The global SaaS market is expected to grow from USD 257.47 billion to USD 1298.92 billion between 2023 and 2030.
That’s a 403% increase in just seven years! And while this indicates the SaaS industry’s dizzying pace of growth, it also means more competition for SaaS businesses.
In this context, decision-makers must rethink their SaaS marketing strategies to stay ahead of other contenders. Because in a crowded marketplace, tired, templatized SaaS marketing approaches will simply not deliver the results they seek.
The good news is that help is on the way. We’ve compiled a list of the 15 most effective SaaS marketing strategies to help you gain a leading edge. The list also contains surefire ways of delighting existing customers and acquiring new ones to grow your SaaS brand.
Before we dive into the details, let’s first understand what SaaS marketing is and how it differs from other types of marketing.
15 SaaS Marketing Strategies to Gain (and Keep) Customers
- Understanding SaaS Marketing
- 15 Winning SaaS Marketing Strategies
- 1. Create a strategic marketing plan
- 2. Define your ideal customer profile
- 3. Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- 4. Deploy referral marketing
- 5. Build a strong social media presence
- 6. Utilize community-based marketing
- 7. Implement email marketing automation
- 8. Launch targeted PPC campaigns
- 9. Offer free trials
- 10. Follow up with leads and customers
- 11. Get featured in SaaS listing sites
- 12. Partner with other SaaS platforms
- 13. Simplify sign-ups
- 14. Ensure demo videos are gated
- 15. Raise the pricing
- The Link Between User Experience and SaaS Marketing
- Current State of SaaS Marketing and Future Trends
- Win in 2024 with SaaS Marketing Strategies That Work
- Common FAQs
Summarize this article for me pleaseUnderstanding SaaS Marketing
SaaS, or Software as a Service, is a cloud-based software distribution model where customers access the software over the internet, typically by paying a subscription fee. It stands in contrast to the traditional software delivery model, where customers make a one-time purchase to buy and use a piece of software.
SaaS marketing refers to marketing strategies that SaaS companies employ to increase brand awareness, acquire new customers, and retain existing ones. SaaS marketers try to create seamless, omnichannel, value-added experiences for their customers as they promote and sell cloud-based software solutions.
To derive a healthy ROI on your SaaS marketing efforts, you need to understand your target audience, emphasize your product’s unique selling points (USPs), and build a SaaS marketing plan that gives your customers what they want, when they want it.
This requires a ton of research, data analysis, and coordination among a SaaS marketing team members—something that ClickUp’s Marketing Project Management Software facilitates perfectly.
Regardless of your chosen SaaS marketing plan, ClickUp’s marketing platform will help you run it better.
And with that, let’s dive into 2024’s best SaaS marketing strategies.
Summarize this article for me please15 Winning SaaS Marketing Strategies
As the global SaaS market shows no signs of slowing down, SaaS companies must turn to data-driven, out-of-the-box SaaS marketing techniques to stay competitive.
Here are 15 of the most effective SaaS marketing strategies you can implement for your B2C or B2B SaaS business:
1. Create a strategic marketing plan
You need a plan before your marketing teams dive into SaaS marketing campaigns. More specifically, you need a strategic marketing plan aligned with your SaaS business’s goals, clearly defined OKRs and KPIs, and fits into your marketing budget.
So start by defining clear, measurable marketing goals, such as revenue targets, customer acquisition, and customer retention numbers. Once you have set your goals, perform an in-depth competitor analysis and determine your USP.
Your plan should also contain the most effective marketing channels to connect with your target audience. Though you might lean heavily on just a couple of channels for distribution, it’s best to use a mix of channels where your audience typically consumes content, such as social media, SEO, email, niche communities, events and webinars, PR, etc.
Once you’ve decided on the channels, create a SaaS content marketing strategy covering the entire customer journey, from customer outreach to acquisition to retention.
Sounds like a lot? It is. Developing a strategic marketing plan can be tedious and effort-intensive, but ClickUp is here to help you.
With ClickUp’s Strategic Marketing Plan Template, you can identify and evaluate buyer sentiments, set clear objectives for your team, and create an actionable marketing plan for your SaaS business.
ClickUp’s marketing plan also enables you to define your target audience clearly, identify the most effective channels for communication, keep all your marketing activities in sync, measure progress, and adjust your SaaS marketing plan as needed.
2. Define your ideal customer profile
A vital element of an effective B2B SaaS marketing plan is building your ideal customer profile (ICP).
A well-researched ICP helps you define the problems your customers struggle with the most. It also enables you to align your products and pricing with your customers’ needs and design marketing strategies that work.
With an ICP-centric SaaS marketing campaign, you can maximize customer outreach, onboarding, retention, and revenue generation.
Start by building multiple buyer personas that fit your brand, using real-time data and market research. Outline basic demographics like age, gender, income, location, and job title.
Then, get answers to questions like: What challenges do these customers struggle with? What are their goals, and how can my SaaS products solve them? What are their preferred ways to consume content (blogs, videos, webinars, newsletters, etc.)? And where do they spend time online? Use this information to refine your understanding of your SaaS customers.
Once you understand your target audience, you can develop a SaaS marketing strategy that will engage them effectively.
Researching and creating buyer persona templates can be daunting work, but ClickUp’s User Persona Template can simplify things. With it, you can create, manage, and track customer profiles in one place.
Moreover, ClickUp’s User Persona Template lets designers, developers, and marketers design experiences tailored to the needs of their target customers.
By creating tasks with custom statuses like ‘Open’ and ‘Complete,’ you can track the progress on each aspect of creating a user profile—from initial research to the emergence of the final persona. You can categorize your template based on demographic variables such as age group, marital status, etc.
Using SaaS management software to automate and streamline your workflow as you work across databases and software tools to build your ICP.
3. Leverage Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO improves the visibility of your website and, consequently, your software on search engines, making it an integral part of your SaaS marketing strategy. SEO can be divided into two categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO involves keyword optimization, quality content creation, internal linking, optimized titles, and ensuring your website has a friendly UI (user interface).
Off-page SEO focuses on high-quality link building, establishing a strong social media presence, collaborating with influencers in your industry and niche to promote your product, and having a content distribution plan.
SEO helps you create content that search engines rank highly, increasing your visibility in the top results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and promoting your SaaS product.
This helps drive organic traffic to your website and engages interested prospects with relevant content.
You can conduct A/B testing, or testing different versions of your website to improve your website’s performance and align content marketing with your SEO strategy.
Remember to leverage content marketing software and product marketing software to create optimized content and run effective SaaS marketing campaigns. Using the right tools can help reduce your SaaS marketing teams’ workload by a considerable amount.
4. Deploy referral marketing
Referral marketing is precisely what it sounds like—leveraging word-of-mouth referrals and recommendations from your existing customers to drive customer acquisition.
Research shows that referrals from people we trust are the most effective way to generate leads. However, only 29% of customers refer a business after a positive experience, even though 83% are willing to do so. This means many SaaS businesses fail to get the most out of referral marketing.
One way to encourage more referrals is to offer incentives to your customers, such as discounts, free products, or gifts. However, every business is different, so test different referral marketing strategies and see what works best for your prospective customers.
Once you figure that out, deploy an optimized referral marketing program and make it a part of your SaaS growth strategy.
5. Build a strong social media presence
Social media is a powerful way for SaaS companies to build authority, generate leads, and grow faster. No longer the purview of only B2C SaaS organizations, today, even B2B SaaS companies use social media platforms to connect and interact with their target audience, showcase their brand personality, and demonstrate their product value.
Like most other SaaS marketing strategies, social media marketing starts with setting KPIs, understanding the ICP, and choosing the right platforms.
For instance, LinkedIn and Twitter are popular social media platforms for B2B SaaS marketing, and B2C SaaS marketers might find more traction on Facebook and Instagram.
Before you start posting, optimize your company page and profile with relevant keywords, images, and links. Create a consistent social media calendar that outlines the frequency, timing, and type of content you will post on each platform.
Then, build engaging and value-adding content for your posts. Play around with different formats such as videos and webinars, to highlight the features of your SaaS product.
Finally, focus on the ‘social’ aspect of social media. Promote user-generated content such as reviews, ratings, and feedback. This establishes you as a trusted brand and strengthens your authority and credibility among your target audience.
6. Utilize community-based marketing
Community-based marketing is about engaging with online groups with a common interest or goal related to your SaaS product.
By actively participating in these communities, you can boost your brand authority, engage with prospects, and build customer loyalty.
There are three main types of communities that you can leverage for your SaaS marketing efforts:
- Organic (naturally occurring communities, such as Reddit and Quora)
- Sponsored (communities created by SaaS businesses, such as Facebook groups)
- Brand (communities created and maintained by the SaaS company, such as a Slack channel)
A community-based marketing approach allows you to engage and interact with your users in real time. It helps make your SaaS brand more relatable, builds authority, improves the customer experience, raises brand awareness, and generates sales-qualified leads.
7. Implement email marketing automation
Email marketing is one of the most effective lead-generation channels for SaaS companies. It involves sending personalized emails to a segmented audience based on their behavior, preferences, or demographics.
You can use marketing automation software to trigger and personalize emails based on your customers’ actions.
For example, if a customer signs up via a referral, there could be a sequence of three onboarding emails that,
- Welcomes them to the product and grants a referral bonus (like a discount or a month free on subscription)
- Walks them through the top three features of the product for their use case
- Incentivizes them to use the product or further spread the word
SaaS marketers often turn to email marketing automation because of its ability to host engaging long-form content, and nurture leads, retain existing customers, and drive conversions at scale.
However, while email marketing is essential to your SaaS content marketing strategy, a good email campaign revolves around good copy. With ClickUp AI, you can create original, compelling, and engaging copy for various stages of the marketing planning process.
You can also use ClickUp AI to get instant responses and support on any part of your marketing operations. The tool will generate project summaries and updates for you in moments and automate repetitive tasks so you can spend your time productively.
8. Launch targeted PPC campaigns
SEO is a long-term investment. It takes time to show results. In the meantime, consider a PPC campaign for your SaaS business if your SEO strategy is not generating enough leads.
PPC, or pay-per-click, is a form of online advertising where you bid on keywords and pay only when someone clicks on your ad.
PPC can help you achieve a higher marketing ROI with paid ad campaigns, as you can target your ideal customers based on their search intent and behavior.
However, not all paid media channels are effective for B2B SaaS platforms. SaaS companies often see higher levels of trust and conversion on Google, both with retargeting ads and text-based organic search ads.
It would be best if you were diligent with your research on keywords to target on Google Ads. Ensure you balance long-tail keywords and broader search terms to generate traffic to your website and sales-qualified leads.
Also, while developing your PPC strategy for SaaS marketing, don’t forget to run A/B tests on your landing pages, to make the most of your budget.
9. Offer free trials
Offering SaaS customers a free trial of your product can be an extremely effective way to turn them into paying subscribers. According to a study, 62% of SaaS companies acquire at least 10% of their paid clients from free trials.
A free trial is an opportunity to show a customer exactly how you can cater to their needs with no investment on their part. If they have a positive experience and you provide responsive customer support throughout the free trial, they gain the confidence to switch to a paid subscription model.
10. Follow up with leads and customers
Following up with leads and existing customers may seem like a routine, below-the-radar task, but we’re here to tell you it’s a fundamental part of any SaaS marketing strategy.
SaaS customers and prospects lead busy lives. They are also inundated with messages from SaaS businesses hoping for a foot in the door. When you send a customized follow-up message to exactly where your customers are in their buying journey, they feel valued and are more likely to take that next step.
Your timely, relevant follow-ups propel your prospects along the sales cycle. So ensure you send follow-ups that are based on previous interactions and that offer solutions that align with your leads’ current interests.
ClickUp CRM helps you visualize the entire sales funnel and pipeline, making following up easier and more effective. You can choose from various views, like the Table view, Kanban Board, and others, to easily manage and track client relationships.
With the right SaaS CRM software, you can also track and manage accounts, collaborate with your team members, and streamline customer acquisition activities all within one platform.
11. Get featured in SaaS listing sites
Listing your SaaS business in SaaS company review sites like G2 and Capterra allows you to connect with potential customers and showcase the value of your product.
This strategy is related to referral-based marketing, where customers make a purchase decision based on other customers’ experiences.
Review sites invite customers to give detailed feedback about the software they use. If customers are satisfied with your SaaS products, you can leverage positive reviews to generate leads.
You can also share product details, case studies, and testimonials from other satisfied users on these review sites. All of the above helps build trust and brand equity for your SaaS business.
12. Partner with other SaaS platforms
Cross-platform collaborations are part of the SaaS industry’s future. Partnering with a non-competing SaaS company can boost your B2B SaaS customer acquisition by making your product more straightforward to use and integrate.
For example, if you run a cold emailing SaaS product, you can partner with a data scraping platform and co-run a marketing campaign.
This way, both SaaS platforms generate more leads as they are exposed to different potential customers.
13. Simplify sign-ups
Making sign-up easy for your SaaS products is a low-effort but high-yield marketing strategy. A hassle-free, user-friendly sign-up or onboarding process encourages your more skeptical prospects to engage with you.
A good practice is to use double opt-in forms and have a concise and visible call-to-action on your signup page. Also, optimize the UI and UX (user experience) design for easy, intuitive navigation.
14. Ensure demo videos are gated
If you want to boost lead generation for your SaaS product, you should consider gating your demo video. This way, you can ensure only users who have signed up can access it.
While SaaS marketing teams often debate the merits and demerits of gated content, it is an excellent way to collect the customer data of interested prospects. Because gated video content filters out those not interested in your SaaS product, it also enhances the quality of your leads.
15. Raise the pricing
Quality doesn’t come cheap. Why should your SaaS product be any different? A cheap pricing plan may reflect an unsophisticated SaaS product. If you’re selling best-in-class SaaS offerings, you can charge more.
You can sell fewer units by raising prices to reach your revenue goals. Moreover, increasing your price will make your service feel premium, and this can help attract high-value customers.
It’s advisable to revise your SaaS pricing model based on industry marketing trends and customer churn rates, but don’t undersell what your team has worked so hard to build.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Link Between User Experience and SaaS Marketing
UX is the overall impression and feeling that users have when interacting with a product. UX plays a crucial role in SaaS marketing as it directly impacts customer satisfaction and therefore, marketing strategies.
A well-designed UI creates a positive first impression of your SaaS product. If your prospects can easily navigate it, they know they can integrate it into their existing workflows. They also know their teams will report a flatter learning curve during onboarding, ultimately enhancing productivity.
A SaaS product with a great UX is less likely to annoy or disrupt users, leading to fewer complaints and customer service requests. This helps with customer satisfaction, which increases the lifetime value of each customer (LTV) and makes it more likely that customers will maintain or scale up their subscriptions.
From a marketing perspective, satisfied users become loyal users, and long-term loyalists become brand advocates who promote your SaaS product and contribute to organic growth.
A superior user experience becomes a key differentiator in a saturated market to attract and retain users. Moreover, a positive UX reduces churn rates, minimizing the need for constant reacquisition efforts.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCurrent State of SaaS Marketing and Future Trends
The best SaaS marketing strategies are ROI-driven, scalable, and easy to implement. But in a dynamic business landscape, SaaS marketers must also be agile and adapt to sudden changes in the market.
Cross-platform collaboration
This is why many SaaS platforms are now focusing on cross-platform collaborations by integrating with other SaaS products and services.
SaaS integrations bridge the gap between different SaaS solutions and tools. This allows users to work across multiple platforms, channel their data freely, and automate critical actions seamlessly.
Data security
Data security will also be an area of increased focus. Expect data compliance and security measures to be stricter going forward, especially for businesses dealing with sensitive customer data.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
No future-state report is complete without mentioning AI. SaaS marketers will rely heavily on AI for everything from copywriting to customer segmentation to personalization to zero-click search optimization.
But, a word to the wise: any AI tool is only as good as its user. So SaaS marketers must elevate their prompt engineering skills and familiarity with AI to get the needed output.
Chatbots are yet another channel that SaaS companies will use to enrich their customer relationships, though they are already a part of virtually every website and mobile. Chats will grow more prolific, but SaaS marketers will look for ways to endow these chatbots with a bit of personality. Because customers, even B2B SaaS customers, tend to respond better to bots that sound more human.
Summarize this article for me pleaseWin in 2024 with SaaS Marketing Strategies That Work
A well-crafted SaaS marketing plan can be a game-changer for your SaaS business.
Try to strike the right balance between personalization and scale by combining strategies and tools. Then, make sure your employees have the skillsets to manage these tools. This is the only way to deploy SaaS campaigns that hit the mark every time.
Managing a high-functioning SaaS marketing team requires non-linear ideation, coordination between multiple stakeholders, and real-time decision-making.
And ClickUp is built to facilitate all this and more.
Sign up To ClickUp for free today and get access to all the tools and templates you’ll ever need to execute an effective SaaS marketing strategy.
Summarize this article for me pleaseCommon FAQs
1. How are SaaS products marketed?
SaaS products are marketed through various traditional and non-traditional marketing channels. Common SaaS marketing strategies are utilizing SEO for online visibility, leveraging a brand’s social media presence, engaging in community-based marketing, and using email marketing automation for lead generation.
Offering free trials, implementing referral programs, and partnering with other SaaS platforms are also tactics to improve the effectiveness of your SaaS marketing campaigns. Additionally, listing products on SaaS review sites, ensuring a positive user experience, and focusing on future trends like AI integration, all contribute to successful SaaS marketing strategies and campaigns.
2. How do you commercialize a SaaS product?
To successfully commercialize a SaaS product, it’s important to understand your users and their needs.
Set a reasonable pricing model that does your product justice but is benchmarked against your competitors. Then, leverage marketing and ad channels to target your customers according to their preferences and behavior.
Invest in high-quality, personalized email marketing and social media marketing programs to engage your customers across the sales lifecycle.
3. What is a SaaS marketing strategy?
A SaaS marketing strategy is a roadmap for software companies to connect with and keep customers. It includes things like talking to the right audience, showcasing what makes the software special, and using various channels like SEO and social media.
Common SaaS marketing strategies may include offering free trials, engaging with online communities, and ensuring a smooth user experience. The main goal is to create awareness of your product within your target audience, get new users, and build lasting customer relationships.
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