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Amol Ghemud Published: August 14, 2018
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Marketing is the lever that powers your SaaS startup into the next phase of rapid expansion and growth; the “go faster” button fuels your growth from stealth mode startup to expansion-stage success story.
SaaS vendors must embrace inbound marketing to attract and engage their target audience to thrive effectively. By leveraging inbound marketing strategies, SaaS vendors can build lasting relationships and drive organic growth in today’s competitive market.
But the modern marketing world is packed with strategies and acronyms, and no two commentators can agree on the “best practices” of marketing a growing SaaS company.
In 2011, Marc Andreessen said in a seminal WSJ essay, “Software is eating the world.” Five years later, his thesis and prediction were correct — software as a service (SaaS) companies have and will continue to disrupt large parts of the economy.
SaaS companies offer innovative software solutions that streamline processes and enhance business productivity across various industries. With their scalable and flexible subscription models, SaaS companies empower organisations to access advanced technologies without requiring extensive infrastructure investments.
The advent of technology has fueled this change: It’s now more accessible and cheaper than ever before to develop software, and with 3.5 billion people having access to the internet, the potential customer base for SaaS companies is vast.
SaaS marketing strategy provides access to more customers by rapidly lowering the barriers to entry. Software has taken precedence over hardware, and SaaS has become a go-to-market strategy for many startups.
While technological advances have increased software development, the subscribe and use model favoured by many SaaS businesses has transformed it into a thriving industry.
Best SaaS marketing companies typically charge a subscription for their product delivered and stored within the cloud.
The subscription business model means companies reach profitability over time and must continually provide value. Otherwise, their clients will become at risk of churning.
This requirement has to be fulfilled by quintessential services to the customer’s needs, usually termed as SaaS marketing strategy. With the internet taking over companies’ operations, Software as a Service (SaaS) companies are witnessing tremendous growth in their demand.
With startups creating stupendous growth prospects for themselves, SaaS marketing companies are here to stay. To remain in the business longer, a startup must employ inbound marketing for SaaS companies.
Inbound Marketing for SAAS Companies’ success
Inbound marketing is a methodology that focuses on buyers and their needs rather than on your company or product.
Inbound marketing success stories highlight how strategic content creation and nurturing customer relationships can drive remarkable business growth.
At its core, inbound marketing attracts ideal customers to your website, educates them with high-value content, and nurtures them to a point where they’re ready to buy.
It’s all about building trust and helping people find your product and service when needed rather than pushing a sale when they’re not yet looking for help.
Content plays a central role in the inbound process. Still, inbound marketing isn’t limited to content alone: it uses additional tools, technologies and techniques to supercharge the content and use it as part of a fully-fledged marketing and sales process.
The use of inbound marketing is quintessential for marketing process of SaaS companies. The reasons for the use of inbound marketing for SaaS companies is useful because of the following reasons.
Customer-centric
Inbound marketing aims to get the right people to your website at the right time. This means that all your content is very customer-focused rather than product-focused.
Long-term growth
Organic traffic usually compounds over time, so commitment to an inbound marketing strategy can create predictable month-on-month growth of visitors, leads and customers.
Why is Inbound Marketing useful for SAAS Companies?
Inbound marketing works well for SaaS startups for several reasons. For starters, inbound marketing has a lower customer acquisition cost than traditional advertising strategies, allowing SaaS companies to reach a wider audience with a decreased total spend.
By implementing inbound marketing strategies, companies have witnessed increased brand visibility, higher lead conversions, and a significant boost in customer engagement and loyalty.
Inbound marketing also shortens the marketing process for SaaS and the sales cycle and increases conversions by preparing prospects to sign up for a free trial or make a buying decision before they reach the sales team.
In short, inbound marketing is a very effective strategy that can help SaaS companies acquire and retain customers, reach profitability more quickly, and achieve long-term success.
Inbound marketing is an efficient method to attract traffic to a website, get more leads, convert those leads to customers, and ultimately fill your marketing funnel. Best SaaS marketing strategies are usually the ones that are tried and tested over time. Many SAAS Companies have proven that Inbound Marketing Works
Inbound addresses each stage of your ideal customer’s buyer journey:
Making them aware of a problem that they need to solve
Helping them to consider ways to solve this problem, and
Give them the reasons to decide that your subscription product is the solution they need to solve their problem.
One clear example of the success inbound marketing can bring to a SaaS company is with KISSmetrics. Their blog is well-read and shared far beyond the SaaS industry. But more importantly, it is highly valued by their ideal customer.
In a recent interview, Hiten Shah, founder of KISSmetrics, shared that their blog is the company’s number one channel for customer acquisition.
But KISSmetrics is just one example of what you can do in your niche when you use inbound marketing.
The inherent question which CEOs must ask themselves is – How to grow SaaS business? Here are a couple more examples where inbound marketing for SaaS companies is useful.
Slack is a popular messaging platform bulldozed into the SaaS world in the last few years. In a recent Q & A session at Hubspot’s annual conference, Inbound, Slack’s CMO shared that they have improved the company’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) with inbound methods.
Specifically, Slack analyses NPS data and uses it to promote the right message, to the right audience, in the right channel. Slack uses a precise marketing strategy for its SaaS business.
This SaaS company helps businesses track packages from when they arrive at a business’ door to their final employee destination because of their package tracking focus.
They’ve had trouble separating quality business leads from invalid individuals who want to track their packages. Inbound marketing has helped them improve lead quality by over 148.28% while decreasing marketing spend by 90%.
This social media optimisation platform is well-known within the marketing world for the value added by its software. But it’s also renowned for the company’s inbound marketing strategies.
As demonstrated in a recent case study of their work. Buffer does not only go to extreme lengths to provide valuable content.
They also infuse intentionality, timeliness, and transparency into their communications. This has helped mould them into the popular brand that they are today.
Conclusion
Your priorities are often clear when looking into inbound marketing for SaaS companies. You guest post, create your blog and optimise your website with landing pages. And target your audience with marketing material in ways never before possible. That’s why it works.
But remember, always look for those ways to push things further and to attract qualified prospects to your buying funnel.
Inbound marketing software and tools provide sufficient flexibility to allow for real creativity. When you do a sport out of looking for new angles, your SaaS marketing strategy will see stronger leads and sales each month.
FAQs
1. What should a SaaS company spend on marketing?
The marketing budget for a SaaS company can vary depending on various factors, such as the company’s stage of growth, target market, and competition. However, as a general guideline, SaaS companies often allocate around 10-20% of their annual revenue towards marketing activities to drive customer acquisition, retention, and overall business growth.
2. What is inbound vs outbound marketing SaaS?
Inbound marketing for SaaS focuses on attracting and engaging potential customers through valuable content, personalised experiences, and building relationships. It involves strategies like content marketing, SEO, social media engagement, and lead nurturing to drive organic traffic and generate quality leads.
On the other hand, outbound marketing for SaaS involves proactive outreach and pushing marketing messages to a broader audience. It includes tactics like cold calling, email blasts, direct mail and traditional advertising to reach potential customers. Outbound marketing aims to create awareness and generate leads by reaching a larger audience, often without prior engagement or permission.
While inbound marketing focuses on drawing customers in by providing value and addressing their needs, outbound marketing takes a more proactive approach by actively seeking out potential customers. Both approaches can be effective, and both inbound and outbound can yield optimal results for a SaaS company when marketing strategies are balanced.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
Don’t let the media or society define what success looks like for you. You know what you’re capable of, you the effort you’re putting in. You’ve got this 🙂 👍🏼
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