post relates directly back to your company and its goals. This doesn't mean that every blog post has to mention customer service at some point—but if there's something related specifically about support within the scope of what we do here at Customer Success HQ (e.g., “Is chatbot technology really as helpful as everyone thinks it is?”), then by all means go ahead! Just don't try too hard: no one wants their own blog posts feeling like advertisements disguised as editorial content.
Create unique content around topics relevant only today's industry trends in tech world such as “How chatbots could change everything” or “Why AI is bad for business models."
Use social media to build a buzz around your brand
When it comes to building a successful SaaS company, social media marketing is essential. It’s a powerful way to build your brand and interact with customers directly. But if you’re new to the game or don’t have time for in-depth research, here are some simple guidelines that will get you started right away:
Create an account on all social media platforms where your target audience hangs out—and make sure it looks professional! If possible, use one image across all platforms so people can easily recognize your content as yours.
Use hashtags that are relevant to your product/service (for example #salesforce #projectmangement, #projectmanagementsoftware). This helps others find content about the same topic too!
When posting updates on Facebook or LinkedIn (for example), include text descriptions along with links back to pages where users can learn more information about whatever topic is being discussed in said update (e.g., “Check out our latest blog post here: http://examplewebsitecom/blog). The goal here is not only attracting new followers but also providing value by offering useful information on what topics matter most right now!"
More SEO tips
Use SEO tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs that will help you find keywords related with yours. You can then add those keywords in the title tags so that they rank higher in the search engine result page (SERP).
Write quality content on your blog or website, which provides value for users who click on it; this way they will stay longer on the page which improves the bounce rate (the average time spent by visitors) and increase the chances of getting them back again because they liked what they read previously!
SEO strategy example by Canva
SEO is a beast. It's a long, tricky process that takes time, patience, and an understanding of what Google wants. But if you can conquer the beast, you'll be rewarded with a huge increase in organic traffic and backlinks to your site—and that's just what Canva has done.
Over the last year, Canva has grown its organic traffic by 5M users and added 2M, new members, to its community. And it all happened because of SEO—specifically, through their understanding of how people use Google and what they're looking for when they search for something on Google.
Canva has been able to rank for more than 5.5M keywords in part by developing a parent-child relationship between their landing pages. This helps create a scalable landing page structure while also making sure that each landing page has a strong focus on one key element or topic so that people can easily find something specific on the site. Canva has two landing pages that are generating a lot of traffic.
The first landing page is for discovery, and the second one is for creation. For example, phrases like “certificate” get 65000+ visits a month and phrases like “certificate template” and “free certificate template,” generates 14800+ hits a month from US alone.
The page ‘www.canva.com/certificates/templates/” generates over 191,543 organic visitors per month.
Another thing that's helped Canva do so well with SEO is their investment in backlink outreach: they've created more than 12M backlinks over the last year alone!
SEO tactics by Digital First AI
Explore step by step process here
Removal.ai app which was created in 2020, removes the background from an image. Like one of many on the market. So how did they increase **motion from 0 to 400,000** unique users per month in one year? The Removal.ai team based their marketing strategy on SEO In a comprehensive share, they share what they did:
SaaS email marketing
A well-executed email marketing strategy can help your SaaS company thrive. For instance, it can help you nurture leads, increase customer retention, and ultimately boost sales. But the truth is that many companies don't take advantage of this powerful channel because they don't know where to start or what to do with their list once they have it. So let's demystify email marketing for SaaS businesses by talking about how to set up an effective strategy from scratch—one that will get results every time!
Segment your email list
Segmentation is the process of dividing a large group into smaller groups. You can segment your email list based on the type of content you want to send, or based on information that’s already in their profile. For example, segmenting by market or industry allows you to send messages that are relevant for each group because they speak directly to their interests and challenges.
When it comes to email marketing, segmentation helps you communicate with your audience more effectively—and allows you to send different types of content to different groups at once! It also allows you to identify people who haven’t opened your emails recently (or haven't opened them at all), so that we can stop sending irrelevant messages and focus our efforts instead on those who are actually interested in receiving our emails.
Use a strong subject line
A strong subject line is one of the most important parts of your email. It should be short, punchy and catchy, so it grabs the reader's attention. That way they're more likely to open your message in their inbox and read it right away.
Use the subject line to tell them what your email is about: "10x Growth Strategy" or "How We Doubled Our Team". Make them want to open the email by highlighting something interesting or relevant from the last interaction you had with a customer (if applicable). Focus on making sure that the recipient understands what actions you want him/her to take after opening up this particular message.
Craft a compelling preheader
The preheader is the first line of text in your email. It should be compelling, relevant and useful.
The best way to get people to read an email is to write a strong headline that tells them what they can expect from the rest of the message. The goal here is not just “Click here!” but rather “Click here because this will help you accomplish X, Y, and Z!”
Keep it short: 2-3 sentences maximum.
Write an enticing call to action
Now that you’ve done all the hard work of setting up your email marketing campaign, it’s time to write compelling calls to action. The goal of a call-to-action (CTA) is to get your readers to click through and go somewhere else on your website or in another app. Here are some tips for writing CTAs:
Make sure the CTA is clear and actionable: If you want people to do something specific, make sure they know what they should be doing and why they should do it by including clear language in the text near where you want them to take action.
Make sure it's relevant: Your customers will appreciate relevant messages that can help them solve their problems—and give them value beyond just being an advertisement for your product or service.
Make sure it's relevant for both parties involved: A good CTA will also give readers an incentive for taking action on whatever offer/request was given through an email campaign as well as provide some kind of value back into their lives (such as tips about how best use this new piece of information).
Design mobile-friendly emails
If you have a SaaS business, you’ve probably heard that mobile is important. You might even be considering building your own responsive email templates from scratch. This can be a good idea if you know how to do it well and have the time to devote to designing emails for each platform individually. If not, though, I recommend using an email marketing service like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp instead—they've already done all that work for you!
Even if you don't use one of these services (which I recommend), make sure your emails look good on mobile devices by following these guidelines:
Make sure everything in your email is easy to read. Use big buttons and lots of white space so people won't have trouble making out words on their phones or tablets.
Keep text short and use simple layouts with few colors and images so they load quickly even on slower connections. Make sure there's enough contrast between text and background colors so they're easily readable against any background color too!
Automate your emails
Email automation is a great way to save time and improve the performance of your emails. Here's how it works:
You set up an email marketing automation tool, like ActiveCampaign or Drip. You create a series of emails that would be sent sequentially, based on specific actions taken by the prospect (e.g., signing up for a trial, paying their invoice).
The software automatically sends out all these emails in sequence at pre-set times and dates.
Nurture your leads
Email is a great way to nurture leads, increase sales and build a relationship with your customers. It’s also a great channel for building brand awareness, trust and giving your company more credibility in the eyes of potential new customers.
SaaS email marketing example by Monday.com
When it comes to email marketing, Monday.com knows what they're doing. They are workflow management software that helps businesses organize and assign tasks, plan campaigns, and schedule content.
The user journey starts with welcome, onboarding emails and transactional emails. Once the user has a paying customer, several kinds of emails are sent, like receipt emails and retention emails. From strangers to loyal customers, they are sending the right email at the right time to keep users engaged.
Email marketing tactics by Digital First AI
Instead of running ads and spending money to gain potential customers, why not use your current email subscribers to get the word out about your business?
One way to do this is by setting a no credit limit for 48 hours for your non-paying subscribers. This will allow them to try out all of the features they are missing out on without having to pay.
explore step by step process here
After the 48 hours pass, they will need to pay if they want to access it again. However, if you don't offer anything new after the trial period ends, customers may just forget about it altogether.
To make this campaign successful, you should offer something new and exciting during those first two days. This could be anything: access to paid tools, new features, beta access, or even just an email with something special in it. You could also send out some coupons for discounts on future purchases!
The goal here is to make people feel like they are getting something special when they sign up for your service, which will encourage them to stick around instead of leaving before paying a single dime!
Podcasting strategies for SaaS
Podcasting is the perfect medium for advertisers looking to connect with consumers at the top of their funnel. According to a recent report by Nielsen “Podcasting Today”, the number of podcast titles and episodes have increased by nearly 200% each over the last two years (2 million and 92 million, respectively), and over 50% of daily podcast consumers listen more often and to more titles, adding to the potential of increased audience reach.
So why are marketers flocking to podcasting? Because it works! According to industry research conducted by Edison Research, 66% of listeners recall hearing about a product or service in a podcast ad. That number jumps to 80% when it comes to ads where the host mentions a company name or product during an episode.
This data proves that there’s no better way to build your brand awareness than through this powerful medium. If you're new to the podcasting world, don't worry: we've got some tips that will help you start cranking out podcasts like a pro!
Determine the purpose of your podcast
The first step of podcasting is to determine the purpose of your podcast. Why are you doing this podcast? What do you want to get out of it? What do you want to do with the podcast once it’s finished?
That’s a lot of questions, but they need answers if you’re going to create a successful show. It seems like a lot of pressure at first, but once you start thinking about it, these questions become easier and easier to answer.
Decide on your content format
Before you dive into the nitty-gritty of podcasting, it's important to decide which format is best for your business. The most common formats include:
Interviews/conversations with experts in your industry
Hosted by one person with a co-host or guest who brings a different perspective on the topic (like an interview between two people)
Hosted by multiple hosts who each bring their own unique perspectives and expertise to the table
Choose a realistic publishing schedule
The most important thing when it comes to choosing a podcast publishing schedule is that you are realistic about what you can accomplish. A good rule of thumb is: if you are unsure if you'll be able to keep up with a given schedule, go lower rather than higher.
This is especially true for SaaS podcasts, which often have very high expectations for on-demand content (meaning episodes are released as soon as they're ready). If your team isn't large enough or doesn't work well together yet, then it's probably not worth trying to publish every week—at least not right away. Here's how some common podcasting schedules might look:
1 per week
2 - 3 per month
Create a consistent naming strategy
When naming your podcast, choose a strategy that is easy to remember. Ideally, you should use numbers and dates in the name (e.g., “The Future of Podcasting” or “Episode 10”). This makes it easier for listeners to find your content on iTunes or Stitcher.
It's also important to use words that are relevant to your business and audience. For example, if you're an SaaS company that sells web applications for small businesses, then choosing a name like "The Small Business Podcast" might be ideal because it tells people what they can expect from the content of the show—information about small businesses—and implies how valuable this information will be for them as listeners (since they're small businesses).
Choose a name that is easy to spell so people don't get confused when searching for it online or sending you emails with questions about your show. You want listeners who hear about it through marketing channels like ad campaigns or social media posts not only listen but also subscribe via their preferred method (iTunes/Stitcher/etc.).
Invest in good-quality audio and recording equipment
You may have a great story to tell, but if the audio quality of your podcast is poor then you won't be able to engage your audience. Invest in good-quality audio and recording equipment so that you can deliver a polished final product.
Use a microphone that's designed for podcasting, like the Rode Podcaster or Blue Yeti Pro. These are both popular options because they offer high-quality sound at an affordable price point.
Use a pop filter to reduce plosives (your p’s and b’s). These are sounds produced by air blowing through the mouth and they can overpower other parts of speech when they occur too near the mic during recording sessions. Pop filters help mitigate this problem by containing the airflow in front of them; however, if possible try not to use one because it can make you sound unnatural when talking into it directly (you'll also need additional equipment such as stands and clamps).
Get yourself some good quality headsets - these come with headphones built-in so there's no need for earbuds or external speakers which means fewer wires! Some people find this more comfortable than wearing traditional earphones anyway since those tend not fit snugly enough inside their ears without falling out every few minutes instead...
Find a co-host or book guests.
Find someone who has a similar background to you.
Find someone who has different interests than you.
Find someone who has more experience than you.
Find someone who has less experience than you.
Don't be afraid to mention your product
It's important to note that there are two ways to mention your product. You can either talk about it as a non-salesy way of providing value, or you can talk about it in a salesy way for the sake of pushing the sale.
If you decide to write a blog post about how amazing your product is, don't be afraid to mention it by name. This can help people who know nothing about what you do discover what services you offer and why they're valuable. If someone stumbles upon one of these blog posts, maybe they'll even decide that your service is worth signing up for!
But if you go too far with this tactic and start selling too blatantly (i.e., “Use our software so that you never have to deal with issues again”), then readers may get turned off by how pushy or inauthentic your content sounds—and they'll certainly stop coming back for more of it!
Use podcasting as an excuse to network with experts and other businesses
Use podcasting as an excuse to network with experts and other businesses.
Network with other businesses
Network with experts.
Network with your customers.
Network with your employees.
Network with your vendors.
Network with your partners or competitors, suppliers, investors and advisors -- all of whom have something valuable to contribute to the conversation that will benefit you and your business in some way
Podcasting is hard, but it's worth it
There are a lot of different podcast formats and styles out there: interviews, roundtables, solo shows with a host who reads their own writing. The best format for you will depend on your audience and what they need from you. If you're not sure which type of podcast would work best for your business, I recommend checking out the Audio Academy's free video series on creating a podcast (you can find it here).
Podcasting example by Buffer
Buffer is a company that is passionate about podcasts. They’ve used the medium as a way to build awareness for their brand and to share their content with the world, and they’re not the only ones.
We know you might be asking yourself: “Why would I listen to a podcast about social media?” Or, “Is this just another marketing ploy from Buffer?” We promise that it’s not! In fact, we think you'll like The Science of Social Media podcast—and maybe even find it useful! It’s an entertaining look at the latest trends in social media marketing, featuring interviews with industry experts and influencers.
Podcasting tactics by Digital first AI
explore step by step process here
Sometimes the best solution, when you don't have your own popularity yet, is to promote in someone else's community. There are places where you can pay for it, e.g. some Facebook groups will ask you to post promotional content for a fee. But what if you don't have the money or the groups in your industry are too competitive? Try to promote yourself in someone else's podcast!
Facebook ads for SaaS
Facebook ads are a powerful tool for SaaS companies. The difference between Facebook ads and other forms of digital marketing is that they are highly personalized and targeted to each user, making them an ideal fit for SaaS businesses with a large customer base.
Facebook uses sophisticated algorithms that take into account your profile information and the data you've shared with them (e.g., pages you've liked, events you have been invited to), along with information about your behavior on the platform itself (e.g., what ads have caught your eye). These algorithms allow Facebook to display ads that are relevant both to what type of person you are as well as what kind of product or service might interest you at any given moment in time.
The key benefit of Facebook ads for Saas
As a Saas marketer, you know that getting your business in front of the right audience is critical to success. The key benefit of Facebook ads for SaaS is that it allows you to reach the people most likely to buy your product. With Facebook advertising, you can target ads by gender, location, age and interests—and even exclude audiences who have already purchased from you!
If done correctly, Facebook ads are also great for testing your marketing strategy and measuring ROI. You can create multiple variations of an ad and use split testing (also known as A/B testing) to see which one performs better at bringing in new customers and keeping existing ones happy.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook Ads for Saas
Before you dive in, it's important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of using Facebook ads for SaaS.
Advantages
Facebook offers plenty of targeting options. You can target customers by location, demographics, behavior and interests. This allows you to reach more relevant audiences and increase engagement with your content.
It's also easy to create different creatives for different ad sets. For example, one set could be used for remarketing campaigns while another can be used for retargeting visitors on your website with an offer or new product features.
You can easily get a good understanding of which ad format works best in order to optimize performance based on cost per conversion/lead generation/sales conversions (CPC/CPL/LPO).
Facebook Ads Manager helps you monitor how much money each campaign costs per day so you know when it’s time to pause or stop running ads that aren’t performing well enough anymore -- this saves money since there are no surprises!
Why do you need to know about Facebook ads for Saas?
It's a good question. For starters, Facebook ads are one of the most powerful tools you can use to reach your target audience and generate leads, and sales and build a community around your brand. Here are some other reasons why it's critical that you understand how they work:
Facebook Ads are inexpensive. The cost per click is low compared with Google Adwords and other platforms. This means that even small businesses can take advantage of them without breaking the bank!
You don't have to create content or manage paid traffic yourself (unless you want to). Instead, let us do all the heavy lifting so that you have more time left over for what matters most - building relationships with customers!
What are the benefits of Facebook ads for Saas?
The benefits of Facebook ads for Saas are numerous. First and foremost, Facebook ads allow you to target a very specific audience. Most SaaS businesses will only sell their product or service to businesses, so it’s important that the people who see your ad are likely to have an interest in what you have to offer. You can use this information to create relevant ads, which will increase click-through rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR).
A high CTR means more people see your ad and share it with their friends; this increases brand awareness because more people know about what you do without having to spend money on traditional advertising methods like radio or television commercials. A higher CVR means more people click through and sign up for something like a free trial of your software solution—and when they do, they become paying customers! This is great news if revenue generation is one of your goals as well as customer engagement; after all: no one wants a bunch of disengaged clients!
How to develop a successful campaign?
Know your target audience
Know your budget
Know your conversion rate
Test different ad creatives (ads that have a picture, an image, a video, etc.)
Test different ad formats (text ads, canvas ads)
Test different audiences (lookalike audiences and custom audiences)
Test different landing pages (landing page A versus landing page B)
Test different ad copy (the words in the text of your advertisement). For example: "Get a free demo." vs. "Try us for free!" Which one would you be more likely to click on? Why? What makes it work better than the other one? If both are performing at an equal level of effectiveness, then we might need to do some further testing with additional variations. We could try changing up our headline from “Get Started” to “Sign Up Now” or “Download Now” or even simply swapping out one word for another like “Learn More” instead of “Sign Up Now” or vice versa.
Facebook advertising example of Grammarly
Grammarly is the writing assistance platform that helps people improve the effectiveness of their every-day or formal writing. Grammarly doesn’t only provide a great service, they also make really good ads.
Grammarly ads are all about self-improvement and helping people, which makes them perfect for targeting on social media. The ads are targeted at people who have been using Grammarly for a while and have become familiar with the brand. Since there aren’t many other companies that offer this type of service right now, Grammarly has a lot of room to grow in terms of target audience size.
Facebook ads tactics by Digital First AI
explore step by step process here
Google advertising for SaaS
Google ads are the most efficient and effective way to reach your SaaS customers. As a SaaS business, you probably have a lot of things to worry about, but don't let that get in the way of your marketing efforts. It's important make sure that you're reaching out to new customers at all times so they'll be more likely to purchase from you when they're ready.
By using Google ads, you'll be able to target the right people with relevant messages and offers so that they'll purchase from your business instead of going with a competitor.
Target audience
The first step in any ad campaign is to target the right audience.
Targeting the right audience is more important than targeting the right keyword. If you’re not getting enough traffic, it won’t matter what keywords you use—no one will see your ads!
Keywords
Keywords are the words you use to describe your product or service.
Keyword research: Identify which keywords are relevant for your business, and how much traffic each one receives.
Keyword mapping: Map out the relationships between different keywords so that you understand where they fit within a larger context.
Keyword analysis: Figure out which keywords are most effective at driving traffic to your website.
Keyword selection: Determine which keywords will best help your business reach its goals, and then develop an optimized ad strategy based on those results.
Conversion rate optimization
The final step to making your ads work is to optimize them. By optimizing your ads, you'll be able to see what works, and what doesn't. There are two main ways of doing this:
Landing pages. These are separate websites that someone lands on when they click an ad. You can use them for either new leads or existing customers, but it's best to have both if possible.
A/B testing (or split testing). This is when you run two versions of the same ad against each other and compare their performance over time. It's also important because it allows you to test different headlines and images without wasting money on other ones that don't convert well with your audience at all
Landing pages
Landing pages are the sites that users land on after clicking on an ad, so they should be designed to convert users into customers. These pages should have a clear call-to-action (CTA) and be designed to meet the needs of your customers.
You can use landing page software like Unbounce or LeadPages to create landing pages quickly and easily
Google Adwords example of Upwork
Upwork is one of the most popular freelancer marketplaces on the web. They offer a wide variety of services for both freelancers and clients and have a large audience of potential customers. These ads below are an excellent example of how a company can find talented freelancers through the platform.
A Google search for "Hire Professional Engineers" will yield thousands of results, but Upwork's ad at the top of page one is an example of how they are able to stand out from all the noise.
Google ads tactics by Digital First AI
explore step by step process here
Don't let all your Google Display remarketing audiences be treated the same. Decide what feature of your website abandoners is really important to you and separate such visitors into a separate segment. For example, if adding a really expensive product to your cart makes a user valuable to you, create a set of ads targeting users who have only abandoned the expensive carts and buy views for them for the highest bid.
LinkedIn ads for SaaS
LinkedIn advertising is a great way to get your business in front of the right people. LinkedIn users are often looking for new solutions and opportunities, which makes them perfect targets for SaaS companies. If you're thinking about starting a LinkedIn campaign or have one that's just not performing well, read on! We'll take you step by step through the process of creating an effective ad and show you how to make it convert better than ever before.
Reasons Why LinkedIn Ads Are Perfect for SaaS Companies
LinkedIn ads are highly targeted.
LinkedIn ads are affordable.
LinkedIn ads are easy to set up, optimize, measure, and integrate with other marketing channels.
They work well alongside other social media channels, like Facebook and Twitter.
Target decision-makers
Let's start with the basics: who is your buyer? Your buyer is the person who makes the decision to buy. Sometimes it's the same person as responsible for the budget and implementation—but that's not always true. Maybe you have a young, junior-level employee responsible for all purchasing decisions in an organization, but your product only needs a manager or VP to sign off on it before implementation.
To target these decision-makers effectively, you'll need to know which demographic groups are most likely to be in your industry and hold those roles at companies of varying sizes (depending on how granular you want your targeting). If you're selling CRM software, for example, this group might include marketing directors or business owners; if you're selling B2B SaaS products like Salesforce or Zendesk, then this group may include everything from senior executives down through mid-level managers and salespeople who need support from their boss' approval before making any major purchases.*
Drive awareness about your solution
Use LinkedIn ads to drive awareness about your solution.
Use a video to explain how your product works. The longer the video, the better!
Showcase your product or service, explain how it works and offer an online demo that shows how easy it is to use. Focus on the benefits of using your product or service—not just features like “10x faster” or “faster than Google”—and talk about how these benefits will impact users in their day-to-day workflows.
You could also use LinkedIn ads for lead generation by offering a free trial of your software or service, explaining in detail what people get when they sign up (like time savings), and also providing an incentive such as a discount off their first billing cycle if they convert from lead generation ad clicks into customers within 30 days after signing up for a paid plan with you on the LinkedIn advertising platform.
LinkedIn advertising example of Outreach
Outreach knows that LinkedIn ads are a great way to get their SaaS business in front of the right audience.
In this example, they use bold text to send a clear message to their audience and a good CTR button "See how it works", they are able to get a better click-through rate. The ad copy "10-person sales teams" also drives clicks by being more specific than just saying "Sales Teams".
LinkedIn tactics by Digital First AI
explore step by step process here
This tactic is a long-shot but are a must-have to establish your brand as a Subject-Matter Expert (SME) and create a long-run automated lead pipeline.
It consists on creating a Group in Linkedin with some of your well-known Partners (& even Competitors) to start an "agnostic" community of users driven by a specific topic or matter, that would be your perfect marketing audience. You can then proactively send invitations to Users with a keywords approach to enlarge the community, contribute to create "non-commercial" relevant and informative content, and progressively moved to a "self-managed" content creation with "outsider" contributions.
Being the administrator of the group, you can approve of every new adhesion request and send a warm message to start a Linkedin Conversation ("foot in the door") that you can steer to a meeting invitation if it fits with your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile).
Growth hacking tactics for SaaS
Growth hacking is a customer acquisition strategy that involves identifying the best, most efficient ways to grow your audience and attract new customers. When you do this, you're using marketing tactics instead of traditional advertising methods.
Instead of spending money on ads, growth hackers look for other ways to attract customers—including by talking with them directly or giving away free samples of their product. For example, if you're selling SaaS products (software as a service), one way to market your service is by offering free trials so potential clients can try out your product before they purchase it.
It's important not to confuse growth hacking with word-of-mouth marketing; while both are strategies used in customer acquisition efforts, they have very different goals: while growth hacking focuses on attracting new visitors who might become customers down the line, word-of mouth seeks out existing customers who will share their positive experiences with word-of-mouth or other platforms.
The 100 Founder Hack
explore step by step process here
Account-based marketing works—every time. It's the high-touch, personalized approach to marketing that helps you identify your dream clients and then send them a gift and craft personalized messages for them. In this hack, I have mentioned a step-by-step process along with a sample letter template and a follow-up email template that you can use for your next digital marketing funnel.
Wait list with gamification
explore the step by step process here
If you're launching a new product, consider implementing a waiting list for early adopters and make your product/service available to a small number of people who will become your evangelists. Useful hacks to squeeze the most out of it.
Youtube Channel using SEO Tactics to maximize results (Free Version)
explore the step by step process here
This is a simple free way to get more brand exposure, provide value and create brand loyalty. Not budget is require as you can effectively use these tactic with free tools available online.
Youtube is a search engine. It is also connects up with Google the world largest search engine. So to not spend a little a bit extra to get your SEO would be such a waste. You have amazing content that others will love so help the search engines find you with this simple SEO for Youtube tactic.
It does take a little bit of time to create content for youtube but that can be done for free as well. So really the cost is your time. Like anything right... time/money ratio is at play.
EUCOC
End user cost of change (EUCOC) is the total cost of switching from one product or service to another. The EUCOC is a measure of the total cost of switching from one product or service to another. It's a function of the cost of switching and the value of switching.
The cost of switching comes in two parts:
The time it takes to make the switch, which can be estimated using historical data on how long it takes people in your target market to change products, or if you don't have any data yet, by interviewing customers and asking them how long they're comfortable with staying on your product before they decide they need something different
The money that users spend during this transition period (e.g., for advertising campaigns for new products, additional hardware costs for migrating data from one system to another, etc. There are many effective growth hacking strategies that will help you scale your SaaS product quickly and effectively.
SaaS Marketing Metrics
The success of your SaaS marketing efforts can be measured in various SaaS metrics, but it is important to measure both the micro-level (the sales journey through the funnel) and macro-level (post-sales/customer retention rate).
Conversion
Conversion is the percentage of visitors that take the action you want them to. It's easy to calculate: if 5 out of 100 visitors sign up for a monthly newsletter, the conversion rate is 5%.
There are several useful conversion measurements that should be considered. You want to be measuring conversions at each level of the advertising funnel - lead, qualified lead, lead conversion, and lead to qualified lead conversion. Lead to qualified lead conversion measures the number of leads that actually turn into qualified leads over time.
Lead Quality
When you're trying to find your ideal customer, the last thing you want is to waste time on unqualified leads that aren't a fit for your SaaS.
But how do you know if they are or not? That's where lead quality metrics come in. You can measure this by tracking your lead scoring, or by measuring various attributes of your ideal customer (geography, company size, number of forms submitted, etc.)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a metric that calculates the amount of profit attributable to a given customer throughout that customer's entire relationship with the SaaS business.
The CLV metric can be thought of as a measure of how much money you can expect to make from a customer during their time as a customer. It's calculated by multiplying the average annual revenue per user (ARPU) by the average customer life span (ACLS), and then dividing that number by the acquisition cost.
Let's say you have an ARPU of $50, and your ACLS is 3 years. If you spend $500 to acquire new customers, then your CLV will be $1,500 ($50 x 3 = 150 x $500 / 500 = $1,500).
Download a free Hubspot CLV template here
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a metric for calculating the total cost of acquiring a customer within a certain time period. It's simple to calculate: simply add up all of your marketing and sales expenses, and then divide by the number of customers you acquired during that period.
If you spend $10,000 on sales and marketing this year and acquire 10 customers, your CAC is $1000. While in a startup period you may have a high CAC, over time you want to see this number decreasing.
Download a free Hubspot CAC template here
CAC-to-LTV Ratio
The CAC-to-LTV ratio is a key metric that helps SaaS marketers understand the value of their customers.
In simple terms, this metric shows the relationship between the cost of acquiring a customer versus the value attributable to that customer. The smaller this number is, the better. Because customers don't have to commit, SaaS marketers have to focus as much (or more) on retaining existing customers as they do on acquiring new customers. The good news is that there are several ways to increase your CAC-to-LTV ratio and improve your bottom line.
Download a free Hubspot CAC-to-LTV template here
SaaS Marketing Tools
Digital First AI
Digital First AI is a marketing platform that helps businesses grow by providing them with the best growth-hacking tactics. It's like having access to a library of approaches, where you can study the strategies of popular businesses and skilled marketers as well as advice. Digital First AI is for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Tell me something about your customer's business
Use our canvases to validate the business, find best products and offer and use content machine framework to find social voice.
Step 2: Manage funnels:
Each of the tactic is associated with an adequate place in the sales funnel. Manage the tactics, assign them to people and see the results!
Step 3: Tactics Library
Meet the recommended growth-hacking tactics and instructions for their implementation on the base of your input data. You can always pick tactic yourself from over 1000+ tactics library. For most of them you don’t even need any budget!
Step 4: Create content
The funnel is now filled with tactics - congrats! Last thing to do is generate content with the help of AI for all the required materials. This includes website, copywriting, social posts, email scenarios or banners!
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a powerful social media marketing tool. It allows you to find and connect with the right person for your business, making it easier to make more sales. With just one click, Sales Navigator will give you information about a potential client's job title and company details so that you can tailor the conversation accordingly. If there is any doubt about whether or not someone would be interested in your services, send them an email asking for more information about their current project needs or future goals—this will help refine their response as well as give insight into how they work best (and whether or not they'll actually use your product).
Once contact has been made through LinkedIn, continue building rapport by sharing industry articles on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook; this way, even if they don't end up purchasing from you directly due to budget constraints or other factors outside of your control (like competition), they'll still think highly enough of what they read that it may inspire them down the road when things are better financially."
Optimizely Website Testing
Optimizely is a tool that makes it easy to A/B test different website layouts and see what works best for your audience.
A/B testing is a powerful tool for improving your website. The idea behind A/B testing is simple: you want to find out what makes more people click through, so you put two versions of your page up and compare how they perform against each other. You then choose the version that performed better in order to increase conversions on your site (and improve user experience).
The great thing about Optimizely is that it allows you to run these tests in real time, allowing you to make changes in response to their results without having to wait days or weeks! This helps save time and money by optimizing only those areas of your site where improvement can be made—making sure "good enough" doesn't mean "good enough."
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a social media management tool that helps you keep track of all your social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram. It also allows you to schedule posts in advance and post them simultaneously across multiple platforms at once. You can view your analytics to see when the best time to post is for what kind of content (text or image). You can also use Hootsuite's scheduling feature to publish blog posts from your RSS feed on a regular basis so that people don't miss any new content from you.
Hootsuite also makes it easier for your team members within the same company or organization to collaborate on social media efforts by sharing data with each other through their profiles in this app.
Typeform
Typeform is a survey tool that can be used to collect data from customers, users, employees and investors. It's also useful for collecting data from partners.
To create a Typeform survey you'll need to sign up for an account and then choose the type of survey you want to create. There are different question types available to choose from including multiple choice questions or open-ended questions (text fields). You can add images and video clips using the upload feature in Typeform too!
Zapier
Zapier is a marketing automation tool that allows you to connect your different apps and software together. The best part? It's completely free. Zapier is great for automating repetitive tasks, so it can be used to automate marketing tasks in SaaS companies. For example, if a customer visits your site and subscribes to your email list, Zapier will automatically forward them a welcome email from Mailchimp with an opt-in link. You can also set up Zaps that will send out an email when someone signs up for an account on one of your sales pipeline tools like Pipedrive or Close.io (we'll talk more about those in the next section).
There are tons of ways you can use Zaps to save yourself time every day:
Automate sending emails based on events happening within another app
Automate sending follow-up messages after people click links sent through other apps
Phantombuster
If you're looking to automate your sales process, Phantombuster is the tool for you. This growth hacking tool lets you scrape useful data from Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other online platforms. It can also be used to build lead generators and email extractors.
Phantombuster's features include:
Web Automation: Web automation lets you automatically perform repetitive tasks on the internet without human intervention. You can use this feature to automate anything from simple tasks like filling out forms or sending emails to more complex tasks such as scraping data from websites or performing machine learning tasks.
Sales Automation: Sales automation allows you to create automated sales processes such as lead generation campaigns and email drip campaigns that send emails at specified intervals over time. This feature also includes functionality for sending email broadcasts as well as scheduling emails in advance so they don't get delivered until after their recipients have left work for the day (or even until they've arrived at work).
Semrush
SEMRush is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that helps businesses run SEO, PPC, social media, and content marketing campaigns. It’s best known for its keyword analysis and research function, but it also provides traffic analysis, back-links, and domain analysis.
SaaS businesses can use SEMRush to create and manage their PPC campaigns across Google Ads, Bing Ads, Yahoo Gemini, Facebook Ads Manager and LinkedIn Ads. They can also track the performance of their PPC ads with the built-in tracking tool or use third-party ad tracking software.
SEMRush also allows you to track your SEO efforts by analyzing all of your rankings across search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo! And it provides detailed information on which keywords are performing well for your competitors so you know where to focus your own SEO efforts.
Buzzsumo
BuzzSumo is a tool that helps you find content that performs best. It also helps you collaborate with influencers who matter, so that you can create high-performing content and monitor your performance.
To use the tool, simply run a search to quickly discover content ideas, uncover platform insights, identify passionate influencers.
BuzzSumo will reveal the truth about what content works and what sinks without a trace with the help of four key components: Discovery, Research, Influencers & Monitoring.
Some of the Features:
Content Discovery: Infinite ideas at your fingertips.
Content Research: Create content destined to succeed.
Find Influencers: Look past vanity metrics to uncover truly influential leaders.
Monitoring: Track mentions, trends and updates.
Figma
Figma is a tool for UI design that is available on all platforms (Windows, macOS, web). It is constantly innovating with new features and improvements. In particular, Figma’s collaboration features makes working in a product team fun and energising.
Figma has been called the most popular UI design tool for good reason: it covers more of the design process than similar tools and is constantly innovating with new features and improvements.
Lumen 5
Lumen5 is an AI-powered video production tool that helps you create eye-catching videos for your target audience. Even if you don’t consider yourself a video specialist, it just takes around five minutes to turn a blog article or page into a video. It has a wide variety of customization options include dragging and dropping media, predetermined color palettes, scene switching, and much more.
You can create the perfect video for social media or YouTube without having to hire a team of professionals
Unbounce
You might be familiar with Unbounce as a landing page tool, but did you know they have the capability to create full-page websites?
While Unbounce is best known for its landing page platform and lead generation tool, it also has all the features you need to create a full-fledged website. These include customizable templates, built-in analytics, and integrations with Google Analytics, AdWords, and more.
The best part about using Unbounce for content marketing purposes is that it's pretty easy to use even if you're not a designer. You can easily personalize elements like headlines and images, as well as change text elements like titles and descriptions.
Asana
Asana is a very popular project management tool among freelancers. It's used by over 50,000 companies, which means that it's definitely one of the best tools on the market. The main reason why Asana is so popular among freelancers is that it has a nice UI. The interface looks clean and neat, so it won't overwhelm you when you first start using the application. Also, the application is flexible enough for you to customize it according to your needs.
Asana also offers many features that allow you to manage your daily tasks more effectively. For example, it lets you set due dates for each task and then alerts you when they are getting close to being overdue. You can also add attachments to each task so that they're easier to manage and understand at a glance.
FoMo
Have you ever felt like you're missing out on something great?
If you've ever been to a restaurant and wished you could have had a reservation, or been at a bar and wished you could have gotten in without waiting in line, then I have some good news for you.
There's an app called FOMO that lets you book reservations for restaurants and events, as well as get into bars without waiting in line. Just download the app and start swiping—it's that easy!
And the best part is that it's not just for people who want to save money or avoid lines. It's also great for people who don't want to miss out on the latest and greatest new places around town, because it lets them know about all kinds of great events and amazing deals happening right now at venues near them.
Calendly
Calendly is the go-to scheduling platform for your business, whether you're a small company or a global enterprise.The Calendly team is dedicated to making scheduling meetings easier and more efficient, so you can get back to what matters: running your business.
Calendly has been recognized as the intuitive scheduling leader for more than 50,000 companies and 10 million people around the world.
Now, with integrations in Zoom, Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Slack, Zapier and more, it’s no wonder Calendly is trusted by everyone from Twilio and eBay to Dartmouth and Gartner.
Canva
Canva is free graphic design software that lets anyone create incredible images for social media, blogs, and more. Canva is a great alternative to using Facebook or Instagram's built-in image creator. When you use Canva on the desktop, Canva loads up with several starter templates. These are super easy to edit and make for quick work of creating professional-looking graphics.
It's a wrap
We hope you enjoyed this exploration of SaaS marketing.
As you've seen, there's a lot to consider when it comes to your business model. But don't worry—we've tried our best to give you the tools and resources you need to succeed.
If you want to learn more about SaaS marketing, we encourage you to check out the sources we used in this guide. We also recommend reading some of the detailed guides that have helped us understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to maximizing our own marketing efforts.
Finally, if you're looking for help with your own marketing strategy, we would suggest you to give Digital First AI a try. There's a 7 days trial available and if it doesn't work out, there's no obligation on your part. :)
