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Generating leads is the life and death of SaaS companies.
You always need to attract potential customers to your business and deliver personalized content to convert them into sales. While a SaaS company may rely on paid advertising to achieve this, generating and converting leads through organic strategies is more revenue-friendly.
As an SEO agency, we know how to capture leads through organic channels and promote content that aligns with your target market.
This article will explore the top SaaS lead generation strategies and how search engine optimization (SEO) works for lead generation. We will uncover how to monitor and track SaaS lead generation strategies and boost your bottom line.
What We'll Cover:
What is SaaS Lead Generation?
SaaS lead generation is critical to driving your target audience to your product. Without an established lead generation strategy, SaaS companies won't know when buyers in their target market are likely to convert, which can be detrimental to their sales.
Generating sales-qualified leads is challenging, especially when you also need to worry about retaining existing customers and driving loyalty in paying customers. SaaS companies must ensure they deploy marketing efforts personalized to their target audience and implement the right strategies to generate high-quality leads because not all leads are the same.
Some prospects in your lead generation process will provide more value and revenue to your business than others. Your SaaS business must know how to leverage valuable insights about your target audience and strategies to secure high-quality leads that are more likely to have a high customer lifetime value (CLV).
Critical Strategies for B2B SaaS Lead Gen
Successful lead generation relies on several lead generation strategies, including;
- A/B tests
- Gathering reviews from existing customers
- Showcasing your case studies
- Optimizing your landing pages
- Using social selling
- Offering a free tool
- Creating mobile-optimized content
- Including a referral marketing campaign to boost marketing qualified leads.
Let's explore a few of the top SaaS lead generation strategies in more detail.
Conduct A/B Tests
A/B tests are at the top of this list because they are always effective for SaaS lead generation, and you’ll need them to guide all your efforts. More often than not, businesses don’t get lead generation campaigns right the first time - this is where A/B tests come in.
Test different B2B SaaS copywriting, formats, fonts and marketing materials to determine what your audience responds to best. While your audience needs a product that satisfies their needs, they are also humans with preferences that may react differently to your materials.
Here’s a real-life example of how A/B tests can help B2B businesses: HubSpot Academy found that only 9% of 55,000 page views watched their homepage videos.
In response, HubSpot Academy used variations of three homepage hero images. This test revealed that by adding more colorful text and shapes and an animated headline, they could achieve 375 more monthly sign-ups.
Gather Client Reviews
Buyers trust positive reviews, so you need to gather positive feedback.
Speak to your existing buyers and gather as much feedback as you can. Find out what retains these clients and how they find the most value in your product. You can use these reviews and testimonials for your marketing materials and website copy.
Excellent reviews will boost your lead generation by positioning your brand as trustworthy and your product as valuable. But this doesn’t mean negative reviews are the end of the world, either. Bad feedback can be an opportunity to show potential clients your commitment to fantastic customer and user experience.
Research shows that 88% of customers would use a business that responds to negative and positive reviews. So, while you need to avoid negative feedback, if one or two clients have a terrible experience with your business, use this to repair your relationship with that buyer and show potential buyers that your clients matter.
Showcase Case Studies
Case studies were long hidden in the corners of websites; however, now, B2B companies can use them to generate leads. Case studies prove how effective your platform is and how it can offer businesses value.
Remember, B2B decision makers want to measure value in numbers, and showcasing your case studies on your website and social media platforms can achieve this.
Case studies are the third most successful content marketing tool for B2B companies. 73% of B2B buyers look at case studies when purchasing, so it’s imperative to develop and promote them for B2B SaaS lead generation.
Ensure your marketing team analyzes client performance before and after adopting your product and converts these into actionable case studies. You can use this for your portfolio and to attract targeted leads via social media platforms.
Optimize Landing Pages
Landing pages are the most transformative elements at every sales funnel stage.
Optimizing your landing pages to meet the needs of your target audience will help you attract and convert targeted leads. However, poor landing page design will have the opposite effect – leads may perceive your business as unprofessional or untrustworthy, and you need to avoid this.
Here are the best strategies for optimizing your landing pages.
- A clear value proposition: Provide a short and straightforward statement explaining why your buyers should choose your product. You can add this at the top of your landing or in the middle to encourage visitors to scroll to the end.
- Easy navigation: Make sure your landing page is easy to navigate. Include interactive elements to improve visitor engagement.
- Social proof: Include your case studies, reviews, and industry endorsements. This will support your credibility.
- A lead generation form: Create an attractive form that makes it straightforward for prospects to add their information.
- A CTA: Craft a powerful but concise CTA to generate leads.
Use Social Selling
Social media platforms can help you extend your reach and directly speak to targeted leads through social selling. This strategy for SaaS lead acquisition works because it goes beyond typical sales approaches and builds rapport with targeted prospects.
The trick to successful social selling is analyzing what your audience discusses on social media and contributing to those conversations, positioning your product as the natural solution. Social selling also provides key insights, such as who an organization's decision-makers are and current industry trends, to help you craft personalized sales pitches that attract targeted leads and convert them.
To leverage social selling for quality SaaS leads, follow these tips:
- Create an attractive and professional social media profile
- Craft a compelling bio that highlights your value proposition
- Track target audience conversations with social listening tools
- Use tools to collect lead information, like contact details for email marketing
Offer a Free Tool
Everybody loves something free, making this one of the best SaaS lead gen strategies. Many SaaS companies already do this — HubSpot offers free CRM and Ubersuggest offers free SEO analytics reports. And there’s an obvious pattern here. These SaaS companies provide free tools that add value to their paid services.
Offering tools for SaaS lead generation is effective because it allows leads to try your platform before committing to payment. It’s also easier to attract high-quality leads this way because these prospects are more likely to purchase your product as they evidently need what you’re offering.
Offering a free tool doesn’t have to be complicated. Understand what your audience needs and how you can offer this for free, allowing them to test your platform without accessing all your features. Your free tool must be valuable and relevant to your product.
Create Mobile-Optimized Content
All your lead generation content must be optimized for mobile. B2B buyers are spending more time researching products and services via mobile devices, and many now use mobile devices at various stages of the path to purchase.
In other words, your landing pages, website, lead generation forms and content must be accessible on mobile devices so B2B buyers can convert into leads from anywhere they are.
Conduct A/B tests to determine which designs perform best on mobile and how B2B buyers navigate websites and content. You also want to ensure any lead magnets or downloadables are compatible with mobile and analyze your lead generation performance over time to identify how to make your content more mobile-friendly.
Leverage Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is a powerful tactic for B2B SaaS leads because decision-makers are more likely to purchase products referred by peers they trust. In fact, 84% of B2B buyers start the buying journey with a referral, and 65% of a company’s new deals come from referrals.
It is no surprise that referral marketing works for B2B. These buyers are much more skeptical than B2C audiences, and if other businesses use and validate your product, they can see it works, motivating them to move through your buying journey.
However, creating a successful referral marketing campaign takes effort. To get started, check out these tips for referral marketing to generate SaaS leads.
- Ask paying and loyal customers for referrals
- Invest in high-quality software to manage your program
- Choose an attractive incentive to generate leads
- Consider multi-step rewards
- Make your program easy to understand and participate in
Role of SEO in Generating Quality Leads
Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a significant role in B2B SaaS lead generation at minimal cost. Targeting the right keywords and optimizing your landing pages for SEO can increase your visibility and drive organic traffic to your landing pages, making it easier to convert web visitors into qualified leads.
Higher web rankings can improve your credibility and trustworthiness, making it easier to attract leads. B2B prospects are much more likely to click on websites with a high ranking in search engines because this makes the website seem more credible and speaks to its domain authority.
Not forgetting, SEO can also improve user experience navigating your website, making it more responsive. This means you can reduce your bounce rate and keep prospects on your website longer, giving you more opportunities to capture leads.
Want to use SEO and improve your B2B lead generation? Check out our blog for the latest tips and tricks.
Case Studies: Successful SaaS Lead Gen Campaigns
For a real-life example of how imperative lead generation is for B2B SaaS marketing, check out these lead generation campaigns by MailChimp and Marketo.
MailChimp
Targeting small business owners, MailChimp adopted Instagram to promote educational content, such as data visualizations and infographics. MailChimp took social selling to the next level and used Instagram to engage with users via comments, host live streams and Q&A sessions, and run contests and giveaways. As a result, MailChimp improved Instagram's CTR by 30% and achieved many new sign-ups from qualified leads.
Marketo
Marketo aimed to increase revenue and qualified leads while minimizing costs and resources. They adopted software for in-depth market research to identify qualified leads, which they targeted through email segmentation and LinkedIn marketing campaigns. Marketo boosted its email CTR by 120%, and LinkedIn paid 46% for ad CTR, with 26% lower costs.
Essential KPIs to Measure SaaS Lead Generation Strategies
It’s one thing to put lead generation strategies in place, but how do you know if anything is actually generating more leads?
Tracking and measuring your SaaS lead generation efforts will help you determine the success of your lead generation strategy. These are known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and these metrics help to show what's working and what areas need improvement.
Here are the top metrics to keep an eye on.
- Number of Leads: Evaluate how many qualified leads different channels have generated within a specific period.
- Number of Sessions: The total number of new and repeat visits a user has made to your website within a given time window.
- Engagement: This measures how much prospects engage with your content, such as likes and comments.
- Conversion Rate: The percentage of web visitors that convert into leads.
- Total Lead Value: This is the value leads provide your business. You can calculate it by dividing your total sales value by your total leads.
- Customer Acquisition Cost: Measure how much it costs to acquire each new customer divided by how much value that customer provides your business.
Start Your B2B SaaS Lead Generation Strategy Today
SaaS businesses must rely on lead generation efforts to improve their customer base and direct prospects to their products.
Your B2B SaaS lead generation strategy should include the following;
- A/B tests
- Gathering customer testimonials
- Showcasing case studies
- Optimizing your landing pages and marketing materials
To generate leads, SaaS companies should use social selling, offer free tools, create mobile-friendly content and create a referral marketing campaign.
Want to start your B2B SaaS lead generation strategy? Contact MADX Digital and leverage SEO to boost your lead generation.
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