Lead Generation Ideas for SaaS Startups

Is your SaaS start-up looking for low-cost ways to generate leads?

Then again, maybe your business’s lead stream has dried up and you have to do something?

Either way, you’ve come to the right place.

To maintain your business buzzing along and the money rolling in, read this guide.

Come on, let’s get the ball rolling!

Convert Website Visitors Into Leads

Your website could be a lead gen machine if you use it properly. But how exactly do you go about doing that?

Simple. Adoric can be deployed on your website.

To assist you to convert your web traffic into leads and sales, Adoric includes a slew of options.

Eye-catching opt-in popups are one such tool. You can use them to collect emails and other contact information from your site users.

Incorporate a lead magnet in your popups to make them more appealing. That will be the subject of future discussion.

If you’re worried about popups ruining your visitors’ browsing experience, choose one of our slide-in or floating bars instead. They’re much less bothersome, but they’re still eye-catching.

But wait, there’s more.

The additional services offered by Adoric are all specifically designed to assist you in generating a large number of prospects for your SaaS business.

They are as follows:

• Use a countdown clock to instill fear of missing out on a limited-time offer in the minds of your site visitors so they sign up for your service right away rather than wait.
• With the use of exit-intent technology, you can re-capture lost customers.
• You can utilize trigger control to regulate when your popups display on the screens of your visitors.
• The ability to target your opt-in forms so that they only appear for the people you want to see them.
• Email service vendors like Mailchimp and Aweber can be seamlessly integrated.

Commit to Email Marketing

What do you do with the emails we’ve collected from people who might be interested in your product once we’ve captured them with our popups?

For this reason, email marketing is a need. And believe me when I say that email marketing pays off handsomely.

According to studies, you get $44 back for each $1 you invest in email marketing.

Fortunately, email marketing isn’t as difficult as it first appears. Have an email service provider, connect your emails, compose attention-grabbing email copy and send them when the moment is appropriate are all you have to do.

Create a Conversion Funnel

The process of generating new leads isn’t complete without a well-designed conversion funnel to take them through.

It’s simple: not every visitor to your webpage is ready to buy when they get there. It doesn’t matter if you get leads from paid advertising, online marketing, or email marketing.

What are my options?

To cultivate your leads through the buying process, create a conversion funnel.

Nevertheless, how does one go about creating a conversion funnel?

A conversion funnel, often known as a sales funnel, depicts the path a lead takes from the time they first express interest in your product or service to the time they become paying customers.

In other words, how do you go about setting up a conversion funnel?

The fact of the matter is, there isn’t one way for creating a conversion funnel that works well for everyone.

• Step 1: Generate Lots of Traffic
  Search Engine Optimization, Online Marketing, Facebook Ads, and Pay Per Click (PPC) are all effective methods for increasing visitors. Just go with your gut and do what seems right to you.
• Step 2: Send That Traffic to a Landing Page
  The next step is to direct the newly produced traffic to a certain location. A custom-made landing page would be the ideal location to direct traffic there. Do not use any of your website’s other pages like the landing page. This is the point at which the transformation will take place. That is to say, a visitor will become a lead on your landing page.
• Step 3: Use a Demo to Capture Email Addresses
  It’s a no-brainer to provide a demonstration to your potential consumers. It’s a pity so many new SaaS companies overlook it. Offer a free sample in exchange for their email addresses and then follow up with them via email. A warm lead is a website visitor who successfully registers for one.
• Step 5: Rinse and repeat
  Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll have a working conversion funnel.

Offer Attractive Lead Magnets

How do you get people to voluntarily provide you with their email addresses? It’s not enough to merely request it of them.

However, offering them something of value is more likely to work as a deterrent.

A lead magnet can be useful in this situation.

To put it another way, lead magnets are things you give away for free in exchange for people’s contact information.

So, what kind of lead magnet is best suited to your SaaS company? That’s a lot!

The following are some freebies that you might offer to draw high-quality leads:

• Product trial
• Consultation
• Evaluation/assessment
• Toolkits
• Video tutorials
• Early bird discount

Cold Emailing

Is it terrifying to consider sending out cold emails to new clients? Of course, it should. It does the job, though.

While cold emailing can be frightening at first, when done correctly, it can help you generate a large number of leads for your company. The best aspect is that it’s affordable. It’s practically free.

However, where do you even begin to begin? Simple. Gather the email addresses of potential buyers for your goods before you do anything else.

You’re probably wondering where I get all of these emails. Here are a few methods for tracking down those errant emails.

• Visit Crunchbase where you’ll uncover a slew of qualified prospects.
• Employ Email Hunter to track down the email addresses of potential clients.
• LinkedIn can be useful as well.

The next step is to design an irresistible email copy once you’ve located the emails.

Get Involved on Quora

If your target audience is online, where do you believe they’re most likely to be spending their time? Quora is unquestionably one of the many probable locations.

Isn’t it logical to spend time on Quora as well? You’ll have a better chance of gaining clients for your goods if you do this.

Quora marketing is the official term for what we’re doing. It’s something that a lot of tech companies do.

All you have to do is set up an account on the Q&A platform and start answering questions. Then you can move on to answering questions that are more specific to your area of expertise.

If you can, join a Quora group related to your sector and become an active member there instead. Your efforts will be rewarded over time if you put in the time and effort.

Become a Member of the Reddit Community

Because it is one of the most popular online forums, Reddit is often referred to as the “first-page” of the internet.

In other words, it’s an excellent place to hang around if you’re looking for consumers of your SaaS offering.

As a result, how can you use Reddit as a lead generation tool for your company?

Get involved with relevant subreddits for your business by searching for them and posting regularly. There are a large number of them. A simple internet search yielded numerous results.

Fortunately, unlike Quora, Reddit does not require you to answer questions to gain attention. It’s enough to look at the results of the conversions themselves. A step further would be to send out pitches to potential customers.

Get Content Marketing Started Right Away!

Use content to educate and inform potential customers about your product. So, let’s get this show on the road.

Video, podcasts, and even infographics are all acceptable forms of content in this context, not just blog articles.

After you’ve finished writing and publishing thought-provoking articles, the next step is to get the word out about them. In reality, this is where the bulk of the action takes place. After all, how can people consume your material if they aren’t aware of it?

What are my options?

• Paid ads on Facebook or Google can help you spread the word after you’ve published content.
• Promote your videos by creating a YouTube or TikTok channel. Think outside the box!

Set up an Affiliate Program

You need a lot of referrals for your SaaS firm to be successful. Even close relatives and family members can recommend your services to others. These efforts are commendable, but they’ll never be sufficient.

To achieve this, you must create and manage an affiliate program. Such programs, if executed properly, can provide you with a consistent stream of referrals.

But hold for a second, do you even understand the concept of an affiliate program?

It’s a service that pays people for each successful recommendation or prospect they throw your way. In other words, you provide others the opportunity to sell your goods, and you pay them for it as well.

Fortunately, putting one together isn’t that difficult. Sign up as an advertiser at Commission Junction (CJ).

It’s also possible to use the Easy Affiliate WordPress plugin to get started right away.

Reward Your First Group of Customers

It’s a good idea to give referral bonuses to those who send you business. It’s better to extend the same courtesy to your initial paying customers.

Now, you’re not required to give them money or other financial incentives as a reward. Even a one-year subscription will suffice in this case.

Even better, give away customized T-shirts as a token of your appreciation. Uberprint offers low-cost printing options for these materials.

Blog Content

Your blog serves as a central center for all of your material. Some of your blog pieces may get a lot of traffic.

Add interactive pop-ups that encourage viewers to download a PDF version of the blog article for later reading, subscribe to your newsletter for further information, or look at any of your other products, such as a webinar or podcast. This traffic may be put to use by adding interactive pop-ups.

Participate as a Guest on Relevant Podcasts

Podcasting allows you to hold the attention of a listener for 20 or even 1 hour. That’s a priceless piece of information.

Because professional podcasts cover a small range of topics, this is an ideal way to reach a targeted audience.

If you’re looking for podcasts to be a guest on, go to a site like Listen Notes and type in:

• Some of the most important terms used in your industry (for example virtual reality, blockchain, project management)
• Competitors’ names
• Founders of SaaS companies in your industry

Next, see if the podcasts you discovered are still in operation, and if so, look for instructions on how to pitch yourself as a guest on their website.

As a reminder, here’s something to remember.

It took Ahrefs Chief Marketing Officer Tim Soulo only four months to appear on 20 podcasts, where he talked about his experiences.

Because individuals listen to podcasts away from their keyboard, he noted, podcasts pose a hurdle for direct lead generation.

This means that they are unlikely to reply soon if you issue a call to action or offer a helpful piece of advice about your application.

There are a few advantages to having a high-profile appearance on a show like this. People will recognize you, speak about the episode with their friends, and your social presence will expand (Tim specifically addressed this one).

Podcast.co, for example, offers a bundle of services to assist you with conceptualizing, launching, producing, hosting, and marketing your podcast quickly.

Set up Free, High-Value Webinars

Webinars are a great way to generate leads for SaaS companies because, when done effectively, they are like a masterclass in an hour or less that is free.

They also have two additional advantages:

• To begin, ask for information such as name, organization, and email address upon signup to generate leads. By showing up and committing to learning from you, this person adds depth and trust to your relationship.
• When conducting webinars, the most thing to note is not to waste the time and attention that your new lead has given you.

To put it another way, give your webinar attendees something they can put to use in their jobs by making it instructive and rich in content.

Ensure your webinar description convinces the reader that they “need to see this!” to create high-quality leads.

Check out this amazing example from Nextiva’s webinar for a similar description. Given that Nextiva’s product is a sales and services CRM, this webinar topic is well-suited, and the description provided by the company goes into great detail.

Implement Live Chat

To compare your SaaS company to a brick-and-mortar store, think of live chat as an assistant.

feWith a live chat feature on your site, you may be present to respond to questions and direct your client to a resource or a product demonstration that can help them learn more.

Having a real-time interaction with your potential clients gives you an edge over your competition.

You may learn a lot about someone by having chats with them about their struggles and finding out the precise words they use to express them.

If you’re looking for new customers, live chat may be the best way to get them to give you their information. Aside from that, live chat has a 92% customer satisfaction score.

For the sake of driving meaningful engagement with website users, make yourself readily available to them. Then, you may direct them to areas of your webpage where they could grab a resource or request a free trial, turning them into your lead.

Live chat has a very strong lead-to-sales conversion rate in our experience at ROI ADVISERS, where we’ve executed hundreds of customer campaigns.

Use this chance wisely—make sure your CRM tracks your live chat prospects so you don’t lose track of, follow-up with, or nurture them. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by!

Integrate Chatbots

With enough personnel on your team, live chat can handle many visitor inquiries at once. What happens, however, if you decide not to?

For this, the use of chatbots is advantageous.

Add a chatbot to your site and program it to handle your most frequently asked questions and point your visitors in the direction of the information they want.

If you want to go the extra mile with chatbots, you may customize them based on how your visitors navigate your site.

An illustration of proactive (and automatic) chat outreach would be to check whether they need help after spending a significant amount of time on your price page.

Visitors that look at your research papers, trial version options, product demonstration, or FAQ sites and documents can adopt a similar strategy.

There’s a good chance you’ll provide them with the information they sought before becoming a lead.

Basecamp, HubSpot, and Acquire all have chatbots that you might want to give a shot.

Include CTA in Your Email Signatures

An office clerk receives approximately 121 emails every day.

Particularly in the tech industry, nothing is surprising: things change quickly and we’re connected to more users than ever before.

Make the most of your signature if you and your staff are the types who send out hundreds of emails a day.

Then, rather than including all the usual suspects—your company’s website, LinkedIn profile, Twitter handle, and YouTube channel—change your signature to focus on a single call to action.

Maximize Organic Social Media

People don’t use social media to make purchases; rather, they use it to engage in stimulating dialogue and find new acquaintances.

Plan your social media posts ahead of time and stick to them. Don’t obsess over the specific times and days you should be available; instead, strive for consistency.

You can increase your visibility by:

• Promote your work as well as the work of others by making mentions of it in your posts.
• Posing inquiries and seeking advice on important issues.
• Taking part in Twitter discussions on the internet.
• Sending LinkedIn connection requests with customized messages.
• Responding to postings and inquiries from other users.

Additionally, repurposing your old material for social media can be beneficial.

You’ll gain your audience’s trust by consistently posting high-quality content on social media. Social media features like profile links and CTAs in articles make it easy to motivate your viewers to act, which turns them into potential customers.

Solicit Strong Client Feedback and Testimonials

Online evaluations are priceless in a world when there are thousands of solutions to any challenge you can think of.

Instilling trust in your brand and your offering can be accomplished with the assistance of these individuals.

To put it another way: customer feedback is so influential that 72% of consumers will not take action unless they read them. Additionally, 15% of users don’t trust firms that don’t have reviews.

It’s best to look for reviews where the name and face of the reviewer are prominently shown, but also where the reviewer expresses the actual feeling of what a product meant to him or her.

A conspicuous call to action (CTA) near to your customer testimonials can help your visitor convert more easily.

Collaborate With Other Businesses (co-marketing)

We previously discussed guest blogging and podcasting as a way to gain access to an already-established audience.

Co-marketing efforts have the same advantages as traditional marketing campaigns. What’s the difference between the two? The two of you become equal partners in the venture.

What’s the deal with co-marketing?

It entails working with a business that caters to a similar demographic as your target market but is not a direct competitor.

A time tracking SaaS, for example, would not collaborate with another time tracking SaaS. You might, however, hook up with a business that specializes in performance training for corporate groups.

Your ideal co-marketing partner, in other words, provides a complementary product or service to yours.

Once you’ve located a business like this, you can:

• Produce unique study findings and conclusions.
• Host a combined webinar (such as the one from Nextiva, which was previously discussed).
• Create and publish a video series with a partner.
• Set up a Twitter chat with a few of your friends.
• Engage one another in a slew of follow-up emails to prospects.

To publish the State of Social 2020 Report, Buffer, a social media tool, teamed together with Social Chain, a social networking agency.

Invest in Paid Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can help you narrow down your target group even further. Social media retargeting is so precise that it allows you to reach business customers, early adopters of technology, and people who make large purchases.

As a bonus, you can reach an audience right now instead of having to wait for organic traffic to build.

Results of a Google search for “saas metrics benchmarks”

Once a potential lead clicks on your CTA, you need to have a compelling offer ready.

We believe that a full-funnel approach is the best course of action in this situation. To put it another way, based on where your prospect is in the sales funnel, you’ll run different types of adverts.

What’s the catch? PPC can quickly become prohibitively expensive if you’re not familiar with tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager.

Create Hyper-Relevant Landing Pages

You should choose this approach as the one to implement if you can only implement one approach from this entire list.

Your SaaS lead development and conversion rates can be greatly improved by using landing pages that are laser-focused on the conversion process.

A landing page is any page used to entice a visitor to take a specific action. A paid ad, an organic social post, a hyperlink in a blog entry, or a button in a lead cultivating email can all provide this information.

It’s the last phase in the sales process, and it’s crucial.

The following is an excellent example of a landing page:

• Is concise, accurate, and sympathetic.
• Prepared in a way that makes it simple to consume.
• Uses testimonials and social proof to explain the “why” of its product.
• The form is simple to complete, and the CTA is visible.

Aircall is a nice illustration of this. They have a Google Ad for “enterprise phone systems,” which when clicked takes you to a page that checks all the boxes above:

Every SaaS lead generation campaign should include well-designed landing pages.

Organize Meetups

It is important to meet your audience in person if you want to bring them into your world, both online and offline.

Set a date and time for individuals to drop by your business for a casual get-together. It’s that simple. Create an agenda that isn’t too rigid, or even include a few speeches from your company’s employees (as long as they aren’t pitching talks!).

Use an online platform like Meetup.com or Eventbrite to sell your tickets once you have a day, time, and agenda for the event. Have a mechanism for people to register with their email account, no matter what approach you take.

So you can get to know your audience (and potential customers) and your corporate values, share your expertise, and socialize over food and beverages.

List your SaaS Company in Relevant Directories

Directory sites have tremendous lead generation potential for a wide range of organizations, from sole proprietorships to rapidly expanding SaaS firms.

Why? This is because sites like G2 include content that tells visitors things like:

• Information on the product.
• Company-produced videos.
• A collection of screenshots taken while using the program itself.
• Downloadable content.
• Filter by firm size, role, industry, or region to see reviews ranging from one star to five stars.
• Pricing.
• Comparisons with other pieces of software.
• Call to Action(CTA).

Although you can’t change or remove reviews, you have a lot of control over how your SaaS features, price plans, and other facts appear on your listing. You can contact G2 if you suspect a review is fraudulent or prejudiced.

What do you consider to be the greatest of the bunch? A call to action is an option. Depending on what you offer, it might be about a free trial, a personalized quote, visiting your website, or getting in touch with you.

G2 receives over a million unique visits each month, according to an Ahrefs study. Relevant directories have the trust of your potential customers. It’s a chance you shouldn’t pass up, especially with so many alternatives for compelling calls to action.

Capterra and TrustRadius are good alternatives to G2.

Influencer Marketing

Thinking influencer marketing is limited for e-commerce firms and areas like fashion and fitness? You’re going to think another after reading this article!

You can use this example if you believe that you can only collaborate with influencers who discuss software.

AWeber and Amy Landino (previously Schmittauer) collaborated on a three-part series of videos a few years ago. This is the tagline for her entire YouTube channel: “helping individuals go for the life they want.” She discusses topics such as vlogging, social networking, and public speaking.

Developing your platform was the topic of this video series. It offers advice like coming up with a slogan, networking, and coming up with new content every day, as well as lessons learned from other people’s successes.

When it comes to building a platform, email marketing was an important part of the process for her, although her advice does not specifically mention AWeber.

There were two calls to action in the video: an Audible one at the end of the film and a written one in the description with a link to a free 60-day trial of AWeber.

You should consider who you can work with to advertise your SaaS product and produce relevant leads.

Use Quizzes

Even when generated by a software corporation, quizzes are entertaining and engrossing.

Those BuzzFeed surveys that inform you which Harry Potter persona you are, or which Wendy’s menu item you are, are all too familiar to us. Even though they’re amusing, they’re also hugely popular and rather addictive.

A similar strategy can be used to generate SaaS leads. SaaS organizations are increasingly using quizzes, as demonstrated by this example from Socialbakers:

Quizzes are useful because they allow people to put their skills and knowledge to the test while also teaching them something new. Create a quiz with a service like Interact and ask those who take it for their email address.

Even better, you can use the findings of their testing to personalize your lead nurturing campaign and any email marketing that follows!

Pre-Launch of your SaaS Product

You can get a sense of demand for your product even before you launch by collecting the email addresses of potential customers.

It’s these customers who supply you with the most useful input for making your product even better. Consider out this pre-launch criteria for a SaaS application if you need further guidance.

Referral Marketing

It has been around for a while, and many companies have already tried it out. Referral marketing works wonders for increasing word-of-mouth and generating highly targeted leads.

We’re all suckers for free stuff. What consumer wouldn’t want to receive a bonus or credit for suggesting a new customer to your business? Referrers should be rewarded by adding credits/points/any important product feature to their accounts. In addition to making your customers feel valued, doing so will help increase your brand’s loyalty.

If a user signs up for Notion or Airtable using your referral link, Notion and Airtable will credit your account.

Integrate With Other Products

Integrating with other programs is the quickest approach to start producing new SaaS leads.

Asking your clients for ideas is a simple way to generate integration concepts. What tools do you want to see your product integrated with, and why?

Even if you don’t have many clients yet, you should keep an eye out for complementary software. Selling marketing automation tools can benefit from integrating with CRM systems such as Salesforce. Building accounting software? Consider adding invoicing software connectors.

Your reputation will be bolstered and new consumers will be drawn in who are currently utilizing the technologies you interface with.

Most modern SaaS organizations are glad to connect with you if they believe the integration will boost their customers’ value.

Final Thoughts

These techniques for generating leads can be incorporated into your SaaS marketing mix regularly. Make sure you try out new strategies and keep tabs on the results so you can either refine your efforts or move on to something else.

Regardless of your SaaS business, there are tools and strategies available for you to use, and it’s up to you to pick a couple and get started!