While doing business or starting your business may be a single decision that you take, there are many kinds of businesses that you could do. In fact, there are many options that could help you earn higher revenues than most of your counterparts. When you do business, you avail the products and services of other businesses so that your enterprise also runs well. This is known as a B2B setup. There are many success businesses and yours might also be one. If you are in the B2B or the business to business space, then you should be proud of yourself since you actually power enterprises and you empower the entrepreneurs behind them! This is where B2B SaaS product marketing also comes into the picture.
But first, let us understand what marketing in general means and what it does for your business. In a general sense, marketing is a group of activities that puts you in front of your audience with a great platform on which you can present your products and services as the solution they would be looking for. With the right marketing strategy in place, you would be able to convince your audience with your consistent efforts and creative campaigns to trust you and make a purchase. This is also the way B2B SaaS product marketing works.
Understanding the B2B SaaS Product Niche
No talk of SaaS product marketing would be complete without understand what this niche is all about. While business to business or B2B is a very broad understanding or definition of the market, when we add the term SaaS, we are actually making a very clear and specific niche here. The SaaS products are cloud based products or services that come in the form of a platform, system or process that can truly help your business grow.
If you look around in the digital space, you will find there is a wonderful line up of products and services in this space starting from CRM to digital marketing and email marketing as well as lead generation and everything in between. It would not be difficult to point out that the B2B SaaS product marketing space is a very vibrant one that is a vital part of everything that we do in the digital space for our businesses.
In fact, it would also be easy to note that without such products and services, you would not be able to fully comprehend all the big data to successfully reach the right audience and engage them with meaningful, well articulated and well timed campaigns, driven by the right data in the right place. Further, there are a number of automated tools that come to the fore in order to capture data and store it once you actually begin the journey towards conversion after successfully reaching and engaging with your core audience.
So, as you can see, B2B SaaS marketing is everywhere you look! You cannot escape it if you want to do business online – which is the only way to do business now.
Strategies for Product Marketing in this Space
When you are looking to take your SaaS product portfolio forward you would need a very strong strategy. What exactly is a B2B SaaS marketing strategy? Here a re a few quick pointers to help you understand:
- A set of tools that will help you reach your audience;
- A fool proof system that captures data and then brings it up at the right time for the right client so that the relevant team member can use it for meaningful and conversion fueling conversations and engagement;
- Recognizing opportunities within the B2B space where your product can fit in;
- Taking the bottom line from big data in an automated way so that this can be used to articulate the problems of your core customer;
- Expressing your features in a solution oriented way that aligns you with your customer and their problems;
- Being able to understand your customers and what they want with good insights from the marketing and automation tools;
- Creating an SEO driven strategy that will power its way to the top of the rankings on any and every search engine;
- Ensuring that the customers move smoothly through the sales pipeline;
- Keeping the customers in the loop about new products and new versions of the same products as well as unique ways to use the products or services they have bought so that there is an up sell, re sell or a cross sell as well;
- Adapting to the changing tools, trends and techniques in the B2B SaaS product marketing
Understanding the B2B SaaS Product Customer with B2B SaaS Product Marketing
While there are just a few of the things that you need for the perfect B2B SaaS product marketing strategy, it would be worthwhile to remember that such a strategy comes with many perks that would help you align with your audience in a way that builds brand recall and brand authority along with a deep sense of trust in what you are offering. But for this, you would need to follow and adapt to the constantly changing needs of this very market. Here’s why:
- The market constantly changes and demands new and improved technologies and tools for better business efficiency;
- If you are not able to fill this gap with the right insights at the right time, then there will be plenty of competitors who can fill in and take your place. This is why you need to constantly think about and look for the next gap to fill and the next big thing to do;
- These customers are finally servicing other customers with your products and services. Show them how they can do that in a revenue generating manner when you are pithing to them with a B2B SaaS product marketing campaign;
- Also, you would have to remember that in this space, the decisions are very high level and logical. Therefore, you have to cover all the exits in the way you articulate the pitch and campaign.
Now that we have understood what these strategies are supposed to do, let us look at a few of the strategies.
1. Website Optimization for Better B2B SaaS Marketing Conversions
When you conduct business activities, you are usually on the look out for conversions. This is true for any and every kind of business. You would do well to look at this from the point of view of your customer. When you are pitching your services, you cannot show them a lesser optimized platform and expect them to believe that your solutions would help them. Unless your solutions have already proven to be beneficial for you and your website, why would they trust you?
This is something that should immediately make you wake up and take stock of your website. Is it completely developed and easy to navigate? Is it completely optimized in keeping with the latest algorithms that have been floated by Google? When you show a range of understanding and execution for such tools and trends, you will be able to win over your customer and help them see how efficiently you can help them in the B2B space.
When we are talking about optimizing your B2B SaaS product marketing with your website, we are also talking about creating a space where the right tools and navigation will be available in the right way for a consumer to use. This is also a sure shot way to optimize to convert. You should ensure that the functions are matched with ease of navigation as well as optimum visibility of all the information that one could possibly ask for.
2. Build Your Story and Tell it With Great Content
When you are in SaaS product marketing space, you would have to reach out to the end user or the customer (who would typically be another business owner), with facts, figures, logic, purpose and much more using a good story telling technique. The right content will immediately help you take your B2B SaaS product marketing game towards the top, if you have the right way of telling your story.
You can spread the various elements of your story over a series of blog posts, pepper them with keywords in all the right places, and then let the click bait headlines do all the talking when you share the same on social media. This would help in creating the right basis to help people understand what you are offering and why it would be helpful to take their business forward. These are the two things that need to be told in every piece of content that you create and publish, along with a very clear call for action at the end.
When you are indulging in SaaS product marketing, you would need to know that you are supposed to cater to someone’s business plan and not merely fit into their fridge, wardrobe, or some corner of their home. Buying your product would be an investment decision and so your content needs to tell the story of why this would be a good investment and a good fit for one’s overall business strategy and vision.
3. Understand Your Competition to Understand Your Customer
This would be a very important aspect of doing well in the SaaS product marketing space. When you take full stock of your competition, you would also be able to see where the gaps in the market are. What is it that the customers want, which the competitors are not being able to provide? When you are able to answer this question, you will be able to fill this gap with your own product, thus creating something that is known as competitive advantage.
With competitive advantage, your B2B SaaS product marketing strategy would be an air tight one. You would be able to appeal to your end user with the help of all the things that are missing in the campaigns and the offerings of your competitors. In fact, it would be accurate to say that your communications and engagement strategy would begin with the things that they have not addressed or talked about. Therefore, it would be very important to know these gaps to understand your customer.
When you are able to understand what the competitor is not offering and how such a feature or element can help your customer and their business, you would immediately be able to create a data driven campaign that thrives on the right messaging. This messaging would fill in the existing gap and position you in it. This would take plenty fo research, which is also imperative for your B2B SaaS marketing side.
4. Inbound Marketing
While your strategy for your B2B SaaS marketing should include your website and all the related things, this is only a larger part of a greater whole known as inbound marketing. You would do well to remember this when you are crafting your entire strategy. From content marketing to social media marketing and finally getting customers in the email marketing loop, there are number of ways in which you can create an entire inbound marketing gamut that would pull the customer in.
This is a very important strategy that you would need to chalk out with much research and a clear eye on your positioning so that you know exactly what kind of a demand you want to generate in order to fill a very specific gap. Once you are mindful of this, your website and your email marketing deliverables as well as your social media messaging and the forums that you choose for content syndication, can all be chosen with much care. It would be important to remember that your B2B SaaS product marketing depends on how well you spread the same message over these varied platforms and channels, and also – how well you manage to adapt various content formats so that they suit the exact, specific needs of the audience on these various channels and forums.
