SaaS Marketing
SaaS marketing requires effort focused on converting and retaining customers.
SaaS features a longer sales cycle, providing buyers ample time to initially evaluate solutions, compare competitors, and inquire about trial periods. Moreover, present clients want easy ways to address issues related to use, integration, and current options.
It’s all a part of SaaS (software-as-a-service) marketing — captivating interested parties, educating potential buyers, and retaining present clients.
SaaS Marketing – Captivation
SaaS brands must clearly identify offerings and immediate target markets. Simplifying SaaS solutions allows clears communication on website homepages, landing pages, PPC ads, and more.
Let’s examine how Dropbox conveys its solutions.
The SaaS brand does a good job informing potential buyers of its solutions. Furthermore, it identifies types of buyers and those within particular industries.
Therefore, we find it best practice to clearly define a SaaS brand’s core solutions and potential target market.
SaaS Keyword Research
SaaS content marketing needs to address the longevity of the sales cycle and the concerns of potential buyers therein.
For example, a customer could be looking for an enterprise-level customer management solution. They’re well aware of Salesforce but want to inform themselves of other options and how Salesforce compares.
This scenarios could be identified as being within the mid-funnel of the buyer’s cycle. Present-day buyers are getting used to transparency. It’s better to own a brand-related conversation versus ignoring the concerns of potential buyers.
Even negative reviews could present opportunity to newsjack the conversation and reroute the public view.
Saas Marketing – Conversion
The SaaS sales funnel gets to a point where potential buyers are invested and a free trial is warranted. There’s a pervading question woven into the fabric of SaaS sales – the free trial.
Should I Offer a Free Trial for SaaS Solutions?
For some SaaS brands, it’s not a question of whether it’s a good idea to expose potential buyers to offered solutions. It’s more concerning to determine how much to allow users to access.
In one case, a well-experienced user, say one who has used a competitor’s solution for years, seeks access. In this situation, it may be better to allow them full access, to fully appreciate all the tools the solution has to offer.
In another situation, a novice user may get confused or frustrated with all the options full access invites. It would be a pity for a SaaS brand to alienate a potential buyer, especially in an enterprise level.
Therefore, it’s a marketing team’s job to determine the free-trial experience. Whether it means segmenting potential buyers or allowing free access for all users, SaaS brands need to further evaluate respective niches to determine best conversion rates.
HubSpot clearly addresses its solutions for several different types of buyers.
Furthermore, the salesperson (lower right) attempts to validate the demo experience by asking what you want to see in the demonstration.
Identify Marketing Channels
An effective marketing channel for Netflix may differ from that of Uber. Therefore, it’s a SaaS marketer’s job to identify needed and most-effective marketing channels.
Further validate particular countries and regions.
Marketing for SaaS – Retention
Understand SaaS User Pros and Cons
Potential users leverage the feedback of previous or existing users to make decisions. Content marketing must recognize the pain points and celebrations of existing users.
Slack users love the fact that it integrates so well with thousands of other apps. This is a celebration that Slack marketers can use in marketing materials and sales conversations.
Likewise, potential or current Netflix users may need to know an array of things related to use and integration.
SaaS PR – Positive Public Perception
Before the age of the Internet, PR companies managed reputation and public perception of small to major brands. These days, companies can make huge blunders in seconds using a few keystrokes while misusing social media tools.
Furthermore, ESG scores, those assigned to scrutinizing a company in relation to environmental, societal, and governmental standards, are becoming a talking point. In short, it’s more important than ever to consider how a SaaS brand appears to the public. So, that entails promptly addressing major to minor concerns via content marketing.
Therefore, how a company is perceived may have further repercussion beyond how one potential buyer may view a SaaS brand. Poor ESG scores and a soured reputation could mean stunted growth, missed opportunity regarding partnerships, or worse, an eventual blackballing and atrophy of the business.
How Can I Grow My SaaS Company?
Often, SaaS brands come to us, aspiring to target Hispanic customers in North America and throughout Latin America. Those unfamiliar with marketing to Hispanics may simplify their needs, approaching translation services. Yes, translating copy is a portion of marketing to Hispanics but the process is refined through transcreation.
Say Hola to Transcreation
Think of transcreation as “localizing” the SaaS marketing process. For example, a higher percentage of those in Texas and California speak Mexican Spanish. However, Florida warrants a different kind of translation process, for many Hispanics in that region come from Cuba and speak a different version of the language.
Translation and Localization
A translator has to take into account the different obstacles that can face and could affect their performance. One of these obstacles that is present in every translation is culture.
Culture can affect languages in many ways due to the fact that some expressions or words can vary depending on the cultural background. Although translation is used to transfer a word into another language, there is also an important aspect into the field that provides perspective to the final product and relies on culture: localization.
Localization is the process when a translator adapts a text to a specific continent, country, state, city or just a group of people, allowing the translator to focus on the target public. Localization means that the person transferring a text is not using a literal translation, but an adaptation expressing the original idea and passing it to the target language.
This branch of translation can be used for many fields such as movies, video games, literature, software or advertising, among others. It also requires a specialized translator that knows almost everything about the culture of the target language and target public (or have the skills to investigate it properly) which has to work with graphics (as in graphology) , images or even color, not only words, to meet their goal.
Learn more about Transcreation:
Spanish Translation vs Transcreation
Conclusion
Marketing for SaaS brands focuses on conversion as well as retention.
Begin the process by identifying provided solutions and targeted markets.
Next, inform keyword research by aligning supplied content with the buyer’s journey, addressing initial needs to more complex issues related to user pros and cons.
Then, layer-in public relations efforts that address public, potential buyer, and current user perception of the SaaS brand.
Lastly, realize SaaS content marketing is an ongoing effort. Take a look at SaaS churn statistics.
Best-case scenarios see SaaS marketing efforts and subsequent performance securing contracts that exceed two or more years. Therefore, longevity and identifying long-term buyers is monumentally important.
Allow professionals to deliver SaaS marketing insight and associated output to put your brand in the best position to captivate, convert, and retain qualified customers.
Let’s get a conversation going about how Altura can benefit your SaaS brand, supplying actionable insight and transcreated deliverables to captivate Hispanic markets in the US and beyond.
Agood