10 Ways to Reach Target Audience Using Saas Marketing

There is no denying the fact that effective marketing is the ultimate mantra of success for any business. People buy from a business only when they are familiar with the business and its services. This familiarity and brand awareness is what marketing aims to cultivate as a strong foundation for higher sales. Even for your SaaS enterprise, you need a structured blueprint for effective SaaS marketing.

Irrespective of whether your SaaS venture is a startup or a mega venture already, innovation in marketing is something that you will always need. The moment you become complacent in your marketing efforts, you would concede the advantage to your competitors. However, the real question is, “what does it take to innovate in SaaS marketing for profuse success?” What are the most extraordinary techniques for successful SaaS marketing?

We look to answer these vital questions through the medium of this thoughtful and highly informative blog on effective SaaS marketing. Each marketing tactic enlisted in this blog is backed by data and the latest trends. However, before we move to the worthwhile ways of impactful SaaS marketing, let us pay heed to some essential statistics linked to the SaaS industry. So, let’s get started without further ado!

A few pivotal statistics on SaaS businesses

1. As cited by Businesswire, with a compound annual growth rate of 12.5 percent per annum, the global SaaS market is expected to reach USD 436 billion by the end of 2025. This speaks for the fact that SaaS businesses represent one of the fastest growing sectors in contemporary times.
2. In accordance with Gartner, companies across all industries are spending almost 21 percent of their IT budget on cloud services. To add, Gartner further infers that more than 50 percent of US government departments now rely on cloud services.
3. With the thriving cultures of remote work and hybrid organizations, the demand for cloud-based services is on a dramatic rise. To validate, SWZD concludes that more than half of the business workloads will rely on cloud services by the end of 2023.
4. From the purview of its findings, Reforge infers that businesses that completely run on SaaS utilize 34 applications on average. To add, 14 of the 20 leading public SaaS enterprises at the global pedestal have their own app stores.
5. As encapsulated by 99 Firms, 73 percent of businesses have already indicated that almost all of their apps will be based on SaaS by 2022. Moreover, almost 95 percent of chief information officers share a common vision of adopting cloud SaaS.
6. To shed light on the pricing models of SaaS companies, around 50 percent of the companies in this domain work on a user-based model for pricing. To add, UserGuiding further explains that more than 50000 SaaS companies are offering attractive discounts to customers. In some cases, these discounts are well over 30 percent.
7. According to Forbes, Zoom remained the fastest growing SaaS business between 2020 and 2021 with an increase of approximately 330 percent in its market capitalization. Besides, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Shopify are the other leading SaaS companies that have enjoyed tremendous growth corresponding to massive digitalization.

The above statistics and trends clearly depict that SaaS companies have the perfect opportunity to go big. With more and more businesses looking to go completely remote and automate their processes, the demand for advanced and excellent SaaS providers is ever increasing. Having said that, the growth environment is ideal for SaaS companies. How much your business can leverage it is subject to your effectiveness as a leader.

The swift hike in demand for SaaS companies also implies that your business will have to face stiff competition from others in the domain. Needless to say, each SaaS business big or small would want to make the most of the favorable trends in the global SaaS market. The need of the hour is to build on competitive advantages to lead your business to new heights. How are you going to give your business a perfect edge over your competitors amid these developments?

One obvious answer here is innovation in marketing so that you can create quality leads for boosting sales. As a seasoned entrepreneur, you already know how marketing and sales complement each other. To skyrocket your sales to levels like never before, you need a charismatic, dynamic and intelligible marketing strategy to give your business the prerequisite competitive edge. The prowess and charm of stupendous marketing will propel your SaaS business to be at par with the likes of Salesforce and Shopify.

Listed below are some unique and worthwhile ideas for marketing your SaaS business effectively in 2023 and beyond. Remember, SaaS businesses hold the key to the future of the business world. You ought to ensure that your company gets the largest chunk of the pie if not all of it. This is where you need prolific marketing strategies based on the inputs provided in the ensuing section. So, let us get started without further ado!

Best marketing practices for your SaaS Marketing

1. Create a winning content marketing strategy

Bill Gates once said, “content is the king” and as the digital world progresses forward, the kingdom of content is only getting bigger. Today, content marketing has become indispensable for your business to attain the heights that you envisage. If you look around, everything is driven by content, or to put it the other way around, content is everything.

When people want to learn about SaaS and the best SaaS businesses around them, they would look for content. Moreover, even when they want to compare different SaaS businesses, they would again be on the lookout for credible content. This is where content marketing becomes so vital especially when the influence of content is swelling by leaps and bounds.

To elucidate, as concluded by HubSpot, 82 percent of marketers across the globe are pursuing proactive content marketing strategies. Content marketing is equally important for both B2B businesses and B2C businesses. Speaking of B2B businesses, as per Content Marketing Institute, emails, websites and social media are the most pivotal channels for content marketing.

To add, B2B businesses are now integrating email marketing software, various analytical tools, and social media publishing tools as a part of their content marketing tactics. Businesses are becoming increasingly advanced in their content marketing approach. Content marketing is the new sphere of competition between businesses in the same domain.

Even your business needs a winning content marketing strategy to dominate the digital corporate space and attract top-notch leads for higher sales. It is imperative for you to know that in accordance with SaaS content marketing statistics, 85 percent of the biggest SaaS companies have a blog of their own. Moreover, 18 percent of SaaS businesses have their exclusive podcasts to interact with their target audience. Are you working on blogs and podcasts as well?

As you can see, SaaS businesses are working on firm work plans for content marketing across multifaceted channels. Are you catching up with the pace or still wondering if your business needs content marketing? Content can facilitate your journey to prolific success and in the absence of great content, that journey will rather remain subdued. You need to diversify your content to attract audiences of different choices.

Given below are some additional quick tips for creating a streak-smart content marketing strategy.

• Encourage your clients to provide user-generated content
• Work around a strategy of creating a worthwhile content funnel for the client journey
• Optimize your content practices with SEO techniques and structured keywords
• Brainstorm content strategies in coherence with the dynamic content trends
• Work on a strategy of guest posts for backlinks to your website
• Create original and informative content aimed at guiding users
• Hire in-house content writers to upscale your content marketing
• Whenever possible, blend storytelling into your marketing content

It is undeniable that most of your leads for SaaS are going to come from the web and not offline marketing. You are selling software for service and your clients are mostly going to find you on the internet. Having said that, content marketing becomes far more important for SaaS companies than retail companies or merchandise brands.

To streamline your business growth, you need to keep optimizing your content marketing strategies with a vision in mind. The more creative you are going to be with your content marketing plans the greater will be the rewards to reap. In alignment with the latest developments in the SaaS industry, you need to constantly brainstorm and innovate on content. If you are winning the content game, your business will embrace new horizons of success.

2. Upscale your social media marketing tactics

In contemporary times, social media is indeed the most powerful marketing platform. Having said that, for your SMART Goals of creating massive brand awareness and digital presence, it is essential that you make your presence felt on social media.

With billions of active monthly users, social media is proving to be one of the most powerful marketing platforms. It is intriguing to note that as per Kepios, the number of global social media users stands at a whopping 4.5 billion. What is more amusing to note is that this accounts for almost 58 percent of the global population. Do you think you are going to get such a massive target audience on any other platform? Imagine a business world without social media!

If your business is not on social media already, you are certainly missing the trick. You ought to know that around 55 percent of social media users use these platforms to search for new products and businesses. Having said that, in proficient social media marketing, your SaaS business has a perfect opportunity to go big. With some wonderful features that social media offers, you can directly engage with your potential customers and influence buying decisions. In fact, it is the best marketing platform for startups that do not want to overspend on marketing.

Moreover, as cited by HubSpot, around 80 percent of marketers are spending handsome amounts on paid ad campaigns for social media. Additionally, marketers are also looking forward to increasing their budgets for Facebook and Youtube marketing in 2023. Every business is keen on building an appealing social media presence and the impressive ROI on that is totally worth it. Are you leveraging the enormous prowess of social media smartly enough?

You have got to have a smart and meticulous strategy for social media marketing to attract more limelight to your business. For that, hiring dedicated social media managers or interns would be a great idea. They would ensure that your business is responsive to social media queries at all times and posts regularly to keep people engaged. Also, it is worth paying heed to the fact that seasoned marketers highly recommend video content for social media engagement.

Having said that, you can post short videos explaining your services, the unique proposition your business offers, or informative content related to the SaaS cloud. Besides, your business needs to entice people with regular stories and updates. You ought to know that customers like businesses to be consistent in their messaging. For that, social media provides quite a quick and worthwhile way of reaching out to billions of people in an attractive way. You should also share stellar infographics on your social media profiles in a regular manner.

Going forward, the following insights will help you a great deal in devising fruitful social media strategies. You do not have to be on every platform out there because not all of them are for all sorts of businesses. Your focus needs to be on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter primarily. Let us check out the crucial trends linked to these platforms.

• As per Statista, the viewership of Instagram Reels on a monthly basis is more than 500 million. This explains why Instagram Reels are now a key domain for most businesses.
• Sprout Social concludes that the most optimum time for posting on Facebook is around 11 AM on Wednesdays or between 1 and 2 PM on Sundays.
• Twitter puts forth a vital insight that Tweets accompanied by hashtags fetch a hundred percent more engagement.
• Statista infers that around 65 percent of Instagram users are below the age of 34. To add, Instagram insights reveal that more than 90 percent of users on the platform follow at least one business.
• Instagram is the most preferred platform for influencer marketing among marketers. As per Sprout Social, 98 percent of them opine that Instagram offers the most effective outreach for influencer marketing campaigns.

So, now you have all the information that you need to work on social media marketing strategies. If you still keep things hanging, your competitors would take giant leaps by making the most of social media. You have to act smart and act fast to build a brand authority on social media to have a great influence on potential SaaS clients.

3. Offer free trials on SaaS

To stay ahead of your competitors, you ought to market your business with the distinction of free trials. Of course, the privilege of free trials will work wonders to attract clients that are doing their research and development for choosing the best SaaS provider. All of us love free trials irrespective of whether it is an OTT platform or a SaaS cloud service. Having said that, free trials would be great for enhancing brand awareness and winning promising leads.

However, here we need to understand that offering free trials to potential customers and marketing this attractive feature are two different things. You have to market your free trials in a superb way to entice excitement among potential buyers. This is where your content marketing strategies and SEO practices will come to play yet again.

Besides, you can also run affiliate marketing campaigns, targeted digital ads, and PPC campaigns to pitch free trials to your target audience. Moreover, strong social media promotions with catchy captions for free trials can have a massive impact as well. The greater the outreach of your free trial feature the more worthwhile leads you will be able to generate.

Let it be known to the world that you embrace the idea of customer satisfaction! Offer a great proposition to your target customers in the form of free trials optimizing their interest.

4. Enhance your positioning on SaaS review sites

It is not uncommon for modern consumers to analyze the reviews of a business before choosing to buy from it. In fact, the modern consumers that are largely represented by millennials are streak smart and they do their homework well before buying. To elaborate, as per Qualtrics, online reviews have a massive influence on buying decisions of around 93 percent of consumers.

Having said that, it becomes essential for you to maintain strong positioning across websites reviewing SaaS businesses. A large part of your marketing efforts will be redundant if the web is brimming with negative reviews about your business. Needless to say, you would not want that to happen at any cost. Hence, being image-conscious is a good business strategy.

Probing further, the reviews that your business is going to get on these platforms are subject to the customer experience you are able to deliver. Therefore, you need to be diligent in your endeavor of offering delightful customer experiences at all times. Customer experiences are salient to both client referrals and client retention. In case you find a negative review of your business on any of these review platforms, you need to follow it up immediately.

The bottom line is that almost 9 in every 10 customers base their purchase decisions on online reviews. Thus, you need to do everything possible to maintain a positive position on review sites. You need to find the right tactics for attracting positive customer reviews for creating an appealing proposition on review sites like Yelp.

5. Pay equal heed to your existing clients

A lot of businesses are making the strategic error of devising marketing strategies solely focused on acquiring new clients. However, the smartest of marketers will always have a two-dimensional approach to marketing plans. To elaborate, marketing strategies need to be inclusive of tactics for client acquisition as well as retention. You also need to tap the opportunities for selling to your existing clients yet again in the future.

It is in fact, a little queer that businesses are overlooking the value of their existing clients in the bid to attract new ones. Semrush infers that only 18 percent of businesses are paying adequate heed to client retention. However, it is crucial to note that the probability of your existing clients or customers buying from you again is 50 percent greater than that of new customers buying from you.

Having said that, your existing clients also need to be in the loop of your marketing efforts. Your marketing tactics need to find the right balance between engaging both your existing clients and potential clients. To indulge your existing clients in a more proactive way, you can inspire them to provide user-generated content. You can also promote their customer journeys with engaging content and present that to your potential buyers.

When your existing clients feature in your marketing ideas, they will feel greater brand loyalty. Hence, the idea of using your clients’ journeys to pitch your SaaS offerings to new clients will be a win-win situation for all. Let your clients be the main protagonist in your brand’s promotion. With genuine client stories and user-generated content, you can build greater brand authority.

6. Host webinars for lead generation

Effective marketing is also about the successful generation of quality leads that make great prospects for conversion. In fact, lead generation is one of the most imperative key performance indicators from the marketing perspective. Worthwhile lead generation will give your business better market penetration outcomes It would of course be a strategic goal of your business.

This explains the reason why marketers always want to have an aggressive approach to lead generation. After all, handsome lead generation will have a huge role to play in upscaling sales.

In the contemporary world flourishing with enormous digitalization, webinars are acting as effective tools for lead generation. To elucidate, LinkedIn explains that almost 70 percent of marketers are keen on increasing webinar budgets.

To add, HubSpot cites that webinars lead to the generation of the best leads as per 54 percent of marketers. Moreover, it also explains that the highest conversion rates are rendered by communication webinars. In fact, communication webinars have a conversion rate as high as 67 percent.

Going forward, let us look at some insightful trends that will help you plan your webinars in a more constructive way.

• As per MegaMeeting, Thursdays are the best suited for hosting webinars
• Statista concludes that live webinars and webinars on demand are the most popular among marketers
• As cited by ON24, Q&A is used as an active engagement technique by 81 percent of marketers. Moreover, 70 percent of marketers prefer to offer downloadable resources during webinars.
• As per WorkCast, webinars that are planned for a duration of 60 minutes gravitate a higher number of attendees than webinars planned for a duration of 30 minutes.
• HubSpot explains that from the consumers’ perspective, the most successful webinars are the ones that provide informative content to consumers on how to perform specific tasks.

These vital insights would surely help you to optimize the planning of your marketing webinars. You can look to host two to three webinars every week explaining various dimensions of SaaS cloud platforms to users. Also, you can blend informative content on SaaS with an overview of how you have integrated the best-in-class innovation and excellence in your SaaS offerings.

You can plan a series of impressive and indulging webinars on the explanation of SaaS, its merits, the linked challenges, and the features of your software. Remember, engagement has to be at the forefront of these webinars for better lead generation.

7. Bring stellar innovation in email marketing

Email marketing is an extensively tried and tested marketing tool that still holds great promise. However, what is essential is to drive prolific innovation and creativity to revamp your usual email marketing approach. The world out there is getting enormously creative with its email marketing strategies and you need to catch up with the pace.

With greater innovation, you need to incorporate more interactive elements into your marketing email messages. You need to make your email marketing campaigns more engaging for the readers with a greater touch of personalization. In this pursuit, the AMP email technology can facilitate great outcomes for optimizing your email marketing campaigns.

To elaborate, AMP email technology is an acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages. This technology enables effective integration of interactive components like ‘Call to Action’ buttons, accordions, confirmation etcetera into email messages. With this state-of-the-art technology, you can offer new horizons of personalization to your existing clients as well as potential buyers.

The best part is that the AMP technology is yet a fairly new technology and businesses integrating it before others will have a great advantage. Leveraging such advanced technologies will be a great idea for rethinking your email marketing strategies. The more interactive your marketing emails are, the better will be the quality of the leads you acquire. Given the merits of AMP emails, you can expect it to be a game-changer for your SaaS business.

To recapitulate, to stay upbeat in times of enormous competition, you need to rethink and reinvent your marketing tactics. There is enough empirical research to believe that the future is quite bright for SaaS companies. The entire corporate space is now being driven by intelligible automation and remote working styles that need SaaS for operating efficiently. To grab your share of market penetration, you need meticulous marketing plans to work for your business. The strategies and tactics listed above would surely be worthwhile in changing the fortunes of your business.