Why is SaaS Marketing Different?

SaaS marketing is different because SaaS products are different. They aren’t something users can pick up, touch, and immediately develop an emotional connection with. In fact, a lot of the work of SaaS marketing is educating users about why they should give the product a try. Plus, in SaaS, there’s no “you break it, you buy it” policy. In fact, if the user breaks it, that means more work for the SaaS company to fix it! But hey, we digress.

SaaS marketing is also different due to the SaaS revenue cycle. Did you know the median startup spends 92% of the first contract value on closing the deal? That means before the revenue is earned, 92% of it has been spent to earn the revenue.

Don’t think about it too hard. It will just stress you out.

Instead, keep reading this blog to learn more about what is unique about SaaS, and how to put those qualities to work for you in a way that achieves efficiencies in SaaS marketing spending, generates more leads, and grows lasting, recurring revenue. All at the same time? Why yes. All at the same time.

What Are the Objectives of Marketing?

The main objectives of marketing in any industry are to improve customer satisfaction and maximize profits through customer acquisition. But it’s also useful to break these down into more specific and actionable objectives, to give organizations smaller targets to aim for. Four basic objectives of marketing are profitability objectives, market share objectives, promotional objectives, and growth objectives.

1. Profitability Objectives: Profitability objectives in marketing include improving net profits and return on assets, as well as minimizing customer turnover and reducing the amount of debt in the capital structure (aka financial leverage).
2. Market Share Objectives: Market share objectives are your goals to win business away from your competitors and carve out a loyal customer base. Usually, these goals are represented by a percentage of the market you want to win in a certain time frame.
3. Promotional Objectives: Promotional objectives in marketing relate to the desired renown and reputation of the product, as well as the work that reputation does for the brand. Yes, this starts with the buzzword “brand awareness,” but also extends to goals for attracting a certain number of new customers or achieving repeat business and upselling.
4. Growth Objectives: Growth objectives are internal goals at the company, but they are still relevant objectives for the marketing team, too. If the company wants to have a certain number of employees, open more offices, or develop new product features, those goals won’t be achieved without the ability to scale.

Why is Selling SaaS Different?

SaaS sales and marketing is different because a SaaS product is not a one-and-done purchase. While SaaS companies share the same basic goals of customer satisfaction and maximized profits as every other business, they can’t achieve those goals the same way. SaaS companies have to sell users and potential users on the initial delight of discovering the product, as well as the long-term customer care, support, and emerging features that mean the platform will continue to deliver value beyond the trial period or initial subscription.

To be candid, selling SaaS is also different because SaaS companies are different internally. When you put a bunch of technically-minded people together in one place, the result is a data-obsessed, curious culture where changes happen in real-time. From company leadership on down, SaaS teams want to know how much they are spending on marketing, what that spend is earning in return on the investment, and how those earnings could be improved through small iterations and improvements. That means a need for capturing customer data and buyer behavior insights, making them visible in real-time, and being aware of the emerging trends that could move the needle.

SaaS Marketing Objectives

SaaS marketing objectives are grounded in complex customer journeys that educate users to buy into the product, and at least make them suspect they might enjoy using it long-term. Unfortunately, that user education doesn’t happen in a vacuum. SaaS is a crowded market sector where users have many applications to choose from, and those options might not really seem that different from a high-level view. That’s why common SaaS marketing goals include the following:

• Paid and Organic Search Ranking: Winning a buyer’s attention at the moment they become aware of their need for your SaaS product is an essential first step to winning at SaaS marketing.
• Lead Generation: Once you have the prospective user’s attention, it’s equally essential there is content and information to move them from interested to committed.
• Customer Retention: After someone signs up for their initial use of the platform, keeping them loyal and ensuring they get value from the product often requires a high-touch approach to customer engagement.
• Upselling: Lastly, as SaaS companies get to know each user and their needs, they must be looking for opportunities to upsell and grow the lifetime customer value.

For every $1 of new recurring revenue a SaaS company wins, they spend $1.32. Again, don’t think about this too hard, because it’s in the upsell and recurring customers that SaaS companies make their return. When existing customers decide to spend an additional $1 in recurring revenue, the cost of winning more of their business is only $0.71. That means you might have to spend more to get them engaged with the product, but once they are, the profitability grows along with their satisfaction and interest.

SaaS Marketing Strategy

Statwax helps our SaaS customers achieve their marketing and sales goals through a four-pillar SaaS marketing strategy:

• Paid Digital Marketing Channels: We work with your sales and marketing teams to target your best-fit customers through a full-funnel paid search strategy that is improved in real-time, along with the changing needs and queries of your customers.
• Persona-Based Targeting: Statwax takes what we learn from your team and turns it into actionable insights about your users through buyer personas. We not only identify and target the basics of your user demographics, but also pinpoint their motivations, challenges, and goals.
• Predictive Modeling: Our data analytics and integration team uses historical and real-time data to provide you with predictive modeling that helps SaaS companies forecast the number of incoming leads, and how much each one will cost.
• Lead Quality Optimization: We take steps to ensure the higher volume of leads coming in isn’t just white noise, but rather, meaningful opportunity for the sales team. Through integrations between paid search and the activities in the CRM, we deliver leads that are actually likely to become customers.

Statwax: Are We the Best SaaS Marketing Agency in the USA?

Statwax’s SaaS clients experience over a 5x return on their marketing spending, while simultaneously realizing a decrease in customer acquisition cost year-over-year. In 2020, 100% of our clients hit their customer acquisition goals, and 90% of the leads we delivered to those customers were considered “high-quality.” It’s our mission to achieve these goals without wasting your money in the meantime. How do we do it? For the last time, don’t think about it too hard. Stop worrying about your SaaS marketing strategy and get in touch with us to learn more about what a partnership could achieve for you.