Five Must-Try Software As A Service Growth Hacking Strategies

Many businesses employ Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for its flexibility and simplicity to fulfill their marketing requirements. Different types of SaaS marketing platforms help companies simplify their marketing needs. But growing a SaaS company isn’t easy. It is quite challenging because the industry is flooded with competition. Research had predicted very early on that 73% of the companies would turn all their apps into SaaS by 2021, making SaaS competition fiercer than ever. Marketeers eye for consumers’ already limited attention spans in B2B and B2C spaces.

As a SaaS company, you create an audience, get new customers, and scale your business. But as goes the general assumption, it cannot be done without spending tons of money. But that’s not true. This is where these Growth Hacking Strategies can step up your game.  

• ABM Outreach Campaign

 As per ITSMA, 80% of marketers measuring ROI deem ABM to be reaping higher ROI than any other marketing investments.

 Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is an underrated outreach tool in B2B marketing. But it has the potential to assist companies to enter new marketplaces and verticals or engage prospects for a product release or an upcoming event. For an ABM campaign to boost your SaaS, it must be based upon identifying qualified leads that fit the ideal customer profile and move on to creating relevant content providing information for Awareness, details, and pricing for Consideration along with the urgency of Conversion.

Growth Hackers deem ABM as highly effective in improving lead quality, increasing funnel velocity, and the effectiveness of targeted outreach. It entails identifying the target accounts and the key personnel within those accounts you want to influence, gaining an in-depth understanding of their challenges, priorities, pain points, and preferred communication channels. This allows you to create content that resonates with them, understand them better and easily persuade them to love your SaaS.

• Leveraging the Power of Referrals

 Dropbox achieved a meteoric growth of 3900% in the number of registered users within 15 months through – Referrals! So did other SaaS companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Uber, etc.

Word-of-mouth is powerful. Referral programs play a critical role in transforming SaaS startups into giants. According to a Nielsen study, 92% of people would trust recommendations from people they know. People are four times more inclined to buy when referred by a friend, making referral programs highly lucrative. Referrals are a critical source of customer acquisition. It creates positive brand awareness, increases the lifetime value of customers by 16%, reduces the cost per acquisition, and increases revenue.

Referral incentives such as bonus cash, discounted bills, and reward points are just means of acquiring new customers quickly. But if a SaaS product/service doesn’t enrich the customers’ lives, the chances of getting referred would be bleak.

• Content Marketing Strategies

 SaaS Companies that posted blogs daily are 13 times more likely to fetch an efficient RoI.

SaaS companies that employed content marketing saw 30% higher growth rates and 5-10% increased retention rates. Content marketing educates customers about products, builds trust, credibility, and brand awareness. SaaS businesses can target a specific audience and generate interest for their brand by leveraging content marketing in the form of highly converting blogs, Quora, Webinars, Podcasts, etc.

Webinars, for instance, are not just meant for targeted lead generation. They engage new and existing users, educate them about getting the most value out of a SaaS product/service, and reduce customer churn. It establishes a brand’s credibility and thought leadership in your niche.

Podcast video marketing is intensely powerful media. Podcasts provide foundational information by industry experts. Podcast video marketing impact Customer Acquisition Cost(CAC). Customers who come through podcasts or have some level of attribution from video marketing incur less CAC.

• Building Trust through Software Listing Websites 

Saying that the SaaS space is crowded is a significant understatement. Simply looking up ‘CRM’ on the software review platform – Capterra – shows 770 results. Irrespective of the subset of SaaS your company belongs to, competition is tough.

Each year about $40 billion is spent on unused or wasted SaaS tools. This speaks about the importance of being featured and regularly reviewed on sites that aggregate customer feedback for SaaS products. According to Groove, testimonials and social proof go a long way in building trust and result in higher conversions. Social proof and positive reviews on software listing platforms such as G2 Product Hunt, Capterra, Software Advice, etc., are key to SaaS marketing, generating digital word-of-mouth.

• Automation for Lead Nurturing

SaaS companies that automate lead nurturing witness a 10% boost in revenue within a span of 6-9 months.

Businesses that nurture leads make 50% more sales at 33% lesser cost.

Automated lead nurturing is a growth hacking tool for SaaS. It enables companies to develop and maintain connections with prospects and leads without direct involvement in the sales process. The challenge is that SaaS companies often fail to convert leads into paying customers. But, by implementing automated lead nurturing strategies, they can skyrocket their conversion rates and ROI.

Creating an automated lead nurturing program would typically include –

• Identifying a campaign topic of interest to prospective customers;
• Creating content in the form of blog posts, articles, social media videos, eBooks, etc., that appeals to all the stages of the sales funnel;
• Automating lead nurturing workflows to facilitate conversions.

When the emails are designed to engage the leads with additional content and offers and workflows set up with automation software such as HubSpot, conversion kicks off.

Key Takeaways

To be effective at growth hacking for SaaS, it’s essential to always provide value to your prospective customers. From our experience in helping SaaS businesses grow, we have found that these ideas effectively scaled up the user base and revenue. It pays to experiment with these 5 growth hacking strategies for sustainable and organic SaaS growth.

Gaurav Lakhani, cofounder of Voxturr, co-authored this piece.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.