Lead generation for SaaS companies

Lead generation for SaaS companies?

SaaS lead generation involves converting prospective buyers into paid customers of your product or service.

Imagine, if you (the prospective buyer) are looking for a CRM software for your business. How do you research information and arrive at a buying decision? You would search on google, social media, ask a friend, check reviews prior to making a buy decision.

How can a CRM software company address your needs as a buyer and get into your list of shortlisted solutions How can a CRM company generate leads?

Voila! SaaS Lead generation!!!!

What are the different types of SaaS leads?

SaaS leads are typically divided into two:

Marketing qualified leads (MQLs)

Marketing qualified leads are considering your products or services. They are warm leads as they are closer to buying a product. The prospective buyer has expressed their interest in your product or service. They are considering your company/ solution as an option in solving a problem they are facing. They have either downloaded a checklist from your website or watched a webinar or attended an event.

Sales qualified leads (SQLs)

Sales qualified leads are deciding if your product or service is a right fit. They are hot leads as they are ready to make a decision. This is where a sales person get involved. The sales person then provides a free trial or free demo. This is followed by the sales person closing the deal.

What makes SaaS lead generation different?

SaaS companies can acquire leads from search engines or social media. SaaS companies have different activation strategies. As previously mentioned, SaaS leads are activated, when they sign up for a free trial or a free demo.

Lead generation for B2B SaaS companies could run into many months. This is due to the nature of B2B buying journey and decision makers involved in the purchase decision.

In the world of agile software development and product road maps, SaaS companies frequently release new features for their product. SaaS marketers need to ensure up-to-date marketing material for their SaaS product.

SaaS doesn’t sell a once-off product. Hence, customer churn is a big issue. SaaS products need a strategy that encourages customer retention and long lasting relationships with customers. 

SaaS lead generation tactics?

Content marketing is the now and future of marketing. So what are some of the ways in which you can use content to generate leads for your SaaS company?

Blog posts, white papers, eBooks, and case studies can establish your company as an industry thought leader. Your content provides solutions to your audience's pain points. This drives traffic to your website, generate leads and nurture leads for your business.

Blogs

Blogs should be written with quality in mind. Think about your user while writing your blog. What problem are they trying to solve? How is your blog going to take them one step closer to solving the problem?

Ask yourself questions like:

1. Do you know your target audience well enough?

2. Does your blog provide actionable advice?

3. Do you provide such value that your reader is willing to part with their email address?

Your blog will turn a reader into a sales opportunity only if you are providing value.

Optimise your blogs for search engines. This will significantly increase organic traffic to your website. Focus on relevant keywords, create high-quality content, and ensure your website is technically sound to improve your search engine rankings.

Image: An excerpt from a blog post written by Anees Misbahudeen, INNMCO

Webinars Or Events

Host webinars and live events to showcase your expertise to your buyer. Demonstrate your SaaS product, and engage with potential leads in real-time. Webinars and events help build trust and credibility. If you attract the right audience to your webinars and events, it helps convert attendees into potential customers.

Decide on a topic that you want to present and are an expert at. Then decide on the format. You can have a single speaker format, 2 speaker format (like an interview) or host a panel discussion.

Once you have decided on the topic and format, you need to think about sign-ups for the event or webinar. You can promote its using organic or paid methods. You can post about it on your social media handles, distribute event details to relevant colleagues or run paid ads on social media.

Image: Event hosted by Anees Misbahudeen, INNMCO on ‘Growing leads & sales from inbound digital marketing’

Gated Content

You are giving away something valuable in exchange for your buyers information. This could include their name and email address.

Whether you are focusing on generating organic search traffic, paid social traffic or email traffic, you are always directing them to a website landing page. Its important that you optimise your website for lead conversion. Some ways to generate leads via landing pages includes gated content, free trials, newsletter sign ups etc.

Free Trial

A free trial gives your prospect the opportunity to go through your product and determine, if it works for them. If the free trial goes on to a situation where they start using your SaaS product for completing key 'jobs to be done', then there is a high likelihood that they move from being an activated prospect to paid customer.

If you have a sales led go to market motion, then it gives your sales person a great reason to engage with the prospect and have a discussion.

Help your prospects to use the software. Show them around the software. You should create quality content to guide them through using the product. Video is great here, as you can show prospects on what features they need to be trying out and experimenting while using your SaaS product. All this will help you to maximise conversions of free trials into paying customers.

Chatbot

Get your buyers talking to a chatbot. In a physical store, you are always greeting by a customer service representative. The chatbot is a digital version of your customer service representative.

You can set up your chatbot to answer commonly asked questions or you can guide the person in real time. In case your buyer contacts you outside business hours, you can ask for their email address and you can contact them later.

Exit Pop Up

When your buyer moves to exit a window or has spend some time on a web page, a pop up activates. What exactly is shown in thes pop up is up to you. What action so you want you visitors to take? It's generally a good idea to give away something of value to your buyer.

Build a targeted email list. Send personalized, relevant content to nurture leads. Use automation tools to streamline your email campaigns and track performance.

Set one content goal per email. What are you trying to accomplish with your email? If you dont have a clear end goal in mind, your content is likely to drift all over the place, leaving your readers overwhelmed, confused or uninterested.

Whether your goal is to drive website traffic or increase sales, it's important to define your content goal and create content to achieve that goal.

Your target audience has to sift through hundreds of emails. Keeping your content to one goal and one message will help them understand the intent of your email. This will enable them to take action.

Image: Our monthly newsletter #MakingTheSwitchToFounder. Tried & tested tips on digital marketing campaigns.

Use social media platforms to engage with your audience. Share valuable content via platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.

You can reach your target audience using organic social media and paid social media. Organic social media is any content that you can share for free on social media platforms. Paid social media is when organisations pay social media platforms (e.g. LinkedIn) for content to be shared with a specific target audience who may be interested in that content. 

You can also generate leads by running targeted ads. Linkedin’s advertising solutions (LinkedIn ads) enables organisations to amplify marketing objectives (brand awareness, lead generation). LinkedIn’s ad platform has a few different ad types to meet marketing objectives. This includes sponsored content, sponsored messaging, dynamic ads and text ads. 

Sponsored content are ads that appear on your LinkedIn feed. These posts are marked as ‘promoted’. Sponsored messaging appears in your linkedin messages. These messages are marked as ‘sponsored’.

Dynamic ads are personalised ads. A few locations where dynamic ads appear include your linkedin home page or profile page. A text ad includes an image, headline and description. A few locations where text ad appears include your linkedin profile page or home page. 

Conclusion

A successful lead generation strategy for SaaS products or B2B services is achieved by using a multi channel approach. See what works for your business. We have discussed a few lead generation tactics in this blog - content marketing, website landing pages, email marketing and social media marketing. The ones mentioned in this blog are the tried and tested ones that generates leads for your SaaS products or B2B service.

Need help with SaaS lead generation? Let's chat. Book in a free strategy call below. 

Written by Anees Misbahudeen

Founder & Digital Marketing Director, INNMCO

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