SaaS Marketing: 26 Powerful Lead Generation Strategies

Your team has put a lot of hard work into developing the best SaaS platform possible.

However, gaining subscribers and users involves a lot more than just sprinkling a few social media posts out there and hoping for the best.

Having a clear and efficient Digital Marketing strategy is crucial to your overall success.

Why is this such a big deal? The software as a service (SaaS) industry is booming. As more verticals start to become dependent on virtual technologies that keep them in touch with their clientele or members, the need for companies like yours is only slated to increase.

The only problem is they can’t choose you over a competitor if they don’t know you exist. And that’s where having a really strong marketing plan is crucial to your growth.

If you don’t, other companies out there will, and they’ll happily take away your target market in favor of their solution.

In this guide, we’re going to cover what makes this type of marketing different and why every SaaS firm needs to have an organized plan for digital advertising.

Ready to get started? Let’s dive in!

Digital Marketing for SaaS Businesses

The very success of the SaaS model is a consequence of digital transformation. The constant development of new technologies and the growing demand for digital products have created a niche of customers who seek to use quality software to perform different tasks in their daily routines.

As you know, Software as a Service refers to a distribution model where a company develops an app and makes it available to customers on the Internet. In other words, users can access and operate it at any time, from anywhere.

Therefore, it is just natural that SaaS companies need to invest in online presence. After all, this is the only way to connect with the right audience. Here, it is essential to note that this presence is not, in any way, restricted to promoting a product.

More than that, companies must develop a strategy capable of putting them on the top of the minds of their ideal consumer. This kind of authority plays a key role in the short and long-term success of any business that operates in the digital environment.

Why Must SaaS Companies Have an Online Presence?

With a solid online presence, your company will be able not only to generate new leads at a satisfactory rate but will also create long-lasting relationships that make all the difference when it comes to business stability.

One of the big reasons for that is the very nature of consumers in this market, who put a lot of importance on the experience provided to them. If they feel satisfied, they will likely stick with you for a long time, creating a base of loyal clients that may even open room for new opportunities.

Part of the investment related to online presence involves SEO strategies. The idea is to create content capable of ranking high on the most popular search engines, such as Google and Bing.

This way, every time someone searches for a solution similar to yours, the algorithm will suggest your website as one of the most relevant options, which is absolutely fantastic for attracting new users.

Even though we are talking about SaaS, it is true that all those factors also apply to other industries. Nowadays, Digital Marketing is imperative for any business that seeks to reach a specific audience and turn prospects into consumers.

However, it is wrong to assume that marketing in SaaS functions in the same way as in other fields. Why? You will learn more on the following topic!

What Makes SaaS Marketing Different?

Before we can get into the finer details of SaaS marketing strategies, it is important to understand why this type of digital advertising is different than any other product or service offering.

To start, you’re offering an item that is based on something intangible, meaning the purchaser cannot touch, feel, or set it on the table in front of them.

It also isn’t a service that they can see the difference in using right away, as most people would if they hired a contractor to mow their lawn or paint a wall in their office.

In order to make your customers see the value in your SaaS platform, you have to be innately in touch with their various pain points and why your service gives them what they need to thrive.

Once you can nail down this concept and come up with concrete reasons as to why your target subscribed would use your platform, then you’re ready to start tailoring your marketing around that message.

Makes sense right? It’s this switch of understanding that you have to consistently push a value perspective that is the top reason why SaaS marketing is different than other approaches.

Complex buyer journey

Every strategy to generate and convert leads revolves around the buyer journey, usually divided into three stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. In most markets, this journey happens linearly. First, the prospect becomes aware of their own problem; then it becomes to seek information and consider different solutions.

Finally, the person takes the buying decision and becomes an actual client. However, in the context of SaaS, this process is considerably more complex.

Firstly, unlike what happens in other business models, a SaaS company can’t afford to stop paying attention to a lead after the conversion is concluded.

We are talking about digital products usually based on subscription plans, which creates the need to maintain long-term relationships. Suppose your SaaS is not successful in maintaining a positive connection with its users. In that case, they will probably drop out of the funnel and increase your churn rate, bringing serious business losses.

Apart from that, the buyer journey in SaaS is far from straightforward. You may have to deal with leads that go up and down on the funnel, which forces the marketing team to create a huge variety of content for all the stages.

It is important to keep in mind that a lead in the decision stage may need more educational materials than others that occupy the same space, so diversifying content is a must.

Tight competition

We can’t stress this enough. There is a lot of competition in the SaaS market, mainly because of the low barriers to entry, the constant development of new technologies, and the continuous rise of new needs and demands.

That said, there is no reason to be worried. This level of competition is actually a good motivator to keep your business improving itself over time. It means, however, that it is imperative to perform benchmark analysis and prepare yourself to avoid threats, besides making good use of opportunities.

What Are the Key Points of a SaaS Marketing Strategy?

Now that you know the angle of value is what makes a SaaS marketing strategy important, you’ll also want to consider a few key points your campaigns should always cover.

This is true if you’re using paid ads on social media, focusing on organic traffic, or using a team of salespeople to directly reach out to potential customers.

How your product solves their problem

Anytime you’re marketing your SaaS product, you need to directly address your customer’s pain points and how your software solves these issues.

What makes you better than the competition

If your niche is incredibly competitive, your advertising campaigns need to highlight the features that make you better than the alternative choice.

What are the next steps

Many companies forget to mention the next steps they want the customer to take to sign up for their SaaS product. Whether this is a freemium version, trial offer, or other special, make sure you provide a clear path to moving forward.

As you flesh out these key points, try to keep them as consistent as possible across all sales channels. This gives your potential customers the ability to resonate with your message, no matter if it is the first or fifteenth advertisement they encounter.

What Are the Best Channels for SaaS Marketing?

When a marketer designs a strategy, regardless of the goal, one of the major points to define is which channels are the most appropriate for the company to use. This decision takes place in the planning phase, usually right after the buyer persona has been elaborated.

By using the persona as a reference, it is possible to identify cost-effective channels for promoting products and performing branding campaigns. So, it is clear that the best means to communicate with the public will vary from business to business, but some options are always relevant for SaaS. Check them out below!

Email marketing

One of the most traditional marketing channels, email is still compelling in generating and educating leads. Once you structure a solid base of contacts, you can work on segmentation and produce messages that genuinely impact the leads receiving them.

This way, you will be able to guide your prospects through the whole marketing funnel, offering content that is adequate for each one of the buyer’s journey stages. As the customer lifecycle is longer in SaaS, this becomes especially important.

You can use email marketing to announce big news, educate leads about a product, offer special deals, or approach customers who have canceled their subscriptions.

Thanks to tools that allow you to segment the audience and automate the messages, this strategy presents a really high cost-effectiveness. After a solid time of email campaigns, your customers will be used to hearing from you by email regarding your company as a true and reliable source of information.

Social media

It is nearly impossible to talk about Digital Marketing strategies without mentioning social media. Networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn have evolved from merely casual platforms to places full of business opportunities.

Besides feeding your social profiles with content related to your solutions, you can use it to bring your persona a little closer.

Modern consumers are used to interacting with brands on social media and may even perform sales while using such tools.

To make good use of social media, it is essential to understand which ones are more relevant to your audience. This is the kind of information you can find by conducting quick research or interviewing your client. However, you can have an idea just by considering the different characteristics of these channels.

Let’s take Instagram and LinkedIn, for example. While the first one is a network focused on pictures and videos, the latter is used only for professional purposes. So, if your persona is B2B, it makes much more sense to invest in LinkedIn, don’t you agree?

Remember: even though some social media may fit better than others in your strategy, that does not mean you shouldn’t work on more than one. In fact, as long as you follow good practices and keep a consistent identity, it is beneficial to extend your digital presence in different networks.

Webinars

Webinars are great for educational purposes, which makes them fit perfectly in SaaS marketing strategies. Put simply, they are seminars held on the internet, allowing the speakers to interact with a vast number of viewers.

For the audience, it is the perfect opportunity to clarify specific questions and to check if the company is really an authority on the subject. In a marketing approach, you may also use webinars to generate leads. It is simple: just create a landing page for the event and ask for contact information in exchange for a link to participate in the seminar.

Organic marketing

Many marketers that work with SaaS spend a massive part of their budget on paid ads, such as the campaigns created in Google Ads, Facebook Ads, etc. This is an effective way to spread your message to an extremely segmented audience, but it is not a good idea to rely solely on that approach.

First, because it is an expense that not every business can sustain, it can eventually harm its financial health. Second, there are a whole lot of people you can reach without spending a penny. For that, you must explore organic marketing.

The idea behind this concept is to attract your customers to your brand instead of reaching out to them. To do so, there is nothing better than Content Marketing. By creating quality materials that speak to your audience and are optimized for SEO, you enable your pages to rank in the first positions of Google’s SERPs.

As a result, more people will organically find you, either by searching for a related keyword or by consuming the content you post on blogs, social media, etc.

Ready to upgrade your content marketing and SEO strategies? Start your WriterAccess free trial right now to get in touch with professional writers and content strategists!

What SaaS Marketing Metrics Should You Follow?

Once you’ve determined your marketing message and you’re starting to use digital advertising to promote your SaaS product, you’ll need to start tracking metrics.

This is incredibly important, as it gives you an idea of what your company should scale up and likewise what you need to reduce or eliminate from your strategy.

However, not all stats are considered equal. The four most important ones to pay attention to are:

1. Unique visitors 

Unique visitors are among the most critical metrics when considering how to market a SaaS product. Page views are how many times someone opened a page. Unique visitors are a more distinctive metric. 

It measures how many new people have opened a web page. Page views could be the same people opening the same pages over and over. Unique indicates the person opening a page has never done it before. 

That makes it a key metric because it clarifies how much new traffic is visiting your web pages. It is a sign of how well your marketing tactics are working. By design, marketing assets like ads and SEO should send new people to your website. 

If the number of unique visitors is low, you may have to change your strategy. If that number is high, though, you know what you are doing is successful.

2. Lead-to-customer rate

Lead-to-customer measures how many conversions occur, so how many leads become customers as a percentage. If you show a 10% lead-to-customer rate and had 500 customers during the month, 50 were conversions. 

The higher this number, the better your marketing and sales tactics are working. Monitoring the lead-to-customer rate can help pinpoint the campaigns and channels that work best for your brand and are not performing well. 

You can use this metric to focus on areas not producing conversions and make changes. With each tweak, you recheck this metric, looking for an increase in conversions. 

3. Churn rate

The churn rate involves customer retention. It is a critical metric for SaaS because it measures the percentage of customers who cancel or do not renew a subscription.

It costs money to bring new customers to your service. You need to recoup that investment before you start seeing revenue from a new customer. The churn rate helps determine if you are meeting that goal. 

A low churn rate might indicate that you are losing customers before getting back the initial investment. So, regardless of your monthly revenue, you are losing money. An increase in customers should mean more revenue, not the same amount. 

For instance, if at the beginning of the month, you have 100 subscribers. If by the end of it, you have 90, you lost ten customers, giving you a churn rate of 10%. If you signed up ten new customers during the month, your revenue would be the same, but in fact, you lost the initial investment you made to bring in new business. 

 4. Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value (CLV) measures the total net profit a business can expect from each customer. It estimates how much customers will spend on their relationship with a brand over their lifetime. 

For example, theoretically, if someone buys a Ford and likes it, they should buy at least one more. This metric goes beyond just marketing. 

CLV can be an indicator of product success. If your CLV is rising, you might consider expanding your product line. If that number drops, you might need to consider another product or market type.  

CLV is really about the status quo. If the number starts to fall, you need to determine why that is happening. Has the market changed? Is it more competitive? 

Maybe your brand changed its marketing strategy, and that is affecting CLV. Or perhaps you have not modified it in several years and need to make the effort. 

SaaS Marketing Success Cases

Consider three examples of SaaS companies that used metrics to grow their businesses.

#1 Squibler

Squibler is a platform that helps writers improve their craft. It serves as a novel or screenwriting tool, as well.

Squibler managed to increase its new users to 4,500 per day after just eight months in business. They did this primarily using a well-written blog. With the help of the blog, they were able to secure a large number of backlinks that drove traffic to their website. 

Adding new features to their product and acquiring other brands increased customer acquisition and conversion rates exponentially. 

#2 Pitch

Pitch is a presentation software brand that needed to raise awareness about what it had to offer. Founded in 2018, they wanted to improve their brand by adding new features. To make that happen, they needed additional funding. 

After closing new funding deals, the company needed to raise brand awareness to prove to its stakeholders that they had made a wise investment. In response, they developed a new marketing campaign that used video to make their brand more memorable.

The video campaign featured the company’s founder discussing new features being added to the platform. The goal was to add a human touch to their marketing efforts, one that would connect better with their target audience. 

With the help of the videos, they were able to secure hundreds of backlinks and referrals for other domains. Today, the company employs over 120 people remotely and has investors from some of the top businesses, such as Instagram, Zoom, and Slack.

#3.Wistia 

Wistia is a B2B video-hosting platform that companies like Zendesk and Intuit use. They took a unique approach to building awareness about their brand.

The brand challenged a video production company to develop marketing videos about one of their products at substantially different budgets. They created an award-winning documentary video series around the process called “One, Ten, One Hundred.”

In the documentary, the company explained how the various budgets helped and hindered the creative process of the marketers. The series got so much attention that it raised awareness about the brand. At the same time, it made them authorities in their industry.

Google loves authority. When combined with the added brand awareness, Wistia started appearing at the top of B2B organic searches for video production. 

These three brands took different SaaS marketing approaches to achieve the same primary goal – increased brand awareness. They were able to use metrics to see how well their efforts were working. For instance, increasing unique visitors is a sure sign that the marketing is paying off. 

26 Growth Tactics for SaaS Lead Generation

Finally, we have a few super effective SaaS marketing strategies to help you skyrocket your growth.

These types of campaigns work exceptionally well and are a different spin on traditional B2B sales.

The good news is that most of them are incredibly easy to launch and really only take a small amount of effort to continue to promote. Even better, they really show how working with your platform can improve specific pain points for your target customers.

1. Find the Platforms Your Customers Are On

There’s only so much time in the day and available resources to try to connect with your SaaS target leads. In that case, you want to make sure you’re on the platforms that your customers are using.

To do this, think long and hard about where they would go to look for answers within their industry.

For example, if you create a sales solution for B2B commercial construction companies, then you would likely want to be on LinkedIn or another similar platform.

Likewise, if your solution helps beauty consultants and day spas book more appointments, then you might want to consider advertising on Instagram or TikTok.

Chances are better that you’ll connect with someone in that industry more so than if you were to look on LinkedIn or Facebook.

The main point here is to know your audience and use that to your advantage when deciding on which marketing channels to pursue.

2. Build Brand Credibility with Testimonials

Another great SaaS marketing strategy is to build brand credibility with testimonials. Make sure you’re always asking satisfied subscribers and clients for an endorsement that you can use on your website and in your other advertising.

Testimonials are generally taken with a grain of salt by most decision-makers, as they understand that there’s no way a company is going to share negative comments.

But it does give hope that at least someone finds your SaaS solution a good one, which opens up the idea that it could also work for someone else.

If you’re just launching and don’t have a huge subscriber base yet, you can still use testimonials to your advantage.

Have a few beta testers provide their feedback and ask for permission to use bits of their comments as testimonials. Most will happily oblige.

3. Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Referrals

There’s no doubt that the internet reigns supreme when it comes to finding new products and services. But don’t be afraid to ask for referrals, too.

More often than not, SaaS customers are more than willing to share a special offer with others in their industry if they know they’ll receive a special incentive, like a coupon or discount.

Furthermore, highly niche industries usually have business owners who work together to find common solutions. In that instance, asking for a word-of-mouth endorsement or connection can really be a solid way to get in touch with numerous leads.

While modern sales really depend on a lot of digital aspects, getting the information for a potential referral and picking up the phone to call them directly still has a lot of power.

Especially if your SaaS solution is on the more expensive or enterprise end where it might take a personalized sales approach to close a deal.

4. Leverage the Audiences of Influencers and Affiliates

To get more quality SaaS leads, consider leveraging the audiences of influencers and affiliates.

What this means is working with someone else who has a large email list, follower count, or subscriber group to try to market your platform.

In a B2B situation, this might not always mean using social media influencers. However, it could include aligning with certain consultants in your niche and giving them an opportunity to promote your SaaS product to their customer base in exchange for a small affiliate income.

Why does this work? Much like word-of-mouth testimonials, working with influencers and affiliates means they’re going out on a limb and endorsing your business.

Their audience trusts them, which means they now also somewhat trust you. In the end, this can mean a steady string of quality SaaS leads.

5. Create Killer Informative Content

You can also build a solid SaaS marketing strategy by consistently creating killer content. This means publishing informative articles and blog posts about your industry on at least a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

By doing this, you’re positioning your brand as an expert in the type of solution your SaaS provides.

It also shows that you know what your target market is going through and can help guide them to find the right answers pertinent to their particular industry.

Furthermore, Content Marketing is an excellent way to boost your SEO rankings. In the end, anyone searching the internet for the knowledge you provide can then become a potential lead.

Ready to upgrade your content strategy? Start your WriterAccess free trial right now to get in touch with professional writers and content strategists!

6. Try Video Marketing

Most Digital Marketing experts agree that video marketing is hotter than ever before. With the global pandemic making it super easy to obtain videography tools like a quality webcam and lighting, now is a great time to start using this medium as a way to reach potential leads.

Whether you’re just doing live stream sessions to answer general questions or creating a series of how-to videos to help users navigate your platform more effectively, this type of media can be an excellent way to reach a broad audience.

Not sure where to begin? Consider working with a Digital Marketing team to come up with a list of ideas that you can turn into individual media or a special series of videos.

7. Offer Downloadable Bonuses

To gain more SaaS leads, you can also offer downloadable bonuses in exchange for joining an email list.

This can be anything from a coupon or free trial to an industry white paper, ebook, or something else of value that makes sense for your particular SaaS vertical.

While you might get a few people who will immediately unsubscribe after receiving their download, most people do not.

From there, you can create a series of marketing emails that offer follow-up advice and reasons why your SaaS solution is the best choice for their particular needs.

8. Use Gated Bonus Content

Much like a downloadable offer, using gated bonus content is a great way to expand your SaaS lead list.

How this works is you create a landing page that relates to your particular niche. Once someone adds their email address and/or contact information via a special form, they’re given a login and password to access more content.

This can include a wide range of different elements. Several examples include access to a particular knowledge base, a free consult call with a consultant, special training opportunities, and so much more.

Ultimately, how you choose to go about this will generally depend on your SaaS niche or vertical and how it relates to your target customers. But the whole idea is to collect information for contacting leads in the future in exchange for something they find valuable.

9. Utilize Chatbots for Better Responses

One modern way to achieve better SaaS lead generation is through the use of special chatbots.

These can be positioned on your website as live help or even just through a program like Facebook Messenger.

Essentially, this gives potential customers the opportunity to ask common questions. The intuitive AI then knows how to point them in the right direction.

In some cases where an inquiry is a little more specific or complicated, it can tell your sales team to reach out to the lead directly.

This works really well for a lot of reasons. If someone is willing to engage with your chatbot, you know that they’re truly ready to purchase or interested in what you’re offering. And warm leads like these are a lot easier for your sales team to close in the long run.

10. Partner with Complementary SaaS Firms

There’s no doubt that the SaaS industry is growing. But that doesn’t mean you have to operate your platform and business alone.

A great way to get in touch with more customers is by partnering with a complementary SaaS firm.

Notice we said complementary and not competing. These are companies that your target client is probably already using to solve a problem not related to the solution you offer.

For example, if your program does scheduling for plumbers, then you might want to work with a small business invoicing SaaS company.

The overall goal is to give your leads a solution that helps them in more ways than one. By pooling resources in this manner, you can easily reach a broader audience while stretching your advertising dollars further.

11. Pick Up the Phone

It might sound like such an old way of marketing, but a good method for getting more leads is to simply pick up the phone.

Don’t be afraid to have your sales team do the old-fashioned thing and initiate a call with a decision-maker at a company that you’re looking to work with.

Now, this doesn’t have to always be cold calls. Maybe that lead signed up for a free trial and hasn’t converted to a paid subscription, making them more of a warm lead.

A phone call from a platform expert might be just what they need to answer questions or other barriers.

12. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Of course, you cannot ignore the use of search engines if you’re trying to grow your list of SaaS prospects.

Simply put, your target market is always going to use Google to look for answers to their biggest questions. Optimizing your website for certain keywords and searches should always be a big part of your marketing strategy.

Following best practices like updating meta titles and descriptions, using keywords in your content, and otherwise ensuring your page speed meets standards are all good places to start.

As your SaaS platform grows, you’ll want to continue to keep up with your SEO to ensure you’re still outranking competitors.

13. Paid Traffic and Landing Pages

If you’re really looking to increase the number of SaaS lead prospects for your business, consider this double punch.

Create a landing page with a special offer or incentive, a video describing how your product solves its biggest issue, or any other information in an easily digestible format. Then drive paid traffic through social media or pay-per-click (PPC) ads to that page.

This eliminates the guesswork for your leads and makes it easy to tell what your SaaS solution offers. It also makes it simple for them to get in touch with you to schedule a phone call, sign up for a demo account, or just get on your mailing list.

What’s even better? This is a strategy you can pair with multiple other ideas on this list for a huge impact.

14. Direct Mail and QR Codes

If the vast majority of your target market is primarily offline, consider this SaaS lead generation strategy.

Send out direct mail with a special QR code. Whenever a recipient opts to point their smartphone camera at the code, they’re instantly taken to a specific landing page you’ve published ahead of time.

Again, we want to make it super easy for people to connect with your SaaS platform. This is a great way to make the process as instantaneous and error-free as possible while getting in touch with those in your niche in a direct way.

Need examples of when this would work?

Think SaaS products that deal with heavy B2B where they might not necessarily be looking for a solution, as they have no idea that one exists. By showing up in their mailbox, you’ll be able to catch their attention more quickly.

15. Industry Websites, Journals, and Magazines

Depending on your SaaS vertical, it might be a good idea to advertise in certain places where your target market is already viewing. This can be industry websites, journals, magazines, and more.

That said, it is important to remember that just because you’re a SaaS firm doesn’t mean you should always stick with digital advertising.

There is still a place for traditional print ads, which can further boost brand recognition and make your company seem more credible.

Does your particular niche have specialty organizations or trade shows? Make an attempt to be a part of those, too. You never know who will see your team’s booth and make a decision to go with your platform.

16. Position As a Knowledgeable Expert

Speaking of credibility, here’s another tip to help optimize your marketing strategy for better SaaS lead generation.

Work to position yourself as a knowledgeable expert within your industry. If necessary, create a section of your website just as a place to provide additional information and important news that your customers would want to know, even if it doesn’t directly pertain to your software offering.

This can create a buzz in two ways. First, it offers a good chance to share your content to bring in more traffic.

Second, providing useful and informative content really paints you as a company that knows what you’re doing. In the end, this helps push subscribers towards utilizing your SaaS solution.

17. Target Specific Clients Directly

Finally, consider targeting specific clients directly. This is especially important if your SaaS is high-level or enterprise, as you might be looking at a longer decision-making process or a chain of people you need to convince before final approval.

Have your sales team sit down and brainstorm a few dozen so-called big fish or dream customers for your SaaS.

Put together a plan to research finding the right people to discuss the details with and make attempts to get in touch. Cold emails and calls actually do work if you have the right overall strategy.

18. Get chatbots

We have already talked about chatbots, but it is essential to emphasize how important the resource is to several ends of your strategy. Through concepts of AI and machine learning, chatbots provide a quick and efficient experience for users who can access the support they need whenever they need it. After all, unlike actual employees, bots are available 24/7 and don’t get overwhelmed when there is too much demand to deal with.

Of course, these tools cannot fully replace a support team or sales representatives. It is always essential to keep the human factor present in your relationship with customers. Still, chatbots are perfect for performing repetitive tasks, leaving the most complex chores to your collaborators.

Depending on how they are set up, they can provide users with answers to FAQs, instruct them on how to use basic features of the software, or simply connect them with someone who can deliver whatever is needed.

Even though it is possible to set up chatbots on some of the most famous social media, it is a good idea to include one on your website or even on your platform. The idea is to provide a quick and satisfactory experience, allowing users to solve any doubts quickly and efficiently.

19. Increase your positive presence in reviews

Whenever we talk about Digital Marketing, we must consider the several different triggers that influence the buyer’s decision. Regardless of the industry in question, one thing is always true: modern consumers are highly influenced by the opinions of friends, family, and influencers. This is an effect caused by years of massive advertising on several channels, which made people suspicious of any major effort launched to promote a product, service, or brand.

Instead, the so-called 4.0 consumer pays more attention to testimonials and reviews, especially when they come from sources they already know and trust.

Since the SaaS environment is friendly to this kind of activity, your marketing strategy should include methods to make your product appear in positive reviews. After all, this business model revolves around the user. This way, a satisfied customer will likely spread their opinion and eventually attract more users to your product.

Ideally, those reviews should be spontaneous, but there is nothing wrong in encouraging satisfied users to write what they think about the solution. You can do so by writing follow-up emails suggesting that they share their views or even by offering special deals to those willing to put the word out there.

Ultimately, however, the only way to increase your positive presence in reviews is to improve your SaaS continually. To do so, you must keep track of KPIs, watch how users behave and, of course, pay real attention to any review left on pertinent channels, especially the negative ones. Any criticism has to serve as fuel for improving the user experience and, consequently, generating more leads.

20. Use social selling

The strategic use of different social media channels is the pillar of several marketing strategies. Networks such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter represent the perfect environment to find your persona, educate them about your brand, and establish long-lasting relationships.

Today, companies use social media to share content, spread ad campaigns, and close sales. To succeed in this endeavor, one needs to act thoughtfully, which is when social selling comes in.

It is not enough to gather thousands of followers or approach different people in their DMs trying to sell your product. In fact, if you are not mindful when approaching users, you may cause them to automatically lose interest in what you have to say. So, what to do?

The concept of social selling refers to a series of practices that aim to generate meaningful interactions and establish the brand as an authority on the subject. The ultimate goal is to attract leads and smoothly guide them through the sales funnel, eventually generating conversions. The process involves producing different kinds of content and a lot of strategic thinking, as each post must fulfill a specific goal, be it to educate, engage, or convert the persona.

21. Segment your audience

Segmenting your audience is one of the most important things to do before launching any marketing strategy. This has been true for a long time, even before the Internet became a substantial part of our daily routines.

When brands mostly showcased ads on TV, radio, and newspapers, marketers already knew which kind of audience they would like to reach. Based on that, they would choose the most prominent channels and, most importantly, use adequate approaches.

The digital transformation has taken segmentation to another level. Now, it is possible to target your messages to particular groups of people, boosting the conversion rate and increasing ROI.

It is logical: impacting a small group of people who fit in your buyer persona profile is much more cost-effective than sending a broader message to an audience that is big but is not necessarily interested in your solution. Therefore, to increase your SaaS lead generation, focus on segmentation.

If you are wondering how to effectively segment your audience, know that there is no magic formula. However, an excellent first step would be to define one or more buyer persona.

This resource represents what you consider to be your ideal customer. It must establish their pains, needs, motivations, and much more. Also, the persona should include data that is common in target audiences, such as geographic location, income, and job position.

After you segment your audience, you can create different campaigns to impact each of your personas. It is possible, for example, that you sell two solutions, one focused on corporations and one that is more suitable for small companies.

Naturally, using the same techniques to promote both products would be counterproductive, as they address different needs and pain points. So, segmentation allows you to make the best of each marketing effort.

22. Use co-marketing

Not everything is about competition. In marketing, many times, two or more companies may gather to develop strategies and campaigns that benefit all parties at the same time. This practice is called co-marketing, and you probably have seen this before. One of the most common examples is related to traveling companies, which partner up to offer complete experiences for their customers.

If you have ever bought a flight ticket that included a rental car or a hotel room in the package, you know what we are talking about.

We can apply this idea in the world of SaaS to develop cost-effective approaches. However, it is critical to choose the right partners and make sure there is no conflict of interest. Ideally, the company you choose to be your partner in this endeavor shares the same target audience as you but sells a solution that is either complementary or unrelated to yours.

23. Host webinars

One of the biggest challenges in SaaS marketing is educating your audience, not only about your product but also about the persona’s major problems and possible solutions. This is why Content Marketing is such a powerful tool in this industry. It allows brands to offer materials that directly address these issues and keep the user engaged.

You can create blog posts, explore social media features, invest in email marketing, and produce YouTube videos. Diversifying the format of your content is essential to attract and keep users’ attention.

When it comes to generating leads, it is crucial to think of your prospects as people who are eager to learn something and solve their problems. With that in mind, you can decide which kind of material you offer.

Few of them are as effective as a webinar. As the name suggests, we are talking about a type of seminar held online, which means that several people can watch and interact at the same time, participating in a unique and constructive experience.

Besides educating the audience, a good webinar will provide your brand with an image of authority in the market, leading more people to look for its products and services. Besides, if you are successfully promoting the event, you can use it to boost lead generation. It is easy: just create a landing page that exchanges access to the webinar for relevant contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses.

24. Set S.M.A.R.T goals

The success of any strategy depends on how efficiently it is planned. During the planning stage, it is vital to outline what you expect to achieve with your business efforts, or, in other words, set goals.

But how to make sure the objectives you aim for are achievable and can actually benefit your SaaS? The answers are in a tool known as S.M.A.R.T. goals, which many experts use to refine their goal-setting process. Each letter on the acronym stands for an element that helps the company to create coherent goals:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Agreed
• Realistic
• Time-bound

The idea is to create objectives that include all those elements. In other to be specific, your planning must detail what you want to reach. But, as you know, measuring results is as important as achieving them. So, your goals need to be measurable. 

For that, it is imperative to define clear metrics and KPIs. Of course, no strategy will go forward if the people involved have not agreed on it, so you must take your stakeholders on board. The goal must also be realistic, so you need to make sure you have all the resources required to accomplish it. Lastly, and this is extremely important in the SaaS environment, be sure to specify when your business is supposed to achieve what you have planned.

Imagine this scenario: you gather your team and tell them you want to increase lead generation. As much as you want it to happen, it is too vague. By using the S.M.A.R.T framework, you would say, for example, that your goal is to generate 500 new leads by the end of the year,

25. Optimize your page speed

Lead generation revolves around two things: your reach and your ability to engage a visitor. So, even if you rely on an excellent landing page and rank high on search engines, you can’t afford to provide a frustrating experience. And, for internet users, there is nothing more disappointing than slow-loading pages. In fact, if the whole content doesn’t load in less than three seconds, the visitor will likely leave. Besides the missed opportunity, this will harm your SEO rankings.

So, any lead generation strategy must include actions to optimize your pages’ speed. It is important to clean your media base periodically and exclude any unnecessary files that may slow down the website. However, the key to avoiding any kind of problem-related to loading speed is to rely on a robust website host.

26. Highlight your competitive advantages

Your competitive advantages are your most potent weapons to convince prospects that your solution is the best option for them. Therefore, you must highlight them whenever you have a chance, especially in the channels you use to attract your leads.

Suppose your strategy for generating new opportunities has social media as its central point. In that case, you should consider producing content that calls attention to the benefits you offer to your clients. In case your advantage is price, make that clear. Do the same if it is quality, special deals, scalability, infrastructure, etc. It is up to you to define what differentials your business has in relation to the competition and use it to engage more users.

The truth is there are hundreds of ways you can optimize your marketing strategy for SaaS lead generation.

However, this all starts with making sure you know your target audience well and understand their particular needs. Once you determine how to get in direct touch with them, then you can adjust your plans accordingly.

Ready to take things a step further? We’ve put together this lead generation strategy ebook just to help you out. Click here to score your free copy now!