12 Key Lead Generation Strategies for SaaS Startups by StartUP MQL | Part 1 of 2
“DON’T THINK OF YOUR LEADS AS “LEADS”
Instead, think of them as people who are frustrated because understanding and buying your product is too hard. Your job is to make it easy for them to learn your product and get started.”
- Andy Pitre VP of Product, HubSpot
Maintaining a full pipeline of sales leads is a critical success factor for SaaS startups of any size. But with so many lead generation strategies available, which ones produce the best results? We've listed down 12 of your best options.
As a SaaS company, you have one goal in mind: to generate more leads. Lead generation is important to the success of your business because these are prospects who are actually interested in what you have to offer. They could become customers down the road if they’re treated correctly during their initial contact with your brand. So, how do you generate more leads? In this post, we’re going to explore 12 strategies that SaaS companies can implement into their lead generation plan. By following these guidelines, you’ll be able to dramatically increase your lead flow within a few months.
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a technique marketers use to attract and retain customers by providing valuable, supported content to them.
Content marketing attempts to create or distribute content that engages users and generates conversions (i.e., leads, sales). Content may take the form of written articles, videos, images, e-books, etc. Content marketing can also include speaking, blogging, animation, etc.
Content marketing has two parts: the content and the delivery. Content marketing is essentially a form of relationships and conversations with your prospects and customers (i.e., it's about engaging them). To obtain leads or make sales using content, marketers must determine who their target audiences are and what they want. Only then can content marketers create content that will attract (or re-engage) potential customers and convert them into leads or sales.
Content marketing also helps generate new traffic on websites, increases brand awareness, boosts search engine rankings, serves visitors longer on each visit, reduces customer service calls, increases conversion rates, etc.
Read StartUP MQL’s Content Marketing Guide for additional content marketing tips.
2. Email Marketing
Email marketing continues to be an effective strategy for SaaS, in large part because email remains the primary means of digital communication for consumers and business buyers. In addition, email's extremely low cost per contact makes it a channel that marketers can't afford not to pursue.
To maximize email marketing efforts, today's SaaS marketers need to build an effective data-driven strategy that incorporates the following elements:
Segmenting your email list to maximize the relevance of all communications:
One of the most important tasks for SaaS marketers is segmenting their email lists. This allows them to target content and offers to prospects that are most relevant to their business, leading to higher open and click-through rates.
For example, a software company selling CRM tools might segment its email list into companies in the finance, healthcare and technology industries.
The marketers at this SaaS firm can then use data collected about customers' preferences when it comes to features, system integrations and support to produce content that is most relevant for each subset of the email list.
Systematically adding prospects to the list and maintaining the list's accuracy:
One key element in building an effective email marketing strategy is making sure that your database lists are accurate. For example, marketers should include their target audience's full contact information and email, and they should add prospects to the list in a systematic way. This ensures your email blasts will reach the right people.
Producing relevant, useful and engaging content:
Email marketing is a great strategy for delivering relevant content to your prospects. For example, you can send emails that announce new features or that offer tips for using the software in certain scenarios.
One way to make your email content more engaging is to include visuals.
Including a strong call-to-action in every email blast:
Email blasts should make it clear what you want the reader to do next. For example, if a user is opening up an email from an SaaS business that focuses on CRM tools, s/he might have several options in the email itself.
These might include clicking a link to a blog post or article that shares tips for using the CRM software, going to a landing page for a demo of the product, or just clicking another link that takes them to the homepage.
Collecting relevant campaign data and using it to split-test content, calls and offers:
SaaS marketers can use metrics and data collected from past email campaigns to create better future content, calls to action and offers. For example, if a company keeps track of which email blasts are most effective at driving engagement, it can use that information to create targeted content in the future.
Read StartUP MQL’s blog on how to create a successful email marketing strategy for additional tips.
3. Free Trials
A free trial is a limited version of a product offered for download, testing, or other evaluation on the condition that if one likes it and wishes to continue its usage with full features at full cost then they must pay for it. Free trials are an excellent lead generation strategy for SaaS firms whose services are complex or unfamiliar. In such cases, lead generation is maximized by allowing a prospect to experience the full version of the service to make an evaluation and eventually a purchasing decision.
The "free trial lead generation strategy" allows SaaS startups to maximize lead generation by allowing their prospects to experience the full version of the SaaS product to make an evaluation and eventually a purchasing decision.
Strategically, free trials sometimes backfire if the process is too easy: the firm generates a lot of free trials, but very few subscribe or upgrade. This may be due to quality leads being turned off by continuous upselling attempts post-free trial sign-up.
4. Free Plan (Freemium Model)
The freemium model, as opposed to free trials, is most suitable for SaaS firms where a basic version of the software is sufficient for users to make a buying decision. However, as with free trials, freemium offers must strike the balance between making the sign-up easy enough for serious prospects but difficult for non-prospects.
Freemiums make highly appealing offers for email marketing and PPC campaigns. In addition, freemium offers should be displayed prominently on most or perhaps all your website's page templates. The free plan is designed to encourage users who are not yet ready to buy into trying out the product with minimal effort.
The following are the main options for free plans in SaaS:
Nominal fees or Tiered offerings: These have few limitations but users are encouraged to upgrade by being charged more if they use advanced features.
Feature limited plans: Plans with more functionality prosaic but still available for free. The firm can provide a limited number of free customers for each plan.
Zero dollar sign up: Free plans available where there are no restrictions on the use of basic functionalities. The user is not asked to enter payment information but will be asked to upgrade when he wants to do something that requires a fee.
5. Improve Website Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is an advanced discipline focused on the many details of website design, content, and functionality that contribute to a site visitor's decision to submit an inquiry via phone or webform. In other words, CRO helps optimize landing pages for lead generation.
A methodical CRO plan uses website analytics and other data to test and continuously improve messaging, major and minor design elements, webform layouts and functionality, and much more. Conversion rate optimization is crucial to maximize the effectiveness of SEO content marketing campaigns. If your website is not persuasive, those organic visitors will never see the inside of your lead pipeline.
The CRO lead generation strategy starts with goals and data. Conversion rate optimization for SaaS startups is less about the big prize - a handsomely-sized list of leads - and more about the increase in long-term customer value that can be gained from each optimized lead.
6. Improve Website UX
As with CRO, many SaaS firms limit their lead generation campaigns by failing to maximize their website's user experience (UX).
Poor UX — for instance, slow-loading web pages, confusing navigation, and broken internal links — frustrates prospects and drives them off the site. Bad UX not only undermines lead generation on the first visit to the website, but it also greatly reduces the likelihood that a prospect will ever come back.
UX improvements should focus intensely on the mobile website experience. Not only is mobile Internet usage growing rapidly, but it has also become a more important source of leads for SaaS companies.
Using the tips below to improve UX could increase your B2B SaaS website's lead generation by 33%:
Improve the speed of your website's page loads. Don't assume your visitors will stick around while a web page slowly renders. Use tools like New Relic, Google PageSpeed Insights, and GTMetrix to identify the specific performance issues that are causing page load times to lag.
Improve your website's internal linking. Tests by HubSpot revealed that 79% of visitors check out a company website after following an inbound link from an external blog or website. Improve internal linking by creating clear, logical navigation that guides visitors through the site.
Improve your mobile UX. More than 50% of your visitors will be using mobile devices to view your website, so you need to ensure that they have a good user experience on mobile. Improve your mobile UX by using a free tool like Google's Mobile-Friendly Test to check how Android and iOS users will see your site on mobile.
Improve your forms UX. Don't make your leads work too hard to get the information you need to qualify them and turn them into leads. Improve your forms UX by eliminating unnecessary fields, making it easy for leads to email themselves a copy of the form, and simplifying the form fields.
Improve your CTAs UX. Improve your CTA UX by making sure that they're easy to identify and understand.
