5 SaaS Marketing Tactics For $10m MRR
You got into SaaS to hit parabolic growth. So you started (or joined) a SaaS company, and now you’re wondering where’s the millions of MRR?
If that’s your question, then I know for a fact you’re not maxing out your SaaS marketing.
According to Blissfully, software spend across companies of all sizes will double in 2020. The money hasn’t dried up. It’s on you to market, advertise, and promote your software.
A $10 million MRR can be yours when you execute the software marketing tactics in this guide.
What Makes SaaS Marketing Unique?
With traditional digital marketing, the sales cycle can take months, quarters, or years before the deal is done.
SaaS transactions are lightning fast. When a consumer looks for a SaaS solution, the consumer wants the solution today, not tomorrow or next week. Worst case scenario, they can quickly cancel and subscribe to another software.
And the sales cycle isn’t full of RFQs, meetings, proformas, and deliberations like in other industries. The SaaS sales cycle starts when a prospective customer sees an ad or Google searches a problem.
Then it moves to comparing features, price packages, and customer reviews. Also, they may email peers or ask their social media followers for their input on the best software for their purpose.
Because a little nudge is all that’s needed to make a decision, advertising is key to improve your velocity of new users and monthly recurring revenue. And it’s a major advantage when you partner with a SaaS marketing agency you can trust.
SaaS Marketing Leads to Billion Dollar Valuations
Let’s zoom in on three SaaS companies who have experienced phenomenal growth recently to uncover their secret sauce. I bet they’ve utilized elite SaaS marketing. Let’s see if I’m right.
Canva
Valuation: $6 billion
Since 2013, few companies have experienced growth like Canva. In less than seven years, the company has attracted more than 15 million users.
What has Canva done to make it stand out in the crowded field of companies that implement SaaS marketing strategies? The answer comes from one of the co-founders, Melanie Perkins, who saw a problem. Perkins developed a user-friendly software tool to help people get the same results as difficult software programs such as InDesign and Photoshop, without being a trained graphic designer on Photoshop.
Canva offered users free access to their Photoshop-made-easy tool. Then they converted nearly 300,000 of the users into paying customers that have generated revenue of $3.2 billion.
For the first two years, Canva signed up an average of 3,600 users per day, which translates into more than 110,000 new users a month.
The value in giving away your tool for free, whether a trial or long term and charging for upgrades, is massive. Implement this strategy immediately in your SaaS marketing strategy.
Intercom
Valuation: Over $1 billion
Flying somewhat under the Software as a Service radar is Intercom. However, with more than 17,000 paying customers, the company is crushing it. They grew from a $1 million per year start-up into a company that bills more than $50 million per year in record time.
Intercom achieved the financial milestone faster than these companies:
- Shopify
- RingCentral
- Zendesk
- New Relic
- Atlassian
Prominent investors that include Jack Dorsey, Jason Fried, and Mark Zuckerberg have provided Intercom with a sizable amount of cash to fuel the company’s rapid growth.
One of the ways Intercom has improved its customer conversion rates is by focusing on creating a simple website design.
HubSpot
Valuation: $12.7 billion
Hubspot dominates content marketing better than anyone else. From these efforts, HubSpot ranks 5th in the world in online marketing niche for website traffic.
According to the annual investors report released by the SaaS marketing company, HubSpot has more than six million users that read the company’s blogs, as well as access its Twitter and Facebook content. The number of HubSpot’s engaged users is considered the most of any other company in the Software as a Service industry.
The company reported that subscriptions comprise 94 percent of its revenue, with professional services accounting for the rest of the revenue pie. Known best for the company’s inbound marketing programs, HubSpot attracts visitors through four important websites.
- HubSpot.com
- Inbound.org
- ThinkGrowth.org
- WebsiteGrader.com
That’s a strong case study in why investing in content marketing and SEO pays off major dividends for decades. We see customers in our SEO agency hit record revenue years directly from their organic traffic.
Fortunately for you, there are only two objectives you need to achieve to hit a record MRR.
Step 1 (Product): Provide Unique Value To Users
Software is a highly competitive marketplace.
If you haven’t first identified a product-market fit, then no amount of marketing can solve for that. SaaS marketing can do everything to help you grow, except convince people a bad product is a good one.
That’s why step one is to create a great SaaS product.
Many startups enter the industry with new types of software that are not yet refined enough to appeal to a target audience. This results in a costly unveiling of software that does not meet the needs of consumers.
Companies that develop unique features should emphasize their positive impact and financial benefits.
Good questions to consider where your SaaS stands on this evaluation are:
- Do you offer a service that clearly solves a niche’s problem?
- Will your product make a quality first impression, or is it better to wait a month and fix as many bugs as you can?
- Do you have a strong plan in place to handle customer support?
Web Profits co-founder, Sujan Patel, advises SaaS companies to avoid leaning too hard on price modeling to differentiate their services from the competition. Instead, he recommends developing a unique value proposition that relies on introducing features consumers want to use.
Whatever your company has done to separate itself from the competition, it means you have created a unique value proposition.
Step 2 (Marketing): Execute SaaS Marketing Strategies
When combined with an excellent product, SaaS marketing is what drives millions in MRR.
Effective marketing speaks directly to your target audience, and accomplishes the following:
- Attracts paying users
- Retains loyal customers
- Secures new investors
- Hires A-employees
- Earns new press mentions
Want to be a unicorn? Or want to create a solid, sustainable, and growing SaaS startup? Marketing is the vehicle you need to master.
Here’s how you get the party started.
1. Offer Free Trials
You know how grocery stores offer product samples to customers?
Sampling is also alive and well in the world of SaaS advertising.
If you sold a physical product online like a Smartphone or a dishwasher, there is no way you could offer a sample to customers. SaaS marketing differs from traditional online marketing because companies can give consumers a sample of one or more software services to generate interest.
Free plans and free trials remain the two most popular sampling techniques used by SaaS companies. You can make a limited time offer to access a software service or ramp up the sampling game by giving customers a chance to enroll in a free plan that expires by a specified date.
One huge benefit of sampling for SaaS companies is that if you run paid ads, a free trial is a tremendous offer to convert new customers.
Some of the best companies including Salesforce, AWS, and Shopify still, to this day, offer free trials. Why change what works?
2. Publish Content Marketing
SaaS companies who educate customers first using demos and content marketing ultimately win. Those who aggressively sell from the start leave an awful taste in prospects’ mouth.
What kind of software company do you want to be?
Start investing serious time and money in content production. Make it the cornerstone of your SaaS marketing. If you do, you will be well rewarded!
By creating content that helps your users get the most out of the software, they’re more likely to experience the value and reduce churn.
For example, Ahrefs publishes content showing subscribers how to use every intricacy of their tool for SEO keyword research.
I’ve spent thousands of dollars because they’ve taught me how to use it to a tee and the value I’ve unlocked is 100x what I pay. I’m way more likely to upgrade my subscription than to cancel thanks to their content. Plus, by using their software, I’m able to create ridiculous SEO ROI for our customers.
Here are examples of content that should drive your Software as a Service platform:
- Blog posts
- Email newsletters
- eBooks
- Podcasts
- Media interviews
- How-to videos
- Answer questions on Reddit and Quora
Let’s return to HubSpot for a moment. Type any marketing topic into Google’s search engine, and it is highly likely that a HubSpot page appears at or near the top of the first search engine results page (SERP). By presenting articles that educate readers, HubSpot demonstrates the company possesses a rich knowledge that reflects well on the brand’s reputation.
If you search for the “Best Email Marketing Campaigns,” an article published on HubSpot appears second on the first SERP uploaded by Google. This prime real estate on Google is also going to help HubSpot receive more links and continue to rank highly for important keywords.
Knowing this, you should aim to publish one blog post every week. There’s no doubt it works to drive new users. And that’s why 85% of the largest SaaS companies blog.
3. Promote Content Using Social Media
After spending time to create super valuable content, the next objective is getting your target audience to see it. Enter social media promotions.
The first step I recommend is to promote your content using Facebook ads. Target your ideal customer’s demographics and interests to make sure the content hits the spot. Then, A/B test everything from caption and creative until the campaign is doing well.
By tracking how much you spend and the user growth, you’ll be able to determine the ROI and what to do on future campaigns. Once you find a winning formula, double and triple down on the ad spend to drive hyper growth.
You can also advertise using YouTube pre-roll ads with your SaaS video tutorials. These do super well. And if you’re brilliant, you should run ads in front of your competitors videos showing why your software is superior and highlighting key differences.
There are other advertising platforms including Google, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Try all of them and see what delivers the best results. Often, Facebook will win plus it is far cheaper.
The goal is to gain massive brand awareness and recognition for your SaaS through content promotion. In six to 12 months time, this is very achievable.
4. Collect Social Proof From Happy Users
If you only take away one lesson from this guide, let it be this. Collecting and promoting reviews from happy customers is the single best form of content.
No matter if it’s a text, image, or video review, a third party communicating their incredible experience is marketing gold. Sometimes the reviews come in on their own. More often you need to nudge your users with a reminder or incentive.
Once collected, make a dedicated customer review page and include them in every demo.
Trust me, when prospects see you have 100, 500, or 1,000 positive reviews, they feel at ease buying. On the other hand, if there are no reviews or it appears they’re the guinea pig user, you have no shot at a conversion.
This applies across verticals, though especially for SaaS marketing.
5. Think Outside The Box
Above are tried and true tactics for increasing your user count. But it’s by no means an exclusive list.
I encourage you to get creative to drive the right attention and convert interest to new users.
Here are some quick ideas we came up with for you to expand on:
- Write a controversial book
- Start a podcast where you interview industry leaders
- Create an annual conference with well-known speakers, musical artists, and industry leaders
- Have your founder do a national media tour using TV, podcast, YouTube, and radio platforms
- Send mailers to your target audience (or current customers) with a special offer
- Research the top brands in different industries to see what you can replicate in your SaaS marketing
Go take a walk, run, sit by a lake or ocean, shower, or do whatever inspires your best thoughts, and consider innovative marketing ideas. You’ll be amazed at what you can unlock in a 30 minute weekly brainstorming exercise.
SaaS Marketing Conclusion
SaaS marketing requires 100% buy in to achieve hockey stick growth.
Concentrate your initial SaaS marketing efforts on building a strong bond with new customers that is based on value. Continue proving your software adds major value to your users’ life, while adding features that solve additional problems over time.
That’s the playbook. It’s simple, yet difficult to accomplish.
And once that foundation is set, what takes your business to the next level is brand. By building brand equity, the interaction goes from transactional to a relationship.
This, of course, creates staying power and reduces churn. Next your SaaS valuation soars to eight, nine, or ten figures.
What is your favorite SaaS marketing strategy?