Software-as-a-service (SaaS) is a unique and profitable business model that works best when paired with a good marketing plan.
Because the cost of hosting cloud networking and applications goes down as more people use them, SaaS companies must quickly grow their subscriber base to stay competitive in a market where there are a lot of other companies.
Over the years, I've seen that many SaaS firms prioritize sponsored acquisition for consistent visitor flow and conversions. While this method is obviously profitable in the short term, once the faucet is turned off, the traffic does not return.
As a result, I advocate that most SaaS firms spend more on SEO as part of a comprehensive growth plan.
Also, the SEO methods I list below will only help your current marketing efforts, whether you use PPC, email, or social media to promote your business.
With this in mind, I'd like to talk about some of the particular issues that SaaS organizations encounter in the digital arena, as well as how SEO may help them overcome these challenges.
Then, I'll give you nine concrete strategies for improving your internet presence and growing your company.
5 Distinctive Digital Challenges for SaaS Businesses
1. Scale economies
As I said in the opening, expanding SaaS firms to a comfortable level in order to cover the expense of hosting their cloud apps is a difficult problem for SaaS marketers.SaaS organizations must establish an efficient network scale to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO).
- constantly acquires new consumers.
- keeps existing ones.
- encourages clients to interact with one another using the software in order to create a full-fledged network.
Unfortunately, paid advertising just adds to the expense of this strategy while failing to attract new clients outside of your restricted window of focus.
Instead, an omnichannel approach that naturally increases awareness across numerous platforms is required.
2. Service Levels
For customer assistance, several SaaS companies use a variety of business models, including self-service, managed service, and automated service models.These models depend on how much help the SaaS provider gives, which has a big effect on how much it costs to run and manage their platforms.
A managed or automated troubleshooting approach might be useful marketing content in various respects.
However, if your SaaS platform, such as Salesforce, has a famously steep learning curve and you employ a self-service approach for customer support, you may need to spend extensively on instructional materials and tutorials to help clients as they learn about your goods.
3. Customer Acquisition vs. Customer Retention
While customer acquisition is vital to growing a SaaS provider's network, maintaining clients on the network is just as important.Whether you use a one-time purchase or subscription model, iterating with new goods, releases, and ongoing customer support is crucial for your company's consistent development.
Because of this, SaaS companies need to use a broad marketing strategy that appeals to both new and existing customers in different ways.
4. Branded Keyword Competition
Most of your keywords may be branded, which may make scaling difficult if no one is familiar with your program or brand.As a result, a combination of PPC, link building, and high-quality content will be vital to expanding your brand's identity and people's associations with your items.
5. Search Intent Optimization
Finally, deciphering intent might be challenging when dealing with branded items and several keywords.As we'll see, it's important for your whole SEO strategy to make sure that your funnel and content are properly optimized for intent.
SEO Advantages for Long-Term SaaS Growth
Because SaaS organizations depend on economies of scale to cut expenses and enhance profit, a long-term approach like organic SEO makes the most sense.The following are some of the benefits of SaaS SEO:
- Creating long-term growth via consistent consumer acquisition
- lowering each new customer's cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
- increasing brand recognition for your items.
- Customers are educated and retained with highly authoritative content.
- Improving the overall performance of multichannel marketing
The latter reason is noteworthy since most SaaS firms will employ email marketing and paid media to recruit and retain clients.
As a result, high-quality content is great marketing material for advertising on different platforms and getting users involved.
Finally, maybe the most crucial part of SEO is building brand recognition around your product.
Many apps, like Microsoft Office and G-Suite, benefit from having more users on the platform because it makes it easier for customers to connect from different platforms.
As a result, by establishing yourself as a thought leader and cultivating a loyal client base through a combination of content and SEO, you can create a large-scale network of users, lowering hosting costs and speeding up your development.
To begin, let's look at seven practical SEO methods for SaaS companies.
7 actionable SEO strategies for scaling SaaS businesses
1. Create a User-Friendly
WebsiteFirst and foremost, you must create a user-friendly website where customers can download your products, contact customer service, or simply browse information.
Your website requires the following technological fundamentals:
- The HTTPS protocol
- optimization for mobile devices.
- quick page load time.
- images that have been optimized (for quality and size).
- a simple web framework.
- Keywords should be used strategically.
- Calls to action (CTAs) are clear (CTAs).
- a substantial crawl budget.
- a sitemap in XML format.
- There are no instances of duplicating material.
- For foreign or multilingual users, utilize hreflang tags.
Once established, it will be easy to rank your website for authoritative content and keep people coming back.
2. Develop your buyer persona.
Following that, your team should create a list of buyer personas that you will target with various conversion techniques. Buyer persona input might come from the following sources:- departments of sales and marketing.
- sources of analytics that are already in existence (e.g., Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or Paid Media Channels).
- Customer service representatives
- Customer surveys and interviews provided direct input.
Your buyer personas or avatars will now change depending on whether you're targeting a B2C or B2B market.
In a B2C setting, your buyer persona will be built on a variety of demographic and psychographic factors, such as:
- Location.
- sAge.
- Interests.
- Occupatio
- level of education.
If you were selling picture editing software, for example, you would most likely design different avatars for professional/freelance photographers and enthusiasts.
Your B2B persona, on the other hand, would most likely target certain individuals within a business, such as managers, founders, or everyday users.
One marketing campaign and persona, for example, may be centered on a software solution for sales teams and sales managers. Simultaneously, another SEO effort may target SEO managers wishing to move away from present goods.
Once you have a list of buyer personas and avatars, you can design effective campaigns on both paid and organic channels that appeal to these personas.
3. Optimize Content for All Funnel Stages
As a SaaS provider, you will almost certainly need to generate various types of content for different buyer personas as well as for new and existing clients.Making content that is specific to each level of your sales funnel can help you convert more people.
Awareness
Make the user aware that he or she has an issue that your software can address. Marketing items that are often used include:
- Blog entries.
- Guest articles are welcome.
- Publications in the press
- increased the reach of social media postings.
- advertisements that have been paid for.
Interest
Find strategies to engage people and generate interest in your goods.
Encourage consumers to sign up for your newsletter or email service, for example, as a terrific method to communicate with them over time.
At this point, you may send consumers emails or pop-ups offering a free ebook, white paper, or other high-level information related to your goods.
Evaluation/Decision
Engage users more to get them closer to a transaction. Among the most prevalent strategies are:
- Free trials are available.
- Consultations are limited.
- Demos are offered for free.
- Free beta testing is available.
Purchase and Loyalty
After a customer buys one of your products, keep them interested with special offers or how-to information that makes their use of the product better and gives them pleasure.
At this point, you should be able to get people to really like your brand and spread the word about it to grow your network.
4. Concentrate on the Right Keywords
Because the acquisition cost for early-stage SaaS providers is so high, it's critical to develop an organic keyword strategy that drives quality visitors to your website.Some methods for generating and using high-converting keywords include:
- Make a list of your top-converting PPC keywords.
- Examine the keywords that your rivals are bidding on and targeting organically.
- Optimize for informative keywords (for example, "How to Enhance a Picture" in photo editing software).
- Use "integration" terminology if your software interacts with other goods.
- Concentrate on the advantages (e.g., growth, improvement, automation, etc.).
- Features of a list (e.g., photo editing, red-eye removal, cropping, etc.)
- Target keywords should be segmented by purpose across your sales funnel (for example, informative keywords at the top of the funnel and keywords concerning features or benefits for mid-funnel content).
- To gain market share, optimize for lower-volume, specialty keywords with less competition.
5. Create Topic Clusters for Authority
It's time to execute after you've created a list of keywords and an actionable content plan for your funnel.Because SaaS solutions are quite complicated and highly competitive, it's best to build your content using Google's E-A-T principles (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness).
Also, I think it's a good idea to build authority and answer as many user questions as possible by making subject clusters based on themes with similar information that supports the main topic.
HubSpot is a great example of a blog and SaaS platform that builds very complex content clusters, like blogs and user manuals, around its main products.
Start with a seed term that acts as the primary subject, such as "photography," and then build a series of related themes.
Adobe, for example, offers a series of photography tips intended to educate users about and promote Adobe products such as Photoshop.
You may establish a community of individuals who flock to your business not only for items but also for intelligent advice by generating great resource material.
As an added benefit, utilize community forums to further engage and educate consumers on typical product troubleshooting issues.
6. Remember to Include Links
While backlinks remain a vital ranking indication, I consider them to be a more beneficial marketing approach.If you follow my content recommendations above, you will generate a large number of linkable assets that will organically generate backlinks and may be leveraged for marketing to earn more.
White papers, ebooks, polls, studies, and tutorials, for example, are excellent tools for educating individuals and citing material for their own study.
Follow the practical steps below to acquire early exposure and establish connections to content:
- To build attention, guest post on prominent blogs and websites.
- Promote instructional material on paid platforms like Facebook and Google.
- To raise awareness, provide instructive information to key individuals in your sector.
- For connections to your program, contact the resource pages.
- Conduct roundtable conversations with industry experts.
- Publicize surveys and research through press releases or sponsored outlets.
7. Connect everything across multiple channels.
Finally, put all of these techniques together to form an omnichannel approach.For an early-stage SaaS company to grow, the best plan will be to use a mix of PPC for brand awareness, content to build authority, and organic SEO to get more clients.
Furthermore, distributing high-level information such as a white paper via ads, email, social media, and other channels is an excellent way to raise awareness, create links, and generate visitors for your website.
Combine your PPC and SEO keyword research to improve your funnel and make a consistent marketing plan that guides customers from being aware to making a choice.
Finally
SEO and SaaS not only sound similar, but they also work well together.
Paid advertising may be necessary at first to get people to know about your brand, but these SEO techniques are the best way to save money and grow your online presence.