Inbound Marketing for SaaS – In-depth Guide for 2022

Whenever a business introduces a new product or service or starts exploring a new industry altogether, they need to ensure that its target segment knows about its existence. Because without this knowledge, no matter what activities, content, or different approaches are utilized to get a brand’s message out there, it won’t be helpful.

This is where the role of inbound marketing comes in. In simple words, inbound marketing ensures that your target segment knows about your existence. Once they see that you are a player within this segment or industry, then only will they be able to be receptive to your content marketing strategies and other outreach efforts.

Inbound marketing is a deliberate strategy for developing excellent content that meets the demands of your target demographics and fosters long-term client connections. Your consumers are your users because you solve their pain points. The true essence of B2B inbound marketing for saas companies is giving the solutions your target consumers are looking for.

Those solutions can shape various content distributed across different marketing channels, each geared to interact with potential customers at multiple points of the purchasing cycle.

In this write-up, we shall explore the role of inbound marketing for SaaS industry and how you can use inbound marketing techniques to push your SaaS business towards tremendous success and growth. We shall also explore how inbound marketing for SaaS companies stands out from traditional inbound marketing.

How is Inbound Marketing Different for SaaS Businesses?

In inbound marketing, the terms and techniques work differently when we talk about it in the context of the SaaS industry. These differences are attributed to several reasons. These days, inbound marketing for SaaS includes the product or service being offered, the difference in the target segment, and how the transaction model for this sector is put in place.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” strategy for SaaS marketing. This distinct sector needs the most effective marketing strategies to fulfill revenue targets for each firm and audience. Inbound marketing is essential as a strategy for attracting people to products and services through content marketing, social networks, search engine optimization, and other means. In a nutshell, inbound marketing is all about creating content that draws people to your website or product, rather than traditional advertising methods that push your message out to potential customers.

Your firm must stand out in order to make an impact. Therefore, here are the main differentiating factors to consider when developing a thorough inbound marketing plan for your business.

Different KPIs, Goals, and Performance Metrics

SaaS products and services are primarily cloud-based, which means virtually any activity can be tracked and evaluated. When it comes to understanding your leads and their user experience, determining the return on your investment, and aligning sales and marketing processes for greater efficiency, reporting can make all the difference. However, it can also assist you in shaping your process and how you sell your good or service.

Keeping these differences in view, the metrics for gauging the performance of inbound marketing tactics are different in sometimes totally unique to the industry. Such as Leads by Lifecycle Stage, Leads to Customer Rate, and Net Promoter Score (NPS), KPIs that are not used for traditional inbound marketing evaluation.

By optimizing and standardizing lead engagement and sales processes, and campaign management processes based on different interactions with your leads and potential customers, you can better segment and target them with the most relevant information at the right time.

All of these differences and concerns must be considered when developing an inbound marketing plan for SaaS companies to ensure that prospective buyers have access to all of the material they need to educate themself about their pain point and decide if your product or service is the best match for their need.

10 Best Inbound Marketing Techniques for SaaS Tech

We shall now look at the best inbound marketing techniques and tactics that you can use for your SaaS business to help increase market awareness and promote general business growth and penetration.

We’ll also share examples of inbound marketing for SaaS businesses.

1. SEO
2. Blogging
3. Email Marketing
4. Offer eBooks and Whitepapers
5. Hire Professional Agency for The Right Inbound Marketing Strategy
6. A User-Friendly Website
7. Automation
8. Targeting Competitor’s Keywords
9. Persona Based Pages
10. Tracking and Optimizing

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a significant driver of B2B SaaS inbound marketing strategy. By developing SEO-friendly material, you optimize your content to appear as high as possible on search engine results pages (SERP).

While the technical specifics of SEO may get complicated, B2B SaaS firms should adopt the below listed easy techniques to improve their search engine rankings and outperform competitors:

• Establish keyword research: Put yourself in your clients’ shoes and investigate phrases or terms they’d type into a search engine at various stages of the buyer’s journey.
• Create valuable, compelling content: What do your consumers want to know? Create content that especially discusses their pain points. While keyword research is crucial for content marketing and SEO. You should avoid black-hat SEO practices such as spamming because they might make your content look ingenuine and choppy to potential buyers.
• Investigate your competitors: What keywords are your rivals ranking for, and what content pieces they’ve covered.

Once you’ve established a strong foundation of optimized, valuable content, it’s time to promote and disseminate it throughout various marketing channels to nurture contacts into leads.

Example

DocuSign is an American company that allows businesses to sign agreements electronically. DocuSign invests heavily in search engine optimization to compete with Adobe and gain traction over it, especially when it comes to search engine results.

2. Blogging

A blog primarily comes under the attract category of inbound marketing. This is at the top of the inbound sales funnel, where you are attracting site visitors because you have relevant material to offer them based on their search criteria.

Most of these visitors will be strangers, which means they may have never heard of your organization before. Without enough traffic to your site, fewer people will turn to leads and more occasional lead nurturing to sales.

When a company blogs regularly, it creates new material for visitors. Through this content, they get to know more about your business. When blogging, it is important to keep in mind that If you want to convert leads into sales, your information should be informative and relevant to the visitors and your business.

Example

If you’ve done any research on SaaS marketing, you’ve probably come across one of HubSpot’s articles. The HubSpot Blog provides many resources, including eBooks, themes, kits, assessments, courses, polls, and much more. Basically, their blogs are helpful and it addresses the pain points of their target audience.

3. Hire a Professional Agency for The Right Inbound Marketing Strategy

Another proven inbound marketing strategy that you can deploy for your SaaS business is onboarding a professional messaging and communication agency to help you develop the right inbound marketing strategy for your organization.

The reason behind suggesting this strategy as one of the most effective ones is that professional agencies have years of experience in inbound marketing and a proven track record of tangible results.

We here at Chasm have years of experience helping SaaS businesses generate traffic and revenue as a result of inbound marketing strategy. We provide content strategy services to help SaaS startups and product-oriented companies to generate leads and improve customer engagement.

Example

Keross provides an open-source platform for data analytics. It was able to improve its customer conversations and increase its conversion rate after it took on the services of a professional agency. Chasm helped them develop the right inbound marketing strategy that increased customers and properly segmented and supported messaging.

4. Offer eBooks and Whitepapers

eBooks are typically five to eight pages long, longer than a blog post but shorter than a white paper. They are more engaging and usually feature a graphically rich layout.

White papers, like research papers, are usually more intellectual presentations used to communicate information. It is a formal and professional presentation as opposed to an eBook.

Whether you’re enticing new prospects and consumers with white papers for a more academic approach or eBooks for a speedier and more graphically intensive piece, include frequently updated bonus content in your inbound marketing strategy.

Example

ADP is a well-known expert in the payroll software sector, and they know what works. Their white paper uses visuals to demonstrate how small firms may solve payroll-related issues.

Furthermore, because the target audience for their white paper does not have much time, ADP has limited itself to the essentials. Instead of filling the white form with text, the firm provides crucial information that the reader is looking for.

5. Email Marketing

According to 61 percent of B2B marketers, email is the most dependable marketing channel when it comes to ROI.

Experts advise making your emails easy to scan and with a clear message, like content marketing. Thus, a well-crafted email marketing plan can prove very helpful for SaaS businesses if implemented appropriately.

For example, a well crafted promotional email is one that is:

• Relevant – Promotional communications must always be relevant and specific. Your promotional email will be useless if it does not apply to the recipient.
• Balanced – Promotional emails must be varied for the recipient not to become bored. Weblium provides an excellent example by sending a mix of informative and promotional emails.
• Offers something of value for free – Promotional emails that offer anything for ‘free’ are thought to be the most effective. This might be anything that adds to your audience’s knowledge or offers to supply something for free.

An email is also an excellent approach to remaining in touch with current clients. Using email for publications, conducting surveys, and soliciting feedback is an excellent method to create a loyalty loop and provide clients with an intimate experience and quick access to communicate with your company.

Example

Weblium is an online tool that helps people build websites quickly without any coding knowledge. Weblium’s promotional emails are among the top promotional email examples in email marketing.

6. A User-Friendly Website

Without a solid web foundation, your potential clients may find it difficult to accept the message you’re attempting to convey. Therefore, creating an accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and informative website is critical to contemporary B2B marketing, not just for your company’s reputation but also for the entire statement of your brand.

Your web pages are a critical component of this messaging. What are the pains of your ideal customer profile? What are you contributing to the table, and how can you help them overcome their difficulties?

Include compelling headlines that will pique your audience’s interest and urge them to continue exploring with advantages, case studies, and adequately credited lead capture forms to bring prospects into your marketing funnel before they leave your website.

Example

Dropbox’s welcoming demeanor, conveyed through amusing graphics, makes users feel at ease while using the software. This enhancement to the UI makes the product feel like an old companion, eager to assist users with their file-sharing needs.

7. Automation

Every B2B inbound approach must be scalable. Otherwise, you will not be able to maintain the marketing tactics’ long-term outcomes. You’ll soon run out of capacity and the ability to engage with every lead that enters your pipeline if you don’t provide SEO-optimized content and lead magnets that your customer genuinely wants.

As your company expands and your marketing team’s workload increases, this is critical to maintaining a clean, structured, and effective marketing funnel and operation. As a result, automation is vital. When feasible, establish automated workflows for your clients, such as sending out automated emails to strengthen relationships with your customers.

Example

The use of quizzes in generating inbound leads has gained quite a popularity in recent years. This is because potential customers and clients find it interesting and intriguing to answer different questions that in turn promise to reveal some interesting and insightful information for them.

Habit House is online software that is bought by different businesses to be used for their human resource in helping them monitor their fitness. This software helps determine and track the fitness and exercise habits of individuals and may aid them in reaching their fitness goals. Once a staff member answers the different questions present in the quiz, they are asked for their name and email address to receive this interesting and thoughtful information for their personal use.

This information can also be shared across different functional teams with permission where leaders can help members in identifying flaws in their fitness regimes and they all can work together towards a healthier workplace.

8. Targeting Competitor’s Keywords

You may input your competitor’s website and view all the keywords they are ranking for and the monthly search volume they may be generating, using tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz Explorer.

The idea here is to differentiate between content (informational) and process inquiries so that you can design and target the appropriate page for ranking. A “how-to” article, for example, will not rank on a product page.

One excellent trick for ranking for a competitive phrase that your product page does not currently rank for (and that you are actively pursuing with link building) is developing important content that is either a market guide or defining a list relevant to that term.

Example

Ahrefs is a top-rated tool for analyzing competitor keywords and SEO efforts. It uses its technology to target competitor keywords such as those put out by another top player SEMrush.

9. Persona Based Pages

Persona-based pages are a great way to segment your website traffic and deliver more relevant content to each type of visitor. By understanding the needs and motivations of your different customer types, you can create pages that speak directly to them – providing the information they’re looking for and increasing the chances they’ll convert into leads or customers.

There are a few things to keep in mind when creating persona-based pages:

1. Define your personas – who are your different types of customers? What needs do they have that your product or service can address?

2. Create content for each persona – what would each type of customer be interested in reading? What information would they need to make a purchasing decision?

3. Make it easy to find the right page – include clear links to your persona-based pages from your home page and other key locations on your site.

4. Test and refine – as with any marketing effort, it’s important to test your persona-based pages and see how they’re performing. Make changes and adjustments as needed to ensure you’re getting the best results.

Persona-based pages can be a great way to improve your website’s conversion rate and deliver more relevant content to your visitors. By taking the time to understand your different customer types and create targeted pages for each, you can provide a better experience for your visitors – and see more leads and sales as a result.

Example

Credo is an online marketing platform that connects marketing leaders with pre-screened marketing agencies. Credo has developed specific pages targeted toward entrepreneurs, SEO agencies, etc. This technique has allowed them to offer a personalized experience to all their segments.

10. Tracking and Optimizing

Marketing tactics that are data-driven and constantly adjusted are the most effective. Therefore, we suggest that you use analytical tools in every aspect of our inbound (and outbound) marketing activities to gain visibility into what works and improve what doesn’t. To begin, you must decide what you want to measure. Typically, you should assess the following:

• Organic traffic to the website and blog
• Conversion rates for different forms and CTAs
• Number of keywords in the top three and ten
• New contacts

Remember to focus on SMART KPIs (key performance indicators) while analyzing your inbound marketing funnel and success.

Example

Facebook Ads has this feature called the clickthrough ratio, which can help SaaS companies in calculating the effectiveness of their marketing initiatives. Not only that this feature helps in further understanding the inbound marketing funnel for SaaS, by providing useful insights in the form of actionable ratios.

Conclusion

Inbound marketing for saas is based on three essential points: creating high-quality and valuable content, devising tactics for promoting the material, and optimizing the content for conversions.

If you can accomplish all three correctly, your SaaS inbound marketing plan is complete, and you can begin to establish a long-term, sustainable stream of leads. The key here is consistency, both in terms of quality and quantity.

With the importance of inbound marketing growing exponentially for SaaS businesses, it is recommended that you start investing in this stream right now, and in case you’ve already entered this realm, then it is time to use professional services and extensive market research to strengthen your ground further.

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