How to Market your Software as a Service the Right Way?
Software as a Service (SaaS) is growing at breakneck speeds and the competition in this space is heating up. The clients are demanding more and all this puts tremendous pressure on Software as a Service (SaaS) providers. Marketing it the right way can make all the difference between making your product stand out from the crowd or having a run-of-the-mill product.
As any company in the SaaS space will tell you timing is very important in this business. It is not about a lack of opportunity but the capability of servicing customers so that they do not jump ship and start buying your competitor’s products. Also there is a lot of churn in this business irrespective of how good your product is or can be. Thus marketing plays a very vital role and can make or break a deal for SaaS product owners.
Here’s how you can stay ahead in the SaaS business with the right marketing
Getting customers fast is very crucial for SaaS and also doing so in a cost-effective way can make all the difference. When you are able to retain the customers for the long run then that can be a real benefit for the organization. The opportunities for upselling and cross-selling are also real and huge and hence getting to know what the client’s business is all about is important in order to explore heightened opportunities to service them right.
The way you design or develop your product has a great bearing on how your customers will accept it. Start with a customer problem and build your software solution from the ground up. Great companies have done it and have reaped rich dividends even in a crowded market of me-too. Now that your software product is a stellar one it is just not sufficient to sell it and this is where marketing can make all the right noises and help sell your product in a time-bound and cost-effective fashion.
It’s a given that for SaaS enterprises there is an urgent need to reach the market faster, develop a lead nurture pipeline and pass on sales-qualified leads to the sales team so that they can go ahead with closing lucrative leads and converting them into valued customers. All this has to happen with adherence to tight deadlines since a lot of money is invested and is stuck and it cannot be recovered unless you get good and great clients fast.
When you are marketing your SaaS product to the clients it’s not about the technology or the capability of your product that you should be talking about. Talk to the clients in terms of the language that they understand. Talk about the faster time to market, lower cost of customer acquisition, higher rate of customer satisfaction, lower investment on skilled resources, lower cost of infrastructure, reduced maintenance and upgrade costs, greater impact on the company bottom line and all such metrics that they can readily connect with. This is what, at the end of the day, will tip the balance in your favour.
Inbound marketing can play a very vital role in assisting SaaS companies get the right clients to ensure the revenue spigot never runs dry. Your customers are B2B customers and they are more likely very active on the internet and thus the power of the internet can be harnessed to reach out to them and sell your product. Inbound marketing provides you with immense opportunities to reach out to the right customers at the right time at the right place.
Like we all know SaaS is a recurring business and this means that you need to renew the contract on a monthly, semi-annually or on a yearly basis. The trick to keep the cost of acquisition (CAC) down is to retain the same customers for a longer period of time. It is a well known fact that acquiring new customers can be six to seven times more costly than retaining existing customers. Also the value from a satisfied customer can increase over the lifetime of the customer thus providing some very good opportunities for increasing the overall revenue and bottom line of the company.
Your marketing collaterals have to be exceptionally good and they should be educational and informative so that it makes a real difference to your client’s business and not just sells more of your products. Keep the clients engaged and provide excellent customer service so that in case of any issues they are never more than a phone call or an email away from your customer care representatives.
Key Takeaway: Being a thought leader and an authoritative voice in your domain helps immensely. Help customers wade through the maze of complexities associated with Software as a Service so that they can concentrate more on their business. Customers look for SaaS not just for reducing the costs but also the convenience and quality service assurance that comes bundled with it. There’s nothing like having highly satisfied customers who go around extolling the virtues of your SaaS product. This is because when people learn about a brand from their peers it has the maximum impact on their decision-making since the credibility of such information is the highest. Strive for creating brand advocates, social media influencers, and all such things can make a huge difference in the long run and the best part of this is that it comes free of cost.