The world of SaaS is ever-expanding. According to Statistica, revenue in the SaaS industry will hit $344 billion by 2027, and innovations in AI will only see this number continue to grow exponentially over the coming decade.
With the explosion of start-up tech and established industry heavy-weights continuing to evolve and introduce innovations that transform the way we work, yesterday’s announcement quickly falls into tomorrow’s history books, and getting seen becomes harder and harder.
Navigating the evolving landscape of SaaS Digital Marketing
Value creation doesn’t happen overnight and establishing a strong digital footprint is integral to the long-term success of any business, and deploying the right digital marketing strategies in the SaaS world means you’ll get seen by your target audiences no matter where they’re searching.
That’s where Everysearch™ comes into play. Everysearch™ is the framework we apply to identifying your target audiences, making sure your brand is being seen at any given opportunity. Thanks to our proprietary technology, Luminr, we’re able to spot gaps and assess your competitor’s tactics to establish the strategy that is going to drive the most value and point more customers towards your sales team.
By being able to showcase what optimal coverage looks like within your sector, we can tell you which channels and what platforms you need to appear on throughout as users journey, from discovery triggers right through to conversion.
No tactic should be seen in isolation, and instead, the following pointers will help steer you in the right direction to be wherever your audiences are.
1. Establishing your brand world
You want to show up wherever your audience is, and there’s nothing like consistency to make sure people remember who you are. Having a clear brand identity that offers flexibility depending on the platform will go a long way in opening up opportunities for you to utilise within your digital marketing strategy. Think of 3-5 different scenarios in which your audience may see you and think about what you want to say to them in each and make sure you have brand guidelines to reflect each of them.
2. What is your value manifesto?
Once you’ve got the above, you’ve got an asset that is vital to the next technique, which is showcasing the value you can add to your potential customers. You need to have a clear manifesto to your audience that you can be trusted, and that your SaaS technology is the answer to them. That’s where the content on your site comes in. It’s your manifesto to prospective customers that you can offer a valuable asset that will improve their working lives.
3. Be part of a digital community
Forums have been around for decades but their position within digital marketing is only now being explored and utilised for value. Reddit is coming up to 20 years old and only now is Google seeing it as a reputable source of information to serve in search results pages. This is where communities of users gather to query, educate and discuss a variety of topics, with communities of users offering up a wealth of information, all of which you can use to inform what content you want to create.
4. Multi-funnel content
Content should never be put in a box. It should be allowed to flow off into a variety of meanings and intents to make sure you always have an answer to a users query, even if they don’t realise they need to see you. Whether someone is at the stage of discovery, consideration, evaluation or conversion, a single piece of content, whether that’s on-site or off-site, is never going to be that magic bean that leads to success. Success comes from a collection of narratives that support a variety of important end goals. An agile content strategy that facilitates this will lead to success in areas you probably haven’t even considered.
5. Competitor evaluation
There’s always a purpose behind any activity your competitor is doing, and it’s important to never discount what you think the objective could be because there’s always method behind what could be seen as madness. Competitor intelligence can go a long way in finding out where your share of voice sits in what is often a loud and busy space and it enables you to learn from what others are doing, even if what others are doing seems farcical.
6. Performance Max exploration
Performance Max has been around for a while now and basically allows you to target your users wherever they are, be that Discover, Gmail, Maps, YouTube, Display Network, etc. ‘PMax’ operates on a machine-learning basis and should be seen as a key way to drive conversions. If you have a rich CRM and healthy budgets to run multiple test campaigns, Performance Max can be a great lead gen source while you explore other channels for awareness tactics.
7. Social is Search
There’s more digital platforms than ever where conversations are happening, meaning there’s even more places to position your brand to the right audience. While TikTok for SaaS isn’t quite what we’re suggesting here, utilising LinkedIn and Reddit as key drivers of awareness could be of a major benefit. LinkedIn’s ad platform has unique targeting that allows you to target specific audiences based on industry and job titles, while with Reddit you can specify exact Subreddits or categories for your ads to appear in.
8. AI is friend-not-foe
Embracing AI as part of your strategy doesn’t involve being a tech wizard or investing vast amounts of money in the next state-of-the-art technology. One of the best ways AI can be incorporated into your strategy is to use it as a sounding board for ideas and help develop the structure of your content. If you’re looking for a bunch of different headlines for ads or blog ideas, tools like Gemini & ChatGPT can offer up structures and ideas that act as a springboard for the messages you really want to get across to your audience.
9. Offer users an experience
Users need to feel engaged and invited once you have them on your site (if that’s the ultimate goal for your activity). Once you have them though, you don’t have long to make sure you get users to interact with you in the way you want them to. Whether it’s as simple as a contact us form or live chat, or inviting audiences to interact and move through to new pages, making sure you think about the user experience will mean all your hard work to get people to your website won’t be wasted.
10. Re-engage
The B2B purchase journey is never a simple click-and-purchase experience. SaaS is an expensive world and decision makers or researches will survey the market before making a decision. If you’ve already done enough to get users to your site, then making sure you have a remarketing strategy to re-engage with your audience will be key to helping drive future conversations with prospects. Dynamic retargeting in Google Ads or through Meta means you can target users in a variety of ways, keeping you front and centre.
Operating a full-scale SaaS marketing strategy is no easy feat, with a whole host of tactics that can be deployed to reach your audience and grow your business. But if this all seems like a lot, get in touch with the team here at Found if you want assistance with your SaaS digital marketing strategy.
