No matter the type of business you run, there are always some commonalities among B2B marketing strategies. However, SaaS companies have a few additional considerations to keep in mind. The following guidelines will help ensure you include all the most important strategies in your B2B marketing campaign.
Create a Plan Ahead of Time
Before you start your B2B marketing campaign, make sure that you have a solid plan. This lets you resolve any issues before you launch your marketing campaign. Part of the plan should involve thoroughly analyzing the market, which helps you figure out what type of strategies will best appeal to your target audience.
Know Your Potential Clients
Part of creating your marketing plan is familiarizing yourself with your clients. A common and effective method is to create buyer personas. For B2B marketing, you could create personas of your target companies as a whole or the decision-makers in those companies. The latter is typically preferred.
Each persona should include information about the type of company, their struggles, and their goals. Personas for decision-makers should also include demographic information, such as gender and age, lifestyle factors, and interests. Ensure the persona also includes the role the person plays at the company, such as mid-manager or executive.
Address a Problem Your Customers Face
As with any other type of marketing campaign, your SaaS B2B campaign should address an issue that your customers are dealing with. You offer your software to resolve an issue, frustration, or challenge of some sort. Create a marketing campaign that makes it clear why that issue is a problem and how your solution resolves it.
For example, if your SaaS is cloud storage, you can highlight the frustrations of secure storage that can be accessed from anywhere. If you sell a background check service, highlight the concerns about hiring someone with a criminal record.
Create as Much Content as You Can to Control the Narrative
Because of the nature of SaaS companies, most potential clients will primarily research your business online. As such, you want to do your best to control the narrative regarding your company. To do this, create plenty of content. Documents like whitepapers and e-books help highlight your expertise, encouraging potential clients to hire you. You can also use those documents to help with the previous point of showing how your product solves a problem.
Creating more content also helps with your search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. SEO helps you organically boost your rankings on search engines, so you are closer to the top of the results and more likely to gain clicks.
Combine SEO with PPC
Your B2B marketing strategy should not solely rely on SEO. Pay-per-click (PPC) strategies are also important. They are particularly helpful because they can deliver instant results. On the other hand, SEO takes time to deliver results.
Offer a Free Trial
To remain competitive as a SaaS company, you should strongly consider offering a free trial, a free consultation, or something similar. Given the nature of SaaS offerings, a free trial makes perfect sense. It lets your potential clients test out your system and see the benefits it provides with their own eyes.
At the same time, it gives you a chance to convince potential customers to use your software. You also get to take advantage of the fact that most companies will not cancel their free trial, provided your software achieves the goal. Even if they choose to cancel after the trial, at least you have still generated a lead. You can always retarget them in another marketing campaign in the future.
Get Reviews and Case Studies
When you have a company that is happy with your software, ask them to write a review. Other companies will look at these reviews to confirm that your company offers a service they want and is reputable.
You can take this to the next level by creating case studies that outline how your SaaS benefited clients. This is an excellent way to show decision-makers in potential client companies that your software is a smart investment.
Measure Your Results
During your planning phase, you should decide what metrics you will measure to track your B2B campaign’s success. During and after the campaign, make sure to continue measuring these metrics, so you can tell whether your campaign was successful. Common metrics to measure include the churn rate, cost per acquisition, cost per lead, lifetime value, and number of new customers.
About Shai Masot
As a digital services provider, I am well-equipped to offer other businesses advice on their marketing campaigns. I am a specialist in marketing and digital solutions, sharing my expertise with companies in SaaS and other sectors. Via my own experience and by providing marketing services to other companies, I have confirmed what strategies work the best.
Sources:
https://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/new-saas-marketing-checklist-need-follow/
https://ninepeaksmedia.com/the-ultimate-digital-marketing-checklist-for-saas-companies https://www.kalungi.com/blog/guide-to-b2b-saas-content-marketing
This is a Contributor Post. Opinions expressed here are opinions of the Contributor. Influencive does not endorse or review brands mentioned; does not and cannot investigate relationships with brands, products, and people mentioned and is up to the Contributor to disclose. Contributors, amongst other accounts and articles may be professional fee-based.