If there’s one thing marketing experts can agree on, it’s that SaaS marketing is one of the most challenging fields to work in. New SaaS companies are created daily and they all compete in a crowded market, where niches are hard to carve out. However, it can be done with a comprehensive strategy that focuses on specific social media channels, among other marketing venues.
While other industries may use social media by focusing on community building, influencers, and other more or less free promotional tactics, SaaS businesses are treating social media marketing as a pay to play tool. Buying up social media ads is widely considered the only way to get your company noticed and especially so in the B2B field.
Facebook Ads
Facebook ads aren’t an optimal tool for promoting a B2B SaaS business. Since your campaigns are oriented towards other companies Facebook isn’t really a natural habitat for an ad campaign made for making a business decision. However, not all is lost. In some areas, a Facebook ad campaign can still produce results.
Blogs are still easily promoted on Facebook. Getting someone to read your well-written blog is still just the top end of the sales funnel, but it is the necessary first step. It’s also possible to use Facebook to generate a few different audiences for your blogs and to separate them based on the criteria you choose. Furthermore, this means you can produce different-tier blog content for different audiences.
Facebook is also a good tool for lead generation. It can help lead the audience to a webinar or eBook you’re promoting. Have in mind that this is better suited to a SaaS business that already has a sales team designated for creating and promoting such content, once the lead is made through Facebook.
A retargeting campaign can also be effectively organized with the use of Facebook ads. It can retarget the lead that has visited your site and lost interest at some point in the sales funnel. This is somewhat limiting since it doesn’t generate new leads, but only retargets those that you’ve made before.
Facebook also allows for a lot of variation and choice when it comes to ad placement. Desktop ads lead to more conversions, but mobile ads generate more leads. The mixture of both and where you place the ads can make all the difference.
Combine with Email
Since Facebook isn’t always seen as a social media platform made for business purposes, it may be useful to combine a Facebook ads campaign with an email campaign. That way the first part of the sales funnel is done via Facebook and emails are used to further promote the service or create a signup system.
The two channels can be combined with most of the popular email newsletter automation tools, meaning that the process is automated and can be cross-referenced.
Customer Retention
Client retention is the end goal for many B2B SaaS marketing campaigns. There are four main phases that you should hit when working on retaining clients.
- Building traffic by using Facebook ad content to move clients to your site.
- Making conversion, meaning turning visitors into users of your service and paying customers.
- Making money which is the phase in which you provide the service that your clients have paid for and that you’ve advertised.
- Scaling up, the last phase in which your service allows the customer to scale up.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is often seen as an outdated channel in comparison to other social media channels out there. However, when you take into account the ROI that SaaS email marketing can produce, this form of advertising still remains one of the most lucrative. In some cases, email marketing has an ROI of as much as 4200 %.
Another important factor that makes email marketing stand out is that it can be used at any stage of a sales funnel. Different SaaS email marketing templates can be used to reach out to new clients, as well as to convert already existing leads and turn them into paying customers. Emails are also a useful tool for marketing services that require deliberation and careful consideration – such as sales, and special offers.
Starting from day one
An email list is something that a business can create from day one. It’s also a resource that you can get back to time and time again, unlike paid social media ads that stop as soon as you’re no longer willing or able to pay for them.
Brand awareness
Email newsletters need to be crafted and sent with consistency. That way your SaaS business can be in constant contact with the businesses that you send the newsletters to. With the use of free email marketing automation tools, these newsletters could be sent out without too many expenses.
It’s important for the content that you send in these emails to be useful and actionable and not only a promotional device.
Nurturing leads
Lead nurturing is the term used to describe the process of creating a relationship with the potential lead on the other side of your email list. It often takes time and effort to lead a potential buyer into deciding on your SaaS and that in turn leads to more sales.
You must find a good measure of how often you touch base with your leads. One email a week is usually considered the best way to go since it’s enough to update the business on the other end without becoming a bother.
Cleaning up the list
Even though an email address list is one of the most important tools you have to promote your business, it’s not perfect. There’s software that you could use to find and single out the undeliverable addresses. That’s worth doing every once in a while so that your email marketing efforts aren’t wasted. It also gives you a better image of how effective your marketing tactics actually are.
LinkedIn ads
LinkedIn ads are usually the most expensive and that means that they are not suited to the campaign used to simply be aggressive. What makes LinkedIn stand out is how precisely it can target a niche your SaaS business is going after. There are 3 types of LinkedIn ads that are best suited for B2B SaaS.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content comes in the form of a single ad, video ad, or carousel ad. However, these are just differences in format and their main point is the same. The content is created with the help of LinkedIn Campaigns Ad Manager, which is the platform LinkedIn uses for marketing ads.
These are public posts and they should be made with that in mind. Other forms could be used for a more direct one-on-one type of advertising.
Message Ads
Message Ads used to be known as sponsored InMail. They are directed to the user’s Inbox and therefore they are similar to email in terms of what they can do and how they are treated. As is the case with email campaigns the key is in targeting.
There are three main audiences to consider:
- those who have already been exposed to your service;
- those who haven’t been;
- those you have an ongoing relationship with.
Text Ads
Text Ads are short messages or little blurbs that appear on the sidebar of the LinkedIn site. These work very well when combined with classic A/B testing meaning that you provide two different messages to the audience and have a real-life test as to which one works.
The Asset
LinkedIn ads are usually centered around an asset. That’s usually a research paper or a study that you’re showcasing to your audience in order to show your credibility. This isn’t the only way to use LinkedIn and the ads can be centered around a sale as well, but an “asset” is a better option for a SaaS business.
There’s no single strategy to help you choose an asset that is suited to your audience. It can sometimes be ascertained via a survey and sometimes is a matter of knowing who you’re writing for.
Marketing Automation System
The marketing automation system is a great source of data on how your asset and your LinkedIn campaign as a whole have performed. It should create a feedback loop when it comes to choosing which LinkedIn marketing tools to focus on.
