Defining a SaaS marketing strategy

Before we look into all the marketing channels SaaS companies can leverage for growth, it’s important to think about your high-level marketing strategy.

Two things you should be aware of:

1. There’s no one-size-fits-all strategy. What worked for someone might not work for you. What worked for you 3 years ago might not work today or in a different industry.

2. There are infinite paths to success. Assess your strengths and weaknesses before defining your GTM strategy.

Let’s sort out two things before starting a marketing campaign: Branding and Buyer Personas.

Having a good brand has its advantages.

Build trust > become popular > sit back and watch organic backlinks grow

SaaS companies with a strong brand usually enjoy a way higher conversion rate on every landing page.

Building a strong brand takes time and energy, be prepared and patient, it’s a process.

What you sell is as important as who you sell to.

Before spending a single dollar, the marketing team should define its buyer personas. It’s okay if they look a little blurry at the beginning.

As you test your marketing engine, crunch the data and talk with more customers they’ll become more clear and well defined.

I am a fan of inbound marketing.

Word of advice: Don’t stretch a weak idea that you could deliver with 200 words to a 5,000-word blog post to rank on Google. You might rank, but your users will dislike it, won’t buy your product, won’t convert into leads, nor trust your brand.

The perfect content strategy should have a mix of internal data, curated content, interviews, and thought leadership plus more tactical posts.

Next: Get your content discovered.

For blog posts, this is usually SEO’s duty.

The downside: SEO is slow. It takes time before driving meaningful results.

The upside: Once it starts sending traffic, it’s a snowslide. Even if you completely stop spending money on content and SEO, it’ll keep sending you traffic for a long time. The growth will be exponential.

Every SaaS startup should start planning their content marketing and SEO strategy before they have a product ready to hit the market.

Email marketing works at any stage of the marketing funnel.

The list of people you can email is one of SaaS marketers’ most valuable assets. Paid ads will stop driving traffic when you stop spending money.

Pick your frequency, feel free to throw in some offers but keep the content useful.

Create lead nurturing flows, and periodically clean up your lists.

Google Ads for SaaS marketing ..works?

The upside: Fairly easy to get started. Reaching your target audience at the right time is super simple. With a decent Ad and landing page, you’ll have a good conversion rate right away.

The downside: Expensive and competitive.

SaaS marketing is competitive and you’ll likely end up paying a lot for each click. You need 100 clicks to acquire a paying customer. $2 per click means $200 to acquire a customer.

And the number of keywords with clear purchase intent is limited.

The more you go up-market with an enterprise-oriented SaaS product, the more you’ll benefit from running Linkedin ads.

The greatest advantage of Linkedin Advertising is by far its targeting capabilities.

Content promotion is too expensive to break-even promoting posts. Lead generation is probably where Linkedin advertising can bring the most value. eBooks, case studies, webinars, and similar kinds of content can perform well if the landing pages are properly optimized.

Ads leading directly to your signup pages are a mixed bag. Usually, conversion rates are not stellar and your CPA can easily skyrocket. However, this differs from industry to industry, and will require some experiments.

SMM is tough. You need to give before you take.

It is time consuming but rewarding. Community building on Facebook Groups or Linkedin Groups is the most powerful strategy.

Improve your attribution by adding analytics to track marketing revenues.

More businesses will soon adopt revenue marketing as a holistic approach to map the entire customer journey.

Focus on building revenue predictability with good alignment with Sales, Customer Support, and Customer Success. Marketers are accountable for revenue generated, ROI, and revenue forecast.