How to Build a Standout SaaS Marketing Strategy: Your Complete Guide

How is SaaS Marketing Different? 

It’s no secret: SaaS marketing is different. For one thing, the buying cycle is typically short. And there’s also the risk of churn, the dynamic of no physical product, and a crowded and rapidly evolving competitive market. 

Even when you do acquire customers with a free or inexpensive entry-level offering, it’s essential to keep marketing to your customers and recognizing their needs to succeed.  

With the right SaaS marketing strategy, you’ll be able to gather a lot of data about your prospects and customers. Although that’s also the tricky part. Data can be overwhelming if you’re not sure how to use it. As Neil Patel puts it, in SaaS marketing, “Your greatest asset is your information.”  

Leveraging the power of data can help you craft a solid marketing strategy, pivot as necessary and, ultimately, send your marketing ROI skyrocketing. 

But first, you’ll want to be sure you’ve got a firm grasp of SaaS marketing trends.

4 Rookie Marketing Mistakes SaaS Startups Make

Remember that all marketing mistakes are reversible. But knowing which pitfalls to avoid early on can save you a lot of headaches. 

	Cutting Corners on Your SaaS Marketing Strategy  Even the best products and services that are one-of-a-kind in your space need a solid marketing strategy. While word-of-mouth is the best  marketing in the world, the problem is that people just don't "talk" all that much anymore. The new normal, post-pandemic onset is driven by online sharing. Capitalizing on this influence requires deliberate planning, so you ensure people have something to share or pass on when they're singing your praises.
	Creating SaaS Marketing Content Without Purpose Did you know that content is becoming even more important to B2B buyers? A recent survey of B2B organizations asked if they rely more or less on content (e.g., blog posts, infographics, videos) to research and make B2B purchase decisions these days. A whopping 62% of respondents checked the "more" box.  Meanwhile, buyers are steadily using Google for research during the awareness stage. (Google has 71.98% of the search engine market share.) You’ll need clearly mapped relationships between every piece of content you post and share. Taken together, different types of content can help you cast a very wide net. Read Keep it Simple SaaS Marketer for a closer look at developing successful inbound marketing strategies. And you’ll want to be sure that your content is SEO-optimized. Gone are the days when old-school web crawlers cared only for keywords and phrases. In this era of super sophisticated algorithmic machines, content must have context. This means you’ll need to connect to other pieces of content to build a story that leads to a killer landing page. Think of it this way: Every single piece of content you share needs a clear purpose
	Not Using Data to Drive Decisions We get it. The mounds of data available to your business can be overwhelming. And interpreting it can be a major drain on your time. But it’s worth it: analyzing metrics is essential to learning how website visitors interact with your content — what to dial up and what to dial down. If you don't tune in to data, your efforts are likely to miss your target.
	Not Understanding Your Target Market This is arguably the largest of the inbound marketing mistakes — not knowing your target customer inside and out. People can need a lot of handholding, which means you’ll need a lot of bottom- and middle-funnel marketing to land the sale.  How do you get to know your customer? Start by getting personal with the people who currently use your product — as well as the ones who stopped using it — so you can learn directly from the source. Check out You are NOT Your Best Customer for more details about how to identify your target audience.

Now that you know where the market is headed and which marketing mistakes missteps to avoid, it’s time to start talking strategy.

Building a Solid SaaS Marketing Strategy

You’d never build a house without a blueprint. To build a solid SaaS marketing strategy, you’ll save yourself both time and money by laying out your plan first.

SaaS Marketing Best Practices

SaaS marketing follows the same basic rules as any other type of marketing. While you’re selling a product to a business, you’re still ultimately appealing to the interest of another person. The goal is to get businesses interested in your company’s product and service.

4 Steps to Building a Successful SaaS Product Marketing Plan

  Step 1    Preparation

Keep in mind that you’ll save yourself both time and money by doing your research first. You need to be crystal clear about who your product is aimed at (otherwise known as your buyer personas) and your USP (the Unique Selling Point for your product — key aspects that make it essential to your target market).

  Step 2    Acquisition

The next step in your product marketing plan should be determining how to drive traffic to your website. There are many ways of doing this, but for SaaS products, one method is consistently effective — content marketing. 

  Step 3    Conversion

Once you’ve captured your leads, you’ll also need a plan for how to convert them. In SaaS product marketing, this is a two-stage process — firstly, you will probably want them to download a free trial, and secondly, you need to transform them into fully “monetized” paying customers. Your product marketing plan should include a plan for how to move leads through your sales funnel.

  Step 4    Retention

One of the most important differences with SaaS marketing is that retention is on the same level as acquisition. Your SaaS product marketing plan must therefore include a final step — considering how you’ll retain your customers, upsell and cross-sell other products, and make sure that you continue to delight them over the long haul.

10 Tips for Building a Standout SaaS Marketing Strategy

Remember that a product marketing plan for SaaS is distinct from traditional marketing that centers on the acquisition of new leads. By contrast, SaaS marketers must not only find leads but also convert those leads, and then keep them. 

A solid SaaS product marketing plan needs to take the full customer journey into account, from awareness to conversion to retention and/or upselling and beyond. 

You need to be clear about who your product is aimed at and your value proposition to this audience to be successful. Here are ten SaaS marketing best practices.

1. Understanding Buyer’s Journey

   You have to know where to find your customers and how they’ll respond to your offerings. In the B2B arena, it’s a person or team who is searching, not an abstract entity. The buyer’s task is to find a vendor who can provide a solution to a pain point within their organization. As they move through the process from researching to decision-making, the buyer’s journey allows them to connect with you at a human level along the way. 

   Keep in mind that digital tools have changed the balance of power between buyers and sellers. The buyer now has a more active role; they reach out to search for solutions that solve problems for them.

2. Understanding Buyer Personas

   You can only attract the right kind of customers if you know what “right” means to you. To fully grasp the buyer’s journey of your customers, you need to know them on a personal level. To create accurate buyer personas, you have to acquire reliable data. 

   This means gathering data by examining real customers and prospects. Consider their challenges as well as their motivations. Surveys are a great way to research your customers while also offering them a chance to provide feedback. Social media pages and forums can provide a wealth of data, too, if you know where to look. And, of course, there’s the tried-and-true method: Interview previous customers. Just don’t shy away from the dissatisfied customers— sometimes they can supply the most meaningful insights. 

   Once you begin to attract traffic and engage with your audience, you can serve them targeted content that will add value and keep them digging into your site for more. 

3. Defining Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

   When you’re defining your product’s value to your customer — try understanding how the customer is trying to make progress or what problem they are trying to solve — in other words, why they “hire” your SaaS product to do the job. If you have a clear idea of what job your customer is trying to do with your product, you’ll be much closer to articulating your USP, which guides you to develop content that resonates. 

   It’s helpful to think of this in terms of a “hero statement.” This statement is a simple phrase that outlines the customer you serve and the value you give them. An example of a hero statement for a healthcare SaaS product could be: 

   
   As a bonus, this knowledge will also help you to continue to develop key features to enable them to get the most from your product. 

4. Defining Your Content Core

   Every good marketing plan should incorporate how to drive traffic to your website. While the avenues are many, content is a consistent way to get the right audience to your page. To accomplish this, make sure your content is engaging and clear — it should connect the dots between the value your business provides and the most pressing issues your customers care about. 

   When your content core addresses target customers with laser-like focus, your site becomes a trusted authority, and you’ll bank important credibility in the marketplace. For example, in the previous healthcare SaaS example, the content core would be how sharing data to track patient scheduling can improve efficiency and boost profit. 

5. Choosing Your Channels

   Creating relevant, valuable content is a great way to attract leads to your website — but to get your content in front of your target customers, you’ll need a plan for promoting it as well. Will you publish it via social media? If so, which channels are most widely used by your customers? Will you create videos and upload them to YouTube? Would a podcast be more helpful? You may want to run some A/B tests to figure out which channels perform best for your market. 

6. Building an Email List

   You might be surprised to know that email marketing is still one of the most effective ways to qualify leads for SaaS customers. Creating an effective email strategy should include offering qualified prospects content with unique value. For instance, gating content, also known as requiring prospects to provide an email address and other personal details in order to access premium content, can be highly successful for growing your subscriber base. 

7. Attracting Leads

   Before launching a marketing campaign, you’ll want to consider how well prepared you are to propel them through the sales funnel. In other words, what systems do you have in place to attract leads, convert leads, and retain them? Here are some helpful tips. 

   To attract the right interest, be sure that you start off with a strong foundation of search engine optimization. Building your website and content on relevant, well-targeted keywords is a process. Diligent planning involves identifying the terms your target customers are looking for and investigating the keyword terms your website is already found for. A web analytics tool such as Google Analytics can provide insights that guide your SEO optimization strategy. Also, don’t forget to consider other factors that will make your website perform well on search engines — page load time, internal links, and the use of titles and descriptions. 

   Still, your SEO optimization depends on having strong content. Fortunately, SaaS marketers have a unique advantage in content marketing. By the very nature of your product, you have access to a wealth of data that you can convert into helpful content — think white papers, infographics, blog posts, webinars. You’ll build authority and credibility. 

   Don’t forget the power of referrals. HubSpot calls referrals “one of the most effective types of leads.”  It’s true that nothing builds trust in a product more than knowing it is already being used by someone we know personally. Be sure to make it simple for satisfied customers to pass the word on. First off — don’t underestimate the power of just asking. And consider adding a landing page on your website where people can refer others or including a referral-focused call to action in the software itself. 

8. Converting Leads

   Even when you’ve diligently prepared to attract leads to your website with compelling SEO-optimized content, you’ll want to consider using retargeting to entice the ones who have visited your site to return. Retargeting means that you track who visits your website, and then show them online ads on other sites they interact with.

9. You can do this via Facebook Business Manager, Google AdWords, or via a platform such as HubSpot. A digital marketing agency can assist with this and customize your ads. 

   Many SaaS companies employ free trials to assist with converting leads. To maximize your product trial conversion rate, try following up trial sign-ups with training support in a phone call, webinar, or email series. Some companies restrict features to simplify the experience. Leads who are demo-ing your software are showing a clear indication of purchase interest, so make sure that anyone using the demo finds it effortless to click the “Buy” button at any stage during the trial. This may mean spending the time to optimize your buy page. 

10. Retaining Customers

    With SaaS marketing, retention should be as much of a priority as acquisition. Understanding how you’ll retain your customers, upsell and cross-sell other products by continuing to delight them over the long haul is just good business. The longer a paying customer stays subscribed to your services, the more profitable the relationship. Therefore, it's important to include customer loyalty, advocacy, and retention as your content marketing objective. 

    Exclusive content, such as a resource library, how-to training, webinars, and in-person events can help you deepen the customer relationship. And in-depth training to help users execute best practices can encourage subscribers to keep using your application. But even with the best intentions, every company still experiences customer churn. But take heart, even this experience can be used as a chance to gather useful information. Be sure to figure out why people leave to learn where you can make improvements.  

    Most importantly, keep marketing your software after a sale is closed. This might mean by sharing use cases, case studies or testimonials via email, or by organizing meetups for users to engage with your company (and each other) in person. 

11. Customer Support

    This may go without saying, but you should consider customer support to be a part of your marketing plan. One way is to make support easy to find, easy to use, and available across multiple channels with tutorials and FAQs that will make your customers’ lives simpler. Sprout Social advises using social media for customer service — for instance, offering customer service hours on Twitter, or sharing answers to common user questions in your social media posts. 

How to Improve Your Software Marketing Strategy 

One point we can’t emphasize enough is the potential that the inbound marketing methodology holds for marketing your SaaS offering. Think of your inbound and content marketing strategies like a buffet — consistently providing a diverse offering will yield benefit. According to Hubspot, 47% of buyers view three to five pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep.  

Why Methodology Matters to Your SaaS Marketing Strategy

With an inbound marketing strategy, gathering data and adapting your content becomes an essential and continuous process. After all, industries and customers change.  

Measuring the right content data will help you improve accuracy over time and alert you when the next round of changes hit — more on that in Chapter 4. But suffice it to say that the key to building a community, or finding the right one, depends on how well you measure and adjust your strategy to develop inbound marketing that resonates. 

Having said that, your marketing strategy can take you only so far. As a SaaS company, your No. 1 concern has to be creating a product that is 100% technically sound and one that people love to use.  

Once you have a sound plan for strategy, it’s time to consider which marketing tools will best suit your purpose.  

Best SaaS Marketing Methods

As we’ve established, content is a core feature of digital marketing, and SaaS marketing is no exception. That’s because it draws customers in, builds trust, and guides them toward buying your service. In fact, educational content generates 14% more organic traffic compared to PR-focused blogs (e.g., company news, product launches).

How to Make Your SaaS Content Marketing Strategy Stand Out

Simply put, content is a valuable tool to share pointed information, whether that’s videos, blogging, social media, email campaigns, white papers, or case studies. 

It may also be useful to put yourself in your customers' shoes and consider the information they need. For example, how easy is it to find your free-trial sign-up or watch a demo video? To effectively progress your audience down the purchasing path, don't forget to include a call-to-action (CTA) in each piece of content.

SEO Optimization

Google now processes over 3.5 billion searches every day, or 1.2 trillion searches per year. That’s a lot of searches that you have an opportunity to cash in on if you have solid search engine optimization (SEO). So, it should be no surprise that 69% of marketers invested in SEO in 2021.  

SEO is a crucial tool for building and marketing websites and content. If your site ranks in the top pages of Google (and other search engines), you’ll succeed at attracting visitors organically. Getting started takes time — and research to implement the keywords and phrases that your customers tend to search for, but there’s much more to learn.  

You'll want to develop your SaaS content marketing strategy with user intent in mind. High-volume, short-tail keywords are competitive and may not be the best bet for attracting traffic that is most likely to convert. Target long-tail keywords or phrases that prospects would use when looking for the exact products or features you offer.

Video Marketing

You may have found that it's becoming increasingly challenging to capture your audience's attention and drive conversion. 

5 Best Ways to Use Video Marketing for SaaS Companies

Here are the five most effective ways to use video marketing for SaaS companies: 

1. Demo/Explainer Videos

   Your demo videos should be succinct and engaging since videos under 2 minutes get the most engagement. They should speak to your audience's challenges and highlight critical benefits that are most appealing to your target market. In fact, 96% of people have watched an explainer video to learn more about a product or service.

2. Case Studies & Testimonials

   To create compelling videos for case studies and testimonials, you should tell a meaningful story (e.g., "before" and "after"), highlight results with specific metrics, add text or graphics to emphasize key points, and edit the footage to create a focused piece that keeps the audience engaged. Social proof has been proven to boost conversion rates.

3. Social Videos

   In particular, LinkedIn videos are highly popular among B2B buyers. They can help you reach a larger audience, deliver targeted messages, generate more leads, educate prospects about your products, and grow your revenues. To increase the effectiveness of your social videos, try posting native videos to your newsfeed. Be sure to use the right hashtags so as to increase visibility, grab viewers' attention within the first few seconds, optimize the videos for mobile, and get the point across without sound.

4. Customer Support

   Video provides your customer service team with a chance to quickly share links with users to answer their questions, facilitate troubleshooting, and streamline the support experience to improve customer satisfaction while lowering costs.

5. Expert Interviews and Trending News

   Webinars or live streams (e.g., LinkedIn Live) are great formats for long-form content. Don’t forget that you can use videos for event promotion and recap to drive traffic back to relevant landing pages for lead generation. You can also turn the event recordings into evergreen video content to get the best ROI.

SaaS Website Management

Also important is designing websites based on a data-driven approach. This method takes the guesswork out of the equation when developing a new site. With a minimalist and data-driven approach, you can measure user response (such as bounce rates, exit rates, and traffic) and make changes accordingly. The end result? Websites that are quicker to launch, more cost-effective — and ultimately — more successful. 

Must-Have Elements for Every SaaS Website

A significant part of marketing these days is concentrated on bringing potential customers to your company’s website. But that effort is wasted if they don’t feel positively reinforced for visiting. This means creating balance: the right combination of elements, compelling content, an intuitive and inviting design, and a solid strategy for maintenance, evaluation, and revision. 

As such, a guiding principle of website design should be customer experience. Determine the elements that will visually appeal to your audience, the type of experience they enjoy, and how to optimize your SaaS website for more conversions. This might take some A/B testing, but the results will be worth it.  

Driving visitors to sign up for a free trial should also be a top priority for your SaaS website. It’s best practice to add banners with a clear call to action (CTA) encouraging sign-ups on every page of your website, including your blog posts.

Marketing Tools That Can Help SaaS Marketers

Email Marketing

Did you know that email remains one of the top methods for B2B marketers to generate demand because of the high return on investment it provides? Here’s where you get the benefit from all those emails you’ve been collecting with your gated content. Email marketing funnels can be a great way to build a relationship with a lead and persuade them to try out your free trial or connect with a sales rep. 

Strong targeting is the backbone of an effective email campaign. Your marketing platform can be a big help in managing this important marketing tool. You’ll want to segment your email lists by persona or by the point recipients have reached in the buying process – leads, new customers, longtime customers, etc. Marketing agencies that work with Hubspot, for example, can help to facilitate this approach, offering easy ways to personalize emails to individual prospects or customers. Your SaaS agency can handle the details, doing tasks such as building automated workflows for email campaigns, setting up proper lead capture and lead scoring, and tracking the right data.

Social Media Management

A successful social media presence doesn’t just happen accidentally. Creating a Facebook page for your company and expecting people to hang out there just doesn’t work. A coordinated strategy is needed, and a good marketing platform can help with the heavy lifting.  

Solid demographic data will help guide the choices you make to maximize your impact on social media, including selecting the right social media platforms for your brand.

Here's what recent research indicates:

Pay Per Click Advertising

PPC offers SaaS companies the way to acquire new leads swiftly and efficiently. The advantage is that you don’t have to wait a long time to see ROI like you do with SEO. With highly targeted strategies, you can present your software using ads on Google. Depending on your market, you might want to pursue Facebook or LinkedIn advertising, PPC or Google ads, or banner ads on industry websites.  

With a keen understanding of the intent behind visitors’ searches, pay-per-click ad campaigns can be exceptionally effective.  

Contact Management

Make no mistake: keeping track of your company’s contacts is a complex and time-consuming endeavor. Even if some contact information is limited to a few pieces of data, there may be someone at your company who has had a more detailed encounter with the contact, which is important to capture.  

The right marketing platform can do that and more — for instance, capturing demographic data from a form on your website. The goal is to make sure all the relevant information about each contact stays close at hand. Other pertinent information may include responses to emails and clicks on Facebook posts. These indicators allow your marketing platform to segment your contacts into prioritized lists.  

By tracking customer contacts, you can systematically qualify the best leads. Entering the criteria of the greatest value or obtaining it through forms enables the automated platform to generate scores for each contact that helps identify the best leads.

SaaS Marketing Metrics Companies Should Track

Metrics are always important, but especially so in SaaS marketing because of the difference between SaaS and traditional sales. Many SaaS marketers decide to measure everything. But this can be a dangerous instinct: measuring everything can lead to “analysis paralysis” — and the world of SaaS moves fast.  

With the wealth of data that you can collect today, it can be hard to know which metrics to track. Do you know what information is worth your time to track? 

To position yourself for success, identify goals and the associated KPIs for each stage of the customer journey in your SaaS marketing strategy. It helps to think of which metrics matter most for each stage of the buyer’s journey. For example, use traffic and click-based goals for top-of-funnel content, engagement, and lead generation KPIs for mid-funnel activities, and sales metrics for bottom-of-funnel pieces.