The SaaS ( Software as a Service) market continues to boom. Recent statistics suggest that the SaaS sector could be worth around $623 billion by 2023. As a result, tech entrepreneurs see SaaS as a get-quick-rich scheme. Though it isn’t because of the tremendous amount of risk involved.
The failure rate of SaaS startups is pretty high. More than 90% of them crumble within 3 years despite growth and funding. But that brings us to a puzzling question: “Why would a startup fail despite growth and funding?”
The answer lies in the marketing strategy. It’s one thing to create a SaaS product and another to promote it. How will your business stay afloat during the early days if you aren’t getting enough subscribers or buyers of your product?
As an established digital advertising agency in Dubai, we have worked with numerous well-reputed SaaS businesses. Most of them are reluctant to invest a few dirhams in digital marketing until they hire us for a couple of months and experience the change.
Silent your mobile phone shut the door behind you, and close all other tabs in your browser because I’m going to spill the beans here, right now!
Read on to find how our experts run result-driven marketing campaigns for SaaS products and how you can emulate them.
8 Tips to Put a Top-Tier SaaS Marketing Strategy
1.Do Market Research & Create a Buyer Persona
Well, this is something you should do before creating your product. Market research is the first step towards creating a solution-driven SaaS product. If you create a product on a whim, you never know if people really need it – or if it has the potential to yield the ROI you are expecting.
Not sure how to go about the first step? Get a free consultation from us. We have industry experts with decades of experience in promoting diverse SaaS products.
Once you have done the market research and are sure that your product has the potential to make you a seven-figure SaaS, it’s time to identify your best leads. Who’s your ideal buyer, from their age to gender, profession, buying habits, and everything that matters is part of the buyer persona.
Statistics compiled by an American agency (Customer) suggest businesses that develop an extensive customer research strategy enjoy a 55% higher retention rate compared to those that don’t.
Luke Genoyer, the head of demand generation at World Telecom, increased business accounts by 40% monthly by doubling down on customer research to refine the buyer persona.
Do the same to be absolutely clear about who is your ideal buyer. This will make the process of creating an effective marketing funnel smooth and streamlined.
2.Invest in SEO & Content Marketing
SEO is the backbone of digital marketing. There’s no way you can run successful digital marketing campaigns without optimizing your website for SEO. The SaaS market is already quite competitive, you can’t expect paid ads to bring enough ROI to sustain.
A report published by BrightEdge says SEO drives 1000%+ more traffic than organic social media. Moreover, 53.3% of all website traffic comes from organic searches. You need to be at the top, or at least on the first page, for high-volume keywords to get long-term results.
So, to sell your product, you need an SEO-friendly website. And to drive traffic, you need SEO-optimized content that hooks your audience by hitting their pain points and presenting the solution in the form of your product.
You can either outsource the SEO of your website to SEO services in Dubai or hire in-house SEO experts. Alongside that produce note-worthy content for your audience. Create long-form blog posts and how-to tutorials about your product.
If you can afford paid backlinks, go for them. The top SERP results on Google have 3.8 times more backlinks than those below them. But make sure your backlinks are relevant and the site website linking to you is an authority in the SaaS niche.
3.Invest in Paid Search or PPC
Our digital marketing agency in Dubai employs experienced and ROI-driven PPC experts who have a deep understanding of customer psychology and what kind of ads convert.
Often, our clients ask us “how much investment is enough for PPC?” And we politely educate them on the tidbits associated with paid ad campaigns because there’s nothing like investment thresholds when it comes to PPC.
It depends on the competition. And generally, the SaaS market is quite saturated. What budget is enough or minimum for you depends on your competitors running paid ad campaigns and acquiring most of the business.
But for the initial boost, it’s essential to spend a few bucks on paid ad campaigns on Google and Facebook. To take down your ad spend to a minimum, hire the best PPC experts and state your expectations clearly, so they can create a strategy accordingly. ( We employ in-house Facebook marketing experts who have created hundreds of Facebook-compliant ads for SaaS and other industries.)
Well-optimized PPC campaigns promise a dream ROI. Statistics compiled from authentic sources show us well-managed PPC campaigns can bring a staggering ROI of up to 200%!
But make sure you have the research work done regarding the demographics of your target audience. The ad spend varies depending on the countries in which you want to show your ads.
4.Run Email Marketing Campaigns
Some little informed people would tell you email marketing is outdated, not everyone checks their email daily anymore. And most of it goes in the junk folder.
Though the second claim is true, sales emails do end up in the junk folder, but email marketing is still there – and generating millions of dollars for health, beauty, SaaS, and countless other industries.
Who would leave a marketing channel that promises a mind-blowing ROI of 400%? Let that sink in, every single dollar you spend on email marketing brings a return of $4.
But, it’s a step-by-step process. You can’t start selling someone right from your very first interaction with them via email. That’s why SaaS product owners hire email marketers in Dubai to create a series of emails and use tools to automate the process.
When someone signs up for the newsletter, they will get a Welcome email. And then the real sales pitch ( consisting of a dozen emails ) begins. You interact with your subscribers, tell stories, create interesting use cases of your product, build rapport, and eventually sell without selling!
We recommend the following tools for creating email marketing campaigns for your business:
- For all niches, flexible: Mailchimp
- Best for Automation: ActiveCampaign
- Easiest to Use: MailerLite
- Best All-in-One Marketing Suite: Hubspot
- Budget-friendly: Moosend
- Best for E-commerce: Drip
5.Build a Strong Social Media Presence
Observe the different SaaS businesses around you, each of them has active social profiles. Instagram to Facebook, LinkedIn, and even platforms like Quora, Reddit, Medium are worth utilizing when it comes to expanding your digital outreach.
You will find people discussing products similar to yours, or perhaps a better option compared to what your competitors are selling. Around 54% of social browsers use social media to research products, and if they get what they were looking for, there is no reason why they won’t convert.
Only in the United States of America did companies spend over $130 million dollars on social media ads in 2020. And they were not just SaaS owners but people owning a wide range of businesses, from household products to local services, and everything in between.
