SaaS Marketing Guide: 8 Techniques to Shine in 2024

If you’ve dipped your toes in the SaaS marketing world, you will discover that it’s a different kind of beast. Unlike traditional types of marketing, where you sell physical products, SaaS focuses on selling experiences. It’s about selling something intangible yet invaluable. In addition to that, there is growing competition in this industry, as new SaaS companies keep coming out each year. To put this into perspective, there are almost 30,000 SaaS companies worldwide today!

If SaaS marketing seems daunting, you’re not alone. But we’ve got your back! This guide will provide tips, tactics, and tools to ace your SaaS marketing game and win over your customers.

First, let’s start with the basics. 👏

Understanding the SaaS business model

Knowing how the SaaS business model works can help you build smart marketing strategies. This knowledge is the first step towards success in SaaS marketing.

The basics of SaaS

So, what exactly is SaaS? Well, it stands for Software as a Service, and it’s a cloud-based software distribution model. Unlike traditional software, SaaS allows users to access applications and data from anywhere, anytime, without needing to install or maintain the software on their devices. This model is highly efficient and cost-effective since it eliminates the need for physical distribution and reduces the demand for customer hardware. SaaS providers typically charge a subscription fee, offering various plans catering to different user needs, whether individuals or large enterprises.

Different types of SaaS products

There are many different types of SaaS products in the market, each designed to improve different functions, industries, or tasks. We could broadly group them into two categories:

👉 Horizontal SaaS products:

These are SaaS products that can be used across various industries or functions without much customization. These solutions typically offer services or features applicable in multiple settings.

1. Project Management Tools that help teams manage projects, collaborate on them, organize tasks, and track their progress.
2. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Solutions help manage current customer interactions, accurately record prospective customers, analyze ideal customer data, and streamline the SaaS sales process.
3. Collaboration Tools that facilitate communication and collaboration among team members, whether it’s through text messaging, video chats, or file sharing.
4. Accounting and Financial Management Software that helps businesses manage their finances, including invoicing, expense tracking, payroll, and financial reporting.
5. HR/Employee Management Platforms that make human resources tasks easier. They handle everything from hiring and onboarding new employees to managing their performance and keeping them engaged.
6. Marketing Automation Tools that automate different types of marketing tasks, such as email campaigns, lead nurturing, social media management, and analytics.
7. Productivity Suites that offer a range of productivity tools, like spreadsheets, note-taking apps, calendars, reminders, and more, all in one package.
8. Customer Support and Helpdesk Software that uses ticketing systems, live chats, knowledge bases, and SaaS customer success analytics to promote efficient service for current customers.
9. Analytics and Business Intelligence (BI) Platforms that help businesses gather, study, and picture their data.
10. AI Content Creation Tools help generate content for various purposes using simple text prompts (or ChatGPT prompts if you use an AI chat engine).

👉 Vertical SaaS products

Vertical SaaS solutions are designed for particular industries, such as healthcare, government, retail, and others. These solutions come with features specifically tailored to meet the unique requirements of these industries and usually offer more advanced customization options.

1. Healthcare Practice Management Tools offer comprehensive solutions to manage patient records, appointments, and billing.
2. Real Estate Property Management Solutions provides property managers with tools to streamline leasing, accounting, rent collection, maintenance requests, and tenant communication.
3. Legal Practice Management Tools help law firms and legal professionals manage cases, documents, billing, time tracking, and client communication more efficiently.
4. Hospitality Management Tools are like all-in-one platforms for hotels, resorts, and vacation rentals. They handle everything from reservations and guest bookings to day-to-day operations like housekeeping.
5. Education Management Systems schools and e-learning platforms are used to create courses, enroll students, analyze learning data, and complete any other e-learning tasks.
6. Financial Services Solutions are designed to help financial institutions, investment companies, and asset managers with various tasks.
7. Food and Beverage Management Platforms that provide restaurants and food service businesses with point-of-sale (POS) systems, inventory management, table reservations, and other useful features.

The options for vertical SaaS solutions are literally endless. However, this diversity in SaaS products means that marketing techniques must be tailored to each product’s unique features and target audience. That’s what we’re going to explore in the upcoming sections.

What is SaaS marketing?

SaaS marketing is a unique blend of marketing strategies to promote and sell SaaS products. You’re not just selling a one-time purchase or transaction. Instead, you’ll nurture relationships and offer ongoing value solutions. SaaS marketing focuses on showcasing the benefits of software as a service, emphasizing its convenience, scalability potential, and other key features that will entice your target audience to choose your SaaS product over the competitors.

Now, let’s discuss why marketing is crucial for the success of SaaS businesses.

• Firstly, an impactful SaaS marketing strategy makes your company stand out. It gives you a chance to explain your unique value proposition, highlight the advantages of your product, and persuade prospective customers to choose your solution over others.
• Since SaaS buyers spend 27% of their time researching online, your product must appear in their search results. This can be achieved by employing a strong content strategy complemented by effective search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
• Customer retention is critical since SaaS companies operate on Regardingodel. For that, you need a solid marketing plan to continuously engage your current customers, nurture customer relationships, and ultimately reduce customer churn rate, earning you loyal customers that stick.

In a nutshell, SaaS marketing isn’t just about promoting your product to attract ideal customers; it’s about building long-term customer loyalty, driving recurring revenue, and sustaining growth. Without a solid SaaS marketing and content strategy, even the most innovative SaaS products may struggle to gain traction in the market.

But the question is, where do you start? Exploring the different marketing channels you can leverage for SaaS growth would be an excellent starting point.

SaaS marketing channels to target

While the marketing channels available to SaaS businesses differ from those used in other industries, the tactics used in each vary. Choosing the right marketing channels to promote your business can make all the difference. It’s all about going where your prospective customers are most active and engaging them with quality content.

Check out these nine marketing channels you might want to incorporate into your SaaS marketing plan.

1. Content marketing

Content marketing is still king in the SaaS world, and platforms that use it skillfully can expect their lead generation to skyrocket by nearly 400%. Offering insightful and valuable content could benefit you in multiple ways; it attracts new users while preventing current ones from drifting away. From blog articles and ebooks to whitepapers, case studies, and video content, there are many different content formats that you can use to demonstrate your knowledge and establish trust.

Regarding SaaS marketing, tailoring your content strategy to your product’s unique features is important. Setting up a knowledge hub can effectively introduce new customers to your product and offer solutions for any problems they might encounter. You might also want to invest in how-to guides, case studies with current customer success stories, and other types of educational content.

An AI content workspace like Narrato can be useful for content reaction and marketing. It offers over 100+ AI tools and templates to help you create content faster, including an AI blog writer, AI copywriter, social media post generator, and product description. The platform also offers a unique AI autopilot for content creation – the AI Content Genie – that automatically generates weekly blog and social media content from the themes and website URLs you provide as a one-time input. You can also schedule or publish content directly from the platform on WordPress, Webflow, and social media.

Other AI tools on Narrato that can help you at different stages of content creation include an AI topic generator, AI SEO tools (SEO content brief generator and AI keyword generator), AI content enhancement tools like AI Content Improver, Rewriter, and Summarizer, AI brand voice generator, and custom AI templates for any type of marketing material you need.

2. Social media marketing

Social media platforms are a goldmine for engaging directly with your audience. They offer an informal setting to showcase your SaaS product’s personality, share user success stories, and publish updates or features. What’s more, the content you’ve crafted for your blog, website, or other channels doesn’t have to go to waste. You can breathe new life into it and share it on these platforms, allowing more people to see it and promoting further engagement.

Platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook are excellent for B2B SaaS companies, while Instagram and TikTok might be more suitable for B2C SaaS products that benefit from visual storytelling. But these suggestions aren’t set in stone. Your main focus should be identifying where potential buyers spend their time online and producing content that grabs their attention.

Influencer marketing can also help boost your social media engagement. This marketing technique uses your existing users and well-known people in your niche to market your SaaS products on social media. You can start by contacting a few influencers and closely monitoring the type of content they create. Once you zero down on the influencers, focus more on your marketing strategy for influencer marketing campaigns on social media. Try different creative approaches to see which gets the most user interaction.

3. Email marketing

Though it’s been around for a while, email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels, especially for SaaS companies. Every dollar invested in email marketing gives an average return on investment of $36 (Litmus). This marketing channel lets you connect directly with your audience to share updates, informative content, and exclusive deals.

In SaaS marketing, having a good onboarding email sequence is just as important as email sequences for your sales cycle. This helps with customer retention, reduces customer churn rate, and gets them to use your product more, which can likely increase customer lifetime value. Including key people from your product team to create these email campaigns is a good idea. Your email marketing plan should also cover the other stages of the customer’s journey through the sales funnel to engage, re-engage, and sell more products or services to your ideal customers using different email campaigns.

At every stage, the focus should be on sending personalized messages. HelpCrunch email marketing software can help you with it all.

It streamlines your email marketing workflow by automating your email campaigns. You can craft and personalize standalone newsletters to share useful content and blog posts, company news and updates, event announcements, or anything else. You can also use its AI Editor for Inbox to write polished messages and emails with a click.

4. Search Engine Optimization

If you’re a SaaS company looking to boost your online presence, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must-have in your marketing plan. By skillfully incorporating relevant keywords into your website and content, you increase your chances of securing a prime spot on search engine results pages. So when potential customers look for solutions your product can offer, they’ll find your content at the top.

SEO for SaaS businesses varies from traditional SEO in two main aspects. Firstly, SaaS SEO efforts focus heavily on buyer personas and their challenges. You need to understand your target customers, their obstacles, and where your SaaS product fits into the picture. Secondly, SaaS SEO prioritizes conversions over organic traffic. You are not offering a single-transaction product but a subscription-based solution. So, your website and content must be optimized to encourage signups, not just drive clicks. This can be achieved by creating high-quality content demonstrating your software’s value and advantages throughout the customer’s lifetime.

For this, you can try out Narrato’s SEO content brief generator, which automatically generates a complete SEO brief for any topic or keyword. This brief will contain relevant keywords with counts, questions to answer, references, and more. It also gives your content an SEO score that shows how well it is optimized for search.

You would also want to invest in the basic on-page and off-page SEO tactics. Here’s a great guide from Ahrefs explaining the basics of on-page and off-page SEO.

5. Paid campaigns

Paid advertising, including Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, social media ads, and display advertising, is great for driving immediate traffic to your SaaS product. By carefully selecting your ad placements and keywords, you can enjoy a high return on investment. It’s important to remember that PPC is not without risks, especially when Google algorithm updates occur and your paid traffic takes a hit. It’s wise to prioritize SEO content strategy, as it brings long-term organic traffic that can be converted into customers. Paid campaigns will also have a place, but it’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify and reap the rewards.

6. Referral marketing/ Affiliate marketing

Leveraging the power of word-of-mouth through a referral program or affiliate marketing can be a game-changer for SaaS sales cycles. This involves getting current customers to refer your product to others by offering them incentives. Affiliates can also help promote your SaaS product to their groups in exchange for a commission on any sales generated. Trust gets built in the process, and you can gain a constant flow of new ideal customers.

7. Cross promotions and collaborations

Partnering with non-competing businesses that share your target audience can be a win-win SaaS marketing technique. Both parties can grow loyal customers and tap into new markets through joint promotions or collaborations. For instance, you might consider joint webinars, guests, or co-branded content offers. You and your partner can expand your reach to a new and potentially interested audience while gaining credibility through the association.

8. Free trials and demos

One of the most persuasive strategies in SaaS marketing is offering free trials or demos. It should ideally be the first step in your sales cycle after digital marketing brings in warm leads. This allows prospective customers to experience your product firsthand, understanding its value before making a purchase decision. It reduces the barrier to entry, inviting more users to try the product over an extended period, which in turn bolsters customer loyalty.

Demos may even allow you to upsell to customers, boosting customer lifetime value.

Zoom is the perfect example of a SaaS product that has seen success with a freemium model. In 2020, when everyone was looking for a platform to hold meetings and discussions, Zoom became a crowd favorite. Primarily because its freemium version offered some great features. The growth of this SaaS platform since then has been remarkable. Combining free and paid users, Zoom’s user base has skyrocketed to 300 million. That’s an astounding leap of 2900% (!) from December 2019, when the daily participant count stood at just 10 million.

The only problem with the freemium model is that some users might try to take advantage of the system by making additional accounts to avoid paying. So, depending on your goals, you can try offering a free trial or demo to encourage more conversions.

9. Review sites

Never underestimate the power of customer reviews. Many prospective customers turn to online reviews before purchasing. Review sites like G2 Crowd, Capterra, and TrustRadius bridge your SaaS product to a broader audience and become a virtual word-of-mouth for your business.

People trust personal testimonials just like they trust recommendations from their close friends or family members. This kind of endorsement goes a long way in building trust and credibility in the eyes of potential customers. So encourage your loyal customers to leave reviews about your product and actively engage with any negative feedback to demonstrate your commitment to customer satisfaction.

Saas marketing strategies to follow

Picking the right SaaS marketing platforms is essential, but your messaging is equally (if not more) important. This part covers strategies that guarantee your messages reach the audience at the right time and in the proper manner.

1. Understand your target customers

The first step is figuring out who your ideal customer is. Which audience segments could find your SaaS product valuable and willing to pay for it? You’ll need to dig deeper into what they need, what bothers them, and what drives them. Simply knowing their basic demographic information won’t cut it.

An audience research tool like SparkToro could give you relevant audience insights, like demographic information, sources of influence, contact info, and more.

Using this information, you can create a buyer persona (or as many buyer personas as you need) to guide your digital marketing efforts. These personas are hypothetical models of ideal customers who best represent your target audience and their interests, issues, and pain points. You can also use the HubSpot Buyer Persona Generator to speed up this process and visualize your target customers better.

After gathering this intelligence, you can customize your marketing copy better.

2. Pick your marketing channels

Choosing the proper digital marketing channels for your SaaS business is not always a walk in the park. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming. Here’s another thing: not every marketing channel suits every SaaS business. You need to pick the ones that align with your specific requirements.

• Start by identifying where your target customers will most likely hang out: Is it social media? Do they prefer email newsletters or blog posts? Research their preferences and habits to find their preferred method of communication.
• Next, consider your marketing budget and resources. Do you have the funds for paid advertising or the bandwidth for content marketing? Think about what’s realistic for your marketing budget and team.
• Analyze your competitors. See which channels they use to distribute content and evaluate if those digital marketing techniques align with your goals.

Once you have relevant insights, look at the different digital marketing channels potentially open to you. These could be content marketing, social media, email marketing, PPC campaigns, referral programs, or anything else. Choose the ones that tick all the right boxes, and plan your marketing strategy for each.

Remember, it’s not about being everywhere but in the right places. By following these steps, you’ll find the sweet spot for your SaaS marketing goals and objectives.

3. Create content that resonates with your prospective customers

After studying your audience and selecting the most suitable marketing channels, your next step is to generate quality content tailored specifically for each channel. This nuanced art requires understanding the tone, style, and format that captures the audience’s attention. Using AI can significantly speed up and enhance the content creation process. AI tools can help generate ideas, write drafts, and even optimize content for SEO.

HelpCrunch offers an AI-powered content writer to create a Knowledge Base for SaaS that could help you build a structured help center and write SEO-optimized articles. The AI editor provides additional features for –

• Rephrasing, shortening, or expanding text
• Changing the tone of the text
• Translating articles into multiple languages automatically

To create blog content, social media posts, and other marketing material, you can use Narrato’s AI writer, which we’ve mentioned above.

No matter what AI tool you decide on, focus on creating product-led content that educates, informs, and adds value to your audience’s journey, ultimately guiding them toward conversion. Much of your marketing material can also help your sales cycle as sales enablement content, so you’re hitting two birds with one stone here.

4. Make sign-ups on your website easy

SaaS marketing is about attracting potential leads and converting them into loyal customers. A crucial part of this process is simplifying the sign-up process as much as possible. With everyone racing against time, patience is often in short supply. If your sign-up process is complicated and time-consuming, chances are they’ll never enter the sales funnel and move on to your competitors.

So, here’s what you need to do –

1. Reduce the number of steps to sign up
2. Use clear and inviting language
3. Ensure the sign-up form is accessible from anywhere on your site and can be easily shared via a link.

Remember, the less friction in the sign-up process, the better your chances of turning a visitor into a lead. Typeform is a good option for creating user-friendly, attractive sign-up forms. It lets you personalize the form and tailor follow-up questions based on user responses.

The HelpCrunch pop-up builder would be a better option if you need pop-up forms. It offers a pop-up editor with ready-made templates, user-friendly forms, and media to create fantastic website pop-ups. You won’t require any coding experience to get started, either.

Streamlining the process and making it user-friendly increases conversions and provides a positive first impression.

5. Pick your call to action carefully  

Calls to Action (CTAs) bridge customer interest and action. But creating a compelling CTA is more art than science. It’s about understanding your audience, their desires, and their hesitations and crafting a CTA that speaks directly to that. You have to be persuasive yet succinct, creative yet clear. It’s not necessarily about having the loudest button on the page, but certainly the most compelling one.

When deciding on the proper CTA for your content, consider these two things –

1. The stage your potential customer is in their journey
2. The objective of sharing/sending/distributing the marketing material

Find out what resonates best with your audience by exploring varying positions and adaptations. Always keep your messaging uncomplicated and brief, and avoid bombarding your visitors with numerous CTAs.

6. Offer support and answer questions

SaaS marketing and customer support combine to create a seamless customer experience. You must promptly answer customer queries, offer demos, and provide valuable resources like video guides. Make sure to have multiple channels, such as email, live chat, or phone support, to cater to different preferences. Being accessible helps build trust in your brand and leads to more loyal customers.

HelpCrunch can help you easily set up and streamline these communication channels. It offers a chatbot builder, a live chat solution, and a shared inbox feature that centralizes all communication channels into one manageable team inbox.

Creating a knowledge base is also a great way to offer SaaS support. Instead of having your team repeatedly field the same questions, your customers can easily refer to your knowledge base for the necessary information. With HelpCrunch AI-powered Knowledge Base software, creating company documentation gets much easier.

In addition to writing content for the knowledge base, it also helps track metrics, helping you identify any gaps in your help center that you might have to fill.

7. Get referrals from influential affiliates

Referral programs or affiliate marketing can be powerful marketing techniques for driving traffic and leads. You can tap into their network and reach more people by encouraging those who already use your SaaS product to recommend it to others. This digital marketing strategy can significantly boost organic leads, as recommendations often carry much weight.

Consider implementing a system of reward tiers to enhance the efficiency of your referral program. Monitor your referrers’ results for your SaaS website and compensate them accordingly. This will motivate them to fine-tune their promotion tactics and focus on achieving specific metrics.

8. Identify key performance metrics to measure success

You can’t improve what you don’t measure. You need to track the right metrics to understand how well your marketing strategies perform and what needs improvement. Depending on the specific digital marketing channels you’re using, these could include key performance indicators (KPIs) like:

• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This metric helps determine the average amount spent to gain a new customer. Understanding this is key to managing your sales and marketing budget as it keeps track of your spending on customer acquisition.
• Organic Reach: This measure indicates how many individuals view your post without paid promotion. It suggests the relevance and quality of your content.
• Activations: Signups alone won’t boost your revenue unless those individuals use your product. This is where ‘activations’ come in. Basically, an activation is the first time a customer uses your product and finds value in it. This is essential to justify your marketing budget and build a case for content marketing.
• Bounce Rate: This measures the percentage of website visitors who leave immediately without further browsing. A high bounce rate might suggest that your SaaS website’s design, user experience, or content might need some tweaking.
• Email Open and Click-Through Rates: If you’re using email marketing, monitoring these metrics can show you if your content is engaging enough to prompt clicks from your readers.

Other useful SaaS marketing metrics include customer churn rate, signup to paid conversation, retention, and marketing-sourced revenue. These metrics will give you insights into different aspects of your business and help you make data-driven decisions to accelerate growth.

That’s a wrap

The SaaS industry is as dynamic as the technology that underpins it. So, staying agile, adaptable, and open to new ideas is essential. We’ve provided great tactics, tips, and tools to streamline your SaaS marketing efforts and catapult your SaaS product into the limelight. Now, it’s your turn. Try these marketing techniques, monitor your results, and refine your approach to create your marketing playbook. Remember, the key to success lies in experimentation. See you at the top 🙋‍♀️