The SaaS industry has been experiencing a ‘boom’ over the last decade, and it doesn’t look like there are any plans on slowing down any time soon.

We all love a boom, but it does mean more competition joining the market and an increased need to get strategic with your marketing. In this beginner's guide, we share how SaaS marketing is different and some strategies you can try to stay ahead of the pack.

What’s the difference between marketing and SaaS marketing?

As a SaaS marketer, your sales cycle is set up a little differently, with a strong focus given to the following;

• Acquisition - attracting users with a low Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

• Monetization - converting users to purchase a plan or subscription

• Retention - nurturing the user to stay subscribed.

Many SaaS companies are working with subscriptions rather than individual sales. Because of this, revenue is measured as ARR (annual recurring revenue) or MRR (monthly recurring revenue). To increase ARR and MRR, marketers need to focus on growth at every stage of the funnel — retaining and expanding existing customers, minimizing churn, AND acquiring new customers.

Depending on whether you are B2B or B2C SaaS, you may also be less reliant on major sales periods like Black Friday and more focused on bringing in the customers who are less likely to churn. There are some other unique challenges with a SaaS, including navigating app stores, listings sites, and public reviews.

SaaS marketing strategies and tactics for beginners

If you've recently joined a SaaS team, these are some of the SaaS-specific strategies and tactics you might start to hear about, and why they're important.

1. Product-led strategy

Get your product to sell itself. No pressure right? A product-led growth strategy relies on the product itself to be the main vehicle in growing and retaining your customer base.

If your product is sparking joy for your customers by solving the pain points they face in their day-to-day, then it’s time to implement a product-led strategy. The product-led concept aligns across the company, meaning your sales and marketing department, engineering team and everyone in between are all established around the product itself. This can lead to scalable SaaS Business growth.

A meaningful feedback loop, improved sales metrics, speedy sign-ups, and a happier team are just some of the benefits experienced by companies who have taken on a more product-led strategy.

2. Data enrichment

Within the SaaS world, data is everything. Enriched data is a step above that. Data Enrichment makes your first-party data much more useful as it offers further insight and a deeper level of detail. You’ll want to add this in your SaaS Marketing strategy to understand your SaaS buyer personas and existing users on a refined level, with accurate information.

As users move around online, the journey they take gives marketers insights into their behavior and preferences. By matching this up with your first-party data, you have the ability to create strong customer relationships, personalized messaging, and meaningful customer journeys — meaning you’re better equipped to nurture leads and increase sales.

3. Hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization uses artificial intelligence (AI) along with machine learning to create an experience for your customers that is purely unique to them.

These meaningful touchpoints with your customers start to build a solid foundation of loyalty, as they feel your company knows what they want. 72% of consumers say they only engage with personalized messaging. The personalization of different touchpoints within your SaaS marketing channels needs to be prioritized within your SaaS Marketing Strategy.

It’s easy to turn an activity into dynamic content to deliver hyper-personalized messages, Ortto. Add dynamic content to emails and SMS from attributes in your activities. Show recommendations, related products, trip information and order summaries.

4. Unbundling

The concept of “one size fits all” doesn’t work for every SaaS company. As users have become more in tune with exactly what they need, customizable SaaS products have become more popular.

These different demands from each client have led to unbundling — an approach where SaaS companies move away from providing a “holistic” solution to selling individual parts of the product.

These parts are then packaged to serve the specific customer's needs and they only pay for exactly what they use. This gives you new ways to upsell add-ons and packages down the track, but if you're moving from a complete platform approach to an unbundled approach, you will face challenges dismantling your product and processes, and communicating the change to your existing customers.

5. Referrals and reviews

While referrals and reviews are not exclusive to SaaS companies, these two different types of “word of mouth” activities are a little different for the SaaS set.

Incentivizing a referral program - Your happy customers now have another reason to share their excellent experiences with your product.

It’s really a no-brainer, as “Referred customers have a 37% higher retention rate compared to other customers gained through other marketing channels.”

Your clients are your biggest advocates. Incentivizing their referrals with an offer or discount will also act as a nurturing tool for client relationships.

Review Sites - We all know the plethora of review sites available for a range of different industries. SaaS has its own set including G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, and Product Hunt.

Review sites can have potential customers comparing SaaS Products, or looking for specific solutions to meet their software needs. Either way, it's an easy win to sign up to top review sites and start building your product review score by incentivizing happy customers to leave a review.

SaaS marketing FAQ

What is SaaS?

Firstly SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It’s a business model where the software is accessed over the internet, rather than installing and maintaining the software on your own device.

This method of accessing software means that you, as a customer, simply need an internet connection to use a third-party software. Say goodbye to the days of installing hardware and endless updates on your computer.

What is SaaS marketing?

A marketing strategy fitting the needs and focus of a SaaS company. A SaaS Marketing Strategy is the process to help deliver a product to a market, position it and create awareness for the SaaS company.

What is a product-led growth strategy?

A product-led growth strategy relies on the product itself to be the main vehicle in growing and retaining your customer base. This way of operating is more than just a SaaS trend, it is a long-term strategy designed for sustainable growth.

Is product-led growth the right strategy for my company?

The best way to answer this is to think about your customers and their behavior. When they reach a salesperson, are they asking for a free trial before they commit? Do they seem disengaged with the demo and itching to get their hands on the product? And once they’re over the line, is onboarding and setup simple? If you’ve answered yes to these questions, it’s highly probable PLG is the right strategy for your product.

If you’re concerned your customers just won’t get it, consider this. Everyday consumers sign up for products like Spotify and Netflix in the millions without a salesperson’s help. In the B2B world, even complicated products like Asana are adopted in major companies with little to no intervention from a sales team.

What is hyper-personalization?

Hyper-personalization uses artificial intelligence (AI) along with machine learning to create an experience for customers that is purely unique to them.

Hyper-personalization is done by creating custom and tailored experiences using data, analytics, AI, and automation.