What is B2B SaaS Marketing?
The tricky thing about marketing a B2B SaaS product is the balance that needs to occur between conveying a vision, building awareness, developing brand recognition, generating interest, and building demand, all while bracing for the reality of a free trial or freemium experience that will likely churn 50% or more of your prospects away in the first 24 hours.
Yes … sign me up for that!
But seriously, this is the reality B2B SaaS marketers face everyday.
We build programs to bring people to our marketing website with the hopes that our carefully crafted messaging will compel them to try our product.
We chase aggressive growth goals to support our sales teams’ even more aggressive quota.
We generate content, attend trade shows, write emails, chase partnerships, build community, manage websites, nurture social channels, conduct research, and build ad campaigns.
We advocate for the customer.
And we do everything we can to ensure that when a prospect tries our product they have a positive and productive experience.
Not All B2B Marketing is Created Equal
Building a successful B2B SaaS marketing program begins with a product that is carefully designed to address the problems of your customer. The more accurately we can target our ideal customers and communicate the benefits and value of our SaaS product, the more success our prospects will have when they experience our product.
The best B2B SaaS marketing is:
- Targeted
- Compelling
- Honest
3 Examples of Great B2B SaaS Marketing
Drift
Drift reinvented web chat, positioning it as “conversational marketing” and building in features to address the pain of modern marketing and sales teams. They identified a market opportunity and went HEAVY on brand marketing to create a new category.
Everything Drift does is BIG, meaning they amplify the shit out of everything they create.
They decided to remove all the forms from their content, and they turned it into a giant PR news story. Made it seem like they re-invented b2b marketing.
They went all-in on social selling and made it seem like you were doing something wrong if you weren’t following their playbook.
Their HYPERGROWTH event is only 3 years old and already considered one of the top marketing events out there.
They even wrote a book to promote their playbook.
Great example of how to do b2b brand marketing well.
Great example of how to create a new category through narrative design.
Ubersuggest
Chances are you know Neil Patel for one of his many accomplishments in the marketing industry.
He’s a best selling author, a top influencer, been named a top 10 marketer by Forbes, and President Obama named him in the top 100 Entrepreneurs under 30.
He also launched an SEO Platform called Ubersuggest that’s pretty freaking awesome.
Neil has built an amazing personal brand and is building on top of that foundation by introducing an easy to use, quick to value, and inexpensive SEO platform into a market that is mostly made up of overcomplicated and expensive SEO tools.
Established SEO tools are complicated and expensive. Ubersuggest is backed by @NeilPatel, is easy to understand and manage, and is 1/10 the cost of other services.
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Great example of how to enter and disrupt a crowded market.
Great example of delivering value quickly to build trust.
Peloton
I am not a member of the Peloton community, but I am a fan of their marketing and brand. They have revolutionized home fitness and created an incredible lifestyle brand. They turned stationary fitness equipment into an interactive SaaS business by building an online community of enthusiasts that freely promote and naturally grow their brand awareness and customer base. Peloton has yet to prove that they can make their subscription business profitable, but they are well on their way with nearly 600,000 subscribers, and anticipating $400M+ in Q2 of 2020.
A great example of a community-driven lifestyle brand.
A great example of how to revitalize a dying market.
What are some of your favorite examples of SaaS marketing? Drop them in the comments.
