Software as a service (SaaS) is among one of the largest segments of public cloud services. There are tens of thousands of SaaS companies out there. The global market for SaaS is expected to reach a valuation of USD 623 billion by the year 2023.
But being such a huge market comes with its own set of challenges. The most prominent among these is growing and marketing a SaaS business. Since new companies launch every day, all are trying to grab a piece of this huge pie. This makes the job tough for a SaaS business to stand out from the crowd.
Those who own a SaaS-based business are aware of the complexity involved in growing it. If you are also a SaaS business owner then you are at the right place.
In this article, we are going to talk about the 5 best strategies to help you grow your SaaS business.
Table of Contents
1. Adopt a freemium or free trial model
As per a report by BMC, by the end of 2021, almost 73% of organizations will be using mostly SaaS-based solutions. This highlights the competitiveness in the SaaS market.
So even if your product is better than your competitors, you still need to stand out from the crowd. This can’t be done until your prospects become aware of your product.
Offering a free trial or adopting a freemium model is an excellent strategy to do that. It helps you get your product in the hands of your customers so they can assess it themselves.
In case of a free trial, you offer customers full access to your SaaS product for a limited period. The goal is to lower the entry barrier for customers. After the trial ends, it’s likely for many prospects to turn into paid subscribers. But this will only happen if your product solves any particular pain points for customers. Moreover, free product trials require little marketing investment.
While a free trial is for a limited period, it’s not the case with a freemium model. In a freemium model, a SaaS company offers users access to limited features of a product without charging anything for it.
This strategy allows customers to engage with the product to check suitability. If it suits their needs, they can take a paid subscription with access to all the features. Similar to a free trial, a freemium model helps SaaS owners test the viability of their offer in the market.
2. Search engine marketing
If people search for the product that you sell, then you can use search engine marketing like Google ads or Bing ads to make your product visible to those looking for it.
For paid search engine marketing, you usually bid on keywords at a price per click known as CPC or cost-per-click. All the businesses that want to run an ad for the same keyword get into a bidding competition. Whoever bids the highest, shows at the top of the search engine results page (SERP).
Search engine marketing can be a really good strategy to grow your SaaS business.
Here’s how you can begin Google ads –
a. Set up your Google Ads account and make your website capable of conversion tracking.
b. Finalize a few keywords for which you’d like to rank on Google. Do keyword research, consider the intent of users, and find keywords that have high search volume.
c. Start campaigns for these selected keywords. Also, write compelling ad copies to increase conversions.
d. Create landing pages that support your ad campaigns.
e. Determine your budget, finalize a geographical location, and set a bid amount.
3. Organic traffic through content marketing & SEO
If you do not want to take the route of paid advertisements then organic traffic can be the path for you. You can take the help of content marketing or search engine optimization (SEO) to rank organically on the top SERP for the same keywords that you had finalized.
As the name suggests, SEO is the process of optimizing your site and content so that it can be organically ranked by Google or any other search engine. SEO, if done correctly, can really accelerate lead generation for your business.
Being a SaaS business, you can also take the advantage of content marketing to grow your business. Typically, content marketing is about offering potential customers free education by publishing blogs, articles, reports, whitepapers, or eBooks, etc. on your website.
Content marketing is a high return and low-risk marketing strategy. It helps create brand awareness, connect with target audiences, improve brand positioning, establish domain knowledge, and boost engagement rates.
However, simply creating content is not enough. To rank on the basis of content, you need to put great focus on creating very high-quality content. A subpart piece of content will never rank on the top of SERP.
By publishing content, you can also build backlinks to your website that increase its authority.
Focusing on organic traffic, therefore, is an amazing growth strategy for SaaS businesses because the returns of informational content compound over time. Moreover, you can leverage the organic traffic to build a big email list and then pitch your products to them.
4. Incentivize referrals
For SaaS businesses, referral programs are huge. For a free month of service or a monetary reward, people will happily refer a friend or a colleague to try your product. Reaching new customers through your existing customers is an effective way to grow quickly.
As per a report, customer referrals or word-of-mouth marketing is one of the biggest drivers of growth for SMBs.
Referral programs are cost-effective as well since you don’t need to spend money on potential customers. You only spend money on real customers that sign up on your platform.
To create a referral program, you can also take the help of referral program software or also known as customer advocacy software.
5. Use SaaS review websites
SaaS review sites continue to grow in popularity thanks to the benefits these sites offer. Similar to other products, consumers are now preferring to check online reviews for SaaS products too.
Many potential customers often visit these SaaS review sites to find solutions for their software needs. So as a SaaS business, it’s important that your solution is listed and well-represented on these sites.
If you haven’t yet considered this as part of your growth strategy then it’s high time you did that.
In terms of SaaS review sites, SaaSworthy is a major player. We help people find the best software solution for their businesses by tracking over 40,000+ software across more than 300 categories.
With the help of detailed product information, unbiased reviews, performance score, and recommendations from the active community, we help stakeholders choose the right SaaS platform.
In case you’d like to get a free product listing on SaaSworthy then get in touch with us here.
