The SaaS industry is witnessing massive growth. A $170billion SaaS market is a testament to how competitive businesses are. And branding is a key factor that can define a SaaS business growth. Here, your PR skills can come in handy.
Besides product enhancement, sales, and digital marketing, SaaS PR strategy plays a crucial role in branding.
As a PR professional, you’d want your SaaS clients to get familiar with their adversaries and offer solutions to tackle those. These bottlenecks can be related to the acquisition, brand recognition, social media presence, etc. Try investing in solutions that help them uncover inadequacies when defining, managing, and collaborating on products.
Different departments need to work in tandem to ensure overcoming those. For instance, developers can look into product management software to identify existing loopholes. The sales team can identify whether pricing is a hurdle, and you will analyze competitors' efforts and tailor PR strategies accordingly.
A SaaS PR strategy requires crafting a long-term vision and driving efforts toward brand recognition rather than acquisition and subscriptions.
Here are some tried-and-tested ways you can implement PR strategies in SaaS business.
Let’s get started.
#1. Roll Out Press Releases
B2B SaaS PR typically begins with creating newsworthy assets that carry valuable stories. Later, you’d pitch those to journalists, influencers, and other sources (online and offline).
Roll out frequent press releases to be on top of the target audience's minds. Press releases are popular almost in any field, including Crypto startups. They actively leverage Crypto PR, which means SaaS businesses can also use this opportunity to create some buzz. A brilliant press release will require you to put yourself in readers’ shoes and consider what they will get from the provided information. This boosts brand recall value for your SaaS client.
Your client’s campaign can be around thought leadership, practical advice, intriguing insights, or interesting stats. Regardless of the idea, strive to make something meaningful that extends beyond your client’s business.
#2. Leverage Data for Narrative
How would your pitch differ from those journalists receive daily? By creating a press-worthy pitch that top-tier media will love as you let data speak for itself.
Your SaaS business client may be driving many data-driven decisions. Leverage that data for your PR activities, especially when pitching it to journalists.
Use this data to drive predictions and provide insights to the target audience. Pique journalists' interest by using such details in a pitch to weave a compelling brief and captivating narrative.
Include data in graphs and charts to help reporters comprehend numerical data. Reporters appreciate this angle to foretell trends in the business or provide vital insights into the target market.
Having data and analytics in your PR campaign offers the following benefits —
- Drives curiosity among readers and captivates their attention
- Offers more value, making your content more shareable
- (More shares means) Reaching out to a wider target audience
- Reporters may build on those initial numbers with more information, making it simpler to write subsequent reports.
#3. Conduct First-hand Research
Two reasons why conducting original research is a useful SaaS PR strategy.
First — Readers prefer primary research because it helps them discover customer insights and trends. If your SaaS client surveys customer service preferences, the results will interest many marketers and academics, and you can benefit from that data for your PR.
Second — Search engines also value original research. They view the inclusion of links to scientific studies and polls as an indication of legitimacy, making this a typical technique for increasing rankings in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Therefore, try conducting innovative research.
If your SaaS client is into chatbot solutions, think of researching about—
- Chatbots from users’ perspectives
- How chatbots add value to the business
- How chatbots boost revenue.
Push yourself and your client to conduct original research. Check out businesses that master the same — Juniper Research, PwC, and Accenture. These companies frequently publish first-hand research as a part of their PR strategy.
Such research helps drive visitors to your site since it adds value, and more people would share it with others. It gives your client more publicity and coverage in the media and drives new businesses.
Consider taking baby steps like conducting a short online poll of the target audience, reviewing small samples, and creating graphics to promote the same.
#4. Use Newsjacking
Newsjacking is the process of creating content around breaking news stories and trends. This technique effectively ties the SaaS brand to a viral hashtag and forces a connection. Instead of coming up with completely fresh ideas, many brands choose "newsjack" popular stories to leverage the event's traffic to the brand's advantage.
This SaaS PR strategy lets you join in on the discourse at large. Since audiences are captivated by timely happenings, this tactic is fundamental to your digital marketing and PR strategy.
Consider the example of Hootsuite, which leveraged the launch of Game of Thrones new season with a video on YouTube and marketed it.
Game of Thrones was popular for its opening intro and music. Any true fan would identify the song the second it starts playing. Hootsuite recreated the well-known opening sequence of Game of Thrones, presenting the various social media platforms as the budding kingdoms and Hootsuite as "Westeros," the common continent.
This way, it linked the SaaS brand (Hootsuite) with the TV show, claiming they 'help manage the quiet battles’ fought between social networks.
Try keeping it simple, relevant, and timely to stay effective. You can offer a fast reaction by setting up listening lists based on preferable keywords. For this, use Google Alerts, Mention, Sprout Social, or Google Trends data to monitor what's happening.
#5. Leverage podcasts
The projected number of podcast listeners is expected to soar to 164 million by 2024. It is because podcasts are becoming a part and parcel of people’s everyday media consumption. Try capitalizing on its popularity as a cost-effective, innovative, and modern approach to running an effective SaaS PR campaign for your client.
There are two ways to do PR podcasts —
Hosting a podcast: Identify the recurring theme of the podcast. Explore different topics weekly and use PR tactics to accelerate listeners’ growth. This involves marketing your podcast intensively.
Here, you may need to —
- Run podcast ads on the platform
- Create native content that adopts a documentary-type storytelling arch
- Call over renowned guests to explore their followers/audience
- Do some content shaping to deliver podcast messages through various platforms (email marketing, social media, etc.)
Being a guest in a well-known podcast: You (or member of a client's marketing team) can be a guest in a well-known podcast to run a PR campaign for your SaaS business.
Here, you’ll need to send emails to podcasters and ask them to host key personnel from your client organization. This email should tell what value the business will bring to their listeners.
You can lead pitches on behalf of your SaaS client and conduct events by providing the audience with helpful content at no cost.
Time to Implement
PR for SaaS aims to impact the market and increase brand recall value. Follow the above-mentioned strategies to kickstart the PR campaign for your SaaS client. Start with setting expectations and navigating the right methods to help SaaS businesses grow multifold.
The innovation in technology and the SaaS sector is a key differentiator. Try highlighting the product's novelty, using audience data, and ensuring content depth on your client website as a part of the SaaS PR strategy. Once you have the right approach and vision, it is time to implement these strategies and reap the results.
