SaaS companies have introduced a revolution to the world of technology. And by starting to play a major role in the global software market, they have also started to change our daily life as we know it.
A growing number of new SaaS businesses emerge each year, boosting this industry to unprecedented heights. The SaaS market revenue is predicted to grow by 17.8 percent in 2019 and reach a total worth of $85.1 billion.
However, with great opportunities comes great competition. Therefore, you need to be on guard against the lurking competitors waiting to take your place the first time you do something wrong.
But if you grow your B2B SaaS business regularly and sustainably, you have nothing to fear. Below, you can take a look at some of the most effective strategies to make your B2B SaaS growth sustainable.
Create a detailed and foolproof business plan
If you have ever started a business before, you know that designing a solid business plan is of the utmost importance. A business plan is a roadmap which outlines your business goals and explains how you will approach them.
Depending on your ambitions, the market you are entering, your budget, and a number of additional factors, a business plan can be as short as one page or as long as ten pages. However, if you want to make things easier, you can always use a business plan template.
Before writing a sound business plan, you need to have a clear vision of your future B2B SaaS business, as well as to know how you will meet your customers’ needs and take full advantage of your unique selling point (USP).
Your business plan should include the following sections:
- Executive summary – the most important part that gives the reader an overview of your business as well as an opportunity to get involved in the project
- Company overview – tells the reader when your business was formed, explains its legal structure, location, and achievements
- Industry analysis – gives specifics about your marketplace/industry
- Customer analysis – describes your target customers and their needs
- Competitive analysis – provides an overview of your main competitors in the industry
- Marketing plan – tells more about your SaaS business services, pricing, growth hacking strategies
- Operations plan – details your key day-to-day processes and milestones
- Management team – introduces your team members and also specifies which tasks you plan to outsource such as outsourced CFO, for example
- Financial plan – gives the financial implication of running your business such as revenue model, funding requirements, and exit strategy
Design a winning content marketing strategy
Your content can make all the difference in communicating with your audience. In the B2C world, using customers’ emotions to drive them closer to purchasing your product or service is a tried-and-true formula.
However, this approach is not nearly as effective in the B2B realm. Your B2B clients usually work at top-level positions at successful companies, which means that they tend to make logical decisions on a regular basis.
How does this affect your content marketing strategy?
Instead of trying to appeal to your customers’ emotions and then blatantly offer them to buy your service, you need to listen to their needs and challenges but also give them a clear explanation of how your services will help them solve a specific problem.
The best way to do this is to start a blog. This will allow you to educate your audience and tell them how they can benefit from using your product instead of only listing its features.
Another thing you can try is to always produce better content than your competitors in order to get those coveted backlinks. You can do this by using the skyscraper technique:
- First, you need to do thorough research and find link-worthy content. In other words, go through all the best-ranking articles on the given topic.
- Next, try to create an article which is better than everything that your competitors have offered. To make your content more valuable, include case studies and design stunning infographics
- Finally, reach out to the right people in your industry, including authority websites and influencers.
Content and email go hand in hand
Always remember that email marketing is inseparable from your large-scale content marketing strategy.
Attracting leads to your blog is very important but it is only the first step. Once you have captured your readers’ attention and offered them valuable content, it is time for some conversions.
Get your visitors to subscribe to your email list, making your relationship with them long-term. A smart B2B email strategy will give you a chance to:
- have continuous interactions with your customers
- educate them further about your products
- help them overcome a number of challenges
- guide them toward making a purchase
Communicate with your audience on social media
Even though content and email marketing are incredibly powerful, they are not the only two ways to build a strong bond with your B2B audience.
But just like content and email marketing should be approached differently for B2C and B2B purposes, the same goes for social media marketing. When it comes to communicating with B2C audiences, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are incredibly effective. On the other hand, your B2B customers prefer another social platform – LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is more of a pull than push marketing platform as it allows you to publish highly relevant and informative articles. As such, this social network should be an integral part of your content strategy and a place where you provide useful insights and solutions to your customers’ problems.
Still, even though LinkedIn is a professional network, it is social at its core. Therefore, when you post on it, you should act socially. Make sure not to talk only about your achievements. Instead, engage with other users, comment on their posts, share information with them, and whenever you can, help everyone who needs help.
Bonus tip – make smart decisions
As time goes by and you reach later stages of your B2B SaaS journey, you will realize that decision making may very well be the most difficult aspect of running a business.
Some of the decisions will have been already made in your business plan. Still, from to time, you will find yourself overwhelmed by the many choices before you and unsure how to make a good one.
These choices will have to do with using your resources in the best possible way, communicating with your team and partners, as well as outsourcing tasks that become too heavy a burden.
Sometimes, however, one of the most difficult things is to know when to stop and call it a day. Even though you have invested your time, energy, and effort into growing your B2B SaaS business, with all that competition out there, it is possible that things won’t work as you planned.
That is the moment to reconsider your exit strategy outlined in the business plan. Who knows, you may even manage to sell your SaaS business at that stage. If people can sell a website business, why wouldn’t you be able to sell your SaaS business?
That way, you will be better off with the profit from selling the business and the experience you have acquired in developing it. After that, you can even start another B2B SaaS business, which may prove to be more successful.
Igor Zagradanin
Writer and Content Strategist at Contentised
Igor is a content marketing expert with a proven track record of helping businesses by adding value to their brands, developing content marketing strategies, as well as educating and connecting with their audiences on a personal level.
In his spare time, he plays guitar, produces electronic music, does yoga, and (with more or less success) tries to get in touch with his inner child.