Last Updated: April 2024
Embark on a journey to elevate your SaaS game in 2024 with the ultimate guide to SaaS marketing strategy example.
Discover the 15 best practices that promise to propel your growth faster than ever.
Let’s navigate the dynamic world of SaaS marketing together, starting with powerful examples that set the stage for an epic year ahead.
SaaS Marketing Strategy Example
Customer Research
Audience research is all about understanding why people buy or ignore your product. In this section, we’ll start by showing you a strategy to get a clear picture of who your best customers are right now.
1. Re-examine your buyer persona
Customer research is the backbone of your business, surpassing the importance of your product.
When combined with SaaS analytics, these two sources of data provide the essential groundwork for achieving product-market fit, creating compelling content for acquisition and retention, and fostering long-term revenue growth.
Consider United World Telecom’s success story after refining its buyer personas through a customer research strategy:
- Monthly business accounts increased by 40%.
- Advertising expenses were slashed by nearly 50%.
- Annual contract values for new customers surged by over 55% in less than a year.
To replicate such success, start by posing a simple question to all customer-facing departments: “What makes a great customer?”
Use this insight to refine buyer personas by analyzing patterns in existing customer data.
Engage with teammates interacting regularly with customers, or even better, conduct interviews with customers themselves to grasp their goals, challenges, and desires.
Keep in mind, that the effectiveness of customer research lies in reaching out to the right customers.
Marketing
Good emails make people who subscribe really like what you’re selling. These two strategies, one big and the other more detailed teach you how to grab their attention and make them super interested.
2. Implement contact scoring, not lead scoring
The “triple sneeze” of inflation, tighter job markets, and shaky supply chains stand out as one of the three major trends affecting revenue growth this year.
To keep bringing in customers, sales teams must truly grasp how these challenges influence the way customers make purchases. What’s crucial is adopting a “technology-boosted approach” to ensure customer-centric experiences in different situations.
Dive into a thorough analysis of the customer’s journey. This way, you can spot and remove any obstacles in the decision-making process.
The longer you wait to score your contacts, the more cash you’re missing out on.
Scoring helps find customers at every step of the buying process.
It sorts your contacts by numbers, making it easy to spot the most interested leads, customers who might buy more, and those who might leave—and in the end, it helps you fix all the leaks in your money-making process.
3. Increase conversions with AMP emails
Remember the last time a brand asked you to survey by email?
Most likely, you had to click somewhere else to share your thoughts. That felt like a bit of a hassle. You might have just ignored the email and gone back to whatever you were doing.
Now, imagine if you could answer the survey right there in your email.
Sounds pretty handy, huh?
That’s what an AMP email does. It puts buttons, forms, and other cool things right in the email, so you don’t have to go anywhere else. It’s much smoother.
According to Zeeshan Akthar from Mailmodo, AMP emails get three times more people to do what you want compared to regular emails.
Take a look at Razorpay’s email asking for feedback. They got a whopping 257% more responses using this approach.
Partnerships
Leverage your strengths in business collaborations. This segment delves into how a startup navigates mutually beneficial partnerships with a larger, well-established company.
4. Partner with non-competing companies
Good things happen when everyone works together.
Bonjoro, a video platform, got three times more users by teaming up with ActiveCampaign. Now, users can make and send quick videos right in their ActiveCampaign accounts.
“Partnering with others helps you both thrive, as you’re exposing your startup to a different audience who might enjoy what you offer.”
Matthew Barnett, CEO and head of product at Bonjoro
Both startups did webinars and blog posts together, and it worked great for both.
Bonjoro has more customers, even though they’re a newer company. ActiveCampaign added cool features to help users give a personal touch to customer service.
Product
No founder wants to take the chance of spending extra money on users who might not become paying customers. The startup you’re about to learn about sets a high standard from the start and effectively turns users into paying customers.
5. Offer a free trial so that prospects won’t refuse
The duration of a free trial depends on how long it takes for a user to grasp the product’s value.
If it’s too brief, the user might miss the value proposition. Set it just right (or unlock the crucial features), and you’ll leave them eager for more.
Take Force by Mojio, a GPS fleet tracking startup, for instance. They understand what customers need. They provide not just a free trial each month but also GPS tracking devices for every vehicle, with no strings attached, for 30 days.
This approach resulted in an impressive 80% conversion rate.
Content Marketing
Effective content speaks to every step of the buying journey. Test out these content suggestions to boost traffic, turn leads into customers, and keep them engaged in the years to come.
6. Create a content moat
Brands that rule the search game in their field get more visitors and links and become the go-to for everything about that topic.
Take HubsSpot, for example. It’s always at the top when people search for marketing and sales stuff.
Brendan Hufford, the SEO for the Rest of Us founder, says having a ton of useful content, a “content moat,” is especially great for topics that don’t have a lot of searches but are important.
He tried this by creating a glossary for a DevOps SaaS startup that just had a big success, and it worked. Traffic and links shot up.
This might not work in a super busy market where big websites are in control. But if you’re in a small, specific market, give it a shot. Keep an eye on places like Exploring Topics to find out about new things before everyone else does.
7. Get your clients to write for you
While not a direct factor in ranking, Google seeks content with strong E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) to meet the searcher’s intent.
Content that checks all these boxes enhances trust, credibility, and conversions.
This is where guest posting becomes a no-brainer.
By inviting clients to share their firsthand experiences on your site, you highlight their expertise and, in return, gain free exposure and publicity.
When DashThis incorporated this type of user-generated content (UGC) on its blog, it experienced an increase in high-quality referral traffic.
The team at DashThis revealed that they explored various SEO strategies over the past decade, but none proved as effective as guest posting.
“We asked clients to write guest articles,” shared Marie Lamonde, the former content marketing and communications specialist at DashThis.
“As a SaaS startup, our clients truly are the experts. They are agencies and marketers, so it was only natural for us to create UGC.”
8. Compare to competitors
Out of 500,000 articles, only a tiny 0.8% were comparisons.
Weird, right?
Even though comparison posts bring in lots of people and usually get shared a bunch, not many people use them.
These articles, where your software is compared to others, often target less common keywords.
The cool part? People looking for these comparisons are usually thinking about buying.
“They know what problem they have,” says Josh Brown from Helpjuice. “They’re actively looking for a tool to fix it.”
In simple words, these users are close to buying!
In your research, ask customers which other products they thought about before choosing yours. Take the ones that come up the most and make a bunch of comparison posts to show your software is the best.
9. Create conversion-driven case studies
Case studies are like a thumbs-up for your idea.
The problem is, that lots of case studies are kind of boring and don’t match the brand.
But when you do them right—tell real stories, share personal experiences, and give clear details—they can turn a “maybe” into a “yes.”
Rankings.io got deals worth $179,444 in just one month using case studies. And guess what? They used those studies for more ads and stuff to attract new customers.
Case studies also help make possible customers trust you more.
10. Run “pain point” webinars
70% of B2B professionals are interested in webinars that provide practical tips, tricks, and best practices.
On the other hand, the remaining professionals prefer content about industry trends, how-tos, expert interviews, solution case studies, and original research.
Josh Marsden’s experience aligns with the mentioned statistic. The former co-CEO at Active & Thriving revealed that webinars addressing customers’ challenges resulted in the highest number of quality leads:
“In each bi-monthly webinar, we tackle a different pain point that HR professionals often face, like securing funding for wellbeing programs or offering advice for early prevention and intervention of mental health issues in the workplace.”
Every two months, a significant portion of the 60-120 attendees turned into valuable leads.
11. Write content that acquires and retains
Because of inflation and interest rates affecting content budgets, it’s crucial to use our money wisely—like spending more on customers who are likely to give us the best return.
That’s why 38% of marketers are now focusing more on keeping current customers happy instead of always trying to get new ones.
To do this, it’s smart to listen to feedback and make the user experience personal. This makes customers stick around longer and gives more value over time.
A company like Ahrefs does this well. They talk about how their SEO tools help with local keyword research and teach current users to get more out of it. They do a great job of keeping customers and helping them learn at the same time.
Referral Marketing & Giveaways
Creating viral content and running giveaways sparks social engagement. This part examines how two startups manage to initiate discussions within their target audience despite being newcomers in the industry.
12. Add a booster pack in referral marketing programs
64% of marketing big shots say word of mouth is the best way to market, but only 6% get it right.
If you want to be like these successful marketers, here’s the trick:
To get more people talking about your stuff, give them good reasons. That’s what the Plan M8 team did when they launched their yachting maintenance app. They offered cool stuff like discounts to early users. And the more friends these users brought in, the better the deals got.
These special deals, called “booster packs” by the startup, didn’t last forever. They were only available for a short time to get more people to sign up.
So, if you want people to spread the word, give them a reward they can’t say no to.
For example, if you’re already giving out cool features in a 14-day free trial, make it even better in the referral program. Give them a whole month free, offer special help when they’re getting started, or let them talk directly to the experts on your team.
13. Reward everyone in your target market (seriously, everyone)
Do your best to make potential customers like you.
Even if it seems like a lot, a giveaway that’s for everyone can get people’s attention.
SuperOps.ai, a tech company, did a coffee giveaway on LinkedIn. They asked people to tag a friend in the comments to win $10 coffee vouchers.
At first, not many people joined, but then more and more started tagging their friends. In the end, it was a big success:
- They got 105 comments and reached 150 people who didn’t know about them before.
- More people visited their website and became potential customers.
- They got 591% more new users compared to the day before.
And guess what? They only spent $1500. If they used regular ads, it would have cost a lot more.
Sales
Decide whether to use a gate or go straight to the point. See how these two startups handle their sales talks with potential customers.
14. Hijack online conversations
When the pandemic hit, in-person events moved online.
One company had to change how it talked to potential customers after a big industry event turned into a virtual conference.
Intuitix, a platform for innovation projects, started looking at what users did (like watching webinars and joining virtual booths) and changed how they sold things.
In the end, they talked to over 20 decision-makers in the companies they were targeting and even got a lead through negotiations.
Evan Davies, the boss at Intuitix, says, “If you’re in a specific group, sometimes it’s better to reach out to customers instead of waiting for them to come to you.”
15. Gate your demo video (or not)
Some companies got different results with demos you have to sign up for and those you don’t.
One software company tripled the number of people signing up for its B2B product demo when they didn’t make people sign up.
But HigherMe had a different experience.
“I was the whole marketing team,” says Carly Chalmers, the former marketing manager at HigherMe. “I wanted something that would bring in good leads, something I could make once, and people could use it again and again.”
When HigherMe made people sign up to watch their demo video, the time it took to make a sale got seven days shorter in the first year. And three years ago, almost everyone who watched the demo ended up becoming a customer.
Sure, making people sign up made it a bit harder for them to see the demo.
But there’s another way to see it: people who shared their contact info were more interested during the live demos.
“They knew more,” says Chalmers. “They asked better questions before talking to sales.”
Conclusion
To sum it up, knowing exactly who your best customers are is crucial. Without that understanding, creating a product they want or making a successful marketing plan is tough.
Before you dive into making content or partnering with other businesses, figure out what things make your revenue grow.
It’s like building a strong base for your business so that everything else falls into place more easily.
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