Have you ever wondered how Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses scale the business in just four years? Maybe you’re wondering what kind of SaaS companies are scaling at an incredibly fast rate. Or perhaps you want to know how to ensure that your SaaS company grows successfully.
Then this article is perfect for you. We’ve gathered some of the best tips to help you scale your SaaS business. Plus, we have thrown in some of the best content creation tools that can supercharge your creativity.
The Industry
The SaaS industry is on the rise, boasting gross revenues of $48 billion in 2016 and continued growth over $145 billion projected for 2022. SaaS revenue has increased by 16% CAGR between 2016 and 2021, while SaaS accounts for 20.5% of total software spending worldwide.
This means that SaaS companies are some of the quickest growing technology solutions across all industries. However, running a successful SaaS company comes with unique challenges.
Well, SaaS companies that are scaling rapidly and successfully today have four years of experience. If you’re starting a SaaS company now or in the next few years, you’ll quickly realize that SaaS is growing exponentially, and you won’t want your SaaS business to fall behind. Understanding how SaaS companies scale their business will ensure your SaaS company can compete at the same level as successful SaaS businesses across the globe do every day!
We’ve compiled some tips to help you scale your SaaS business. But before that, let’s quickly define SaaS and what makes it different from other businesses.
The SaaS Business Model Defined
SaaS, commonly known as “on-demand software,” is a software distribution model that allows users to access the SaaS provider’s applications or services. SaaS companies give businesses and organizations subscriptions to SaaS tools rather than selling them outright.
Businesses subscribe to SaaS tools as a service, meaning they pay for SaaS as and when it’s needed. SaaS subscriptions allow SaaS providers to sell their SaaS tools and applications easily and on a recurring monthly or annual basis.
SaaS has become the go-to business model for quick and specific solutions in today’s world. SaaS companies are now offering software to businesses of all sizes and industries. Companies can use this software to quickly and affordably grow their business. The most successful SaaS companies provide software to a specific market or niche. The SaaS ecosystem is filled with major players such as Microsoft, Adobe, and Google and smaller SaaS companies offering SaaS products for specific industries and businesses.
What makes SaaS different
Unlike traditional business models where companies require significant capital investments to buy software or outsource development work, SaaS allows users to procure the SaaS tool at a fraction of the cost and scale up and down according to their needs. Companies can purchase SaaS tools without worrying about high upfront costs or installing software on individual systems. SaaS providers deploy SaaS applications over the cloud through internet protocols which means that any device with an internet connection can access them anytime, anywhere. SaaS also provides real-time data insights, which is not possible with traditional business models. SaaS also enables businesses to reduce costs and optimize IT infrastructure.
Now that you are more familiar with SaaS as a business model, we’ll share 12 tips on how you can scale your SaaS business this 2022.
12 Smart Tips to Scale Your SaaS Business in 2022
1. Get Customer Insight
Nothing is more important than beginning your scaling process with the customer’s point of view. SaaS companies don’t move forward without solid insights into the SaaS user’s behavior. They need to know their customer’s needs and desires before expanding the SaaS product or service. SaaS businesses should constantly analyze customer feedback, data, and analytics to fuel SaaS product development initiatives.
2. Hire Right
As SaaS companies scale rapidly, the SaaS business needs to balance rapid growth with ensuring that clients are still getting high-quality services. If SaaS companies hire people who cannot handle the pressures of scaling up, then there is a higher chance of losing existing clients. Hiring right requires finding experienced professionals who believe in SaaS business’s core values and quality. SaaS companies must be careful to monitor the SaaS team’s activities as they scale rapidly.
3. Tweak and re-tweak your sales funnels
SaaS businesses with the best SaaS sales funnels have a competitive edge over SaaS companies that do not optimize their Sales funnels. SaaS companies must identify the SaaS funnel’s weak points and make adjustments to make them stronger. SaaS business should also ensure SaaS product or SaaS service makes it easy for customers to navigate through the purchase process.
4. Analyze Sales data
With the help of analytics, SaaS companies can collect precise measurements on how well they are performing in each area that matters most to your systems. This includes understanding conversion rates across various customer segments, customer experience, and usage trends among individual users. Understanding SaaS analytics can help SaaS companies identify processes that do not work well and need to be adjusted. SaaS businesses can also use analytics to monitor client satisfaction levels to meet customer demands.
5. Improve Your Pricing Strategy
There is no one-size-fits-all SaaS pricing strategy. SaaS companies have to find the pricing sweet spot that balances profitability with SaaS products or service demand. SaaS businesses must understand client requirements and customer lifetime value. SaaS companies also need to keep changing their prices for their products or services as their clients’ needs change over time. They should also keep their pricing model flexible to adjust based on new technologies and competitors’ moves.
6. Monitor Customer Experience
SaaS businesses should stay alert to significant changes in how people interact with the product. With the help of SaaS data, companies can monitor how existing customers are using their services in real-time. By identifying patterns in user behavior, Social Media Analytics, and Social Listening, companies can take quick action on any issues that might arise before they cause serious problems.
7. Understand your Financial Big Picture
Capital Requirement for Scaling – Any business that plans to scale knows that you will need a LOT of money. It’s just the way business works. Think of it as adding fuel to a flame. The more fuel you add, the bigger the flame. SaaS businesses have to be ready for financing as they scale their SaaS products or SaaS services. They also need to know what amount of capital they will need to take from point A to point B and beyond. SaaS business leaders should understand how much money it would take to grow exponentially and sustain that growth over a 10-20 year period.
Improve your Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) – You can lower your CAC by optimizing your marketing efforts. Easy-to-use SaaS businesses will have a big advantage over complex SaaS companies. You can reduce bounce rates by making sure your SaaS tools are easy to use. You should also try to retarget clients who didn’t buy anything. You should also think about using SaaS content marketing and social media to improve your SaaS product or service awareness.
8. Implement a referral or affiliate marketing strategy
Encourage your customers to refer your SaaS products to other potential users. SaaS businesses need to make it easy for their customers to sell stories about their SaaS products. You can do this by integrating SaaS tools that companies and customers can use. Encourage your customers to refer your SaaS products to other potential users. SaaS businesses can offer discounts to their SaaS users, and these users may be willing to share this information with their friends.
9. Create educational marketing material
If you have a SaaS business that provides educational resources, you will attract more new customers than those who do not. You can place these resources on your website or distribute them through various channels like email newsletters, online communities, blogs, and websites. People are always looking for information, so why not create your own and place it where people who use SaaS will find it.
10. Expand Globally
When a company offers SaaS, it can grow by expanding to new markets. However, this requires that the company localize its services to be appropriate for the new region. Additionally, SaaS companies should make sure their software is easily transferable between different territories to reach more customers.
11. Make steady improvements over time
Ideally, a SaaS company always makes its product better by adding updates and upgrades. This means testing new features and getting user opinions before adding them to the product. However, it is crucial to make sure that the changes don’t confuse customers or make them unhappy by changing too much and too fast.
12. Leverage on the Power of Social Media
The world is using social media regularly. This makes it an excellent way for SaaS businesses to reach new customers. But how should SaaS companies advertise on social networks like Facebook and Twitter? Studies show that consumers want to see more video content from brands advertising through social media. Videos are eye-catching and easy to share among friends, which gets SaaS businesses more attention. SaaS businesses should create videos that explain what their products do and why people need them.
The beauty of scaling your SaaS business in this day and age is that there are already a lot of companies to learn from, both from best practices and failures. It’s hardly uncharted territory anymore. SaaS businesses should study SaaS companies scaling successfully to understand what they are doing right.
We hope that the tips we shared will help you successfully scale your SaaS business.
And for making it this far, as promised, here are the hand-picked tools that we believe will supercharge your creativity and will create efficiencies in your work environment. These will also give you back all the time you need to be out there, enjoying life while being awesome at what you do.
9 Recommended Content Creation Tools for SaaS Owners
- DesignStripe – You can create engaging and exciting visuals with minimal to no design skills needed.
- Erase.bg – Get rid of unwanted backgrounds on your images and make your visuals more hardworking for you.
- DrawKit – Make your posts more eye-catching and engaging with hand-drawn vector illustrations.
- Removal.ai – Remove backgrounds from photos and images with AI-driven technology that delivers the best results.
- Icons8 Mega Creator – Never run out of ideas on how to tell your stories on social media. Enhance the quality of your storytelling on your Facebook and Instagram posts and stories.
- Text Blaze – Create efficiencies in your workplace by making typing shortcuts for responses and/or templates. This tool is perfect for chat responses/letter writing with very repetitive content.
- AI-Writer – Create high-quality blog content fast! This is ideal for businesses with blogs looking to create a constant stream of content for SEO and Content Marketing.
- Pixelixe – Easily create and generate stunning visuals in multiple sizes in one go. This tool is perfect if you struggle to blast out consistent images on various social media platforms that require different dimensions.
- Pixelied – An all-in-one graphic design editing tool to create more visuals, find inspiration, and create high-quality image content.
There you have it, our recommendation of awesome tools you can use for your SaaS content marketing creation. Using these tools, SaaS business owners can enhance the quality of how they use social media to communicate with consumers and other stakeholders. Of course, these tools will only be as valuable with a solid content and marketing plan in place.
In closing, scaling any type of business requires four key elements to come together. The customer needs at the core, infrastructure of the company through people capabilities and systems, spot-on marketing communication, and the willingness to adapt, tweak, and correct as new information becomes available.