SaaS inbound marketing - Your Ultimate Guide

Gone are the days when companies relied only on billboards, event sponsorship, cold callings, and direct mail to boost brand awareness and visibility. 

Inbound marketing is the new approach that ‘pulls’ the audience towards brands. 🔍74% of organizations worldwide rely on an inbound marketing approach.

Are you ready to hop onto the inbound marketing bandwagon?

If yes, this guide on SaaS inbound marketing is the only thing you need to learn more about inbound marketing for SaaS companies. 

So, let’s begin the educational ride!

What is inbound marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy that draws potential customers toward a product or service via strategically engaging content tailored to their preferences and interests. 

Marketing tactics such as SEO, optimized blogs, social media, and more are used to attract buyers, build trust, create brand awareness, and generate high-quality leads.

What is SaaS Inbound Marketing & Why is it Important?

SaaS inbound marketing is a marketing methodology that involves cost-effectively generating potential and quality leads. It enables SaaS companies to establish brand awareness and authority.

An inbound SaaS marketing strategy may sound complex but is not. It involves only three primary areas.

SaaS content creation

SaaS content is customer-oriented. They are crafted to address the prospect’s needs and queries. In SaaS inbound marketing, content aligns with your prospect’s pain points and behaviors.

Follow a few things to create quality SaaS content for your target audiences. 

• Develop a buyer persona to understand your ideal target audience – their pain points, needs, choices, and behaviors. 
• Target the right keywords for your content so that people can find you when they search using specific search terms. SEMRush, Ahrefs, Google’s keyword planner, etc. can help you target the ideal keywords.
• Identify trending topics on social media with tools like BuzzSumo and create content on the trending topics. It will help you engage prospects better.
• Create in-depth, valuable, relevant content updated with the latest information to ensure a better user experience.
• Offer a range of content – blogs, infographics, videos, webinars, podcasts, eBooks, case studies, whitepapers, and more.

Content promotion

Promoting the content is equally important as creating it. And to promote your quality content, a proper SaaS SEO strategy is a must. 

• SEO is a vast subject that covers several effective ways to make your content visible through higher rankings in the SERPs. A few include using backlinks in the content, optimizing web pages, making the web pages mobile-responsive, improving page load speed, well-structured content, and more.
• Promote your content via social media channels. Share them to increase your organic reach and social media followers. Also, paid features like Facebook Boost Post can help promote your content.
• Guest posting is an effective way to promote content and get valuable backlinks. Reach out to brands in the SaaS niche and pitch a guest post idea.
• Send lead nurturing, informative, and action-oriented content to your email subscribers via email marketing to promote your SaaS inbound marketing content.

Optimizing content conversions

After you have created and promoted your content for SaaS inbound marketing, it’s time for your prospects to bring in value. But how? Through conversions.

To convert your readers into customers, nurture them with valuable content like in-depth how-to guides, offer lead magnets like eBooks, templates, and checklists, and email marketing to send company information, newsletters, updates, etc. You can also offer free trials, which work great for SaaS inbound marketing. 

Coming to the importance of SaaS inbound marketing, a few facts tell you a lot about the significance of an inbound SaaS marketing strategy.

🔍 75% of marketers consider inbound marketing effective; 

🔍 85% of the biggest SaaS brands own an active blog for SaaS inbound marketing; and 

🔍 60% of marketers think inbound marketing is the best way to generate high-quality leads. 

These numbers show that marketers rely on inbound marketing for SaaS lead generation. 

Now, let’s see how beneficial inbound marketing is for SaaS companies.  

• Inbound marketing for SaaS enables brands to build awareness, trust, and authority – that’s what buyers look for before making a purchase. 
• It involves SaaS content creation tailored to the needs and preferences of the target audience. Thus, by aligning your SaaS content with what your prospects need, you can become a credible source for the prospects. 
• Inbound marketing organically earns the attention of ideal customers. 
• Inbound marketing costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound marketing.
• SaaS inbound marketing is an essential part of demand generation. It can drive your ROI to the next level. How? We’ll tell you later! 😎

Inbound Marketing Methodology for SaaS 

Peter Cohen, principal of SaaS Marketing Strategy Advisors, once said, 

“When [SaaS customers] need a solution, they do some online research, maybe ask a colleague, try the solution or watch a demo, and then buy. The whole process might take a few days, maybe a few hours. Customers find it, they see it, they like it, they buy it. Done.”

Unlike B2B sales, the SaaS sales cycle is relatively short. The SaaS sales cycle takes 84 days on average but can be shorter (about 40 days) if the product pricing is below $5000. Hence, inbound marketing for SaaS companies works well. You can effectively engage prospects at each stage of the sales funnel.

For instance, suppose you are a SaaS company selling SEO software. Here are the SaaS inbound marketing efforts you can try at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Awareness stage

At this stage, you can provide content about SEO for people to understand when they need SEO, what it does, and how it can benefit them. You can also talk about your SEO services and how it can help them resolve the issue of declining conversions. 

Consideration stage

The content at this stage must bring your product benefits to the spotlight. Tell people about the unique benefits of your SaaS product. Content like ‘factors to consider when buying an SEO software,’ ‘comparison among SEO software brands’, etc., is ideal for the consideration stage.

Decision stage

Give the audience fact-rich content. Offer them case studies and success stories to convince them to buy your product. 

Delight stage 

The delight stage is all about offering continuous support services to the audience to convert them into loyal customers. Give them valuable content like tutorials about how to use your SEO product better, dos and don’ts in SEO, SEO best practices and tips, and much more.

Isn’t inbound marketing for SaaS easy? The simple idea in SaaS inbound marketing is: to provide valuable content for your audience at different stages of their journey. 

Now, let’s see how SaaS inbound marketing drives your ROI. 

How is Inbound Marketing a Winning Strategy for ROI? 

A few things about inbound marketing📝

• 79% of companies report a positive ROI for inbound marketing. 
• Inbound marketing attracts the audience. If you engage them well, it can deliver sustainable results. 
• It is a long-term strategy that yields results if you invest and have a good strategy in place. 
• Communication plays a vital role in inbound marketing. It helps you get new business and retain existing clients. 

Are you ready to witness your inbound marketing success? Here’s how you can kickstart your SaaS inbound marketing and skyrocket your ROI🚀

Step 1: Develop your SaaS inbound marketing tech stack

To ensure successful inbound marketing for SaaS, start by reviewing your technology stack🔍-what tools do you have, and more do you need?

You will need a bare minimum of the following technology to build and execute a successful inbound SaaS marketing strategy.

• A website and landing page solution

• Marketing automation software
• Sales automation software
• CRM
• Google Analytics and Tag Manager

The SaaS space is currently flooded with tech and tools. Hence, you must thoroughly research the SaaS marketing landscape to pick the best technology for your business. 

Chances are that you will get confused. Reach out to a SaaS inbound marketing agency (like us!) for help. 

Our Marketing & SalesOps services can help you figure out which tech best suits your business needs and quickly set up your tech stack. We can also enable hassle-free communication between your MarTech and sales stack and set up automation for seamless work. 

A quick tip💡Find technology that integrates well with your marketing tech stack. Your tools must work together seamlessly to support a successful implementation of SaaS inbound marketing. For example, ensure that your CRM integrates easily with your email marketing system to capture lead information and engagements. 

Step 2: Identify your ideal customer segments and profiles

What does your ideal customer look like? What are their characteristics, and how do they behave?

These questions are vital to finding out whom you want to target and are the basis for all your SaaS inbound marketing campaigns and communications. 

Here are the key stages of identifying your target audience and their pain points to personalize your communications. 

1. Customer segmentation and prioritization

Segmentation is about dividing your customer base into segments or groups and then prioritizing the ones that are easy to target. Here’s what you must do at this stage.

• Break your customer base into groups based on simple criteria that differentiate one group from another. You can consider job title, experience, organization type, industry, or other variables.
• Know that each customer group differs in characteristics and impacts their challenges and how you would communicate with them. 
• After segmentation based on key customer characteristics, prioritize the profitable and easy-to-attract groups. 
• Consider factors like the resources needed to engage the prospects, their likelihood of purchase, and the audience size to prioritize the segments. 
• Finally, choose the low-hanging fruit for targeting – the group that’s easiest to communicate with, requires the least effort, cost-effectively converts into a customer, and is most likely to buy. 

2. Buyer persona development

Create buyer personas for each customer segment. Dig deeper into each group, identify the common characteristics, and create the personas. 

These personas will enable you to understand your ideal customers better by adding important details about each segment and outlining their profiles, behaviors, and preferences. Thus, you can make informed decisions and build a better SaaS inbound marketing strategy. 

3. Customer journey development

After creating the buyer personas, map out the customer’s journey for each group. Start from a person hearing about your business first and then all the arriving to the point of sale.

Mapping out the customer’s journey will help you understand the engagement path – from identifying a problem to seeking a solution and then engaging with a vendor to discuss the services they can offer. 

Step 3: Create your value proposition

Now, you have the buyer personas and a good idea about your target audience. So, start mapping out the message you want to communicate and how.

To finalize your value proposition, here are a few things you must work on. 

• What value will your product deliver to the customer?
• How are you going to communicate it?
• What are your unique competitive advantages?
• Why should a customer collaborate with you?

In short, convey your unique value to customers and tell them why you do it the best way. 

Your value proposition forms the basis for engaging your personas. Once you have the proposition chalked out, you can understand how it correlates to each buyer's persona and how it can help them address their issue. 

Step 4: Identify search opportunities with keyword research

Once you understand your target audience’s pain points, you need to research on the keywords they use to search for content or solutions to address their challenges. 

With keyword research, you can identify the most-used search terms related to your product or service. Then, you can use these targeted keywords in your content creation – blogs, guides, webinars, and more. 

Keywords research can help you craft content for each stage of the buyer’s journey. Thus, it will be easier to get the attention of the right prospects and bring them into your lead nurturing strategy.

The perfect keyword research strategies allow you to map keywords to the buyer’s journey. This ensures that high-quality leads organically come into the funnel at different stages based on the keywords related to their problems. 

A quick tip💡Keyword research is extensive. But there are tools to help you out. You can use keyword research tools to identify keywords your competitors rank for, related keywords, and their search volumes. You can also partner with a SaaS content agency for your keyword research and content needs. 

Step 5: Craft content aligned with the Buyer’s Journey

SaaS inbound marketing is content-driven. So, creating targeted content for your audience is a must.

Once you identify your buyer personas, create your value proposition, and find keywords your audiences search for, you can create target content pieces aligned with each stage of the buyer’s journey. 

The content at each stage must be such that it drives the prospects to the next stage and nurtures them from the first contact with your brand to the stage where they purchase.

The content themes for each stage should be mapped around certain keywords to ensure that the content ranks higher in the SERPs. Thus, your content will be right in front of your target audience. 

1. The Buyer’s Journey

There are three basic stages of this journey, and your content must be aligned with each to drive conversions effectively. 

• Top of Funnel (TOFU) – This is the awareness stage where you must provide educational content like whitepapers, research data, blogs, eBooks, etc., to help prospects find their answers.
• Middle of the Funnel (MOFU) – This is the evaluation stage where prospects look for comparison content and content related to your product and services (landing pages, case studies).
• Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) – The purchase stage is where prospects determine what must be done to become a customer. Customer testimonials, demos, and tutorials help to convert customers at this stage.

2. Topic clusters

A cluster content approach is the best way to make your content rank higher in the SERPs. Plan a cluster content approach to achieve higher brand visibility and ensure solid results from your inbound SaaS marketing strategy. Craft a series of content on one main topic and create additional content on the sub-topics to underpin them.

For example, employee productivity may be the main topic and keyword. You can create content about the main topic, like ways to motivate employees, time management tips, and more.

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Example of topic cluster

Step 6: Personalization

A SaaS inbound marketing strategy should drive conversions and retain customers too. Fortunately, you can do so by creating thought leadership. Thus, you can maximize your ROI too. 

However, to drive engagements and conversions, personalization is a must. Personalizing content, CTAs, emails, and other forms of communication.

For instance, your prospects need convincing about your product. Hence, schedule a call or book a demo CTA works well for them. On the other hand, your customers need content that will provide value and continue to nurture them on the product. This will result in retention and brand advocacy. 

Step 7: Content distribution

This step is about deciding where to put out your content so that they reach your target audience. This is what you must think about in your content distribution strategy. Here are a few questions you must answer. 

• Which channels are used by your target audience?
• What is the most appropriate time to share content on these channels?
• Will you choose paid channels? If yes, which ones?

Your content must be shared across different channels to ensure optimum visibility and engagement. You can also repurpose your blogs, guides, etc., and convert the content into short videos, carousels, or infographics.

You can use paid channels besides sharing your content on social media. There are several paid channels, but for B2B inbound marketing, LinkedIn and Google Ads are the best ones. 

Step 8: Track and measure success

It does not get over with planning and implementation. You must track and measure the outcomes to improve. Once your SaaS inbound marketing strategy is ready, plan to measure the performance of your inbound marketing efforts.

You must align the measures with your campaign goals. For instance, list the objectives you want to achieve through an inbound SaaS marketing strategy. Then, list the core KPIs involved. Also, think about how to track the metrics and KPIs, whether they are automated or you have to collect data manually.

Additionally, consider what you want to achieve and within what timeframe. Make sure that the key metrics reflect this aspect. This will enable you to evaluate your SaaS inbound marketing efforts effectively.

SaaS Inbound Marketing Strategies and Best Practices

Before you plan and execute an inbound SaaS marketing strategy, there are a few best practices you must note down. Consider these best practices and tailor them according to your SaaS marketing needs and goals.

Understand your customer journey

Not only B2C consumers, 80% of B2B buyers expect companies to interact with them in real-time. Hence, you must map the buyer’s journey to monitor their moves and provide them with the best experience with your brand. 

Consider the buying experience of your ideal customer profiles when promoting your product. This will help you convey information strategically. Here’s the modern buyer’s journey cycle to help you understand your customer’s journey.

• Awareness- Identifying a problem
• Consideration- Research and Discovery 
• Decision- Lead to the actual purchase 
• Retention- Post-purchase customer experience
• Advocacy- Customer loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing

Your SaaS inbound marketing efforts must drive awareness, convert awareness into action, and prioritize retention. Considering all of these aspects will ensure a great customer experience, and therefore, your SaaS inbound marketing strategy will yield sustainable outcomes. 

Develop a user-friendly website.

SaaS inbound marketing is not only about blog content. It also involves higher-converting web pages. So, build a website that’s informative, aesthetic, and intuitive. A website is significant in SaaS marketing as it helps the brand to build trust and convey the overall message to the target audience.

Based on your buyer personas and ideal customer research, build landing pages that convey the right message to the right people. Use strong headlines and landing page copies to communicate what you offer and how it can solve your audience’s problem. 

Further, add personalized CTAs to your website that can prompt visitors to take action – from signing up to subscribing to newsletters and attending webinars. Make sure that the website content resonates well with the target market. 

Here are a few handy tips for building an effective website.

• Make your website easy to navigate.
• Use clear, prominent, and concise CTAs.
• Make sure that the page load time is sufficient. Use compressed graphics to prevent long load times. 
• Design the landing page aesthetically. Include your brand elements and color schemes and make it appealing to the visitors.
• Track the website metrics – the amount of traffic, on-page behaviors, bounce rate, etc. Use heat maps and website reports to make adjustments and optimizations.

Make Content the Focus on your SaaS Inbound Marketing Strategy

As mentioned above, SaaS inbound marketing is content-driven. 

Content is the core of SaaS marketing. It involves creating blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, guides, and more to educate prospects and position your product or services. In fact, 70% of marketers actively invest in content marketing as a part of their overall strategy.

Statistics indicate the importance of content in SaaS inbound marketing.

• SaaS content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing
• It generates 3 times as many leads
• High-quality content marketing can generate an ROI of 448% or more for SaaS brands.

Hence, you must cover a wide range of content in your inbound SaaS marketing strategy. A few content types that you can include in your marketing plan are

• Blogs
• Videos
• Webinars
• Podcasts 
• Templates
• Checklists
• Infographics
• Research reports 
• Newsletters
• eBooks 
• Whitepapers
• User guides 
• Product demos
• Testimonials

Create SEO-friendly content to ensure higher rankings on the SERPs. Here are a few simple SEO practices that will help your content rank higher and increase visibility.

• Conduct extensive keyword research and identify your audiences' search terms and phrases. 
• Research your competitors to track their strategy, outcomes, and content gaps. 
• Craft engaging, informative, and relevant content. Address customer queries and provide action-oriented tips and tricks. Besides keyword research, consider backlinking and technical SEO as well. 
• Promote your content on social channels. Also, use email marketing to share your content with customers. 

Email Marketing for Lead Engagement and Nurturing

Emails aren’t dead yet. 

Statista says there are 4 billion daily email users which is expected to increase to 4.6 billion by 2025. Furthermore, email marketing revenue is estimated to reach 11 billion by 2023 end. 

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64% of B2B marketers said email marketing had been the most effective strategy to meet their 2021 business goals.

All of these facts about email marketing scream its effectiveness even today. In SaaS inbound marketing, emails are vital to gaining a higher ROI. However, ensure that your email marketing strategy aligns with effective modern marketing.

Here are some simple rules experts suggest to make the most out of B2B email marketing.

• Catch the reader’s attention with a clear and compelling header and subject lines. 
• Don’t spam your readers. Always go with quality over quantity.
• Personalization can take you a long way. Use the recipient’s name, company, job title, industry, and other information to tailor your messaging to their needs and interests.
• Make your emails mobile-friendly. Make sure they are clearly and easily visible from mobile devices.
• Conversion is your goal, and remember it when creating emails. Always include a relevant CTA to drive your readers to take action – directing them to a landing page, subscribing to the newsletter, or following you on social media.
• Experiment with your emails to find out what works best with your ideal customer profiles.

Emails are also superb for staying in touch with your existing clients. Reach out to them once in a while, share updates, product launches, offers, and recommendations, take their feedback, and secure their loyalty.

Top 5 Inbound Marketing Agency for SaaS

It’s a task to find the best inbound marketing SaaS agencies😓

But we’ve already done the groundwork for you! 

Here are our top five picks in SaaS inbound marketing agencies. 

1. TripleDart Digital

TripleDart is a SaaS inbound marketing Agency that drives growth and helps you achieve your business goals. In other words, by collaborating with TripleDart, you can witness a positive ROI. 

Coming to the services of this fantastic SaaS inbound marketing agency, there’s a wide range of services for startups and scaleups. Let’s take a look.

If you are a startup or scaleup looking for a full-stack marketing service, TripleDart has the following offerings for you. 

• Pipeline marketing- paid search, paid social for audience-led demand gen, performance SEO and ABX, paid campaigns audit and restructuring, and product-led SEO.
• Product marketing- product positioning, messaging, GTM and launch strategy, sales enablement, competitor analysis, A/B testing positioning, and messaging
• ABX – Personalized B2B ABM, account-level measurement, ABM beyond social
• Website design and development – website and landing page design and development, webpage analytics, conversion rate optimization.
• Marketing & Sales Ops – conversion tracking, Marketing and sales technology, workflows, automation, lead and deal Ops, campaign ops, tech audit.
• Content marketing – Newsletter, blogs, thought leadership, Digital PR, ad copies, creatives, eBooks, and whitepaper.
• Analytics – track KPIs, full-funnel reporting, holistic marketing, and data-driven ROI.

Overall, if you’re looking for growth, lead generation, a boost in conversions, and ROI, TripleDart is your destination.

2. OpenMoves

OpenMoves is a SaaS inbound marketing agency focusing on SEO and PPC strategies. The agency mainly focuses on driving new customers through digital channels. It holds expertise in performance media buying across platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Programmatic, Amazon, and more.

Here are a few key offerings of the SaaS marketing agency.

• OpenMoves marketing automation services help you nurture leads and win back customers with automated drips.

• Free mobile-responsive email templates.
• Automated A/B and MVT testing
• Dynamic content based on the needs and choices of the target audience.
• Paid search and paid social services 
• Amazon ads and marketing services
• Email marketing services
• Integrations include Salesforce, Shopify, Pipedrive, MS Dynamics, Zapier, and more.

3. SmartBug Media

SmartBug Media is a full-service SaaS inbound marketing agency that covers inbound SaaS marketing strategy, design, content, web development, sales enablement, and marketing automation.  

The SaaS marketing agency offers

• Demand generation solutions with content and SEO strategies
• Revenue operations to boost sales enablement and drive revenue
•  eCommerce marketing strategy that covers emails, SMS, and affiliate marketing
• Paid media services – from PPC to social media advertising, SEO optimization, and creation of digital ads.

Along with these services, SmartBug Media also offers video marketing and PR services. 

SmartBug’s several other services include

• Account-Based Marketing,
• Email marketing,
• Content marketing
• Digital Analytics
• Conversion rate optimization

SmartBug Media offers SaaS inbound marketing services and covers several other services – from paid media, SEO, and content to eCommerce marketing, creative and branding, and public relations. 

4. WebFX

WebFX is a SaaS inbound marketing agency that can help your business reach new heights with data-driven strategies. The agency can help you get ahead of the competition by generating more leads and increasing sales and revenue. 

WebFX’s expert team enables businesses to optimize sales pipelines and set up automations to reduce workload. It offers a wide range of services that include:

• SEO services and paid advertising
• PPC management, 
• Social media management
• Digital marketing services for eCommerce 
• Conversion rate optimization
• Landing page design,
• Content marketing services.

In short, WebFX is a full-service digital marketing agency that can also offer custom SaaS inbound marketing plans for businesses.

 A few key features of WebFX are:

• WebFX offers SEO and content marketing services to drive website traffic.
• It helps you build powerful ad campaigns with programmatic advertising, social advertising, and PPC management services.
• The agency also offers access to the website call tracking features and lead management.
• It also offers website, landing page design, and social media management services to boost conversion rates. 

5. KlientBoost

KlientBoost is a SaaS inbound marketing agency that aims at increasing revenue by using multiple channels for marketing. The SaaS marketing agency can give you marketing plans tailored to your business needs and goals. 

KlientBoost also offers access to BoostFlow, which helps you to track, score and prioritize marketing experiments. Get a detailed analysis of your business performance and track all metrics at a glance through reporting dashboards. With the quarterly business reviews, you can also get an idea of future tactics and strategies. 

Take a look at KlientBoost’s key features.

• KlientBoost provides paid advertising services that cover Facebook Ads agency, PPC agency, Google Ads agency, and more.
• It helps in designing and building landing pages.
• The agency also offers content marketing, SEO, and linking-building services. 
• It helps create more engaging emails through email marketing services and provides conversion rate optimization. 

Audit & Strengthen your SaaS Inbound Marketing Strategy with TripleDart Digital

SaaS inbound marketing is not for the faint-hearted. It demands a lot of effort and patience to see results. However, once you have a solid inbound SaaS marketing strategy, you can yield sustainable outcomes.

So, if you are yet to start with SaaS inbound marketing, get ready to do real work and achieve your business goals. 

TripleDart is a SaaS inbound marketing agency that cares for your inbound marketing needs. And if you already have a strategy, our team can guide you to strengthen your strategy further and boost the bottom line ROI. 

So, TripleDart can help you reach new heights with SaaS inbound marketing no matter what stage you are in. Book a call to discuss your needs and learn more about our services.

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