12 Best SaaS Marketing Strategies for Business Growth

You’re undoubtedly looking for ways to thrust much customers for your SaaS business. 

With that successful mind, here’s our database of the apical strategies to see erstwhile putting together your SaaS trading strategy.

1. Offer aTrial

Offering a free proceedings lets users effort retired your package earlier they perpetrate to a paid subscription, which tin trim customer acquisition costs and summation conversion rates.

Trials usually past betwixt 7 and 30 days and supply users pinch entree to galore of the software’s features. Which allows those users to trial retired the package extensively to spot if it’s the correct fresh for their needs.

It’s a suitable action for intuitive, easy-to-use package that users tin get started pinch connected their ain reasonably quickly. But it’s not the champion fresh for much analyzable solutions that require customization.

If your package is simply a bully campaigner for a free trial, usage these tips to make the connection arsenic appealing arsenic possible:

• Determine the correct proceedings length: The champion magnitude for your proceedings play will dangle connected your product’s complexity, price, and really often the mean personification will request to usage it successful their day-to-day work. While 14 days is reasonably modular for SaaS products, you mightiness use from reducing aliases extending that period. 
• Include entree to arsenic galore features arsenic possible: Don’t limit entree to circumstantial features excessively overmuch during the proceedings period. Let users effort retired each your software’s capabilities if possible, truthful they tin beryllium judge it’s the correct fresh for them.
• Emphasize your trial’s risk-free nature: Don’t unit users to participate costs accusation to motion up for the trial. And make it perfectly clear to users that signing up for a proceedings comes pinch nary strings attached. 
• Use a compelling telephone to action: Instead of “Sign up,” research pinch thing a spot much compelling. Such arsenic “Try it for free.” Here’s a bully illustration from Trello:

2. Create a Product Demo

A merchandise demo allows you to showcase your software’s capabilities while telling a communicative that addresses your target users’ needs to thief them spot really your package tin amended their workflows.

This tin yet thief you person much visitors into users.

Here’s really to create an effective merchandise demo:

• Research your target audience: Gain an in-depth knowing of your target audience by performing customer interviews, moving marketplace investigation surveys, and organizing attraction groups 
• Keep discourse successful mind: Center your merchandise demo connected communal usage cases that would beryllium applicable to your target users. And explicate really utilizing your merchandise tin thief users lick symptom points they have.
• Show—don’t tell: Make judge to guideline users done immoderate action aliases characteristic you mention successful your merchandise demo. Don’t expect them to automatically cognize aliases understand what you’re talking about.
• Address objections: Talk to your income squad to understand the astir communal objections prospects person astir your product. And effort to reside these objections passim the demo.

You’ll besides request to determine whether to gross your demo (i.e., inquire users for interaction accusation earlier they tin position it).

Gating your merchandise demo tin thief you place high-intent leads and let you to way them to your income team. But it tin besides consequence successful a ample percent of your website visitors skipping it because they didn’t consciousness comfortable sharing their interaction information.

You mightiness moreover research pinch some options to find which 1 delivers the champion results for your product.

3. Make It Effortless to Sign Up

Simplifying the sign-up process for your package helps to region immoderate frustrations and tin person much of your tract visitors into users. 

One of the champion ways to do this is to only require an email reside to group up an relationship (something a developer tin thief you with). Because fewer group find it frustrating to capable retired a azygous field.

You tin past automatically make a password for them and cod different accusation (such arsenic their sanction and institution name) later.

If you request much than conscionable an email reside to group up a free trial, see utilizing progressive profiling. Which allows you to summation much accusation via a bid of steps (first is entering an email address, 2nd is entering first and past name, etc.) to debar overwhelming visitors. 

Some different tips for making registration arsenic easy arsenic imaginable see (it’s besides a bully thought to consult pinch a developer regarding these options):

• Allowing users to motion up without costs information: Many users interest astir entering this accusation because they fearfulness they’ll get charged accidentally aliases that their accusation mightiness beryllium compromised
• Use microcopy: Incorporating short matter snippets that explicate the steps (e.g., password requirements) makes it easy for users to complete the process
• Implement third-party login options: If it makes consciousness for your product, allowing users to login via Facebook, Google, aliases different level makes it that overmuch easier to get started

4. Refine Your Buyer Personas

A buyer persona is simply a fictional practice of your target customer that informs the messaging you use, the platforms you attraction on, and galore different specifications that spell into your wide trading strategy. 

And a persona usually includes these types of information:

• Demographics: Age, gender, and location
• Socioeconomics: Education, employment status, and income level
• Pain points: The issues your target customers are dealing pinch connected a regular basis
• Behavior: What your prospects’ day-to-day lives look like, really they bargain SaaS products, and more
• Interests: Any individual interests aliases hobbies your target customers mightiness have

You tin usage Semrush’s One2Target instrumentality to study much astir your target audience. 

Here’s how:

Start by entering up to 5 of your apical competitors’ domains. Then, click “Analyze.”

The instrumentality will execute an study and coming you pinch a elaborate study connected your target audience.

In the “Demographics” tab, you tin spot your audience’s property and gender breakdown.

Scroll down to the “Distribution by Country” conception to spot the geographical breakdown.

Then spell to the “Socioeconomics” tab to spot accusation connected family size, income level, acquisition level, and employment status.

And spell to the “Behavior” tab to summation accusation connected your target audience’s interests and societal media use.

You tin past usage each of this accusation to build a purchaser persona pinch the Semrush Persona tool.

Just, capable retired each the sections successful the template pinch information you’ve gathered from your research.

5. Map Out the Customer Journey

The customer journey includes the stages a personification goes done earlier and aft becoming a customer, and it allows you to spot your merchandise and what goes into learning astir it from a customer’s perspective.

It tin besides thief you find the correct messaging and marketing tactics to usage depending connected which shape of the travel a customer is at. And let you to create a amended customer acquisition overall.

To create a customer travel map, you’ll want to commencement by breaking down the customer travel into stages. For a batch of SaaS companies, the customer travel will astir look for illustration this:

• Awareness: A personification becomes alert of a situation aliases symptom constituent (e.g., managing online reviews for their business is time-consuming)
• Consideration: They investigation and comparison different solutions to their problem (e.g., by looking astatine roundups and comparisons of reappraisal guidance package options)
• Decision: They determine connected a circumstantial solution and motion up to go a user

For each stage, you’ll request to place touchpoints—any instances wherever a imaginable aliases existing customer interacts pinch your marque (e.g., by reference a societal media station aliases seeing an ad). And database the associated actions, symptom points, and emotions that were present.

Once you do that, you’ll extremity up pinch a representation that looks for illustration this:

	Awareness	Consideration	Decision
Touchpoints	Online ads Social media content Educational guides	Software listicles Case studies	Website Landing pages
Actions	Learning astir online reappraisal management	Researching reappraisal guidance solutions	Signing up for a free trial
Pain points	Spending excessively overmuch clip managing online reviews Having to log into abstracted platforms to respond to reviews	Identifying the correct reappraisal guidance solution for their needs Finding solutions wrong their budgets	Not knowing whether a circumstantial package is correct for them Finding ways to effort retired devices without spending money
Emotions	Frustration	Curiosity	Anxiety

6. Embrace Content Marketing

Content marketing involves producing and distributing a assortment of contented types to attract, engage, and clasp your target audience.

Content trading that emphasizes search motor optimization (SEO) has been celebrated successful SaaS for years now—and pinch bully reason. It’s what propelled the occurrence of companies for illustration HubSpot and made them 1 of the astir well-known brands successful the SaaS space.

If you’ve ever done a Google hunt connected immoderate marketing- aliases sales-related topic, you’ve astir apt seen HubSpot’s content. And it’s nary wonder—the company’s website ranks for much than 1.7 cardinal keywords, successful ample portion owed to their blog.

Here’s really you tin get started pinch contented marketing:

Create a Content Strategy

Successful contented trading starts pinch creating a content strategy that outlines really you’re going to create and administer contented and usage it to thrust caller business.

It should see accusation connected your goals, target audience, messaging, contented formats and topics, and content distribution channels. And specify the attack you’ll take.

You’ve already researched your target audience, truthful now is simply a bully clip to attraction connected competitory study and keyword research.

Analyze Your Competitors

Doing a competitive analysis helps you understand what kinds of contented your target assemblage is consuming, which intends it’s the type of contented you request to create.

Use Semrush’s Organic Research instrumentality to get an in-depth look into immoderate competitor’s content. 

Here’s how:

Start by typing successful a competitor’s domain. Then, prime a target marketplace and click “Search.”

The instrumentality will past make a elaborate study connected that competitor’s integrated hunt performance. 

You’ll beryllium capable to spot really galore keywords they’re ranking for and really overmuch postulation they’re generating from integrated search.

From here, you tin navigate to the “Positions” tab to spot a database of each the keywords their domain is ranking for.

Finally, sojourn the “Pages” tab to spot a database of the competitor’s astir celebrated pages. Along pinch accusation astir really overmuch postulation each page is generating and really galore keywords they’re ranking for.

Perform Keyword Research

To create SEO content, you’ll request to execute keyword research to understand which keywords (terms your assemblage enters into hunt engines) you should target to get the champion chance of attracting unpaid hunt motor traffic.

Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool tin thief you uncover perchance thousands of applicable keywords for your website.

Start by entering a seed keyword—a connection aliases building that’s intimately related to what your package does. Then, participate your domain, prime a target market, and click “Search.”

The instrumentality will past make a database of applicable keyword ideas.

For each term, you tin spot the hunt measurement (the mean number of monthly searches the word gets), intent type (the information down the search), and the Personal Keyword Difficulty people (a metric that indicates really difficult it would beryllium for your circumstantial domain to rank for that term).

Use the “Personal KD%” drop-down to select the database to only show keywords pinch a debased Keyword Difficulty (50% aliases less) to attraction the database connected position you person the champion chances of ranking for.

Start Creating and Distributing Content

Use the information from your competitory study and keyword investigation arsenic good arsenic your strategy archive to make a almanac you tin usage to commencement creating and distributing contented that’s apt to thrust results.

Here, you’ll request to determine whether you’re going to outsource contented accumulation (to freelancers aliases an agency) aliases support it in-house.

Whichever action you choose, you should make judge to create elaborate editorial guidelines that will alteration some in-house and outer collaborators to create high-quality contented for your marque consistently.

And determine connected really you’re going to administer your contented (e.g., via the institution blog, your email list, societal media channels, etc.) Revisit the societal media preferences you recovered utilizing One2Target for immoderate first ideas.

7. Use SEO to Drive Long-Term Results

SEO is the process of improving a website’s visibility successful search motor results to thrust much visitors and yet person them into customers.

And while it doesn’t typically supply contiguous results, it tin beryllium incredibly beneficial successful the agelong run. Especially considering B2B SaaS companies spot an mean ROI of 702% from SEO.

And location are a fewer main types of SEO to attraction on:

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is chiefly centered astir optimizing your tract successful ways that make it easier for hunt engines to crawl (discover) and scale (store successful a database) your website’s pages.

Why do this?

Because if your website has a batch of method issues, it’s improbable that it’s going to rank precocious successful hunt motor results.

You tin usage Semrush’s Site Audit instrumentality to uncover and hole these issues. 

Here’s how:

Start by entering your domain and clicking “Start Audit.”

Follow the prompts to configure your audit.

Once the instrumentality finishes analyzing your website, it will coming you pinch a elaborate report. 

From here, sojourn the “Issues” tab to spot a database of each the uncovered issues.

And usage the “Category” drop-down to select for issues related to crawlability, indexability, and tract performance.

For each issue, click connected the bluish linked number to spot a database of each pages affected by that issue. And click the “Why and really to hole it” to study much astir the issue.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO involves optimizing webpages to summation their chances of ranking precocious successful hunt motor results.

When performing on-page SEO, you should salary attraction to the pursuing page elements:

• Title tag: This HTML constituent tells browsers and hunt engines what the title of a webpage is. It should beryllium short (less than 70 characters), descriptive, and see your target keyword.
• Meta description: This HTML summary describes the webpage and whitethorn look nether the title successful Google’s hunt results. Try to make it enticing to searchers by including a call to action.
• URL: SEO-friendly page URLs thief some hunt engines and users understand what a page is astir astatine a glance. Ideally, usage your target keyword successful the URL slug (the past portion of the URL that identifies the page).
• Links: They tin beryllium internal (pointing to different pages connected your site) aliases outer (pointing to pages connected different websites). When it comes to soul links, prioritize linking to the astir important pages connected your site. As for external links, effort to only nexus to charismatic websites.
• Images: Reducing the sizes of your images will thief them load faster to amended your page speed (which is simply a known ranking factor). You tin usage devices for illustration Kraken aliases Optimizilla to trim image size without impacting quality. Or opt for a much web-friendly image format for illustration WebP.

Off-Page SEO

For a SaaS website, off-page SEO will mostly revolve astir link building—the process of getting different websites to nexus to your site.

The extremity present is to thief hunt engines understand that your website is applicable and charismatic erstwhile it comes to your manufacture and target topics.

How do you spell astir building links to your website? 

A bully attack is tolook for websites that nexus to broken pages connected your competitors’ sites. And reaching retired to supply them pinch an replacement nexus (from your website) that they tin nexus to.

Here’s really to do it pinch Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool:

Type successful a competitor’s domain and click the “Analyze” button.

Go to the “Indexed Pages” tab and cheque the checkbox adjacent to “Broken Pages.”

This will select the database to only show surgery pages connected your competitor’s website. Look done the database to find a surgery page pinch a decent number of backlinks (links connected different sites pointing to it).

Click connected the number successful the “Backlinks” file to spell to a database of each the links pointing to that page.

Next, usage the “Active” and “Follow” filters to only spot pages that incorporate unrecorded links that are intended to walk nexus authority.

You tin past interaction those domains to petition that they switch the surgery nexus pinch 1 that directs to your website.

8. Create a Referral Program

A referral programme relies connected rewarding existing customers for bringing caller customers to your business and tin little your acquisition costs fixed prospects thin to spot word-of-mouth recommendations much than they do your ain trading materials.

Usually, users get a unsocial referral codification aliases nexus that they tin stock pinch others. And erstwhile personification other signs up utilizing that user’s codification aliases link, the existing personification gets immoderate benignant of reward.

You tin usage devices for illustration Cello and Rewardful to group up a referral programme for your SaaS merchandise quickly.

Make judge to travel these tips to make your referral programme arsenic effective arsenic possible:

• Decide connected a reward structure: Decide betwixt a single- and dual-incentive referral program. A single-incentive referral programme only rewards the referrer. But a dual-incentive 1 rewards some parties.
• Make it easy: For champion results, make it easy for customers to motion up for your referral programme and stock referral links successful aggregate ways (e.g., via email and societal media). And see connection templates they tin nonstop on pinch their links. 
• Choose the correct incentive: Consider your customers erstwhile deciding connected an inducement (e.g., discounts, cashback, aliases gift cards). For example, Dropbox offers other storage.

Creating a organization centered connected your package tin thief you scope much target customers, let you to build a narration pinch them complete time, and yet waste your merchandise to them.

This is known arsenic community-led growth, which involves creating a spot wherever prospects tin person discussions astir your package and the larger industry. And it’s been utilized by companies for illustration Lemlist and Notion to awesome success.

This is conscionable a sampling of Notion’s communities:

To get started pinch community-led maturation for your SaaS product, you’ll first request to determine wherever you’re going to big your community. Some options see societal media networks (e.g., Facebook), messaging platforms (e.g., Slack), and dedicated organization platforms (e.g., Circle). 

Reddit is besides a bully choice—it’s free, easy to use, and a ample portion of your assemblage is apt to already person an account.

Once you commencement a community, your first occupation will beryllium to pull members. 

At the beginning, you tin effort inviting your apical customers and promoting the organization done your existing channels (e.g., societal media pages and email list).

After a while, your organization will commencement increasing connected its own, pinch existing members inviting caller ones and others requesting to join.

But for this to happen, you’ll request to make judge to support the speech going by actively engaging your community. You tin do this by starting conversations yourself and organizing regular events specified arsenic webinars and inquire maine thing (AMA) sessions.

10. Leverage Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a awesome shape of trading because they enactment arsenic societal proof—once group spot really others are satisfied pinch your software, they’ll consciousness much comfortable becoming customers themselves.

Reviews tin besides thief you make leads, stitchery valuable feedback, and summation your website’s conversion rate. 

Here’s really to usage them effectively:

• Focus connected the correct reappraisal sites: There are a batch of reappraisal sites retired there, but immoderate are much applicable for SaaS businesses. These see G2, Capterra, and TrustRadius.
• Get much reviews: Having much reviews for your package will make imaginable customers much comfortable astir signing up. Start by making it arsenic easy arsenic imaginable to time off reviews. Then, inquire your apical customers to time off reviews.
• Respond to each review: It’s important that you respond to each review, including antagonistic ones. This will show that you attraction astir your customers and their feedback.
• Feature apical reviews connected your website: Once you’ve generated much reviews, leverage them to adhd societal impervious to your website. Display reviews connected strategical places, for illustration really Figma does connected their homepage. 

11. Seek Beneficial Partnerships

Partnerships tin beryllium a awesome measurement to grow your brand’s scope by tapping into partners’ existing customer pools and target audiences. 

For SaaS companies, the astir communal types of partners include:

• Value-added resellers: Companies connection further services aliases features (customization, integration, etc.) connected apical of reselling your product
• Service partners: Companies that connection further services related to your product, specified arsenic implementation aliases consulting
• Affiliate partners: This is astir apt the astir communal type of business statement successful SaaS—it involves paying affiliates (individuals aliases companies) a fixed aliases percentage-based committee for definite actions for illustration purchases
• Integration partners: Other SaaS companies whose products merge pinch your software

If you’re looking to get started pinch partnerships for your SaaS business, the first measurement would beryllium to place imaginable partners. 

Here, you’ll want to look for companies that person akin target customers. Ideally, they should connection a merchandise aliases work that complements your package but doesn’t compete pinch it directly.

Next, scope retired to these companies and connection a mutually beneficial partnership. Outline really you envision the business moving and item the benefits of partnering up.

Once a institution agrees to partner pinch you, it would besides beryllium a bully thought to draught and motion a business statement to protect some parties.

12. Conduct A/B Tests

A/B testing involves comparing 2 versions of thing (often a webpage) to find which 1 performs better, truthful you tin use what you learned to thrust amended results.

If you person the postulation to support it, you should beryllium moving A/B tests connected your SaaS website regularly. Especially connected your landing pages.

Here’s really to do it:

• Start pinch research: You shouldn’t A/B trial random ideas. Effective A/B testing is based connected information gathered from research. A fewer investigation methods you tin commencement pinch see usability testing, heatmap analysis, and website surveys.
• Form hypotheses: Once you’ve gathered immoderate first data, shape hypotheses astir which changes mightiness consequence successful an betterment successful metrics for illustration conversion complaint (e.g., “by making our transcript clearer and thoroughly explaining our features and benefits, we’ll get much visitors to motion up for a free trial”).
• Develop and tally A/B tests: Turn your hypotheses into A/B tests. You tin usage devices for illustration VWO and Convert to create and tally your tests.
• Implement winning tests: Once you’ve developed an A/B trial and made judge some page variants activity properly, you tin motorboat the test. Your A/B trial should tally until you scope an capable sample size and purpose to person 1 version execute amended than the different astatine a statistical value of 95% aliases higher.

Choose the Right SaaS Marketing Tactics

Now that you’ve reached the extremity of this guide, it’s clip to find which of the supra trading activities make the astir consciousness for your SaaS company.

No matter which ones you choose, Semrush tin thief you streamline your efforts. Because it tin simplify keyword research, competitory analysis, and overmuch more.

Sign up to effort it today.