Common Misconceptions When It Comes to SEO for B2B Companies
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January 4, 2023
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Not sure if your SaaS marketing is up to industry standards? Or is your current SEO strategy failing flat? In this article, you'll learn the tools you should use and seven strategies you can implement today!
According to a study by Gartner, in 2022, end-users are expected to spend an estimated $171.9 BILLION on SaaS - up more than 40% from the last two years.
However, this rapidly growing market is getting "saturated," making it critical for SaaS companies to leverage successful marketing strategies to carve out a niche. This article will walk you through the challenges of SaaS marketing head-on, with plenty of actionable processes and tools you can use to find your blue ocean, with plenty of actionable strategies and tools to discover untapped marketing to entice potential customers to take action.
Your SaaS marketing strategy should help you create awareness for your brand product while using digital marketing tactics we all have come to know and love by leveraging content marketing to build exceptional digital experiences for your prospects. Similar to any other marketing campaign, your SaaS marketing campaign aims to connect with your target audience and deliver the right messaging at various points of the customer journey, all o them convict g prospects to purchase.
Marketing a SaaS product is often more complex than selling a traditional service. When consumers are familiar with the basic concepts around a product or service, there is less explaining that needs to be done upfront. However, with SaaS, You're selling a product or service that you can't physically show to the customer, which marks it challenging to describe succulent and is hard to illustrate or display clearly (screenshots are not the most alluring visual attraction, In many cases, your prospects don't know that your SaaS company exists, not that you can solve a problem for them.
SaaS marketing relies heavily on informative content such as case studies, blog articles, videos, and webinars to educate potential customers about why your software can help them overcome critical bottlenecks in their daily operations. As your content inventory grows, you'll establish yourself as an industry expert while also building trust with your customer making it easy for your audience to choose your saas solution over competitors.
Whether you have a B2B SaaS or a B2C SaaS, these marketing strategies heavily depend on your digital channels. This is because as the world revolves, your main priority should be putting buyer needs before the sales cycle. For example, B2B sales used to rely heavily on the quality of your company's sales reps. Still, most corporate buyers research online before even speaking to a salesperson. Moreover, one-third of B2B buyers prefer a seller-free experience, increasing to 44% among millennial B2B buyers.
However, your customer has a few differences, depending on whether you're selling B2B or B2C.
While you'll customize your message according to your buyer's journey, both B2C and B2b SaaS marketers will depend on an arsenal of SEO-optimized content. With optimized content, SaaS companies can forge paths to audiences through search engines, social media, our website, and other digital assets.
A successful SaaS marketing strategy is built on these foundational principles:
In this next section, I'll show you how to put these steps into action and ensure you have all of the proper tools to make these action steps easier to implement.
Before you build your SaaS marketing plan, you know your customer like the back of your hand. So first, determine what's important to them and gain insights into their behaviors. Once you figure out what motivates them and their most significant pain points, you can begin crafting messages to convert them into customers.
To fully understand your customer, perform in-depth market research:
The most significant part of your SaaS strategy will be customer retention; with the typical subscription model, your goal isn't to conclude a single transaction. Instead, it would help if you had ongoing engagement and support to ensure that your customers are satisfied to the point where they continue to subscribe each month.
Once you've acquired your customers, your primary focus should be on keeping them by providing video tutorials and articles to help them maximize the benefits of your software and serve up related tips to keep them engaged. In addition, ensure you release prompt information about the needed features or patches to fix bugs, emphasizing customer care and engagement to reduce churn.
By leveraging your customer personas to guide you in determining the proper marketing tactics to reach your audiences on the channels they prefer. This approach ensures your resources and energies are focused on the best possible results. While every deal and customer is unique, some general rules of thumb are:
Your customer's pain points are the stumbling blocks that make their work difficult. Use in-depth market research, surveys or interviews to identify your customers' core issues and how they impact your customer's revenue. Of course, pain points vary for different types of customers, so it's essential to run through this exercise for each person you come up with.
Before we discuss the proper marketing tactics to deploy, let's get you set up with all the tools you need to succeed. These tools make marketing more efficient and streamline work. To maximize your marketing spend, you'll need platforms and apps that help you manage your marketing strategies, create content, analyze data, and communicate with customers.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software helps you track customer interactions in one place. Use a CRM to target the right audiences for automating marketing tasks, understanding customer behavior, and upselling and cross-selling to your contact database.
If not included in your CRM, you can use email marketing platforms to manage your subscription lists and target customers directly with personalized emails. Use this tool to design emails, select recipients, and track who reads your emails and clicks.
Choose an SMS platform to segment audiences and send text messages directly to customers on their mobile devices. This approach is ideal for short, quick messages such as transaction confirmations, customer support, announcements, contests, discounts, polls, and feedback.
Webinar platforms let you host live online video events such as presentations and demos. In addition, you can interact with audiences through chats and questions, track attendance, and see when users join and leave.
Make your content creation more accessible with a blog template, and then run the copy through a tool like Surfer SEO or INK to optimize for readability and keywords. When you need graphics for social media, use Adobe Creative Suite or Canva to build infographics, posters, and ads.
Google Ads are a form of pay-per-click advertising. The ads display above organic search listings for your chosen keywords and can give your immediate business visibility while you're implementing a long-term SEO strategy.
SEO tools are software platforms that help with keyword research and show you how your site can rank better in Google search results. Popular SEO tools include SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, and Screaming Frog.
Google Search Console is a free Google tool for optimizing your website in search results. You can see how your site performs and the keywords visitors use to find your site. It also alerts you to issues that may keep Google from indexing your site.
For valuable information about who's using your website and how to set up Google Analytics. This essential tool helps you analyze traffic data to refine your SEO and marketing campaigns.
An effective SaaS marketing campaign has a lot of moving parts. Project management tools like Asana or Basecamp help marketing teams stay on top of them all. Break each element into specific tasks, assign resources, and ensure resources complete jobs on time.
Once you've identified your customer base and set up all the proper tools you need, you can implement your SaaS go-tp market strategy and campaigns.
Your campaigns will vary based on your resources and budget, but here are some essential marketing strategies B2B and B2C SaaS companies should prioritize.
As a SaaS marketer, your website is your central selling platform. You can drive traffic to the site through organic search, social media, and pay-per-click ads, but your website has to do the hard work of converting once your prospect lands. This makes your web copy one of the most (if not THE most) essential content assets in marketing.
Invest time in creating straightforward, concise content that engages the reader. Reassure the buyer that your service solves their problem while showing and not just telling. The more difficult your service is to understand, the more detailed information you need.
CTAs that offer free demos or trials are among the best calls to action for drawing in customers and creating marketing qualified leads. Free trials allow customers to see first-hand how your solution works and the value of your service without financial risk.
The goal of a demo is to convert these leads into paying customers. But before you sign up prospects, you need to drive traffic to your landing pages. There are two excellent ways to do this:
SEO and PPC depend on the right keywords to put your business in front of your target customer. Once you perform comprehensive keyword research, you can use the same search terms for SEO and PPC campaigns.
The key to success in SaaS marketing is creating content your audience wants to consume, so they come to your website or social channels to access it. Whether you're focused on producing written copy, video, or audio, all your content needs to deliver in-depth and valuable insights readers can apply to their situations. Consider the following content tactics to appeal to different audience segments and include them in your content marketing strategy.
Case studies are one of the most powerful ways to demonstrate the value of your product because you're showing how you solved actual issues for a customer and generated long-term benefits. Highlight SaaS customers that fit your buyer persona and use real numbers that deliver quantifiable results.
Blog posts are a chance to entice readers to your website and share knowledge and insight that they find helpful. Additionally, these articles incorporate keywords to help with SEO and build backlinks from other sites and social media to drive traffic.
Often used to target B2B audiences, heavily researched white papers backed up with data provide in-depth knowledge of a narrowly defined issue. White papers are usually used in later stages of the customer journey to help customers through the decision-making process. This type of content is often gated and excellent for developing leads, as prospects are usually willing to provide contact information in exchange for accessing the document. We've seen exceptional B2B software marketing conversion rates leveraging these white papers in email marketing.
Webinars allow you to have an interactive way to engage with your target audience and establish a presence in the industry as a thought leader. These live, online sessions can take place in many formats:
Newsletter offers your a direct line of communication with your customers that keeps your SaaS at the top of their minds while enabling you to distribute links to numerous pieces of content. A common challenge that SaaS companies face with newsletters is that you're competing against various other marketing emails in your Ideal Client's inbox, so incorporating your most unique and engaging content will be the key to compelling readers to open these emails of your inbound marketing strategy.
Branded podcasts can produce content that provides an intimate and relaxed conversation. Podcasts are often listened to by busy C-level executives who prefer to listen to content while multitasking.
Newsletter offers your a direct line of communication with your customers that keeps your SaaS at the top of their minds while enabling you to distribute links to numerous pieces of content. A common challenge that SaaS companies face with newsletters is that you're competing against various other marketing emails in your Ideal Client's inbox, so incorporating your most unique and engaging content will be the key to compelling readers to open these emails of your inbound marketing strategy.
While creating content to educate your audience about the benefits of your SaaS offering is essential, customers also seek social proof from others that your products are everything you claim to be.
Enter software review sites, similar to TripAdvisor or Yelp, but designed for tech users. These online platforms are a one-stop-shop for customers to learn about different products and gather third-party reviews and testimonials in one place.
Review sites are an excellent yet underrated marketing tool for SaaS companies. Independently users may decide to submit reviews; you can also encourage satisfied customers to share their insights by simulating sending an email or a text message with a link to the site and requesting that the customer give you a rating based on their experience.
Software review sites will help you increase your online visibility while giving users another way to discover and learn more about your product. For example, your listing may display on the search engine results pages, or someone may find it when browsing the site for competing products. And remember, the more 5-star reviews you generate, the easier it is for a prospective customer to choose your service.
Another way that you can generate leads is through referrals from existing customers. Again, social proof is adequate, but a recommendation from some that your customers highly trust is even more impactful. The numbers support this as consumers are four times more likely to go into business with a company that a friend refers them to.
A referral program makes sense for your bottom line too. A study showed that eight out of every ten B@B said that referrals were a good or excellent source of quality leads. In addition, it's a channel with one of the lowest costs per lead.
When creating a SaaS referral program, make sure you choose an incentivize that will spur your customers into action. For example, upgrades, discounts, subscription extensions, and cash are all common motivations that convert; then, let your customers complete referral links in one or two clicks before sending them to a convincing landing page.
Another way to conquer the market share is to engage in partner marketing with businesses that offer complementary products. A strategic partnership increases your brand exposure in front of a new client base while adding value to your customers. Again, you're pooling your resources with another business to acquire new customers jointly.
A mutually beneficial strategic partnership ensures your target customers align and companies serve different needs. If you've found the right partner, you must seek opportunities to market your solutions. For example, you may want to host a webinar or podcast together, publish guest blogs, run a joint social media marketing campaign, or develop other co-branded content. You can also create a formal strategic partnership that involves co-selling or reselling services.
The SaaS marketplace is a face-paced and highly competitive environment. However, you can still separate your brand from your competitors by focusing on your product's value and how it makes the life of your users easier.
A successful campaign combines multiple marketing tactics to generate sales and fuel your growth by outsourcing some or all of your growth marketing efforts to a partner that under how to market SaaS companies and execute each step to your industry's best practices. In addition, SaaS marketing companies like AccretionEngine, have the tools and expertise too quickly and effectively build awareness around your company and product.
You now know all the marketing insights, tools, and strategies needed to improve your SaaS company's online visibility and attract more customers to your products and services. It's time for you to take the next step in your growth and discover how our SaaS SEM Agency can help drive sales and elevate your SEO to another level.
We have a team of experts with extensive experience in assisting SaaS to scale their number of monthly subscribers while also rising in the search engines and attracting the right audiences! Request your free Traffic Projection Analysis today!
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