The market for SaaS products is growing every year. In fact, it is now worth $116.4 billion. That’s a dramatic increase since 2008, when it was worth $5.5 billion. This also means the competition for SaaS businesses is increasing, and you need to set yourself apart in order to experience continued growth.
And for this, you will need to upgrade your social media strategy significantly.
Here are some highly effective social media marketing strategies that will help your SaaS business grow:
1. Partner With Relevant Influencers
If you’re keeping up with the latest trends in marketing, you have heard of influencer marketing. It involves working with individuals who have a voice and significant following in their respective fields and niches.
Influencer marketing has proven to be highly effective at winning the trust of consumers and compelling them to make purchase decisions.
In fact, TapInfluence has found that influencers can help deliver 11 times higher ROI compared to traditional digital marketing channels. However, only 15% of B2B companies are running ongoing influencer marketing campaigns as compared to 55% of B2C companies.
So you have a great opportunity to get ahead of your competitors by working with relevant influencers in your industry. These influencers can help spread the word about your product and educate their audience about its benefits and features. They can help raise brand awareness and establish trust between you and their followers.
But it is critical that you work only with influential individuals who have sway over your target audience in order to yield the desired results. Tools like Tapinfluence, Upfluence and others make it easier to find influencers with relevant audiences.
SaaS companies like ClickMeeting already make use of influencer marketing in their social media strategies. Since the product is a webinar-creation tool, the team looks for influencers in the webinar landscape.
These influencers then guest host webinars, effectively showcasing the product’s benefits. Both the company and the guest host promote the session through social media to draw in a significant number of relevant attendees.
2. Create More Visual Content
Visual content is crucial if you want to engage a social media audience. The number of marketers using visuals on social media is growing every year. According to Social Media Examiner, 85% of marketers used visual content in social media marketing during 2017, while the number was 74% in 2016.
In addition to this, HubSpot found that social images tend to be a preference among consumers, especially younger ones. Sixty percent of respondents between ages 18 and 24 wanted to see more social images from the brand they support. The same goes for 56% of respondents aged between 25 and 34, and 42% of respondents aged between 35 and 44.
You can start by creating original graphics such as infographics, which are both engaging and informative. In fact, Venngage found that this form of visuals tend to drive the highest engagement on social media.
There are several tools that will let you create original graphics for social media.
Canva is an excellent option, as it not only lets you create original infographics, but also allows you to build customized social media graphics. Piktochart is another good option with a ton of existing templates you can customize to create eye-catching infographics.
Another effective visual format you can implement in your social media campaigns is video. Even in the previously-cited HubSpot study, 52% of respondents in the 18 to 24 age group wanted to see more social videos. The same goes for 47% of respondents in the 25 to 34 age group, and 35% of respondents in the 35 to 44 age group.
In general, 53% of respondents in the study chose videos as the type of content they want to see more of in the future, staying ahead of all other types of content. This means that your SaaS business should make the most of videos to educate your audience about the features and benefits of your product.
Zendesk for instance, uses different content formats to engage their Facebook audience. They even create educational videos that will be useful for their audience, such as a video about CSAT ratings.
3. Make the Most of Facebook Retargeting
Not everyone who lands on your website will convert. Some of them will bounce immediately. Others may look through your product offerings, and decide to leave for some reason. Some may even consider purchasing, but change their minds once they discover the cost of your service. And once these visitors leave, you could lose them forever.
The good thing is Facebook retargeting helps change up this game.
It helps you re-engage these people who seemed to have shown interest in your service before. You could approach them again with a better offer that compels them to convert. For example, it’s possible to retarget those who abandoned your site at the pricing page with ads offering free trials.
Additionally, you can also retarget them with offers for limited-period discounts that could compel them to sign up. Otherwise, try to offer other free products such as ebooks, tutorials, webinars, etc. The opportunities are virtually endless.
Some SaaS companies have been able to achieve an ROI of 1,284% within just seven days using Facebook retargeting.
4. Provide Better Social Customer Support
Data from Sprout found that social media is consumers’ top choice for customer care, surpassing email, phone and other channels.
Since consumers can get instant support through social media, we should expect to see an increase in the use of this channel for providing customer support. So if you want to grow your SaaS business, you need to focus on improving the quality of support you provide over social media.
Monitor your direct messages regularly and try to answer customer queries instantly. The goal is to reduce the trouble they have to go through to get information so as to improve their experience interacting with your business. This could help you improve your customer retention rate.
Also, answer any questions potential customers have about your service, pricing plans, terms and conditions, etc. The goal is to eventually guide them towards making a purchase decision and making it easier for them to complete their purchase. This could help you generate valuable leads.
Salesforce does a great job of responding to customer questions and complaints on Twitter by listening and letting customers know exactly what to do in order to get issues resolved.
Hi Dan, We’re sorry to hear about your experience. Could you DM us the email address associated with your account? We’d be happy to look into it for you.
— Salesforce (@salesforce) March 6, 2018
In addition to this, you can also monitor conversions on social media about your brand and products. You can then participate in these conversations and respond to any complaints that customers or potential customers have about your product or service. Sprout Social’s suite of social media monitoring tools can help you with this. Not only can you monitor brand mentions, you can even filter the mentions to identify the most important conversations that you should pay attention to.
5. Gain Trust through User-Generated Content
Whether it’s in the B2C industry or the B2B landscape, consumers trust other consumers. In fact, Bazaarvoice found that 51% of millennials and 34% of baby boomers would even trust recommendations coming from strangers.
So if you wish to gain the trust of potential customers, recommendations from other customers can be a very effective form of social proof. And social media is an excellent platform to showcase these recommendations in the form of user-generated content. You could share brand mentions, customer stories, reviews and testimonials through social media.
The idea is to use your social media channel for establishing trust with potential customers who are checking your profile out. At the same time, sharing your customer stories and reviews can make them feel recognized and valued. So this boosts your customer retention at the same time.
Algolia does a great job of using their Twitter profile to showcase brand mentions. They regularly retweet posts from their users regarding their product.
They also retweet posts from other SaaS platforms they’ve integrated with. This is a great way to strengthen your relationship with them and showcase your potential customers about the possibilities your service offers.
Additionally, you can repurpose social media brand mentions and social media reviews to win the trust of your site visitors. Cultured Code does a great job of this.
Conclusion
These are five of the most effective social strategies that can help your SaaS business grow. While many of these strategies can be used for generating quality leads, some can also help you retain your existing customers. This is vital because the more customers you’re able to retain, the stronger your business will become.
What are your thoughts about these strategies? And do you have any other strategies that you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below.