SaaS Marketing Guide
The 24 Best SaaS marketing agencies for 2023
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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
The rise of remote working has led to a huge increase in SaaS (Software as a Service) adoption, with the global SaaS market estimated to reach a value of $195 billion during 2023. In an increasingly crowded market, you need to make sure your SaaS company stands out.
Added to that, today’s tech-savvy B2B SaaS buyers like to complete their own research process before even thinking about contacting your sales team.
That’s where SaaS marketing comes in to make sure they can find your product when they search online, and that your content educates and engages them.
Marketing SaaS products requires unique skills and knowledge, so it’s best to hire a SaaS marketing agency to help you—but how do you pick the right one?
In this post, we’ll explore why it’s important to find an effective B2C or B2B SaaS marketing agency, what to look for in an agency, and the right questions to ask. We’ll also present 24 different options, and explain why accelerate agency does it best.
01. Top 24 SaaS marketing agencies
- accelerate agency: SaaS SEO, Digital PR & Link Building
- Hey Digital: SEM (PPC) & CRO
- NoGood: Email marketing and growth marketing
- Bay Leaf Digital: Web analytics
- Kalungi: Growth marketing
- Huemor – Web design
- Refine Labs: Demand generation
- Deviate Labs: Growth marketing
- Roketto: Web design & inbound marketing
- Inturact: Demand generation
- Heinz Marketing: Pipeline marketing
- HookLead: SEM & LinkedIn marketing
- Ladder: Growth marketing
- Smartbug Media: Inbound marketing
- Wallaroo Marketing: Full-service marketing
- Earnezt: Social media marketing
- Cobloom: Growth marketing
- BAMF media: Growth hacking
- Directive: Performance Marketing
- Kraftblick: Paid advertising
- DigitalCurrent: SEM & CRO
- From the Future: UX & digital PR
- Single Grain: SEO & SEM
- Simple Tiger: SEO & content marketing
02. Why finding an effective SaaS marketing agency matters
If your in-house marketing resources are basic or non-existent, you’ll need an experienced B2B SaaS marketing agency to help you. SaaS marketing is different from traditional marketing, because you’re selling digital products to fellow businesses.
SaaS marketing experts know the right strategies for this type of marketing, including nurturing long-term relationships with your customers so that they become paid users and continue to subscribe.
However, you have to find an agency with a proven track record of success, otherwise you’ll be wasting your money on ineffective campaigns.
While some agencies specialize in one aspect of SaaS marketing, such as SEO or content, it’s more efficient and cost-effective to choose a company that offers combined services.
For example, accelerate agency provides SEO (including technical and onsite SEO), content marketing, link building, and outreach.
Through a combination of human expertise, data, and machine learning, accelerate agency creates ambitious strategies that ensure continual PQL and MQL growth, as well as MRR. The agency produces high-quality content and gets it in front of your target audience at the right time.
03. What to look for when hiring a SaaS marketing agency
Choosing the right marketing agency for your B2B SaaS company can be difficult.
Here’s what to look for:
Can they fulfill your SaaS marketing strategy requirements?
What are your short- and long-term goals? Do you need an agency that specializes in your niche?
Most businesses will be looking for SEO, content marketing, lead generation, and CRO. But you might also want web development or design services. Make a list, and find an agency who’ll put together a SaaS marketing strategy based on your needs.
Will they work within your budget for SaaS marketing?
Your SaaS marketing budget is a major factor. Understanding your goals will help you work out what services you need, but you should also decide what you’re willing to pay.
Of course, the cost will depend on the scope of work you want the agency to carry out. It could be a one-off project or an ongoing relationship.
Can they complement your current team?
If your in-house marketing department works pretty well already, you may only need the agency to offer extra help—pairing their experts with your existing team members.
Make sure that the agency is a good fit, and that they’ll work well with your team or with other departments.
Do they have a good reputation?
As well as checking that your marketing agency has the right experience, make sure they’ll deliver what they promise. They’ll have testimonials and case studies on their website, but you should also read impartial reviews online.
The best marketing agencies will be happy to put you in touch with existing or previous clients.
04. Types of SaaS marketing
SaaS marketing is a nuanced and varied endeavor. Here are just a few of the main elements:
Inbound marketing
SaaS inbound marketing is about creating awareness and pulling potential customers toward your brand, instead of creating ads for a wide audience.
You’re advertising to people who are actively searching for a similar service. This involves creating content that your target audience is likely to engage with, and building authority and trust.
As well as blogs, video content, and social media, you can also optimize your CTAs, add AI chatbots and surveys, and show off key features with free demos.
Digital marketing
Digital marketing tools enable you to raise awareness and create demand at scale. The right agency, with the right tools, will work with your company in a range of areas:
SEO
SEO gives your content the best possible chance of being searched for, ranking highly in the SERPS, and being clicked on. Remember, only 0.63% of search engine users will go beyond the first page of Google results!
An agency will check the search volume of different keywords relating to your business. These include common terms your ideal customers are searching for, keywords your site already ranks for, and keywords your competitors rank for.
You also need to know which keywords to use at which stages of the funnel, and check your enterprise SEO metrics. Plus, if you create high-quality content and include quality links, you’ll have a better chance of ranking highly.
accelerate agency specializes in being a SaaS SEO agency, carrying out SEO strategy, technical SEO auditing, competitive intelligence keyword gap analysis, high authority link building, thought leadership content, onsite SEO content and AI optimizations for a 360-degree approach.
Social media marketing
Social media provides great visibility for SaaS content, whether it’s blog posts, videos, or infographics. But you’ll need a different strategy for each content type—for instance, placing image-led content on Pinterest or Instagram, and quick updates on Twitter. Pay attention to the networks used by different demographics.
It’s also vital to analyze the outcomes, by measuring the number of impressions and clicks through to your website as well as engagement through comments, likes, and shares.
SEM (PPC) marketing
SEM (PPC) advertising (where you pay each time someone interacts with your ad) can encompass traditional paid search ads, display ads, paid social ads, and remarketing ads for people who’ve already shown interest.
For example, you could put your ads on a site that’s frequently used by your target audience. The bonus of targeted digital advertising is that you get lots of trackable data, but your agency will help you measure the results to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth.
Email marketing
Email marketing is still a popular choice, with 64% of B2B marketers saying their strategy is effective for meeting business goals.
A SaaS company might send welcome emails for new subscribers, email newsletters with educational content, and recommendations for customers.
Regular emails with links to your blog posts are a great way to drive traffic to your site. You can also use re-engagement email sequences to target inactive subscribers.
Lead generation
In SaaS, lead generation is marketing-focused rather than sales-focused. That’s because potential customers can easily try the software online, and don’t need to be persuaded to make a high upfront payment.
Marketing qualified leads (MQL)
MQLs are those that fit your ideal client profile—which you’ll discover by collecting their data.
They’ve shown an initial interest, so marketers can pass them to the sales team to set up a demo. However, SaaS and B2B buyers often prefer access to software earlier in the buying cycle.
Sales qualified leads (SQL)
SQLs are willing to consider a purchase. They’ve probably visited your site several times, checked out your pricing page, or requested a demo.
They shouldn’t be confused with “opportunities”, which are people who have indicated interest in a specific deal.
Product qualified leads (PQL)
PQLs are the key group in SaaS marketing, and they’re a step further into the funnel than MQLs.
They have already experienced value from using your product, through a free trial or freemium model with limited features. These leads are much more likely to become paying customers.
Content marketing
This is your chance to position yourself as a thought leader. Potential customers who engage with your content are likely to seek out your brand when they’re ready to purchase, and other content writers will quote you—meaning more backlinks.
You need to create articles about your product and about the industry, and produce guest blogs for other sites.
A content marketing strategy might also include creating landing pages for different buyer personas, setting up a knowledge base, and targeting competitors’ content gaps.
Look for a marketing agency that has strong content partnerships, so that you can get your content featured around the web.
For example, accelerate agency is able to secure links for clients from high-authority sites such as HubSpot, Moz, and TechCrunch through its long-standing partnerships.
LinkedIn is a useful way to target certain audiences, such as those who have specific job titles or work for particular companies.
You can set up lead generation forms, which allow users to fill out their details without leaving the LinkedIn feed, and follow up with those who submit forms. It’s also possible to sync leads directly with CRM and automation platforms.
Brand awareness
Content marketing is the best way to present your value, while paid ads on specific websites will keep you top of mind and drive visitors to your website.
Although SaaS marketing is all about customer retention for the long-term, you do still need to acquire customers in the first place. You have to make people aware of your brand and what it stands for.
Demand generation
Demand generation focuses on content that generates awareness but also engages prospective customers by educating them about your product and its importance.
You need to make people feel like they can’t live without your product. It’s also worth offering limited edition products or offers to build demand and urgency—for instance, you could offer 20% off subscriptions for one month only.
05. Top 24 SaaS marketing agencies
SaaS marketing agencies vary widely. You’ll still need to do your own research, but we’ve picked our top 24 to give you an idea of what’s out there:
1. accelerate agency: SaaS SEO, digital PR & link building
accelerate agency combines several specialisms to produce results for SaaS companies.
Clients Include Sage, RingCentral, Paylocity, Global App Testing, Pandadoc, Dialpad, Auditboard, Platform,sh, Brightpearl and many more.
With engaging content, efficient SEO Strategy, keyword research, link building, digital PR, technical SEO and onsite content, the agency will optimize your web presence to ensure PQL and MQL growth, while driving MRR.
Working with accelerate agency, you’ll get a robust SaaS SEO strategy that brings long-term cost efficiency. Unlike SEM (PPC), where you have to keep investing more money, SEO has a compound effect and increases your ROI over time.
You’ll see this through detailed monthly reports that track your growth and successes.
The agency can work as an extension of your marketing team, or the creators and editors will produce ready-to-publish SEO content for you, using real data and AI to make sure it’s uber-targeted and high ranking.
You also benefit from relationships with high-authority domains, meaning your content is placed on trusted sites and contains authoritative links.
accelerate agency offers a combination of on-page, off-page, and technical SEO strategies. This includes ensuring that the technical specifications of your website are optimized for the best user experience.
The agency has a reputation for bringing success to major brands. For example, cloud communications giant RingCentral saw a 40% increase in ARR and 120;1 ROI, Dialpad saw a 4130% increase in monthly non-brand traffic, while data platform Databricks got 450,000 new visitors to its site over six months.
Book a consultation to see how accelerate agency can scale your SaaS brand
2. Hey Digital: SEM & CRO
Hey Digital aims to grow SaaS companies with paid advertising and CRO, as well as landing page design.
It builds paid acquisition campaigns on Facebook, Google, Bing, and LinkedIn to help you increase revenue via new acquisition channels, and improves your PPC campaign targeting to reduce wasted spend.
Hey Digital is all about ads rather than content marketing—which is great if you want to focus on that, but SEO-driven content is a better way to engage.
3. NoGood: Email marketing and growth marketing
NoGood describes itself as “the Billie Eilish of growth marketing” and counts TikTok as a client.
It works with VC-backed startups as well as big brands, and specializes in growth hacking to help you achieve rapid growth. NoGood will appoint a “growth squad” to execute strategy, experimentation, and refinement.
The agency combines inbound marketing, SEO, and content marketing, plus SEM and CRO. However, their content marketing section doesn’t mention link building or partner relationships.
4. Bay Leaf Digital: Web analytics
Bay Leaf is a full-service digital marketing agency with a focus on growing awareness and strengthening pipelines. It uses web analytics to create data-driven strategies, and also offers SEO, SEM, and content marketing.
The analytics insights help clients to increase their MRR, reduce cost per lead, and create higher-converting landing pages. Bay Leaf will also connect and automate email marketing and CRM platforms. It’s been around since 2013 and says it’s still adding to its team.
5. Kalungi: Growth marketing
Kalungi is a full-service agency, offering marketing leadership through its own B2B marketing playbook. It provides content creation, branding, design, and analysis, on a pay-for-performance basis with quarterly OKRs.
The CMO-as-a-Service model gives your company an associate CMO who will build and manage your marketing strategy—including hiring, onboarding, and training your in-house team.
Kalungi focuses on small tech firms, so may not be suitable for scaleup-up or global enterprises (unlike accelerate agency).
6. Huemor: Web design
Huemor is a web design and development agency that aims to improve the user experience for your website visitors.
After discovering what makes you unique, and getting to understand your customers, the agency uses storytelling, web design, and conversion optimization to accurately reflect your brand and create memorable digital products and online experiences.
Some reviewers mention a few issues with project and task management and the QA process during the development, as well schedule slippage. 1
7. Refine Labs: Demand generation
Refine Labs sets itself up as an extension of your internal team, promising revenue growth, marketing innovation, and thought leadership. It helps you implement sustainable revenue programs by combining research, strategy, and execution to generate demand.
The agency takes a buyer-centric approach, using real customer data to analyze and optimize your current sales funnels. It carries out continuous testing, iterations, and market experiments, creating new demand in awareness channels and lowering customer acquisition costs.
8. Deviate Labs: Growth marketing
Deviate Labs is a growth marketing consultancy that works with companies from Shark Tank startups to billion-dollar enterprises—based on the idea that small business strategies can also work for large businesses, and vice versa.
It carries out advertising audits, market analysis, and competitor research to ascertain the unique value proposition and audience, and uncover new perspectives to position your company.
SaaS marketing is listed as a feature alongside programmatic advertising and conversion optimization. There’s not much focus on SEO.
9. Roketto: Web design & inbound marketing
Roketto is an inbound marketing and web design agency, which aims to help SaaS companies scale their reach and profits for predictable growth.
The agency develops content for every stage of the customer journey, instead of focusing on top of funnel prospects. It uses inbound marketing to position your brand as a trusted industry leader.
Other services include AdWords campaigns, SEO, and technical on-page optimization. Roketto says it specializes in SaaS, but it also handles industrial/manufacturing and real estate.
10. Inturact: Demand generation
Inturact offers consultancy and full-service SaaS marketing, focusing on customer acquisition, sales and marketing alignment, customer retention, and monetization.
Services include growth consulting, product marketing, inbound marketing, growth hacking, web design and development, content marketing, and data analysis.
The agency aligns digital marketing with sales objectives, using technological solutions to build your brand, expand reach, and increase revenue. It takes a data-driven, product-led approach, providing you with a custom growth playbook and clear goal setting.
11. Heinz Marketing: Pipeline marketing
Heinz Marketing aims to provide a predictable pipeline for clients struggling with their sales. It does this through strategic planning, data-driven marketing, and creative problem-solving, with results based on buyer insights, market-driven best practices, and a rapid feedback loop.
After identifying your target audience, the agency uses deep, customer-centric insights to help you build immersive customer experiences. It leverages marketing automation including campaign process workflow development, alongside lead nurturing and scoring and social media integration.
12. HookLead: SEM & LinkedIn marketing
HookLead operates as consultants or as an extension to your team. They focus on data analysis, acquisition, growth optimization, and retention, helping you drive leads, sales, and growth in MRR and ARR.
The agency will create or improve a SEM campaign with scalable lead generation methods.
HookLead will analyze and take action on any part of the funnel, whether it’s educating customers, onboarding, or increasing referrals. They also handle conversion optimization, re-targeting, and email nurture campaigns.
13. Ladder: Growth marketing
Ladder promises to make you stand out from the competition through a combination of paid ads, conversion optimization, email activation, and growth analytics.
The agency will identify the most effective messages and designs across your digital footprint, and allocate your resources to the winning mix of channels, initiatives, and KPIs.
Services include content strategy, creative testing of email sequences, optimized landing pages, multichannel prospecting, retargeting of top-performing user segments, and agile video production.
14. Smartbug Media: Inbound marketing
SmartBug specializes in inbound marketing, helping you identify gaps and opportunities and achieve predictable results across channels.
It offers strategy, content marketing, web design, and web development, alongside PR, sales enablement, marketing automation, and data analysis.
The agency also handles demand generation and paid media, and takes a personalized approach to SEO.
However, it doesn’t only focus on SaaS companies, as ecommerce marketing is also on offer. There are a couple of online user reviews that mention high pricing. 2
15. Wallaroo Marketing: Full-service marketing
Wallaroo started as an SEO and content marketing agency, and now offers social media advertising for all sizes of company, namely design, creation, and targeting of paid social ads.
It pairs members of its team with members of yours, so you can work together on campaigns. The agency also provides brand development, design (print, graphic, and digital), UX/UI, web and app development, photography and videography.
That’s a lot, which might raise concerns over which is the main specialism.
16. Earnezt: Social media marketing
Earnezt believes that B2B customers want to be inspired, engaged, and entertained, just as much as B2C customers.
The agency works with clients at a strategic level, helping them to define a solid go-to-market strategy and interpret data for better commercial returns.
It uses customer insights to create campaigns, and refines the strategy using live data on how customers are interacting on socials. Other services include advertising, direct marketing, live events, digital experiences, and content marketing.
17. Cobloom: Growth marketing
Having successfully sold their own SaaS startup, the Cobloom team is well-placed to help others grow.
Specializing only in SaaS companies, it generates qualified and engaged leads through referral, content, and inbound marketing (the latter seems to be sold as a separate package).
The agency combines the long-term growth of inbound marketing with the rapid iteration of growth hacking, promising to develop or optimize your pricing model and generate more trials, demos, and conversations—as well as reducing churn.
18. BAMF media: Growth hacking
BAMF (which stands for Badass Marketers and Founders) is another growth-hacking agency that chiefly uses email and LinkedIn prospecting to turn cold leads into warm leads.
By combining human research, technology, and data-driven copywriting, they’ll help you grow your pipeline with qualified prospects.
BAMF will ghost-write viral content for your LinkedIn profile, optimize that profile, and take care of outreach and messaging to relevant prospects who have interacted with your content, leading them to book appointments on your calendar.
19. Directive: Performance marketing
Directive is a performance marketing agency that aims to scale brand advertising, lower your customer acquisition costs, and create a healthier media mix.
It combines SEM, SEO, content, paid media, email activation, design, analytics, and financial modeling, as well as digital PR.
The agency uses its own “Customer Generation” methodology, which is basically a customer-led version of demand generation. It leverages first-party data and detailed segmentation to drive alignment between sales, marketing, and lifetime customer success.
20. Kraftblick: Paid advertising
Kraftblick is a digital marketing agency that helps SaaS companies increase their brand awareness and visibility in order to get mentions on high-ranking platforms.
It offers consultancy services rather than merging with your own team, providing step-by-step instructions on the marketing activities you should carry out, and how to implement them.
Alongside SEM advertising campaigns, the agency offers SEO and content marketing, using target audience analysis and keyword research to create viral blog topics for your business.
21. DigitalCurrent: SEM & CRO
DigitalCurrent is a full-service digital agency that specializes in SEM and CRO, but also offers content marketing, link building, and SEO.
It builds SEM campaigns ranging from search and display to YouTube, Gmail, and PLAs, combining paid social with paid search.
In terms of CRO, the agency runs polls and interviews to learn what your happiest customers love about you. It also carries out A/B testing and user testing, and aligns the CRO strategy with your business goals.
22. From the Future: UX & digital PR
From the Future takes a scientific approach to marketing, with its own Growth Amplified™ methodology involving innovative media, real-time data, and response-optimized creative.
There’s a focus on UX—the team uses CRO to find friction in your purchase processes, and organic social to engage with followers and create a buzz.
They also create editorial-style content that targets users at the beginning of their buying journey, and promote it via third-party advertisers. The agency doesn’t only specialize in SaaS, though.
23. Single Grain: SEO & SEM
Another full-service agency, Single Grain runs digital marketing campaigns based on your business goals. The agency works with your business to find, nurture, and convert qualified leads, through a combination of SEM, SEO, and CRO.
The agency will build you a custom SEM campaign, with targeted search advertising, Google Ads, and paid social. Alongside SEO goal evaluation and KPI setting, it offers content marketing, performance marketing, and competitor analysis. There’s also ecommerce marketing, not just SaaS.
24. SimpleTiger: SEO & content marketing
SimpleTiger is a SaaS content marketing agency that focuses on personalizing customer engagement and capturing your brand’s voice.
It also focuses on SEO, using keyword research, content strategy, and promotion to increase traffic and conversions. SEO can be purchased individually or as part of a complete solution.
The agency integrates into your team and provides deep monthly reports plus a live dashboard where you can see real-time data. Other services include paid ads and technical optimization.
06. Questions to ask a SaaS marketing company
Okay, so you know what to look for in marketing SaaS companies, and you’ve seen some of the options. But what are the questions you need to ask?
1. What kind of SaaS business experience do you have? Have you worked within my industry?
Make sure the agency has experience, not just in SaaS, but in your particular niche if possible.
As an example, accelerate agency has been in the SEO industry since before the birth of Google (which was 25 years ago, if you want to feel old!)
2. What kind of SaaS marketing services do you offer?
As we’ve seen, SaaS marketing agencies can offer a wide range of services, so choose according to your needs. You might only need SaaS content marketing or you might want to combine it with link building and SEO.
3. How have your marketing services improved conversion rates? Any case studies?
Ask for facts and figures, not vague statements. Look at case studies for other businesses.
For instance, accelerate agency helped global cloud comms provider RingCentral to achieve a 40% increase in ARR, by placing thousands of thought leadership pieces with high-authority backlinks and improving RingCentral’s onsite content SEO.
4. What is a realistic timeline for SaaS SEO growth?
SaaS SEO growth is different for each business, and will depend on the type of growth you want to achieve and the resources you have.
Discuss your growth goals with the agency and work out a realistic timeline that everyone’s happy with.
5. What is the size of your SaaS marketing agency and marketing team?
Size isn’t everything—a small SaaS digital marketing agency might have a great track record. However, for a big project or specific requirements, you’ll need to know they can handle it.
The bigger the agency, the more likely they are to have a specialist in your niche.
6. Do you use any marketing tools such as marketing automation etc.?
If they don’t use automation and tools, the agency may lack efficiency, and then it’ll take longer to see results.
accelerate agency uses a combination of human expertise and machine learning.
7. How do you report your marketing efforts?
You’ll need to review the work they’ve completed, so that you can see progress toward your goals. Will the agency give you regular updates, and when?
8. What can you show me given our marketing budget?
Be clear about what you’re getting for your money. The agency should explain this in detail and point out the limitations of your budget.
Book a consultation to see how accelerate agency can boost your SaaS brand
07. Frequently asked questions about SaaS marketing agencies
What is SaaS Marketing?
SaaS marketing is a specific form of marketing for Software as a Service products. These are digital solutions rather than physical products, which can make it harder to engage customers.
The subscription-based payment model also requires SaaS businesses to retain customers for the long haul, so nurturing relationships is vital.
Why aren’t my lead generation strategies working?
If you’re not generating as many leads as you’d like, this could be due to low SERP rankings, a clunky website, or advertising on a platform that’s not used by your target audience.
It’s best to ask a SaaS marketing agency to help you with SEO, content strategy, and website optimization so that potential leads not only discover your product but engage with your content.
How much do SaaS marketing services cost?
Prices vary according to the size of the SaaS marketing company, its expertise, and its specialisms. It also depends what you want them to do—after discussing your needs, they’ll come up with a bespoke plan.
Many agencies use a pay-for-performance model where you only pay if the agency delivers results.
What are the most effective SaaS marketing techniques?
Again, it depends what you want to achieve. If you’re looking for fast results, then SEM or paid social ads can work. But for long-term growth, SEO, content marketing, and link building are a better bet.
These tactics will help to position your brand as an authority in your industry, and keep customers coming back. You can easily combine them with email marketing and referral marketing, too.