Inbound Marketing Age

The software as a service (SaaS) industry is one of the most lucrative niches on the market. Inherently scalable and profitable, it’s expected to surpass $112.8 billion by 2019.

But if you're in the business of selling software as a service, you’ll know that standing out is now more of a challenge than ever.

And, unlike many other industries, if a software company grows at only 20%, it has 92% chance of ceasing to exist within a few years according to McKinsey.

So, listen up, because getting this right is important.

Inbound and content marketing are often favoured by SaaS companies because they are conducive to B2B buying habits.

SaaS products are conceived, programmed and built to provide a solution to a problem. A concept which also happens to permeate the entire inbound philosophy.

It’s for this reason that an inbound strategy lends itself so well to SaaS marketing. But for SaaS buyers in particular, the relationship with their vendors can be very sensitive.

A SaaS inbound strategy demands a high level of skill, education and consideration to devise the most successful approach. Each stage of the buyer’s journey is as crucial as the last, and there is no time for complacency in such a disruptive and competitive landscape. 

So, it’s only natural that in the commotion of trying to cover all bases and get everything right, sometimes things go very wrong.

Video Marketing is a must for SaaS and other cloud-based software companies.

You know it’s time to incorporate video into your content marketing strategy; it has been under your nose for a long time and 87 percent of online marketers are using it already. But what exactly would corporate video look like for you?

Here are some ideas on how SaaS companies can use video marketing to their benefit.

Explainer video

One of the biggest challenges SaaS companies face while making video is taking dry technical content and turn it into something engaging and shareworthy. In a competitive B2B environment it’s necessary to provide solid context and detail.

Despite the hype around social media, messaging apps and other newer forms of marketing communications, email is still an effective marketing channel. Providing your prospects have signed up for it, email still has the power to engage with clients and prospects as well as any other medium.

But like any marketing channel, it’s only valid when you are doing it right. Get email marketing wrong, you run the risk of losing not only prospects, but also your existing customers. Email marketing has great potential to irritate and annoy if is unwanted or unhelpful. There are few things people loathe more than spam. And spam is not just unsolicited emails, it’s any email that wastes the recipient’s time.

It is a tumultuous time for anyone involved in SaaS marketing – massive changes in the marketing landscape, the way customers buy and the channels available mean that SaaS marketing plans and strategy are having to be revised or even scrapped. SaaS companies, with their reliance on good marketing to gain customers and combat churn, will find themselves at the forefront of this change. They can either surf it and gain the benefits – or go under.

In SaaS marketing the aim of your content is to generate leads, convert prospects, reduce churn and upsell additional services. To do that effectively you need to create content that meets the needs of your audience. Your inbound marketing strategy should include developing buyer personas and targeting appropriate content at different stages of the buyer’s journey.

But what topics make for a great piece of content for SaaS? Here are four tried and tested types of content that are effective and enduring.

Industry research shows that technology firms are increasingly adopting content marketing strategies to drive business results.

A report by the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) published earlier this year found 95 per cent of tech marketers are using content marketing, and that almost 7 in 10 (69 percent) say their organisation is extremely or very committed to it. And the results are clear. 79 per cent said it has increased audience engagement, 77 per cent said it has increased the number of leads, and 59 per cent said it has increased their sales.

In fact, the report showed that tech marketers are focusing on content even more than B2B marketers in other industries.

So why is content marketing so well suited to the B2B technology industry?

We know that the key to success as a SaaS business is to reduce churn by retaining existing customers. SaaS is different to many other products and services in that it has a closer relationship with its users, over a longer period of time. So, more so than for many companies, whose marketing revolves around understanding new customers in order to serve appropriate content and gain leads, SaaS is also about understanding existing customers.

This duality makes the job of the SaaS marketer both more difficult and yet at the same easier. More difficult, because there are potentially two sets of people to understand and market to. Easier, because the level of contact with customers/users over a period of time means there is more data on existing customers. This should allow for a greater understanding of their needs and therefore, by extension, potentially make it easier to predict what new customers are looking for too.

For a SaaS company, reducing the number of customers who cut ties with your service during a given period – or ‘churn rate’ is essential to the survival and growth of the business. But there is a solution - Inbound marketing – and here’s seven reasons why.

Get the right customers in the first place

Inbound marketing helps you to attract more visitors to your website. But it is not enough to just attract more people; they need to be the right people. Inbound delivers quality, pre-qualified leads who are ready to do business. If you can find the right fit customers in the first place, then churn rate will drastically decrease.

Out of all the digital marketing channels available to you, social media is probably the most hyped yet least understood of them all. If well executed, with a solid strategy behind it, social can be a powerful marketing tool for a SaaS company. 

Social media is unlike other marketing channels in that it is not just for marketing; it is more of a two-way conversation and not just a means of distributing content. For SaaS companies, this is a strength and advantage over other channels.

But what can you use it for, and how can you make the most of it?

If you are in the SaaS industry, you might feel that it is sometimes difficult to write about your services and make them exciting or engaging to your audience. You may be so familiar with what you offer that you struggle to find new angles and walk in your prospects shoes. Maybe you have lost your motivation and find it hard to believe anyone finds what you write about interesting?

If this sounds familiar, here are three ways to make your content work and get you back on track.

In a previous post, we discussed how an inbound approach enables your SaaS company to connect with the right people,in the right way, at the right time. Inbound allows you to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, answer your target audience's questions and, ultimately, help you to win their business (and keep it).

If you are a business that produces software, it is highly likely you have moved, or are considering moving, from selling an off the shelf product to delivering your product online - a method commonly called 'Software as a Service' (SaaS). But has your marketing strategy adapted?

There are several significant differences between the marketing strategy for selling boxed software than for selling SaaS. In this post, we are going to look at those key factors and explain why you need to think ‘outside the box'.

In a previous post, we discussed how an inbound approach could help your software as a service (SaaS) company. We talked about the importance of SaaS organisations not only winning customers, but retaining them over the long term - a challenge inherent in the SaaS business model.

As a SaaS company, you will know that you have to wait a bit longer to enjoy the fruits of your labour than in other industries. When you win new business, the payoff doesn't come straight away. You need those customers to keep on buying your services and you also want to sell more services to them over time. 

In the same vein, when you first start out on an inbound marketing journey, you won't reach your destination immediately. Implementing inbound marketing is a commitment (with all the challenges that entails). 

However, in both instances, the potential rewards to be reaped are well worth the wait. So, let's explore why and consider how adopting inbound marketing for SaaS could help you to reach more of the right people and grow your business. 

If you are creating content for a software as a service (SaaS) company, from time to time you will probably struggle to find something relevant to talk about. So, here are 30 blog ideas you can use as they are, or modify for your own circumstances.

Bear in mind that you should always have one of your buyer personas in mind when choosing one of these, and when writing the detail, as is the case across all of your inbound marketing activity.

You also need to consider what part of the sales funnel your chosen persona is in. Some of these are introductory topics suitable for top of the funnel (TOFU) content, some are more detailed in scope suitable for middle of the funnel (MOFU) content.

Across the spectrum, industries are facing change on an unprecedented scale – and the software as a service (SaaS) industry is no exception. In today's fast-moving and competitive environment, SaaS companies will live and die by their ability to acquire new customers and keep them on a long-term basis.

Therefore, it's important that you can reach the people that matter the most to your business. To do so, you need a targeted and effective marketing strategy that enables you to connect with and form relationships with the individuals and organisations that will benefit from purchasing your products and services.

Adopting an inbound approach can help you to achieve just that. In this post, we explore the current state of the SaaS industry and look at how implementing inbound marketing could help your company.

Writing for the B2B market is often challenging, and never more so than in the world of the software as a service (SaaS) industry. When such a detailed, intense focus on technology is required, it is easy to get caught up in the content itself and miss the bigger picture. That can lead to a number of bad habits.

Here's our list of some of the worst offenders so you can recognise and deal with them.

1. A lack of focus

Every piece of content you create should fit into an overall plan, and be specifically targeted and written. Each item of content should be aimed at one of your buyer personas, and focus on a specific step in the buyer's journey (awareness, consideration or decision).