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Best SaaS Marketing Practices To Boost Your Business

SaaS-Marketing-Practices

Attracting qualified leads without breaking the bank can be challenging when marketing SaaS Products. SaaS marketing is tricky because you need to offer more to consumers than the product.

You need to engage and qualify potential leads. Engagement has a better customer conversion rate than a product discussion. Qualifying leads will help further grow your SaaS company.

A suggested starting point for your marketing strategy should begin with your vision and goals. Defining your vision and purpose, develop your SaaS marketing practices and tips to fit into your system.

In this article, we will discuss the best SaaS marketing practices. These practices have proven to work for SaaS companies and give you actionable guidelines on implementing them in your business today!

1. Avoid discounts

Offering discounts can be deceiving for sustainable growth. Do not feel desperate to gain growth of clients and users. Doing this can increase your churn rate. Ultimately you want to attract the right audience.

Competing on prices could be a bad practice for SaaS businesses. Instead, focusing on benefits can benefit you in the long run. When you convert new customers based on your marketing techniques, they will likely stick with you for longer.

Suppose you launched new software and could use new users to understand how people use your solution instead of offering discounts. In that case, you can submit your tool on Appsumo as a lifetime deal to increase your users base when launching.

This will help you:

  • Increase your users base
  • Understand how people use your software
  • Discover missing features
  • Collect customers feedback
  • Optimize your product

Related Reading; Our experience on AppSumo

2.  Review Site Involvement

Getting into SaaS review sites is an excellent way to build your SaaS marketing performance. Software review websites are essential nowadays to strengthen the trust and authority of a newly launched SaaS company.

Potential customers can see what others say about your product. Customers want to learn about others' experiences using the software. Overall they want to know they are purchasing a quality product.

It is suggested to research review sites before releasing your SaaS product. 

The research will provide ideas on:

  • Users' pain points
  • What people are saying about your competitors
  • Find keywords to use for SEO marking on your sales pages

Review sites also allow you to answer customers' reviews. Communicating with customers is a good practice. Potential customers reading your responses provides positive feedback. Potential customers will also know your customer support team is responsive and willing to improve your product.

Here are some of the most popular SaaS review sites:

3. Make Your SaaS Product Accessible

Maybe it seems counter-intuitive, but shortening your trial period often increases the conversion rate.

It's because there will be a more considerable time pressure on your trial users. Scarcity is an effective tool when it comes to converting sales. Plus, your SaaS product will seem more valuable. 

Keep in mind most SaaS software provides either a 14-days or 30-days free trial. 

The trial length should also depend on how much your product costs. SEO SaaS products are more costly tools and offer a 7-days free trial.

Product-led growth strategies are on the rise. Make sure you keep your SaaS product accessible so people can explore the value themselves.

So consider balancing both and keeping your product accessible while still creating some scarcity for users.

4. Increase your prices

Often prices are lower than they should be. Many companies believe lower prices will get people to register. This is incorrect.

People are looking at the features and benefits first. If your argument can convince customers your tool can provide a high-quality solution to their challenges, you have won.

There are always exceptions to the rule. If you're targeting SMBs, pricing can be a little more complicated. The SaaS pricing of your product should fit the budget of such company sizes.

5. Offer annual payment

If you do not offer an annual payment, start doing it now. Customers find the yearly fee slightly cheaper than paying month-by-month.

The lower annual cost for the customer means you don't have to worry about churning for a year. Remember not to neglect them over this year. Make sure you provide tech support to take great care of them. 

Also, providing annual plans helps make your numbers easier to forecast.

Monthly payments mean accidental churn could occur. Keeping up with these customers can become costly. Committing more resources to keep these customers also costs the investment of time. Offering a discount for yearly billing is more convenient and practical as a result.

Annual revenue provides you a steady revenue for the whole year. The income could become essential if your product has seasonal sales. Annual sales help you become less vulnerable to seasonal fluctuations.

6. Have a good customer support

Yes, one of the most important things is your customer support. Customer support could be a deal-breaker if you have significant competitors. If your competitors do not have much time for support, you could benefit by gaining their clients.

The opposite can be true too. So it is essential to provide high-quality customer support.

The customer support level should be highly affected by your business model. If you offer self-service, customer support through chat and email is sufficient. If the business is transactional, you may want to provide a telephone option too. Office-level business models should offer a one-on-one, live solution.

7. Offer Free Lead Magnets.

A lead magnet is a free offer a customer gets in exchange for contact information. Some SaaS businesses use free trials or ebooks to create lead magnets. You can generate the number of leads from the contact information.

Sales-led organizations offer free ebooks, worksheets to collect leads. They build a rapport with the user to turn them into customers. At the same time, product-led organizations can get pretty much only off their product's free trial version to make the lead magnet.

Lead generation benefits are reducing costs and increasing conversions relative to other marketing channels. It is essential to establish your strategy early. You will gather more contacts and qualify them based on their interests.

8. Create a Buyer Converter product

The 8th SaaS marketing practice is a very cool trick. If you are familiar with the Inverted Funnel Concept, you may already know about the Buyer Converter Product.

The inverted funnel concept is a conversion rate optimization technique.

Buyer Converter product is designed so an organization can convert purchasers into loyal customers. A Buyer Converter Product can convert leads into buyers by offering a low-ticket, very focused tool. 

The idea is the customer doesn't need to go through a lengthy decision-making process. Once they have found your product trustworthy, they can purchase another product with added features. 

These tools answer to particular pain points of your buyer personas. You can also market these as free features. Though asking for a few dollars could help qualify your leads and frighten away freebie hunters.

9. Charge for additional support

Time and money come with the territory for additional support. If you offer one-on-one consultation to help your clients reach their install quicker, then charge an installation fee. 

When a company uses your install team's solution, they save money by not paying their tech team to do the installs. During the installation, you can add value to the installation. Educate them on specific features of your product. The added weight will help them feel better about paying for additional support.

10. Never use hidden fees or lie about your product.

Be honest:  Deceptive techniques are a huge turnoff for customers. If your software does not provide a feature, do not say you offer the feature. 

This should be beyond obvious when marketing your product. Seriously though, you want to build trust, and anything that can be feel like a lie should be avoided. These means do not use hidden fees.

If you offer a monthly or annually recurring billing, service, avoid sneaky tactics. You want to avoid monthly bill credit rates to lower the monthly price. It is also important to disclose the total number of months until renewal.

Be obvious, and do not be sneaky.

SaaS providers often try to up-sell their products by being sneaky. If a customer needs only one service and doesn't need anything else, they don't want an up-sell!

Also, you must have transparent fees. Customers become massively irritated by and unexpected expenses. 

People will pay for your software, but they'll probably churn if they feel they have been misled.

11. Send onboarding emails to new customers.

Onboarding emails to new customers can communicate valuable content on using your product. New SaaS users are eager and excited to use your product. The excitement can lead to them opening your email. Try to refrain from writing these as a newsletter. Make these emails about the value of their recent purchase.

Utilize this opportunity to guide users to achieve increased success using your SaaS product.

Acquaint your SaaS users about your product's uses. Standard features available for new users are great for the first few emails. Please explain why you think the appropriate tool is the best solution for their current situation. This is an excellent place to communicate common mistakes you found from the interactions in the review sites.

These educational emails will help increase retention rates customers get more value from your SaaS offer.

12. Reward users for achieving milestones

Behavior-based emails are essential to communicating with your customers. Sending highly personalized, timely, and targeted messages will help increase retention and purchase new products.

Send emails based on your customers' in-app activity. These targeted emails will help reach higher engagement. Congratulate existing customers and provide loyalty rewards to help achieve milestones.

13. App Integration 

The ability to integrate apps is a significant attraction for SaaS users. Being plugging into as many relevant SaaS apps as possible adds value. Integrating your SaaS products with other popular SaaS tools, you open yourself to a whole new audience. These users might not know your product is available. 

This also gives interested visitors a more significant reason to sign up. They will find your SaaS product simple to integrate into their workflows and software stack.

In 2022, time is finite, and no one wants to export, import, and match the data manually. The movement of data around promotes the risk of data being lost.

Integrations create a seamless workflow that syncs data to save time and secures your data.

A specific integration can be extremely valuable to your SaaS potential customers. Your sales pages, SaaS blog articles, and help center are great places to promote your integrations.

14. Simplify your Signup Form.

One of the best SaaS marketing tips is to simplify your signup form. Users are eager to use your product. Keep your record short, sweet, and to the point. If you need more data, you can:

  • Create a multi-step signup process
  • Ask users to complete their profile later

The social signup process is also recommended to save new users time. Instead of typing signup data, they'd just signup with their:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Google account

A shorter signup process creates a less leaky process. The effectiveness of your signup process can be measured by setting up two events to track:

  • When the signup started
  • When the signup finished

This way, you can measure the signup conversion rate and optimize it accordingly.

15. Use an Affiliate Referral Rewards program.

A SaaS referral system is an excellent SaaS marketing tactic to help you obtain new users. There are many ways to set up a referral system:

  • You can provide a referral link for existing customers. Converted sales can lead users to receive discounts for their next purchase.
  • You can create a great referral system by offering commissions.
  • You can use established SaaS Affiliate programs.

You can create a SaaS marketing referral contest and reward winners. It is also essential to measure the effectiveness of your SaaS referral system and make necessary improvements accordingly.

The big advantage of an affiliate program is that is based on a pay-per-performance model. Meaning you do not have your affiliates anything before they start generating money for you.

Start your Affiliate Program now

16. Follow up on lost users.

It is crucial to note SaaS marketing does not always end with a purchase. Communicate with lost users and follow up with lost users.

Send them helpful content about your products or their industry periodically.

For example:

  • A simple follow up email asking for feedback
  • Offer free consultations in case a lost user needed assistance getting started
  • A case study that shows what results from other users achieved with our tool

A primary re-engagement email sequence doesn't take much time to set up but definitely can win you back a couple of if not many lost users.

17. Host webinars with existing customers

Hosting SaaS webinars with existing customers can help you engage new users. These users might not have become engaged via your other marketing channels. Here you get to be the organization's face and build up your product's trust level.

During these webinars, you can discuss customers' challenges and tackle them using your product. You can also introduce new features.

A webinar is a fantastic way to discuss the new features coming out. Sometimes sending an announcement email seems easier. Putting in a little extra work with hosting a webinar can help you up-sell existing customers.

18. Start Social Marketing Groups.

Kicking off a Facebook group is an excellent marketing tactic for SaaS companies. You can reach new users and engage the existing ones.

You need to create the FB Group and invite your current customers to start conversations. Your products dashboard can provide an invitation to let them know about this valuable experience on Facebook.

Social marketing is a great way to engage with your targeted audience directly. 

Conclusion

These SaaS marketing practices will help you be able to:

  • Generate new users and customers,
  • Engage existing ones,
  • And deliver a better experience.

The application of these tips and suggestions will depend on your product, target customers, and resources. Please take what you think works best for you, experiment with it, and see what works best.

Recommended; Start your affiliate program now.

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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