SaaS Marketing for B2B Companies
With the advent of cloud-based platforms, SaaS, or Software as a Service, has grown in popularity over recent years because of its composability, customization, and flexibility. It offers businesses a solid way to meet their software needs without having to purchase and download/distribute software. However, SaaS marketing can be tricky; you first need to extend your brand to achieve visibility. In other words, your business customers have to realize that they need your service, and achieving that can be difficult in a sometimes near-flooded market.
Software as a Service Marketing Spend
In B2B SaaS content marketing, it’s estimated that public SaaS companies may spend approximately 80 to 120 percent of their revenue in their first three years on marketing and sales alone. This is compared to non-SaaS companies that spend 10 to 14 percent of their yearly budgets on marketing. 
The cost of acquiring customers and fierce competition is the driving force behind that much higher percentage—but it’s still possible to master SaaS marketing to the degree where you’re not doling all of your revenue toward marketing while also boosting your ROI. Read on to learn more about SaaS, B2B content marketing best practices and how to implement them in your marketing strategies.
What Sets B2B Marketing Apart from B2C?
B2B stands for business to business, while B2C stands for business to consumer. When marketing to an entity rather than a general consumer, your target audience must be more precise. While holistic marketing treats all the different aspects of a business as one entity, SaaS marketing for B2B companies, for example, may want to zero in on one specific aspect of a business, depending on the software type. B2B goods and services often have more features than B2C ones, which come at a higher price. Your SaaS must stand out from the crowd, typically achieved by marketing.
Patience is also a virtue in SaaS B2B marketing—B2B has a longer sales cycle than B2C, and it can take longer to establish relationships with clients. B2B doesn’t focus on the quick sale. This customer-first marketing can be challenging but rewarding, provided your marketing strategies are on point.
What Are B2B Marketing Goals?
Before you map out a B2B marketing strategy, having some standard goals in mind is an important first step. You need to know what you’re trying to achieve with SaaS marketing before you launch any campaign. Many SaaS businesses share some common marketing goals. Some common goals include:
- Upselling and cross-selling to existing clients
- Lead generation
- Lead-into-client conversion
- Extending your brand/brand awareness
- Retaining clients
- Increasing client lifespan
Your SaaS marketing goals may look slightly different or be very similar. However, in general, these are solid goals that SaaS companies are looking to achieve. There are powerful SaaS B2B marketing strategies, one of which is content marketing.
Content Marketing as a SaaS Marketing Strategy
SaaS companies may spend innumerable amounts on paid advertising and ignore content marketing to generate solid leads. Search engine marketing (SEM) is another tool often used by B2B companies to get their brand’s results nearer to the top of SERP pages. Using paid ads and SEM can lead to a higher cost per acquisition, whereas weaving solid content marketing into the mix can lower marketing costs and boost ROI.
It can be challenging to measure ROI from content marketing solely, but apps and tools such as Google Analytics, HootSuite, and BuzzSumo to get a better understanding. For example, one company increased website traffic by 448 percent using inbound tactics such as these, according to Clutch. Also, in a study conducted by Business 2 Community, 98 percent of the top 150 SaaS brands had a blog, many of which were instructional or comparison posts.
It’s also estimated that around 83 percent of SaaS blog traffic comes from organic searches. However, there is much more to content marketing than blogs, so what are some other content marketing ideas for SaaS marketing?
The most prolific types of SaaS content include landing pages, tech walkthroughs, and feature announcements, meaning that if you’re working with a good content team, you can highlight these areas of the site to boost your lead marketing strategy. Targeted content is important across the board, which means you need to know your clients’ pain points before you begin. In addition to blogs and featured content, reviews, case studies, and social media posts are also paramount.
The content itself is important—it should be engaging, relevant, and should speak to your clients—so building this part of your SaaS marketing strategy will take some time and effort. Still, once solid content is in place, you should see a positive return on ROI. In the meantime, pay-per-click (PPC) and referral marketing can also be viable tools when it comes to SaaS marketing for B2B companies.
To jumpstart your SaaS marketing plan, strategy, and launch, contact MDINC today.
