Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a highly distinctive yet lucrative business model when paired with a successful marketing strategy.
As the cost of hosting cloud networking and applications tends to decrease with more customers, SaaS companies must rapidly increase their subscriber base to thrive in a competitive market.
Over the years, we’ve noticed that numerous SaaS companies have a tendency to prioritise paid acquisition for consistent traffic flow and conversions. Although this strategy may provide short-term profitability, once the faucet is turned off, the traffic doesn’t return.
For this reason, we suggest that the majority of SaaS companies focus more on SEO as a comprehensive growth strategy.
Moreover, the SEO tactics listed below will enhance your current marketing efforts, regardless of whether you market your company via PPC, email, or social media.
Keeping this in mind, we would like to address some of the specific hurdles that SaaS companies encounter in the digital arena and how SEO can be utilised to overcome them.
Subsequently, we will provide nine practical tips to assist you in improving your online presence and expanding your business.
Five Distinctive Digital Challenges that SaaS Companies Face
Economies Of Scale
As mentioned in the introduction, SaaS marketers encounter a challenging task of scaling SaaS businesses to a satisfactory level to compensate for the expenses of hosting their cloud applications.
In order to attain a reduced total cost of ownership (TCO), SaaS companies must establish a proficient network scale that:
- Consistently acquires new customers.
- Retains existing customers.
- Encourages customers to interact with one another using the software to establish a complete network.
Regrettably, paid advertising only adds to the cost of this model and is incapable of attracting new customers beyond your limited scope.
What is required instead is an omnichannel approach that organically raises awareness through various channels.
Levels Of Service
Numerous SaaS providers utilise diverse business models, including self-service, managed service, and automated service models for customer support.
These models are related to the level of support offered by the SaaS vendor, which significantly impacts the cost of operating and managing their platforms.
In some respects, a managed or automated troubleshooting model may serve as a beneficial marketing tool.
However, if your SaaS platform has a notoriously steep learning curve, like Salesforce, and you employ a self-service model for customer support, you may have to invest substantially in educational resources and tutorials to assist customers in their product discovery.
Customer Acquisition Vs. Retention
Although we place significant emphasis on customer acquisition to expand the network of a SaaS provider, retaining customers on the network is equally vital.
Whether you depend on a one-time purchase or a subscription model, consistent evolution with new products, updates, and ongoing customer support is essential for maintaining consistent growth for your business.
Therefore, SaaS companies must invest in a diverse marketing strategy that appeals to new and existing customers in various ways.
Optimising For Search Intent
Lastly, when working with branded products and multiple keywords, it can be challenging to interpret intent.
As we will elaborate, strategically optimising your funnel and content around intent will be crucial for your overall SEO strategy.
Benefits Of SEO For Sustainable SaaS Growth
As SaaS companies rely on establishing economies of scale to decrease costs and maximise profits, a long-term strategy like organic SEO is the most practical choice for SaaS enterprises.
Some of the advantages of SaaS SEO comprise:
- Generating sustainable growth through consistent customer acquisition.
- Reducing the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) of each new customer.
- Creating widespread brand awareness for your products.
- Educating and retaining customers through highly authoritative content.
- Improving overall omnichannel marketing performance.
The last point is intriguing because most SaaS companies typically employ email marketing and paid media to attract and retain customers.
Consequently, high-level content functions as excellent marketing material to publicise over these channels and stimulate user engagement.
As a concluding remark, enhancing brand visibility for your software is perhaps the most crucial component of SEO.
Several products, such as Microsoft Office and G-Suite, benefit from a larger user base since it decreases friction for individuals attempting to communicate through two distinct products.
Therefore, by establishing yourself as a pioneer in the field and cultivating a devoted customer base utilising a combination of content and SEO, you can construct an extensive network of users that reduce hosting costs and hasten your growth.
To begin, let’s examine seven practical SEO tactics for SaaS enterprises.
7 Practical Approaches to Expand SaaS Enterprises Using SEO
Establish the Basics
Foremost, you must construct a user-friendly website where people can download your products, contact customer support, and peruse content.
Some technical basics that your website necessitates include:
- HTTPS protocol.
- Mobile optimisation.
- Fast page speed.
- Optimised images (quality and size).
- Clear web structure.
- Strategic keyword usage.
- Clear calls-to-action (CTAs).
- A substantial crawl budget.
- An XML sitemap.
- No duplicate content issues.
- Hreflang tags for international or multilingual users.
Once established, it will be simpler to rank your website for authoritative content and retain users on it once they visit.
Establish Your Ideal Customer Persona
Subsequently, your team must generate a roster of buyer personas that you will target through several conversion tools. Sources for developing buyer personas could be derived from:
- Sales and marketing teams.
- Existing analytics sources (such as Google Analytics, Google Search Console, or Paid Media Channels).
- Customer service representatives.
- Direct feedback from customer surveys and interviews.
- Now, your buyer personas or avatars will vary based on whether you are targeting a B2C or B2B space.
In a B2C setting, your buyer persona will be determined by numerous demographic and psychographic factors, including:
- Location.
- Age.
- Interests.
- Occupation.
- Education level.
For instance, if you were selling photo editing software, you would likely establish distinct avatars for professional/freelance photographers and hobbyists.
Conversely, your B2B persona will probably concentrate on specific individuals within an organisation, such as managers, founders, or daily users.
For instance, a marketing campaign and persona may centre on a software solution for sales teams and sales managers. Meanwhile, another campaign in the SEO space may focus on SEO managers seeking to switch from current products.
Once you have a roster of buyer personas and avatars, you can develop strategic campaigns with practical solutions that entice these personas on both paid and organic channels.
Strategically Enhance Content for Each Phase of the Funnel
As a SaaS provider, you will probably need to develop distinct content for distinct buyer personas, as well as for new and existing customers.
Regarding acquisition, crafting precise content at each phase of your unique sales funnel will enhance your likelihood of conversion.
Awareness
Establish awareness that the user has a problem and that your software can resolve it. Typical marketing materials include:
- Blog posts.
- Guest posts.
- Press releases.
- Boosted social media posts.
- Paid advertisements.
Interest
Foster interest in your products and devise ways to connect with users.
For instance, motivating users to subscribe to your newsletter or email service can serve as an excellent approach to interact with users over time.
At this stage, you could dispatch emails to users or present them with a pop-up ad advertising a complimentary ebook, white paper, or any other top-level content that aligns with your products.
Evaluation/Decision
Further engage with users to encourage them closer to a conversion. Some typical tactics include:
- Free trials.
- Limited consultations.
- Free demos.
- Free beta testing.
Purchase and Loyalty
After a user has purchased one of your products, persist in engaging with them using special offers or educational content that elevates their user experience and guarantees satisfaction.
Ideally, at this stage, you can foster strong brand loyalty, stimulating word-of-mouth advertising to expand your network.
Concentrate on the Right Keywords
As the acquisition cost for early-stage SaaS providers is tremendously high, it is essential to devise a strategic organic keyword strategy that generates qualified traffic to your website.
Several tactics to formulate high-converting keywords and utilise them effectively include:
- Target a list of your highest-converting PPC keywords.
- Analyse the keywords competitors are bidding on and targeting organically.
- Optimise for informational keywords (e.g. photo editing software: “How to enhance a photo”).
- Leverage “integration” related terms if your software collaborates with other products.
- Concentrate on benefits (e.g. increase, improvement, automation, etc.).
- List features (e.g. photo editing, red-eye removal, cropping, etc.).
- Segment target keywords by intent across your sales funnel (e.g. informational keywords at the top of the funnel and keywords about features/benefits for mid-funnel content).
- Optimise for lower volume, niche keywords with less competition to establish market share.
Develop Topic Clusters to Build Authority
Once you have established a roster of keywords and a practical content strategy for your funnel, it is time to implement it.
Since SaaS products are relatively intricate and fiercely competitive, it is advantageous to adhere to Google’s E-A-T guidelines (Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness) to formulate your content.
Additionally, we suggest creating topic clusters centred on subjects with comparable content that reinforces the main topic to generate authority and address as many user queries as possible.
HubSpot is a great illustration of a blog and SaaS platform that creates highly complex content clusters surrounding its primary products, including blogs and user tutorials.
To devise a topic cluster, commence with a seed keyword that serves as the main topic, such as “Photography,” and create a sequence of related topics.
For instance, Adobe provides a series of photography tips intended to educate users about and promote their products, such as Photoshop.
By producing comprehensive resource content, you can construct a community of individuals who come to your brand, not just for products but also for insightful guidance.
As an added advantage, use community forums to foster further interaction and educate users with shared troubleshooting concerns regarding your products.
Remember to Focus on Links
While backlinks remain a valuable ranking signal, we regard them as a more valuable promotional strategy.
If you adhere to the content tips stated earlier, you will generate numerous linkable assets that naturally accumulate backlinks and can be used for promotion to earn more.
For example, white papers, ebooks, surveys, studies, and tutorials provide excellent resources to enlighten people and cite information for their research.
However, to gain early exposure and build links to content, implement these practical tips below:
- Guest post on popular blogs and websites to create interest.
- Promote educational content on paid channels, such as Facebook and Google.
- Send educational content via email to relevant individuals in your industry to build awareness.
- Contact resource pages for links to your software.
- Conduct roundup interviews with industry professionals.
- Promote surveys and studies through press releases or paid channels.
Ensure Cohesion Across Multiple Channels to Maximise Results
Last of all, integrate all of these strategies into an omnichannel approach.
Employing a combination of PPC for brand exposure, content to establish authority, and organic SEO to expand customer acquisition will offer the most effective strategy to grow an early-stage SaaS business.
Moreover, promoting high-level content, such as a white paper, over advertisements, email, social media, and all other channels is an excellent way to gain exposure, generate links, and steer traffic to your site.
Merge your PPC and SEO keyword research to optimise your funnel and create a coherent marketing approach that guides users from awareness to the decision stage.
SEO and SaaS are not just similar in name, but they also complement each other seamlessly.
Although paid advertisements may be crucial for early brand exposure, these SEO strategies offer the most effective route to reduce your reliance on paid advertising and organically expand your online presence.
Discover unparalleled growth for your SaaS brand with our tailored digital marketing solutions! At Loud Days, we specialise in creating data-driven SEO and marketing strategies designed to elevate your online presence and drive sustainable success. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to enhance your brand visibility, increase user acquisition, and boost customer retention. Reach out to our team of experts today and unlock the full potential of your SaaS brand with our cutting-edge SEO and digital marketing services. Take action now and secure your spot in the competitive SaaS market!
