The SaaS Growth Blog

Start-ups…multi-million dollar funding…another company turned unicorn…

All successful business owners know that the key to their success is due to the customer’s satisfaction. The customer always comes first. Being proactive about the customer’s needs by going out of your way to anticipate them will undoubtedly provide you with a satisfied and consistent customer base.

The SaaS Marketing Journey -- that arduous road that sees newcomers to your business become active promoters of the products you offer -- is a complicated beast, to be sure. However, just because the tasks ahead pose a significant challenge to your SaaS business, it doesn’t mean that success is beyond your reach. In fact, a number of companies have wisely leveraged SaaS content marketing to gain customers and boost awareness.

Following the successive stages of the SaaS Marketing Journey, we’ll touch base on the best practices of just a few of the companies who have optimized their content marketing efforts.

Whether you are just getting started with SaaS or you are working to enhance your company, you are probably taking the time to visit us because there is something specific you need help with. We want to speak directly to your needs, so this is us reaching out to you for some prompts!

One of the most critical decisions you can make for your business is your target audience. Before you even start to develop the concept behind your venture -- and this is especially true for the subscription-based model used by SaaS businesses -- it is an absolute necessity to know who your customers are. Such an understanding early on in your business will guide the many decisions ahead and make it that much easier to connect with your customer base.

At this point, we’re roughly midway through the process. The Attract, Convert and Experience stages have led your prospects through the steps to become users of your product, but now the time has come to unlock the next achievement in your customer development. Subsequent installments of our full breakdown will explain the remaining stages. At this time, however, we’ll detail the next part of the SaaS Marketing Journey, the Success phase.

Thus far, we’ve reviewed the Attract and Convert phases of the SaaS Marketing Journey, which center on developing uninitiated consumers into promising leads. Subsequent entries will detail the entire process that ultimately results in loyal customers who actively promote your business for you, but now we’ll delve into the next step in your customer development journey, the Experience stage.

As subscription models rise in popularity, Software as a Service products are fast evolving from the new frontier to the industry forefront. Because of this continual need to win and retain customers, the significance placed on a scalable, customized marketing strategy has never been stronger. While SaaS marketing previously held mostly to the established strategies used by inbound marketing (as illustrated in a popular HubSpot infographic), the changing nature of the industry has demanded the development of an updated methodology.

With subscription-based models like Software as a Service (SaaS) increasingly becoming the industry standard, it’s more important than ever for companies to have a concrete knowledge of how to shape their marketing strategy into something scalable and tailor-made to meet customers’ specific needs. For years, SaaS marketing was largely defined by traditional inbound marketing methodologies (including a key infographic from HubSpot), but the continuing evolution of the industry has cultivated the need for a more robust approach.

All marketing strategy should stem from a deep understanding of the values that are important to your ideal customer. But that is easier said than done.