When it comes to growing a SaaS, sending Cold Emails or doing outbound lead generation is a tactic well used. But do you know that an average cold email takes you around 10 mins, that’s 10 minutes for 1 personalized cold email that’ll fetch you a response? And if you end up sending 100 cold emails you’re putting in 1000 minutes of your or your team’s time. 

While Outbound Marketing is a great strategy, SaaS Inbound marketing takes away the discomfort of selling. It is also 10x more effective than outbound when done right. Cool.

You might wonder what’s the difference between the two? Well, Traditional outbound marketing uses a disruptive approach. You spot your target customer and push your product towards them.

“Inbound Marketing is all about building relationships with your potential customers, and nurturing them even after they’ve purchased from you”- Sakshi Jha, SaaS Writer

While in SaaS inbound marketing, you talk about how your product makes their life easier with the use of content creation, social media marketing, email marketing, and Content Marketing to name a few. Once you attract your target buyer’s attention, you don’t sell. You continue talking with them about it. 

Soon your prospect starts to believe you’re the right fit for them and wants to buy your product.

Simple, right?

What is SaaS Inbound Marketing?

SaaS Inbound Marketing means attracting potential customers and/or visitors to your website, landing page, or social, with the help of strategic content creation. B2B SaaS Inbound Marketing involves creating valuable content around your SaaS product. The intention is to attract and engage your target audience with consistent interactions and nurturing.

The result? They become willing customers. They start to trust your brand and need little to no strong persuasion to make them buy from you.

Wonder why 82% of marketers believe that inbound marketing gives better leads than outbound marketing.

What does it mean for SaaS Brands?

B2B SaaS Inbound Marketing is a great way for brands to attract, nurture and convert leads into sales without spending time on Cold Messaging or Outbound. The best part? It allows you to build your brand name, credibility, and authority in your niche while creating a significant demand for your product. A great example is Hubspot. 

Hubspot designed the Flywheel model to explain how inbound marketing works. One key takeaway from their model is- Your SaaS inbound marketing plan gains momentum when happy customers share their experiences. 

There are 3 stages to an Inbound Marketing Strategy that works for any business. 

1. Attract

You attract strangers from your target audience with high-quality content. This content can be anything from blogs on your website, a lead magnet, social media content, etc. They come to you because they like your product/brand and would love to hear more from you.

2. Engage

When your target audience wants to engage with you, they become prospects. Over time, qualified prospects decide to become your customers. Engaging with your content is a double-sided coin, you talk to them and they’ll talk to you. This can mean checking out your blogs and leaving a comment, or dropping a comment on your social media post.

3. Delight

Once your target audience starts to engage with you, you can easily turn them into happy and satisfied customers and then promoters for your business. The best part about Inbound Marketing is that you can easily turn customers into brand advocates. 

Why is it important for all B2B SaaS to have an Inbound Marketing Strategy?

Digital buyers don’t ‘buy’. They ‘invest’ in products to make their lives easier. They like to do their research before making a buying decision, especially the B2B buyers. They’re analytical, they trust facts and figures before making any decision. 

By serving them valuable content, you tip the decision in your favor. You’ll easily be able to cater to their rational side by showing them the pain points your product solves, the transformation brands are getting from using your product, and other types of content. 

SaaS inbound marketing is a long-term game. You compound your efforts by engaging with your target audience over a long time.

The results of your consistent efforts will show up when your prospect knows you and trusts your SaaS, and decides to invest in your product.

8 Powerful Ways to Improve your SaaS Inbound Marketing Strategy

1. Know your target audience closely

So you’ve made a SaaS product that promises to change lives. But whose lives are we changing? And how will they find out about it?

To attract your ideal buyers, you need to find out who they are. You can do this by:

Creating your buyer persona

A buyer persona represents your ideal customer as a fictional avatar. Your Buyer persona defines your target audience’s demographics, age, pain points, beliefs, etc. So that you can target them with your content. 

This helps you understand what to look for in your target audience. It also increases your chances of engagement and conversion.

Zero in on their goals and pain points

Understanding your ideal users’ goals helps you map the steps they go through. This also tells you about the pain points they face along the way. Use this to serve them with content and resources that are relevant to their needs and pain points.

Update with changing information

It is important to keep up with your audience in all their stages. This helps you provide value based on their changing needs. Collecting information from opt-ins, gated content, and feedback helps you stay up-to-date.

2. Write high-quality blogs

Blog post traffic is compounding, which means it gains organic results over time. – Hubspot

92% of marketers use blogs in their content marketing strategy. By writing blogs, you create a stock of high-value content for your audience. It also helps you rank higher in SERPs. Blogs are also a great way to attract organic traffic through SEO, and Content Marketing. While creating blogs for your website, keep in mind these 2 things:

To Build quality over quantity

You’ve written a super-long blog. But it does not meet the search intent. Now your reader moves on to the next search result.

And this is where you lose the lead.

Producing good quality content helps you build engagement and loyalty with your audience. This works even if you’re not churning out 10 blog posts every week.

To Tend to your prospects at every stage

The goal of your SaaS inbound marketing strategy is to provide value to your prospect at all stages. It is important to serve them with the information they look for as they move forward. Do this by including blog topics of different levels in your content strategy.

3. Diversify your content strategy

Content Marketing is still one of the best ways to do Inbound. But there is not just 1 type of content you can create. Use audio, video, or visuals in your content marketing strategy. This makes your content more interesting and you can target a wider audience. This will also make your audience wait for more. 

It helps keep information longer

People love to watch more than they love to read. Bitter but true. So, Images and visuals will help you in keeping them interested and in retaining information for longer. The average person retains only 10% of textual information 3 days after reading it.

And, Visuals help keep up to 65% of it. So keep it in your strategy. 

You can do more with less

According to Wyzowl, 88% of people decided to buy after watching a brand’s video. Videos with the highest engagement are 2 minutes long.

Imagine how many 2-minute videos you can make out of a single blog post, and how many videos you can turn into blogs or short-form social media content! Content Repurposing at its best.

Easy to distribute

A single blog can help you churn out several pieces of media content that get shared several times. This generates higher traffic on different platforms. and creates links leading to your website.

4. Collaborate with industry experts and influencers

Your target prospects want to learn from the people who made it to the top.

Collaborating with well-known faces in the B2B SaaS domain. It helps in boosting your inbound marketing game.

93% of marketers use influencer marketing to promote their brand.

• It helps you build credibility and brand awareness faster
• It helps you gain traction from the influencers’ following
• It generates higher traffic on all your platforms

Here are some ways to collaborate with the top of your industry to add to your SaaS inbound marketing.

5. Build a strong brand

The digital buyer values relationships. They don’t want to buy from another SaaS product company. By showing up as a recognizable brand, you add the ‘human’ factor to your business. You are now someone they can get to know and trust. And that’ll make them more likely to buy from you!

Create your brand’s personality

The first step is to get your messaging right. As a growing SaaS brand, who do you want to sound like when you speak to your audience? Your brand’s style and tone should be relatable to your target audience. 

The tone and voice in which you’ll display your brand to others will matter a lot. 

Complement it with visual branding

You can increase your brand’s recognition by 80% by using a signature color. By nailing down your company’s visual branding, you make your content easy to spot in the crowd of the world wide web.

Visual Branding comes very much in use especially if your target audience is on Instagram or LinkedIn. Having your brand kit with you will keep you armed. 

Show up with consistency

Consistency. The most overused word on Twitter, yet the one often less followed.

Now that your prospects know what you look like, you need to show up often and with purpose. Help your audience remember you by making your brand pop up on the screen from time to time. Your target audience will notice your absence, so make sure you have a consistent schedule that you can stick to without burning out.

6. Grow your community

In your SaaS inbound marketing strategy, the flywheel keeps moving. This means that your existing customers can bring in more conversions as referrals. Having referrals will save you tons of time that you spend on attracting a new audience time and again.

But, how to bring your promoters closer to fresh new leads?

Harness the power of communities

Build groups on social media platforms to gather interest for your SaaS product. Invite target buyers and existing customers to join your group. Engaging with both prospects and promoters helps you build better relationships.

• Host challenges to help your members to reach goals in real-time.
• Give out exclusive lead magnets for free – Ebooks, webinars, guides, and short courses.
• Invite happy customers to talk about their experience using your product.
• Use the community to grow your email list.

7. Focus on email marketing

The world will have around 4.48 billion email users by 2024. In the age of social media, email continues to be the most relevant marketing channel.

And, 9 out of every 10 marketers used email marketing to distribute content in 2021. Here are some steps you can take to level up your email marketing game.

8. Invest in great web design

In all the world wide web, your website is the hub where all your activity happens. 80% of marketers focus on a well-designed website in their inbound marketing strategy.

Make your website easy to navigate

• Use a visual hierarchy to separate sections.
• Make your resources easy to find.
• Include plenty of white space.
• Use a predictable layout design.
• Make sure your CTA is visible at the bottom, sides, and in pop-ups.

Communicate what you offer with clarity

Use simple language to describe who you are and what you do. The aim is for your audience to understand what you offer in a very short time. They can then proceed to explore the rest of the website.

The longer they stay, the more likely they are to convert.

My 2 Cents

Now comes the most interesting part(in my opinion), my thoughts on Inbound Marketing Strategy for SaaS Brands.

Don’t run after lead generation

Getting new leads is important, but qualified leads are better. Walk your prospects through different checkpoints until they are ready to buy.

Focus on retention and conversion with your strategy.

Optimize your strategy with new information

The goal is to find the right people and reach them with relevant content, at the right time. Keep track of how your campaign performs and improve it to deliver the best results.

SaaS inbound marketing is a simple yet effective way to get your product to the right customer.

The trick is simple: Build your strategy around your audience.

Attract their attention with high-quality content. Engage them with value and build awareness. Delight them with the best experience once they’re on board.

Enjoy the new leads they bring in.

Use the right methods to tweak your SaaS inbound marketing strategy. This helps you reach your goals faster and promises higher returns.