How to Market a SaaS Product in the Digital Realm

FastSpring
FastSpring
September 18th, 2017
Estimated read time: 3 minutes, 27 seconds

Marketing a SaaS product is essentially about breaking through the noise of other digital messages. SaaS is growing rapidly – three times faster than software as a whole – and your customers are overwhelmed with offers. How do you stand out?

Here are some strategies that will help your product rise above the chaos.

Targeted Content

Do you deliver targeted content on an ongoing basis? If not, start immediately. It’s a form of SaaS investment that drives traffic to your product and builds return over time.

Targeted content is helpful information that your users find relevant to their lives. It’s delivered in the form of blog posts, microtools, e-books, free templates, white papers, and more. When your targeted content is genuinely helpful to people, they’re inclined to give you a first chance, second chance, or even their ongoing attention.

That’s why an established company like Dropbox hosts tons of free webinars and why a SaaS startup like Wishpond hosts monthly meetups for people in the tech sector. It’s all meaningful, targeted content that builds relationships with their customers.

Drip Campaign

A drip campaign is a series of small, enticing messages that drive repeat buys. Messages are spaced at regular intervals to provide increasingly tempting incentives and special offers.

Send drip messages using the channels you’ve already established with your customers: email, text, app, social media, in-platform messaging. Base them around the first day of your SaaS demo or trial offer.

Sujan Patel, VP of marketing for employment software company When I Work, uses a drip campaign of educational emails sent on these days of the trial offer: Day 1, 4, 7, 14, 21, 30, 45, and every two weeks thereafter.

Expirations and Referrals

Seize the opportunity offered by expiration dates. When a trial offer is about to expire, trigger a message that not only gives a special incentive to subscribe but also – and this is key – encourages them to send a free trial offer to a friend.

This is particularly effective for SaaS products that target businesses. Why? Because employees have to petition their bosses for the budget to buy new things. They need you to provide “the pitch.” Give them an easily-shareable message with an irresistible free offer.

Complementary Integrations

Sam Aparicio, co-founder, and CEO of Ringio, grows his company by developing partnerships with complementary SaaS businesses. Instead of holding competitors at arm’s length, he openly courts them as channels for additional business on both sides.

Which of your competitors could be viewed as complements? Is there another SaaS product that could enhance your user experience, given proper integration? Think about how you could create a shared ecosystem with a partner SaaS product.

This way of thinking – where a competitor becomes your ally – means added business, combined marketing efforts, and increased public awareness for both partners.

Friendly Face

Finally, don’t forget to take a step back and evaluate the face of your brand. People strongly prefer companies that seem friendly. It’s easy for SaaS products to come across as cold and faceless.

A study by the journal Psychology and Marketing found that people could name brands they enjoyed interacting with as much as their close friends: 83% had feelings of “brand love” and 67% felt “brand like.”

So ask yourself whether your customer experience is truly friendly, every step of the way. Develop a personable messaging style that helps customers enjoy their relationship with you.

In fact, the best SaaS providers view customer interactions as a type of storytelling, where the story is always about positive feelings and software satisfaction. A company like Starbucks, which is top-ranked for storytelling, builds all of its messages around positive feelings towards coffee.

Do the same for your SaaS product. Personalize your approach to customer service and pay close attention to the language used. Create a warm, human brand that feels like a friendship.

 

Looking for more ways to market your SaaS product in the digital realm? Connect with FastSpring, a full-stack e-commerce platform that will offer you the tools you need to market more effectively. Click here to download our guide, What You Need to Know About Selling Online.

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