Top B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies in 2022
Published on March 09 | 14 minutes read
In this, every growing world of business, SaaS (software as a service) has taken on a pivotal role in every industry. Therefore, with the ongoing dynamics, no SaaS business owner is satisfied with the current growth of their setup. They want to continue to explore bigger avenues and enter more industries.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a resurgence in the SaaS market and therefore SaaS business owners are now more than ever focused on not only growth but customer retention along with new cutting edge ways to reduce customer turnover as well.
From a generic marketing marketers’ point of view, it may seem like this is another opportunity for a content-focused marketing campaign to help any SaaS business grow, but it is not that in its true essence. Any experienced digital marketer will tell you that for SaaS businesses, developing a comprehensive marketing strategy is a different ball game. Especially when it comes to content strategy, advertising campaigns, lead generation, etc.
Therefore, as a SaaS business owner, you should not only put extra attention when it comes to marketing strategies for your business in the coming business year but also select the best marketing strategies available in the SaaS context to help you achieve bigger and better results.
We will now look at some examples of B2B SaaS marketing campaigns especially relevant to technology and software. This will help us in developing an understanding of the importance of marketing for SaaS companies in the B2B sphere.
Ahref’s one of the world’s leading SEO service provider platforms has always stood out due to the sheer ingenuity of its marketing campaigns and how well they’re able to reach out to its target audience. As displayed in the example below unlike its direct competitors.
Ahref’s offers a comparatively shorter trial to its B2B customers. This may seem like not an effective marketing technique, but this is exactly what sets them apart and makes this one of the greatest B2B SaaS marketing examples.
As you can see Ahref’s offers only a seven-day trial to his customers. The reason behind this is that within these seven days the tools that the platform provides can deliver results that are more than enough to convince you as a business owner to hop on Ahref’s bandwagon.
This of course means growth and new sales. On the other hand, this B2B SaaS marketing strategy also helps prevents customer churn. This is done with the vision that offering a longer trial, will no doubt have businesses register for a free trial but eventually a major chunk of those businesses especially those which are smaller will leave the platform, thus causing customer turnover.
Outreach is one of the world’s most sought-after SaaS platforms that helps businesses in the software and technology industry to improve their sales process across the sales funnel journey. In the words of Outreach itself, their software helps you close the execution gap when it comes to marketing and sales. As displayed below the demo request page on Outreach’s website is a perfect example of B2B SaaS marketing using content as your major player.
The request a demo page comes with a form that is super easy and simple to fill, which is enhanced by the availability of testimonials of executives from reputed organizations in the world as well as logos and pictorial representations of their clients. Add to all this a video to give a prospective client a demo of what the software can do for them and how will it do it for them.
All these combined make for a wholesome B2B SaaS marketing strategy by Outreach to not only help it grow but also retain its current customers.
Now that we have looked add some descriptive examples of how B2B SaaS marketing can help SaaS businesses enter newer markets and achieve greater heights, we will now present to you the top SaaS marketing strategies for 2022, for you as a business owner to adapt to not only grow sales but also expand your user base but alongside deliver excellent services and customer satisfaction.
Leveraging SEO to not only drive relevant but organic traffic to your website is an effective strategy but it is also a need of the hour. We suggest that you take guidance from SEO experts that help SaaS businesses to increase their website traffic such as those at scalablemedia.io.
They will not only help you determine your end objectives and KPIs but would also support you in developing market profiles for your prospective customers as well as identifying the keywords that a relevant to your software and ensuring that your website and its linked pages are all SEO appropriate and ready to deliver the best marketing results.
In the end, you can then measure your results against the set objectives and keep on adding in terms of SEO content using a step-by-step approach.
Product-led marketing for SaaS businesses involves putting your software at the center stage in such a way that its features, usability, and value proposition does all the marketing and selling for you. We suggest that you invest in product-led marketing by developing demos, offering free trials as well as conducting webinars.
All these techniques prove fruitful in product-led marketing because these tools help the end consumer understand your product and see it in action before they make the purchase. This ease of trying out the product and experiencing it combined with the utility of the software itself will not only help you increase your sales but will also help you in terms of market research and customer profiling.
Content-led marketing for SaaS businesses majorly focuses on inbound marketing. You must ensure the availability of the right fit content for the right target market at the right time. Content-led marketing for SaaS businesses is very different from conventional content-led marketing because not only are you marketing for a product alongside you are marketing for a service as well that relies heavily on word of mouth and different SEO tools.
What you need to do is identify your customers’ needs in relevance to the customers’ profile and then develop a content-focused marketing strategy that hits the customer right where you need it to for driving sales and brand awareness.
In your content-led marketing strategy for your SaaS business always remember the distribution channels and how you want the right information to be delivered to the right customer through the right channels.
The SaaS industry relies heavily on word of mouth, brand buzz, and customer satisfaction due to the nature of the product being offered. As all of these are heavily dependent on the performance of your product, you should develop your service offerings keeping in view the human part of the marketing process.
One of the key strategies that you as a SaaS business owner can employ in the year 2022 for your business is to have it listed on review sites for the right exposure. By the right exposure we mean not all review websites, only those which are credible and are meant for your target audience.
Therefore, you must identify only credible review sites where you can have your product or service listed to be reviewed by customers and users alike. This when done right is the most effective form of marketing and it will not only result in increased sales but will also increase customer loyalty.
Building on reviews and customer satisfaction, one other strategy that you can employ for your SaaS business in 2022 is approaching your current users and customers and asking them to review your SaaS business and product on popular review websites particularly made for businesses. The best examples of such websites are Trust pilot, G2, and Podium.
Websites like these offer freemium services for businesses and those listed here actually enjoy great credibility in the market and are trusted by SaaS customers and SaaS businesses alike for their transparency and truthfulness.
When it comes to marketing in the B2B sphere for SaaS, Google Ads again stands out as one of the most effective tools. Using Google Ads, you will not only be able to achieve quick results due to the search query nature of these ads but also as these ads are text-based and are triggered by certain keywords.
The traffic they divert towards you and the leads that are generated through these are organic and have a high conversion rate when compared with other search engine platforms. Using Google Ads, you can deploy a manual bidding strategy and use the most searched keywords to achieve maximum benefits from your investment.
In the example below it is well illustrated that how by the use of the correct keywords and the tactile bidding system you can become one of the top listed SaaS businesses.
Another strategy that you can deploy for your B2B SaaS Business in 2022 is the use of affiliate marketing, to improve your market presence, brand awareness and of course garner more exposure. Search is proven that in the sass industry over 17% of the orders received for sales, purchases, and long-term affiliations are driven through affiliate marketing.
For an affiliate marketing strategy to deliver results, you need to work closely with third-party affiliate marketers and develop a structured cost structure within the SaaS business to not only reduce costs but also increase your ROI on this investment.
Always remember to work in close coordination with your affiliate marketing partners and help them in putting the word out there for your brand by providing them strong content in the form of a tagline, call banners, and even interesting images to put on their websites or blogs to drive traffic towards your business.
Freemium plans follow a two-pronged approach, to reduce customer acquisition costs for your SaaS business. If you decide to deploy a freemium plan strategy for your SaaS business, then you will be required to offer two options to your prospective customers.
The first would be called the freemium where the users can sign up for free and have access to a limited number of tools and resources. Deploying this technique reduces the barriers to entry and as it helps the customer experience the product firsthand.
The conversion rate for such a strategy is over 73% along with a significantly reduced customer acquisition cost as previously discussed. The second prong of this approach refers to the paid version of your product which the customer would opt for once they have experienced the freemium.
Always remember that if you will create ease for your customer, the customer will create ease for you, and this cannot be better demonstrated by talking about the purchase processes involved in SaaS products. The purchase process itself for a SaaS product comprises different transactional steps that need to be fulfilled by the prospective customer on their end along with certain steps present on the business owner’s end, for the deal to be locked in and finalized.
Removing redundant steps and making it easier for the customer to access your product, will not only save time and cost but will also help raise customer satisfaction. For the optimization of this process always remember to have your purchase policies laid out in the terms and conditions and have customer support readily available for the client in case of any queries.
Co-marketing refers to strategic partnerships between two non-competing entities that work towards providing services or products to a similar or same segment of the market. It is one of the most effective strategies being deployed in the SaaS industry for complimentary products to raise brand awareness, generate leads and increase sales.
Not only does it help the collaborating companies in widening their customer base, but it also helps the prospective customers because they find their required products or services to fulfill their needs and demands together in one place often advertised as a bundle and sometimes even at reduced costs. It not only helps them in saving their time and effort but also creates a certain sense of camaraderie.
An example to understand the concept of co-marketing in the SaaS industry could be the strategic partnership between a financial software provider with an inventory management system developer, both targeting the logistics industry.
A SaaS marketing strategy refers to the marketing strategy specifically developed for a software as a service product (SaaS). This strategy focuses on the tools and techniques that can be deployed mainly in a digital setting to create brand awareness, generate leads, increase sales and help retain customers.
The marketing efforts done under the SaaS marketing strategy need to evolve quickly given the dynamic nature of the industry to ensure that customers are attracted and retained for a long journey with your business. Products being offered under the SaaS marketing strategy are subscription-based software, therefore the content that must be deployed for the promotion and sales needs to be specifically tailored and updated with the market demographics.
Let us now answer some of the most frequently asked questions when it comes to B2B SaaS marketing strategies.
Using any 5 of the top strategies for B2B SaaS marketing in 2022 as highlighted by us, you can get your SaaS to sell itself. Using these proven and effective marketing strategies, especially the product-led marketing strategy and the offering of freemium plans, you will have customers approaching you instead of you going out to approach them to generate sales.
The beauty of any 5 of these strategies is that not only have they delivered proven results time and time again, but they’re also backed by empirical research conducted by industry experts and testimonials of satisfied customers like those represented at scalablemedia.io to support their credibility, effectiveness and of course potential.
SaaS marketing differs from conventional marketing in the sense that you have not only marketers working towards achieving a particular goal but developers and technical resources as well. In SaaS marketing, all these three need to work in close coordination together with an equal stake and efforts to drive a marketing campaign that will deliver tangible results.
The developers might have made a great product but without the help of the marketers and the support technical resources especially when it comes to customer service, the SaaS product will not achieve its true potential. Therefore, these three need to work like a well-oiled machine to keep on delivering excellent service to the customer under SaaS marketing.
SaaS marketing strategies that we have covered here are developed to widen the customer base, increase sales and reduce customer churn. But keeping in view the dynamic nature of the industry and how technology is evolving at a pace faster than ever we suggest that you stay abreast of the latest development in the SaaS sector especially.
When it comes to marketing trends, to achieve the best outcomes. We recommend that you determine and use only those strategies out of the best ones that are well aligned with your business objective and its operational structure as well.
Given the customizable nature of SaaS a product especially when it comes to B2B marketing, the possibilities are endless, and a thorough marketing strategy can deliver amazing results if used alongside strong market research and customer insight.
Editorial Staff at Scalable Media is a team of SEO experts led by M. Farasat Khan. We have been helping SaaS businesses scale through performance led SEO strategies.
Editorial Staff at Scalable Media is a team of SEO experts led by M. Farasat Khan. We have been helping SaaS businesses scale through performance led SEO strategies.
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