How an Excellent Digital Marketing Firm Boosts SaaS Sales

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry faces many unique sales challenges. But a dependable digital marketing firm can help solve them.

This article lists how a Chicago digital marketing agency supports SaaS companies. This way, they remain scalable, competitive, and profitable.

• Use account-based marketing to shorten and manage long sales cycles.
• Build a solid inbound marketing plan to increase market awareness.
• Create and promote a unique selling proposition (USP) to beat the competition.
• Strengthen relationships with email marketing to reduce the churn rate.
• Leverage social media to maximize the limited sales resources.

Learn how you can implement each of these strategies below. Let’s go!

Are you looking for a full-service digital marketing agency? See the DAP difference below!

1. Use Account-Based Marketing 

The average SaaS sales cycle differs but often depends on the price. The more expensive it is, the longer it takes to sell.

You do not want a long sales cycle because that will:

• Increase customer acquisition costs
• Demand more resources, such as time and people
• Lead to lost opportunities, especially converting other potential high-quality leads
• Slow down revenues, sometimes making it more difficult to forecast sales growth

Shorten it with account-based marketing (ABM). It is a marketing strategy that optimizes lead generation by targeting specific accounts. Unlike traditional inbound marketing, it flips the sales funnel stage with these steps:

• Identifying specific audiences that best fit the product or service
• Expanding the leads list by including people with similar roles
• Creating personalized content based on the targeted leads
• Transforming customers into advocates for referrals

With these in mind, a SaaS digital marketing partner specializing in ABM begins the plan with a customer profile or persona based on questions such as:

• What industries or verticals would benefit most from our SaaS product?
• In what types of companies are our current customers?
• What is the ideal company size I should target? What is their budget range?
• Who are the key decision-makers?
• What challenges or pain points does our SaaS product address for potential customers?
• What specific use cases would be most valuable to potential clients?
• Where are these businesses located?

2. Build a Solid Inbound Marketing Plan 

The SaaS market is one of the fastest-growing tech segments today. It could achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.7% from 2022 to 2029. By the end of the forecast period, its market size could be over $880 billion.

But the same data suggests that most key players are a few tech giants, such as Google, IBM, and Amazon. The rest are startups that need a reliable inbound marketing plan to boost their brand awareness. 

Digital marketing companies can help with:

• Conducting in-depth market research
• Creating personalized content based on the E-E-A-T guidelines, the industry’s best practices, and customer profiles
• Using omnichannel digital marketing tactics to amplify and distribute content to target audiences
• Analyzing collected data to optimize online marketing methods
• Designing websites and apps according to user experience (UX) design principles
• Automating online marketing techniques, such as ad retargeting
• Providing sales teams with tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) software and case studies to communicate the product value well

3. Create and Promote a Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

Some studies reveal that over 90% of SaaS startups fail — and for a significant reason. Besides struggling to increase market awareness, they must compete against established brands. 

How do you do that if you are a fledgling business in the field? One effective strategy is defining your unique selling proposition (USP).

Your USP is a statement that persuades your target market to choose you over others. It is:

• Unique, helping you differentiate your product or service from your rivals
• Memorable, enhancing brand awareness
• Benefit-driven, communicating how your business solves a problem
• Targeted, speaking directly to your chosen leads
• Compelling, inspiring your potential customers to take action

Here are a few SaaS companies with powerful USPs:

• Dropbox: “Get to all your files from anywhere, on any device, and share them with anyone.”
• HubSpot: “All-in-one marketing, sales, and service software that helps businesses grow better.”
• Salesforce: “The world’s #1 customer relationship management (CRM) software.”

A Chicago digital marketing agency works with SaaS clients to develop a solid USP. Combining traditional and online strategies, it will:

• Gather market data to identify gaps and opportunities in the market. These include online surveys, customer reviews, and analytical methods such as SWOT.
• Analyze the product features, then translate these into benefits
• Communicate these benefits consistently and clearly through various offline and online marketing channels
• Test and refine marketing campaigns to know if the developed USP matches with the targeted leads, and convert them into sales

4. Strengthen Relationships With Email Marketing

The churn rate measures the number of customers who stopped buying the product or service. In SaaS, it might refer to the percentage of canceled subscriptions.   

All industries have a churn rate, which can vary depending on factors such as market size. But SaaS seems to have one of the highest, with some hitting over 30%. Ideally, it should be between 3% and 8%.

A high churn rate hurts by limiting business growth and resources. It also indicates a high level of customer dissatisfaction and low product value. Both often lead to a negative reputation and more difficulty acquiring new customers. 

While you cannot avoid churn, you also cannot ignore it. You might need a SaaS marketing specialist to help you manage it with a tried-and-tested strategy. It is called email marketing. 

Here is how you can use emails to decrease abandonment:

• Immediately send an onboarding or welcome email with incentives. These can be free e-books, mini-course series, or downloadable guides.
• Send triggered emails when they abandon carts. It can persuade users to complete the action and interact with the product.
• Break down subscribers into different segments and customize content based on their profile.
• Encourage users to give testimonials and feature them in email campaigns.
• Send regular product updates to inform users about new features and improvements.

5. Leverage Social Media

Most SaaS companies are small or startups, so they often face limited resources, especially during the first few years. Your business can borrow from other industries’ marketing playbooks by tapping into social media. 

It is free, easy to use, and offers limitless opportunities to reach customers. You can also choose several social media ad platforms to help measure success.

With an experienced digital marketing agency, you can leverage all of these by:

• Developing engaging and informative content
• Creating appealing visuals, like infographics, to make complex concepts easier to understand
• Exploring creative options, such as webinars or live Q&A sessions with influencers and subject-matter experts who can speak on your brand's behalf
• Analyzing customer feedback collected from various social media channels and adjusting the strategy
• Optimizing organic visibility through relevant hashtags, keywords, and influencers

Summing Up

A good Chicago digital marketing agency gets to know your brand and customers well. This way, they can execute efficient strategies that deliver results. 

But the SaaS industry has unique pain points. You need a team that understands your needs and can provide your desired solutions, such as Digital Authority Partners (DAP). Contact us today so we can assist you.