SaaS Marketing Guide
6 Effective SaaS lead generation strategies
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Further Reading:
- SaaS Marketing Strategy
- SaaS Content Marketing
- SaaS SEO
- SaaS Account Based Marketing
- SaaS Email Marketing
- SaaS Inbound Marketing
- SaaS Retargeting
- SaaS Marketing Budget
- SaaS Marketing Plan
- SaaS Referral Marketing
- SaaS Demand Generation
- SaaS Customer Journey
- SaaS CMO Strategy
- SaaS link building
- SaaS Lead Generation
- SaaS Landing Page Examples
- SaaS CMS
- SaaS Customer Churn
- SaaS Marketing Automation
- SaaS Marketing Campaigns
- SaaS Marketing Agency
- SaaS SEO Agency
- SaaS Link Building Services
SaaS lead generation can seem tricky at first. After all, it’s a competitive space, with thousands of companies vying for attention.
So how do you attract your ideal clients? How do you find clients who will stay with you for the long term and add a huge amount of value to your business?
Actually, it might not be as difficult as you think.
We’re going to explore six lead generation strategies that have been proven to work very well for SaaS businesses.
Skip ahead, if you like:
Top SaaS lead generation strategies for your business
- Optimize organic search
- Get involved in industry events
- Request referrals
- Engage with software discovery platforms
- Create competitor comparison pages
- Get imaginative with your content strategy
Things to consider before adopting new SaaS lead generation solutions
ROI tracking tips for B2B SaaS lead generation
Best practices for SaaS lead generation
FAQs about SaaS lead generation
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What is SaaS lead generation?
Let’s face it, without leads, you don’t have a business. It doesn’t matter if your product is best-in-class if you don’t actually have any clients. Productive lead generation is the lifeblood of any successful business, and a major focus for most.
Each particular type of business will have specific needs when it comes to generating leads, and the same applies to SaaS operators. For one thing, the long sales cycles that are typical in the SaaS sector generally mean that an effective SaaS marketing strategy will look different from, say, a fast fashion marketing strategy.
There will be some overlap, of course. In the modern business environment, pretty much nobody can afford to ignore SEO, for example. But when you’re considering lead generation for SaaS services, it’s important to focus on the kinds of approaches that speak to your target audience in particular.
So let’s take a look at a few tried-and-tested techniques for lead generation SaaS companies will find work particularly well for them.
Top SaaS lead generation strategies for your business
The good news is that there are a number of ways of achieving effective B2B SaaS lead generation.
Some of these you may well be implementing already, but it’s possible others might be approaches you haven’t considered. It’s always worthwhile branching out and experimenting with new strategies:
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01. Optimize organic search
There’s no getting around it, SEO is so important that it has to come first on this list. In-depth keyword analysis and well-placed backlinks will get you off to a great start here. But it can also be useful just to take a step back and think about user intent more deeply.
Try to make a connection between what your potential customers need and what kind of searches they’re making. What problems do they have, and how does your product solve them? That way, you’ll be able to leverage SEO properly using your own relevant, high-quality content and attract more clients.
The fact is, most SaaS companies are heavily reliant on organic search. Paid clicks might work well for something like an ecommerce site, but SaaS operators need to build a client base that will stay for the long term.
A well-thought-out SEO strategy means a faster reduction in cost per acquisition and can deliver more conversions from other channels.
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02. Get involved in industry events
Another effective way of reaching out to your target market and supporting lead generation is to participate in events like business conferences. This could mean anything from being a sponsor to having senior team members speak or be part of a panel discussion.
The key idea here is that doing this builds your authority within the industry. It’s a good plan to look for events that dovetail with your target customers’ interests, since that’s where you’ll find them.
If you’re struggling to find appropriate events, why not organize one yourself? Granted, this will mean allocating substantial resources in the short term, but the boost it gives your visibility will be well worth it.
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03. Request referrals
Succeeding in SaaS is all about building trust, and one of the best ways of doing that is for happy customers to recommend your service.
You don’t need to send out endless requests for referrals. It’s better to be a little cautious here because you don’t want to irritate your clients. One option is to approach customers requesting a referral at a significant moment in their relationship with you. This could mean after they’ve been with you a year or you’ve just delivered an important success, for example.
It’s also possible to formalize referral requests. For instance, you could create a dedicated referral system that incentivizes recommendations.
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04. Engage with software discovery platforms
Software discovery platforms are sites that host user reviews of different kinds of B2B software. People who search them are often looking for something in particular, which makes them at the very least a warm lead.
These sites are also worth watching because you can learn a lot about what potential clients want. It’s essentially free feedback.
You can also cast your eye over what reviewers like and dislike about your competitors’ products, which can be useful for refining your product’s design and helping it stand out.
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05. Create competitor comparison pages
When it comes to SaaS, different types of lead generation are appropriate for different stages of the sales funnel.
So, make sure you have all your bases covered. Creating a page that directly compares your service to a competitor’s can help turn an interested MQL into an SQL who is ready to buy.
Assuming your product does have a valuable USP, this is where you can make it shine.
Craft a side-by-side comparison of your product with a leading competitor’s, making sure to showcase the strengths of yours. Best practice tips for doing this include:
- Make it easy on the eye: Use images and formatting that show the product differences clearly
- Do your research: Study every aspect of the competitor product, from pricing to features, so you can create a convincing case as to why yours is better
- Enable easy follow-up: Make sure to include relevant links and resources on the page to encourage the reader to sign up
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06. Get imaginative with your content strategy
Providing useful, high-quality content is one of the best B2B SaaS lead generation strategies. Combined with an effective SEO strategy, it’s one of the most powerful ways of driving traffic to your site.
But content doesn’t just have to mean publishing insightful blog-based commentary, vital as that is. There are so many other channels you could be using.
Depending on the nature of your product offering and the audiences you’re targeting, you might want to consider video or podcasting, for example. These can be a great way of reaching out to new audiences and generating fresh leads.
Audio-visual media like these are also great for cross-collaboration. It can be much easier to build a community around this kind of channel than around the written word.
This means that you’ll create more opportunities for having real-life conversations and, in turn, showcasing your authority.
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Things to consider before adopting new SaaS lead generation solutions
There are a number of things to consider before you embark on a lead generation drive.
As well as obvious limiting factors such as the budget available, there may be other constraints. For instance, the regulatory environment you operate in may restrict the kinds of outreach you can do. Make sure you’re fully aware of anything like this so you can avoid any potential problems further down the line.
There are some elements of a lead generation strategy that are pretty much universal, though. One of these is that you have to know your customer.
You should have a clear idea of the clients you’re aiming to attract before you start. Build up an Ideal Client Profile (ICP); the more detailed, the better.
What business are they in? Where are they based? What’s their current annual turnover? The more you know about your target clients, the easier it will be to find them.
When it comes to SaaS, different types of lead generation work better for landing different kinds of clients. A fast-growing startup will meet you in a different place from a long-established multinational corporation, for example. It’s vital to factor this aspect of the process into your planning.
It’s also crucial to think about how your prospects move down the conversion funnel. Picture it like this:
Tracking your typical customer’s journey through the different stages over time will be revealing. You’ll learn what it takes in your particular situation to turn a lead into a qualified lead. And to turn that qualified lead into a new sign-up.
Putting all this together, you can use SaaS lead scoring techniques to figure out how to rank your leads. This is important because it gives your sales team a good idea of how to prioritize each lead in terms of how likely it is to generate value for your business.
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ROI tracking tips for B2B SaaS lead generation
You’ll have a lot of data at your fingertips to help you work out how effective your lead generation campaign is. The most important metrics when figuring out ROI are the Cost Per Lead (CPL) and the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).These refer to the average amount of money invested in marketing to attract one lead or sign up one customer, respectively.
Each of these tells you a slightly different story. Monitoring CPL is useful for identifying which channels are working best for you to attract leads in the first place. Whereas CAC gives you a much clearer picture of the progress of your campaign as a whole and how well it’s translating into new business.
When tracking ROI for a SaaS lead generation campaign, you’ll find that these metrics give you the most accurate picture of how your situation is evolving.
Best practices for SaaS lead generation
Having looked at some specific techniques, let’s now think about how the best lead generation for SaaS can be approached strategically. This is where we get into exploring best practice and how to make it work for your business.
Optimize your website for conversions
Getting potential clients to visit your website is half the battle. But once they’re there, it’s crucial to do everything you can to draw them in further. As a minimum, your site should flow logically and be highly responsive, so the user experience is first-rate.
Research which areas of your website tend to be heavily visited, and place CTA opportunities on those pages. The key point is to make it easy for readers to move smoothly through your site in a structured way. In turn, this increases the chances of upping your conversion rate.
Fully engage with free trial users
If you offer free trials, there are a couple of elements it’s crucial to get right. First, look at the first page that greets a user on sign-up. Is it genuinely engaging? Could you improve it?
One mistake to avoid is overloading the reader with long lists of features. You may be tempted to show off all your product’s capabilities immediately, but overwhelming the reader with detail can actually scare them off.
Second, make sure to do follow-up. This is where you can get into that detail, highlighting product features in emails in a useful way. Gently encourage the user to log in and make use of them.
Automate your marketing
There’s a lot you can do in terms of automation to save time. Content and email marketing can be made much more efficient with well-designed automation tools in place.
To make the most of automation, establish workflows that use data about typical client journeys to generate new leads. If you find that users who download premium content are much more likely to convert, for example, then that’s an area of focus worth highlighting.
Try closed-loop targeting
This strategy involves figuring out whether visitors to your website behave the way you’d like them to. It gives you some insight into where your most valuable customers come from.
Use cohort analysis of new sign-ups to understand which acquisition channels are the most efficient in delivering customer lifetime value and helping hit your SaaS KPIs. You can use the data generated to refine your marketing strategy so that it targets the best prospects.
Accelerate your SaaS lead generation
Follow all our strategies, tips, and best practices above, and your SaaS business is sure to have a leg up on its rivals, when it comes to lead generation. If you need more expert help, though, accelerate agency is on hand to provide our industry-specific insight and the benefit of our experience.
FAQs about SaaS lead generation
What does a SaaS lead generation agency do?
A SaaS lead generation agency provides a specialist lead generation service for B2B SaaS companies. It brings its expertise to the table to help companies effectively reach out to their target market and move up to the next level.
Essentially, it takes the headache out of finding new business and converting it to long-time returns, enabling executives to concentrate on core business tasks.
What is the best platform for lead generation?
The best platform for SaaS lead generation depends on your line of business. However, most companies in the SaaS sector will benefit from a well-executed content marketing strategy that helps drive traffic to their websites, boosting conversion rates.
