The number of companies entering the SaaS (Software as a Service) market is constantly growing. According to Statista, the SaaS market has grown from $105 billion to $116 billion in the period from 2017 to 2018. And by 2020, it’s expected to hit more than $130 billion.

So, if you want to stay competitive and increase your sales, you need to deploy marketing tactics that attract, nurture, and convert efficiently.

Following the strategies listed below should help you get a large number of subscribers for your software in a short period. However, bear in mind that SaaS marketing is different from other marketing so, if you’re struggling with sales and profit loss, consider hiring a software sales consultant.

8 SaaS Marketing Tactics to Grow Your Business

1. Data-driven Marketing

If you want to stay on top of the game, you’ll need to start utilizing your company’s data as a base for your marketing strategy. According to a survey conducted by Forbes, nearly 65% of respondents agree that data-driven marketing is crucial to success in today’s ultra-competitive economy.

Data-driven marketing refers to strategies built on insights derived from the analysis of large volumes of data, collected through consumer engagements and interactions with an aim to predict future behaviors. This involves understanding the data which brands already have access to, as well as analyzing, organizing, and applying that data to improve their marketing efforts.

Data-driven marketing planning enables you to provide better and more personalized customer experience by creating content and marketing campaigns that resonates with your customers. However, as consumer data comes from a number of sources, ranging from surveys to web browsing and social media, the sheer volume of data can be overwhelming for marketing teams. In general, coming up with a data-driven marketing strategy takes a lot of time and effort so you might want to consider using a tool that automates the whole process of marketing data analysis.

2. Content Marketing

SaaS companies need to educate customers about how their software works and point out its advantages. When done right, SaaS content marketing can help you attract, educate, and convert large audiences, even if you’re operating on a tight budget. Here are a few tactics that can help you:

Think about which keywords your customers might type into search engines when searching for your service. Create pages that contain these keywords so that they start ranking better.

Create social posts, white papers, and e-books to raise awareness of your service and establish yourself as an expert in the industry.

Create expert guides, podcasts, and webcasts to educate customers about how your service solves their problem.

Create testimonials, case studies, and vendor comparisons to persuade customers to choose your service when they are in the decision-making stage.

Create personalized content based on customers’ location, needs, buying habits, job position, etc.

3. Free Trials

Offering a free trial of your product is a must! This is the best way to allow users to figure out how your service works, what its benefits are, and persuade them to subscribe.

However, while free trials work as a great marketing strategy, you need to consider carefully how to offer them to your potential customers. Leave a room for some suspense and don’t offer all the features your software has because if you do so, the prospect won’t have a reason to subscribe.

4. Clean Registration Forms

The purpose of registration forms is to sign up people for your product. It is safe to say that the registration form is the most important element of your website since it is the place where conversion happens.

Keep in mind that nobody wants to spend ages filling out complicated or lengthy registration forms. If your prospects are faced with such a form, they’ll most likely leave. Make sure your form is simple and short, requesting only the absolutely necessary information.

Here are a couple of tips that will help you design a great registration form:

Ask yourself: Why should visitors register for your software? Your registration form’s content should emphasize the benefits of your product.

Depending on your product, reduce the number of fields to a minimum in order to make the sign-up process quick and easy. In general, most companies need only three fields: username, password, and email.

To make the sign up really fast, use a modal window.

5. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a great tool for SaaS companies because it provides a continuous stream of leads. The best part is that you pay after the sale is closed.

Existent customers can drive plenty of revenue for SaaS companies. Consider paying your loyal customers a commission every time they refer to others.

Some SaaS affiliate programs offer recurring lifetime commissions. This is a great way to motivate affiliates because they will keep earning their commissions as long as the customers they acquired keep renewing their subscriptions.

6. Influencer Marketing

If you’re up to date with digital marketing trends, you probably know that people trust recommendations and reviews from people they know (friends and family) but also from people they feel like they know and trust (influencers).

The concept of influencer marketing is very simple: find influential people in your niche and ask them to share or recommend your software to their followers.

Influencer marketing is a great way for SaaS companies to get more customers, build a loyal following for their brand, and increase brand recognition.

7. SaaS Review Websites

When people are thinking about subscribing to your software, they’ll most likely compare your service with your competitors’. They’ll visit a bunch of SaaS review site to find out more about your product’s performance and check out comments by existing customers.

For this reason, you need to list your service on SaaS review websites, but also make sure it is great quality and gets awesome reviews from users.

Some of the best site where you can list your service are:

Capterra
G2crowd
Discover Cloud
Software Advice
SaaSGenius
Trust Radius

8. Customer Service

Did you know that poor customer support is the main reason why customers decide to switch to another service? People get really annoyed when a customer support agent doesn’t respond on time or doesn’t have enough information to assist them.

That’s why you need to make sure that your customer service is rock solid. Here are a few tips to help you:

The customer support contact or link needs to be visible and easy to find.

It’s always better to have human customer support agents helping people instead of automated responses. Live chat is a great option but you need to ensure that the bots have enough info related to the customer they’re assisting.

Make sure to provide troubleshooting tutorials and FAQ with enough detail to help users solve their problems quickly and easily.

Offer multiple support channels including email, phone, live chat, social media, etc. so that people can reach you anytime.

Make sure your staff is patient, polite, and well-trained. Ask customers to leave a review of the support staff’s performance. This way you’ll always keep track of how your agents are performing.