As a marketing agency, we speak to lots of SaaS start-ups. Founders realise that they need to invest in inbound, or have their chance of market-share stripped away from them piece-by-piece.
Some of the people we speak to just haven't quite got it yet, though, and the 5 naive comments I share with you today haunt us time and time again in our discussions. Don't get caught out saying these yourself!
1. "Customers don't need content to buy our SaaS product, they can just try it"
No matter what you're selling, your potential customers will search for solutions to their problems online. Your content could help solve these problems, and that helps build demand for your SaaS product.
80% of B2B buyers start their research online, with a search engine, like Google. Whether you sell CRM, Manufacturing Automation or Contact Centre Software your potential customers are making searches that could introduce them to your company.
That is, if you publish and distribute the right content online.
We've yet to come across an industry where people never search for solutions to their business problems or consume content, where inbound marketing done well wouldn't improve the buyers' journey and increase conversion rates.
2. "All of our customers come via word-of-mouth, we're Not Ready for inbound marketing"
Word-of-mouth is great. In fact, it's one of the best marketing methods out there. The best leads your SaaS business will get, are when you delight a customer, and your customer goes on to introduce a friend or colleague to you.
However:
- You're restricting the rate you can grow. You will only ever grow slowly, as it takes time for word-of-mouth to really pick up. In the end, your customers have a personal or professional network that's only so big, and it's rare for people to talk about a SaaS product all the time!
- You restrict the impact of your word-of-mouth marketing by not having an inbound marketing strategy. Word-of-mouth works best when your target market also stumble across your brand and content during their day-to-day work and find you helpful.
- You lose your "early" advantage within the sector you're in, if you don't have much competition yet. If another SaaS competitor starts building their content brand ahead of you, it's much more difficult for you to compete with them later and create content which will outrank them in search results.
Being the first to create great content around a topic is a huge advantage. If you're selling AI Contact Centre Management software for example, there's loads you can help educate people about. Countless misconceptions to address about AI in general. Huge opportunity. A SaaS Start-up in the sector would be foolish to lose that to someone else.
3. "Blogging doesn't work, we've already tried it"
Whenever someone has said this to me, I immediately know that their blogging strategy was the problem. If blogging doesn't drive targeted traffic to your website, you're almost definitely doing it wrong.
Most commonly:
- You spend lots of time creating blog content, but didn't put any resources into promoting what you had published. When you first start out, social media ads can be particularly effective for building your early content's links, awareness and popularity.
- You didn't create the right content. No one just wants to read your company's news or topics which don't help them solve problems. Your content needs to focus on helping your target audience whether they buy your SaaS software or not. It also needs to be targeted at the types of search queries your target audience are making, which requires keyword research.
There's no replacement for depth or quality. Churning out low quality content every week doesn't work well. - You didn't blog consistently for long enough. In order to attract lots of links, build your authority and drive large amounts of organic traffic which moves the needle, you need to create quality blog content each month on an ongoing basis.
Ads and promotion "turbocharge" a piece reducing this time period, but it usually takes at least 6-12 months of consistent blogging with an effective promotion strategy to see organic search take off.
4. "We can't afford to spend on our inbound marketing, We Need Engineers"
While getting your product into top shape is essential, it's worth remembering that it's Product / Market fit you're seeking... not Product / Nothing fit!
Too many SaaS companies make the mistake of focusing solely on their product at the beginning, rather than testing whether there's also a market fit for it effectively.
Building your content brand and traffic helps you to test more, and develop a reputation for helping which expands beyond your product as well. This can be helpful in building goodwill amongst your target audience, encouraging more people to test your early stage product.
5. "Everyone in XYZ industry is our target, we Need to target all of Them with our website and content"
Especially in the early days, your product and marketing needs to focus.
No business targets everyone. Not. A. Single. One.
It's important that you understand the individual customer types you are targeting, so that you can produce the content that resonates with them, and drives them to purchase from you. Until you are willing to accept that you cannot create a marketing strategy that targets "everyone", you will forever end up treading water.
If you haven't decided on which segments of "everyone" you're going to target, then you need to take your thinking back to the drawing board. There's nothing to stop you building a marketing strategy that initially targets a very small subset of buyers with your inbound marketing, and adding new buyer personas as time goes on and your business grows. In fact, we almost always recommend this approach to smaller businesses.
So that's it for our 5 naive things business owners say about inbound marketing. There's many more out there, and it'd be great to hear some of your favourites. If you're guilty of some of the above, don't worry.
Invest more time learning more about inbound SaaS marketing. You'll be one step ahead of your competitors.
