Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the number of SaaS companies has increased considerably. Companies can see where technology is headed and are adapting to it. The Covid-19 pandemic enabled the rise of work from home and 78% of small businesses have already invested in a SaaS alternative – such as a collaboration platform – and more are surely on their way.
And because other businesses use SaaS-related products, SaaS growth can be seen everywhere, even in the healthcare industry with a 20% increase in SaaS adoption rates.
As per a study by Microsoft, 82 percent of businesses have shown a significant decline in costs when they depended on cloud technology. Furthermore, 70% of small companies say that they can reinvest cloud cost savings back into their operations. And these are just the reports of the economic advantages of SaaS. SaaS companies are essential to the massive digital transformation taking place and a sea of advantages come with its use.
With so many SaaS companies emerging, your company is almost forced to perform better each and every day. To stay ahead of the competition, every SaaS company needs to adapt to the changes and be ready to welcome new customers with arms wide open. To do so, they must first ensure that their company is growing rapidly and is ready to take the extra step.
Growth Marketing for SaaS companies
Traditional Marketing as we know focuses only on the top part of the funnel whereas growth marketing uses data to formulate insights into a strategy that drives acquisition and increases customer lifetime value.
Growth Marketing is a full-funnel approach designed from the bottom up for developing a SaaS company. It is a way to experiment and test critical growth hypotheses while also laying the groundwork for long-term customers who would use and appreciate your brand.
It is frequently defined as a combination of traditional techniques, big data and data analytics, and it is most often used by premature companies to drive growth through a combination of brand marketing strategies and performance.
Using the right growth hacks and strategies will help you to get your brand noticed and skyrocket your sales.
10 SaaS growth strategies you can try for your SaaS company in 2022:
Incessant change is the key to growth in any company. In the SaaS market, if your company doesn’t grow, it dies.
In fact, the SaaS industry is said to be expanding by 16% each year. To keep up with the rapid SaaS industry growth, you need to adopt the right marketing strategies to make your SaaS company stand out.
1. Content Marketing
Essentially, content serves as the foundation for the other marketing strategies while also drawing visitors, resulting in increased traffic and, in turn, increased sales.
When you have a solid content marketing strategy in place, you can not only establish authority and innovative thinking in your target market, but you can also attract more leads, increase brand awareness and boost SaaS growth.
Most potential customers are likely to look for a relevant solution to their problems online, and your SaaS company must be able to provide it.
To develop a successful content marketing strategy, you must first research your clients’ pain points and give them better alternatives whenever they require one, during the various stages of their consumer journey.
You can start by analyzing key industry topics and then produce content that will be useful to your intended audience. The most effective types of content are:
- Videos
- Social media posts
- Blogs
- GIFs
- Memes
- Ebooks
- Interviews
- Checklists
- Case Studies
- Podcasts
- Infographics
These resources can be used as lead magnets at any time to help attract people to join your mailing list.
2. SEO
Content Marketing and SEO go hand-in-hand. You need to ace both of these strategies to get effective results.
When you examine the growth of the most impactful SaaS companies, it is clear that their SEO strategy played a major role in their success.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is more important in the SaaS industry than in any other. The safety of your company is dependent on getting your products known to as many people as possible, meaning you have to generate and convert organic traffic.
The goal here is to have a robust SEO strategy to rank your landing pages, blogs, content and products as high as possible on the search engine results pages (SERPs). After all, the higher you rank, the more visible you are and hence the more traffic you receive.
Making SEO a part of your SaaS marketing strategy will help you to increase growth exponentially, decrease your cost per acquisition and help in boosting conversion rates from other channels like social media and email as well.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing should be at the heart of all of your business strategies. It is the most convenient and efficient communication channel for one-on-one interaction with clients.
Email marketing outperforms other channels in SaaS because it allows you to make your users know more about your product, send personalized messages at the perfect time resulting in increased conversions, decreased churn, and tactics to retain customers.
Emails can be used to share any news and updates about your SaaS company, feature upcoming products, deliver out onboarding emails or relevant content such as blogs and even conference call invites, or crucial promos.
For this SaaS growth strategy to work, you will first need to build a mailing list. With a mailing list, you can send your subscribers daily, weekly or monthly updates.
But make sure your mailing list contains the email address of your target audience and people who are willing to hear from you. You can use an email finder tool to find the valid email addresses of people in your target market and add them to your list.
Also, make sure to provide them an easy option to unsubscribe in case they are not interested in your emails. This will help you build a better image and save you from getting marked as spam.
4. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is another effective and easy SaaS growth hack to increase conversions.
It opens up a whole new world of possibilities that you simply cannot pass up.
Most marketing activities necessitate an initial outlay of funds, with no guarantee that the results will be worthwhile. This is not the case with affiliation; if the results are worth the expense, you pay a commission and if they aren’t worthwhile, you don’t pay. And what might be better than having others market your brand on your behalf?
The hard work of persuading the audience to explore your company is done by the Affiliates. All you need to do is provide affiliate links and offer your partners a commission on every purchase done through the shared affiliate link.
Industry experts, influencers, and bloggers are highly trusted and popular among people these days. When coming from a trusted source people tend to believe in your brand more. This exposes you to a larger audience and opens up new opportunities of growth for your SaaS company.
For your SaaS company to really grow, you must consider this as one of your SaaS marketing strategies.
5. Building an Audience Base
Building an audience is important to turn your office space from just a garage to a multi-story building.
Every brand needs to expand its audience and build a loyal base of clients and customers who are likely to do business with them for the long term. You can build your audience by getting to know them, their preferences, their choice of products, and what they think about your product.
Start by segmenting your current audience based on what you already know about them. Then take up one of the common traits shared by those people to find new audiences who have the same traits.
You can also use social media influencers to build a solid foundation of potential leads and customers. You can do so by engaging in conversations about topics that are important to your customers. For example, if you are a wedding planner, you might want to start conversations on what is most important for your customers when planning a wedding and then you might as well show them how you’ve tackled those things before by posting pictures/videos.
Create community groups on social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Facebook and interact with them in all the ways you can. You can also collaborate with complementary businesses.
Last but not least you could take the help of postcards to stand out from your competitors. For example, if you are a jewelry brand, you could send an invitation card to your anniversary celebrations as well as a discount coupon to attract customers.
6. Client Testimonials & Use Cases
There are so many SaaS tools available that it makes it quite difficult for consumers to choose one. So focus on showing them how your product is different and what it can do for them in more real and practical ways.
For example, you can develop a number of case studies highlighting your customers’ success stories. Use those stories to position your product in the best light possible and mention all your SaaS statistics that made some positive impact on your customers.
Aside from case studies, you can share posts on social media (User-generated content), testimonials, and user reviews on your website. Such types of social proof are treasure troves for growing your SaaS company.
7. Free Trials
Customer reviews and testimonials help but there’s nothing compared to using the product yourself. One of the oldest metrics that people consider when making a purchasing decision is the ability to try out a product and compare it to another.
In response to this wish, businesses have attempted to provide freebies that allow potential leads to achieve the value they seek in a product and turn into loyal paying customers.
55 percent of people have said that they returned a product because they didn’t know how to use it. That means providing a free trial in itself is insufficient to convert users into long-term customers. With the free trial option, you should also offer an onboarding process that will guide clients in determining your product’s value in the most effective manner.
8. PPC for SaaS Growth
PPC or pay per click is a form of advertising where you only pay for the ads that are clicked i.e. the ads that generate traffic for your website. In this era of digitalization, PPC is essential to running an online business successfully.
PPC might seem like a winner among the SaaS growth strategies, but if done incorrectly, it becomes revenue down the drain. If used wisely, it will ensure less revenue spent on lead generation yet more conversion rates.
Before investing in PPC ads, it’s better to clearly define the marketing goal of your ads- whether it will focus on generating brand awareness or promoting free trials. This will help in targeting leads more efficiently.
9. Optimize your Website
An important SaaS growth hack is to create a website with a strong SEO value and excellent meta-data.
Having a high conversion rate website with all of the correct on-page features that will persuade site visitors to buy is also crucial. It all comes down to a landing page with strong sales copy in the end.
Building effective landing pages for each marketing campaign will help you to boost your SaaS company’s conversion rates further. Instead of multiple call-to-action buttons, placing a single CTA button where it is appropriate on the page, will help you to guide your website visitors to the desired action.
You can also create dedicated sales pages for your SaaS that will lead directly to check out and encourage your clientele to subscribe to your email list or reach out to you at the slightest inconvenience.
10. Educate your Customers
Educating your customers can seem trivial but it can prove to be as important as any other point on your SaaS growth strategies. Customers can not only learn more about your product than everyone else, but they can also quickly be your strongest brand ambassadors.
Moreover, this can help you in improving your SaaS statistics such as lead generation, customer retention, conversion rates, and decreased churn rate.
The best way to go is to pay attention to your onboarding process and create a smoother customer experience. It further helps you to attract more potential customers globally.
Summarizing…
Growing a business is difficult as it is and during a pandemic, it is a lot tougher, even for SaaS companies. You can’t keep using the same old SaaS marketing strategies and SaaS growth strategies you used to rely on before.
We all know that the SaaS industry can be highly competitive, so it’s critical to stand out and get your company’s name out there as much as you can. These important SaaS growth strategies will help you raise brand awareness, increase lead generation, and increase sales!
When you create and deliver highly personalized messages that are tailored to your clients’ needs, you will be able to accelerate your SaaS company’s growth through the channels that are most important to your clients.
The most important takeaway should be that even minor improvements in your market expansion can have a significant impact on your SaaS growth.