As of 2022, effective SaaS marketing is now seen as essential in an industry with a growth rate of 11.7% and predicted market cap of $307billion by 2023. But what are the key strategies that you can employ within your SaaS marketing model to ensure that your product reaches potential buyers and/or subscribers?
Here at OggaDoon, we’ve been noticing the subtleties in SaaS marketing that make one business grow exponentially whilst another may fail to gain traction.
Here are three key pieces of advice that we have learned throughout the years.
It doesn’t matter what you call it; ‘freemium’, ‘lite’, ‘basic plan’ or ‘demo’, you need to have a free plan for your software product. A SaaS marketing strategy cannot claim to be competitive when the best way to displace market leaders is to give their users a taste of what you can offer. Without a free trial, your potential customers will never overcome the inertia of having to unsubscribe from an adequate product and test out an unknown one.
Sure the Facebook and Google pixels are great algorithms that have a place in any SaaS marketing model; however, nothing beats conducting your own market research on existing customers. Remember, your competitors are advertising on the same platforms. In many niches, competitors’ lookalike audiences are practically indistinguishable from one another. By using a referral scheme, you can find out who your most loyal customers are, helping you to reach out to this premium subsect and find out the loves and gripes they have with the product. Look out for common themes that might belie an untapped niche. Are they all work-from-home parents who appreciate the timesaving of a certain product feature within a hectic schedule? Before you know it, you will uncover USPs that will help you position your product for the right audience.
Every SaaS marketing strategy revolves around converting leads to customers, it is the primary performance indicator of many companies. However, at Ogadoon we believe in plugging the holes on a leaky bucket as opposed to trying to increase the volume of water going in. We identifying a new set of KPIs revolving around customer retention.
Has their product usage rate tailed off significantly? Have a customers’ referrals dropped off? Losing a customer makes it harder to gain a customer as social proof is now working against you. Make sure that users hitting these KPIs are entered into an email chain that offers perks and the opportunity to chat with one of your team or even better, yourself. Never forget that one bad review is worth twenty good ones so it’s crucial to service your customers properly.
So there you have it, three simple steps you can take to optimise your SaaS marketing strategy. At Oggadoon, we employ a range of more complex techniques that we’d be happy to talk you through. If you’d like to book a call then just follow the link.
Written by Harry Curtis.
OggaDoon specialises in guerrilla communications and marketing to gain you reach.