The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) sector has started exploding like never before. Digital services had already been growing like never before, but the entire SaaS industry got an unexpected boost from the COVID-19 pandemic. All of a sudden, everyone was home, and the attention put on SaaS companies boomed. Some used this attention to soar like Zoom and some were unsure how to take full advantage of this opportunity and floundered like Skype.
So how do you make sure that your SaaS company takes off and doesn’t end up stalling its growth? Our fractional CMOs, CEO whisperers, and other marketing experts have put together this ultimate SaaS marketing strategy guide to help you lead your SaaS business to success.
Positioning – It's More than Just How You Sell Your Product
Branding within the SaaS industry can be a hard task. How do you demonstrate value in a digital world? There are many different value propositions, such as price, but to convey value and establish the brand positioning, you need to start thinking of value beyond price. What is the value of your brand?
This is a simple question that comes with a hard answer, but it is important to know because it is the centre of your brand positioning strategy. Brand value comes from many different sources and dimensions. In many ways, it can be easier to demonstrate the value of a physical product. You can use higher quality materials, pay influencers to wear your products, and much more. Demonstrating value in the digital world of ones and zeroes revolves around keeping true to your company’s core.
What is this core made of? It consists of four different key dimensions. These dimensions include your vision, mission, values, and value proposition.
Vision
What do you want your business to be? What is your grand plan for the future? Your vision is the reason why your company exists. It’s the goal you had in mind when you decided that you wanted to start your own company.
The SaaS industry is built on grandiose visions, and it’s a large part of why so many SaaS companies are taking off. This vision should be motivational for you and your employees and be the reason to keep your business moving forward into the future.
Mission
Your mission is how you are going to achieve your vision. It’s the fuel that drives your company towards your future and will help you grow in the SaaS market. At the centre of your mission is your mission statement.
If you look into advice on writing a mission statement, you will see the answers are a bit all over the place. Some people like to keep their mission statements short and sweet.
A prime example of this is Google’s mission. Their mission reads, “Our mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” This mission is only fifteen words long and perfectly conveys exactly what Google is working to do.
Some mission statements are more expansive. Looking outside of the SaaS sphere, Ben and Jerry’s has an excellent mission statement which they break into three separate parts. One about their economic mission, one about their social mission, and one product mission.
Neither of these mission statements is necessarily better than the other. They are both great for the companies that they belong to. When making your mission, what’s most important is making sure it is reflective of and meaningful to your company.
Values
Your values are effectively the moral backbone of your company. What kind of people do you hire, what’s your working environment like, and what are your corporate policies? These are all questions that, when answered, shape the perception of your company.
Your values must be heavily communicated internally. Management needs to understand and know your company's values, but a marketing expert knows that marketing internally is just as important as marketing externally. When all of your employees are aware of and committed to your values, customers will see it at every point of interaction with your company, further building and demonstrating your brand’s worth.
Value Proposition
Why should a customer pay for your service? What makes you stand out from the competition? This is the core of your value proposition. Focus on your key differentiators, and more importantly, make sure you know how to communicate the value of your key differentiators to your customers.
If sales aren’t your strong suit, then there are simple steps that you can take to build your skills in communication of your value proposition. Start with building a strong elevator pitch and build a more sophisticated sales pitch from there. Once you can demonstrate your value in every way possible, any customer can be yours. If this challenge still feels too daunting to you, consider getting help from an interim CMO.
Once you have put all of these, the value of your company will shine inside and out.
Identifying Your Market
The next thing you have to think about to be a successful SaaS marketer is the other side of the transaction. You need to identify your target market, your market size, and what your target market wants. The chances are that your service doesn’t appeal to everyone for the same reason, making it hard to determine the demand for a product. This is why personas are a favourite of the SaaS marketing strategy.
Personas take digital marketing to the next level by allowing a more dynamic analysis of your customers. All of a sudden, instead of just marketing to people who need a B2B service, you are all of the sudden marketing to Gary, an accountant for a large firm who lives just outside of London and has a wife and kids.
Personas allow insight into customers that is extremely valuable to the SaaS marketer. It allows you a perspective into their day-to-day. Answers questions like what influencers do they listen to? What stores do they frequent? As well as many other questions.
As mentioned earlier, no two customers are the same, so we make personas for multiple different customer types. To help us gain an understanding of all different types of customers. You gain an extra level of insight into customers when you start making the personas interact with each other.
Having personas interact with each other allows you to understand your customer ecosystem, especially how people recommend products to each other. Greater knowledge of the interactions between the people in your total addressable market (TAM) allows you a more precise SaaS marketing strategy.
KPIs – How Do You Measure Success?
Before you take your strategy to market, you need to look at how you will measure your campaign's ultimate success or failure. Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be the measure by which you see if your SaaS marketing strategy worked.
These parameters can come in many different shapes and forms. If you’re a start-up, it could be how many sales have come from your marketing efforts. If you’re an established company looking to expand your presence, you may be looking to measure the brand awareness that comes from your marketing campaign.
If you’re a business with an established customer base, you might be focused on keeping them, in which case your unit of measurement would be retention. KPI’s come in all shapes and sizes, so you have to figure out which are the right ones for your business.
Moving Forward with SaaS Marketing
SaaS marketing can seem like a very intimidating task. Some challenges don’t exist in the world of retail and other physical goods that very much do exist within the digital world.
However, many benefits come with being a SaaS company that you can take advantage of. Especially with how we are in this current golden age of SaaS businesses. So, take your best foot forward and use what you have learned here to boost your SaaS business to the next level.
If you need assistance with SaaS marketing and the development of a marketing plan, then contact gigCMO. Our team of Fractional CMO’s, CMO and CEO Whisperers, have a wealth of experience behind them that will help lead your business to grow into the business of your dreams.
