How to Start & Grow Your SaaS Startup – 13 Tips for SaaS Growth In 2022

SaaS marketing is quite different from any other type of marketing. In the last year, 52% of companies experienced increased spending on customer retention. In 2022, you need to assess your current SaaS marketing strategy to identify the areas of improvement in your B2B SaaS marketing plan, as its estimated market worth is expected to grow to $220.21 billion. For 55% of SaaS companies, the customer retention cost is one of the key SaaS growth metrics.

The SaaS model is meant for lead generation, revenue growth, and sales based on features and price instead of selling value and solutions. Seeing steady growth, SaaS startups have been competing for market share from the already established companies. We have compiled a list of SaaS startup growth tips in this blog post. Before that, let us first learn how SaaS is defined and let us talk about its market value.

SaaS Business and Market Value

SaaS stands for ‘Software as a Service’ that is related to businesses offering subscription-based software delivery services to clients using cloud technology or internet storage. It is related to cloud computing and could prove beneficial for both clients and business owners.

SaaS products can be accessed through web browsers or any other interface on the client’s end which the users can access anytime, anywhere. Updates are installed automatically, improving user experience regularly.

In the next section, we will talk about some tips on how you can grow your SaaS startup in 2022.

13 Tips to Make a SaaS Startup Grow

Starting up and growing a SaaS startup is not easy. To make the job easier, we are listing down some tips for you to grow your SaaS startup.

1. Follow a Lean Planning Process

Traditional business plans are too time-consuming. A lean planning process model replaces the business plan with a business outline requiring less time to be updated and expanded with business growth.

This covers four important business areas, i.e., schedule, strategy, tactics, and revenue generation. The strategy includes the core aspects you are trying to achieve with your business and SaaS product. Tactics cover how you will achieve the goals set in the strategy. A schedule helps in setting each milestone, keeping a check on your SaaS startup progress. And, the revenue generation covers how you make money with the service that you will offer to the consumers.

2. Hatch a Strategy

When making a strategy for your SaaS startup, you will cover the following sections:

• A brief business description and what makes it unique
• The problems faced by consumers, the solution your business will provide, and how it solves the problem
• Find locations such as the websites, groups, and pages where you can find potential customers who might be interested in buying your product
• The competition for your SaaS product and learning about their product and services by testing it out, reading reviews, watching customer review videos, and listing down the right and wrong things they’ve been doing.

3. Make the User Onboarding Process Fast and Simple

Users do not like trying out apps that take too long to install or register. They want the process to be as simple and fast as possible. Make the users sign up for using the service, and once the user has an account, they are likely to continue using it.

Change the process for purchasing your SaaS product. This impacts your conversion rate positively. Here are some ways to optimize your purchase registration flow:

• Two-step Checkout: Making a two-step checkout can improve your conversion rate by up to 10%. The first step would be the customer's name and email, and the next is their credit card details.
• Third-Party Authentication: The third-party authentication services make it easier for prospects to register on your site. It also eliminates the need for email verification and ensures that the information is correct.
• Reduce the fields in the sign-up process: If the existing registration flow requires a lot of details from the user, your conversion rate can decrease drastically. The best way to remove this friction is by offering immediate user access with only necessary details. Give them an idea about your product, after which you can collect more data about them.

4. Perform Testing on Your SaaS Product

A poor-performing app can damage your company’s reputation to a great extent. An app with a smooth and easy-to-use UI can expand the user base tremendously. Before releasing your product, it should be put through a thorough testing process and must be released only after passing the beta phase. Invite people to use the app who need something like it and give you an honest opinion to fix any issues. A feedback mechanism must also be there in the app so that anyone can send their feedback easily.

5. Perform Data Analytics

Once the SaaS product is ready, you need to integrate it with analytics with which you can track things such as the people using the app, features they are using most, what pages they are visiting most, etc. Data analytics help collect the data to make reports in which the user can view the facts and figures when they are needed. A detailed report helps gain insights into what customers like the most and what they don’t so that you can modify your marketing efforts accordingly.

6. Use Content Marketing

Content marketing is perceived to be one of the best growth strategies. It includes creating many articles, blog posts, videos, etc., that talk about search engine optimization, pay-per-click, email marketing, and social media. This helps drive people into your funnel, increase chances of getting more conversions, acquire backlinks, and boost brand awareness. This is one of the key marketing strategies to reach potential customers, drive home sales and improve customer loyalty.

• Create emails and demographics with captivating content to obtain customer information, encourage blog subscriptions, gated content, eBooks, or webinars
• Be authentic about your brand when you are interacting with contacts, use technical language to target a specific audience

• SaaS startups that enhance customer loyalty can experience an increase in profits. Smoothen the onboarding process, introduce new blog features and start a newsletter.
• Create webinars to create, engage your audience and educate them about your SaaS app. Share some customer success stories with them to convert.
• Write on topics often searched in your niche
• Create content that addresses your audience’s issues and offers them value.
• Make your content scannable by making it easier to acquire information without reading the whole post using subheadings, short paragraphs, and numbered lists.
• Incorporate visuals in your blog posts to make them engaging, which could be a screenshot, chart, a stand-out quote, or video.

7. Offer a Transparent Pricing Model

Many SaaS businesses fail to acquire customers when their pricing is complicated. Ask a focus group to look at your pricing page and evaluate its user-friendliness. It’s important to choose the right pricing model to predict costs and plan budgets. The more customers you acquire, the higher the pricing will be. Another approach is per-user pricing that depends on the number of people using the software. The subscription plan lets the company forecast costs far easily.

A monthly, quarterly, and annual pricing are preferable but your end goal to increase your SaaS growth is to lock in customers for a longer period at the annual tier. Other SaaS pricing models you can consider are per active user, flat rate, tiered pricing, per feature pricing, freemium, etc.

A perceptive business owner understands that pricing evolves accordingly with market and competitor movement. The effectiveness of your pricing must be checked constantly.

8. Offer Free Trial

For a SaaS business to run, digital marketing is a must. Giving free trials of your digital product is one of the common examples of code marketing. With code marketing, you can provide value in your content that encourages customers to believe in offerings and invest in them. Here are the best code marketing practices that you can implement:

• Content marketing: Content marketing is a key growth strategy for a SaaS startup that businesses can use in their code marketing strategy. You can enable customers to imagine your product experience by including data on your service improvement on customer issues.
• Social Media: Allow existing clients to publish results after using your service so that potential customers get a social glimpse. You can also ask your customers to leave testimonials after using your product or service.
• Search Alternatives: You should offer potential clients free workshops or free consulting services so that they can imagine the experience of using your services.

9. Use Email Marketing

There are 3.9 billion people using emails daily; therefore, email marketing is one of the greatest ways to grow a SaaS business. It makes your customers believe in the product’s value. In fact, 81% of B2B marketers use emails most often in their content marketing campaigns. Thus, it is important to use email marketing for your business.

Some of the benefits you can gain from email marketing are driving user engagement, increasing conversions, and enhancing customer retention rates.

Here are some of the best email marketing practices that you can implement:

• Balance Email Frequency: It’s critical to balance between too much and too little emailing as you don’t want to annoy your customers. It is estimated that 35% of B2B marketers transact 3-5 emails every week, but your email frequency depends on what your customers want.
• Classify Emails: Creating emails in categories depending on user buying patterns has a better chance of converting customers.
• Identify the Goal: Take a look at the intention of your emails that offers your customers a higher value, and be clear with the content you are offering.
• CTA Design and Format: Using an attractive and distinctly styled CTA is very important in email marketing execution.
• Use Automated Tools: The execution of your crafted emails is difficult without AI-driven tools that support your deployment.

10. Embrace the power of SEO

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) improves your landing page quality. 68% of online experiences start with a search engine making SEO a critical marketing strategy to grow your company’s engagement.

SEO startups need to understand that this process needs to be continuously implemented and optimized over long. Here are the best SEO practices to be implemented:

i. Generate Keyword Traffic: You must hit keywords that your potential customers often search. The right keywords will make your content more organic.

ii. Use Backlinks: Partner with other businesses to link your website to another website. This attracts search engines as it helps you gain trust. You can build a relationship with other businesses, but one of the best ways to get a backlink is by offering to write a guest blog for them in exchange for a backlink. You need to make sure that your backlinks are coming from reputable websites.

iii. Ensure Quality User Experience: Search engines prefer websites with a good user experience. Make sure that your website loads quickly, is compatible with mobile, and is easily navigable. 

11. Leverage Co-Marketing

Marketing more and more is a must for SaaS companies. Having a partnership with other startups and co-marketing deals with making the best of each other’s following and expertise. It is good for companies looking for a broad customer base and offering marketing content that can generate leads. Co-marketed campaigns let consumers make buying decisions without even talking to a sales representative. Co-marketing is one of the cost-effective marketing campaigns and displays good brand leadership for your audience. Here are the best practices for co-marketing:

• Finding the Right Partner: Your SaaS partner must have an audience beneficial for your brand. You must ensure that you have the right amount of leads, appropriate expertise, and a good reputation. Once you enjoy working with your partner, it makes a huge difference to your marketing campaign.
• Ensure Consistency: When creating the content, it is a must that the end product is consistent.
• Quantify Results: It is critical to analyze the campaign’s success to knowing how to improve. Lead-to-customer conversion rates and quality ratings are some things to consider to know if it is worth working with a company again.

12. Invest in a Digital Marketing Campaign

An effective digital marketing strategy helps in the growth of your SaaS business. Optimized content can generate brand awareness and a positive reputation. Not only this, but creative digital marketing materials can also attract potential investors. Incorporate the newest digital marketing trends. You can begin with SEO and PPC campaigns, email marketing, and social media marketing. There are also other ideas to utilize, such as multimedia ads on interactive social platforms.

13. Make a Note of Your CAC and Churn Rates

For scaling your SaaS startup, manage your resources as per your operational expenses. Also, compare with the number of customers who are paying for your services. This is where you can keep a track of your Cost for Acquiring Customers (CAC) and churn rate. CAC helps you determine your acquisition expenses and then build your user base. 

The CAC data helps you forecast your success rate and manage your expenses appropriately. On the other hand, the churn rate points to the service cancellation percentage within a specific period. A low churn rate signifies customers are happy with your service. A higher churn rate indicates that you need to adjust a certain aspect of your offerings.

Conclusion:

SaaS startups use software to offer customers a subscription-based product. These businesses create, develop, host the product themselves. SaaS businesses have immediate access to the global market and can scale without increasing product delivery costs.

Creating a SaaS offering is one thing and making your SaaS startup grow is another. For achieving a sustainable SaaS growth metric, your product must be genuine, have great flexibility, and have a smart market positioning.

This list of 13 most effective tips for achieving SaaS startup growth will help you get the right clientele, boost their perception of your product value, and collect feedback for making strategic decisions. It will also help manage your sales funnel effectively and establish yourself as a successful business leader. For more such interesting articles on SaaS, visit ATC. If you are looking to scale your SaaS business or are looking for a partner to help build your SaaS product, ATC might be the right fit for you.