The SaaS industry suffered a significant loss due to pandemic conditions in 2020. A global report and survey conducted by Software as a service (SaaS) Global Marketing explain that the industry has seen a low growth from 2019 to 2020 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1%. The standard augmentation is mainly due to a global economic downshift caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and the steps taken to control it. Nevertheless, from 2021, the market was anticipated to recuperate and grow at a CAGR of 10%, achieving $253 billion by the end of 2023.
The immediate focus of SaaS businesses has finally diverted to growth. This is where growth hacking takes centre stage. But before getting to it, let's understand what exactly growth hacking is, followed by what are the best hacks to grow.
What is Growth Hacking?
Growth hacking is a catch-all term for techniques that concentrate entirely on growth. The word "hacking" here refers to discovering creative marketing methods that convey significant results. It is most commonly utilized by early-stage companies requiring rapid development on a limited budget. Regardless, (almost) every company is in the recovery stage and trying to increase its growth journey. As a result, growth hacking is crucial for every business – startups or large enterprises.
Growth hacking often spawns significant returns with modest investments. Companies like Dropbox, Dollar Shave Club, and LinkedIn have profited from it to earn millions of customers and dollars.
Growth hacking concentrates on generating new clients and raising their businesses over anything else to spike the growth curve. They design, implement and test their opinions to determine their effectiveness.
What drives Growth Hacking?
Each metric relates to a class of the growth hacking funnel to efficiently calculate and follow the improvement.
- New Clients: Acquiring new clients is what investment is all about. This contains the following website signups, funnel drop-off junctures, and more.
- Active Users: It influences clients to support utilizing your product and delivers them a favourable first experience. Emphasis is on registrations, feature usage, and other things.
- Customer Retention: Keep clients coming back for repeat business. Monitor software use, component usage, engagement with new updates, etc.
- Revenue Generated: Note the amount of paying users, the free-to-paid user proportion, the number of initial transactions, upsell prospects, monthly churn pace, and more.
- Referrals: Enable clients to direct new clients to you through referrals. Tracked based on customer happiness, social media shares, and other metrics.
There are many sub-metrics to each stage, and it becomes more accessible by the level. Once you understand what's working and what is not, it becomes easier to track growth efficiency.
Growth hacking ideas for SaaS businesses
1. Streamline communication with your customers and potential leads
It is more profitable when you can reply to a SaaS customer.
Whether we're speaking about development issues, pricing queries or commendation, this rings true.
When misrepresenting multiple marketing pipelines, you must distribute your resources and focus on messages and forewarnings. Doing so could distinguish between a long-term client and a failed lead.
Current data from Salesforce reports that a business's background is just as necessary as its product or service. Some standard instances are lead promoting using marketing mechanization to turn demo registrations into paying clients. The takeaway is that you cannot afford to let queries or feedback dawdle.
Other methods to get more from your outreach endeavours besides utilizing state-of-the-art sales mechanisms. These ways automate customer journeys like onboarding, training, A/B testing etc., using marketing automation. Furthermore, automation tools can support you track leads and automating your marketing campaigns.
2. Curate customer stories
Social verification and favourable reviews are essential to SaaS marketing, developing a sort of digital word-of-mouth. According to data from Groove, testimonials and social evidence go hand in hand with increased conversions.
It speaks to the importance of being featured and regularly checked on sites that aggregate customer feedback for SaaS products.
- G2 (formerly G2 Crowd)
- Product Hunt
- Capterra
Piggybacking on the above, maintaining open communication tracks makes it much more comfortable to curate reviews on such websites. It makes it manageable to ask for testimonials and case studies which are among the most reasonable ways to demonstrate that your product is up to the mark.
For instance, Optinmonster facilitates a variety of testimonials on-site. These testimonials manage a combination of industries, permitting them to show off their social verification and win over additional segments of their audience.
Meanwhile, their testimonials and case analyses break down clear metrics and implementation data. The capacity to show off actual numbers is much more compelling than just praise for a well-off job.
That said, even the simplest forms of positive feedback can serve as good news for your business. Notice that many SaaS brands take the time to respond and re-publish shout-outs from the customer.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a method that enhances the quantity and rate of traffic to your landing page or blogs straight from search engines. Search marketing provides brand pervasiveness for various stages of purchasing intent.
68% of online experiences commence with a search engine, which drives SEO as a crucial marketing strategy to grow your company's engagement. But it's not always effortless in a world where companies fight for their online content to be consumed.
Startups must comprehend that this method needs to be constantly executed and optimized over a long period. One would not get instant outcomes, but it pays off to be patient, and you see leads developed through search marketing.
4. Getting the right content in front of the right audience
Developing the right content that draws attention and upholds potential customer engagement. As you have likely attended, content is sovereign and still is, particularly with SaaS. Users desire a lot of knowledge to enable them to make a buying judgment and envision your brand to maintain a high level of control.
You can use Software like Spyfu and Google Keyword Planner to specify what your top keywords are and what your target audience is exploring.
A few strategies are sharing your content as a guest post on another blog with a similar audience. Use platforms like Medium and publications and ads while boosting them to get in front of the right audience.
5. Create a Pre-Launch Email List
When it arrives at an adequate startup growth approach, email marketing stays at the top in locating conversions and leads.
Put your emphasis on creating an email list. It will permit you to reach your audience and produce your message effectively. Email marketing also helps enterprises build pre-launch advertising for any product or occasion.
It would benefit if you brought a few weeks to assemble the hype and make your audience keen for your launch. It will also let you reach potential clients even before your launch. But do not just make a list of email addresses and sit inactively.
To set up email lists, you should opt for email assistance like MailChimp, which permits you to push emails without hassle. Since communication recreates a vital role in modifications, ensure you reach out to your potential clients at least a week before your launch. A great case study involves Author Stash, which utilized this strategy to count about 2000 subscribers in just two weeks.
6. Make New Brand Partnerships
Business partnerships and collaborations are amongst the best growth hacking techniques as they create a lot of noise. Many brands have realized that co-marketing and product partnership are effective growth marketing strategies.
It will create a tremendous social media buzz and transmit relevant organic traffic to your website. It is a possibility for news coverage and will improve the visibility of your products and services worldwide.
Some of the most prosperous partnerships with not-too-shabby Return On Investments have been those that formed new products around a theme. Any small-medium enterprise can create a practical collaboration if it encounters the right companion to bring value to its brand and vice versa.
Partnerships even function for companies that work in very diverse environments. A great example is a partnership between Airbnb ( a room-sharing app) and Flipboard (a news app) that lets users of one brand leverage the strengths of the further partner.
In this case, Flipboard delivers customized content to Airbnb users, who could then make instructed decisions when reserving residences through Airbnb. On the flip side, these users make content (in the form of comments and reviews) that Flipboard sums for its users.
7. Leverage Adjacent Markets
Adjacent markets are an outstanding sales growth hack. It's taking your core competencies and developing new value for new clients. The key to adjacent markets is to export your aptitudes and capacities, not services and products.
Before considering any new market, consider a few factors, like the competition. These factors are as follows:
- How abundant is the opportunity regarding volume and profits?
- Are there legal obstacles you will need to tackle?
- Look at the brand's potential and active channels.
- Find new ways to utilize those skills.
Most people associate Nike with products, concentrating on track and field sports. However, Nike's product spectrum covers almost all sports and workouts related products for which you need high-quality apparel and footwear.
When Nike joined the competitive market of mountaineering-based products, they decided to bring the principle of Adjacent Markets into play. They began by proposing footwear for mountaineering activities. Once they assembled customer loyalty, they successfully diverged to the apparel industry.
8. Build a Community Around Your Brand
Social media is a vital part of the marketing mix for companies. One can leverage social media communities and groups to advertise themselves, acquire market feedback and interact with industry influencers.
It takes time to design content and build an audience. For this, you must seek to align social media moves with the overall direction of your development.
Creating a Facebook group is one of the best social media growth hacking strategies for leveraging social media for your business success. The group should concentrate on your brand where your audience would engage with your label. The odds are fair that those not conscious of your label may learn about it once they are encouraged by the content in your group or community. You must ensure you build value for them through that group or community.
Growth hacking & outbound marketing is a Facebook group created by the founder of Find that Lead – Lead generation tool. The group's audience consists of potential buyers of his product. He does his best to inspire them by sharing his best growth hacking tips daily.
