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Marketing Planning for SaaS: A Simple, 8-Step Guide for CEOs

Marketing-Planning

As a SaaS founder, you know that marketing is essential to the success of your business. But with so many options and moving pieces, it can be challenging to know where to start. 

Luckily, we've put together this simple, 8-step guide to help you plan your SaaS marketing strategy. By following these steps, you'll be able to craft a plan that fits your unique business and enables you to achieve your goals.

What Is Marketing Planning?

Many people confuse marketing planning with marketing strategy. But they are two different things. Marketing strategy is the big-picture approach that you take to achieve your goals. It's the who, what, where, when, and how of your marketing.

marketing planning process visualisation

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On the other hand, marketing planning is the process you use to develop your marketing strategy. It's a way to organize your thoughts, figure out what's essential, and ensure that your strategy is achievable.

Think of marketing planning like this: Strategy is the destination, and planning is the map.

Why is Marketing Planning Important?

There are a few reasons why marketing planning is so important for SaaS businesses.

First, it's hard to overstate how fast the SaaS landscape changes. New tools, technologies, and approaches are constantly emerging. If you're not careful, your marketing strategy can quickly become outdated.

Second, SaaS businesses have a lot of moving parts. There's product development, sales, customer success, and more. Marketing has to coordinate with all of these other teams to be effective.

Finally, SaaS businesses are often working with a limited budget. You can't afford to waste money on marketing initiatives that don't produce results. Planning helps you make the most of your resources and ensures you get a good return on investment.

Some other benefits of marketing planning include the following:

  • Setting clear goals and objectives
  • Helping you allocate resources effectively
  • Giving you a framework for decision-making
  • Allowing you to track progress and measure results
  • Enabling you to adjust your strategy as needed

8 Steps to Create a Marketing Plan for Your SaaS Business

Now that we've discussed why marketing planning is so important let's dive into the process. Here are eight steps to creating a marketing plan for your SaaS business.

Define Your Target Audience

The first step in any good marketing plan is to define your target audience. Who are you trying to reach with your marketing?

This might seem like a simple question, but it's essential to get specific. SaaS businesses often make the mistake of trying to appeal to everyone. 

target market vs target audience visualisation

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But the truth is, you can't be everything to everyone. It's much better to focus your efforts on a specific group of people.

When defining your target audience, consider factors like:

  • Their needs
  • Their pain points
  • Their goals
  • Their values
  • Their preferred method of communication

The more specific you can be, the better. Once you understand your target audience, you can start to craft messaging that resonates with them.

Set Clear Goals and Objectives

The next step is to set some clear goals and objectives. What do you want to achieve with your marketing?

Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). And they should align with the overall goals of your business.

Some examples of SMART marketing goals might be:

  • Increase website traffic by 25% in Q3
  • Generate 100 new leads per month by the end of Q4
  • Increase conversion rates by 10% in the next 6 months

Once you have your goals in place, you can start developing the strategies and tactics to help you achieve them.

Perform a SWOT Analysis

Before you start putting your marketing plan together, taking a step back and assessing your current situation is essential. This will help you identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT).

swot template

To perform a SWOT analysis, ask yourself the following questions:

  • What are our strengths?
  • What are our weaknesses?
  • What opportunities do we have?
  • What threats do we face?

This exercise will help you identify areas where you need to focus your efforts. It will also help you avoid making any unnecessary or risky changes.

Conduct Market Research

Once you have a good understanding of your current situation, it's time to start doing some market research. This will help you gather data about your target audience, your competitors, and the overall SaaS market.

Some ways to collect market research data include:

The more data you have, the better. This will give you a solid foundation to decide your marketing strategy.

Develop Your Positioning Statement

Your positioning statement is a short, declarative sentence that summarizes your brand's unique value proposition. It should answer the question, "Why should anyone buy from us?"

Your positioning statement will be the foundation of your marketing strategy. It will guide your decisions about what to say and how to say it.

For instance, if you're positioning your brand as the most affordable option in your market, that will influence the messaging and tone of your marketing materials.

Or, if you're positioning your brand as the most innovative option, that will guide the creative direction of your marketing campaigns.

Ultimately, your goal should be to develop a positioning statement that is clear, unique, and relevant to your target audience.

Create a Messaging Framework

Once you have your positioning statement, you can start to develop your messaging framework. This will help ensure that your marketing materials are on-brand and aligned with your business goals.

Your messaging framework should include the following:

  • Key messages: These are the core messages that you want to communicate about your brand. They should be based on your positioning statement and aligned with your business goals.
  • Supporting messages: These are the messages that help your key messages. They should be used to provide additional information or to address common objections.
  • The tone of voice: This is the overall tone and style you want your marketing materials to have. It should be aligned with your brand personality.

Create Your Marketing Plan

Now that you have the pieces in place, you can start putting together your marketing plan.

Your marketing plan should include the following:

  • Goals: As we mentioned before, your marketing goals should be SMART ( specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound).
  • Strategies: These are the high-level plans you'll use to achieve your goals. They should be based on your SWOT analysis, market research, and messaging framework.
  • Tactics: These are the specific actions you'll take to execute your strategies. They should be detailed, actionable, and aligned with your budget.
  • Metrics: These are the metrics you'll use to measure your progress. They should be aligned with your goals.
  • Budget: This is the amount of money you're willing to invest in your marketing efforts.
  • Timeline: This is the timeframe in which you'll execute your plan.

Implement and Measure Your Results

Once your marketing plan is complete, it's time to implement it. This will require some coordination and project management on your part, but it's essential to stay on track and avoid getting sidetracked.

As you're implementing your plan, be sure to measure your results. This will help you track your progress and make adjustments as needed.

Some metrics that you might want to track include the following:

  • MQLs: Marketing qualified leads are leads identified as a good fit for your product or service.
  • SQLs: Sales-qualified leads are leads that have been identified as being ready to buy.
  • Conversion rate: This is the percentage of leads you convert into customers.
  • Customer lifetime value: This is the total amount of money a customer spends with your business over their relationship.
  • Churn rate: This is the percentage of customers that cancel or do not renew their subscriptions.

Once you have a solid understanding of your metrics, you can adjust your marketing plan as needed. This will help you continue to generate leads and grow your business.

Marketing Planning: FAQs

What are the 7 steps of a marketing plan?

  1. Research and analyze the market: This involves analyzing customer needs and wants, competitor offerings, customer preferences, and the overall market conditions.
  2. Set marketing objectives: This involves setting measurable goals for the marketing plan that can be tracked and evaluated.
  3. Design a marketing strategy: This involves determining the best approach to achieving the objectives, including choosing channels and tactics to use.
  4. Set a budget: This involves setting a realistic budget for the marketing plan, considering expected costs and available resources.
  5. Execute the strategy: This involves implementing the marketing plan, including the tactics selected, to reach the desired audience.
  6. Monitor and evaluate results: This involves tracking the results of the marketing plan, such as the number of sales, customer feedback, and other metrics, to assess the strategy's effectiveness.
  7. Adjustments: This involves making changes to the marketing plan, such as increasing or decreasing the budget, changing the tactics, or revising the objectives to ensure the best possible results.

What are the essential 4 components of a marketing plan?

The four essential components of a marketing plan are research and analysis, setting objectives, designing a strategy, and setting a budget.

Research and analysis involve understanding customer needs, wants, competitors' offerings, preferences, and overall market conditions.

Setting objectives consists in establishing measurable goals that can be tracked and evaluated.

Designing a strategy involves determining the best approach to achieving the objectives, including choosing channels and tactics to use.

Setting a budget involves allocating natural resources to the marketing plan.

What are the 4 Es of marketing?

The 4 E's of marketing are:

  1. Engaging: Involves creating interest in a product or service among potential customers.
  2. Educating: Involves providing potential customers with information about a product or service.
  3. Exciting: Generate enthusiasm and motivation for a product or service among potential customers.
  4. Evaluating: Involves measuring marketing efforts' effectiveness, such as tracking sales, customer feedback, and other metrics.

How does the strategic marketing process work?

A strategic marketing process is a systematic approach to marketing that involves setting a goal, researching the market, understanding the competition, and developing a plan of action.

It also involves examining customer needs and preferences, evaluating potential marketing channels, and monitoring the success of the marketing efforts.

A comprehensive strategy should include customer segmentation, target market, positioning, messaging, and budgeting. This process ensures that the marketing efforts align with the company's overall goals and objectives.

Conclusion

Developing a marketing plan is an essential part of growing any business. You can increase your chances of success by taking the time to research, define your goals, and create a detailed plan.

Also, remember that your marketing plan is not set in stone. As your business grows and changes, so too should your marketing plan. 

Please review and update your plan regularly to ensure it remains relevant and practical.

Joran Hofman
Meet the author
Joran Hofman
Back in 2020 I was an affiliate for 80+ SaaS tools and I was generating an average of 30k in organic visits each month with my site. Due to the issues I experienced with the current affiliate management software tools, it never resulted in the passive income I was hoping for. Many clunky affiliate management tools lost me probably more than $20,000+ in affiliate revenue. So I decided to build my own software with a high focus on the affiliates, as in the end, they generate more money for SaaS companies.
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