SaaS marketing is very different to traditional marketing for a number of reasons. Often the buyer's journey is a long drawn out process with a lot of research and consideration involved. Often their can be multiple decision makers and most SaaS solutions can be complex sales involving integrations and technical queries. Because of this businesses are forced to change their marketing efforts to accommodate the buyer and ensure that they have all this information available to them. With this in mind, B2B businesses should adopt a content marketing strategy as this has been proven to be the most effective form of marketing amongst the B2B industry.
Develop a Buyer Persona
Do you know who your target audience is? If the answer is no then you should halt all marketing until you actually know unless you like shooting in the dark. Developing a buyer persona should be the foundations of all marketing and will give you the ability to plan all marketing efforts around this persona. By doing so this allows you to be found by people who are actively looking for your service, who have a need for them and who also have budget for them as well.
Create a Content Strategy
When it comes to getting found online and building up authority, content is king. Content allows Google to identify your website as a provider of information, therefore Google will rank you higher in the search results. Google looks for good quality content. Content that is going to be relative to certain keywords and long tail keywords so when creating content it’s best to ensure that quality is above quantity as Google will pick up on this. Consistency also plays a big role in a content strategy and if it slacks off for a few weeks or even a few months Google will take notice and your business will drop ranks in the search engine. All content should be produced with the buyer persona in mind and information that is relevant to them and that can help them solve particular challenges. B2B business generally post content regarding their product and how it can solve for a particular pain that their persona is facing.
Offer Free Content
People take to the internet in search of information and potential resources that will help them with their purchasing decision. Offering free content in exchange for an email address is the best way to convert visitors to leads when they are on your site. Free content can come in the forms of ebooks, white papers, infographics or even video. Anything that is going to add value to your persona is can be used to acquire an email address. Businesses can create smart forms on their website to progressively profile their visitors which will allow them to develop their buyer persona further thus improving their marketing efforts.
Develop Thought Leadership
Developing thought leadership is one of the most powerful things a b2b business can do to really distinguish themselves in the market and separate themselves from the competition. A perfect example of this is HubSpot who develop massive amounts of content and free downloadable ebooks in exchange for email addresses. They have created a form of leadership around inbound marketing and have done so through targeted content marketing with their buyer persona in mind. By producing good relevant and engaging content this can be achieved so that when it comes to a final purchasing decision you are front of mind with your prospect.
Nurture Leads
The majority of leads that you capture aren’t going to be ready to close or even talk to a member of your sales team. A recent study showed that 95% of traffic to your website is still in research mode and only 5% are ready to potentially talk to sales. In order to ensure that 95% of your traffic returns and eventually converts to a customer it’s important to be able to nurture these leads. Through marketing automation lead nurturing allows businesses continue to build a relationship with prospects by providing further information that will assist them during their research. Not only does this build trust it means that when the prospect reaches decision mode that business will be front of mind.
Sales Strategy
Marketing only gets a lead so far down the funnel which is why it is important that every business is actively working their marketing. Having a strong sales and marketing alignment can make or break a businesses potential to close more business. Marketing's job is to generate new leads for sales and to nurture leads who are not ready to talk to sales. Once marketing leads are qualified they can then be passed to the sales team in which they can be worked.
If you are interested in learning more about the best practices for marketing your business then feel free to get in touch with a member of our team - info@mofadigital.com