How To Improve Customer Acquisition For Your SaaS Business: An In-Depth Guide

SaaS (Software as a Service) companies cannot survive without clients. And as the competition gets more fierce, the need for more robust strategies to attract those clients has risen exponentially. Businesses that have this in mind and start working on a plan early on can steamroll the competition and create long-lasting success while also making their customers happy.

What Is Customer Acquisition?

Customer Acquisition can be defined as the process of winning new customers. Apart from being the main drivers of profit for businesses just starting, it is the aspect that SaaS businesses focus on across market stages. Simply put: more customers equals more money.

For SaaS companies that run on a subscription model, the customer acquisition metrics show how efficiently you acquire new customers through sales, marketing, or other approaches, such as a free trial. Combined, these tactics create a powerful customer acquisition strategy, which fires up the whole acquisition process.

How To Create An Effective Customer Acquisition Strategy?

Your company's success is highly dependent on your ability to win over and retain customers. However, this can prove to be a costly and time-consuming pursuit.

And that's why it's vitally important to develop a robust customer acquisition strategy.

The following are three must-know steps to help you devise a working customer acquisition strategy for your company:

• Focus on your key target. What is your key target market? Your ideal customers? Their likes and dislikes? Once you have this knowledge at your disposal, you can start working on your plan to reach out and win them over.
• Research the competition. What do your competitors do to win the hearts and minds of new customers? Which of their approaches work and which don't? Use this info to your advantage and build your customer acquisition strategy with it in mind.
• Develop a strong marketing plan. Once you know your target market and your competition, you can start working on a solid marketing plan. Think of the channels that would reach your target market in the fastest and most efficient way. How often will you reach out to them, and what type of messaging service will you be relying on? Devise a detailed plan that has your strategy outlined.

Your strategy will only be as good as the metrics you rely on to measure it. SaaS companies must pay attention to several metrics to ensure they're acquiring fresh customers the right way. Churn rate, customer acquisition, and customer value need to be paid special attention to when tracking metrics. By reviewing them constantly, you can adjust your customer acquisition strategy appropriately and ensure that your investment is worth it.

Also, by trying out different strategies, you can pinpoint the tactics that bring new customers to your business. Use SaaS metrics to study, test, and strengthen your customer acquisition strategy so that you can win new customers and grow your business more efficiently.

Mapping Your Customer Acquisition Strategy

Customer acquisition has never been easy, but it's also far from impossible. SaaS customer acquisition adheres to the same rules most businesses have followed for a long time — from attention-grabbing and interest to creating bridges between leads and loyal customers.

Below we have listed four vital elements you must pay special attention to:

1. Building Awareness

Awareness is the hook that will lead customers to your doorstep. After all, customers cannot be expected to buy something they don't even know exists. A thought-out strategy should firstly concentrate on the marketing side. Don't be shy about using whatever tactic you feel will do the job when it comes to marketing, including building an email list and communicating with your readers regularly, paid ads on various platforms, as well as social media posts.

For best results, you can work on SEO-tailored content, as it will elevate your internet presence for search keywords and sentences relevant to your offer. Your ultimate goal here should be to capture the attention of the most relevant leads continuously.

2. Engaging Your Audience

After getting the attention of your prospects, it's time to focus on getting them to start exploring what's on offer. But for that to happen, you need to be able to engage them. You could start by generating results in the form of inquiries, requests for new features or any other info, and of course, sales.

By providing your prospects with a full basket of content choices, you can drive engagement and substantially shorten the distance between the onboarding process and the sale.

3. Encouraging Exploration

As potential customers start immersing themselves in what your brand has to offer, you should start nudging them to explore the life-changing solution you have in store for them. It can be as easy as pointing them to your sales page, but it can also be the perfect time to give them a free trial option to get the feel of your product. As leads slowly start warming up to your offer, they also begin to consider getting the whole package containing all the features. Providing them with all they need to experience your product and its benefits to the fullest extent can help ensure a conversion on their side.

4. Converting And Retaining Your Leads

Last but not least, while transporting your leads through all the stages of your customer acquisition strategy, you can start aiming at the sale itself. You must, however, also keep in mind that the sale isn't the end all be all.

Retention is also extremely important and should be explored in more detail. Loyal customers are the foundation of all successful businesses. This is especially the case for SaaS businesses, as subscription models are often preferred to other pricing options.

Customer Acquisition Strategy Suggestions

The following are five examples of tried-and-tested customer acquisition strategies:

1. Focus On The Customer Experience

Steer your efforts into solving customer problems as best as you can. You will need to pay special attention to the issues your customers are facing and aim for complete satisfaction on their side to earn their loyalty. To ensure success, streamline communication between your brand and your customers, employees, and divisions within your company.

2. Take Advantage Of Automation At Key Points

Communication at crucial points of the buyer's journey is vital for turning leads into customers. Automation allows for more personalized experiences and key moment outreach. In addition, it makes the process of retaining customers much simpler and more effective.

3. Upgrade Your Conversion Strategy

Help people who are still unsure about your product or service by guiding them to the solution they are hoping for. This is a must when building a real customer base as opposed to letting leads wander about aimlessly just as they're on the verge of converting.

4. The Importance Of Proof

Entering an unknown realm can cause doubts, especially if there's payment involved. Potential customers who are on the fence about investing are likely to respond positively to hearing or reading about the experiences of customers who have benefited from your product or service.

More than 30% of customers walk away with a positive attitude about a product or service after reading a good review. Positive reviews do a great job at putting cautious customers at ease about trying out new things so they won't miss out on a beneficial deal.

Including a well-placed reviews field on your page can do wonders for your business without coming across as salesy or dishonest. Mixing up testimonials with star ratings and in-depth case studies can earn you the trust of new customers who may not have considered investing in your offer otherwise.

5. Find A Knowledgeable Partner You Can Trust

For maximum efficiency in bringing in new customers and retaining them, it's immensely beneficial to have an expert by your side to guide you through the process. Many businesses help startups and digital product/service companies to align their strategy with their objectives for growth. Find one that suits your needs, and watch as your dreams come to fruition.

Customer Acquisition Techniques

There are several surefire techniques you can use to win the interest and trust of new customers. Here are three of the most efficient ones:

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of optimizing a webpage to gain a higher ranking in search engines such as Google. This is crucially important for businesses of all shapes and sizes because it boosts visibility and draws potential customers to their sites.

SEO can be extremely beneficial for SaaS companies due to its power to reach people and increase visibility at a low cost organically. By setting some resources aside to optimize your page for relevant keywords, you can double and triple the visitors to your website and convert them into paying customers if all else is in place.

So, if you want your SaaS customer acquisition strategy to bring success to your business, you need to make sure that you are investing in Search Engine Optimization.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is a smart way to create and distribute precious, relevant, and constant content to win over and retain customers to drive up revenue.

It all starts with attracting people to your webpage through engaging and helpful content. Once you have them engaged, you can start the conversion process by directing them to your product/service. Eventually, you focus on turning your customers into brand advocates who will bring others to your business (if your product or service is good enough, that is).

Content marketing is a continuous process that needs a lot of effort and attention on your side to work properly. Still, it can do wonders for bringing in new customers and driving revenue for your business. Depending on your type of business, you can use content marketing to create articles, blog posts, ebooks, infographics, and other engaging materials.

Social Media Marketing

Here we have a relatively new but exceptionally powerful customer acquisition strategy for SaaS —- Social Media Marketing. Even better, this type of marketing doesn't have to be limited to only Facebook and LinkedIn. Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, or Quora can also be great platforms for showing off your product or service, building brand awareness about your product, and establishing yourself as a leading expert in the field.

To ensure maximal success, take advantage of any social media that you think will be a fit for your business needs — it's a proven shortcut to access a wider audience and elevate your business.

Social media platforms can be extremely efficient tools for both large and small businesses because, apart from providing a direct way for potential customers to connect and communicate, they allow you to reach an audience you might not have access to otherwise.

Final Words

Coming up with a well-rounded plan for SaaS customer acquisition can prove to be a tough job, even for the best out there.

It requires a lot of work and patience, as well as a strong grasp of how to create a SaaS acquisition strategy that has the power to win the trust and loyalty of customers.

When you follow the tips outlined above, make sure to always put the needs of your customers first. By concentrating on the key benefits and how they can improve people's lives, you will get a much better reception from your customers. Always remind yourself of this and find new ways to guide them through the acquisition journey with helpful, engaging, and well-timed content to add an extra layer of value to their experience. This will lead to unprecedented success for your business in the years to come.

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For some extra tips on how to run a successful customer acquisition funnel for your SaaS business, see the following video.