7 Tried & Tested Inbound Marketing Strategies for SaaS Companies

With internet taking over companies’ operations, Software as a Service (SaaS) companies are witnessing a tremendous demand growth. This requirement has to be fulfilled by quintessential services to the customer’s needs. If you are a SaaS company or a client or here just because your internet wanted you to have an insight on SaaS, then you are at the right place. With startups being the new cool thing, SaaS companies are here to stay. To trail long enough, you have to turn on survival mode through inbound marketing techniques.

Here are smart inbound marketing strategies for SaaS companies

1. Google AdWords

While inbound marketing can significantly decrease your AdWords spend, thousands of people still prefer to click on search engine ads. With ads becoming notable in Google search results, you should continue to invest in PPC or else you might end up on missing out potential leads. AdWords remains pivotal for innumerable reasons. It delivers focused traffic to your website and is highly scalable, i.e you can increase or reduce your budget based on the needs of the business on any given day and time. The best strategy is to run a series of trials and see what investment generates the best ROI for your business. HubSpot has launched the Ads Add-On feature so that the companies can run the inbound and paid campaigns from within the software.

2. Co-marketing

Many SaaS businesses collaborate by running a co-marketing campaign with other firms that either complements the services offered by them or share a similar point of approach to marketing. Typically, the companies involved in co-marketing, create a piece of content, host a webinar, create an eBook or publish some research work. The leads generated and the expenditure incurred are also shared by the companies involved. Both companies have the chance to leverage each other’s followers and potentially reach a different customer base. If both firms are aligned, co-marketing can be very productive. However, it’s pivotal to ensure both firms are in agreement and understand the other's expectations from the start.

3. Build Brand Awareness

Every firm should develop their online personal brand to popularise their existence. By increasing brand awareness, you can expect your company to improve its customer retention and hence get more leads. Some key inbound marketing strategies one should include:

• Collaborating with a group of influencers whom their clients trust
• Monitor keywords of brand and industry to optimise organic results
• Consistently develop content on landing pages optimised for Google search engine

4. Establish Trust with Investors

As a startup founder, to receive funding, it is necessary to find the right investors and please them as well. To do so through inbound marketing strategies, one should -

• Create a buyer’s persona that helps you to identify your ideal customer. Knowledge of your audience will help you with your investors
• Redesign website by making a framework around the buyer’s journey, giving the investor a preview of the firm’s audience and its demands. The company’s ability to understand the same will help the investor to gain trust
• Providing content that answers their buyer persona’s central questions and hence answers the same.

5. Be active on social media

Your industry, target customers and whether you’re B2B or B2C affects your ability to utilise social media in your inbound marketing strategy. For B2C companies, depending on what your customers expand their social space on, you can incorporate any or all of the following into your plan: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat. Post engaging content that goes viral, write relatable posts and just go with the trend. Choices are unlimited, and you have to make the right ones. For B2B companies, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook are the holy grail. Finding and being a part of relevant discussion threads on LinkedIn, tweeting consistently, following the trend on Twitter and sharing posts on Facebook are likely to connect you with your potential audience. Best channels and practices for your company can only be found after regular analysis and engagement on social media. It is pivotal to create a social media presence, formulate your brand's voice, monitor and develop your engagement levels, conversions and clickthrough rates.

6. Speak your customer's language

Inbound marketing is an excellent tool but must ensure that the customer understands what the company is providing them. Often, marketing content has the potential to become monotonous, complicated and jargon-ridden. To avoid losing customers due to this hindrance, develop a format and language your target consumer will enjoy. Your website must be designed in such a way that the reader is not reading your content but instead is having a conversation with you. The content must be simple enough for a layperson to understand but also advanced enough to reach your target customer’s needs. Jargon-ridden content can be left out entirely, or your website must define it and tell the consumer what it means. The key is to develop the content in a way so that it addresses the demand of the customer. If he spends time on your website, make it worth it. Your customer base might be an amalgamation of marketing people, sales department, techies and the CEOs. The tone and format you use for your targeted content should focus on who you are writing it for. Their tone, manner, conversations, the publications they read and the influencers they follow on LinkedIn and Twitter; keep track of all these sources and formulate your content accordingly.

7. Nurture Qualified Leads

Website traffic and leads can be generated by sign ups, promotional offers, blog subscribers. But marketing efforts can turn futile if the leads aren’t converted. An inbound marketing software can come to your rescue if all marketing techniques do not convert your audience. Website traffic and leads can be drastically increased, integrating sales and marketing, if inbound marketing techniques are implemented according to the following methods -

• Design a plan of action after analysing the interaction of leads with website content, blog posts and email
• Integrate inbound marketing software data to provide sales departments with crisp information as to how to increase leads.

Charles Darwin might have said ‘survival of the fittest’, but in this race, it is survival of the smartest. Inbound marketing software are as smart as they come with a packaged deal for your SaaS company to give your customer the perfect master plan.