Insights, Marketing

How To Create A Winning B2B SaaS Marketing Strategy for 2023

by Ryan James

To succeed in the competitive B2B SaaS market in 2023, there’s no doubt that your SaaS company will need a well-executed marketing strategy. The good news? There are plenty of ways to secure a strategy that works for not only your business goals but also your B2B customers!

To get there, it’s often just a case of doing your research. To help, our team of SaaS experts is here to guide you on the steps you should be taking to build an effective B2B SaaS marketing strategy and ensure your business succeeds in 2023 and beyond.

Let’s discuss just some of the seven key steps you can take to create a winning B2B SaaS marketing strategy:

1. Define your target audience

This one might sound obvious, but identifying who you’re trying to reach, what their pain points are, and how your product or service can solve their problems is essential to any great B2B marketing strategy. 

To help you tailor your marketing efforts to speak directly to your target audience, the basics should include:

• Conducting market research to gather insights and segment your target audience based on demographics, behaviours, and pain points
• Creating buyer personas that represent your ideal potential customers based on the data collected from your market research
• Tailoring your messaging and content to address your target audience’s needs (using their buyer personas as a guide)

Tip: After effectively defining your audience, you can explore marketing strategies such as account-based marketing. Account-based marketing is a B2B marketing strategy that focuses marketing and sales efforts on target accounts within a specific market and can be highly effective for SaaS businesses.

2. Build a strong online presence

A strong online presence is essential in today’s digital world. Even though ‘old-school’ brand awareness techniques such as billboards and TV ads can still be valuable, approximately 71% of small businesses now have a website. This means that in today’s market, all businesses are expected to be accessible online. 

To ensure your website is as effective as possible:

• Leverage UX design to create a user-friendly website
• Optimise your site for search engines
• Put some time into social media marketing and have an active presence on multiple platforms
• Carry out frequent performance and accessibility audits to ensure your website is serving its intended purpose
• Track metrics (marketing automation software can be useful for this!)

3. Use content marketing to become a leader

Businesses are becoming increasingly careful about the partners they align themselves with. From financial risks to security compliance, companies want to know that the SaaS providers they work with are trustworthy.

This is where a content marketing strategy comes in. Content marketing is an effective way to establish yourself as a leader in your industry and provide value to your target audience as a reliable and authoritative figure.

From creating quality blog posts that showcase your expertise to releasing white papers and case studies that speak to your customers’ pain points, you can create an image for your SaaS brand that increases your appeal as an industry partner.

Tip: Be sure to take search engine optimization (SEO) into account to ensure your content can be more easily found. Especially when it comes to inbound marketing, visibility is key!

4. Leverage email marketing

With so much digital marketing ‘fluff’ and noise in the SaaS industry, many businesses are enjoying the direct approach that email marketing provides. A powerful tool for reaching your target audience, the right approach to email marketing can drive significant results for your business. 

Our recommendation? Personalised email marketing is the way to go.

This is because:

• It helps you nurture leads and build relationships with your customers over time
• It can be automated 
• It provides measurable results through open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates
• It is a cost-effective way to communicate with prospective and existing customers 

Tip: Just be careful to avoid making these common email marketing mistakes!

5. Invest in paid advertising

Paid advertising can be effective in reaching your target audience. This includes running ads on search engines (e.g. Google ads) and social media platforms, as well as investing in retargeting ads to reach customers who have already expressed interest in your product or service.

Sound like an expense that’s only relevant for B2C companies? Think again. The benefits of paid advertising for a B2B marketing strategy include: 

• Helping you target specific industries, job titles, and company sizes to ensure the right people see your ads
• Enhancing your brand visibility and trust amongst your target audience
• Generating better-quality leads to improve efficiency
• Reaching a wider audience than just those who already know about your brand or have visited your website i.e., spreading word of mouth

6. Focus on customer retention

Hoping to future-proof your business and achieve long-term success? Customer retention might be the answer!

Maintaining a satisfied customer base is crucial for any SaaS company hoping to achieve long-term success. A well-crafted customer retention strategy can help you reduce customer churn and increase customer lifetime value. 

To achieve this, you can offer:

• Personalised upselling and cross-selling opportunities
• Exceptional customer support
• Loyalty and referral programs 
• A sense of brand community (i.e., helping those using your SaaS product feel part of an exclusive and support-heavy community)
• Offering exclusive or early access to new releases and updates

Tip: It’s always a good idea to seek regular feedback to improve your brand image as a SaaS company. Not only will identifying and addressing customer issues with your service help increase revenue and profitability, but it will also help you establish a loyal customer base who knows that when there’s an issue — you’ll deal with it!

7. Measure and analyse your results

As a SaaS business, it’s important to measure and analyse the results of your marketing efforts. 

Especially when dealing with other businesses, tracking metrics can help you gain insight into how to improve existing relationships and spot new opportunities with similar companies. The more metrics you have, the more informed your business decisions will be.

The metrics we suggest starting with include:

• Website traffic, e.g., bounce rate, time spent on site, pages viewed per session
• Conversion rates
• Customer retention rates
• Churn rate
• Return on investment (ROI) for your marketing campaigns
• Engagement metrics, e.g., click-through rates and open rates for emails
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Customer lifetime value (LTV)
• Social media metrics (which platforms generate leads most effectively?)

How Rocket SaaS can help you build a winning B2B marketing strategy

As your go-to market strategy specialists, we’ve helped countless SaaS companies rise up against the competition with strategies designed for long-term success. 

As SaaS specialists, our packages have been developed to cater to your specific business needs, saving you the hassle of trying to find a digital partner that can offer the expertise you need. If you want to know more about our services, feel free to contact our team or sign up for a complimentary one-on-one consultation with our SaaS marketing strategists.

Create winning SaaS marketing strategies for 2023 and beyond!