One of the quickest sectors in the global economy is the Software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry. Because SaaS is a growing market, there’s steep competition between new organizations looking to gain enough legroom. This article discusses some of the challenges a SaaS marketing agency or SaaS company may face and how to overcome them.
How To Get On The Map
Starting with a new product can be pretty challenging. As a SaaS company, your product is quality service over time; therefore, the challenge seems insurmountable. Taking the time to introduce your organization and its key players as thought leaders in your industry is essential.
It would be best to spend as much time as you spend on product development on your content creation strategy. The strategy should include posting 4-5 blogs every week, creating at least 1-2 premium content per month. After building a solid content base on your website, you can engage existing thought leaders and figures in your industry. The goal of a foolproof content creation strategy is to stand out from the background noise in your industry as a quick-witted and vocal newcomer ready to save the day. Furthermore, your content creation efforts increase traffic and leads you can follow when your product is ready for launch.
Emphasizing The Service And Not The Software
Most people that sign your contract are not doing so because they like your user interface or dashboard; they’re most likely signing up as your customers because of your service or the results your services deliver. Although this point is obvious, ensure you don’t forget what your marketing plan is about and why.
Not Forgetting Your Existing Customers
The inbound methodology does not end at the close. For SaaS companies, you must delight your customers into promoters that extol the virtues of your product and services to their friends while staying around for longer. Because SaaS companies run a subscription-based model, you may not get revenue from customers till they’ve been with your company for a year or longer. Therefore, creating marketing content for your customer to address their unique needs, questions, and answers is essential. Advantages of marketing to your customers include helping them stick around long enough for you to make a profit and increasing the chances of them evangelizing your company to their peers looking for a solution like yours.
Minimizing CoCA
Cost of Customer Acquisition, also known as CoCA, is the amount an organization spends on acquiring a customer. CoCA depends on research, sales and marketing costs, and operating expenses. You can calculate it by dividing the total costs used in the acquisition by the total new customers within a specific period. In a SaaS company, everyone must be involved in minimizing CoCA and growing LTV (lifetime value) simultaneously.
Investing in hands-off strategies like marketing automation and lead nurturing campaigns can help marketers minimize CoCA. Although it may take a bit of time to get the strategy running, once they are off the ground, they can easily take a subscriber to a sales-qualified lead without much effort from the marketer.
Choosing Customers Wisely To Maximize Lifetime Value (LTV)
The nature of a SaaS business requires customers to remain in an organization for a certain period before they’re profitable. Consequently, investing time and effort to keep your customers happy and engaged before it starts to pay off is essential. Instead of taking every customer, it is best to be choosy. Choose customers you can support long enough to bring value to your bottom line. These customers are more likely to provide the greatest LTV.
Choosing your customer period is difficult, let alone choosing it in a way that maximizes their LTV. Nevertheless, being choosy in the first place means you have a strong stream of leads and potential customers. However, waiting a bit longer till a given customer brings in revenue is worth the wait if you can afford it. Sometimes, you have to choose between bringing in a customer that your company can break even on in 6 months but needs 300 man-hours to onboard and delight and a customer that will break even in 8 months but needs 100 man-hours. Your best bet is to go for the customer that will take longer to reach probability; it is essential to note that this will strain your resources, though. If possible, it is best to choose only customers that are the best fit for your product or service. These customers not only stick around for longer, but they also get more value out of your product, have a high likelihood of evangelizing your organization, and are easier to upsell to additional products or services.
Finally, the simple points discussed in this article are what differentiates a SaaS company that burns out and one that burns up the competition.
