Successful SaaS businesses usually try several strategies to grow their businesses. There are several examples out there to learn from. However, the strategies might not be an all standard method for every new startup out there. There are strategy tweaks that should be done to ensure that a strategy fits your company. With that cleared out, we looked at several strategies and found the following which you can start implementing as soon as today:
1. Email Drip Campaigns
Onboarding can help you retain your customers and grow. It is easily achieved by implementing an email drip campaign that you can use from the first day the customer signs up or starts their free trial.
By setting up a drip campaign, you can prevent the loss of customers who fall off after the first few days of signing up. Most customers fall off because they do not understand how to use the product. Additionally, due to lack of engagement with you, some new users might not take the product seriously, leading them to disappear and eventually cancel.
The main point here is to keep your new users engaged. Automation has enabled that to happen through implementations of drip campaigns where you get to resell the value of the service, educate the users and even offer incentives and upsells.
You can set your campaigns to be a bit more frequent in the beginning and then far apart but consistent after the user has become accustomed to the service.
2. Referrals
A lot of Saas businesses have utilized referrals to grow. Two good examples can be Dropbox and PayPal.
When Dropbox started out, they would offer customers 2 GB of free cloud space and an extra 650 MB for every new friend they referred. People referred each other like crazy. Dropbox is now a $4 billion company due to that hack.
PayPal started out offering $10 for every new signup that you referred to them. Consequently, PayPal has become synonymous with online transactions as a result of that hack.
Referrals can help your company grow fast, but you have to offer incentives that trigger your current users to refer you to other customers for it to be more effective. You have to find a balance that means you don’t give away too much incentive to the detriment of your service.
3. Content Marketing
Content is king. Beyond every other possible growth hacking strategy, content can set you onto a serious uptick in customers.
Creating evergreen content for your customers and marketing this content effectively proves your authority and credibility in the said topic niche. You become a credible source of insights in that field and that begets trust. Trust begets customers.
Hubspot and Buffer are two Saas companies that have utilized content marketing to grow into the companies they are today. HubSpot has cemented its place in the field of analytics, marketing, and sales from the powerful blog posts they publish.
Buffer also got into the field of social media scheduling when more than a dozen apps were already in the business. However, after building their software, they embarked on serious value provision through their blog. They published long-form content full of charts, graphs, comparisons, and statistics just like HubSpot did. Their immense growth today is largely due to that content and how they marketed it online on every possible social media network.
Content marketing is a huge gift that keeps on giving. Even for blog posts that were written years ago, evergreen content never fades. The effects are more customers. A post that you worked so hard to publish 3 years ago could still be bringing in about 500 visitors per month today without your day to day efforts on it. Check out this content marketing guide for startups if you would like to go deep into content marketing.
4. eBooks
An eBook worth its price in gold can take several weeks to complete. However, once it is done, you have on you something that could fill your email list to the brim.
Giving eBooks for free to your blog’s readers is a simple tactic to get closer to them before turning them into customers, hopefully. All you need is to get an eBook done, a pop-up and some quality blog posts to go with it. Offer this as an incentive to get the readers’ email addresses and you are well on your way.
5. Live chats
Implementing live chats in your Saas business can improve the signup rates for the site visitors tremendously. Visitors who are already chatting with you on your website tend to be very highly qualified leads.
At Pressfarm, we have implemented this strategy and seen more signups when we are engaging with our site visitors. They come in as possible leads, when they chat us up they, in turn, become hot leads almost immediately. If we answer their questions satisfactorily, more often than not, they signup.
It is a good impression to potential clients when they know they can ask quick initial questions before signing up. It also goes to show how customer-centred your Saas business is as proof that in case they need support you will be easily reachable.
6. A public relations strategy
An effective PR strategy can also help you not only build brand awareness but also earn public trust. By connecting strategically with members of the media as well as your target audience, you can tell a memorable brand story and boost sales.
If you can produce quality content and build positive relationships with your audience, then you will eventually establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry.
Do you need help building a successful PR strategy for your brand? At Pressfarm, we have experience helping brands from different industries to generate publicity for their products and services. With our professional press releases, engaging feature stories and creative media kits, we can help you make a memorable impression for your brand. In addition to producing quality content which captures attention, we also have experience helping brands do media outreach. For starters, we develop personalized media lists to help brands to connect with the best journalists in their niche. Additionally, all our clients have access to our comprehensive media database of over 75,000 journalists across different industries. Reach out to us and start creating a buzz for your startup today.