How to create a SaaS marketing plan?

How to create a SaaS marketing plan?

A SaaS or ‘Software as a Service’ marketing plan provides a framework for SaaS marketers to funnel customers from awareness to acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue.

A SaaS marketing plan’s purpose is to

1. Drive traffic to your website

2. Growth in new demos and user sign-ups

3. Upgrades to paid versions

SaaS Subscription Models

The revenue from SaaS products are recurring in nature. After a period of free trial, most SaaS companies offer two ways to buy services from them, either monthly or annually.

Two ways in which SaaS companies implement their subscription model.

1. MRR or monthly recurring revenue - SaaS companies that have monthly subscriptions, use this metric to determine how much revenue they can expect every month.

2. ARR or Annual recurring revenue - SaaS companies that have yearly subscriptions, use this metric to determine how much revenue they can expect each year.

What is a SaaS marketing plan?

A SaaS marketing plan helps you to identify your target audience, their needs, goals and challenges. It describes strategies your team can use to convert interested users into paying customers who are willing to sign-on for month to month or annual plans.

If these customers are happy with their purchase, they may return for additional purchases.

It helps you to identify what your target audience is looking for in a SaaS solution. How much are they looking to spend? What would make them return back for additional purchases?

A SaaS marketing plan provides a data-driven way for you to create campaigns that align with customer needs, goals and challenges.

Directly connecting with customers enables you to create a customised offer that increases customer happiness and their chances for renewal when their subscription is about to expire.

How to create a SaaS marketing plan?

1. Create buyer personas

Research your ideal customers. Buyer insights enables you to create a customer value proposition and content that addresses their goals and challenges .

Define buyer personas. Buyer personas enables you to define a consistent buyer experience across multiple channels. Buyer personas focuses your efforts in understanding buyer motivations, behaviours, goals and challenges.

Create and serve content that is informed by past interactions your buyers have had with your business and their buying journey stage.

2. Understand customer journeys

Understand your potential customer’s buying journey. This will provide insights into channels they prefer for researching solutions and what information they are seeking at different stages of their buying journey. These insights will shed light on the decision criteria used by buyers while making purchase or renewal decisions.  

Deliver a consistent brand experience across all touch points, keeping the buyer in mind as opposed to the business or product. Help them every step of the way, in finding a solution to their problem.

You need to progressively learn more about your prospective buyer at every stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to acquisition to activation, retention, referral and revenue.

3. Research your competition

Research your competitors, their content and marketing campaigns. Incorporating this information into your marketing plan, will ensure that your campaigns are not looking very similar to that of your competitors.

4. Identify key marketing goals

Set SMART marketing goals that are aligned with your business goals. Allocate budget for marketing activities at different stages of the marketing funnel. An example of a SMART marketing goal for the awareness stage of the marketing funnel is:

‘Increase website traffic by 10% in the next 3 months, by doing '5' social media posts per week on LinkedIn.’

In the above example, allocating budget for the marketing activity in the awareness stage of the marketing funnel, will increase brand awareness with your target audience. This will help with brand recognition when your target customers are in market for a solution to address their needs.

5. Identify your channels

The insights you have learned about your target audience will help you guide them through each stage of the digital marketing funnel utilising the most effective tactics and media mix.

A media mix refers to a combination of digital channels that you use to reach your goals. This will enable you to divide your budget among them.

To select your media mix: 

1. First review your existing media content to analyse gaps.

2. Based on your assessment, decide which channels to focus on.

3. What content and campaigns to run on those channels and how to allocate your budget?

6. Set a budget 

Create a budget that enables you to run marketing campaigns without breaking the bank.

7. Prototype, Test and Learn 

Create prototypes of your campaigns. Test, learn and optimise from your digital marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

What are you waiting for? Go ahead! Create a SaaS marketing plan for your business!

You don’t have to do this alone! Let’s talk about the work that’s important to you and get started!

Written by Anees Misbahudeen

Founder & Digital Marketing Director, INNMCO

Subscribe to my monthly newsletter #MakingTheSwitchToFounder