There is no limit to what businesses can get out of the B2B SaaS industry. But first, you need to get it right – and this is where most brands are missing it. Here is a guide to understanding the challenges of B2B SaaS marketing and the tactics to beat these challenges.
If you handle the SaaS marketing strategy of your company or consider hiring a saas consultant, you already know it is difficult to manage and, in some cases, quite expensive.
Top Challenges of B2B SaaS Marketing
Let’s start by highlighting the B2B SaaS Marketing issues as a solid foundation to understand how to maximize the strategy.
- Poor communication
The goal of every marketing strategy is to communicate product benefits and overall value. Customers want to be sure they are getting the best value for their money. Inbound marketing helps to achieve this by educating the audience via case studies and using social proofs.
- User retention
SaaS is quick in product development and marketing, but this is a two-edged sword. The flexibility makes it easier to make sales but also to lose customers. Users can cancel their subs without prior warnings. Incorporating user retention will fix this.
- Short Sales Cycle
B2B businesses are known for the long sales cycle. However, the B2B SaaS niche is the opposite – a very short sales cycle. Depending on how good the marketing strategy is, a brand can quickly lose or gain a prospect.
- Service Provision
SaaS marketing involves selling the software as a product and the “service” aspect of the process. Service here incorporates frequent updates/patches and improved features. It also incorporates excellent customer service.
- Freebies and offers
Unlike other business models that avoid giving free stuff, freebies are an essential component of B2B marketing. Clients expect and see free-trial demos as a norm in the industry. However, brands should manage this effectively to ensure a healthy cash flow.
Away from the challenges, let’s discuss a few proven B2B SaaS Marketing Tactics you can use to combat these challenges.
Proven B2B SaaS Marketing Tactics
How can you maximize your B2B marketing to ensure that your business thrives? Here are some helpful tactics you can leverage.
- Know your ideal audience.
Understanding your audience is crucial in the B2B SaaS space. But it can be tricky, considering different companies/organizations are in the picture, with each requiring a different approach. For best results, create a unique buyer persona for each of the roles involved in the purchase decision for every organization you are targeting. You can use competitive analysis, brainstorming techniques, interviews, surveys, and CRM analysis to derive the data needed for this step.
When you understand your audience, you are better positioned to plan and execute your marketing strategy to perfection.
- Maximize lead generation.
The shorter sales cycle of the B2B SaaS space means it is easier to generate leads. The first step is to attract more website traffic, which ultimately translates to leads and conversions. You can generate traffic through inbound/content marketing, paid advertising, remarketing, B2B SEO, etc.
When the traffic starts coming in, work on converting them into actual prospects using the led magnet strategy. A quality lead market strategy involves providing valuable content, comparison content, and a seamless free-trial registration.
The key here is to ensure an excellent service delivery – it facilitates the conversion of traffic into prospects.
- Optimize the ‘Service’ in SaaS.
The ‘service’ in SaaS is very important, either through continuous service, software improvement, fixing customer’s requests, and most importantly, offering important information that helps the audience.
Customers want their chosen brand to be their trusted source of information – the same as prospects. You can ensure this by providing answers to frequently asked questions, creating relevant content around your industry keywords, and finally conducting surveys and interviews of existing customers.
- Work to improve conversions.
Conversion has three primary stages: a website visitor into actual prospects, from prospects into free-trial registrants, and finally, from free-trial participants into actual customers. You can use your marketing channels, including email newsletter, content, and website, to facilitate these conversions.
While at it, do not hard-sell to your audience. You can also make important improvements like optimizing your website for mobile devices, optimizing your homepage for conversions, and introducing landing pages, as well as CTAs in your content.
- Prioritize content/inbound marketing.
It is not enough to offer excellent service; SaaS marketing also thrives on impressive content. The industry has shown that a strong inbound marketing strategy is essential to survival. It brings in quality traffic which ultimately translates to leads and conversions.
Inbound marketing thrives on relevant and regular content and promoting the content to the right audience through the right channels like paid advertising, email marketing, social media, and influencer marketing.
This, alongside, technical optimization will make inbound marketing effective for your business.
- Introduce social proofs.
From peer recommendations to positive reviews and other forms of brand credibility, social proofs are a huge deciding factor for prospective clients, especially in the B2B SaaS space.
To get your social proof to the optimal level, ensure your prospects can access a list of your existing clients, as well as their positive reviews. The latter may require you to offer an incentive, but it is worth the efforts. You should also ensure Online Reputation Management (ORM) best practices.
Finally…
B2B SaaS marketing is not as complicated as it may appear. With the right inputs and tactics, you can rest assured of excellent results. Start with an excellent product and service in a single package, build a sterling reputation for your brand, and optimize inbound/content marketing.
Good luck.
