Success in the competitive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry requires a strong market presence. As new players enter the market every day, distinguishing your product can be challenging. A practical strategy is to initially establish a foothold in a niche market and then expand into broader segments. Optimal product positioning involves identifying ideal buyers, utilizing company strengths, and differentiating the product by addressing unmet customer needs.
To reach your target market with the right messages, you need an IT or SaaS marketing strategy to convince your audience about your product's value. In this guide, we discuss four steps to help you achieve your B2B SaaS company’s demand generation goals.
4 Demand and Client Growth Steps for Your B2B SaaS Product or Service
4 Demand and Client Growth Steps for Your B2B SaaS Product or Service
Understand the B2B Tech Buyer’s Journey
In 2023, the SaaS portfolio of organizations has increased to an average of 371 applications, a 32% rise from 2021. However, the road to acquisition can be complex. The diversity of tech personas poses a significant challenge in navigating the tech landscape. Research by T.A. Monroe Digital Agency shows that 74% of B2B buyers consist of a mix of IT and business users. This indicates a need to widen ideal customer profiles, including roles like business analysts and department managers in outreach and messaging.
SaaS portfolio
To fully understand your B2B tech customers, you must dive into their customer journey. The SaaS industry has a longer sales cycle than other industries due to two primary factors. First, B2B buyers are typically "self-guided" or "self-serve" customers who take time to explore potential products or suppliers. Second, the decision-making process is more complicated as it involves multiple individuals for checks and balances.
Capchase's B2B SaaS Sales Cycles in 2023 report reveals that the average sales cycle lasts 134 days (4.4 months), higher by 27 days compared to the 2022 average of 107 days. Of those who reported longer sales cycles, the majority (42%) said their cycles extended by 2-3 weeks while 35% said theirs rose by 4-5 weeks.
Furthermore, G2’s Software Buyer Behavior Report found that 47% of contracts in North America last for six months or less, suggesting that buyers are opting for shorter-term contracts. This allows for reduced upfront costs and greater agility in software selection, as vendors can be chosen to suit changing needs or market conditions.
According to TrustRadius, current economic conditions have led to 27% of buyers involving more decision-makers in the buying process. This often means convincing finance teams of the product's value, running the software's terms and conditions by the legal department, and obtaining a C-suite member's approval to finalize the purchase. In fact, 14% of buyers noted that this final stage now involves more C-level executives than before.
Gartner
Given this complexity, Gartner reports that tech buying teams now consist of an average of 5 people. Thus, an effective marketing strategy must consider this diverse "hierarchy" of SaaS buyers. Learning about every stakeholder in the buying process allows you to understand individual pain points, expectations, priorities, and motivations.
Discover "Buyer Moments"
Besides a longer sales cycle, the B2B buyer's journey is hardly linear. Various motivators and barriers can move them forward or backward along the sales funnel. Studio North deconstructs the marketing funnel with a new model based on the emotional states buyers go through (“buyer moments”) which are:
- Understanding options
- Ensure the product is a good fit for me
- Ensure it's a good fit for the company
- Get it done (approvals)
- Find the best next choice
- Make my solution popular with others
To illustrate this concept, they made a diagram showing the motivators and barriers a new employee faces in selecting a laptop. Like the employee in the example, tech buyers can decide to select or reject a product based on the information available on the channels they turn to ("Where") at every stage.
Studio North marketing funnel
Despite reduced software budgets, buyers continue to spend on technology, but their motivations have changed. According to those surveyed by TrustRadius, the top priority has shifted towards purchases that save time or increase automation (50%). Additionally, 28% of respondents expanded the use cases of their existing tech stack, 21% focused on mastering their tech stack's features, and 15% made new tech purchases to compensate for reduced staff.
TrustRadius
This shift in priorities is not just limited to operations but it is also reflected in ease of adoption and value. As per G2’s report, companies of all sizes share similar top priorities: ease of use and implementation, receiving ROI within 6 months, and scalability.
G2’s report
Identify Touchpoints
After getting a fuller picture of your B2B tech customers, you must identify their go-to channels for research to provide touchpoints between your company and theirs. Foundry says that product testing, reviews, and opinions (46%) were the top resources among IT practitioners followed by product demo/literature (44%), technology news (42%), vendor presentations (38%), analyst research (38%), and case studies (33%).
Content types
In addition, among tech buyers surveyed by TrustRadius, the majority (77%) said that free trials or accounts are the most influential resources, followed by product demos (74%), their prior experience (72%), user reviews (61%), and consultant recommendation (48%).
Influential recources for technology buyers
Start Your Conversion Plan
It's time to take this knowledge about your audience's profile, goals, and preferred marketing assets to determine the right strategy. Craft effective conversion journeys for your customers by following these steps:
1. Check how you appear on search engines.
Findings of a survey by Marketing OG showed that in the information-gathering stage, B2B software buyers still consider Google as their top information source.
survey Marketing OG
While search results satisfy 40% of users, many find that corporate content often appears repetitive and indistinguishable, leading them to “zone out” when reading it. Therefore, it's crucial to regularly monitor your brand's mentions on online communities and forums, as these emerged as the most trusted sources of B2B information. Respond to positive and negative reviews professionally and promptly. This will show your commitment to customer satisfaction and enhance your reputation.
survey Marketing OG
2. Optimize your content.
With B2B tech buyers and Google becoming smarter, it's crucial to offer unique and authoritative content. Internet searchers can detect repetitive, boilerplate content, and Google's AI, Rankbrain, prioritizes content that retains users' attention over content that's quickly abandoned. Hence, you should focus your SEO strategy on creating original content and establishing authority in your field.
To accomplish this, you can try the following:
- Review your existing content and update your high engagement/conversion blog posts (ranking 3rd to 10th in SERP).
- Prune low-engagement content or update older content.
- Check your internal links (remove broken links) and orphan pages (pages lacking internal links).
- Test different CTAs to boost your highest-value content.
- Consider improving your blog architecture (header, sidebar, and footer menus, blog post date, and others).
Keyword optimization is still indispensable and based on user search intent such as:
- Navigational – the user aims to find a specific site, almost always including brand keywords.
- Informational – the user looks for an answer to a specific question or wants to learn more about a topic.
- Investigational/commercial – the user wants to learn more about a product/service or compare products to prepare for a future purchase.
- Transactional – the user wants to learn about a specific product/service before a purchase.
3. Choose the right format.
The preferred content format for B2B tech consumers depends on their stage in the buying journey. According to research from Marketing OG, short video formats (less than a minute long) are more appealing than text articles 66% of the time for those discovering a new B2B product. However, buyers want longer videos (more than one minute long) during the trialing stage.
Marketing OG survey
Other video marketing tips:
- Produce explainer videos to simplify complex SaaS software. Embedding such videos into blogs can increase the traffic to your article by as much as 80%.
- Create customer success story videos to build emotional connections.
- Record and upload live webinars and Q&A sessions.
- Optimize video content for different platforms and devices.
- Gather feedback and analyze engagement to improve future content.
Meanwhile, 51% of buyers in Marketing OG's study say they find long-form written content "often too long and difficult to navigate." But when they want to have a more thorough understanding of products, 69% are willing “to dive deep into details.”
4. Offer free trials or freemium access.
During the assessment or trial phase, buyers consider freemium access to software or free trials on membership sites as their top information source. Opt-out free trials, which require credit card information upfront, can increase your conversion rate up to 60%. On the other hand, opt-in versions that typically only require an email address have a conversion rate of 25%.
Survey
Here are some factors that affect the customers' decision to opt for paid services from a free trial:
- Trial length: Give users enough time to understand your product and determine how it benefits them. The more complicated the software, the longer the trial period should be. The recommended minimum timeframe is 14 days.
- Features: Trials offering limited or restricted features emphasize the value of the premium version. This convinces users to upgrade and try advanced features or critical actions only available in the paid software. Zoom, Hubspot, Spotify, and Grammarly are good examples of platforms with restricted freemiums.
- Ease of use: Paid plans become appealing when your interface has an intuitive design.
- Pricing: Fees should not be so steep that users are discouraged from opting for the paid plan. Diverse payment options also impact conversions.
- Customer support: Giving freemium users a foretaste of your consistent commitment to user success can motivate them to go for paid services.
- Promotions: Use your website and other online assets to explain how your solution can benefit users.
- Onboarding: Provide a personalized experience based on the demographic information the user supplies during signup.
- Incentives: Offer a discount or access to exclusive features.
5. Audit your website for conversion readiness.
Besides optimizing your content, these other steps can turn your site into your best salesperson to increase conversions:
-
Fast-loading site and compelling calls to action (CTAs)
Ensure your website loads fast and you situate your CTA buttons in strategic areas of your homepage. Tools like Google Analytics can help you check site speed. Meanwhile, heatmaps allow you to discover spots on your site that attract the most attention.
-
Connection value offer (COV)
Clarify what customers can expect when they book a demo. For instance, your discovery call page can say that by the end of the call or demo, your team will uncover areas where they're losing time, overpaying, or dealing with poor or inadequate services.
-
Lead magnets
Offer incentives that deliver a "quick win" for prospective customers. Besides quickly accomplishing a goal or providing an immediate solution, lead magnets must be instantly accessible and easily digestible. Examples include:
- eBooks
- Step-by-step tutorials or guides
- Webinars or online courses
- Case studies
- Research reports or white papers
- Checklists, such as "(X) Essential Features to Look For in a (Software)"
A good example of a lead magnet would be Heap’s request-a-demo page which contains a three-point COV and a “demo tour” of its dashboards and analysis modules.
Heap’s request-a-demo page
6. Let your paid campaigns address user pain points.
Avoid merely highlighting your product or service's features when crafting ads. Instead, your ad copy should express how it solves your target market's most pressing challenges. SaaS brands tapped Powered by Search to create ads that reflect their motivation to address their customers' operational and legal pain points.
Powered by Search
You can get more practical advice on optimizing paid media from our guides on PPC ad strategies (Google and Bing), Facebook ad creation, and LinkedIn ad campaign management.
7. Focus on social platforms relevant to your brand.
B2B SaaS companies typically use LinkedIn, X, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Since social media is meant for distributing shareable content, it's the best place to repurpose your best-performing blog posts and repackage user feedback in an interview format.
You can also leverage influencer marketing to widen your reach. Here are some SaaS influencers you can follow:
Also, start searching for personalities that follow your SaaS brand and collaborate for interviews and other engagements. However, don't forget to groom your homegrown influencers—including brand founders and employees. Review and optimize their profiles, particularly your founder’s page as they significantly contribute to brand trust.
Given the ever-changing trends on social media, it’s important to stay updated on relevant topics. Here are some key insights from Demand Conversion's "State of B2B SaaS Demand Generation, Fall 2023" report:
- Buyers are following industry leaders more on social platforms.
- More conversations—particularly seeking feedback and vendor recommendations—are happening on LinkedIn, other channels, and online communities than in live events.
- Marketing leaders believe that they can stay visible organically on social media by posting engaging content. The primary vehicles are 60-second videos and podcasts embedded in articles, noting that YouTube videos gained more views than podcasts.
This post on X by cloud learning platform TalentLMS features a link to several YouTube tutorials—each around a minute long—on how to customize the portal's user dashboard.
New Advanced Customization Tip!
📝 This week, we show you how to add a new item to the learner dashboard sidebar:https://t.co/QxgC1EDT3K
To customize your TalentLMS portal with code, use our cheatsheet: https://t.co/LqcinRCJET
📽️ All video tutorials: https://t.co/movoAzcuCx
— TalentLMS (@TalentLMS) October 3, 2023
- Marketers use social media to announce live webinars, which they record and later distribute on platforms like BriteTALK for on-demand viewing.
- Some marketers have broadened their engagement strategies, establishing their presence on Threads, TikTok, and Snapchat.
8. Get listed on software directories.
Claim your listing or profile on these review sites so you can learn more about your customers and collect social proof.
- G2
- Capterra
- TrustRadius
- GetApp
- SoftwareAdvice
- Trustpilot
- PeerSpot
- GoodFirms
- Gartner Peer Insights
- PCMag Business Reviews
You can send an email to your satisfied customers requesting them to leave a review by clicking a link to these third-party sites or your corporate review form.
9. Don't sleep on email marketing.
B2B buyers, who prefer a rep-free buying experience, also favor email communications 77% of the time. Thus, newsletters with useful tips, special deals, and updates about new features are helpful. Use email solutions to segment your contacts list by job title, company size, industry, customer life cycle stage, or engagement level so you can tailor the messaging for each customer category. Also, automate your onboarding email sequence, progress check-ins, requests for review, and other actions. And ensure your emails are mobile-friendly as most B2B buyers read their messages on their phones.
You can also use email marketing for retargeting, particularly churned customers and lost prospects who had to delay or back out due to financial constraints. Re-engage with:
- Resource downloaders, demo registrants who failed to show up, and others who have shown interest but haven't purchased
- Closed-lost leads from the past year, trial non-conversions (never converted to a paid plan), and right-fit churned clients.
10. Integrate with other products.
According to G2's Buyer Behavior report, approximately 82% of respondents prefer to purchase software that integrates with their existing tools. They also favor fewer vendors (78%) and a single solution over multiple ones (84%). Additionally, quality content about integration capabilities is in demand among 71% of the surveyed participants from Marketing OG. Thus, partnering with firms with services complementary and relevant to yours can help improve conversion rates.
Get Ready to Make a Stir with Your B2B SaaS Marketing Strategy
Having a feature-rich and versatile product isn't enough to make you succeed in B2B SaaS marketing. It's crucial to understand the needs, motivations, and preferred touchpoints of your B2B tech buyers to create a responsive and agile strategy. To maximize your potential, consider enlisting the expertise of B2B SaaS digital marketing agencies. They can help you identify gaps in your current approach and seize growth opportunities, giving your business a significant competitive advantage.
