As a SaaS company, demand generation is critical to your success.
But with so many channels and tactics to choose from - content marketing, email marketing, social media, paid advertising and many more - it can be overwhelming to know where to start and how to execute your strategy effectively.
At Kurve, we understand the challenges SaaS companies face with demand generation.
That's why we've put together this guide to help you navigate the world of SaaS demand generation. We'll explore the top channels and strategies for reaching your target audience, and provide tips for measuring the effectiveness of your campaigns.
What is Demand Generation?
Demand generation is creating and nurturing demand for your SaaS product. It is a holistic approach that creates awareness, builds relationships, and guides potential customers through the buyer's journey.
SaaS companies need to develop an effective demand generation strategy because it helps create a predictable and scalable revenue stream and fills the sales pipeline with new opportunities.
Unlike lead generation, which focuses solely on acquiring leads and selling your solution, demand generation aims to create an awareness of need that will ultimately result in sales. It involves building a relationship with your target audience and creating a consistent message to attract and retain customers over the long term.
Important Checklist before starting demand generation
Before you begin your demand generation efforts, it's vital to ensure that you have a solid foundation in place. Here are some essential items to consider before you start:
-
Define your positioning
Clearly defining your company's unique value proposition and understanding how it fits into the market is crucial for success. Your positioning should differentiate your company from competitors and resonate with your target audience. Conduct market research and analyze your competitors to identify gaps in the market and develop a unique value proposition that speaks to your ideal customers.
-
Study the competitors
Analyzing your competitors' offerings, messaging and marketing strategies can help you understand the competitive landscape and identify opportunities to differentiate yourself. This research can highlight potential partnership opportunities or ways to improve your product or service offerings.
-
Ensure the website UX is good
Your website is the initial touchpoint for any customer who will use it to form their first impression. It must provide a good user experience (UX) to ensure that impression is positive. To achieve this outcome, it should be visually attractive, easy to navigate and provide clear information about your products or services. Conduct UX testing and optimize your website for mobile devices to ensure a friendly user experience.
-
Setup analytics
Measuring the success of your demand generation efforts is critical to making data-driven decisions. Set up analytics tools like Google Analytics or Plausible that enable you to track website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates. Using this data, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your demand-generation campaigns and make informed decisions to improve performance.
Completing these items on your checklist will build a solid foundation before starting your demand generation efforts. This will help you create a more effective and efficient demand-generation strategy that aligns with your business goals and drives growth.
Top Demand Generation Channels in 2023 for SaaS companies
With your checklist complete and a solid foundation in place, it's time to start thinking about the most effective demand-generation channels for your SaaS company.
Nowadays, there are several different options that you can consider. This can be overwhelming and makes it difficult to focus your efforts when deciding which ones to choose. This section will explore the top demand generation channels for SaaS companies and provide a detailed overview of each.
1. SEO-Led Content Marketing
SEO-led content marketing is a powerful demand-generation channel for SaaS companies. Creating high-quality, valuable content to solve your target audience's challenges can attract organic traffic to your website and establish your company as a thought leader in your industry.
To make the most of this channel, conducting thorough keyword research and optimizing your content for search engines is essential. This process involves identifying the most relevant and high-volume keywords related to your products or services and incorporating them into your content in a natural and valuable way for your readers.
For example, if you're a SaaS company that offers project management software, you might create a blog post that covers common project management challenges and provide tips for overcoming them. By incorporating keywords such as "project management tools" or "best project management software," you can attract relevant organic traffic to your website.
In addition to attracting organic traffic, SEO-led content marketing can help you establish relationships with industry influencers and publications. By creating valuable content that addresses the needs of your target market and audience, you can earn backlinks and social shares, which can help improve your website's organic search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.
2. Linkedin Ads
LinkedIn Advertising is an effective channel for SaaS companies to generate demand due to its ability to target specific industries, job titles, and even individual companies. As a platform with a professional focus, it is the ideal place to connect with decision-makers and influencers.
You can create sponsored content, text ads, and sponsored InMail campaigns to generate leads and increase brand awareness. For example, sponsored content can drive traffic to your website, where you can utilize lead-generation forms to collect contact information and book demos.
With LinkedIn's advanced targeting options, you can also retarget users who engage with your content or website and further nurture leads through InMail campaigns. The platform's in-depth analytics, including impression, engagement, and conversion tracking, enable you to measure the success of your campaigns and optimize for better performance.
With LinkedIn Advertising, SaaS companies can boost demand generation efforts by targeting the correct decision-makers with the right message, resulting in more leads, conversions, and revenue.
3. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a cost-effective and highly measurable demand generation channel for SaaS companies.
By building an opt-in email list of prospects, you can regularly engage with them through newsletters, targeted offers, and other relevant content. It’s a direct and personalized way to nurture leads and keep pushing them toward the next stage of the funnel, ultimately driving conversions.
With advanced email marketing automation tools, you can send triggered and behavior-based emails, such as welcome sequences, abandoned cart reminders, and win-back campaigns, further optimizing your demand generation efforts.
For example, a SaaS company can offer a free trial or demo in exchange for an email address, then use targeted email campaigns to educate and engage the prospect, eventually leading to a purchase decision.
With email marketing, SaaS companies can also track and analyze email performance, including open, click-through, and conversion rates, providing valuable insights to improve future campaigns.
4. PPC Advertising
PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising is another highly effective demand generation channel for SaaS companies. Using targeted ads, you can reach potential customers actively searching for the solutions you offer. One of the most significant advantages of PPC ads is that they allow you to track your ROI and make data-driven decisions about your marketing spend.
In addition to driving conversions, PPC ads can also build brand awareness. Even if users don't click through your ad, they may still be exposed to your brand and product, increasing the likelihood that they'll remember it when they're ready to purchase. This makes PPC advertising an excellent option for companies looking to establish a strong presence in their industry.
When running PPC campaigns, choosing the right keywords and targeting options is essential to ensure your ads reach the right audience. You can also use ad extensions and ad formats like display ads to make your ads more engaging and eye-catching. With careful planning and execution, PPC advertising can be a precious tool in your SaaS demand generation strategy.
5. Partnerships
Partnering with other companies can be an effective way for SaaS companies to reach new audiences and drive demand. By teaming up with complementary businesses that share your target audience, you can leverage each other's existing networks and resources to create joint digital marketing campaigns and mutually beneficial promotions.
For example, a project management software company may partner with a time-tracking tool to offer a bundled package that appeals to freelancers and small businesses. Alternatively, a CRM company may partner with a marketing automation platform to offer enterprise clients a full suite of sales and marketing tools.
By identifying and nurturing strategic partnerships, SaaS companies can expand their reach, improve their credibility, and generate demand more cost-effectively.
6. Webinars
Webinars allow SaaS companies to engage with their target audience and demonstrate their expertise in a particular area. Creating high-quality webinars that provide valuable insights and actionable advice can attract potential customers and drive demand for your product.
For example, a project management software company could host a webinar on effective project planning and management, providing attendees with practical tips and strategies to improve their productivity. You can establish thought leadership and build trust amongst your target audience by showcasing your expertise.
Webinars are also an opportunity to showcase your product's unique features and benefits by offering a demo or live walkthrough. By providing a hands-on experience with your product, you can demonstrate its value and help potential customers understand how it can solve their specific pain points.
Measuring the performance of SaaS demand generation
Now that we've discussed the various demand generation channels that can be effective for SaaS companies, it's time to shift our focus to measuring the performance of these strategies.
After all, what's the point of investing time and resources into demand generation if you can’t track its effectiveness and make data-driven decisions to optimize your campaigns?
In this section, we'll take a closer look at the key metrics to monitor when evaluating the success of your SaaS demand generation efforts.
1. CPC (Cost Per Click)
Cost per Click (CPC) measures the amount you pay for each click on your ad and helps you understand how much you are spending to drive traffic to your site.
Keeping a close eye on your CPC allows you to optimize your campaigns and adjust your targeting to maximize your advertising budget.
If your CPC is too high, it may indicate that your ad targeting or copy needs to be optimized to improve relevance to your target audience.
2. CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is the estimated revenue a customer will generate over their relationship with your company. By calculating it, you can identify the most profitable customers and focus your marketing efforts on retaining them.
CLV considers not only the revenue generated from a customer's initial purchase but also their future purchases and the potential to refer new customers to your business.
Measuring CLV can help you determine how much money you should spend to acquire new customers and how much you should invest in customer retention efforts. A high CLV means you can afford to spend more on customer acquisition, while a low CLV may indicate a need to improve retention or adjust pricing strategies.
3. Churn Rate
Any SaaS company typically keeps losing a certain percentage of customers monthly. This number of canceled users is referred to as the churn rate.
It is a critical metric for SaaS companies because it directly impacts revenue growth.
Tracking churn rate can help you identify customer pain points and areas for improvement in your product or service. A higher churn rate can be a warning sign that your product needs improvement or that you need to improve your customer service.
4. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors that performed actions, like signing up for a free account or booking a demo call. It's a key metric to measure your overall demand generation efforts.
By tracking conversion rates, you can identify which channels or campaigns drive the most conversions to optimize your marketing efforts and overall ROI accordingly.
5. Demos Booked
Demos booked is a metric that measures the number of live demos or consultations scheduled with potential customers.
This metric is important because it indicates your target audience's interest and engagement level.
By tracking demos booked, you can gauge the effectiveness of your marketing and tweak your strategy accordingly to drive more demos and increase your sales pipeline.
6. CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures the total cost of acquiring a new customer, including all marketing and sales expenses.
By tracking CAC, you can determine the ROI of your marketing campaigns and optimize your spending to acquire new customers more efficiently. You can also compare it to metrics like your CLV and weigh up whether the return is worth the investment.
Final Thoughts
Following the strategies and tactics outlined in this article, you can create a comprehensive demand-generation plan that drives results and generates revenue. Remember, demand generation is not a one-time effort but a continuous process that requires ongoing optimization and refinement.
At Kurve, we specialize in creating customized demand-generation strategies tailored to our client's needs and goals. Our team of experts have years of expertise in B2B SaaS demand generation and can provide comprehensive support throughout the entire process.
We offer various demand generation services, including LinkedIn paid social and search ads. Additionally, we understand the importance of measuring the success of your demand generation efforts, which is why we provide comprehensive audits, detailed analytics, and reporting to track the performance of your campaigns and optimize them for even better results.
If you want to learn better about how Kurve can help your SaaS company generate more qualified leads now, drive revenue, and grow your business, please schedule a consultation with one of our demand generation experts.
We look forward to working with you!
