Software is taking over every part of the economy today. No wonder there are hundreds of SaaS startups cropping up each day. With the increasing numbers of Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, competition is bound to get stiff.
For most companies, launch day stands as the most important day for marketing; it is the day people get to know about your product. However, this day only marks the start of a long marketing journey.
What if you never had to market your products? It would be easy for developers as they would concentrate more on creating new and better products. Established companies have it easy as existing customers market them through word of mouth.
Startups have it rough. 75% of internet users do business with one of the top three search results when shopping for a product or service. To make it to the top, you need to implement exceptional SaaS SEO as part of your success strategy. Nonetheless, there are simple SaaS Startup Sales strategies to get the product moving without you hard selling.
1. Launch Like a King
Who doesn’t know when Apple is launching another of their products? The company launches for all to see. There will be a countdown to the launch date. During the launch day, there will be hundreds of thousands or millions of units sold.
Ok, so you can’t launch your product like Apple, but there are a number of ways you can improve your chances.
How do you do that?
Solve a problem without hard selling. Everyone can search for the features of your product online. What people need to hear is how the product affects them.
For instance, if you are launching a blog network hosting tool, you should explain to people how the product will save them time managing their blogs.
Secondly, get industry experts talking about your product. Since most startups may not have established blogs, getting established blogs talking about your product early sets you apart.
Remember to hire a SEO company early on in your launch plan and get them started on their SEO strategy to get guest posts on relevant authority websites to build up your online reputation.
You must use content wisely before your product launch. Your content must paint a bright future for your prospects.
Lastly, make the launch an event and make early registration possible. As much as possible, let people stay in suspense waiting for the launch. However, make it possible for early birds to order or register for the new product.
If your budget allows, let the event be all glitter. If you are pressed for finances, hold a small event online.
2. Customer Support Is King
Businesses that rely on SaaS providers hate one thing – Downtime and delays that come with it.
Commitment to customer support makes all businesses successful. This is one way to get your existing customers market for you. It is often not seen as a sales strategy but when done seamlessly, it propels your sales.
Whenever a new person signs up, they need help to find success with your product. While signing up might feel like an easy task, each customer needs to get through each step successfully. Frustration from the side of customers will lead to missed sales.
Great customer support should include free guides and tutorials for new members, training webinars, platforms, blogging, phone support, email and much more.
When offering support, you need to get human. Auto-responses are great but they cannot match the effect live chat or phone conversations have.
3. Use Content and SEO Wisely
Each marketing strategy has to inject content. It is one way of marketing to prospects without hard selling. Here, you will need to create a blog and update it regularly.
You can use a blog or guest posting to get your website ranking high on the search engine results page and increase subscriptions. Content has to be original and most of importantly, helpful to your customers. Each post should aim at educating your customers more and/or solving a problem.
The inbound traffic that comes from a blog lets you capture new prospects. Besides a blog, make your social media presence pay. Create engaging content which helps you collect information on what your customers need.
4. Make the Trial Period Count
Attracting new customers should not be the heart of your marketing strategy. You should work more on retaining the customers you have and those willing to buy your services.
The trial period can make or break your marketing. Here, bloggers and industry influencers might be looking to review your product. If you do not make the trial period worth, influencers might not be willing to work with your brand.
Subscribers on the trial should have the same privileges as premium customers. This helps them experience all the features of your service. They should get great customer support to help them understand your service better and its effect on their businesses.
During this trial period, you are able to collect information on what your customers do. You will understand where your customers are failing or excelling with your software. This will help you better your services.
5. Use Analytics for Better Services
SaaS Customer Acquisition Strategies needs evaluation. You can only do this through analytics.
As you launch your business, make sure you have a solid analytics tool to help you collect data.
Analytics show you where your customers are located, which strategy is working and which is tanking, which customers stuck with you and who left.
You can know what your customers and prospects are up to and how to better your services. This way, you can tackle problems before you lose customers and before they start complaining.
Analytics is one way of getting customer and prospect data but you should integrate it with other ways of data collection.
Conclusion
There are customers who will look at your service pricing model vis a vis that of your competitors. Price impacts your customers directly. Your marketing strategies will work only if your prices are competitive.
Different payment models will help you capture different clientele which will make your business perform better.
Moreover, you can always develop efficient marketing strategies for software companies on your own to handle your marketing initiatives properly. The significance of these strategies is in the tactics that you’ll eventually come up with your team, which will better off your business’s situation from a marketing perspective and raise brand awareness.
Like any other marketing campaign, you need to have goals and targets. Your campaign should revolve around these goals. Without objectives your campaign can take you anywhere; a place you don’t want to be.
Each of your SaaS startup sales strategies should engage your leads; to establish the effect of your product on businesses and handle emerging concerns. Engagement makes it easier for your existing customers to market on your behalf.
Lastly, keep your software updated. Include new exciting features that better services.
