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Spoiler alert: marketing is hard—regardless of your industry. But the challenges that confront SaaS marketers are different and, arguably, more challenging.
As Neil Patel rightly notes in, "How SaaS Marketing is Different from Every Other Type of Marketing:"
"Marketing is hard. But what about marketing something that has no physical presence? Or marketing something that is constantly changing? Or marketing something that has some goofy name? Or marketing something that only about 20 B2B companies will be interested in? Or marketing something that doesn't even make sense to the average person? You get the idea. SaaS marketing is not for the faint of heart. It's challenging. And it is critically different from virtually every other type of marketing that the world is aware of."
A Marketing Challenge That Screams For A Strategy
The precision necessary for successful SaaS marketing doesn't leave much room for error or guesswork. To succeed, your business needs to leverage best practice marketing strategies that demonstrably deliver results—and they need to get results throughout the buyer's journey.
Your goal, of course, is to increase sales. But you can't make sales without qualified leads, and no matter how good your software is or how effectively it solves protracted problems for the businesses you target, you aren't going to generate leads unless you can push more traffic to your website.
To Boost Website Traffic, You Need To Answer This One Question
As a seasoned marketing veteran, you know all about setting realistic goals, leveraging inbound marketing tactics to build trust and creating buyer personas to effectively target your messaging. But the most important question you need to ask—whether your goal is increased sales, more quality leads or an uptick in site traffic—is, "Who are my customers?"
If you think that one's a no-brainer, think again. Why? Because, according to Content Marketing Institute, most marketers can't give a good answer to that question. For example, more than 60% aren't sure what's most important to prospective customers. More than half don't know what their audience wants to know at each stage of the buyer's journey—and about the same number again can't effectively name the several stages of that journey.
Aligning Website Generation Strategy With SaaS
Knowing who your audience is, what they care about, need, and want is especially important for SaaS businesses. This is because your prospective customers have unique concerns, questions, and problems. Said differently, to generate more traffic to your website, you need to understand who your customers are as you leverage best practice website generation strategies, including the following five:
1. Customise Content For Your SaaS Audience
Yes, "content is king," but if the king loses touch with his subjects, he risks losing his head.
The content that you create needs to answer the questions and solve problems of the prospects most likely to be interested in your software, whether your software is for CRM, ERP, accounting, email marketing or project management.
That's one of the reasons Moz is so successful. Their blogs, guides, and videos dovetail perfectly with the concerns of key market segments. Blogs like "Are H1 Tags Necessary for Ranking?" help their SEO prospects, while other blogs provide coveted answers about inbound marketing. Remember, content marketing will only drive more traffic to your website, if it provides solutions your target audience cares about.
2. Let Them Give Your Software A Try
Prospective software customers like demos—but they like product trials even more. Letting prospects take a "test drive" solves two related problems. First, it makes customers more likely to buy your software. Second, it gives you valuable market intelligence—a prospect who tries out your software is arguably more sales qualified.
A couple of cautions. First, make sure the software your prospects are trialing will give them enough of a taste of what your SaaS solution can do for their needs. Second, it's important to show the value of your software without confusing or overwhelming your audience, make sure using your software is easy and intuitive for your target market. Once you’re happy you can give a good experience through a free trial, highlighting this option in your Pay Per Click (PPC) ads or social media posts is one of the best ways to drive website traffic.
Discover the secrets of converting your free trials in this blog.
3. Get SEO Right
To begin, SEO isn't generally for DIYers. For one thing, the tactics necessary to get on-page and off-page optimisation right are complicated and confusing. For another, the rules of engagement are continually changing (consider for example that Google on average pushes out almost 10 algorithm updates every day). That said, achieving SEO results will give your content greater authority, meaning the increase of traffic those results generate will be of high quality.
4. DIVE INTO GOOGLE ADS
On average, businesses that ultilise Google Ads well, can see a 200% return on investment (ROI) through Google Ads.
To maximise the impact of your paid search strategy, create content and related ad copy that aligns with each stage of the buyer's journey. Next, be sure what prospects when they click on through to your website, lives up to the promises you make in your ads. If for example, it's "customised CRM," make sure that's the content you deliver. Finally, be sure to A/B test every element of your Google Ads strategy.
5. GET SOCIAL
Social media posts are among the best ways to push more traffic to your website. The obvious choice for SaaS (and other B2B) businesses is LinkedIn, but you shouldn't ignore other social platforms. For example, almost 75% of Facebook users say they use Facebook for "professional purposes" too. As with paid search, to optimise traffic generation, use both internal and external customer data to put your social media posts in front of the right audience.
The marketing challenges that confront SaaS businesses can be difficult to solve, but not impossible with the right SaaS marketing strategy. To achieve your key marketing goals—whether that's generating more leads, increasing website traffic or boosting conversion rates—you need a more focused strategy, a formulaic, step-by-step approach designed to meet those goals. That's where we can help.
