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When you built your original SaaS marketing strategy how much time did you spend on your post-sales strategy? Were you solely focussed on lead generation tactics to start building up your business? After all, when you start any business the one thing you definitely need is customers.
For CEOs at growing SaaS companies, one of the challenges they face after their initial growth success is how to maximise the relationship with their existing client base. In a previous article, we noted how a 5% increase in SaaS customer retention can increase profits by up to 95%. So spending time on extending your SaaS marketing strategy beyond the sale and into your ongoing relationship will pay massive dividends when done correctly.
Delighting and retaining your client base is vital to successful SaaS business growth. That’s why it forms one of the three pillars of the SpotDev SaaS Growth Model. The model is a proven SaaS business strategy that provides a profitable and scalable approach for achieving your revenue goals.
Should my SaaS marketing strategy only focus on client retention?
Reducing your customer churn is just one of the benefits of extending your SaaS marketing beyond the sales cycle. Whilst the benefits gained from retaining your existing clients include improved profitability and a steady revenue stream from which to build your growth, the opportunity to further nurture and delight your customers can lead to longer customer lifecycles and a bigger wallet share of their budget for your business.
When you consider that lead generation activity that specifically targets your existing user base has a 60-70% higher chance of closing compared to new business SaaS leads. It is apparent that retaining your clients and continuing to market your services towards them should be part of your SaaS growth plan.
How do you start building your strategy and tactics to tap this highly valuable resource and ensure a high return on your marketing investment?
Don’t wait until you’ve won the sale to start delighting your customers
Ok, I know that technically a sales lead is not a customer, but like many successful SaaS companies, you probably have a free trial offer of some kind. Whether that is a freemium subscription or a limited free trial offer, these are in effect customers. They are using your product and this is a great point in your relationship to build trust and showcase the value you bring to the client’s business beyond just supplying a piece of software.
The sales cycle for B2B SaaS is not as fast as that of B2C SaaS, unlike the home user, the business user will often have other considerations in play when reviewing your solution. They will have to consider budgets, usability, user uptake, boardroom pressure, compliance and security. Each of these pressures will bring with it questions and requirements that will need to be understood and met quickly. Failure to provide these answers will lead to a loss in confidence and trust that your business is the right business to solve the client’s problem. They need answers to their questions, not more problems.
Questions are always a great marketing opportunity, in fact, many people will tell you that the main function of a good SaaS marketing strategy is to provide answers to questions. This is very true as part of inbound marketing. There is more to this than just providing FAQ’s on your website, it is about developing a content strategy that educates, supports and guides end users.
If you delay delivering a content strategy for these users who are onboarding with your SaaS via a free trial, then you run the risk of losing significant numbers of your user base without ever having generated any revenue. To give you a head start here's a link to 4 tactics that convert freemium users into customers.
How do I build a SaaS content strategy to delight customers?
Any strategy that you create for your business should minimise guesswork and look at the facts and the desired end result. From here you can start to identify the steps required to achieve your goal.
When we work with our clients on their GamePlan and look at how to delight their customers with a content strategy we kick things off with a workshop.
The GamePlan gives you the exact strategy needed to deliver successfully.
It consists of 3 elements:
Data - Opinions don’t matter, data does! This is why we start by gathering information about your current business positioning, your industry and competitors as well as how well your sales and marketing is currently performing. It’s only once we’ve got the actual facts that we define the strategy for your personalised inbound plan.
Strategy - Your GamePlan will contain the actions recommended in order for you to hit your growth targets. You’ll know who you’ll be targeting, how you’ll reach them and what you’ll do with them once you have captured their details.
Content - This is the actual campaign strategy that will be implemented to put your GamePlan into action. This is where all the insights from your data come together with your strategy and deliver the results laid out in the strategy element.
To get your own internal workshop up and running, why not get together with your sales and marketing team and identify your buyer persona’s. The buyer persona template is one of the most powerful tools that you can use when developing a SaaS content marketing strategy. You can get everything you need for this workshop in “The Ultimate Guide to Identifying Buyer Personas”
In summary, you do need to have a SaaS marketing strategy that goes beyond the sale because your most profitable sales are here, and the secret to accelerated growth comes from maximising your existing relationships.
Do You Want a SaaS Marketing Strategy that Converts Leads?
