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B2B SaaS Marketing is a tough one. It isn’t just about posting on Social Media and getting people to your website. You need to convert leads and sales.
That’s where this article comes in. I’ll give you proven marketing strategies that you should use if you want to increase your B2B SaaS conversions.
Proven B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies
Tell a story
Telling your story is a great way to build trust with your audience and get them to understand why they should use your product.
Stories help you connect on an emotional level with people, which makes them more likely to act on what you’re sharing.
Plus, as a company, you are much more interesting when there’s a narrative behind your business.
Here are tips that will help you tell your story as a B2B SaaS marketing strategy:
Tailor your story to the customer
You need to tailor your story to resonate with each prospect’s situation.
This means not only telling them how they benefit, but also how they will benefit. If they’re stuck in a certain situation, tap into their pain points.
If they’re looking for ways to increase revenue or decrease costs, emphasize those areas.
Tap into fun
Stories are great ways of connecting with people at an emotional level.
Start off by making sure that your story is fun and engaging, so that your prospects will want to listen to it in the first place.
Capture attention at the beginning
The beginning of your story needs to have enough intrigue to capture your prospects’ attention and keep them from getting distracted.
After all, you don’t have much time before they lose interest and start looking for something else – like your competitors!
Show them how it works
Prospects won’t be convinced just by hearing about benefits; they want proof that what you’re offering.
Tell your story visually
Infographics are a great way to give more detail about your products, services, and business processes while also telling your story visually.
These visual mediums help customers understand what they’re reading.
Content marketing
The most successful B2B SaaS businesses are those that invest in content marketing.
Truly effective B2B content marketing, like every successful online marketing strategy, is a two-way street. It involves building relationships with customers as well as reaching out to new prospects.
The content you create should not only attract new clients but also help retain the existing ones. Here are some tips on using content marketing as a B2B SaaS marketing strategy.
Define the right KPIs
Key performance indicators (KPIs) help you measure your success in terms of content marketing. Establish specific metrics and monitor them closely so that you can make changes to your strategy accordingly.
Start a blog
A blog helps you establish your thought leadership position and gives you an opportunity to connect directly with potential prospects and existing customers.
Create white papers
White papers explain complex concepts in simple terms and offer solutions to common business problems faced by the readership base of your target audience.
Publish case studies
Case studies are great for showcasing how your product can solve real-world problems to your target audience (whether they’re prospective clients or current users).
Understand your customer’s journey
What is the customer’s journey? How can you map it out? The customer’s journey is one of the most important concepts in B2B SaaS marketing.
It’s a way of viewing your customer as they move through their experience with your product or service, and understanding what motivates them to take certain actions at specific points in time.
Trying to understand how your customers use your product, where they have pain points, and how you can nurture them through their experience with your product is a very valuable exercise.
After all, if you don’t understand who they are and what they need, how will you ever be able to sell to them? The best way to make sense of your customer journey is to actually map it out. Here’s how:
- Write down the major steps in the customer’s journey. Think about when they’re first exposed to your brand (awareness), when they make the decision to sign up (consideration), when they start actually using your product (usage), and so on.
- Add any additional steps that might fit into smaller chunks of the journey. These could be things like discovery, onboarding, or getting support for an issue. You might have customers that never get past a certain step on their journey.
- Use your customer’s journey and decision-making process to direct your content strategy – whether that’s blog posts, eBooks, infographics or a webinar series. That way you can deliver the right message at the right time to the right person.
Target the right audience
Targeting the right audience for your B2B SaaS marketing strategy is critical to your success.
You must know who your target audience is and what they want to see on your website, in your blogs and on your social media pages in order to get them to sign up for your services.
Trying to figure out how to target the right audience as a B2B SaaS marketing strategy can be difficult and we’ve compiled a list of tips below to help.
Get to know your audience
Understanding your ideal customer is crucial. You need to know who you’re selling to if you want to be able to sell them effectively.
By knowing what your customers want, you can provide them with value, and in return they’ll become loyal customers that keep coming back for more.
Take some time out to really get to know who your ideal customer is and what they’re looking for. It’ll be time well spent!
Use data-driven marketing
Data-driven marketing is essential when it comes to B2B SaaS marketing as you need every advantage possible when competing against other businesses in your niche.
Having access to data allows you to make informed decisions about your product and how you market it.
Being personal
By now you have a good idea of your target market and the name of the person you’d like to connect with. In order for that connection to work in your favor, it’s important to be personal when reaching out by email or phone call.
Don’t just fire off an email and get straight into your pitch. First say hello, ask questions about their interests and build rapport with them before diving into your marketing message.
Take advantage of the market size
While it’s true that the B2C marketplace is larger, there is also a much bigger opportunity in the B2B space if you know how to target the right audience.
This is why I always encourage my clients to go after smaller markets. The reason for this is that startups can build an audience more effectively in smaller markets than in big ones.
This is because big markets have well-established players with big budgets and heavy ad spends, whereas small markets are dominated by local players with small budgets.
Email marketing
Email marketing is one of the best tools to grow your B2B SaaS business and reach out to potential customers.
Tailoring your emails and having a professional email marketing service can help you connect with your target audience and drive sales for your business.
Here are some tips on how to use email marketing;
Create segments in your database
Segmenting is the process of categorizing your subscribers into groups based on their profile, behavior, purchasing history and more.
This way you can send customized emails and newsletters to each group in order to improve engagement and conversion rate.
For example, if you have an eCommerce app for iPhone, then segment your subscribers into groups by mobile device – so that you can send them iPhone-specific offers, news or tutorials.
You could also segment them by user activity – send those who haven’t logged into the app for a long time a special offer or give them a call to action to re-engage with the app.
Send emails at the right time
To get the best results from email marketing, send out newsletters regularly but not too often.
Most people want to receive regular updates from companies they buy from, so try sending out two or three newsletters in a week.
If you send too many emails, subscribers might start ignoring them – sending only 1 or 2 emails a month can be considered spamming by some.
Create a welcome series
A welcome series can be used to introduce new users to all aspects of your service, which includes benefits, product features and support information.
Send this series on a regular basis in order to create brand awareness, encourage user feedback and build loyalty with your customers.
Use calls-to-action in all of your emails
Make sure that each email has a call-to-action so that you can track how many subscribers read through an entire email and take advantage of any promotions or offers that may be available to them.
Set your goal
There are many goals that an email marketing campaign can have. Make sure you set realistic goals for your campaign.
Social media marketing
Social media marketing has taken the world by storm; it is the hottest thing since sliced bread.
However, many B2B businesses are still struggling with its effective application.
The best way to see what works is to focus on key metrics and track them over time. If you don’t have a great idea of how social media marketing can help your business, here are tips that might help.
- Create a social media channel plan that defines goals and objectives for each platform.
- Social media marketing isn’t about you shouting loudest – it’s about listening and responding to what others are saying. If people are talking about your product or service, join in the conversation, address their issues and questions, and answer them as best as you can.
- Create a strategy to get more people to follow you on social media.
- Pretending that you’re a thought leader in your industry is not enough if no one knows who you are. You need to consistently create valuable content that adds value to the prospects and helps them solve their problems faster.
- Start your social media marketing campaign with goals and objectives in mind.
- Use social networking sites for building brand awareness, becoming an expert or getting referrals from customers.
- Social media is the best tool for building relationships with prospects, but this can be challenging because you have a limited amount of time to convey your value proposition in 140 characters or less. To win at social media B2B SaaS marketing, focus on building relationships first and avoid self-promotion.
Pay-per-click marketing
A great B2B SaaS marketing strategy will include pay-per-click marketing as an integral part of it. Pay-per-click marketing is a great way to get your product in front of prospective customers.
It’s important to think of pay-per-click marketing as a long term investment, and not just a short term fix.
Setting up pay-per-click marketing for your company, especially as a B2B SaaS company, doesn’t have to be complicated.
Treat your Google Adwords campaign just like you would any other part of your marketing strategy.
That way, you can produce the best results with the least amount of effort.
Here are the steps to help you get started with Google Adwords for B2B SaaS marketing:
Step 1. Create an account with a third-party pay-per-click marketing provider.
Step 2. Set up target keywords for your business.
Step 3. Use your existing website to direct traffic to landing pages designed to convert visitors into customers.
Step 4. Split test different versions of your landing pages to see which combination of headline, image, and body copy works best with your target audience.
Step 5. Identify potential search terms that are driving traffic to competitors’ websites and develop a strategy to steal their traffic and turn it into leads for your business.
Step 6. Add negative keywords to block irrelevant searches from sending people to your website.
Step 7. Zero in on your target customer by creating custom landing pages based on demographic information such as the searcher’s location, search term (e.g., “best SaaS CRM”), and interests (e.g., “enterprise software” and “startup software”).
Step 8. Write compelling ad copy that communicates the value of your product or service in a way that triggers an emotional response from your target audience, rather than simply informing them about what you do and how much it costs per month/year/etc.
Partner with influencers
Influencer marketing has become a hot trend in B2B marketing over the past few years as brands realize that it’s not enough to just publish content anymore.
In fact, an estimated 79% of B2B marketers said they planned to increase their influencer marketing budget in 2021. Partnering with influencers is one of the fastest ways to generate customer interest and engagement with your brand.
Influencers can take your message several steps further than you can on your own, so finding ones relevant to your brand is key.
According to Inc., “In a study of over 4,000 U.S. consumers, 41 percent said they trusted recommendations from bloggers more than any other form of advertising.”
If you’re looking for a way to amplify your brand’s reach and grow your audience, consider partnering with influencers. Here are tips for doing so:
1. Find the right influencer. Find someone that is:
(a) Relevant to your target audience
(b) Active on social media platforms relevant to your industry
(c) Open to working with new brands (reach out first!)
2. Have a plan for what you want from the relationship before reaching out to the influencer. What do you want them to achieve? For example:
(a) Create content about your product or service
(b) Provide feedback on your product or service
(c) Showcase your product in a video review of their own personal use of the product (or use of their own personal tools)
Segment your prospects
B2B SaaS business owners should know how to segment their prospects so that they can maximize their marketing budget and time.
There are several ways you can segment your prospects into groups that are most likely to convert.
You can use the price of the product, the nature of the customer, or any other relevant information.
Segment your prospects by the stage of the buying process they are in. You should have multiple segments for your most important stages, like:
Early stage buyers
Learn everything about them. Their problems and goals, their perception of value and the solutions that exist in the market, what are main objections they face, how they evaluate the solutions, how likely they are to buy your solution, their expectations from you as a vendor.
The prospect is open to learning more about you and your solution. They are not yet ready to buy, but they might be soon if you do everything right!
Leads
They have demonstrated interest in our solution. They have come back for more information or asked for a demo or a trial.
They have shown some interest and given you some information about themselves. Now is the time to stalk them on social media (if it is allowed) and engage with them personally.
Active sales
They have been through all steps of the sales cycle and we are currently working with them to make it happen! This is where we will try to close the deal or ask for an up-sell or cross-sell.
Working relationships
The relationship between customer and vendor can be described as “we know each other” or “We trust each other.”
Outreach
Reaching out to your prospects and customers is an essential part of a successful business-to-business software marketing strategy.
However, it must be done in the right way to achieve the best results.
Why?
You need a reason to reach out — you’re interested in an influencer’s work, you have a question, you want to get on their radar because you’re launching something cool.
What?
Explain what you’d like to discuss or achieve. This could be a specific relationship (e.g., partnership) or simple knowledge sharing.
When?
Give the other person or company a chance to respond, and don’t expect an instant response. If it’s a cold outreach, you’ll usually get faster responses if you follow up after a few days; if it’s warm outreach, expect more time unless the influencer is actively looking for new connections.
Where?
Reach out directly via email, but also consider adding them on social media channels as well — a cold approach via LinkedIn might be warmly received if they know who you are already on Twitter or Facebook.
How?
Be courteous and concise — there’s no need to go into detail unless they ask for it.
Include opt-in forms on your site
Truly successful B2B SaaS companies have a diversified lead generation strategy that includes multiple tactics such as email marketing, content marketing and social media.
One of the best ways to generate leads through content marketing is through the use of opt-in forms. Opt-in forms are text boxes or buttons on your site that encourage visitors to sign up for your newsletter or download your ebooks, white papers and guides. Here are some tips for optimizing opt-in forms on your site:
Give your visitors multiple ways to opt-in
In other words, make it easy for them. Provide them with a few choices: subscribe to email updates, sign up for your newsletter, become a fan on Facebook, follow you on Twitter or connect with you on LinkedIn.
Keep it simple
Don’t make your visitors work to find the opt-in box. Most people won’t bother scrolling through a site if it doesn’t immediately grab their attention.
If you want to take this tip one step further and really boost opt-ins, give your visitors a reason to scroll down the page and an incentive to do so. For example, offer a coupon code or special report just for subscribers (more on this tactic below).
Make it easy for people to subscribe
Make sure you have an email program that gives you the ability track open rates and click-throughs.
Not only will this help you gauge the effectiveness of your opt-in strategy but it will also help you improve the campaign and get better results from future efforts.
Final Thoughts
The B2B SaaS marketing strategies in this guide are designed to help you stand out from the crowd, attract visitors and convert them into leads.
These strategies have worked for hundreds of companies and we’re sure they will work for you as well.
We hope that this guide can serve as a solid foundation for your marketing campaigns.
