The main aim for any business is growth, and in today’s technological age, growing your SaaS business is relatively easy if you incorporate certain strategies to bolster the key ingredients of growth. These include keeping your current client base happy, managing a successful team, advertising, and of course, acquiring new customers in the first place.
SaaS companies aren’t exactly a rare breed any more, and the industry is growing at an exponential rate – in fact at around 13.1% a year growthmarketingpro.com and with new competition springing up every day, SaaS businesses need to pull out all the stops to ensure that their business enjoys a continuous period of growth – the stage of a business when it is at its most profitable.
But how?
Allow Abika to enlighten with this handy guide.
How Can Creating A Growth Mindset Grow Your SaaS Business?
There are no magic spells or secret incantations that you can use to grow your SaaS business – unfortunately your company’s success is all going to have to be down to your own hard work and determination. Every good entrepreneur knows that using a growth mindset is a critical skill and in simple terms is the belief that the efforts you put in will lead to your success. But it’s not about ‘positive vibes only’ or wishful thinking. Having a growth mindset involves looking objectively at problems or failures within your SaaS business and understanding that they are lessons to be learned that can help you to become better at what you do. Facing obstacles head-on, conquering those set-backs and moving forward are key if you want your SaaS business to grow.
Setbacks can often be seen as a surefire way to stunt the growth of any business, but that doesn’t have to be the case – if you embrace a growth mindset. If a metaphorical bump in the road causes you to lose some clients, for example, you shouldn’t let this affect your business goals. Instead, stay in your growth mindset and focus instead on how you can turn the situation around by thinking of ways to improve your SaaS services or products.
If you’re running a SaaS business with a growth mindset you’ll understand that, like with any business, there’s a certain level of risk involved. The trick here is not to dwell on those risks, and yet always be prepared to deal with them if they arise. Entrepreneurs with a growth mindset are committed to focusing on the end results, while always keeping in mind that they have to create new products and services if they want to get there – SaaS businesses included!
How Building An Email List will Grow Your Business
Email is a SaaS business’s number one channel of communication, so make yours work for you and help you to grow your business. An email list is built by collecting email addresses from visitors or users of your website, and allows you to communicate with both prospective and existing clients. Your marketing team will know better than anyone that building that list is essential for growth, with marketing emails being responsible for either positively or negatively influencing consumers’ purchasing decisions. An engaged email list could very well be your best asset because it is immune to algorithm changes, lets YOU shape the story of your brand and has much more of a reach than paid media – not to mention being a lot more cost effective!
Of course, you can’t just build an email list overnight, and creating one will take patience and a strategic plan of action if you want to use it to grow your SaaS business.
For most businesses, it is your website and social media presence that is the foundation for building your email list, so use those to draw in new customers (and therefore email addresses!) by posting enticing content, offering loyalty and referral schemes, discounts and offers.
How Can Finding The Right Customers Grow Your SaaS Business?
Knowing who your ideal customer is is pretty critical for your SaaS business if you want a smooth running sales process. It might seem like the smart thing is to have a generic offering or have a ‘one size fits all’ attitude – but niche is key. Something that could be for everyone rarely catches the attention of anyone.
You might think that this will narrow your market, but what it actually does is allow you to appeal to an audience that really values what you do – and the more you know and understand who those people are, the easier it will be to create content that speaks directly to them. Identify the habits, likes, dislikes and goals of your customers, and identify how they make their purchasing decisions. That way you can tailor your marketing and advertising campaigns specifically to them, enabling your Saas business to grow by targeting those who are the most likely to make a purchase from you.
How Can Customer Retention Grow Your Software Business?
Getting customers is almost the easy bit, it’s the keeping a hold of them that is really going to allow your SaaS business to see some impressive growth, as they continue to use your services over and over again, and hopefully recommend your SaaS business to everyone they know!
Retaining customers is so important for Saas businesses because it is a good indicator of not only how much your customers value your product, but also whether they’re happy with the service you’re providing as a business. But how does that contribute to growth?
Well, the saying goes that it will cost you five times as much to get a new customer as it does to retain an existing one – and while there’s no concrete source for this saying, the huge majority of companies do recognise that, in their experience, keeping hold of customers is definitely cheaper than trying to attract new ones. If you’re looking for sustainable, long term growth – the kind of growth that makes a business profitable – retaining and growing your current customer base is key.
You can continue to add value for those loyal customers and also encourage them to make upgrades or pay for additional services and features, and knowing that they’re not going anywhere means that there’s the recurring revenue needed to expand and grow your SaaS business.
Can Scaling Your Marketing Efforts Help Your SaaS Business To Grow?
The simple answer is, ‘yes, absolutely’.
As we said at the beginning, there’s no shortage of SaaS businesses out there, and if you want yours to be one that’s growing to dizzy new heights instead of being here today, forgotten tomorrow, scaling your marketing efforts is one of the most effective (and easiest) ways of doing that.
Content marketing is one of the ways that businesses of all shapes and sizes – including SaaS businesses – are building their brand, attracting website traffic and generating leads. One of the huge advantages of content marketing is that it will continue to drive leads and increase in value over time, unlike something like PPC (pay-per-click) advertising, which will only get you leads all the while you continue to fork out for it.
Another great marketing idea for SaaS businesses is product trials – something I’m sure you’re used to seeing a lot of in the industry. Offering customers a ‘test drive’ of your product is an effective lead generation tool, and if, as a SaaS business you’re not already doing it – you might want to think about starting.
SEO is another marketing tool that is simple to implement and yet incredibly effective when it comes to getting your SaaS business ‘out there’ where customers are searching. SEO (search engine optimisation) works alongside your content marketing to make that content discoverable on search engines like Google. SEO works in two complementary packages: on-page and off-page SEO. On-page SEO is entirely in your hands. As well as creating content that people are going to want to read and share, you need to think about things like including keywords and search terms and internal links. Off-page SEO is about building good quality links sourced from trusted sites and influential social media accounts.
Building and growing a successful SaaS business is no easy feat, but it’s fair to say that the devil is in the details. Following our handy guide will help you to identify your weaknesses and the areas that you need to focus on so that you can get a better idea of what will drive your business where you want to go. So enjoy the ride.
