It isn’t always obvious how to go about marketing SaaS products effectively – especially the more technical products or specialist ones that serve a narrow niche.
To help you understand the intricacies of SaaS marketing, read on for some best practices and effective strategies.
Time is of the essence when it comes to SaaS marketing success. Unlike the long B2B sales cycles of physical products or high ticket software suites, most SaaS sales cycles are relatively short.
Most SaaS sales rely on a subscription model that offers low monthly pricing without a big initial outlay for the customer. For this reason, most customers are happy to move quickly when making a purchase decision.
Therefore, it is vital to get as much information communicated to prospects in the shortest possible time to drive more sales. You can achieve this goal by using snappy, engaging, and clear copywriting on your homepage or landing page.
There are different ways in which people will discover you, including organic search, content marketing, or pay-per-click ads. All of these channels lead back to your homepage or a dedicated landing page.
To be effective, the copywriting should catch people’s attention quickly and hold it for long enough to explain the value of the product and how it works. You should concentrate on explaining how it can help them to solve a specific pain point or problem.
The wording needs to be clear, informative, easy-to-read and unambiguous.
For example, imagine a SaaS product that helps reduce queues at a pharmacist. Which of the following headlines and subheadings would work the best do you think?
a) Headline: The best app available to help reduce queues at a pharmacy.
Subheading: Make sure that people get served quickly and reduce waiting times for prescriptions.
b) Headline: Reduce pharmacy queues, without increasing your workload.
Subheading: Easy-to-use app that lets customers select an exact time slot to collect their prescription.
Neither example is particularly bad, as they both communicate benefits to the business owner and customer. But b) is probably the best as it provides much more information in the same amount of words. There’s a good chance that b) would seriously outperform a) in terms of conversions.
Providing information isn’t just limited to sales copy on landing pages. You should also create content marketing resources such as blog posts, downloadable whitepapers, and reports to give people access to all the information they need whenever they need it.
This is something that salespeople in the motor trade have known for years – letting people try before they buy is a powerful way to increase sales.
If your offering is as good as you think it is, you shouldn’t be afraid of letting people have a week or two for free. If they discover that your product solves a big problem for them or has benefits such as time-saving or cost-cutting, they’re much less likely to cancel after the trial period.
If you don’t like the idea of giving access to the full product, you could always consider offering a limited, pared down version of the full software.
The best way to highlight this is to display call-to-action buttons that clearly state “Click here for 14 day free trial” or “Get 1 month free”.
When it comes to SaaS products, marketing doesn’t end as soon as you’ve made the sale. As most SaaS companies use a subscription model, it’s important to retain your existing customers.
Here are some ideas to encourage people to keep their subscription going:
– Update the software to include new features,
– Provide regular relevant information and interesting content,
– Offer first class customer support.
As marketing guru Neil Patel says, you want your SaaS product to keep selling itself. To do this, you need to keep a tight integration between product development, support, and marketing and sales.
Don’t forget that the second “S” in SaaS stands for service. All SaaS companies are service providers, so the more effectively you can serve your target market, the more likely they are to remain happy and loyal customers.
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