10 SaaS Marketing Tactics Every SaaS
Business Should Know

Did you know that 92% of SaaS startups fail within three years? There are several reasons why this happens. It could be a lack of product-market fit, lack of funding, or being outdone by the competition.

Usually, the most important aspects of the success of a SaaS company are its product development, marketing, and sales departments.

Of course, you wouldn’t succeed in the SaaS market if you didn’t have a high-quality SaaS product that has something new to offer. While your sales and marketing teams are the ones in charge of creating awareness for your product and getting people to buy it.

You need all of these aspects in the right place for you to actually sell your SaaS solution. If you don’t have a great SaaS product, no one would buy it. And if your marketing and sales teams fall short, no one might even know of it.

One of those crucial factors is marketing. And in today’s cutthroat SaaS market, it sure is a deciding factor on whether or not you would get ahead of your competitors.

There are a lot of marketing strategies and tactics out there. But what works for one SaaS company might not work for another. It all depends on your target market, your product, your budget, and your goals.

To help you out, we’ve listed ten effective SaaS marketing tactics that have been known to work well for most SaaS companies.

• Get Your Product Marketing Straight
• Focus On Inbound Marketing
• Cover All Bases In Your Content Marketing Campaigns
• Get More Traffic To Your Website
• Use Social Media Marketing Strategically
• Optimize Your Pricing Model And Strategy
• Get Referrals From Your Happy Customers
• Leverage User Reviews To Promote Your Product
• Form Strategic Partnerships With Complementary Businesses
• Don’t Forget Customer Marketing

Let’s talk about them one by one.

1) Get Your Product Marketing Straight First

Across the board, product marketing is one of the most important things that a SaaS business should do. Whether you’re still about to launch your SaaS product or have been in the business for years, it’s something that you need to do.

Product marketing is all about communicating the value and the benefit that your SaaS product could give to your target market. Not much of any gimmick yet—just creatively stating what your product can do.

Product marketing bridges the gap between your product, marketing, and sales teams.

The people in your product development team are the ones who know your SaaS solution’s features and benefits the most. And product marketing ensures that your marketing and sales teams communicate those benefits accurately.

Product marketing involves working on three key things: your target audience, product messaging, and targeting high-quality leads.

Target Audience

Your target audience is the group of people who you want to reach out to and eventually convert into paying customers.

You could define your target market and it still would be filled with people or businesses that are very diverse. They would have different locations, roles, interests, and other factors.

That’s why you need to narrow it down to your target audience and even down to your ideal customer profile (ICP) and buyer persona development.

Product Messaging

Your product messaging is the way you communicate the value and benefit of your SaaS product to your target market.

It should be able to explain what problem your product solves and how it solves the problem. And it should be done in a simple yet creative way.

Remember, people usually don’t have the patience (or attention span) to read long paragraphs of texts. So make sure that your product messaging is short, sweet, and direct to the point.

That’s why you need to craft your value proposition and unique selling proposition (USP).

Your value proposition is a statement that explains what benefit your product or service could give to your target market.

While your USP is a factor or consideration that makes your product different from and better than your competitors. It is also helpful with your market positioning, which is the way you are presenting your product in comparison to your competitors.

You can craft another statement that may be similar to your value proposition, but more focused on your USP.

Targeting Your Highest Quality Leads

One thing that makes product marketing essential to SaaS businesses, especially startups, is its focus on high-quality leads.

You see, there are a lot of other SaaS marketing tactics, like content marketing, social media marketing, and others that we will talk about later.

But the thing about these tactics is that they usually take a lot of time and effort.

It could take months and a considerable number of blog posts before your content drives significant traffic to your site. It takes consistent posting and interaction for your to build a social media following and establish a social media presence.

But product marketing targets the bottom of the funnel. That means you prioritize people who already fit into your ICP.

Remember, you don’t have to reach millions of customers right away. You can focus on winning a few high-quality leads and then work your way up to those millions.

2) Focus On Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on drawing people in, rather than pushing your message out.

It’s the opposite of traditional marketing or outbound marketing. Outbound marketing is where businesses proactively reach people with their message through things like TV ads, cold calls, cold emails, and other similar methods.

Outbound marketing is also called “interruption marketing” for a reason. It tends to be intrusive and probably even annoying to the person you are marketing to.

With inbound marketing, however, you’re creating content that people actually want to see. That way, when they do see it, they’re more likely to be interested and engaged in what you have to offer.

You see, when it comes to customer acquisition and retention in SaaS, relationship is key. You need to build trust between you and your customer for them to buy your SaaS solution and keep subscribing to it in the long run.

If you’re going to start a customer relationship using intrusive or possibly annoying methods, chances are that it’s not going to go well.

What’s more, inbound marketing methods have proven to be the most effective way to win and keep SaaS customers.

Now, inbound marketing in itself is a broad topic. There are a lot of ways you can do it. And we will talk about them one by one as we continue talking about these SaaS marketing tactics.

3) Cover All Bases In Your Content Marketing Campaigns

Content marketing is one of the most effective SaaS marketing tactics out there. It’s practically synonymous with inbound marketing.

In a nutshell, content marketing is creating and sharing valuable content to attract potential customers, gain their trust, and convert them into loyal customers.

This could be in the form of blog posts, e-books, infographics, videos, or any other type of content that provides value to your audience.

The key here is to produce content that is relevant and interesting to your target market. That way, when they do see it, they are more likely to engage with it.

What’s more, by providing reliable content, you are also building trust with your audience. And as we’ve mentioned before, trust is essential in customer relationships, especially in SaaS.

The beauty of content marketing is that it covers a vast scope. It can be in any industry or in any part of the customer journey. So you need even more tactics to maximize your SaaS content marketing efforts.

These tactics include the content moat and the content marketing funnel.

Build A Content Moat

The first content marketing strategy you need is building a content moat. Your content moat is basically the body of work that you produce that makes it difficult for your competitors to copy you.

This is important because, in order for SaaS content marketing to be effective, you need to be seen as an authority in your industry. You need to establish yourself as a thought leader.

And one of the best ways to do that is by having a lot of high-quality content that people can see.

And I mean A LOT of content.

The more content you have, the more likely people are going to find you when they search for topics related to your industry. And if they find you, they’re more likely to engage with your content and consider you an expert in your field.

Think of your content marketing campaign as a castle. Your competitors will try to “besiege the castle” by trying to outdo your content. But having a moat will deter the attackers.

And in this case, your “moat” is a comprehensive repository of high-quality content.

One example of successfully building a content moat would be HubSpot. They are a SaaS company that offers marketing, sales, and customer service software. They also happen to be one of the most successful content marketers out there.

They have an extensive blog with thousands of articles. And they’re not just any articles. These are high-quality, well-researched pieces that provide valuable insights to their readers.

What’s more, they don’t just write about their own products. They write about topics that are relevant to their target market, such as inbound marketing, sales strategies, and so on.

This has helped them establish themselves as leaders in the industry. And it’s one of the reasons why they’re so successful.

Of course, doing this for your own SaaS business takes time and effort. But it’s worth it in the long run.

Create Content For All Stages Of The SaaS Customer Journey

The second tactic is to create content for all stages of the customer journey. In other words, have a content marketing funnel.

The SaaS customer journey is the process that your potential customers go through when they decide to buy a product or service.

This journey is generally divided into five stages: awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. And each stage requires a different type of content.

Some of the content types you can create for these various stages are educational blog posts, product comparisons, and tutorials.

Educational Blog Posts: These are articles that teach your readers about a certain topic. They don’t have to mention your SaaS product right away.

But your educational content should be reliable so that you can build trust for your content and brand. Further down the road, that trust in your content can turn into trust in your products.

The great thing about this type of content is that it can help you in any part of the customer journey.

For example, in the Awareness stage, your potential customers are just starting to realize that they have a problem. They might not even know that your product exists yet.

So at this stage, your content should be focused on educating them about their problem and how SaaS products can help solve them.

But this informative content can also help customers in the later stages, such as Retention and Advocacy.

Your existing customers having access to educational content can help them get more out of your SaaS product. If they are happy enough with it, they can even become advocates for your brand.

Product Comparisons: These are articles that compare your SaaS product to other similar products on the market.

This type of content is great for the Consideration stage, where potential customers are looking at different options and trying to decide which one is the best fit for them.

A well-written comparison article can help move your potential customers further down the SaaS marketing funnel by showing them why your product is the better option.

But of course, it’s important that you are 100% honest and objective with these product comparisons. Remember that the goal of content marketing is building trust with your target audience.

If you’re caught being dishonest, it will ruin that trust and damage your reputation.

Don’t get me wrong here, though. You can still feature your SaaS product as the best compared to your competitors. But be sure to back it up with data.

Tutorials And Hacks: These are articles that show your readers how to do particular actions and tasks using your SaaS solution.

Tutorials are great for the Purchase stage, where potential customers are trying to learn more about how your product works and what it can do for them. It can also be a part of your onboarding process.

What’s more, tutorials and hacks can also help your customer retention efforts. By showing your current customers how to get the most out of your product, they’re more likely to stick around and continue using it.

Not only that, but these types of articles can also help turn your customers into advocates. If they find your tutorials and hacks helpful, they’ll be more likely to share them with others.

4) Get More Traffic To Your Website

Another SaaS marketing tactic is to focus on getting more traffic to your website.

More traffic means more potential customers. And more potential customers mean a higher chance of making sales and growing your business.

But how do you get more traffic to your website?

There are a few different ways, but some of the most effective ones are search engine optimization, paid ads, and affiliate marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears higher in the search results when people search for keywords related to your business.

It usually works together with content marketing so that you can make your blog posts more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs).

For example, if you sell a SaaS product for managing social media accounts, you would want to optimize your website for keywords like “social media management” and “best social media management software.”

Doing this can help you attract more organic traffic to your website from people who are looking for a SaaS product like yours.

Now, there are a lot of SEO techniques that you can do. But some of the most important ones are adding the right keywords, building backlinks, and optimizing your website structure.

Paid Ads

Another way to get more traffic to your website is through paid ads.

With paid ads, you can target potential customers who are searching for keywords related to your business. Instead of giving the time and effort for SEO, you can just pay for your spot on the top of the SERPs.

Of course, this doesn’t come without a cost. Paid ads can be quite expensive, especially if you’re in a highly competitive market.

It’s important that you do your research before investing in paid ads. Make sure that you know your target audience well and that you’re clear on your goals for running the ad campaign.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of digital marketing where you pay other people or companies to promote your product on their website or blog.

And for every person that they manage to get to buy your product, you will give them a commission.

This type of marketing can be quite effective, especially if you partner with the right affiliates. So look for those who have an engaged audience that is interested in your type of product.

5) Use Social Media Marketing Strategically

Another SaaS marketing strategy that you should focus on is social media marketing.

Social media is a great way to connect with potential and current customers. It’s also a great way to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.

But before you jump into social media marketing, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind:

Choose The Right Social Media Channels To Focus On

First, you need to identify which social media platform or platforms your target audience is using.

Not all social media platforms are created equal. Some platforms are more popular with certain demographics than others.

For example, Facebook is more popular with older adults while Instagram is more popular with teenagers and young adults.

And if you’re targeting more of a business-to-business (B2B) audience, LinkedIn is the way to go. Connections on this social media platform are more professional in nature.

Set Clear Goals For Your Social Media Marketing Efforts

Once you know which platforms your target audience is using, you need to create a social media marketing strategy.

This strategy should include goals, such as building brand awareness or generating leads, as well as the specific tactics that you’ll use to achieve those goals.

For example, if you’re trying to build brand awareness, you might want to plan on creating informative blog posts and sharing them on social media. Or you could run social media ads.

On the other hand, if you’re trying to generate leads, you might have strategies like hosting webinars or running contests.

And if you’re trying to increase customer loyalty and retention, you might use practices for building a community. You can do things like creating a private Facebook group for current customers or sending out weekly updates.

Whatever your goals are, make sure that they’re specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). This will help you create a more effective social media marketing strategy.

Maximize Both Organic and Paid Social Media Marketing Methods

To get the most out of social media marketing, you should focus on both organic and paid tactics.

Organic social media marketing refers to the unpaid posts and activities that you do on social media. This could include things like consistently posting on your page and participating in online conversations.

Paid social media marketing, on the other hand, involves paying for ads or boosting posts. This is a good way to increase your visibility even to people who don’t follow your company page yet.

You can even target specific groups of people with your social media ads. Let’s take Facebook Ads for example. You can target people based on their location, age, gender, interests, and more.

Both organic and paid social media marketing tactics are important. They work together to help you achieve your goals.

6) Optimize Your Pricing Model and Strategy

Your pricing model and strategy can have a big impact on your marketing campaign. That’s why it’s important to optimize both for your target market.

To do that, you can use the following strategies:

Keep Your Pricing Model Simple

A lot of times, companies make the mistake of overcomplicating their pricing models. They offer too many different options or features. As a result, potential customers get confused and end up not buying anything.

To avoid this, you should keep your pricing model simple. Offer a few different plans that are easy to understand. And make sure that each plan has a clear value proposition.

You can also use tiered pricing to simplify things even further. With this pricing strategy, you offer different levels or tiers of service at different price points. This makes it easy for customers to choose the right option for them based on their needs and budget.

Use A Value-Based Pricing Strategy

Another pricing tactic that you can use is value-based pricing. With this strategy, you base your prices on the perceived value of your SaaS product.

You see, setting a price range involves finding the sweet spot. If you charge too high, only a few people (if any) would buy your SaaS product. If you charge too low, it may end up hurting your business rather than growing it.

There are different pricing strategies that you can use for setting a price for your SaaS product. One of them is competitor-based pricing. With this pricing strategy, you look at how much your competitors are charging and then price your product accordingly.

For example, if your competitor is charging $50/month for their SaaS product, you might charge $49/month or $51/month.

But the problem with this pricing strategy is that it’s their strategy, not yours. You’re just following their lead instead of setting your own prices.

That’s why value-based pricing is the most recommended pricing strategy. With it, you base your prices on how much your target market is willing to pay for your SaaS solution.

That means you need to do a lot of research. If you can, you need to directly ask them how much they would pay for a product with this feature or that feature.

You can also look at indirect methods of research, such as online surveys or social media polls.

Once you have this information, you can set a price that you’re confident about. And because it’s based on how much your target market is willing to pay, there’s a good chance that they will actually pay it.

Show Your Pricing Upfront

A lot of SaaS companies make the mistake of hiding their prices just so they can have their potential customer reach out to the sales team and give their contact information.

But this tactic is increasingly getting outdated. Nowadays, customers want to know how much something costs before they even talk to your sales team. If they even want to talk to a salesperson in the first place.

They want to be able to do their own research and compare different options. And if you hide your prices, they will just go to your competitor’s website instead.

So rather than hiding your prices, show them upfront on your website. That way, prospects can easily see how much your product costs and decide whether it’s within their budget or not.

If you have different pricing plans, make sure to list them all out and include the features and benefits of each one.

You can also use pricing tables or price lists to make things even easier for your prospects.

Deliver Value Through Free Trials or Freemium Models

Another way to increase your conversion rate is by offering free trials or using a freemium model.

With a free trial, you let prospects use your SaaS platform for a certain period of time without having to pay anything. After the trial period is up, they can then decide whether they want to continue using your product or not.

A freemium model, on the other hand, is where you offer a basic version of your SaaS solution for free and then charge for premium features.

For example, Dropbox uses a freemium model. It offers 2GB of storage for free. But with a paid plan, you can have additional storage space and access to advanced file management features.

The great thing about these pricing models is that they let prospects experience your SaaS product first-hand. They can see for themselves how your software works and whether it’s a good fit for them or not.

And because they’re using your SaaS product, it would be an opportunity to deliver value to them. If they see that it’s actually helpful, they’re more likely to pay for premium features or continue using it even after the trial period is up.

7) Get Referrals From Your Happy Customers

Referral marketing is a great way to acquire new customers and grow your SaaS business.

Referral marketing is when you give existing users a discount or some other type of incentive for referring a new customer to you.

It’s basically free advertising from your current users. Well, almost free at least.

Let’s have Dropbox again as an example. It gives its users 500MB of additional storage space for each person they refer. And if that person upgrades to a paid account, the original user gets an additional 1GB of storage space.

This type of marketing is effective because it’s coming from a trusted source: someone who’s already using your product and knows how great it is.

What’s more, referral marketing can also take advantage of social proof.

Social proof is when people see that others are using a product or service. As a result, they are convinced to try it out too.

It’s basically the idea that if other people are doing it, it must be good. And when it comes to referrals, social proof is even more important because it adds an element of trust.

For example, let’s say you’re looking for a new SaaS solution to use. You then come across two products: one that’s being recommended by a friend and another that isn’t.

Which one are you more likely to try?

The answer is obviously the one that’s being endorsed by a friend. Because you know that your friend only recommends products that he or she actually likes and finds useful.

Including a referral program as part of your marketing strategy is a great way to grow your SaaS business. Not only will you be able to acquire new customers, but you’ll also be able to get social proof for your product.

Now, speaking of using recommendations and testimonials for your SaaS product…

8) Leverage User Reviews To Promote Your Product

Another great way to promote your SaaS product is by leveraging user reviews.

User reviews are another powerful form of social proof. They show prospects that other people are using your product and they’re happy with it.

When you have good user reviews, make sure to showcase them on your website. You can even create a separate page where you list all of your positive reviews.

And if you have any testimonials from well-known companies or influencers, make sure to showcase those as well.

For example, Basecamp is a project management software that’s been around for a long time. And because of that, they have testimonials from some big names like Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke and 121 Captions founder Tina Lannin.

And Basecamp openly flaunts these praises on its homepage.

9) Form Strategic Partnerships With Complementary Businesses

Another great way to promote your SaaS product is by forming strategic partnerships with other businesses.

For example, HubSpot and Salesforce are two popular customer relationship management (CRM) software. And they have a strategic partnership where they integrate their two products.

This partnership is beneficial for both companies because it helps them reach new markets and tap into new customer segments.

And as a result, both companies have seen an increase in sales and revenue.

So if you can find complementary businesses that you can partner with, it would be a great way to grow your SaaS business.

10) Don’t Forget Customer Marketing

Last but definitely not least, you should also focus on customer marketing.

Customer marketing is all about your marketing campaigns that are targeted to your existing customers.

Its goal is to increase customer loyalty and advocacy. And as a result, you’ll be able to increase customer lifetime value (CLV) and reduce churn rate.

There are a few things you can do as part of your customer marketing strategy.

Loyalty Programs

First, you can create loyalty programs that give existing users rewards for using your product. For example, you can give them discounts or additional storage space. This is a great way to increase customer loyalty and keep them using your product.

Email Marketing

Another great way to reach out to your current users is through email marketing. You can send emails to stay in touch with your customers and let them know about product updates or new features.

You can even use email marketing to upsell or cross-sell your other products.

For example, Dropbox regularly sends emails to its users to let them know about new features. They also use email marketing to upsell their paid storage plans.

Community Marketing

Finally, you can also use community marketing to reach out to your customers. It is all about building a group of users around your product.

You can do this by creating an online forum or creating social media groups. In these communities, your customers can interact with each other and also get support from you.

Building a community of users around your product is a great way to increase customer loyalty and advocacy.

Final Thoughts About SaaS Marketing Tactics

As you can see, there’s a lot that goes into marketing a SaaS product.

But if you use the right marketing tactics, you’ll be able to reach new heights with your SaaS business.

Just remember to always focus on providing value to your users and building a strong relationship with them. If you do that, you’ll be able to win and retain them as customers for life.

Looking for more guides and tips to grow your SaaS business? Check out our SaaS marketing blog here.