How not to waste your marketing budget in SaaS

The Real Situation in SaaS Marketing

In the competitive landscape of SaaS, companies often falter by fixating on technical specs rather than understanding the psychology behind consumer decisions. This leads to a cascade of mistakes, from neglecting customer engagement to failing in content planning. The consequence? Lack of uniqueness, growing competition, and an inability to articulate product value. The pain lies in draining marketing budgets with diminishing returns.

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The main feature of SaaS is that marketing efforts don’t end with lead generation. The goal is not just to close a deal but to turn the prospects into long-term users who regularly pay for a service and stay with the business (increase LTV). In addition, SaaS often involves a situation where the cost of acquiring a customer exceeds the monthly subscription cost by a factor of X.
Initially operating at a loss, breaking even after a couple of months, and only then starting to earn real profits.

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Real SaaS marketing focuses on increasing LTV, not just one-time sales. This leads to longer communication chains, building trust before and after the purchase.
The main challenge is the efficient use of resources. Your actions should have the maximum impact on results while maintaining a balance of expenses for acquisition.

Here are a few common mistakes that companies make during Marketing efforts:

1. Wrong Targeting. SaaS products are typically launched by Developers (tech gigs) and prioritize technical specifications and functionality. They often market their products based on these principles, emphasizing features and technical advantages, forgetting that buyers are not interested in functionality per se. Potential customers need to solve specific problems and fulfill their needs.
2. Lack of Value proposition. Focus on functionality instead of explaining how their solution meets the audience's needs. Key messages should be tailored to specific needs and offer solutions.
3. Neglecting Customer Engagement After Sales. Some companies abandon the customer after handing them over to the sales department, failing to maintain contact and communication, negatively impacting the Sales circle and, eventually, Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
4. Neglecting the target audience and customer analysis leads to too broad paid targeting and pumping money into too many channels.
5. Failure to consider the decision-making stage in planning and creating content leads to creating so many Top of the Funnel (TOFU) marketing materials that create a big gap between attracting and converting prospects

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As a consequence of These Mistakes, many products become “the same” and start competing with Cost/Price only, and all of these lead to:

1. Lack of Uniqueness: There are few truly unique products, including in the SaaS sphere. The difference in functionality for potential customers may be insignificant.
2. Growing Competition: The competition increases, and the balance between costs and profits is disrupted. Ad competition grows, and with the same budget, you attract fewer customers each year.
3. Inability to Articulate Product Value: Failure to explain the product’s value and offer usage scenarios that solve specific problems leads to a high percentage of purchase rejections, even among qualified leads, and a low LTV.

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How to transform "the same" marketing to "Working" (on real case)

Trust is the most underestimated factor in any business, especially in SaaS. Without focusing on faith, marketing revolves only around generating more leads, not customers.
But, Let’s Dive deeper into the best Marketing Consultation methodologies to address these issues, such as Customer Focus, Demand Capture, and Demand Generation. Thanks to them, you will efficiently allocate resources, reduce the criticality of traffic cost growth, and increase revenue.

Customer’s Decision Map becomes the cornerstone of content creation, leading to a 50% reduction in irrelevant leads.
Demand Capture is the pivotal and most underrated part of marketing efforts, with the right alignment along the stages, resulting in a 2x increase in Qualified Contacts.
Demand Generation is the unsung hero that doubles conversion rates by building trust and expertise.
The best way to start Selling is to start doing outreach, but to stop it is Demand Generation.

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Next, I will explain the logic of working with these methodologies and provide specific examples of their usage based on a case study of our client — the company AFFISE.

Initial Conditions:

AFFISE is an affiliate tracking platform that allows analyzing the effectiveness of each affiliate’s work: the quantity and quality of acquired customers, LTV, CPC, and drawing conclusions about cooperation.In affiliate business, substantial money is involved, so the competition in the tracking platform market is high.Pouring traffic into landing pages is not feasible because there is simply no ability to compete in the marketing budget field with the largest players.

By the time I joined the company, everything was working simply:

• Launched ads on Google in search based on thematic keywords, a bit on competitors.
• Ran ads on Facebook to attract leads, showcasing the product and its features.
• Worked a bit on LinkedIn: published a blog article and reposted it to followers only.
• Google ad campaigns brought in clients but they were expensive.
• Facebook didn’t generate clients at all.
• LinkedIn had leads but just a few.
• Organic engagement on social media was only from company employees.
• SEO was absent; content work was unsystematic: writing whatever was thought of without relying on the real needs of the target audience and marketing funnel.

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Doesn't ring any bell?

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Well, My First Step in Solving the Task was to create a Decision Map for the product purchase, revealing the potential customer’s decision-making process.
Simultaneously, we conducted in-depth interviews with clients to discover why they specifically bought our product.

Quite often, “our” considerations on this matter and the “client’s” real motivation do not coincide.

We learned what pains they solve with our product, what is important to make a purchase, and how to enrich the product to make it even cooler and more useful. Processing and combining this information, we began restructuring the entire marketing strategy.

Anyway let’s put all general words aside and consider how we implemented Customer Focus, Demand Capture, and Demand Generation and What We Achieved:

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Implementation of Customer Focus:

The essence of the methodology:

• Create a Decision Map that describes all decision-making stages: awareness of the problem, search for information and methods of problem-solving, formation of requirements for the future solution (technical, business, and financial requirements), gathering information about available solutions and comparing them, making a deal, trial period, and usage after purchase.
• Create a pool of topics for content preparation that will help cover each stage. Decide on the format and key messages.
• Conduct in-depth interviews with clients to understand their real pains and problems.
• Form usage scenarios for different target audience groups. For B2C products, you can rely on pains and needs, for B2B — on the business specifics and the user’s role in the company.

In the case of AFFISE, we created a pool of key messages, topics, and content formats that allowed us to talk about the product’s benefits (instead of listing its main features).We began positioning the platform not as tracking but as an analytics system that helps obtain necessary data and consequently improves the efficiency of expenses for attracting customers through affiliates.People in the search phase for such a solution were directed to the company’s landing page, where we provided materials on the analytics capabilities of our product.For the active comparison stage, we created another landing page that not only highlighted our capabilities but also conducted comparisons with competing platforms.Our goal was not only to increase the effectiveness of messages and content but also to attract the highest quality contacts. We aimed to clearly and precisely explain to people what our platform is and the possibilities it offers.

Thanks to the implementation of this tool, in the first two months, the number of irrelevant contacts entering the sales department decreased by half. Meanwhile, the promotion budget remained within the current limits.Consequently, for the same amount of money, we started to acquire twice as many high-quality clients.

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Implementation of Demand Capture:

The main goal at this stage is to collect all existing demand for the solution (provided by the product)
To achieve this, it was necessary to:

1. Analyze the channels used for promotion and traffic acquisition. Before making any changes, it is crucial to understand where the bottlenecks are.
2. Match the channels with decision-making stages. Clearly define which channel covers each stage, what key messages to convey in creatives, and where to lead potential leads.
3. Expand the list of channels (if you have resources): don’t forget about organic traffic, events, and resources where people might be looking for a solution.
4. Create all necessary marketing materials: one-pagers, banners, prepare paid campaigns, etc.... and make sure you are where your customers looking for a solution.

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How did this look in practice?

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In AFISE, we analyzed all channels used for promotion and contact acquisition and then synchronized them with the Decision Map. Each channel became a part of the nurturing process (responsible for its stage in the funnel).

On Google Ads campaigns, we restructured accounts by reducing the number of keywords used to attract traffic. We kept brand queries, competitive queries, and keywords that indicate the client is not just looking for a way to solve the problem but is already at the stage of choosing a specific solution and comparing it with competitors, i.e., ready to purchase. No more vague and too general keywords.

On Facebook, we launched reach-oriented advertising campaigns and used look-alike audiences to ensure brand presence and recognition.
We transformed sales-oriented messages into useful and expert-level, we started guiding them, and thanks to this, customers started remembering the company as an expert-level analytic platform for affiliate channels.

LinkedIn was used for remarketing only. We worked with audiences based on interests and companies.

Affise is good for newcomers in affiliate world who is willing to start their own affiliate journey, that is why we added resources like Reddit and Quora to the pool, where people ask questions, and seek solutions to their problems, methodologies, and approaches. For these resources, we prepared questions aligning with the interests of our target audience and then promoted them.

We updated the SEO strategy from Top-of-the-funnel (TOFU) to the whole Funnel content (added Middle and Bottom), updated website pages, and created blog materials focusing on keywords based on decision queries.

Additionally, we included events in our channel list. We actively participated in industry events, organized webinars, provided expert content, concurrently explaining the benefits of the promoted solution.

As a result of these actions, we achieved a 2x increase in organic traffic in six months: from 4,000 to 8,000 per month. Moreover, with the same marketing budgets (sometimes even lower), we increased the number of sales department inquiries from 200 to 500 per month.

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Implementation of Demand Generation:

Demand Generation is not aimed at selling the product but at demonstrating expertise in a specific field, and understanding the pains and tasks of the target audience. The main focus is to create a “Desire to start working with The product”

What needs to be done at this stage:

1. Develop expert-level content: ebooks, checklists, case studies, real examples of product usage (benevits from it), useful analytics, and other information that can help the audience solve their problems.
2. Integrate the content into the funnel and keep in mind that 95% of buyers aren't ready to buy, most of them just expoling potential solutions for the next quarter/year/to find hidden growth opportunities.

By implementing Demand Generation, we significantly increased trust in the promoted product: in six months, the disqualification rate dropped by half, i.e., conversion increased from 17% at the start to 33%.

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This stage is the most labor-intensive and resource-intensive. Many simply ignore it, preferring methods that provide immediate customers. But, this is the wrong strategy (well it's outdated strategy, the golden age of SaaS has gone).

Working with a colder target audience allows you to lay the foundation for brand trust and lead potential clients to purchase, greatly reducing the need to distance yourself from competitors and explain your advantages. People will remember you, trust you and the final deal cost becomes lower.

Thus, Demand Generation not only generates demand but also helps win in the competition for traffic and hot customers.

To independently assess the potential effectiveness of working with this methodology and justify it to management, I recommend collecting data on competitors and their activities, preferably in dynamics. This information will clearly show that competition is growing, the cost per click and lead are increasing. So, if you don’t engage in preliminary preparation and warming up the audience, richer competitors will take a piece of the market.

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