Marketing for a traditional company is pretty easy at this point, but if you’re a saas company, that’s a whole other ball game as a saas marketer, you have to follow a completely different business model.

That also means adapting to different digital marketing strategies. If you ever want to reach customers and convert them.
In this article, I’m gonna show you 5 simple tactics that you can use to create a solid saas marketing strategy:

1. Create content for your audience

One of the best ways to reach your audience is through a search engine, but if you ever want to claw your way out of the phantom zone, that is page 2 of Google you’re going to need to write some content, but here’s the catch. It’s got to be optimized content that your audience actually wants to read.

This isn’t a big secret and it’s something your competitors are already doing so you’re not going to beat the rest of the world to the table. Your only hope is to create better content. That’s optimized for both nurturing and lead generation.

So how do you do that? here are a few suggestions:

Create resources that appeal to your customers, these can be blog posts, videos, ebooks, free courses, and even interactive quizzes. Case studies can also be an effective method that gives social proof to your customers.

Every one of these options will help you create some really good content, but with so much competition out there creating content. That is good, isn’t good enough anymore. You need to put in extra time to find unique angles that work with your brand.

2. Boost your acquisition with free trials

Everyone wants something. That’s free and saas. Companies are in a perfect position to offer free trials to interested prospects.
Saas trials are perfect because at the end of the trial period, there’s nothing to return a customer either decides to move forward, or they don’t make sure you’re hyping that trial. A lot include it everywhere that you can your home page, your emails blog posts, literally everywhere before that trial, you’re an unproven commodity.

There’s no trust between you and your customer. But if you let them take your system for a test drive you can improve your quality and secure their business, and all of this costs you nothing ( I know, it varies from product to product. For example, Odown uses multiple servers to monitor uptime, so a trial user costs a little bit of money ).

3. Encourage activation

Getting someone to sign up for a free trial is only a first step if they don’t actually use that trial, then they’re not going to buy from you. You have to gently, encourage your free trial users to actually get to know your service to do that, you’re, going to have to figure out what actions make people more likely to become paying customers at the end of their trial, then create a strategy around pushing those actions- just don’t be obnoxious about it, something like in-app user prompts could help you do this.

Another idea is to use email marketing automation, to reach out to your trial users at set intervals, something as simple as

Hey, welcome to your trial, you should do this thing can go a long way

Then a week or two later follow up with

How are you enjoying your trial? Have you tried this thing yet

It may be a bit more eloquent than that, but you get the picture.

The goal is to make your user feel as familiar with the product as possible, while it’s still free that will show them the value of your service and lead to more purchases.

4. Experiment with pricing

Everyone wants to get the most value for the least amount of money. You need to figure out what your audience is willing to pay for your saas product and that only comes through trial and error.

Studies show that companies who consistently optimize pricing have a lifetime value to customer acquisition cost ratio six times higher than those who don’t. But the most effective pricing isn’t always the most obvious one. This is where understanding your saas audience comes into play big time, it’s always better to get users to subscribe to a service on a yearly basis rather than month to month.

As you can see below, in my Odown product, I offered 2 months free on the annual plan, so with this little trick, I can maintain the servers and guarantee the charges for a long time and it allows me to focus on the product itself to build strong new features

So try to prove the value of this by telling them that they get a free month of service by paying for the year in advance.

Since most people don’t immediately understand the value of a percentage using a phrase like free month can make a huge difference in your conversion rate.

5. Get those referrals

More than 82 percent of Americans ask their friends and family members for recommendations on products and services, but getting customers to actually brag about your service is a lot easier than it sounds believe it or not.

Most of your customers have lives outside of their interactions with your saas product and they don’t spend their free time talking about it. So you might need to sweeten the pot a little bit offer a discount or even a free gift to subscribers who refer their friends.

Incentivize the referral show your customers what they can stand to get when they send their friends and family your way.

Some businesses take this a step further and create affiliate programs, that’s when your user essentially becomes a brand ambassador earning a commission on anyone that they refer.

Yes, we said that saas marketing was a totally different animal, but it’s still marketing, while it might look different you’re still addressing the main three parts of your sales cycle:

• Lead acquisition
• Monetization
• Retention

Invest some time and energy into understanding your saas audience and you’ll be able to create strategies that will draw them in sell your product, and keep them coming back for more.