What Is Enterprise Software Marketing?
Launching brand-new software in the market can be daunting, but it's a step all SaaS companies and startups have to take to succeed. An enterprise software marketing strategy refers to all the steps and techniques you follow to create brand awareness, identify your target market and customers, launch campaigns, and measure their performance. However, marketing enterprise software is complex and usually has a long sales cycle. You must use clear ways to communicate the value of your solution and take the time to nurture your potential clients while beating the competition. A comprehensive SaaS marketing strategy helps every team in your company align their goals and efforts toward achieving the overall objectives. At the same time, SaaS businesses should stay updated regarding technology and market changes and redesign their marketing techniques to fit the ever-changing landscape. Part of your marketing strategy should be your ability to offer guidance to customers during onboarding while upselling and cross-selling.
Read on to discover what you need to create a compelling software sales marketing plan and help your business grow from the ground up.
7 Steps To Create A Successful Enterprise Software Marketing Strategy
1. Set Your Goals
Any B2B SaaS marketing strategy starts with your goals. What do you want to achieve? What is your end goal? You have to be very specific about your objectives so your tactics are highly targeted. For example, you may want to break into a new market, increase market share, boost customer retention, or improve engagement. Once you identify your goals, you can start brainstorming smart marketing tactics to achieve these objectives and make the most out of your budget.
2. Decide Who Your Audience Is
To generate new leads, you first have to know who your target audience is. Marketing enterprise software is quite demanding, and your audience is probably very specific. So, take some time to research your potential buyers and what their needs and pain points are. Once you identify them, you can craft different buyer personas based on their similarities. For example, you may divide them into two categories: decision-makers, meaning high-ranking managers and VPs, and engineers and product managers. Based on these personas, you will use different language that fits their respective profiles.
3. Pick Your Channels
When we say "channels" here, we don't mean social media platforms but marketing channels. Every enterprise software marketing strategy should highlight the ways it will achieve SaaS lead generation. Your options include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), pay-per-click ads (PPC), events, thought leadership content, account-based marketing (ABM), and search engine marketing (SEM). Before choosing your channels, ensure your options complement each other. For instance, email marketing goes hand-in-hand with content marketing.
4. Set Your Budget
We couldn't possibly discuss marketing strategies for software companies without touching on budgets. There are a few things to consider before deciding on your financial plan. Your top considerations are your company revenue, overall expenses, brand awareness, and marketing requirements. You also have to understand your customers' needs and goals, audit previous promotional campaigns, and know the average cost per lead (CPL) to understand how much money you spend to convert clients. Plus, you should know how many leads your company needs to calculate your costs precisely.
5. Measure Your Results
An enterprise software marketing strategy isn't done once you've implemented your tactics. Rather, you need to continuously perform evaluations and measure your marketing results. For example, your email copy may be weak, or the content you create may not speak the same language as your prospects. Or maybe you are utilizing Instagram way too much and need to focus more on LinkedIn and X. But to measure your marketing performance efficiently, you must first set your SaaS metrics. ROI, CAC, annual churn, monthly visitors, lead-to-MQL conversion rates, and visitor-to-lead conversion rates are a few of the most pivotal KPIs.
6. Nurture Your Prospects
To sell enterprise software, you need to nurture clients and make them feel like you are the top expert in your field. Your sales reps and SaaS marketers should collaborate harmoniously to achieve such a feat. But how do you know which prospects have the highest potential? All SaaS businesses typically have both low-intent and high-intent clients. The former are also called cold leads and are those who have just entered the sales funnel by joining your email list or signing up for a webinar. On the other hand, high-intent leads, also called hot leads, are those in the consideration stage. For instance, they may have started your 14-day free trial to check whether your solution is ideal.
7. Be Consistent In Your Messaging
Do you have a brand voice that remains consistent across all channels? If not, you definitely need to figure it out. Whether it's blog posts, emails, or social media posts, your tone should be the same. It's quite easy to create a brand voice once you've identified who your target audience is, how you stack up against your competition, what your strengths are, and which niche you belong in. Knowing the language your buyers speak will help you craft your unique identity and demeanor that resonates with their goals and needs.
8 Strategies Software Marketers Should Implement
1. Content Marketing
Do you need to craft a SaaS B2B marketing strategy that builds brand awareness and thought leadership? Content marketing refers to creating articles, webinars, eBooks, podcasts, infographics, etc., to attract your audience's attention and establish your expertise. Software companies must create engaging and high-quality content that competes with other similar websites and offers valuable information. For example, a company promoting its onboarding software can focus on creating a series of webinars showcasing how its solution operates while answering everyone's questions. You may also use your eBooks and whitepapers as gated content to attract more leads and increase your subscription list. The secret is to maintain your brand voice throughout your content to build trust and loyalty.
2. Email Marketing
You can't complete your enterprise software marketing strategy without involving email marketing. High-performing marketing teams know that successful email sequences engage potential clients and nurture existing customers so they return to you. Based on your buyer personas, you can personalize your emails to suit their varied needs and challenges. Also, based on the different funnel stages your customers are in, you can either promote your articles or offer a free trial. However, your emails shouldn't look like spam, so make sure your copy is intriguing and not clickbaity. Find a healthy frequency that does not annoy people but instead keeps them updated. If you want to promote your enterprise software further, you can collaborate with a trusted figure for featured placements and increase brand visibility and credibility.
3. SEO Optimization And Link Building
If you're looking for ways to get your website to rank higher on Google, Bing, and other search engines, SEO is your secret. To achieve that, you need to conduct keyword research and start implementing relevant keywords and phrases in your blog posts and website content. SEO skills help your software website appear at the top of the search results, requiring minimal ad spend. Basically, you generate more leads without paying to acquire them by simply creating content that includes the language they use for their search queries. There are three types of SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical. On-page SEO refers to optimizing your website content with relevant keywords and HTML source code. Off-page is about link building, while technical SEO is affected by website speed, mobile optimization, and site architecture.
But let's dive deeper into link building for SaaS. How do you receive authority backlinks? Buying backlinks is an option many websites resort to. Nevertheless, it is risky, as Google may deem these links unreliable and lower your ranking. Additionally, you can't be certain these links are trustworthy because many of them belong to empty websites with zero credibility. This means that you should collaborate with expert marketing agencies offering link building services since they work with pre-approved content and sites.
4. Lead Scoring
Enterprise SaaS marketing depends on lead scoring, which many marketers focus on heavily. It refers to analyzing each prospect and how close they are to making a purchase. For example, someone who has just entered your sales funnel is probably looking for helpful content and not to buy anything. On the contrary, someone in the consideration stage is checking various solutions before they make up their minds. A customer relationship management (CRM) platform helps marketers identify high-intent clients and distribute their attention accordingly. One of the top applications of Artificial Intelligence is automating your lead scoring so you don't have to waste hours doing it manually.
5. Headless CMS
If you want to accelerate business growth and promote omnichannel growth, a headless content management system (CMS) is a solid option. Its biggest advantage is developmental freedom since it allows your developers to create customized options instead of utilizing pre-designed templates that may be too generic for your brand identity. Also, whenever the market changes and updates take place, you can enable frontend upgrades without disrupting the backend. Lastly, you can include new touchpoints to your site's frontend so that all channels are interconnected and synchronized. Companies that use a headless CMS say that it has helped them creatively, too, by modernizing their domain and offering a great digital experience.
6. Paid Ads
No matter how triumphant your SEO efforts are, paid ads should still be included in your enterprise software marketing strategy. Organic traffic takes time to evolve, and until you have achieved high rankings, paid ads are effective lead generation techniques. You may choose Google ads and social media platform ads, as all channels offer paid promotions. Thanks to their targeting options, you can choose your demographics, job roles, interests, locations, and online behavior patterns to make your ads specific. Enterprise-level marketing can benefit significantly from PPC, display ads, and popup banners. You can track your advertisements' performance, modify your budget, and adjust your strategy.
(And that's not all PPC ads can offer you. How about PPC directory listings? Niche and trustworthy websites allow you to list your SaaS business for free. On top of that, if you want to stand out and rank higher than your competition, you can create PPC directory listing ads to increase visibility.)
7. Free Offerings
One of the best SaaS marketing tips to attract new clients and convert them into buyers is offering free stuff. For starters, free trials and freemiums allow users to experience your enterprise software and decide whether you are the ideal solution. Free trials usually last 14 days, while freemiums are unlimited basic versions of software with the possibility to upgrade. Yet, for this tactic to be effective, you need to allow users to access to as many features as possible. Limited features won't show them how valuable your SaaS product truly is. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you also offer onboarding support to show clients how eager you are to guide them along the way.
Furthermore, you can create free tools for your audience to use with absolutely no strings attached. Take Canva, for example. The tool is easy for everyone to access and use. However, it has limitations when it comes to accessing all its features. This is where professionals are convinced to upgrade to premium and unlock the tool's full potential.
8. Case Studies And Testimonials
Customer success stories have always been important to marketing. And since marketing software solutions is demanding and time-consuming, writing about successful client cases is necessary. When you are filling out your marketing plan template, make sure to add case studies and testimonials under your content needs. Such material builds trust and credibility and convinces prospects you are the real deal. Starting with case study articles, you can write about a customer's challenging situation and how they finally boosted their sales with your help. Make sure to add relevant statistics that prove your claims.
Customer testimonials are usually short quotes from your clients. Most companies add them to their home and landing pages. Don't fall into the trap of exaggerating or faking your customer success stories, as your clients will probably see through the lies.
9. Video Marketing
Whether it's tutorials, how-to guides, or demos, video marketing is an effective way to showcase your product's worth and usability. For example, video marketing for HR software helps boost brand awareness, increase sales, and improve accessibility and engagement. Your options with video are limitless. You can create detailed guides that help users get familiar with your solution or case study videos where your existing customers detail their experiences working with your enterprise software. Moreover, you can repurpose your webinars and podcasts by publishing them on YouTube once their live streaming has finished. This way, you allow those who weren't in attendance to view and listen to your content for free at their convenience. Especially with podcasts, you can also film them so people can see the speakers and form even closer bonds with them.
Challenges Software Marketers Often Face
One of the main challenges for businesses that want to market their enterprise software product is scaling up. Specifically, content targeting and personalization are two big headaches for many SaaS companies. Instead of delegating tasks to employees from other departments, you may need to collaborate with a B2B content marketing agency to help you out. You may also need to purchase a content management tool for efficient operations. Another major issue is vendor management. From finding the best vendor to negotiating contracts, communication can often be problematic. Monitoring your vendor relationships helps you ensure a smooth supply chain, on-time deliveries, and high service quality. Not to mention, once you have built strong foundations, you can negotiate better rates.
What else can go wrong when you build a strategic marketing plan for your enterprise software marketing strategy? Wasting resources or allocating them ineffectively is a potential danger. That's why SaaS companies should utilize enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This way, you don't have to manually track down statistics, as the system automatically gathers them for you. Moreover, siloed communication is another hurdle you may encounter. While building a marketing strategy for your software product, you may have an influx of opinions. This can lead to confusion. That's why you need to communicate your mission and startup marketing tactics to the entire company clearly.
Key Takeaway
Bringing your enterprise software inside the congested SaaS sales market can be intimidating for any inexperienced marketer. Thankfully, seasoned digital marketing agencies know the right course of action. They start by defining your company goals and target audience, picking your marketing channels, and setting a healthy budget. They connect every goal with a set of KPIs they continuously track to make improvements and adjustments if necessary. This is only the first part of an enterprise software marketing strategy, though. You need to invest time and money into creating content, setting up email marketing campaigns, conducting keyword analyses, and link building.
The fun doesn't stop there, as you also need to create convincing and genuine customer success stories and videos for various platforms and decide what your free offerings will look like. Are you going for a free tool or a free trial? All this may sound complicated and too much for your in-house team to handle. That's why you should think about working with a content marketing agency, like eLearning Industry, that will take a huge burden off your shoulders.
