Attract, educate, convert, retain—these are the four pillars of SaaS marketing. Like most pillars, without one, the others fall away. Each marketing pillar relies on the last.
But what do they mean? How does one lead into the other? Here, we look at the four pillars of SaaS marketing and how you can use them for your own SaaS brand.
What is SaaS marketing?
Simply put, SaaS marketing is all about how companies promote and sell their Software as a Service (SaaS) products.
What sets SaaS marketing apart from traditional product marketing is that it revolves around services you subscribe to, rather than one-time purchases. It’s a different ballgame, and here’s a closer look at the game plan.
What are the four pillars of SaaS marketing?
Attract
When it comes to SaaS marketing, content is key for attracting customers.
A solid content strategy is essential for pushing a SaaS product, part of an inbound marketing approach that gets your product in front of the right people by offering relevant value to drive qualified traffic to your site (and if you don’t know where to start, Seeker has you sorted).
1.Devise a content strategy
First things first, you need a solid gameplan. Every content strategy should take the following factors into account:
Overall objectives: Clearly outline the goals you aim to achieve with your content. Whether it’s brand awareness, lead generation, or customer retention, having a clear roadmap ensures that every piece of content serves a purpose in the broader marketing strategy.
Ideation and Planning: Building on the insights gained from customer personas, brainstorm content ideas that cater to the specific needs and interests of your target audience. Plan a mix of content types, such as blog posts, whitepapers, infographics, videos, and webinars, to keep your strategy diverse and engaging.
Brand Messaging: Whatever you produce, it must maintain a consistent tone, style, and messaging in keeping with your brand.
Content Distribution: Identify the channels where your audience is most active and distribute your content strategically. Whether it’s through social media, email campaigns, or partnerships with industry influencers, ensure your content reaches the right eyes at the right time.
Metrics and analytics: How do you plan to measure the performance of your content? You’ll need to track metrics such as engagement, conversion rates, and audience demographics to continually refine and optimise your content strategy — and inform future campaigns.
2.Create customer personas
Next up, it’s time to create a detailed picture of exactly who your product is for — this is known as a customer persona. Your customer persona should include details on:
Demographics: Age, gender. location, occupation
Challenges and Pain Points: Identify the problems your customers are trying to solve.
Goals and objectives: What objectives are they trying to achieve in their personal or professional lives? How can your SaaS product help them reach these goals?
Customer journey: Map out the typical customer journey from discovery to conversion. Identify touchpoints where your customers interact with your brand.
3.Use keyword research
Keyword research is an essential part of any SaaS marketing project, as it helps businesses identify and target the most relevant and high-performing keywords in their industries.
It’s not just about appeasing the search algorithms, though… By determining the most common questions and queries related to your niche, you can tailor your content to directly address these concerns. In essence, keyword research can be used as a strategic tool for aligning your offerings with the needs and desires of your target audience.
If, for instance, you’re pushing a productivity and collaboration tool (think Slack or Basecamp), you might write about communication tips for remote teams or a guide to different project management methodologies.
In this example, such titles are relevant to their target audience, and serve as top-of-funnel content that gets prospective customers hooked into your marketing funnel.
4.Consider offsite placements
As well as onsite content, consider offsite placements to drive organic traffic and increase rankings too.
Use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to build out a list of target websites based on your business keywords and related terms.
This helps your marketing team identify websites with qualified traffic, whose audience is likely to consist of prospective customers.
For example, suppose we stick with the aforementioned productivity and collaboration tool example. In that case, a list might consist of productivity and enterprise blogs with an audience of business owners or project managers.
For more on winning offsite placements, we’d recommend heading to our blog on link building for SaaS businesses — inside, you’ll find plenty of useful tips, even if you’re building a backlink profile for a business in another sector/niche!
5.Conduct competitor analysis
If it works for your rivals, there’s a high chance it’ll work for you too. Targeting websites where your competitors have already won links is a simple but effective means of getting your brand seen by pre-qualified audiences.
Reach out to these sites, offering a unique, quality piece of content that establishes your authority as a brand and value as a SaaS product. By tapping into established link networks, you’re placing your brand in front of audiences already interested in similar offerings, expanding your reach and influence with minimal effort.
6.Craft a Compelling Pitch
Of course, in all cases, a good pitch is crucial too, and the prospects you reach out to will be inundated with emails just like yours, so it needs to shine.
As ever, your value proposition is what will make your pitch stand out—what can you offer that your prospect will actually benefit from, and that is new and worthwhile? A one-size fits all approach won’t cut the mustard here, so be sure to personalise every pitch you send — especially if you’re going in cold!
All of the above is part of Seeker’s own SaaS marketing service, and it’s something we excel at. Take the pressure off and let us do the work for you, blending content, outreach, and SEO to get real results — we’ve got packages to suit every marketing budget.
Educate
As alluded to above, what really attracts SaaS customers is value — specifically educational value that enhances their lives, way of working, and so on. The value you deliver should, of course, be related to your own niche.
As well as attracting the right kind of potential customers, it also lets you flex your muscles as an authority within your industry—never a bad thing.
But as well as educating customers around your specific niche, this is also the time to educate them about your SaaS product and how it can help or resolve their own pain points too.
The trick is to sell your SaaS product’s value in a way that ties into wider value for your audience.
1. Write content that provides value and promotion
Remember — your content shouldn’t read like a sales pitch. The promotion of your SaaS product needs to feel like a natural and valuable inclusion, rather than an overt sales push.
Take this guide to the best social media management tools from Buffer, for instance.
Image Buffer
The title addresses a common search query (“best social media management tools”), related to Buffer’s niche and product, but offers a brief and fairly-weighted overview of the best social media management tools. It places Buffer’s own tool at the very top, peppered with links to independent reviews, free trials offers, and so on.
However, the risk here is that prospective customers might look through the rest of the list and decide to try the other options. But chances are that the Buffer sales messaging is more likely to stand out, thus netting them sign-ups.
This is just one example, though. You could well create a piece of content that answers a common industry query, and weave in references to your product (and your product alone) throughout, positioning it as a solution.
To really sell it, keep it simple and accessible. Outline the value of your SaaS product for your prospective customers in clear, concise terms.
And crucially, relate your value to the content title in question. Your product needs to be an essential part of the solution to the pain point your content addresses, as this is what gives it a hook, encouraging your customers to read more.
2.Create a knowledge base for customers
A robust knowledge base isn’t just a boon to your current customers — it might also convince newcomers to buy into your product, too.
If you’ve never come across the term before, a knowledge base is just a centralized hub for crucial information, usually comprising FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and best practices. A sort of one-stop shop for the confused customer.
Ease of use is a key buy-in factor for many consumers. Consequently, complementing your SaaS offering with its very own newbie-friendly knowledge base could tip the scales in your favour when a potential customer is deciding which service to invest in.
3.Offer onboarding tutorials
Leading on from our last point, it’s also worth including a detailed series of onboarding videos for your new customers, too.
Break down the onboarding process into clear, step-by-step instructions, using a combination of written content, visuals, and interactive elements. Highlight key features that deliver immediate value and address users’ primary needs. Incorporate interactive walkthroughs to allow hands-on interaction. Essentially, leave no room for confusion — a confident customer is a happy customer.
Convert
When you educate, you create value for your product in your customers’ eyes.
Where the first two pillars get the product noticed, this pillar converts them, capitalising on that value to turn interested visitors into paid-up customers, and free trials are a key part of that.
1.Offer free trials for decision empowerment
Indeed, for SaaS products, free trials are all but mandatory. Beyond the fact that virtually all your competitors are offering a free trial, it’s also a valuable opportunity to hook prospective customers into your product.
Communicating the value of a SaaS product can be tricky, particularly if it’s in a very unique, specific niche. And even if you’re selling a fairly common SaaS product that people are familiar with (ecommerce platforms, for instance), there are still enough variations in how a product works that can make or break a customer’s decisions to stick with it.
Free trials give prospective customers a chance to get hands-on with your product. It lets them try it on for size and, hopefully, decide to stick with it too.
But free trials are just one element of this. Combine them with free product demonstrations to provide personalised, one-to-one sessions to prospective customers. As well as helping them get to grips with your SaaS product, this also sparks a personal connection that acts as a strong foot in the door for a sign-up.
2. Have a clear pricing structure
A transparent pricing structure is essential for converting interested leads into customers. Ambiguity in pricing can deter potential buyers. Clearly outline your pricing plans, detailing the features and benefits of each tier.
Essentially, you’ve got to make it easy for visitors to understand the value they’ll receive at different price points. Don’t leave any room for confusion — remember, a subscription is an ongoing commitment. Consumers want to know exactly what their money is going on, as well as when they’ll be billed, and even more crucially, how to cancel. By providing a straightforward pricing model you’re instilling confidence, making the decision-making process smoother.
3. Show client testimonials on your website
Client testimonials serve as powerful social proof, assuring potential customers that others have found value in your SaaS product. Feature these testimonials prominently on your website, preferably on your homepage, showcasing real-world experiences and success stories.
Whether through quotes (good), case studies (great), or video testimonials (fantastic!), these authentic endorsements build trust and credibility. Testimonials provide valuable insights into how your product solves problems and adds value, influencing potential customers to convert based on the positive experiences of others.
Saas Marketing — Free Trial Checklist
It’s important to note that, generally, customer lifetime value tends to be higher for subscription services, when compared to one-time purchase models, but this is because subscriptions demand a continual investment, meaning you’ll have to work far harder to persuade your audience to convert.
A well-executed free trial can be highly effective in alleviating any customer apprehension, providing them with a firsthand experience of your product, and allowing them to gauge suitability according to their own metrics. The proof is in the pudding, as they say!
The best free trials all use the following ingredients:
- A generous trial period: Don’t be stingy! Give your users enough time to explore the product comprehensively. In certain cases, you may decide to limit access to advanced features during the trial, gradually unlocking them upon subscription
- User-friendly onboarding: Ensure the onboarding process is intuitive and user-friendly to minimise confusion. Provide step-by-step guidance to help users quickly understand how to navigate and use key features.
- Engagement emails: Implement a series of engaging and informative emails during the trial period. These emails might contain handy hints and tips, success stories from other users, or promotional codes to encourage conversion.
- Feedback loop: Encourage users to provide feedback during and after the trial period — you can use this feedback to continuously improve your product and address any pain points.
- Seamless upgrade process: Clearly outline the process for upgrading to a paid subscription at the end of the trial, and offer incentives or exclusive discounts for users who choose to transition to a paid plan.
- Trial extension options: Consider offering trial extensions for users who need more time to fully evaluate the product. Use these extensions strategically to nurture leads that show genuine interest.
But once you’ve won a customer, the work doesn’t stop there…
Retain
The relationship between a brand and its customers is much like any other relationship—without continuous care and attention, it’ll wither, the magic will go, and you’ll drift apart.
How many times have you been signed up to a food delivery app, only to see new customers get offered all the bonuses and discount vouchers while you, the loyal customer, get nothing?
And when 65% of a brand’s business comes from existing customers, it’s important that your relationships with these clients are nurtured.
This starts with great customer support.
1.Provide awesome customer support
As your customers get used to your product, they will begin to take it further, customising it and applying it in new ways to achieve their desired goals. Naturally, this means they will return to you often for advice and guidance on how to do this.
Provide your existing customers with quick online support, monitored forum threads, customer events (where applicable) and even, where possible, one-to-one video training sessions.
Email marketing software provider Mailchimp is particularly adept at this.
Image Mailchimp
It provides an array of resources for new and existing customers, including many video tutorials and webinars that walk users through a variety of different processes. Easy to understand and tailored to specific user needs, it’s exactly the kind of useful content that will retain Mailchimp’s customer base.
2.Harness user feedback
A key part of the customer support strategy mentioned above means continuously listening to your customers and their concerns (social media monitoring is a good way to stay on top of this).
But it’s not enough to simply monitor what your existing customers are saying about your product— you’ve also got to act on this feedback. Indeed, some of the most iconic brands owe their strategic decisions to customer input— Take McDonald’s paper straws for example. Tesla’s ever-controversial CEO, Elon Musk, Has even been known to respond to customer queries personally via Twitter. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you, so if you’re seeing the same complaints crop up time and time again, be sure to act on them!
There you have it, the four pillars of SaaS marketing. This is just an overview, of course—in practice, such an approach requires solid groundwork and granular tactics to make it work.
Want to implement it for your own brand? Get in touch—Our SaaS Marketing Agency can deliver sustainable, reliable growth, on a budget that suits you.
Originally crafted by Elliot Taylor, this blog has been collaboratively updated by Alex Daintith to ensure its ongoing relevance and accuracy.
