How To Grow A Saas Business

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Do you know why 90% of startups fail? They fail not because they create useless products, but because they do not know how to market their products in the right way.

As a founder of a startup, you are responsible for lead generation and sales growth. So if you want your company to succeed, you should learn the basics of sales, marketing, and branding. Read this article to know what steps you should take to turn your startup into a big brand.

Define your marketing personas

The first step is to define your marketing personas. This step is a crucially important one, so do not skip it! Conduct research and find out who you are targeting.

To create an ideal customer profile, pay your attention to the following elements:

Job title (e.g., CEO, CMO, head of recruitment)
Industry sector (e.g., finance, transportation, engineering)
Demographics, including gender and age range
Location (e.g., Southeast Asia, Western Europe, the State of New York)
Seniority (here you should think whether the person you target has decision making authority and budgetary sign-off)

Once you clearly understand who is interested in buying your product, you can start building your marketing strategy.

Take a look at the marketing strategies of your competitors

Another important step you should take is to analyze what approaches to sales your competitors use.

Well, you may claim that your product is unique and that you don't have any direct competitors. But the truth is that even if your product has exclusive features, there are other products in the market that satisfy the same need of your target audience. So if you don't have direct competitors, you should focus attention on your indirect competitors.

You should analyze the following aspects:

Do your competitors offer a free trial? If yes, how long their SaaS free trials are?
What pricing strategies your competitors use (e.g., per-user pricing, tiered user pricing, feature-based pricing)?
In your opinion, do your competitors offer overpriced or underpriced products?
What marketing channels do your competitors use (e.g., email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing)?

The answers to these questions will help you to understand what sales and marketing approaches work well for your target audience. It will allow you to build a more effective strategy and boost your marketing efforts.

Generate leads with the help of content marketing

As a founder of SaaS startup, you should understand that the production of high-quality content must be your first priority. You should create white papers, blog posts, infographics, and guest posts and use them as lead magnets. It will help you to drive traffic to your website and generate leads.

If you don't have enough money to hire an in-house content creator, you should outsource content writing services. Here you have two options to consider. You can hire freelance professionals via such platforms as Upwork and Fiverr.

Take the most of email marketing

If you want to grow your SaaS startup, you must use email marketing and do it wisely. If you are a newbie in this field, here are a few tips for you:

"Humanize" your email address. Use "YourName@StartupXYZ" instead of "sales@StartupXYZ".
Personalize the subject line. Make your prospect client feel valued and special.
To achieve the best results, set up a drip-email Create a triggered sequence of automated emails and send them to your prospects on a predefined schedule.

Create a comprehensive demo

The quality of your demo has a direct impact on your sales. So do your best to create a demo that will impress your prospective clients. To achieve the desired results, follow these simple rules:

Try to explain everything in simple words. Avoid complex programming terms.
Keep your video shorter than 15 minutes. Provide only the most important information.
Don't discuss the features of your product in detail. Focus on the benefits that your customers will get.
Add a call to action at the end of your video. Encourage viewers to take the next step.

Use social proof wisely

Social proof such as testimonials and case studies has a great impact on sales. So if you want to grow your SaaS startup, you should do your best to generate more social proof:

Offer your customers to get free access to new features in return for social proof. Focus primarily on customers with famous brand names.
Use advanced review management software. Define positive reviews and use them on your website to generate new leads. Answer to negative reviews to minimize the negative impact on your brand.

Don't be afraid to set a high price

Probably you will be surprised to know that some startups fail because they set a too low price for their product. They try to beat the low price competition, and unintentionally scare their prospects away.

Just imagine the following situation. You are a customer. You visit a website of a SaaS startup. You read the product description, and you get really impressed. You check the pricing page and see that this unique product costs not $100 per month as you expected, but $10. Since cheap products tend to have poor quality, you may presuppose that this product is not as good as described. And you will decide not to buy it.

"If you want to lead your SaaS startup to success, don't be afraid to set a high price. You should compete with other companies not on price, but on the value you provide to your customers," says Jennifer White, a CMO of Subjecto.

Wrap it up

The growth of your SaaS startup heavily depends on the marketing and sales techniques you use. So if you want to increase sales, you should focus not on how to create a product with unique features, but on how to create a product that perfectly appeals to the target market. You should build a comprehensive marketing strategy and do your best to meet the expectations of your prospects.

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