Congratulations! That’s it… you’ve gone through all the crazy stages of creating your company! You found an innovative concept, a name, built an outstanding team, and now you’re at the crucial stage: how to propel my SaaS into the spotlight! Marketing automation is one of the levers to get there, and we’re going to see together how, with a concrete campaign example.
1/ Raising awareness of your SaaS through inbound marketing
These days, the trend is inbound marketing! A practice that has proven itself, especially among SaaS vendors. The principle? I give my target audience a clear and concise answer to their problem through so-called “premium” and free content. This way, you can ask for their personal data in return and start nurturing the relationship.
This is where it all begins to propel your company forward: you need to be visible and have everyone talking about you! The benefit of this practice is collecting high-quality data, establishing your expertise in your field of choice, and becoming legitimate in the eyes of your prospects. And yes… they will naturally turn to you when they are ready to convert into users.
To do this, let’s start by attracting our prospects. In the SaaS world, one of the most successful types of content is the white paper or eBooks, for example. If you choose this option, I strongly advise you to be specific and keep your promise by giving advice that readers can easily put into practice. That’s how you capture attention and, above all, create a sense of trust over time.
Another example of rich content that works is the webinar format! Its advantage is that it allows you to interact directly with the audience, create live polls, and thus collect even more high-quality data. At Webmecanik, it’s one of our favorite formats because we can address our future customers’ issues directly and without beating around the bush.
Finally, if your business model allows it, don’t hesitate to offer free trials. It’s a first step in introducing your offer and helping your target audience understand the value of using your product. It’s a quick and effective trigger for collecting data at scale. You can then leverage it with your marketing automation tool!
2/ What you need: the tools and a few ideas for your first pieces of content
To implement and enhance your inbound marketing strategy, you will need tools to process and above all leverage the data you have collected. Marketing automation is the essential tool that will allow you to store, enrich, and maintain a high-quality database.
The direct benefit is being able to identify prospects, send the right message to the right person and, above all, at the right time! No prospect is ignored anymore, and the user experience will only be strengthened. Indeed, thanks to this tool, you can act on the 4 essential phases of your conversion funnel: ATTRACT, CONVERT, TRANSFORM, and RETAIN.
Today, let’s look at the first step, “ATTRACT,” with a concrete content example. For example, I am a company and offer SaaS software that revolutionizes the processing of candidate profiles for businesses. To attract my target audience, I offer a webinar with a punchy title, which I’m going to promote on LinkedIn for example. The goal is to bring prospects to your website, get them to sign up, and have them discover your solution.
Because it’s a webinar, depending on your budget and your preferences, several platforms exist such as GoToWebinar or Livestorm. You can easily connect these platforms with your Webmecanik Automation software thanks to connectors. If that’s a touchy subject for you, don’t panic, our trainers will support you in setting them up?!
3/ The informational campaign for your contacts, let’s go!
What campaign should you use to inform your contacts? At this stage, you probably have no or very few email addresses to process, so I invite you to use the power of your marketing automation tool to attract and target as many people as possible. At Webmecanik, we call them anonymous visitors!
Let’s recap: you created a LinkedIn post with a link to your website where you integrated a registration form for your awesome webinar. Several places to integrate this form are possible and recommended. For example, a landing page and why not a pop-in that appears when a visitor is about to leave your website.
Thanks to Webmecanik Automation software, you capture anonymous visitors via tracking, and yes, at last no prospect is ignored anymore!
Here is an example of a scenario in an image:
As you can see, the source of the campaign is anonymous visitors grouped into a segment. They will enter the campaign when they have submitted the form; once the contacts’ details are recorded, the contacts will receive an email and then a follow-up to participate in your webinar.
NB: the best practice is to collect your contacts’ consent, so think about opt-in as soon as they enter the database, then about scoring in order to assess your contacts’ engagement. These are tools available in your marketing automation software.
In this campaign example applicable to any type of SaaS, I invite you to manage marketing pressure by giving your contacts time before following up with a second email invitation to your webinar.
The final goal of your scenario is to continue nurturing the relationship with your contacts, so think about your post-webinar campaign!
4/ The next step… think conversion!
That’s it… the webinar is over, you had many registrants: participants or contacts who could not attend, so it is important to continue nurturing these interested contacts. It’s time to think about converting your leads into subscribers! You will learn all the secrets of this new step with Léa Igier in her next article, where you will find a concrete and simple campaign to implement, interesting, isn’t it?!
As for me, I invite you to discover the replay of my Live session. There, you will discover in detail the scenario presented today! I will also give you all my tips for putting YOUR marketing automation strategy in place so you can be propelled into the spotlight! A valuable moment of discussion around your challenges, which I will address with the expertise I have gained from all the clients I have supported. See you soon!
