Attracting high quality leads to your website and increasing your conversions sounds quite simple, but is a very crucial aspect of SaaS marketing. We often mistake our measure of success by the quantity of leads we attract to our business instead of the quality. Take Company XYZ for example. Company XYZ had approximately 10,000 visitors to its website on a monthly basis. However, the conversion rate was as low as 0.2%. While analyzing what could have possibly gone wrong, it was found that all of those 10,000 visitors weren’t relevant audience for the company.
So it doesn’t matter how many visitors you get, what really matters is how many of your leads are good enough to become your customers. Now, how do you ensure that the visitors landing on your site have the intent of purchasing your product/service. Here are the strategies for SaaS businesses that you could employ to pull relevant and good crowd to your web properties:
1. While stomach may be the way to a man’s heart, your website is the way to your customer’s heart
SaaS Marketing Strategy with Website - Your website is the reflection of your brand and it speaks volumes about the quality and efficiency of your products/services. Create a really clean and user-friendly website that communicates the what’s, why’s and how’s of your business to your leads. You may have a simple site with just a HomePage. But if it has all the contents in bold, legible and easy-to-interpret format, then you have done your job well. The actual way to glorify your website is through compelling content. Create irresistibly good content that gets noticed for the right reasons. Have effective Call-to-Action buttons (CTAs) positioned correctly. CrazyEgg has a really simple website that tells its audience what the brand is all about in its HomePage. The key takeaway from this site is that it informs everyone about its business offering but does not give away any details of how it functions and what are the tools it offers, unless the visitor logs in using one of his/her social properties. This way, CrazyEgg ensures that only really interested people will enter the site and try to figure out more about its products and services. This is a great example to attract rich audience through a smartly designed website.
2. Include forms to take details from your visitors
SaaS Marketing Strategy with Forms - This is an extension of the previous point wherein you add simple forms that require your leads to fill out basic details about themselves/their company. This way, you restrict your audience to only those who are genuinely interested in the product/service you’re offering. If you are a really big player and have complete confidence in your offering, then you may go a step further and ask your visitors to signup or signin to access privileged information.
3. Introduce freemium models with defined benefits
SaaS Marketing Strategy with Freemium models - A lot of your leads may be clueless about your product or tool and may need to try their hands on it before actually purchasing it. If you think it is feasible for your business, it’s best to offer a free trial version of your tool for a stipulated period of time (typically less than 30 days). GoAnimate is one such company that offers a free trial of its video making tool for a period of 14 days, post which you need to pay to access the tool.
4. Attract the right kind of audience by adding an element of FUN to your SaaS website
SaaS Marketing Strategy with Fun element - If your brand stands for something quirky and peppy, then reflect that in your website and social properties. Look at what Kellogg's has done with its site. It has deviced a simple way to interact with its audience in an extremely fun-loving and innovative manner. How about identifying that fun element for your brand and using the same to talk to your customers? Now, that’s creativity and it sure will attract the right kind of audience that understands your brand’s tone and language.
5. Guest blogging - one of the great strategies for SaaS businesses to attract visitors
SaaS Marketing Strategy with Guest blogging - Forbes, Moz, Business standard, YourStory and many more high authority sites offer guest posting. You very well know that the audience present on these websites are thought leaders in their respective industries. You, most certainly cannot afford to miss being on these sites. How would you create a buzz in such a crowded environment? It’s quite simple actually. Write a well-researched and informative article on any trending issue. Using the right tags and relevant keywords, publish it on these sites. Then, all you have to do is wait and watch the magic that your article does. Another shortcut that you may follow is to skip writing an article and simply posting intuitive and ingenious comments on popular blog posts that other peers have written. Leave a link (if possible) to direct interested people to your site. Company XYZ followed this and saw a rise of 38% in its visitors. After all, there’s nothing to lose in this, right!
6. Using Social Media smartly is important to attract quality visitors to your SaaS business:
SaaS Marketing Strategy with LinkedIn - LinkedIn has the largest pool of professionals today. All the CXOs and Marketing Managers are mostly active on this platform. Join relevant groups and post something really interesting with apt keywords. Use unconventional strategies like negative theory or controversial topics to gain attention of your target audience and ensure that your article does justice to the title. This is a good medium to guide your leads to your website. It works as a great filter for high quality customers. Similarly, follow Twitter and Facebook influencers and mention them in important tweets/posts. If you grab their attention and they distribute your post to their followers, then you know you’ve attracted quite a few eyes there.
7. Attending conferences, events, and seminars is one of the important strategies for SaaS businesses to attract visitors:
SaaS Marketing Strategy to attract visitors - Never miss an opportunity to attend a conference or seminar (be it big or small). Your target audience could be present at that event. Make sure you present your company well and connect with the right kind of people. You’ll definitely get good leads and business as well. Webinars are also another way to network with like-minded people who can collaborate with your company to do some awesome work. If you are in the healthcare industry, then you have so many events and meetups of doctors and medical professionals around you that you ought to be present in each one of them to increase your connections and announce your brand’s awesomeness.
So, these are a few strategies for SaaS businesses to attract relevant and right visitors to your site/business. While there may be many other methods, we have included the more popular and efficient ones that have worked for most companies. It may be a debatable topic as to whether quality is preferred or quantity, but according to us, it is the right balance between both these entities that is important for a successful company.