Like every product/service. SaaS products are different. They are intangible. They have intangible buyers. They have subscribers like Netflix, who have to pay for their product/ service annually, monthly, or quarterly.
To increase sales, they have a few tricks which are by giving annual discounts, showing off customer testimonials, social media promotions, enhanced customer experience, demos, Live chats, CTA, set up calls, and Feedback to retain the customer.
Not only this, this industry has its process as it has an intangible audience. So, they have to understand their presentations not through body language but by how they are expressing their views or presenting their questions in an email or call.
Providing Free trials is mostly there in the SaaS industry. As the audience will get to know what your product is creating value to their biz and how it is helpful in the growth of the biz by saving time/ money.
The free trial should not be too long or short. It should depend upon the complexity of the software.
SAAS Marketing Techniques To Grow Faster In 2021
Your Way To Success
Before knowing the technique one should know what Saas is and how it works. Right?
Like before buying anything we ask for the price of the product.
We all have heard about SaaS product marketing? But how it is different from other marketing channels is the thing to look into. Isn't it?
So, here we will give you the beginners guide For SaaS.
SaaS stands for Software as a service. It is a software licensing tool and a delivery model of a product. This service runs on a subscription basis and is hosted centrally. Like: Microsoft office.
The model involves software delivery by getting access to software with a proper internet connection and a device and removing the time-consuming process of installing and maintaining it.
Example: Netflix, where you chill and watch is an OTT platform which is a SaaS-based product where your service i.e. movies or series. It offers software to watch licensed videos on its platform. It has a zillionth base of subscribers all over the world.
SaaS products are intangible like any tangible product. But attain revenue and profits. They have their selling strategies that differ from company to company.
What are SaaS conversions?
It is like selling the software that the customer access through an online website or portal which is on a subscription basis which helps the biz and customers to grow their biz with save of time or money or improving their revenues
Since it is a subscription-based price model the customer gets frequent while buying these products as they are part of their growth which is a steady sale of their service.
And also, these products are highly customized. So, you can choose features according to your needs.
But the more expensive your product is, the more stakeholders will be involved which can stretch the process to one month or more. Here are other factors that slow down the SaaS sale cycle :
1.Complex software: the more complex the software is, the duration of the cycle will be more. So, in this case, the right prospect should be in the room for the proper and fastened solutions.
2.New Markets: if you are selling it to new markets, the cycle may be longer as you’re communicating with them and giving valuable information for the product. But before making them your customer you should educate them properly about the product which will further make them a frequent buyer.
3.Enterprises: Selling to these companies would increase the stakeholders but there would be technical and more legal red tapes which would slow down the cycle of sales.
4.Free Trials: if offer a free trial, then the length of the trial will naturally add time to the sales cycle. As the customer will utilize the free trial before proceeding with further buying. keeping in mind, the free trial should be short which will give two things: shorten the sales cycle and make the customer buy the service quickly.
The longer the trial, the longer would be the sale cycle which will take time to decide if the customer will buy it or not.
Fundamentals of SaaS Sales
“Having a repeatable process empowers your sales reps to sell with efficiency and confidence”. The process begins from:
Prospecting:Since we are selling it to the tech-savvy audience, we will do inbound marketing which includes blogs, online posts, email newsletters, whitepapers, etc.
In addition to that, we can do face-to-face interaction with potential buyers which is rare in this SaaS industry.
Qualifying: Not all visitors on your website or trial subscribers will buy the product. To know that, there are lead scores which is an automatic way to qualify leads and you will get information and interpret it from your data and assign it with the lead scores from 1 to 10.
Another way is to start a trial is to email them or call them for after-sale service. So, you will get an idea of the status of the buyer.
Presenting: Mostly it’s not possible to present in face-to-face interactions in the SaaS industry otherwise we have got it through body language.
Through online mode, presenting would be done through email sequence and frequent follow-ups which will let us know the pain points the way it’s been expressed.
Handling objectives: After presenting, prospects have questions and concerns about the product or service. So, you must have known what most of the customers ask and know how to handle the response of the prospect.
Closing: At this moment, the prospect becomes your customer. In this stage, we will deliver the final proposal of the product and negotiate with the customer.
Nurturing: to retain the SaaS customers excluding customer support which includes training for existing and new customers. Feedback includes reviews, rates, and testimonials.
Part of their happy moments by sending happy birthday, and celebration notes, etc.
How to increase your SaaS conversions using the right marketing strategy:
Create strategic trial duration
Most of the SaaS products have a trial duration. As it is a great way to hook new customers to buy, however, to make it worthwhile, you should plan it strategically.
When the customer has the opportunity to get trials which will help them to know the value of the product in their biz as well as the benefit of your offering.
The trial period should depend on the software. if the software is complex then 14 days or more trials would work. But what if the software is easy to adapt and gives the trial for 30 days?
It would only make the sale cycle long and there would be fewer customers buying the product. As they know every part of your software and will compare with the alternatives of the service. So, it depends on the product.
Custom/ live setup call
Many of us don’t know how to set up the software. How did things work? These customers have the priority of how the software will work for them by giving lesser importance to how your products work.
SaaS has the highest conversion from this special technique of Live setup call only. This CRM would help them to achieve their objective related to the product they have taken a trial or purchased.
Leverage Annual discounts
Many SaaS products offer annual discounts in exchange for the customer paying the bill all at once in a cheaper amount as compared to paying it every month which attracts customers to attain the service.
While the company gets a sizable influx of cash at a moment and doesn’t get worried about a customer leaving at any moment.
Automated follow-up
As you see whenever you log in to the florist website or hospital website. They will ask ‘how may I help you?’ which is an automated way of assisting you.
In the same way, these automated services will help the new customer to assist with the service and product and they have common queries stored which will be solved by the assistant by putting up the questions and shortening the sale cycle.
Content Marketing
This is the only way of communication between the buyer and seller. By reading your content, understanding it, and perceiving it makes the buyer come into your contact.
Biz around the globe is using content marketing to reach the audience and generate leads. With consistency, you share the content it will increase its value over time
PPC( pay per click) also generates leads but with valuable content.
So, content marketing is an asset for biz owners while online ads are temporary or rented. Biz around the globe is using content marketing to reach the audience and generate leads. Keeping content quality consistent across multiple channels helps increase brand awareness among your audience.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This feature works hand in hand with content marketing by making it discoverable in google, bing, and ranking it in two ways: On-page SEO and off-page SEO.
On-page SEO: This form is under your control. You create content that people search to read. By adding internal links, UI, use of the title, and description.
Off-Page SEO: Mainly, when we hear about SEO, links are the things that click us. But getting the right trusted and authoritative link is what matters! The best way to gain links and shares is by a distribution strategy.
Google AdWords
While inbound marketing reduces the spending of Adwords, zillion people are still clicking on the search engine ads per day.
If you don’t want to miss out on these people to generate leads then you should still invest in PPCi.e pay per click
.
PPC is beneficiary as it is scalable, generate leads, and generate the best ROI for your biz
Pro Tip: to increases sales, some strategies to take care of is to choose the right model of SaaS, identify the target audience and its value proposition, set prospect qualification criteria, create templates, call scripts, set revenue goals, create a customer support system, and keep track of sales performance metrics that will be effective in rank in the SEO.
Top comments (2)
Great insights in this post! I've always believed that effective SaaS marketing strategies hinge on a mix of innovative strategies and consistent execution. One approach I've found particularly useful is leveraging customer feedback to refine product features and marketing messages. By creating detailed buyer personas, I've been able to tailor my content and campaigns to address the specific pain points of different segments. Additionally, utilising data analytics to track user behaviour has enabled me to optimise onboarding processes and increase user retention. A data-driven approach and personalised customer engagement have been key to accelerating growth.
I've been struggling with SEO for the past year. Great post. I was fortunate enough to receive a few small checks from angels to help keep us afloat.
However, the previous year wasn't entirely ineffective. From DR 28 to DR 51, we increased. From 300 to 5,000 people now visit us every day. We are one of the top 3 "Music Visualizer" websites.
The negatives are that we don't convert well with this traffic; those are the positives. Our YouTube to Mp3 tool, which we run for $600 per month and converts 0 customers, accounts for a sizable portion of our revenue.
We have a problem because I am not entirely sure how to rank for keywords that will bring in paying customers.
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