How to Effectively Generate Leads for Your SaaS Product

27-Jun-2019 12:05 PM Lead Generation

In the past few years, SaaS products have become popular and they are fast becoming an alternative for on-premises software deployment. Here are ways to generate leads for your SaaS products. 

The Software as a Service (SaaS) model is gaining more and more attraction every day as it is being embraced by organizations, irrespective of their sizes and shapes, all around the world. The business world is finding it as an alternative for on-premises software deployment.

According to several studies, it is estimated that more than 95% of all companies will integrate at least some SaaS solutions into their business by the end of 2019. In fact, the growth rate of a company can be increased by 19.6% with the use of SaaS products.

SaaS, which is a software distribution model that is hosted by a third-party provider and is made available on the internet for the customers, is particularly for businesses that are aiming at cutting down IT costs and responsibilities. Features such as flexible payment, accessibility and persistence, scalable usage, and automatic updates make it a favorite among businesses.

But, to keep a SaaS platform afloat in the market, it is essential to have a steady stream of leads. Today, a huge amount of time (and money) is spent by marketers on content creation and for most of them, it is all about lead generation. Here are 5 lead generation strategies that can be used to boost your SaaS marketing.

1. Free Trial

The free trial is an amazing and important tool when it comes to SaaS marketing. Since the trial can be done for free, you will get a lot of people taking it up and trying it out. And if the free trial you offered is excellent, you will gain customers who realize the benefits of the product.

At the same time, there might be another group of people who might not be ready to buy the product. But, upon realizing the potential of the product, they will share their experience among their personal and professional circles, which will lead to the next set of users.

If you ensure to offer an excellent free trial experience, this is expected to continue, and get you a steady stream of leads.

2. Content Marketing

Lead generation is based on two things in particular: a great landing page and equally great content to support it. Content marketing is being used by businesses across the world to build their brand, attract visitors to their website, and to generate leads.

To create great content and generate leads thus, it is important to understand your audience and create the type of content that works best for them. Content is always an asset for business as its value will only increase over time and will continue to drive leads.

There are many factors that shape up SaaS content strategy: creating the right content, blogging, identifying influencers, guest posting, e-books, white papers, and landing pages. You can create a great content strategy and generate leads by taking these factors into consideration.

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO and content marketing work hand in hand. SEO makes your content discoverable on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Safari. In order to make that happen, it is important to take both on-page SEO and off-page SEO into consideration.

In fact, when it comes to generating leads, search engines are still one of the biggest drivers of leads. Acquiring the right traffic by focusing on creating good content, by taking the long tail and high-volume keywords into consideration will turn into qualified leads.

During this process, collecting information from the customers and picking the right keywords will bring more people to your website from search engines.

4. Social Media

For B2B marketers, in terms of customer engagements, LinkedIn and Twitter have the highest traction. A simple search with the right keywords will help you get in touch with people who are currently interested and have questions related to your SaaS product/platform.

Being proactive with the customers and reaching out directly to the users can tremendously increase the inbound sales from social media.

The content on social media should have an educational value and it should spark ideas, conversation, and arguments. While the educational value of the content must be informative that they can use in growing their company, the content that spark ideas, conversation, and arguments will make the audience trust you (which will eventually work as a reason for them to come back).

5. Guest Posting

Guest posting, one of the earliest methods for generating leads, is not only less expensive but also generates hundreds of leads every month. Even though it is one of the oldest tools, it (as well as the content created) is still highly relevant today as it has the ability to link back to the content and reach an entirely new group of audience.

The bloggers, influencers, and publishers who guest-post will fill each piece with quality content, actionable insights, and provide a backlink to your SaaS product/platform. An important factor is the author-bio where you can give information about you and your company. It will help you drive the right people to your website which eventually generates more leads.

SaaS start-ups and SaaS marketing professionals have tried and tested these lead generation strategies successfully. But that doesn’t make these the right fit for all companies. It is always best to test and analyze these strategies first to make sure they are the best fit for your SaaS product.