SaaS stands for Software as a Service.

Many businesses have already made the switch from traditional licensing models to SaaS, but many are still unsure how this change will affect them.

The truth is that SaaS marketing opens up all kinds of new opportunities for companies that want to attract customers and grow revenue.

Marketers can use these tactics to help convince potential clients that there is no better way than through SaaS!

What is SaaS Marketing?

SaaS Marketing Definition

SaaS marketing is the process of building awareness and helping to sell software. This includes product-led growth for the business, with SaaS teams being crucial in successfully bringing a company's offerings to market.

When it comes to a SaaS marketing strategy, at first glance, the process doesn't seem all that different from regular old-fashioned customer acquisition. You have your product, and then you promote it for people who might want it.

This includes both spoken word or digital media campaigns designed specifically around reaching those interested parties out there ready and waiting!

But with SaaS products, you can't hold them in your hands. It’s not enough to sell with your words. You need an interactive and engaging marketing strategy that will help seal the deal for potential customers in this digital age.

Companies adopting this strategy can heavily customize their products to meet better individual customers' needs, which increases their margins and decreases churn rates.

This marketing strategy also allows buyers to make changes with ease at any time because updates can be done remotely without needing to use outside vendors or employees.

Also Read: 9 Video Marketing Benefits for Your Business

How is SaaS Marketing Different?

The idea behind SaaS marketing is to create long-lasting relationships with customers by providing them with customized software solutions that solve their current problems.

Unlike most other marketing, which includes selling physical products or recurring subscriptions, in the case of software companies selling SaaS, you will often find that they only expect the customer to pay one time. Yet, it's more than enough because they create a customer for life.

1. SaaS Sales Cycle is Much Shorter

For SaaS firms, the sales cycle is drastically reduced when compared to most B2B businesses.

This is because SaaS pricing plans are usually quite simple to understand since they have a monthly charge or sometimes one time payment.

Because of this, it's simpler for customers to make purchasing selections without needing to involve higher management, as would be the case for more enormous capital expenditures.

2. SaaS Customers are for Life

SaaS is perfect for customer retention - often because it takes less time and money to keep an existing happy customer than it would take to find a new one.

It means finding out what they like or don't like about your company, providing more or better than they expect on each subsequent visit, and making sure all of these things remain constant. Just as if you were trying to win them over again the first time around.

2. You are Selling a Service

The primary distinction is in how it's done. VideoForm, for example, is software sold as a product. You pay the money, get the chrome extension, and then set up everything.

You can also provide a free trial so customers can feel how easy it is to use your service and what sort of content is offered without any risk whatsoever.

The SaaS Carrot

The expectation is that you should be able to provide a Free Trial, a Freemium product, or at the very least a demonstration if you are a true SaaS.

SaaS carrot

Each has advantages and disadvantages, so one model may be preferable for your company over another.

1. Offer a Free Trial

The essence of your client's affections is found in a sample of your product. Users will determine if your product fulfills their needs and whether they are worth the money by allowing them to test it out and interact with it for a few days.

2. Offer a Freemium Version

The freemium model was popularized by industry titans like Dropbox, Google, and Facebook. This marketing approach aims to gather data about your marketing strategies to know what will work best for you later on down the road.

If done correctly, it's a no-brainer! Successful implementations of this model most often happen organically through product updates that include minor features enabled only for premium subscriptions.

They're released as free trials, or limited time-limited offers before rolling back to their original functionality.

You're marketing to the masses, and while only 2-5% of users will pay for your product, it's so addicting that a percentage of people are prepared to fork over cash for better perks - such as extra storage space, support, or new features.

The drawback to a free-to-play model, on the other hand, is that it costs money to run.

3. Offer Demos

Offering a demo allows you to create an interactive environment where you may establish trust, address any concerns, and discover whether your product is the appropriate fit.

SaaS Marketing: 10 Tactics That Bring Massive ROI

1. Re-Examine Your Buyer Persona

A deep understanding of a buyer's motivations will help you deliver your value proposition in a way that resonates with the target audience.

When you understand their perspective, the delight they experience from buying what you offer is amplified.

Buyer persona

The more precisely you make all aspects of the purchase for prospects - from product delivery to customer service - the less chance they'll regret the decision and cancel the order.

Organizations that have a comprehensive customer research plan and apply it to all business areas have a higher retention rate.

2. Use Video Outreach

You might be familiar with brands using emails for cold outreach so far, but have you seen someone take this one step further by creating personalized video messages to engage their customer base?

Well, now it’s time to turn the tide towards videos with VideoForm. You can also send customer testimonials and case studies via email or social media.

Text emails work, but it is dull; this is why you need to focus on recording professional videos and speaking in a friendly manner to your audience and increase brand awareness.

Video outreach

This way, not only does the prospect feel excited by seeing a personalized video on his inbox, but he also opens and watches it through due to intrigue.

Video marketing is a great way to set your company apart from competitors by providing prospects with more information before they have even started the conversation.

Videos can also help demonstrate what makes you unique so that people will want to work with you instead of just responding "no."

Overall, videos provide an opportunity for first impressions that will generate interest, leading to verbal interactions later on down the line when making contact.

3. Compare Your SaaS Tool With Competitors

A lot of SaaS tools are great, but they can't compare to what you offer. Show your customers how invaluable and unique your service is compared to competitors by using one easy-to-use product for all their needs, making it easier than ever before!

Competitors

You can record a screen + camera recording video and show how easy it is to use your product compared to the computer or tool. This way, potential customers will know you are credible, and the information is correct.

For this to work, make sure to speak with your existing customers and ask them what made them choose your product. You might find the holy grail right there!

4. Write Content That Acquires

I’ve seen content that satisfies one of the above requirements, but very few blog posts manage to do both simultaneously.

What does this mean? It means that your readers can get bored with your content and stop caring even if they find it relevant and informative because they need a narrative structure that connects unrelated topics into an overall narrative arc.

Simple blog posts invariably fail to deliver on this crucial point. To maintain reader loyalty, you will have to craft a story-driven narrative for people not to feel left behind or confused in places where unrelated topics are introduced.

An excellent example of this is my recent blog post which became a hit - Sales Video Playbook.

To create a high conversion rate, you have to master four areas of your writing content. You need to:

  • Develop relevancy with the reader
  • Establish your expertise in the subject matter
  • Answer their question or solve their problem with how to’s
  • Show the potential benefit

For example, if you had a Content marketing SaaS, suitable topics for your content could include:

  • Best content marketing tactics
  • Content marketing best practices
  • Content marketing for small business
  • Content marketing cost
  • How to use content marketing for your startup

5. Automate the Marketing Motions to Get the Conversation Started

Marketing automation is the process of simplifying and streamlining the sales process. Whether it is for multiple industries or focus on a single industry, the key indicator or goal for many firms is to automate their sales process and get the conversation started.

Marketing automation

VideoForm offers video email marketing automation in a simplified manner. Once you start the process, you can automatically send video emails to prospects at every stage like - inbound marketing or prospecting, outbound prospecting, when a customer is on board, etc.

6. Spend Time on Your Site’s SEO

In the world of search engine optimization, a thorough SEO strategy has never been more critical. With increased web traffic comes new opportunities for growth and success, but only if you're willing to put in some hard work!

The concept is straightforward enough-you need content that will show up when people search your keywords on Google.

SEO strategy

Plus, good old-fashioned technical optimizations like making sure everything looks nice (fonts/colors) or using page titles + descriptions according to best practices will work wonders.

It all adds up into one fast way to make an impact online without breaking too many sweat points along the way.

Your site's popularity is directly related to how many people visit it. The better your SEO performs, the higher you'll rank on search engines and get more visitors for free!

There are all sorts of things that go into making excellent SEO. Some activities work better with SaaS companies than others because you need different types of content or services to impact online.

However, each strand has its set way of doing business which adds up successively when combined which can lead one straight towards victory lane.

Also Read: Do’s and Don’ts of Video Email Marketing for Your Business

7. Undertake Intelligent Referral Marketing or Partner Programs

By undertaking Intelligent referral marketing for your SaaS businesses, you can tap into the power of word-of-mouth marketing that will significantly impact both engagement and your sales funnel.

When customers feel rewarded for their word-of-mouth referrals, they're more likely to share them with their friends.

Referral marketing

One of the great examples would be Xero - a cloud-based accounting software. They wanted to focus on adding value to their existing market and platform, so they evolved into a small company solution.

They came up with an extensive partner program as part of the answer. Xero enables partners to acquire clients through its Partner Program, providing opportunities for events and awards to provide more value.

8. Make it Easy to Sign Up

You don’t want people beating a path to your virtual door, only to be put off by a series of obstacles.

Only 10% of the visitors on your site will sign up for an account. The job of the sign-up form is not just to get prospects through it but to get them excited about joining and consider all the different ways to use your product.

A lengthy and complicated signup form is a big turn-off. Even if the prospects had intended to join, many will abandon such forms when confronted with plain ones.

This is why instead of the text contact form, you can include a VideoForm that works as a video chatbot to your website. Seeing a human speak, potential customers will trust your SaaS startup even more.

Make sure your onboarding procedure is fast and straightforward. Don't ask for information that isn't relevant to obtaining a new customer signed up.

9. Figure Out a Clear Pricing Structure

Pricing can be a nightmare for most startups. I recommend you take the time to consider who your customers are, how many of them exist, and then use what you have to offer to determine a price point.

Figure out how much it costs to provide your service/product, the benefits of your product/service over the competition, what are you charging for those products now, and lastly, how would someone be willing to pay more than that amount.

Keep in mind that consumers are willing to spend more money on items they perceive as higher quality or higher status. You may need to pull information from other companies. One idea is asking for the target audience's thresholds.

10. Use Demo Video on Your Site

The video demo shows the product in use, and it helps prospects to make informed decisions before they spend.

Uploading your product demo as an embedded video is one way that won't disappoint your site visitors who want more information about your business but don't want anything else imposed upon them.

This way, you will get  better questions during the live demonstration.

SaaS Marketing Strategy is All About Long-Term Customers

Yes, and videos in your outreach strategy can help you achieve that! The thing that sets SaaS marketing apart is the lifetime value of customers and satisfaction of current customers.

Remember how the Slack-free model is irreplaceable! Anecdotally, many early-stage companies will see 95% of their revenue come from only 10% of their customer base.

Benefits for long-term customers can include discounts on services or prioritized customer support over less loyal customers if demand suddenly spikes upwards (think sending an email to all your recent sign ups), which may also help to reinforce retention marketing efforts.

Customers often feel like they're getting more value for money with increased commitment and open up themselves to loyalty programs through this type of strategy.

Role of Videos in SaaS Marketing

SaaS marketing has three main factors that constitute its process: Social Media, SEO, and video marketing. These factors all work together to get the most eyes on your product.

Video helps keep people’s attention because it is often easier for them than reading for content online. People remember and watch videos more than they do videos or images on social media or websites.

Videos are a compelling way to engage with your audience, convey messages, and actively teach them about new features.

Give some examples of different types of video content- training videos, product demos, how-to's where you walk through the steps to do something.

If interested, sign up for a VideoForm!