The SaaS industry is as big as ever, many companies, institutions, individuals turn to SaaS solutions for a series of their everyday tasks. Since you are reading this article, I assume you are already familiar with what SaaS is, so we won’t be talking about that today. What we are going to talk about is how to personalize the marketing strategy you are using to promote your own or your company’s SaaS solution and services.
Marketing is a vital part of any product’s success: many great companies with great products fail because of a lack of good marketing.
Now, what exactly is good marketing? By now, people are very used to a variety of marketing strategies because that is what they come across all day every day while walking the streets, browsing social media, reading their emails and so on. In other words, people are able to “sniff out” marketing, and if it’s not truly some never before seen marketing strategy or a product they genuinely need at that moment, they most likely won’t respond to the marketing by making a purchase. What they most likely will respond to is personalized marketing.
Most people when using a product or in this case a service want to feel like it was made by a company that truly understands their needs and a company that cares about each of its customers. In order for your or your company’s SaaS solution to be marketed as well as possible and for it to reach as many people as possible you should consider personalizing your marketing strategy.
You might be a bit lost now in knowing how to do that, so here are a few ways you could make your marketing more personalized.
Identify your ideal customer
In order to personalize your marketing more to your consumers, you have to know who exactly they are. There are a number of ways in which you can determine who makes up your consumer base. You can do it the more technical way and look into your Google Analytics, that should give you some general information. Another way or something you should do apart from looking into your analytics is by asking the customers directly. Nothing will give you a clearer idea as to what the customers want or think than the customers themselves.
When signing up for your SaaS solution, within the registration form, you can ask the consumer some information about their needs and preferences. After and during the trial period you can always follow up with the user and ask for feedback. You should implement a way of receiving this information that will be most suited for you, the main thing is that it helps you in accurately identifying your ideal customer.
Focus on the service part od Software as a Service
As the name indicates, SaaS is a service and every service is there to work in the best possible way for the user, so should your service as well. You should focus on letting the user know that your service is there for their benefit and their success, regardless if it is an already signed up user or someone looking to start using your services.
If a user knows that you will be there to help them solve any issue and provide them with great customer service at all times, they won’t hesitate about using your service or recommend it to anyone in their surroundings.
This can achieve this by implementing live chat and chatbots for example. That will make a lot of things move much quicker, like scheduling demos, answering user questions, assisting them with issues or forwarding them to a professional in case of more serious issues.
Just because the software you are providing is the main focus of your business doesn’t mean that the service part should be any less important.
Engage influencers in your marketing
The impact influencer opinion has on people’s purchasing decisions nowadays is truly impressive. Whether that is positive or negative is debatable, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it to advertise your service to a wider audience.
When listening to the advice of an influencer, the consumer feels as if they are listening to the advice of someone they personally know because when deciding to follow an influencer they are looking for someone who shares the same opinions and preferences as they do.
So if you find an influencer likes your service and who is suitable for your brand and your service it is more than likely that they will be advertising to an audience that will be equally as happy with using your service.
Reward your most engaged customers
Every customer likes to feel appreciated, especially if they have been a long-time user of your services. A long-time user is most likely an advocate for your services, creating free word of mouth advertising for you so you should find a way to make them feel special.
A good way to do this and get honest feedback at the same time is to offer them Beta versions of your yet to be released services. Since they are already very familiar with your services, they can accurately asses if the new services are up to par with the ones they are currently using and can give you constructive feedback in case they are not. Also, letting a returning user know that you remember them, by saying “Welcome back” on the landing page and giving them an occasional coupon or discount are the small but kind way of showing your appreciation for them.
Adjust the website according to the user’s location
After identifying your customer base and knowing who they are and where they come from, you can use that information to tailor your site’s appearance and functionalities specifically to them. People from different parts of the world have different design preferences and of course, speak different languages.
If you use their preferred colors, incorporate their language, or even curate content just for them, this will give the user a sense that you are taking more of a personal approach of reaching out to your users. This doesn’t only have to be done on your website, you could also do it with your ads, emails, anything that goes out to your user.
Offer training and support
Everything we use takes some getting used to and SaaS is no different. Whether your SaaS solution is a simple one or something that is intended for completing quite difficult tasks, it is going to be a learning curve for someone. That is why you have to let your users know that you are going to be there for them to help them with learning how to use your services or in any time of confusion and difficulty by providing guides, tutorials, one-on-one assistance, etc.
Make sure you state this in your marketing because the potential user will want to know that they won’t be left alone to figure out all the ins and outs of your services and that you are a company that cares about helping its users.
Use content marketing and education
You can kill two birds with one stone by using education and content to promote your product. On one hand, you are educating people on the industry, related topics, and your product, but at the same time, you are marketing and bringing that product closer to them by telling them about your brand, your services, how they came to be and how they are meant to be used, sparking an interest in them to become users of your SaaS solution.
There are a number of ways to do content marketing: blogs, videos, social media posts, and podcasts which have gained a lot of popularity in recent years.
Also, don’t forget to engage your audience and ask them what they would like to learn about next, because there is no point in creating content no one is interested in.
If you need to first build an audience, Buzzoid can help. See Buzzoid ratings here to check whether it’s worth purchasing.
Conclusion
By reading this article it means that you are already taking a step in the right direction. Relying on traditional marketing techniques is where a lot of businesses go wrong and end up leaving their potential customers to feel as if they are just another number to them, but you have decided not to let that happen. Take your time to think which personalized marketing technique will be the best for your SaaS solution. It might be one of the ones mentioned above or you can be creative and come up with a unique one.
The beauty of marketing is that it really has no rules the only important thing is for it to speak to a large enough audience and to do it efficiently. So why let your marketing blend into a sea of other marketing campaigns when you can take a personalized approach and make your customers feel as if your product was made just for them. There are plenty of SaaS solutions for them to choose from, make sure their choice falls on your one.
