Advertising SaaS companies – the unmistakable path to success

“Software as a Service” works mobile through cloud storage on the principle of providing access to the client to the software that is vital to him within the framework of the optimal subscription chosen by him. It is essential to develop such software and content that would not only bring profit but also be able to sell it to the target audience and prove to the client that SaaS is a workable business model worth paying for monthly. Therefore, not only developers but also experienced marketers should enter the game. Advertising SaaS companies will not only adapt and align standard communications for promoting and selling their specific commercial product but also guarantee sustainable marketing growth.

The “Software-as-a-service (SaaS) model is firmly established in the practice of modern dynamic business. We have access to SaaS software from anywhere in the world through our web interface. The rapid growth of the SaaS services market worldwide averages 15-20% per year. According to experts, by 2025, more than half of the large companies will use SaaS infrastructure in their activities.

In a growing market, additional coverage of the share of companies requires the activation of marketing tools and the study of the nuances in advertising SaaS companies. The SaaS software product’s specificity is to focus customers’ attention on the essence of the company’s service and its difference from traditional goods and services on the market. Professional promotion is the key to success in the SaaS industry in an ever-increasing competition.

Nuances in Advertising SaaS Companies

The SaaS service cannot be expressed materially; therefore, the main task of SaaS advertising is to show its main advantages, relying on digital marketing tools and tools. To launch an effective advertising strategy for SaaS it is necessary to pay attention to the analysis of the target audience and the correctness of its identification according to key quantitative and qualitative criteria. Furthermore, it is essential to coordinate the planned sales volumes of SaaS services with the distribution of funds to form the advertising budget.

In addition, SaaS advertising should focus on:

  • emphasizing the quality of customer service and their satisfaction;
  • disclosure of the pricing model and financial accessibility of SaaS services;
  • SEO parameters and their internal and external optimization;
  • content marketing;
  • Search for alternative advertising channels as a competitive advantage in the SaaS market.

Like any advertising, SaaS advertising must be justified regarding budget investments and other resource costs in its creation. The choice of marketing and advertising solution also depends on the selection of advertising channels, the direction of brand development, traffic assessment within the established budget, and current market rates for such advertising.

Selecting Advertising Channels

The company is guided by its priority and cost when choosing advertising channels. Ideally, a SaaS company should be focused on maximizing the attraction of targeted organic traffic to its web resource. Another way to attract customers is to use other traffic sources within paid digital advertising channels:

  • search engines (Google Ads, YouTube, Bing Ads, Yahoo, Amazon Ads, DuckDuckGo, Baidu);
  • social networks (Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Linkedin Ads, Pinterest Ads, Twitter Ads, Reddit Ads, Quora Ads, TikTok);
  • systems for mobile traffic (inMobi, Millennial media, AirPush, TapJoy);
  • push traffic (Admaven, RichAds, Propeller Ads, Ad-Maven, ActiveRevenue, PusHub, iZooto, Push Monetization, Adsterra, Airpush, Richpush);
  • discovery traffic (Discovery Ads, OutBrain);
  • redirect traffic (Tonic Ads, ZeroPark, RichAds);
  • pop traffic (Popads, Adcash, Popcash, Wigetmedia);
  • partners and referrals (via Dropbox, Google Drive, pCloud, Sync.com);
  • podcasts (PodBean, Blubrry, Castos, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Captivate, Simplecast);
  • blogs (Wix, WordPress, Squarespace, SITE123, Medium, Tumblr, Drupal).
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Brand Development

The dynamism of the SaaS industry and the high level of competition are increasingly forcing SaaS companies to look for ways to increase their level of visibility through powerful content marketing. As the analysis of the SaaS market shows, most large SaaS companies use content marketing to attract and retain customers to ensure their brand identity. In addition, one of the ways to update the brand is its promotion, personalization, and automation of the main processes in SaaS. For example, brand promotion through the personal social accounts of employees is a factor in the potential success of SaaS, which allows you to reduce company costs and increase audience loyalty.

Traffic estimation

The evaluation of an alternative SaaS advertising channel’s traffic includes an analysis of each of their price offers. Maximizing the financial investment in a company’s SaaS advertising budget does not always mean its effectiveness. In this situation, the advertiser must weigh the pros and cons in terms of achieving SaaS growth targets:

  • Churn Rate;
  • Monthly Recurring Revenue, MRR;
  • Lifetime Value, LTV;
  • Customer Acquisition Cost, CAC;
  • User Engagement, etc.

You should also evaluate the market competitiveness of the proposed traffic cost on similar ads platforms, the transparency of its formation, and the feasibility of choosing according to the “price-quality” and “speed-quality” criteria.

 

Common Saas Advertising Mistakes

Launching SaaS ads is not as straightforward as it first seems. The expected rapid growth and 100% effectiveness of advertising may not come. Limited resources and decision-making time often do not allow fully implementing an advertising campaign for SaaS due to wasting effort on extraneous elements.

Defocusing the Budget on a Large Number of Advertising Channels

SaaS companies often make the mistake of not considering the testing of advertising channels. At the same time, the budget allocation should involve deliberate and balanced funding of SaaS advertising based on their diversification. As a result, advertising can be launched on many channels, and you are not alone in this decision – your competitors also offer and popularize their SaaS products. A potential client gets lost in the flow of offers (on websites, social networks, blogs, etc.) and, as a result, simply does not respond to your marketing efforts. As a result, the low efficiency of using the channel only leads to defocusing the advertising budget. Multi-channel analytics will help eliminate this problem which identifying the channel you need. For example, building a system of advertising channels and optimizing their budget can be based on using such tools for SaaS companies as call tracking or a promotional code. So you can understand which channel was used for a particular client.

Incomprehensible Message of the Advertising Message

The initial association of SaaS advertising misleads the marketer that his message reached the end goal and leads to the client’s company. However, this is far from being the case… One of the main mistakes is conveying its distorted content to the target audience. You can avoid ambiguity in relation to the SaaS company and its service by following simple rules:

  • make your message unique and inimitable;
  • motivate the audience to take action;
  • keep it simple and short;
  • move away from routine media and channels;
  • Earn your audience’s trust with facts and figures.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of clicks only

When evaluating the effectiveness, using clicks as the main metric for SaaS advertising is erroneous. Ad click-through rate and conversion rate, built based on the number of transitions, do not always adequately reflect the structure and real picture for a SaaS company. The transition to the site may not be done for technical or subjective reasons, while the metric worked and gave a positive result. Therefore, when predicting the future results of an advertising campaign, it is advisable to rely on constructing an optimal system of indicators, depending on the specifics and scale of SaaS activities. Also, the success of SaaS advertising directly depends on the professional skills of specialists involved in its development and placement on various channels.

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TOP 5 Examples of SaaS Ads

The dynamic growth in implementing global SaaS Ads practices allows new and current market players to build on existing experience and develop their own foundations and principles of SaaS advertising.

#1 Brand Awareness Advertising Efforts

Dedicated branding tools and programs are at the core of Amazon Ads, which offers help in building a brand strategy and implementing it on its platform. The first step in developing a brand is to register it on Amazon. The subsequent launch of a Sponsored Brands campaign has some SaaS advertising benefits that target specific brand content. In addition, branding, product attribution targeting, and social selling on Amazon networks, similar to streaming services and other social media, deserve special attention.

#2 Partnership programs

Dropbox is the world’s leading cloud service that provides a virtual workplace that your employees can access remotely from anywhere in the world. The user can access the SaaS service and its sales and marketing tools through its partnership programs with Google Suite, Microsoft Office, Slack, Adobe, Zoom, Autodesk, Canva, and AWS. Dropbox also provides functionality to enhance user activity and use intelligent content suggestions, which implements advertising in the field of SaaS distribution between synchronized team members.

#3 The Comprehensive Theme of Content Marketing

HubSpot invites the user to create well-thought-out marketing and advertising strategy with the help of its online tool – Marketing Hub. It allows you to create, manage and automate advertising campaigns. Content marketing at HubSpot is indicative of driving traffic and broadly displays the main themes that describe the functionality of its main applications. Content Management System, already optimized for conversion, helps you create and personalize your pages for each client easily and with confidence.

#4 Integration with social networks

Wix is one of the most sought-after website builders worldwide, offering various options for creating a professional web product based on built-in editors. For example, it allows you to create SaaS advertising in Facebook Ads for further promotion on Facebook and Instagram. At the same time, Wix takes care of channel testing and targeting individual client requests. Wix also can import a blog from WordPress, and an active marketing block provides access to the SEO wizard functionality.

#5 Ease of communication with clients

All SaaS products in Jive are based on ease, despite their scale, which allows you to combine users, resources, and related content on one universal online platform. Customizing SaaS ads is facilitated using criteria like Google-like search to achieve hyper-targeted results. The simplicity of the process of communication with customers also implies built-in integration with Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, and other systems. In addition, Jive’s sustainable digital eco-system guides SaaS advertising efforts towards synchronizing the interactions of the main participants in the process.

 

Checked by marketer Victoria Fedchenko

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