What Is ?
is a term used in and advertising industries to draw customers or clients to a company or product through published online. Essentially, that focuses on attracting customers by creating tailored to their needs is called .
In contrast, interrupts your audience by sending them they don’t necessarily want. connects people interested in your product or service with people who need your product or service.
Why you should use an in your B2B SaaS today, not tomorrow
Let’s face it, whenever somebody says let’s write a ; all eyes roll because we understand how long and laborious blogging can be. Everyone except the executive understands that it’s a long-term play, yet executives or investors generally want SEO rankings under 3 months and tangible MQLs and MRR.
The truth is you need to be doing both for the long-term and paid to keep your investors or executives happy today and tomorrow.
for B2B SaaS should always be considered as a long-term in addition to paid traffic channels. has many elements: , , and generation. All of these work towards getting you new customers.
focuses on creating quality that attracts a from search engines or social channels through syndication. This is opposed to using outbound methods such as cold-calling, direct mail, or buying ads.
generates 54% more leads than . produces leads that are 61% cheaper than those obtained through .
The quality of leads and conversation from is generally significantly higher than outbound. That’s a no-brainer, yet many B2B SaaS brands are still resistant to the idea of embracing as a real long-term strategic initiative and focusing their attention on paid. This is generally because of pressure from executives and investors. So once they get to MVP (minimal viable product) and PMF (product-market fit), they begin to struggle to get to hockey stick growth after 10 million ARR. This is where they start throwing money at trade shows, TV ads, and other expensive, risky ventures.
As a senior leader, it is your job to convince your decision-makers to embrace this as part of your holistic, long-term strategic growth in your SaaS.
You must shift your brand’s attention and understand that is all about arming and delighting your potential customers with that can help them move the needle on their business. This means your service or product is just a secondary source. Supporting your ‘s growth is about caring and providing them with the right tools as an afterthought. This is one of the reasons they’ll buy from you. You have to think about the value optimization curve from your ‘s standpoint and understand where they are today and where they want to be tomorrow.
Your can be a powerful machine that can get your potential customers to become an active marketer for your B2B SaaS by spreading the messaging across their social channels and sharing it with other online communities. However, this only happens if your truly elevates their brand to a higher level.
Essentially, it’s like word of mouth, but on the world wide web, which is one of the strongest types of globally. There’s no better than a good word of mouth. enables you to achieve this goal very quickly. All you have to do is share your thought leadership with others and answer their burning questions.
It creates a captive audience for you by allowing you to build long-term relationships and trust with your clients. Regardless of whether you’re in the B2B SaaS or other tech spaces, you can make work as a part of your mixed channel .
The very nature of ensures a long-term value creation . This is critical for B2B brands who rely very heavily on paid media channels and want more sustainable growth over the long term. To sustain or build long-term MRR growth, you absolutely need to embed an into your overall holistic to build a strong, healthy B2B pipeline for your SaaS.
fosters long-term relationships with your customers, creates a captive audience, and educates your customers even after buying from you.
Still not convinced about using for your products and services?
Look at it this way; is about delighting your customers during their journey as they get to know your brand one moment at a time and employing them to do your for you.
This also means you have to reach them on the right device, in the right context, at the right time. This is a concept developed by Google, and they are 100% correct on this one. Your brand has to consider micro-moments when your prospects have a “brilliant idea,” and they’re reaching for to learn about something.
Are you being found online when they have a brilliant idea?
If not, start learning how to be there when your future customers have a pain point in their business.
No works better than good word of mouth. helps you enable just that with the flywheel methodology.
What is the I Flywheel Methodology?
The flywheel methodology is the method of growing your organization by building meaningful, lasting relationships with consumers, prospects, and customers. It’s about valuing and empowering prospects to reach their goals at any stage in the with your SaaS brand.
Why?
Because when your customers succeed, you succeed.
This is the new modern age concept that many tech brands ignore, although it’s clearly a very simple yet powerful way to build up your B2B SaaS.
What is the Flywheel?
The flywheel is a business model used by HubSpot to illustrate how momentum may be generated in your company by prioritizing and delivering an exceptional client experience built right into your campaigns. You must spin and build momentum in your flywheel by investing in methods that acquire and keep clients for it.
However, any friction that slows down your flywheel is a barrier. The main sources of friction for your customers are handoffs between teams; therefore, good alignment and communication are essential to keeping your flywheel rotating continuously.
When your flywheel is driven by the , your , , and service functions may provide force and eliminate friction during the attract, engage, and delight phases. All organizational departments are also responsible for removing impediments from your flywheel.
For example, will likely play the biggest role in the attract phase by doing daily blogging, SEO, SEM, Paid social or event . However, your can also add power by engaging in social selling. Your success teams should press this lever further to apply maximum pressure to reinforce this further.
They can do this by educating your current client on the use of the platform, thus making it easy and convenient for your existing customers to make referrals. This is done through world-class support, and once your customers get a world-class experience from you, they become your biggest generation source because they love your brand and tell everyone how delightful it is to deal with your support team. Zappos understands this like no other brand.
The main key takeaway is that your flywheel allows you to grow your SaaS brand over time without continually investing in acquisition through paid media channels like programmatic, paid search, paid social or connected TV. Platforms like , Twitter Ads, Facebook Ads, Bing Ads, Baidu, or even Yandex can be very helpful to get traffic quickly to your site. However, they’re like a band-aid to a deeper brand problem that needs to be addressed early, or long-term growth is extremely difficult to sustain for any SaaS.
The flywheel methodology can be applied in three ways:
Initially developed and packaged into a framework by Hubspot, here is how it works:
Attract: Drawing in the right people with from search engines or paid social channels to create conversations can establish you as a trusted advisor with whom they want to engage. They engage with you at the higher end of the funnel during awareness stages as they’re looking to learn more about your brand or might have a tech issue they’re solving.
Engage: Generally, they’re looking to solve their pain points, not necessarily purchase your SaaS product or demo it immediately. At the engage stage, you must focus on educating your prospects on how your tech can solve their challenges and begin to slowly show them that you can take their pain away. You should be presenting insights and solutions that align with their pain points and goals, so they become educated, and then they’re more likely to demo your product and maybe even buy from you.
Delight: At this stage, the has learned about your solution and likely did some comparison shopping and more learning on their own across the whole MarTech landscape. If they decide to buy from it is still your job to keep providing help and support (through Success teams) to empower your customers to find success with their purchase in the long run. This generally reduces churn and improves LTV, making your investors and executives happier.
Let’s unpack some more strategies.
Using Attracting Strategies for your B2B SaaS
Attracting strategies
development and creation are two components of that appeal to your or .
To reach your audience, start with such as blog articles, offers, and that provides value. Examples include guides on using your products, information about how your solution can solve their challenges, testimonials, and details about promotions or discounts.
To attract your audience members on a deeper level through , you need to optimize your with an AI-Powered platform. A modern-day SEO will require you to target specific keywords and phrases related to your products or services, backed by linking-building and technical SEO. You must focus your on solving your customers’ challenges and the many specific tactics or strategies that can help solve your user’s problems that keep them up at night.
This approach will allow your and information to organically appear on the results page (SERPs) like Google or Bing. Your can discover your the same way as when you’re searching for this information. You have to focus on solving your ‘s challenges, and search is an exceptionally powerful way to tap into user intent behind user search queries.
Engaging Strategies
When using methods to connect with your , make sure you’re engaging and interacting with leads and consumers to encourage them to want to develop long-term relationships with you. When utilizing these engagement tactics, provide information on the value your organization will give them.
The next stage is to figure out how you can increase your . If possible, document each conversation you have with clients and potentially an and track which strategies work best for each situation. How do you manage and handle calls? Focus on how care staff deal with inquiries from people or any viable .
Furthermore, make certain you’re always solution selling rather than product selling. This will guarantee that all transactions result in mutually beneficial agreements for customers and your business since you offer value to your right-fit clients.
Delighting Strategies
satisfaction is enhanced by delighting strategies, ensuring that consumers are delighted, satisfied, and supported after making a purchase. Your team members should become advisors and experts who can assist clients at any time through these tactics.
Customers love to be understood, so make sure that your chatbots ask them questions and give useful answers. Surveys should be integrated into the conversation at suitable intervals to assist, support, and request feedback.
Chatbots may also assist current clients in adopting a new approach or that you’ve introduced that they want to take advantage of. A satisfaction survey may also be distributed six months after customers buy your product or service to obtain feedback and suggest improvements.
Another important for satisfying consumers is to utilize listening. Customers may use one of your accounts to provide comments, ask questions, and share their experiences with your goods or services on . Respond to these discussions by providing useful, supportive, and encouraging responses that demonstrate you care about and understand them.
Finally, an approach focused on delighting clients should assist and support clients in any scenario, whether or not your business benefits from it. Remember that a happy client becomes a brand ambassador and promoter, so treat all transactions and interactions, both large and small, with care.
How to Get the Most From
Engage Professional
An has a team of experts who work together to bring in business for their clients. They are well versed in copywriting, , and . Hiring a team is usually cheaper than hiring individual specialists.
Before signing the agreement, ask the agency about their approach with their that they plan to use to generate results for your SaaS. This could touch on previous work they’ve done with a similar SaaS brand like yours and/or similar size businesses within your industry.
If you’re looking for deep expertise, many specialized agencies can typically deliver on their promise, but only if they’re “known for that” in the marketplace. It makes perfect sense to hire a digital analytics agency to build out your CRM and digital analytics so you can effectively understand your data pipelines across different ecosystems.
Of course, hiring them to handle your SEO is not always the best idea, although they may have a pretty good team. The bottom line is that you should look for agencies or fractional leaders with a proven track record of growing teams, running successful demand generation programs for clients, and helping B2B SaaS clients scale quickly.
How do you do hire for effectively?
#1) Look for a leader with deep expertise in creating effective programs through search engines using SEM ( ) or SEO (), positioning your brand messaging, designing demand generation programs. Your in-house or Fractional CMO should understand how to build data-driven KPI frameworks and display a strong understanding of creative development for digital media platforms that can drive MRR performance.
#2) Look for a Fractional CMO who’s likely been in their role at least 2 years or ideally 4 and someone who’s not afraid to experiment with new channels and other new digital ways like podcasting. Your leader should also understand the importance of data-informed strategies and can connect the user journey steps across the user’s multiple touch-points as they jump between different channels in today’s chaotic, noisy world.
#3) Digital savvy for a B2B SaaS CMO is critical today because most SaaS companies tend to go to market with a digital-first approach. While a brand-focused executive is great to have on your roster to complement your CDOs or CMOs digital strengths, a Chief Brand Officer (who’s more old-school focused) can play a critical role in achieving hockey stick growth past the PMF (product-market fit) point.
While digital officers are arguably the sexier of the two types of marketers, Chief Brand Officers might be able to complement your Fractional CMOs weaknesses, particularly if they’re heavily focused on digital-first go-to-market strategies.
#4) Ask your future agency if they’re specialists or a jack of all trades. What do they specialize in, and what are they offering as an add-on to potentially appease you to get you to sign on the dotted line? The things they’re not specialized in are things that you should outsource to other agencies that directly focus on that. We don’t believe full-service agencies are experts in every domain, even if they claim that on their website. They’re likely great at search or analytics but are not good at creative work or producing high-quality video creatives and CRM and and a dozen other things. We understand the temptation and the convenience of a one-stop shop. However, our experience tells us that diversifying your portfolio across various agency partners is better. Hiring a manager to manage these relationships in-house will likely provide you with access to the best expertise on the market with the highest ROI in the long run.
Leveraging Tools
A good will include various automation tools like Active Campaign, Hubspot, or even full-blown platforms like Adobe Experience Cloud. These tools or platforms help you understand how to automatically move prospects down the buyer’s journey without adding a dozen new employees for “that new initiative’ your CMO wants to implement.
Incorporating these tools is the standard practice in today’s world, and most people are accustomed to semi–quasi personalized messages. However, personalization MarTech is getting significantly better every year (and more creepy 🙂 ).
Choosing the right MarTech can be overwhelming, and sometimes you need an agency partner who has the chops to help you with the selection process and potentially save you some money in the long run. So, don’t be shy about asking your agency partners to help you with the vendor selection process.
A good will educate you on the proper tools that fit your SaaS business needs and help you shortcut the process, and likely support you with the implementation. Many agencies are certified in specific experience or ABM platforms like Act-on, Active Campaign, or Hubspot, so look for their certification status on their website partner’s page or in their collateral.
Institute a culture of data-informed decisions and stay open to continuous testing to improve retention
Your should be using data to drive decisions about your SaaS growth. Suppose you’re not using the right MarTech. In that case, this can really hurt your growth at the 10 million mark. You’ll run into a scalability problem with your data-collection, media buying, and focusing on the hottest MQLs ready to buy now, not 10 months later.
These decisions typically range from CRM data collection practices to media buying platforms and aligning channel to your growth goals. Once you’re past the MVP and hit PMF, you must start focusing on instituting an ABM and a scoring practice to boost your MQL to SQL conversion rates and improve the bottom line. Speed of outreach to the right prospects in today’s markets separates fast-growing B2B SaaS companies from those that stagnate or reach out at the wrong time, ultimately slowing growth as competitors catch up and gain market share.
Your teams need to be able to align purchase intent data and make suggestions to improve the speed of MQL to SQL handover. Ultimately they need to align user intent with your media buying practices and connect your SQL intent data to media buying algorithms and audience signals. Whether you’re buying traffic from or Facebook, it is ultimately up to you to feed the correct CRM audience signals to your bidding solutions within your media buying platforms.
To get the best results in the long run, stay open to testing new ideas and test non-stop as fast as possible with as much statistical significance as you need to draw feasible conclusions.
Here are some things you should be testing in your B2B SaaS regularly:
- Pricing strategies
- Headlines,
- length,
- Posting frequency, time of day for posting on ,
- Creative A/B testing on media channels,
- Message testing,
- Layout changes on the website
Ultimately, your customers will tell you which they love by evaluating consumption and MQL conversions. By taking a data-driven approach, you will get a better return on your marketing spend over the long haul.
13 Important reasons why should you consider for your B2B SaaS
1. Cost-effectiveness: is one of the most cost-effective ways to reach new customers through digital channels. Compared to outbound methods such as cold-calling or purchasing ads, costs less and generates a much higher ROI.
2. Reach more people: By creating , you’ll attract more website visitors and, in turn, more leads. attracts people who are already interested in what you have to offer, so the chances of converting them into customers are much higher than with outbound methods.
3. Build trust: When potential customers find you created online, they’ll see that you’re an expert in your field. This builds trust, which is essential for turning leads into customers.
4. Get in front of buyers early in the buying cycle: targets potential customers when they’re early in the buying cycle when they’re still researching their options. By getting in front of buyers early in the process, you’ll have a greater chance of winning their business.
5. Stand out from the competition: With , you can set yourself apart by providing that they can’t or don’t publish.
6. Reach buyers in new channels: reaches buyers through and search engines. This gives you a wider reach and allows you to connect with more potential customers.
7. Capture more leads: captures more leads than traditional outbound methods like cold-calling. By publishing quality , you’ll attract more visitors to your website, which will be added to your funnel.
8. In , the focus is on quality over quantity. This means that you’re more likely to attract customers interested in what you have to offer, rather than just anyone who comes across your website or ad.
9. offer a range of features designed to help you attract and convert more leads, including capture forms, landing pages, nurturing campaigns, and more.
10. Certain software can make it easy to track the success of your campaign, so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
11. An like AI-Powered optimization can help you improve your rankings, resulting in more targeted organic traffic to your website.
12. make it easy to create targeted campaigns, which can help you increase and boost loyalty with the right message to the right at the right time.
13. can help you build relationships with potential customers by providing that they can use and share with others in their network to boost your .
Top FAQs around
Who uses ?
is an effective solution for businesses of all sizes, particularly for B2B SaaS. Whether you’re a small SaaS business owner looking to generate more leads, or a large enterprise trying to improve your rankings, can help you achieve your goals.
is also a great solution for companies looking to build relationships with potential customers by providing that they can use and share. An allows you to track how much traffic is coming to your website from different sources, so you can focus your efforts on the channels that are most effective.
What exactly is ?
is a software platform that helps you automate your and engagement to generate more leads, close more deals, and accurately measure success.
While is a great for creating , it doesn’t result in or moves prospects along the buying journey all by itself. bridges the gap between real conversion and the engaged audience that creates.
For example, with , you can keep your in the loop about all of your leads, allowing them to respond quickly when a created through shows signs of being ready to close on a sale.
What exactly is ABM (Account-Based )?
Account-Based (ABM) is a strategic that focuses on specific accounts and/or industries to improve revenue and growth. It involves creating personalized and campaigns targeting key stakeholders within those accounts. ABM can be used in conjunction with other , such as generation and nurturing, improving results.
ABM is an effective for B2B SaaS companies. In one study, ABM increased deal sizes by more than 50%, and in another, it was found to increase conversion rates by 10-15%. ABM can also help improve lifetime value (CLV) and acquisition costs (CAC).
If you’re looking to improve your SaaS company’s revenue and growth, consider using ABM as your . It is an effective for many businesses and can help you achieve your goals.
Why Partner with an ?
B2B SaaS is a complex world of messaging, measurements, innovative tactics, and strategies. We get it. We’ve been there and seen the wild west. It is not easy to stay on top of it all or find the time to do everything that needs to be done to continue growing and keeping your investors happy.
If you’re looking for an to help you grow your monthly recurring revenue, partnering with an is a great option.
Here are 7 reasons why partnering with a B2B SaaS agency focused on proving an is a great idea.
1. An B2B SaaS agency has the experience and expertise to help you achieve your SaaS growth goals.
2. An has a team of dedicated experts who can help you create and execute a successful from start to finish in a measurable way.
3. An can help you create a more robust and successful demand generation program to convert more of these leads into customers.
4. An can help you improve your website’s rankings and get more valuable free organic traffic to your site.
5. An can help you create targeted that resonates with your audience and drives results, and maps that to your avatar.
6. An can help you streamline your data collection process and install a digital analytics program. This can help you track your progress and make better data-informed decisions about your to grow faster.
7. An can provide you with the deep expertise in-house marketers often lack and other resources you need to grow your business.
Partnering with an is a great way to achieve your growth goals. An can provide you with the experience, expertise, and resources you need to succeed. Leave us a comment or contact us today to learn more about how we can help you grow your SaaS brand.
