What is SaaS Marketing? Strategies and Examples Included

Software as a Service—or SaaS—is cloud-based software that allows users to access a program via the Internet. Think Slack, Dropbox, MailChimp, and other digital tools you use without installing anything.

SaaS marketing is the strategies and techniques used to promote these products.

The subscription-based nature of SaaS tools makes marketing them slightly different from products you may only buy once.

With SaaS, the relationship with your customers is ongoing. This opens up opportunities for you to consistently show your product’s value rather than always selling.

It’s about attracting and retaining users by giving them what they need with your ever-improving products. Retaining loyal customers is vital, particularly as acquisition costs can be high in the software market.

How is B2B SaaS marketing different?

B2B SaaS tools are geared towards businesses instead of individual consumers.

Marketing them means thinking about the needs of an entire company, while the distinct SaaS model requires further considerations.

• Builds a relationship: B2B SaaS selling is all about relationships, not just transactions. Because your subscriptions are ongoing, you get more touchpoints with your customers. This allows for deeper connections and trust compared to one-time sales.

• Focuses on retention: SaaS products operate on a recurring revenue model. Instead of big upfront payments, you earn incremental fees. A retention-focused approach relies on you steadily providing value vs hard selling—this keeps your customers happily subscribed for as long as possible.

• Uses targeted GTM strategies: SaaS marketers use very targeted go-to-market (GTM) strategies focused on their niche. Broad campaigns would waste your budget on the wrong audiences. Targeted content, referrals, and communities enable you to scale cost-effectively while speaking to your target users.

When it comes to SaaS marketing, driving new sales is only part of the winning.

You also need to ensure your customers are satisfied and retained. Balancing acquisition with retention is key to increasing your profits.

Let’s explore some of the top strategies for attracting and keeping users.

Content marketing

Content has incredible marketing influence for SaaS brands. Blog, guides, and videos position your product as an authority and build brand trust—nearly nine out of ten SaaS businesses use blogs as part of their online marketing strategy.

Useful, relevant content also brings in organic website traffic from search engines and is great for nurturing leads.

Establish yourself as a top expert resource rather than a faceless SaaS vendor.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is crucial for discoverability.

Making your pages and content better for search helps SaaS sites get found by buyers who are looking for solutions. Refining sitemaps, metadata, and backlinks and monitoring your rankings will help maximize your organic visitors.

SEO doesn’t just cover desktops, either. With over 63% of Google searches coming from mobile devices, improving your site for mobiles is a high priority. Optimizing for voice search (like Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Google Assistant) is also becoming more important.

Product trials

Letting potential customers try out your software through free or freemium trials removes friction from the buying process.

When people experience your product firsthand (rather than just taking your word for it), they’re more likely to convert to a paid plan. There’s even evidence suggesting free trials double the likelihood of a customer making a purchase.

Offering different pricing tiers also captures a wider range of usage needs.

Referral marketing

Word-of-mouth referrals are incredibly influential from a marketing point of view.

Referral programs with creative rewards incentivize customers to spread the word to their friends and family or on online groups and forums. This helps reduce customer acquisition costs (CAC) and drives viral, scalable growth backed by social proof.

In fact, one study found that over 88% of consumers surveyed trust recommendations from people they know above all other forms of marketing messaging.

Co-marketing

Strategic partnerships with complementary tools or services help boost your credibility and reach.

Co-marketing campaigns, cross-promotions, and guest posts with related brands expose your audience (and theirs) to new solutions. These win-win collaborations with non-competitors can also spark referral partnerships.

Crafting a SaaS marketing plan helps you focus your efforts and resources. It’s essentially a strategic blueprint that steers every campaign, initiative, and activity across your digital ecosystem.

Here are some key steps for creating your framework.

Create buyer personas

Understanding your target customers is the first rule of SaaS marketing.

Build data-driven, hypothetical portraits of your ideal buyer, including their demographics, challenges, and motivations. You can then tailor your messaging to resonate with what matters most to them.

Research the competition

Analyzing competitors helps you differentiate and hone in on your unique value proposition—the things that set your product apart.

Check what marketing tactics rival SaaS brands use to attract their audience, then double down on what makes you better.

Identify your goals

Define what “success” actually looks like. Establish clear KPIs for your metrics, like the amount of leads generated, conversion rates, lifetime value (LTV), and churn rate reduction, so you know what to optimize.

Decide how often you want to asses these figures, too—this might be weekly, monthly, or annually, depending on the size of your business or what you’re measuring.

Keep where you are in your growth stage and business objectives when setting any numerical targets.

Choose your channels

Select the marketing channels to allocate your money and time towards based on their ROI potential.

Try to include top-of-funnel (TOFU) elements like SEO and content, mid-funnel (MOFU), such as email nurturing and ads, and bottom-funnel (BOFU), like free trials and demo requests.

Track your results

Once your campaigns are going, you’ll need to monitor their performance closely. Analyze the metrics for each channel to see what content and initiatives deliver the best results.

You can then continue your actions, improve them, or pause the strategy. Technologies like UTMs can adequately attribute the conversion data to help you decide.

Experiment

Being successful in SaaS marketing means continuously experimenting with new strategies and offering different combinations.

No campaign should take a “set it and forget it” attitude. Use techniques like A/B testing to see what’s working and do more of what converts.

So you’ve got the core SaaS marketing building blocks—now what?

To implement them, you’ll need to use some proven tactics and best practices to launch your product successfully.

Lead with value

Effective SaaS Marketing is value-led, not product-led. Spotlight how you solve customer points rather than boasting about the features.

Use blogs, guides, and videos to set up your product’s value without overt selling. Earn your audience’s attention first by speaking to what they want and need.

Use product experts

Your sales reps, customer success team, and other colleague experts make great thought leaders.

Have them create blogs, videos, and webinars (over 93% of SaaS companies offer educational webinars), to build authority and trust. Infuse an insider's perspective instead of just relying on corporate marketing speak.

Nurture leads

Don’t ignore prospects who aren’t yet sales-ready. Continue nurturing them with helpful content that moves them through the funnel, like email sequences, retargeting ads, and special guide downloads.

Ensure your product stays at the top of their mind until they convert—over 85% of people will pay more for a SaaS product if they have a positive customer experience, making your efforts worth it.

Promote customer success

Case studies, testimonials, and referral programs flaunting your happy customers help build social proof.

Spotlight user success stories to reinforce your ROI potential for prospects. This creates organic community excitement.

Test pricing options

Not everyone’s budget and use cases are equal. Multiple pricing tiers, bundles, and custom enterprise plans capture a wider potential revenue.

Test various packages, discounts, and trails to develop stronger plans that convert.

Rinse and repeat

Even effective SaaS marketing campaigns get stale over time when new platforms and tech arise.

Reassess your strategies regularly as your buyers' behavior changes. Keep doing what works while revamping what doesn’t.

Amplitude is an analytics platform that’s purpose-built to help SaaS marketers use their data to drive business impact.

• Analyze behavioral cohorts to create hyper-targeted campaigns that speak to where users are in their journey.

• Identify the highest-value customer actions based on the outcomes of your data, then nurture more people into those behaviors.

• See which marketing channels drive conversions and lower churn.

• Compare campaign performance to understand the true ROI of things like paid ads, content, and referral programs.

• Use the segmentation functionality to personalize your offerings at scale.

• Serve tailored content, offers, and messaging to your users based on the attitudes and behaviors Amplitude highlights.

With Amplitude, SaaS marketers can access the rich insights they need to elevate their campaigns and activities.

By connecting your marketing tactics to your business outcomes, you can efficiently allocate your resources to more impactful programs.

Get on the path to sustainable SaaS growth. Sign up for Amplitude today.