The SaaS industry is an intensely competitive market. 

With a market revenue projected to reach over $450 billion by 2029, hundreds of SaaS companies are vying for the same market share as you.

That’s why there is an immense need for SaaS businesses like yours to increase their revenue and thrive.

TL;DR – Advanced B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies

In this article, you’ll learn 10 proven SaaS marketing strategies to maximize your ROI and scale your business.

Here’s a quick overview:

1. Educate with content marketing
2. Drive organic traffic with SEO
3. Offer free trials
4. Nurture relationships with email
5. Collaborate with influencers
6. Leverage sequential messaging
7. Delight with video
8. Get instant results with paid ads
9. Start conversations on social media
10. Turn customers into advocates

Head on to the full article to read about these strategies in detail.

But if you’re looking for a business coach and marketing expert, I can help you design a B2B SaaS marketing strategy to boost your ROI and ensure sustained growth. Book a discovery call with me, Nora Sudduth, today.

What is B2B SaaS Marketing?

B2B Saas marketing is a technique employed by software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies to promote their products and services to other businesses.

How is B2B SaaS Marketing Unique?

Unlike traditional marketing, B2B SaaS marketing focuses on nurturing long-term client relationships to sustain a subscription-based business model.

Here are other reasons why this technique is unique:

• Requires continuous promotion of product value: SaaS companies rely on clients continuing their subscriptions to cloud-based services to maintain or increase their recurring revenue. 

To keep customers engaged, they have to continuously educate their customers on the value of their products.

• Follows a longer, more complex sales cycle: The SaaS messaging framework involves nurturing different leads at various stages of the marketing funnel, with key messages tailored for multiple decision-makers.

Examples of the Best B2B SaaS Marketing Campaigns

Let’s examine how two of the most widely known SaaS companies today have succeeded in their marketing campaigns:

Canva

Canva is a visual suite created to make graphic design easy for everyone.

The company understands that its target market lives on social media, which is apparent in its marketing strategy.

They are one of the best examples of how social media marketing can ignite interest in a brand, educate people on its benefits, and even teach users how to make the most of their tools.

Take a look at the photo above from their Instagram account. It’s colorful, inviting, and informative at the same time, all aligned with Canva’s brand identity.

And it’s working. According to recent reports, 170 million people across 190 countries now use Canva.

Zapier

Zapier is a tool that lets users connect multiple apps without writing a single line of code.

Its marketing strategy is behind the curtain, yet everywhere, using SEO and content marketing.

If you examine their website, you’ll notice that every possible service that you need Zapier for has a dedicated landing page. This is helpful because Zapier’s target audience consists of business owners who want to be educated on solutions to issues they encounter.

Their SEO strategy also helps them rank well on search results pages (SERPs). For example, here’s what you will see if you search for the “best lead management tool”. 

The result? Over 2 million companies use Zapier to automate their business today.

10 Advanced B2B SaaS Marketing Strategies

Here are 10 B2B SaaS marketing strategies that are proven to drive results and boost your company’s ROI:

1. Educate with Content Marketing

In B2B marketing, content is one of the biggest drivers of revenue. 

Blogs are an effective tool for driving leads and pushing potential customers further in the sales journey. 

According to a Demand Gen report, 71% of B2B customers consume blog content during the sales process. That’s why blogs are one of the surest ways to educate consumers on how your product can provide the value they’re after.

Some other ways to do content marketing are:

• Landing pages
• Webinars
• Podcasts
• Tutorials
• Interactive content
• User-generated content

2. Drive Organic Traffic with SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing your website to improve your brand’s visibility and drive organic traffic. 

Compared to paid ads, SEO is also a more cost-effective solution that provides sustained results.

There are three main aspects of SEO:

1. On-page: This refers to optimizing the parts of your website that people see, such as your landing pages and blogs. Best practices of on-page SEO include targeting high-intent keywords and internal linking.
2. Technical: Improving your website’s technical backend elements, like load speed, mobile-friendliness, and security, impacts your ranking on SERPs.
3. Off-page: Establishes authority and credibility through efforts outside of your website, such as backlinking and guest posting.

3. Offer Free Trials

SaaS products tend to be more complicated, making it harder for new customers to fully appreciate what they can do or understand how they work.

Free trials or “freemium” models can break that barrier.

Some things to consider when offering free experiences:

• Study the average time it takes for leads to convert into paying customers: Design free trials that are not too short so users can’t appreciate the product and not too long so users are no longer motivated to upgrade to a paid subscription.
• Implement a seamless onboarding process: Make it as frictionless as possible for new subscribers by providing resources and real-time support.

4. Nurture Relationships with Email

For every dollar spent on email marketing campaigns, you can expect a return of $42. That’s a 4,200% ROI! 

The plus point about email is it’s an owned channel, which means you can customize it according to your needs. Plus, you own the contacts you build through your newsletters. That’s an incredibly useful resource that can help you better understand your audience.

Email is also great for capturing various audience segments, especially other business owners. You can tailor your key messages according to what will nudge each segment further in the sales journey.

5. Collaborate with Influencers

According to Sprout Social’s Influencer Marketing Report, 49% of all consumers make a purchase after seeing an influencer post about a product.

Therefore, it makes sense that 92% of marketers invest in and believe influencer marketing is effective at generating sales.

To forge the right partnerships, consider these factors:

• Shared values: Collaborate with someone whose values are aligned with your brand pillars.
• Authenticity: People trust influencers who are known for their honesty and transparency, even when talking about sponsored content. Partner with influencers who genuinely find value in your brand.
• Entertainment: Strike the perfect balance between being informative and entertaining. People tend to engage more with content they find amusing.

6. Leverage Sequential Messaging

When people leave your website without signing up for, say, a free trial, they end up in the percentage of your traffic that doesn’t convert.

That’s if you don’t retarget them.

Sequential messaging is a marketing strategy that allows you to recapture an audience segment that comes away from a touchpoint without converting.

This works by using cookie data to analyze traffic on your website and re-engaging with your audience through ads, newsletters, or social media.

7. Delight with Video

Video is one of the most engaging media formats because they’re entertaining and easier to digest than your typical in-depth case study or podcast. 

Studies show that people retain only 10% of the information they hear, but when presented in video format, retention jumps up to 65%.

Here are a few tips for creating a video strategy:

• Publish instructional videos: According to the Wistia State of the Video Report, audiences are increasingly more interested in informative and educational videos.
• Convert viewers with CTA and email capture forms: According to the same study, email capture forms are being used only 15% of the time, but they have the highest conversion rate (23%), followed by CTAs (13%).

8. Get Instant Results with Paid Ads

With competition as fierce as in the SaaS market, you need to make headway ASAP.

If you run a startup or are launching a new product, paid ads are the best way to quickly boost brand visibility and awareness to your target businesses. 

Paid advertising includes:

• Google ads
• Paid search
• Social media ads
• Display ads
• Instream ads

For more sustained results, you can bolster a paid ad strategy with organic efforts like SEO and content marketing. 

9. Start Conversations on Social Media

Everyone is on social media, including business owners and people in management roles. The only difference is that to reach these people, you need business-focused platforms, like LinkedIn, instead of social networking sites like Facebook and Instagram.

Here are ways to grab your audience’s attention on your posts:

• Know what’s in: Be in on new trends, hashtags, and viral content. You can even take advantage of the traction viral topics are getting by trend jacking (including your brand in popular online conversations).
• Get creative: Add a dash of creativity to your messaging to pop from the page. Some examples are using funny clips or inviting people to answer polls – depending on what your audience finds interesting.
• Stay true to your core: Maintaining consistency when delivering your brand message across platforms is tricky. But it’s key to ensuring that your audience recognizes you wherever you’re speaking. 

10. Turn Customers into Advocates

Happy customers are the best brand advocates because they will gladly talk about their experience with your brand to others. And it’s great for business. 

Studies show that word of mouth commands a total annual spending of $6 trillion globally.

So, make the most of it by:

• Running referral programs
• Featuring user-generated content like success stories and testimonials

Still Not Seeing an Increase in Conversions?

If you use these strategies, you should see an uptick in the number of leads and conversions. So, if that’s not the case, your marketing might need a bit more work.

Get expert assessment with my ConversionRX program, a comprehensive diagnostic program that spots any weaknesses in your marketing strategy and lets you know how to get your funnels to convert.

B2B SaaS Marketing Metrics & Benchmarks

Monitor the performance of your B2B SaaS marketing strategy with these metrics:

• Customer churn rate: Churn rate refers to the percentage of users who cancel their subscriptions after a certain period. Aim for a low churn rate (around 5% or lower). The higher the churn rate, the more customers are leaving your business.
• Free trial conversion rate: This metric measures the number of people who upgrade to a paid subscription after a free trial. The average conversion rate from a free trial is 18.6 to 29%.
• Lead-to-customer conversion rate: B2B SaaS businesses have an average lead-to-paying customer conversion rate of 2-5%.
• Monthly recurring revenue (MRR): Your expected monthly revenue is your MRR. A thriving B2B SaaS business should have an MRR of 10-20%.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): This is how much you spend to gain each customer. Industry benchmarks peg the average CAC at 25% of your customer lifetime value (the total revenue each customer brings throughout their relationship with your brand).

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Here are some more insights on B2B SaaS marketing strategy:

Which B2B SaaS Marketing Channels are Best to Use?

Here are three of the best channels to use for your marketing strategy:

• Paid and organic search: A combination of both, organic and paid search will boost your visibility quickly and continue to drive traffic long-term.
• Email: Email marketing is an effective way to acquire and retain customers because it keeps the conversation going and helps bolster your retargeting strategy.
• Content marketing: B2B customers want to be informed and educated. Content marketing delivers just that through blogs, webinars, podcasts, and interactive content.

How Can Content Marketing Benefit B2B SaaS Businesses?

Content marketing, hand-in-hand with a robust SEO strategy, can help businesses increase brand awareness and establish industry credibility. 

Conclusion

Despite the steep competition in the SaaS market, you can get your target audience to notice you and become paying customers.

The strategies I shared here should help you shape a successful marketing strategy:

• Content marketing
• SEO
• Free trials
• Email marketing
• Sequential messaging
• Video marketing
• Paid ads
• Social media marketing
• Customer advocacy

But don’t stop there. 

You need a marketing strategy designed specifically for you. Let me help you craft a personalized strategy that boosts brand awareness, and fosters sustained growth. Schedule a discovery call with me today.