Posted by SaaS, or software as a service is the largest contributor to the cloud market and its revenue reached $98.9 billion in 2020. Undoubtedly, SaaS marketing is growing in popularity with the growth of SaaS businesses. This also means increased competition requires companies to find new and creative ideas to promote their business on social media.
If you are still wondering how powerful social media for SaaS can be, with over 3.6 billion users around the world leveraging social media networks to stay connected, SaaS social media marketing aids the growth of your company and allows you to reach potential customers on channels where they are active online.
Why use social media marketing for SaaS?
When it comes to SaaS, you are not in it for the short run. SaaS businesses have an annual average churn rate of 5%. And that’s why you need low-cost channels like social media marketing to acquire and retain customers.
Activities such as researching, seeking out recommendations and watching demo videos contribute to helping the prospective buyers make their purchase decisions. You must be thinking, social media platforms for promoting SaaS products isn’t the best idea because the SaaS buyer’s decision-making is so much more complicated than selling eCommerce or physical products. The truth is, engagement is essential while growing a SaaS business and even after it gains traction.
However, here are the 4 primary reasons why social media for SaaS should be an integral part of your marketing plan.
#1. Your potential audience is active on social media. Millennials who are the world’s most powerful consumers are active social media users. They are using social media platforms to discover products and services.
#2. Believe it or not, social media users want to get in touch with businesses on social media. 74% of US consumers follow at least one business on social media and one in three users reach out to a business over social media for customer support. If you’re shying away from social media, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to interact with people directly because consumers are equally happy to engage with businesses over social platforms.
#3. As a social media marketer, you must be well aware that consumers are bombarded with ads online. This makes them use ad blockers extensively. Social media marketing is a cost-effective tool that gives great results. Along with being active on social media platforms, customers use social networks as search engines to discover new brands, content and follow influencers. For SaaS companies, this is a great chance to promote products without spending a lot of money on creating brand awareness.
#4. Social media platforms have started rolling out features to help businesses and customers communicate with each other. These business-specific features include shoppable posts and clickable links to help SaaS companies promote products and services inside the social media apps.
Now that you are convinced to give social media marketing a try, it is important to remember that simply having a social media presence is not enough to promote your product. The right social media strategy allows you to achieve business goals, interact with users and potential customers and leverage social media for SaaS.
10 Effective and proven social media strategies for SaaS
Whichever social media platform you choose to market your SaaS company, here is the list of 10 actionable, proven and effective social media strategies being used by brands.
#1. Highlight what your SaaS tool does – On average, an internet user spends 145 minutes each day on social media. People use social platforms for everything, from reading news to discovering products and communicating with their friends and family.
The key to using social media for SaaS is to reach out to the target audience and encourage them to follow your business. The best way to help them learn more about your products and services is by telling them about your offerings and their value.
Regardless of the platform you use, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn, have a bio section that conveys what your business does, in a few words. Imagery in the form of photos, videos and cover images gives additional information about your SaaS business.
Let’s take the example of the team communication app Flock. The company is active on all social media platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
On the Twitter page, the bio tells the reader what the tool does, in a nutshell.
Their Facebook page has contact information and links to the website, app and other social media channels.
Today, people are pressed for time. Chances are, they will scan your social media profile to decide if the product is of interest to them or good enough to follow.
Some social media marketing tips to remember, while creating a bio include:
- Add a clickable link to your website
- Write the key benefits of your product
- Ensure that the visuals convey what your product does
#2. Be consistent in engaging with prospective customers – With so many businesses and people sharing content continuously, it’s not easy to keep up with the speed. Without consistency, your post will be lost in the overcrowded feed of your customers, even before they see it.
Repeated engagement is the only way to go about it. A HubSpot research found 45% of people internet users expecting more social media posts from brands they follow.
This means marketers would have to create a more diversified strategy with alternative types of content such as videos and social media posts to engage with the audience.
If you are looking for inspiration, Grammarly does a great job at nailing social media marketing.
The Facebook page shares fun grammar tips in the form of videos along with quotes.
The Twitter page includes more interactive formats such as polls to encourage the reader to participate in engaging with the brand.
Here are a few tips to help you nail customer engagement on social media:
- Creating a social media calendar and leveraging social media tools such as Crowdfire to stay on top of content creation and publication across channels
- Using images to make the social media content more engaging
- Using graphs, charts and infographics to display complex and numerical data
- Adding videos using a tool like Design Wizard to build a personalized relationship with customers
#3. Leveraging user-generated content to increase trust – Building trust or boosting customer retention isn’t easy. That’s why you need to leverage user-generated content to showcase how the existing customers use your products or what they have to say about your SaaS tool. Positive word-of-mouth buzz can go a long way when it comes to increasing brand trust.
While using user-generated content as a part of the social media strategy is commonly seen in B2C brands, it is equally effective for B2B and SaaS companies.
User-generated content on social media boosts your brand’s trustworthiness. It can also be posted in the form of testimonials on the website that serve as social proof about the results your product delivers.
For example, Xoxoday uses LinkedIn to announce vendor onboarding.
Going a step further, to encourage more users to share their experience/content, you can incentivize them with digital rewards using Xoxoday Plum customer referral rewards. As a part of the customer retention strategy, send digital rewards to new customers to build a rapport. When an existing customer contributes to building a better product by pointing out issues, use rewards, incentives and referral marketing to make them brand advocates.
#4. Collaborate with niche-specific influencers – Did you know 17% of companies spend more than half of their marketing budget for collaborating with influencers? Well, yes, that’s how important influencer collaboration is, for brands.
With an influencer spreading the word, you will be able to build a trustworthy brand and reach a greater audience. Before getting involved in such collaborations, look for influencers relevant to your target demographic and create transparent goals.
While you would’ve commonly heard of influencer marketing for B2C brands, Adobe regularly partners with niche influencers to share their stories.
You could start the influencer marketing campaign for your SaaS product on a small scale. When both partners see good ROI, you can take the partnership to the next level.
#5. Social media customer support – The modern customer expects a brand to solve their queries quickly without making them wait. With 64% of customers preferring to message a business over social media than call them over the phone, social media customer support is highly effective as it allows them to get in touch with your team over an online platform they actively use.
This means customer service is an integral part of the entire buying cycle for a SaaS product, from marketing to post-sales. The best brands take advantage of every interaction with the customer on social media to offer value, impress the prospects and ultimately sell.
Spotify knows how to take care of its customers on social media. Along with having a dedicated account for support (SpotifyCares) on Twitter, the team gives specific instructions to customers reaching out for help. For example, for payment queries – they ask you to DM. For tech queries – they ask for the operating system/device.
Going a step ahead, you can offer personalized customer service by tracking engagement on social media to find how customers feel about your brand. Tracking social media conversations and analytics would show you if the same issues keep popping over and over again and help you learn more about the users.
The omni-channel helpdesk software LiveAgent for customer service allows you to answer customer comments, mentions and messages directly from a universal inbox.
Some vital social media customer service tips include:
- Finding and monitoring conversations around your brand on social media using a social media management tool such as Crowdfire
- Creating social media guidelines for the internal team
- Providing self-service informational resources
- Always responding (and quickly) even if it is with a template
- Using a chatbot to answer the frequently asked questions
#6. Explain how your product works with diverse content formats – While most people seek out solutions when they face a problem, people are proactively discovering new products even when they do not need a solution.
You can use diverse content formats to explain how your SaaS product works to build brand awareness and attract potential customers along with catering to customers who are seeking solutions. The four types of social media content every business owner needs to create include interactive, visual, informative and positive content, regardless of the format.
People consume content in different formats, some prefer audio, text, visuals, or videos. To cater to all these customer preferences, explain how your SaaS product works in the following ways:
- Write and publish educational posts
- Go live (as per Facebook, live streaming has three times the engagement over other types of content)
- Organize Q & A sessions
- Create explainer videos or videos talking about the customer pain points
- Illustrate the working of your product in the form of an image
With 85% of all internet users watching online video content every month, publishing videos (educational, explainer and so on) is the most effective form of social media content.
ClipChamp, a free video editor shares pre-made templates for users on Twitter in the form of short videos.
Use videos to showcase the working of your products, the pain points it solves, validation from the customers in the form of testimonials and the value it offers. If you are starting an eCommerce business, videos become all the more important to tell your story, distil the message and increase the relatability between your brand and your customers.
#7. Leverage customer testimonials – The key to growing your SaaS business is listening to customers. Often, customers know what they want from your product, so collecting feedback and converting them into brand advocates will help you improve the product and engagement.
The best part of social media is that users are not shy of expressing their thoughts on your product. More so, they want to help other potential customers who are looking for recommendations.
That is where you can use customer testimonials or feedback collected on social media to instil more trust in the audience for your product.
Instead of simply asking customers to provide a video testimonial, testimonial templates for the customer as a starting point to help them give more effective feedback. Some customer testimonial templates you could use include compiling user benefits, sharing a success story and getting into the specifics of how your product benefits their business.
What’s more, not all customers tag company’s social media profiles to share their thoughts on the product. A whopping 96% of customers who discuss businesses do not follow them online. This is why you should use social media listening tools such as Keyhole, Mention, or Buzzsumo to track untagged brand mentions.
Here’s an example of user feedback Airtable got on Twitter.
#8. Share discounts – When discounts are done right, social media can help boost SaaS sales. To tap into the customer’s FOMO (fear of missing out) a rapid sales campaign (time-bound) limited discount where the customers would have to make a fast purchasing decision will encourage them to buy from you. Did you know, many people follow businesses on social media for discounts and offers?
Do you need an example? AppSumo regularly runs time-sensitive deals on its Facebook page.
What’s the bottom-line here? Like any other user, SaaS buyers are common people who are looking for sales and offers before buying from companies. Running or sharing discounts or offers on social media is a great way to get your product into the hands of potential users who are not completely convinced of your product.
#9. Run social media ads – As 83% of social media marketers run promotional ads, it comes as no wonder that more and more companies are realizing the marketing potential of social media ads and their ability to reach a relevant new audience. Although organic social media marketing takes time and effort, running social media ad campaigns to promote your SaaS product helps you cut through the noise quickly.
Further, 67% of users purchased a product after seeing an ad on social media. On one hand, you have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram ads which are not too expensive. While LinkedIn ads cost more, they have a higher conversion rate.
Start with deciding the kinds of ads you would want to run. On Facebook and Twitter, it could be ads to increase brand awareness. Instagram could be used to run retargeting ads. And on LinkedIn, you could promote a lead magnet to boost lead generation.
For example, this ad from Verloop.io gives the reader 6 months free of WhatsApp outbound messages. The smart trick here to remember is, to offer users something in exchange for their email address and contact details. As long as you offer something valuable, your leads would be more than helpful to respond to the ad.
#10. Use social media for lead generation – By now, you know for sure that companies use social media for brand awareness. Because the more people know about your business, the more potential customers you can reach out to, and acquire. You also know that simply having a social media presence would not be enough to grow your SaaS business. You need to interact with them and convert them into leads. Social media marketing is a proven B2B lead generation strategy to guide the customers down the purchase funnel.
Give people are reason to share their information with you. For example, LinkedIn offers credit points in exchange for signing up for their marketing solutions. Discount codes or rewards encourage users to visit your website and ideally make a purchase. If you are planning to generate leads, have a strategy in place for nurturing and converting them.
The truth is, lead magnets work. They could be gated content, discount codes, and contests or sweepstakes. As per a report by Ascend2 titled “Lead generation: How marketers are adapting to change”, here are the effective content formats marketers use to build relationships to generate and nurture leads.
Remember to have a good reason to collect customer information for your lead generation campaign. Tell the customer what is in it for them, be it delivering a newsletter, cultivating loyalty or offering rewards in the future. Furthermore, using a tool like JotForm survey maker, you could take customer feedback to know the effectiveness of the lead magnet and the product.
Additional examples of SaaS companies mastering social media marketing
Phew! That was quite some information there. Now that you are fully aware of the SaaS social media strategies and tips, let’s take a look at 2 companies acing social media marketing. This will help you to get an idea of how your SaaS business can take up social media marketing this quarter or the next.
#1. Mailshake – Sales engagement and automation software Mailshake condenses articles for LinkedIn for readers who prefer browsing through the key points. They’ve added the link to the article in the comments.
On Twitter, they share content more frequently and the social media posts are a mix of curated articles, videos and Mailshake’s blog posts.
#2. Octane AI – Octane AI personalizes every stage of the Shopify customer’s journey using quizzes, opt-ins, SMS and Messenger. Let’s take a closer look at how they handle social media marketing on different channels.
Their LinkedIn posts are typically published once a week. The content format includes lead generation posts, blogs, hiring posts and webinar links.
Their posts on Twitter are more frequent and include polls, curated articles mentioning them and links to Octane AI blogs.
As a SaaS business owner, maintaining a steady flow of incoming leads and converting them into paying customers is an ongoing challenge. But that’s not enough, given the competition you have today. That’s where social media marketing for SaaS helps you educate, inform and entertain your target audience. Social media for SaaS, as a powerful marketing tool, allows you to ease the mind of the worried customer and understand the user better.
With Crowdfire, you can find curated content, schedule your posts, engage with your audience, deep-dive into analytics and create custom reports. Now introducing Social listening. Try it for free.