SaaS Marketing Checklist: Make Sure Your Campaign Strikes the Right Chord

17-Jul-2019 12:26 PM Digital Marketing

When a new SaaS product is launched, it must face two things: strong competition and many potential users who have seen it all before. Even if your product is the best, it is bound to be a failure without a great marketing plan. SaaS marketing checklist is important for your marketing campaign and should be taken into consideration seriously.

Businesses around the world are embracing Software as a Service (SaaS) like never before because of the various features it has to offer. The software distribution model hosted by a third-party provider is open for the customers online and is suitable for start-ups and businesses targeting less IT costs and fewer responsibilities.

Studies indicate that the growth rate of a company can be increased by 19% by using SaaS products. Today, many SaaS products are there in the market and all of them offer different services to the customers.

A newly launched SaaS product is bound to face tough competition today. Even if it is a game-changing product, it won’t attain the expected result without proper marketing. In order to unlock the full potential of your product, it is important to have a strong digital marketing plan.

A good SaaS digital marketing plan will convince your customers about the value of your product, it will get you rates, it will acquire new clients, and increase retention.

Now, we have a marketing strategy. But how do we formulate a strong plan? Let’s find out.

1. Know Your Audience

Even though the SaaS product is designed for a specific audience, marketers often make the common mistake of underestimating (or overestimating) their audience, which can cost them badly.

The best method to avoid that is by learning everything you can about your target audience. Once you track down your target audience, put yourself in their shoes and start a journey that they might take which leads up to a purchase. In fact, you can create a representation of your customer by understanding their behavior, things that might influence their decisions, market research, and real data of your customers into consideration.

Also, identify your users’ problem, if there is any. Every SaaS product is intended to address a problem in the market. Focus on the problem your product is supposed to cure and make it your marketing campaign theme. Use the keywords that trigger the user to relate to his issue. If you succeed in that, your SaaS product will win the market.

2. Market Through the Right Channels

The time and resources to market on every channel is limited, especially when you are a startup. So, it is advised to test several channels during the initial days, and when you find a good channel, finalize it. Moreover, you only need two or three channels that work well to effectively market your SaaS product.

When you test channels, there are many factors to be considered. You are committing a huge blunder if you choose a marketing channel without considering the following key factors: cost, scale, flexibility, targeting, control, impact, and time.

The best approach is to look at your marketing channels from your customers’ point of view which will help you find out the best channels that could link your product with the target audience.

3. Have a Well-Defined Budget

Most of the SaaS companies don’t have a clue about the amount of money to be invested in marketing. Honestly, it is highly important to fix these numbers before starting any kind of marketing campaign.

Generally, the percentage of the revenue that is invested in SaaS sales and marketing is 10% across all industries. But, recent studies show that the number is rising these days. The marketing cost for SaaS marketing is so much higher mainly because of the competitive market. Companies must work hard to set themselves apart.

Two key factors to be considered while planning your SaaS marketing budget are the total lifetime value of the customer and customer acquisition cost. You should also take factors like your capital, your growth plans, your product, and the marketing team or agency you use into consideration.

4. Use Online Paid Ads and Align It to Buyers’ Journey

Paid advertising is one of the best tactics for SaaS marketing as it helps you generate leads right from the first day. Running sponsored ads on social media platforms will help you get the maximum number of signups on a limited budget. Since the CPC bids on Google Display Network is lesser, advertising there is also advised.

Running Gmail Ads, funnel-based remarketing campaigns, and paid ads on Quora are some of the other methods to market your product effectively in limited budget. If you can align these advertisements to your buyers’ journey, the result of your marketing will be a huge success.

5. Create Infrastructure for Inbound Marketing

The technique used by marketers to attract customers to the product, site, and services with the help of content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), branding, and social media marketing is commonly known as inbound marketing.

Today, inbound marketing has become one of the most important aspects of SaaS marketing. Without spending money on disruptive ads and promotional campaigns, marketers provide valuable and relevant content to the customers, which attract them to the website, product, and services.

Using inbound marketing, marketers provide customers the solutions that they were searching, which makes the product more discoverable. The valuable content published regularly will establish credibility and trust among customers. And most importantly, inbound marketing is generally cheaper and affordable compared to other types of marketing.

“Great marketing only makes a bad product fail faster,” David Ogilvy once said. At the same time, if a great product is not marketed properly, it is simply suicidal. Your SaaS product should have a great marketing strategy that should always be embedded and aligned with your product.

The five points given above are already being used successfully by several digital marketers. You can have a more effective digital marketing plan that aligns with your SaaS product by using the key factors included in the checklist given above.