Software as a service isn’t an easy industry to market anymore – if it ever was.
First, the challenge was getting businesses to understand the value of SaaS. These days, however, the market is saturated with thousands of options.
Estimates put SaaS as a $157 billion market as of 2020 – and shows no signs of slowing down.
Your audience is out there. You just need the right B2B SaaS marketing strategy to reach and engage them.
8 B2B SaaS Marketing Best Practices You Need to Know for 2021
Most SaaS marketers struggle either because they don’t define their target audience clearly enough or they lack the best content and strategy to engage them.
The best thing you can do is to narrow down your target audience. Once you do that, you can create more relevant content and offer better personalization across all touchpoints.
1. Content Hubs are Your Friend
Did you know buyers are more likely to binge your content when you organize it in an interactive format? That’s just one reason adaptive content hubs are your friend for B2B SaaS content marketing.
68% of buyers say they’d like to see content organized by pain point, while 58% want to see content categorized by industry or vertical.
It’s also smart to organize your content by firmographic if you’ve narrowed down your niche enough to create content for different accounts or job roles.
Add AI and machine learning to the content hub next so each visitor gets personalized recommendations based on their vertical or stage of the funnel.
2. Get Your Brand on Top Review Sites
Companies turn to sites like G2 when they’re searching for new solutions to problems. These sites let them learn about the experiences of companies like theirs so they can find the best fit for their brand.
Make sure to claim your business page on any relevant review hub and optimize your description and meta information for keywords related to your brand.
Your own content matters too, but much of the content buyers consume during the journey comes from third-party independent sources.
3. Maximize Your B2B SaaS Marketing Case Studies
Buyers consume 13 pieces of content during the journey on average. Are you creating the right type of content for your B2B SaaS marketing strategy?
Transparent content that empowers buyers to make smart and efficient decisions during the process is key.
Use content for each vertical or pain point to cover your specifications, comparisons to similar products, success stories, and tutorials. When done well, these are the useful pieces of content that prove your value to specific market segments.
4. Optimize Your Freemium Strategy
Freemium products are tough to get right.
On one hand, you want to give someone a solid understanding of what kind of value your product offers. On the other hand, you don’t want to give so much away that most of your audience doesn’t feel compelled to buy.
More than anything else, you want to prioritize the user experience. Withholding certain features could frustrate your audience. BuzzSumo seems to have a good freemium strategy: limited access to every standard feature for a week.
Study your competition closely here. Is there a way you can outdo them?
Also, make it easy for freemium users to submit suggestions or report bugs. Use that information to optimize the overall strategy.
5. Adjust Your Pricing Structure
There’s no shame in changing your prices based on what’s best for your business and customers. As your business evolves, consider what types of companies use your service and what features matter most to them.
Is there a way you can restructure certain services and features to offer customers exactly what they need at the right price point?
At Hushly, for example, we used to only charge per lead, but as our products progressed and evolved, we adapted our prices to match.
While you never want price to become your differing factor, you do want to stay competitive in the market, so it’s worthwhile to keep an eye on your competition.
6. Make Sure Your B2B SaaS Content Marketing is Targeted
This is an absolute must for every B2B SaaS marketing strategy before you create any piece of content.
Over half of B2B buyers say the content they receive from brands is irrelevant and useless. The best thing you can do is research your market and niche down.
If you don’t, your content will never be relevant enough to resonate with any audience. People will just scroll past. Do some research and figure out which markets other SaaS brands have neglected. Consider your current customers, too.
It’s absolutely worth the effort.
7. Create an Account-Based B2B SaaS Marketing Strategy
Account-based marketing gives SaaS companies an easy way to niche down without neglecting entire market segments.
Thanks to today’s technology, even small and medium businesses can reap the benefits of ABM. Using artificial intelligence, you can design account-specific landing pages complete with relevant offers, assigned sales staff, and account-based content just for them.
Just make sure you have the quality B2B SaaS content marketing ready to back up your ABM: product specifications, comparisons, tutorials, etc. Include anything hyper-relevant to your accounts.
8. Offer Custom Configurations for Different Verticals
As part of an account-based marketing strategy, you can also cluster different verticals for relevant content. Configurations specifically are a smart place to start.
69% of B2B buyers say personalized offers and recommendations can help them draw more value from your product or service.
The point is, don’t wait for them to ask. Figure out what type of relevant custom configurations your audience segments would appreciate and promote them on your landing pages where you know buyers will see them.
Make Sure Your B2B SaaS Marketing Gets the Attention It Deserves
Show your audience you’re tapped into the latest technology to improve their experience with AI-powered personalization.
AI and machine learning algorithms make sure every visitor to your site sees the most relevant piece of content each time based on their behavior, interest, company, pain point, or stage of the buyer’s journey.
Don’t wait for visitors to dig through your backlog for the most relevant content. Provide them with custom recommendations using AI tools.
See how an adaptive content hub can take your B2B SaaS content marketing to the next level.
