What we cover in this blog?

• Introduction
• Create Appealing Content
• Build A Strong Social Media Presence
• Interact With Your Audience
• Showcase The Case- Studies and Partnerships
• Provide A Plethora of Pricing Options
• Provide Demos and Free Trials
• Utilize The Power of Referrals
• Keep Track of the Market Trends
• Conclusion

Introduction:

SaaS enterprises fill a need in the market by offering online subscription services to businesses. Most companies use at least one SaaS provider for email automation, Customer Relationship Managemen(CRM), or file hosting service. However, although a SaaS firm can assist business owners in finding consumers, it is gripping to see how SaaS business owners promote other businesses.

It corresponds to implementing a plan of action based on your organization’s goals. A marketing plan is created by using several strategies and approaches.

You’ll need to apply the most effective marketing tactics in sync with your business to accelerate your business to the next level and stand out from the crowd.

To understand it in more depth, let us go through eight B2B marketing strategies to help you build your SaaS business:

1. Create Appealing Content:

Content marketing for SaaS companies can take the shape of case studies, blogs, e-books, or any other type of content and is a proven technique for establishing a brand, reaching your target audience, and generating leads.

Compelling content increases marketing influence.

It also improves the brand from a marketing aspect, providing experience in solving difficulties that others are encountering. Instead of explicitly pitching a product, the material should be instructive, relevant, or amusing in a way that targets your target audience and gives them unique information.

2. Build A Strong Social Media Presence:

Building a social media network, interacting with your followers, and understanding your target demographic are excellent strategies to establish a brand.

Many B2B marketers have had success growing their businesses using social media platforms such as Quora, LinkedIn, and other venues where key decision-makers ask questions.

3. Interact With Your Audience:

Community participation is a terrific approach to reaching out to a certain demographic and educating them about how your product may assist them in solving difficulties.

Utilizing social media by organizing virtual campaigns, interactive polls, and games will render more reach and leads.

4. Showcase The Case- Studies and Partnerships:

Displaying client testimonials is a simple and efficient technique to establish trust. Make any partnerships and integrations with other firms prominently displayed. Showing your associations with well-known businesses builds trust.

Make your client testimonials and case studies easily accessible on your website to build a strong reputation.

5. Provide A Plethora of Pricing Options:

It is always beneficial for your company to demonstrate how you provide greater value to clients.

Regarding subscription pricing schemes, one size does not always fit all. Consider giving several price plans to your consumers based on their budgets and demands, and make them easily accessible on your website.

It demonstrates that you understand your customer’s needs and provide flexible and customized solutions for their budgets.

6. Provide Demos and Free Trials:

Free trials are also a fantastic method to give your consumers a taste of your software before committing to purchasing it.

To enhance customer conversion rates, follow up with marketing automation and sales.

Furthermore, you may use client input to improve your product and plan offers overtime. If you don’t provide a full free trial, consider giving a demo version, allowing buyers to try out the features of your services.

7. Utilize The Power of Referrals:

Referral programs, a popular marketing tactic among SaaS firms, may help increase user sign-ups by providing incentives to the community.

Referral programs allow you to reach out to the people who would most benefit from your products and services.

Most referral systems are the same: provide a reward to receive the same prize back. This concept, on its own, is classic.

Brands that have effectively engaged loyal consumers are increasingly approaching the referral model in novel and innovative ways. Some of these novel ideas include tiered systems, gamified benefits, and short bonus periods with increased rewards.

8. Keep Track of the Market Trends:

Researching the market is an important part of a successful SaaS product marketing plan. It’s critical to identify the top SaaS company in your line of goods so you may benefit from its experience, especially the techniques it employs.

SaaS product marketing agency assists in developing the company’s approach in line with the market trends.

Conclusion:

Whereas it is clear that B2C marketing is concerned with mindshare and building a brand, B2B SaaS marketing focuses on getting your clients at the right time and educating them on how your solution addresses their problems. By delving further into these eight best practices, you’ll be able to create a successful marketing plan that converts interested leads into loyal buyers.

Still confused about how to get started?
Don’t worry; Kloudportal has got you covered!

Kloudportal is a digital marketing firm specializing in SaaS marketing and sales outsourcing. Contact us to learn more about how a comprehensive marketing strategy might help your business in 2022.

What we cover in this blog?

• Analyze Your Target Audience
• User-Centric Branding
• Content Marketing
• AI and ML for Hyper-Personalized Marketing Campaigns
• Trials
• Improve customer experience
• Conclusion

1. Analyze Your Target Audience

• What are those likely topics they would talk about at work?
• What is their position in the company?
• What is their career status?
• What are the problems faced in completing their work?

2. User-Centric Branding

3. Content Marketing

4. AI and ML for Hyper-Personalized Marketing Campaigns

5. Trials

6. Improve Customer Experience

• Focus on making the customer feel valued and appreciated. Greet them warmly, thank them for their business, and take the time to listen to their concerns.
• Work to resolve any problems quickly and efficiently. If a customer is unhappy with a purchase, adopt the necessary measures immediately.
• Finally, follow up after the complete transaction to ensure everything went smoothly.

Conclusion

We have always heard that content is the king and it plays a significant role in the success of an online marketing campaign. Both startups and MNCs rely on content marketing to engage with customers, increase traffic, and generate leads and sales. However, for content marketing to be successful, a sound content marketing strategy needs to be developed that takes the content marketing campaign through its lifecycle for great results. The content can be anything from audio to video to pure written content.

Here is everything you need to know to create an unbeatable content marketing strategy for 2022.

How To Make An Effective Content Marketing Strategy In 2022

Here we have discussed tips that will assist you in creating an effective content marketing strategy in 2022. 

Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy

For SaaS product marketing, Hub and Spoke Content Marketing Strategy is considered to be of great importance. It’s because a SaaS product needs a lot of content in order to educate the audiences and also keep them engaged. In the Hub and Spoke content marketing strategy, the best SaaS product marketing agency would segregate around two themes. The first theme would be the main topic or the problem that SaaS product in question is trying to solve. The second theme would be supplementary topics that talk about issues that constitute the environment in which the SaaS product is being sold. For more on Hub and Spoke content marketing strategy, you should read this insightful KloudPortal blog .

Set goals and objectives

The very first thing you need to put your mind to while creating an effective content strategy is finding the right set of objectives you have for your business. The objectives could be to generate leads, increase sales, create brand awareness etc. You have to pick the content that can help you attain the ultimate objectives you have for your business. If your company runs a website, you can increase the reach of your business and create brand awareness using relevant content. Good content with quality keywords can fetch a lot of traffic to your website.

Know your target audience better

Your target audience plays a significant role in your business as they are the ones that generate leads and purchase your stuff. You have to pay full heed to the content your target audience is interested to read time and again. You can also research and find the social media platforms they are using mostly. If you are well- versed with what your target audience is up to, you are halfway through creating an effective content marketing strategy.

Be aware of and focused on your niche

You have to be very specific with your niche and work on it a lot to gain the best results. Instead of investing your time, mind and money in multiple niches, stick on to one niche and work on it rigorously. By doing that you will be able to gain a good grip on the niche and can focus on improving your brand.

Keep track of engagement rates

Always keep track of engagement rates with the content strategies. For instance, if you put a lot of effort and time into writing and posting content on your website or blog or social media pages, it is good to track the engagement rates to find out how things are going. The engagement rates will help you analyze whether your content can reach the audience or not. You can then rework the content and do changes here and there to increase engagement.

Content management system (CMS)

Once you get the clarity over what is working best for you, take the customer feedback. Go through your website, blog and social media handle to find out the feedback you are getting for your content. You can also employ CMS software to find out your customer’s pulse. Keep working on the intelligence drawn from customer feedback. Update and upgrade your content in line with the customers’ expectations.

Quality check

Once you are done implementing all the above steps, work on increasing the content production without ignoring the quality. By clubbing everything perfectly, you will be able to take your SaaS business to the next level with ease. You can also generate more leads and improve sales. Ensuring quality of your content without fail will add credibility and prestige to your product and brand. It’s important that the content a SaaS product marketing agency is using is not only high-quality but also unique, useful, interesting, and engaging.

Hiring a SaaS Product Marketing Agency

When hiring a SaaS marketing agency, it is important to choose the best one for your purpose. The top B2B SaaS product marketing agency in India will create a content marketing strategy roadmap to success. Then, it will put in place the system to repeat the success, and finally, it will ensure that strategy works with a consistency of success. To this end, a SaaS company should engage only the best Best B2B SaaS product marketing agency in India.

Think about the Market

Another very important thing in working out a great content marketing strategy for 2022 is aligning the strategy with the unique requirements of the market. Whether your SaaS product is to be marketed in a limited geography or it’s going to have a global market. The roadmap for SaaS product marketing will be different for each product as per its market and target audience. However, a B2B SaaS product marketing agency in Hyderabad, for example, can cater to any geography through a well-planned content marketing strategy.

Content Marketing Strategy for SaaS will be Different

SaaS product marketing is significantly different from other marketing strategies. So, the content marketing strategy will also be different. A SaaS company should hire the best B2B product marketing agency to work out its content marketing strategy. It requires a good deal of curated content that informs the target audience prompting them to buy. And once the sale is completed, it should regularly distribute content that keeps customers engaged on a positive note.

In conclusion

Content creators must work as per the content strategy prepared by the digital market department or agency. Content marketing strategy is a set of functions such as fixing the goal, identifying the audience, creating the content, and distributing it. When all of these actions are aligned to achieve a fixed goal, the strategy is successful and the content marketing campaign is able to meet the objectives set before the campaign.

Marketing strategies for SaaS products have to be different from other types of marketing. It’s because these software products are after all software that can be talked about but not shown physically or in action to every customer.

How do you overcome this? Through innovative marketing strategies!

Marketing has always been a fiercely competitive area and it’s more so for SaaS products. Given this, marketing trends keep changing. However, what might be relevant in previous years are likely to be good to some degree in the current year also. So, a SaaS product marketing strategy should build on previous knowledge and strategies.

Here, we are going to provide the 10 best marketing strategies for SaaS products.

SaaS marketing campaigns are designed to entice visitors to sign-up for trials leading to paid subscriptions. SaaS Product Marketing is about intangibles – wholly digital – that promise to change the way you work. The SaaS marketing funnel is the conversion of visitors to a free trial and then to a paid subscription. Here are 10 killer ideas to grow your SaaS company:

Simplify sign-up process

People don’t like lengthy personal info forms; keep the free trial or freemium sign-up page easy and simple. The “form fields” should be relevant to the exercise. There shouldn’t be unnecessary fields. The best SaaS product marketing agency in India will ask only for the name, email address, and payment mode. The subscriber will have the option to give additional details, but with the lure that doing so will qualify him for a reward!

Step up with content marketing

The benefits of content for SaaS companies are immense. Invest in content. The most effective modes of SaaS marketing are webinars, blogs, articles, videos—especially demos and how-to-use videos—case studies; virtual summits, and email marketing campaigns. Ensure content is consistent. Also, ensure content in different formats. Boost a webinar with a blog on the same topic. Share them on multi-media platforms. Such content will reach more people than just those who attended the webinar.

Marketing automation

Companies routinely automate marketing. Various marketing automation software products are available. Marketing automation boosts the conversion of leads with prompt action on customer behavior. The SaaS marketing strategy goes a step further, i.e., it aggressively pursues customer outreach. It reviews customer behavior and reaches out with a highly personalized B2B marketing strategy.

Upgrade to freemium

The ‘visitor—free trial—paid subscriber’ is the standard SaaS funnel. Another SaaS product marketing idea is to upgrade to the freemium model. The power of freemium is hard to resist. Replace the time-limited free trial of software with the full-time free account. But limit the features. Once potential customers get used to the freemium plan, chances are they will convert to paid subscriptions. They don’t have to, but they will.

Referral programs

Referrals help companies add customers. A rewards program for referrals is a good SaaS B2B marketing strategy. Financial compensations for subscribers who bring in other subscribers are a good rewards program and an excellent marketing strategy for SaaS marketing. For example, a rewards program of a phone company that gifts an extra 10 GB free for a single referral will attract referrals like bees to honey.

Partner with competitors

Tie-up with competitors! It is a good SaaS marketing strategy. A win-win for both because, unlike concrete sales, SaaS sells in the intangible and the digital. The SaaS market is not in the millions or the billions. Niche software has a finite market. The trick is to reach out to the right audience. A partnership strategy works for startups with limited budgets. Webinars in a partnership are an example of SaaS marketing. Webinars and promotion events jointly organized by competing companies are the future of SaaS marketing, especially if the Coronavirus remains active.

Retention and acquisition

Customer retention is the mantra for SaaS product marketing. It boosts profits by significant margins. Targeting potential users of SaaS is only half the job done. SERPs should also rank retention of existing users high, not existing customers alone. The content should relate to both old and potential customers. Mix ‘how-to’ content with comparison posts. Tell old subscribers how they’ll profit by sticking with existing SaaS. Content that helps both retention and acquisition of customers is like eating the cake and keeping it, too.

User-generated content

Asking clients to write guest articles and guest blogs about your SaaS product is a good marketing strategy. Content specialists say this is one of their best SEO strategies. The best SaaS product marketing agency in India would know that longstanding clients are experts on a company and its offerings. The clientele comprises marketers and agencies. And because they do business with the company, they’re the best people to write and create content for the company. User-generated content with keyword research ranks high on SERPs. It is a win-win situation.

Case-studies

Case studies are invaluable; they help marketing and sales efforts besides the expansion of the user-base. Saas product marketing is also about using case studies as a marketing strategy. Case studies bring with them expertise, especially conversion-driven ones.

Hijack the conversations

That is, get on first base with the customer. Go online and straightaway starts a conversation with the client. This happened a lot during the Covid-19 lockdowns all across the world. Invade chat rooms, and virtual event platforms for SaaS Marketing, and hijack conversations. Create and use a separate conversation strategy for different prospects you converse with. Ask about the event and how they felt about it. So on and so forth. Answer questions. Ask how the ‘product’ will change the life of each one of them.

In Conclusion

SaaS Marketing Strategy is a magnet to people looking for more than a 3D product that they can hold and take home for the mantelpiece or add to those hanging in the closet. SaaS is software that transforms life in ways never imagined before! The best SaaS product marketing agency in India does just that—transforms life.

Given the domain expertise required, digital marketing for SaaS products requires help from digital marketing experts and agencies. So what should a company consider before hiring a SaaS marketing agency? At KloudPortal we curate a large number of informative blogs on SaaS Products and SaaS Product Marketing and other related topics. Let’s not forget that content is, perhaps, the only tool through which SaaS products can be marketed no matter what channel you choose.

Cred is a phenomenal success story on the Indian startup horizon. Founded in 2018, it became a unicorn at a valuation of $2.2 billion in April 2021, in less than 2 years. That makes it the fastest billion-dollar startup in India.

Although Cred is a Fintech company and doesn’t quite fit into the definition of a SaaS product, its cloud-based app that provides the credit card payment system works much like a SaaS product.

Before we take a deep dive into Cred’s marketing strategies, new start-ups can learn from its success. They should avoid making some common mistakes and choose their marketing agency carefully.

Cred’s marketing strategy involves B2B Marketing and SaaS product marketing.

Cred’s marketing case study

As per the latest reports, the credit card payment processing company is again scouting for a fresh round of investment at a valuation of $5.5 billion. Cred has a staggering 7.5 million users on its platform and apart from facilitating credit card payments, it offers a bouquet of financial services that include instant personal loans, a D2C payment system, and more.    

The lightning speed at which Cred has grown as a Fintech enterprise is largely due to its marketing blitzkrieg. The company reported a loss of Rs 360.31 crore in 2019-2020, high due to high expenditure on marketing and advertising.

In this post, we will discuss some of the key marketing strategies campaigns that launched Cred into the big league of most successful startups globally.

Event Marketing

Cred signed up as a sponsor of IPL for 2020 to 2022 for a hefty Rs 120 crore. Event marketing is Cred’s calling card as it relies on this strategy to influence massive audiences. There is no better strategy than to promote brands using the vibrancy of events. Event sponsorship is coveted and cherished.

That being said, there are two modes—align brand campaigns with many events, or put all your eggs in one big basket! Cred’s vote has always been for and with the Indian Premier League (IPL). If the Cred App exists, it’s because you saw it on IPL ads and promotions.

Cred square drive 

During IPL 2020, Cred launched the 100% cashback offer to those making payments using the Cred app. The 100% cashback was for one lucky user. And there was no minimum payment limit to avail of the offer. Social media jousts, ads, and marketing drives during the IPL gave the Cred brand saturation exposure.

For Cred content is king 

Cred gets its heft from knowing finance. As it is, finance is not everyone’s cup of tea. But Cred does a great job in educating Indians on finance. Financial blogs and youtube videos on financial topics on credit cards are very much part of Cred’s marketing content. There is also a Cred YouTube channel called ‘On the Money’ which is dedicated to how IPL earns money. In short, Cred serves customers with content.

When Cred went viral 

Cred does its marketing such that it gets viral. Cred is known worldwide for its viral content. Trending is in Cred’s blood!

That ‘Dravid the Gunda’ ad

Now whoever thought Rahul Dravid is a ‘Gunda’? But for IPL 2021, Cred launched ‘The Great for the Good’ marketing campaign featuring a bunch of ads. One of them had Rahul Dravid doing the impossible. Mr. Cool, the Wall, loses his cool in a traffic jam! He yells, and he rages—he is not the man he is, he is the quintessential bad dude! The ad expresses incredulity at somebody getting rewarded for paying his credit bills using the Cred app. It is like saying Everest is a hillock. It is like insisting Rahul Dravid lost his temper! Impossible! Comic Tanmay Bhat thought it up.

Cake from Cred

Another time, Cred struck upon the cake idea! In a first worldwide, in 2019, Cred dispatched cakes for customer acquisition. Existing users were surprised with a cake apiece at their workplaces. “Who sent you this cake?” asked colleagues and the answer made droves of people install the cred app for making credit card payments—it was a bloodless coup!

Jousts and Jackpots 

Cred attracts users to its platform with contests and giveaways—exciting gifts plus rewards. A reward warms the heart. Cred lays out a spread of rewards and asks for only two things in return—install the Cred App, and don’t miss paying credit card bills.

How many of you remember Cred’s ‘Mega Jackpot Week’ during IPL 2021? The Mega Jackpot, a total of seven rewards! Harley Davidson—Fat Boys—iPhones for a decade—Free flights for five years—Gold—Tata Safari—Bitcoin—and a complete homemaker! Beat that if you can.  

Seen on TV

Cred’s target audience is Gen Y. Generation Y loves TV, they watch the idiot box like they are geniuses, the thing to do and how! Want to advertise to them, make a TV commercial. Way to go!

In 2019, the Cred app was a TV ad launched with Jim Sarbh doing the honors of explaining the benefits of Cred.

In 2020 Cred made 6 TV commercials featuring Madhuri Dixit, Govinda, Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan, Bappi Lahiri, and Anil Kapoor. Outcome: 700% hike in Cred App users.

Summing up

Cred’s backroom marketing experts leveraged many of the strategies typically used in SaaS marketing. It may not have hired a  SaaS product marketing agency per se, but it did engage a few reputed digital marketing agencies to plan and run its campaigns.

New startups both in Fintech and SaaS Product marketing can benefit from lead generation and marketing automation software OPAL CRM. Cred may soon be tapping public funds by listing itself on the stock exchanges. For new startups, ideation to IPO is a lot of distance.

However, it’s not impossible to cover in a short duration. Here are some tips from Kloudportal, a leading B2B marketing, and SaaS Product Marketing Agency. Cred’s curious marketing case study should inspire you to stay on the course and aim for big success.

The budget for SaaS product marketing can be a difficult issue in the first few years of the business. You need to spend vigorously on different channels to drive sales and recurring revenue. At the same time, you can’t lose sight of the ROI that gives you a hint about the areas that need more investments than others.

To know about winning marketing digital strategies for SaaS companies, you should visit Kloudportal, a leading SaaS Product Marketing Agency. In SaaS B2B marketing, retaining the customers is as important as making new customers. You can take the help of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software  to engage, delight, and retain your customers.

In this post, we are going to discuss how you can plan your SaaS marketing budget by working out ROI for different channels.

SaaS Marketing Budget and ROI

Assessment of ROI and preparing a marketing budget for your SaaS product is an essential aspect of SaaS marketing. SaaS companies need to constantly work on increasing their recurring revenue so it can offset the cost of customer acquisition, if not fully then to some extent. How much a SaaS company may have to spend on sales and marketing? For an established brand, it may vary from 10 to 40 of the annual recurring revenue (ARR). The SaaS product marketing of a new product may cost up to 90% of the ARR in the first year of its launch.

How to calculate your SaaS Product Marketing Budgets

A SaaS product’s business model is based on monthly or annual recurring revenue. So, how much budget should you set aside for SaaS marketing? The answer depends on how much return you want and how many customers you need to achieve that target. For example, if your SaaS product is priced at $100 a year and you want an ARR of $100,000, you need 1,000 customers.

Next is the number of leads you need to convert into 1,000 customers. If your SaaS product marketing agency works out that you will get 1 conversion from 200 leads, then you need 200,000 leads to achieve your target of 1000 customers.

Your SaaS product marketing budget depends on how much you need to spend to generate one lead. For example, if it takes $1 to generate 4 leads, you will have to spend $50 to generate 200 leads that will convert into 1 customer who pays $100 for a year. This is how you work out your SaaS marketing budget.

How to work out your return on investment (RoI)?

The return on investment is the rate of profitability and it is worked out as the ratio of return against investment. In the example that we are working with, the total investment needed to acquire 1 customer is $50. For 1000 customers, the investment would be $50,000 while the ARR or the return is $100,000. So, the ROI will be $100,000: $50,000, which is equivalent to 2: 1. In other words, for every dollar spent, the return is $2. More simply, we can say the RoI is double the investment.

Why is ROI important?

The marketing campaign for a SaaS product may involve  B2B marketing where many different channels are used. For every channel, a marketing budget can be allocated based on the return on investment it offers. Working out RoI for different channels may give an idea as to which of them is more effective and cost-efficient. There can be a whole range of metrics that can provide insight into your investments and returns.

Different marketing channels

A SaaS product marketing agency will most likely use Email Marketing, PPC Search Ads, SEO and Content Marketing. These marketing campaigns can help the company reach new customers within the budget and quickly.

Of the 3 marketing channels we have just mentioned, email marketing and Google search ads are the first and the second most cost-effective. They deliver an average ROI of $45 and $8 respectively for every $1 spent.

To effectively monitor the leads particularly where it’s coming from you will need CRM software such as the one from Salesforce or Hubspot.

ROI of different channels

You can use the same formula as we have used earlier in this post to calculate ROI. You can work out how much money it needs to be spent on email marketing to generate enough leads to acquiring 1 customer. Finally, you will compare the returns with the investment for a clear picture of the RoI status.

An important thing to remember is that you should compare the RoI with the previous month of the year to see if the direction of your campaign and the allocation of budget are right.

Dig deeper into the data

Once you have all the ROI data of the period under review as well as that of the previous month of the year, you can do some data analysis and see which channel is more profitable to work with. You may get some actionable insights such as reducing or increasing the budget on a particular channel.

However, RoI alone may not be a matter of concern all the time. There are some SaaS marketing metrics that you might be interested in. They all go into making your RoI better from one review period to the next.

Traffic:

Whether it’s has gone up or down; geography-wise mapping and tracking of visitors.

Qualified leads:

it gives you an idea of which channel is more effective in bringing qualified marketing leads and qualified sales leads.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC):

It helps you know where you should spend your marketing budget and in what proportion.

Churn:

Customer retention is the key in SaaS marketing. If your business is witnessing a higher churn rate, you need a course correction.

Summing up

Accurate and timely assessment of SaaS product marketing ROI and provisioning of SaaS product marketing budgets holds the key to success in this highly competitive business segment.

For SaaS marketing, you need to plan, develop, and implement   a sound digital marketing campaign. To this end, you need to hire a good SEO company  that can make your digital marketing journey less painful and more productive.