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Every SaaS business should have a well-designed playbook
A playbook documents all your business’s essential policies, strategies, operations and processes – in other words, it addresses critical aspects of your company and how various departments must function.
As a SaaS SEO agency, we believe in the power of playbooks and recommend them to all our clients.
This article covers what SaaS playbooks are, why your company needs a playbook and the top strategies to include in your playbook.
What We'll Cover
What is a SaaS Playbook?
A SaaS playbook is your SaaS strategy guide. This "book" covers essential strategies, marketing approaches, business models, operations and processes.
Your SaaS business should create a playbook to communicate how your company works to existing and new employees. It's also important that SaaS companies document their strategies, as it allows you to reflect on their performance and keep their team aligned.
At MADX, we created a comprehensive playbook that covers every aspect of the business. It's the first thing we share with new employees, and the speed at which they adapt to the company and its operations is a testament to this invaluable resource.
The Benefits of Creating a Playbook for SaaS Businesses
Every SaaS startup and established company should have a SaaS playbook. Here are four reasons why a playbook can benefit your business and operations.
Team Alignment
Keeping your team aligned is critical whether you’re a SaaS startup or an established company. As you introduce, eliminate, or refine strategies, your team should always be on the same page. Businesses that align with sales and marketing teams can accelerate profit growth by 27%.
Developing a SaaS playbook maintains team alignment for existing and new employees. Your employees can keep up with new implementations and strategies without having to receive this information individually. Onboarding and training employees is also easier — they can get all the details they need on your processes from your playbook.
Prevent Confusion
Companies are always trying to simplify their processes. It can be complicated for new employees to get familiar with comprehensive operations, whether navigating your project management platform or setting SaaS KPIs. Likewise, when you adjust or improve your current strategies, it may be challenging for existing staff to keep up with these changes.
Once you've created a SaaS playbook, employees can always refer back to these details for guidance. This not only makes it easier for them to get the answers they need, but it also mitigates inefficiencies and mistakes.
Maintain Consistency
In addition to team alignment and preventing confusion, a SaaS playbook helps you maintain consistency throughout your operations. As your SaaS company grows, this document provides your employees with clear guidelines, reducing the risk of them taking matters into their own hands.
As a result, you can optimize productivity and efficiency as team members will know what they need to achieve and how to accomplish it.
Centralise Company Information
Organizing a lot of information on process guidelines and strategies can make it difficult for employees to find the necessary documents. Playbooks eliminate questions like, “What are the guidelines for XYZ?”, “How do I do XYZ?” and “What are the instructions for XYZ process?”
Searching through poorly organized documents takes time, leading to inefficiency and lower productivity. However, businesses don’t have to worry about these risks after developing a SaaS playbook, as gathering this information in a centralized location makes it quick and easy for employees to find.
SaaS Market Strategies To Include in Your Playbook
Part of a SaaS playbook is documenting how you want to develop and market your SaaS product. You can include tactics, growth strategies, insights tailored specifically to your operations, how-tos, practical advice and more, all in service of helping your employees understand how to help the business be successful.
We’ve compiled a list of the top strategies to include for a successful SaaS company.
Referral marketing
Referral marketing is one of the most popular SaaS cheat codes for improving customer acquisition efforts while minimizing costs. Just look at these stats:
- 79% of SaaS customers are more likely to purchase a product recommended by friends or family
- 66% of these buyers trust product recommendations on review sites
- 20% who hear about a product through word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing are more likely to purchase instantly
- 86% of businesses feel that referral leads close quicker than others
- Referred clients have a 16% higher customer lifetime value (CLV) than those acquired through other channels
Referral marketing is an imperative strategy for SaaS businesses to acquire customers, optimize sales and prove their credibility.
Detailing referral marketing strategies in your playbook, you should include your:
- Campaign goals
- Campaign timeline
- Budget
- Incentives
- Target audience segments
- Referral marketing channels
- Terms and conditions
- Rules and guidelines
- Monitoring and tracking parameters
Email Marketing
Email marketing is essential for SaaS companies for various reasons. 77% of B2B buyers prefer email communication and 59% of marketers consider email marketing twice as effective as paid ads for lead generation. Of course, email marketing isn’t a new concept for software companies, but mapping out your email campaign can be complicated.
SaaS businesses must ensure that the specific members of their marketing and sales teams understand their email campaigns, how to manage and track them, the goals they need to reach, and the content they must produce.
For example, your marketing team must know how to integrate email marketing at every touchpoint of the buyer’s journey to build your email list. They should also learn how to identify inactive subscribers and design content to re-engage these users. Conversely, your sales team must know how to convert subscribers as they join your email list quickly.
Email campaigns are often robust and constantly changing. Documenting your campaign in your SaaS playbook will ensure you never drop the ball on your email list and subscribers are nurtured to conversion if they haven’t already.
Content Marketing
From a multimillion-dollar startup to a bootstrapped SaaS company, content marketing is always complicated, involving many guidelines, processes, tools, and specific team responsibilities. Your business must have a streamlined content production workflow – this boils down to how defined your process is and how aligned your team is.
Within content marketing, there are multiple campaigns SaaS companies have to manage. For example, they must implement and oversee content marketing for paid advertising campaigns, blog content, social media, email marketing and website copy. You’ll have varying guidelines, deadlines, processes, and goals for each campaign. Because of this, it’s imperative to plan all this information in a SaaS playbook, making your operations and objectives transparent and accessible to employees.
For your content marketing strategies, your SaaS playbook should highlight the following:
- Specific processes for specific campaigns,
- User roles and access,
- Workflow stages,
- Tools employees must use,
- Deadlines for different tasks,
- Objectives for various campaigns and,
- Content quality guidelines.
Product Trails
B2B buyers require a lot of convincing before they make a purchase. Unlike B2C buyers, they don’t make compulsive purchasing decisions. As a result, it’s essential to allow your target audience to try out your product before purchasing it. Not only can they determine whether your software fits their needs, but this also proves your confidence in your platform’s functionality and benefits.
But the questions are: How do you target customers to try a product trial? And what happens after these customers complete their trials?
Your SaaS company must document how you direct target buyers to your product trial and convert them afterward. Employees should also know:
- The various stages of your product trial,
- How to answer common customer questions,
- How to personalize the experience for your audience,
- How to measure and track product trail performance,
- What steps do they need to follow up with potential clients after the product trial and
- What content is involved in various stages of the product trial?
Social Proof
Social proof is the foundation of credibility for software companies. SaaS founders must understand the importance of social proof in persuading targeted buyers, maintaining a positive reputation, and proving their product’s worth. 92% of B2B customers are more likely to buy a product after reading trusted reviews, and 50% of buyers visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews.
Social proof can ensure you stand out in the SaaS industry and position your brand as trustworthy and valuable. Various types of social proof exist, such as real-time statistics, customer testimonials, expert or influencer endorsements, case studies, and third-party review websites.
In your SaaS playbook, you must emphasize the importance of gathering social proof at various touchpoints of the buyer’s journey and campaigns. For example, your sales team should know to check in with your most recent customers and find out about their experience with your product. Hopefully, these buyers have a lot of positive remarks, which the sales teams should know how to record and repurpose for your company’s social proof.
How SEO Can Drive SaaS Growth
SEO is imperative for SaaS growth. The most significant aspect of SEO is how cost-effective and long-lasting the results are for SaaS companies. SaaS businesses can use paid ad campaigns to engage, reach, and acquire customers. However, these campaigns are costly and do not guarantee long-term results.
On the other hand, SEO can help these businesses save money and maximize their bottom lines through organic traffic. SaaS founders can also improve their reputation and authority through higher SERP rankings — a surefire way to build a successful SaaS business.
So, how do you get your SEO campaign started? Check out our blog for the latest SEO insights, tips, tricks and strategies.
SaaS Playbook Tips
Creating a SaaS playbook requires careful planning and trial and error. Here are a few expert tips to make this easier.
- Use clear and concise language: Your SaaS playbook should be an engaging and informative read with clear and concise language. Keep your sentences short and to the point. Focus on valuable information that employees must know and simplify complex concepts. This approach ensures that your employees understand your playbook and its processes. Otherwise, your SaaS playbook will create more inefficiencies than it will solve.
- Be thorough: Ensure your SaaS playbook is as detailed as possible. However, you should maintain clarity, avoid industry jargon and keep these details as straightforward as possible. Nevertheless, you must ensure all the critical details are available in your playbook so employees have all the necessary information.
- Make it cohesive: Every well-developed SaaS playbook must be cohesive. Start with your company mission, values and goals, customer onboarding, lead nurturing, etc. This will make it easier for teams to walk through your various stages to understand the outcome.
- Prioritize employee input: Your SaaS business should gather input for your playbook. Employees have first-hand experience of your operations, making their feedback paramount to your playbook. For example, your sales employees may have valuable insights into how to document processes for your product trails. At the same time, your project managers would know which tools and resources are relevant to your content marketing campaigns.
- Approach everyday customer and employee questions: Evaluate frequently asked questions from your clients and employees to inform how you design your playbook. Do customers ask about your referral incentive? Do marketing employees often struggle to export your email list? Consider all these questions and ensure your playbook addresses them.
- Continuously review and update: Your strategies and processes will likely change, so you must update your playbook regularly. When you introduce new techniques, be sure to include them in your playbook using the tips above. Your playbook mustn’t become outdated, as this would diminish its value.
Grow Your SaaS Company with MADX Today
Developing a SaaS playbook is imperative to align your team, avoid confusion, maintain consistent processes and centralize critical company information. Your playbook should outline strategies essential to SaaS growth, such as referral, email and content marketing product trials and your social proof tactics.
In addition to SaaS playbooks for exponential growth, SEO is also a crucial factor. A well-designed, buyer-centric SEO campaign can boost your revenue in the long run and help you accelerate organic traffic.
Ready to get your SEO campaign going? Contact our expert SEO team at MADX Digital to help you get started.
