How To Develop Digital Marketing Strategies for SaaS Businesses

Posted by
Jeremy Smith

As a SaaS business, you must have an effective digital marketing strategy to ensure your product or service reaches the right people and drives them to take action (aka BUY). But how do you go about developing a successful digital marketing plan?

Below, we’re exploring top strategies and priorities for a comprehensive digital marketing plan for SaaS businesses like yours to boost your profits and SaaS valuation. By the end of this article, you should be well-equipped with all the knowledge necessary to create an effective digital strategy for your SaaS company.

Top Digital Marketing Strategies for SaaS Businesses

A well-rounded SaaS marketing strategy isn’t 1D. It includes various tactics that speak to different levels of your funnel and work together to inform, educate, and eventually convince your target market to pull the trigger and sign up for your subscription service.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is an essential part of any digital marketing strategy. It helps you build trust, establish credibility, and position your brand as an industry expert. Content marketing usually includes:

• online articles
• blog posts 
• guest posts in other publications
• white papers
• E-books
• any informational (yet marketing-driven) content

Invest in creating content that educates, entertains, and engages your target audience, and aim to share it regularly through the highest-performing channels.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the best ways to stay in touch with your audience and keep them informed of new promotions, product updates, and other important news in an intimate way – in their inbox. Sending out regular emails that are personalized, relevant, and full of value will help you nurture leads down the funnel until they’re ready to buy.

Pro Tip: Email segmenting is a best marketing practice for SaaS businesses that want to accomplish different goals with different portions of your email list. For example, you can send current customers emails about your latest updates while you send prospective customers and leads more entry-level information about your service and customer success stories.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a must if you want customers to find your SaaS business online. Invest in keyword research and optimize all your website, blog posts, landing pages, etc., with targeted keywords to help you rank higher on search engine results pages.

PPC/SM Ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) and social media ads are great ways to generate leads and boost brand awareness. Target prospective customers with relevant, timely, and captivating ads. Use internet data that tells you who’s visited your site or shown interest in similar products and deliver ads that will pique their interest. Today there are tons of tools available that make your ads trackable so you can measure the performance of your campaigns.

Free Trial Offers

Free trial offers are a great way to get people to try out your product before they commit to buying it. It gets them in the door and gives you their contact information and the opportunity to show them what your business can do. Include offers in emails, on social media, and even PPC or social ads to increase their effectiveness.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing will get more eyes on your SaaS product without paying for ads. This kind of marketing refers to using affiliate partners (often influencers, niche experts, celebrities, etc.) as a selling channel in exchange for a portion of each sale they drive to you. By partnering with industry influencers, you can tap into their existing audiences and get the word out about your product or service.

Top Priorities of a SaaS Marketing Plan

Now that we’ve explored top digital marketing strategies for SaaS businesses let’s consider what priorities to focus on when creating a successful marketing plan for your business.

Use Data to Inform

Use all of the data you have to inform your marketing plan. Pieces of information like your SaaS valuation, profit/loss statement, and audience demographics can be precious in helping to outline an effective marketing strategy. Don’t just guess; know that what you’re doing supports the numbers behind it (and vice versa).

Clear, Consumer-Centric Communication

Communication is vital in any productive marketing plan. Use your marketing tactics to speak to your customers in a clear way that considers their level of knowledge, their pain points, and the real value your SaaS product offers. Tailor your messaging to the interests and needs of your audience to ensure they understand what you’re offering. Don’t use fancy industry jargon.

Share Customer Success Stories

Nothing speaks better to the value of your SaaS product (or builds trust) than happy customers who can vouch for it. Create case studies and share customer success stories on social media, in emails, and on your website. 

Show prospective customers that real people are already enjoying the benefits of using your service. They’ll be able to envision themselves as the customer in the ad and see a compelling case for using your SaaS business.

Create Easy, Consumable Content

Creating content will drive leads and help build your brand identity over time. Content should be easy-to-read, informative, and helpful to the reader. Focus on creating consumable content that can be quickly digested by the target audience, even at the top of your funnel. High-performing content could include blog posts, videos, podcasts, tips & tricks guides, infographics, etc.

Make Signing Up a No-Brainer

A primary goal of your marketing plan should be to make the sign-up process for your service as easy and intuitive as possible. Have a clear call to action on all content, emails, ads, and other materials you produce. When a customer does come to sign up, you want to avoid any roadblocks in their way. Require as few steps as possible to make it a no-brainer. 

Plus, by showing higher numbers of customer sign-ups, you may be able to increase your SaaS valuation.

Before You Go

Digital marketing is a powerful tool that can help SaaS businesses reach their target audiences, generate more leads, and eventually, increase their SaaS valuation. 

Consider the strategies available and how best to communicate with your customers within your SaaS marketing plan. Use a custom combination of free trials, affiliate marketing, ads, content and email marketing, and SEO to get the results you’re looking for, and maintain a steady focus on your goals as you get started.

About Jeremy Smith

Jeremy has a stellar track record of helping businesses grow in the digital space. If sales or team building are your core concerns right now, Jeremy is your guy.
Want to get 45 minutes on his calendar? Apply for a free growth session with Jeremy here: https://meetings.hubspot.com/jsmith128/jeremy-smith-growth-session

• How To Develop Digital Marketing Strategies for SaaS Businesses – Apr 7, 2023