What Is SaaS Marketing? Everything You Need to Know to Start

SaaS businesses aren’t selling a one-time purchase. They’re selling a long-term relationship, which is a much bigger commitment. 

That’s why they need to use a special set of tactics that build on traditional marketing fundamentals. These include inbound methods, direct outreach, live demos, and more. 

This guide is a crash course in SaaS marketing and its most effective strategies. By the time you’ve finished reading, you’ll know exactly how to generate hordes of leads that fit your ideal customer profile like a glove. 

What Makes SaaS Marketing Unique?

To excel at SaaS marketing, you first need to understand what makes it different from ordinary marketing. 

Let’s look at the three defining characteristics of SaaS marketing. 

Recurring Revenue and Retention Over One-Time Purchases

SaaS marketers need to convince people to pay for the same product month after month. This requires some serious relationship building.

Techniques that remind users of your value and expertise—like content marketing, thought leadership, and community building—are essential.  

Emphasis on Customer Education and Onboarding

In SaaS marketing, which hinges on retention and self-service, you need to provide users with enough understanding of your product to implement it and use it effectively. If education is lacking, adoption will suffer, and customers will cancel their subscriptions. 

This means providing a comprehensive onboarding experience, perhaps even dedicated customer success managers. At the very least, you’ll want to create a large knowledge base with tutorials about how to use your solution.  

Longer Decision-Making Process and Multiple Stakeholders

SaaS buying decisions, especially for high-priced B2B purchases, tend to have a long sales cycle with multiple decision-makers. 

A CRM software brand doesn't just have to convince a CRM administrator of its value. They also have to persuade the Chief of Sales, CTO, CMO, CEO, and lead sales rep. 

To win over individual buyer personas, marketing can’t be generic. You need to use highly persona-based value propositions, role-specific engagement strategies, and personalized live demos. 

SaaS Marketing Funnel

The SaaS marketing funnel has four stages: top, middle, bottom, and retention. 

Let’s go over the purpose of each one and the strategies used to move leads along the customer journey.   

TOFU: Driving Awareness and Attracting the Right Audience

At the top of the funnel, SaaS brands engage in demand generation, creating content that addresses common customer pain points and begins to position their brand as a solution. 

For example, Artisan publishes top-of-funnel blog posts about topics related to our product, AI outreach software. 

The goal of this content type is to guide the buyer to an understanding that they have a problem and become interested in your brand as a source of expertise and assistance. 

MOFU: Educating and Nurturing Leads

In the middle of the funnel, leads are interested in your brand and aware of their problem. Now they’re starting to evaluate solutions. 

It’s your job to help them learn more about what you offer. Use feature breakdowns, cold emails, comparison guides, and other product-focused content. 

For example, Artisan’s CEO, Jaspar, often publishes LinkedIn posts that teach potential leads about Artisan without being overly promotional.

BOFU: Converting and Onboarding Users

Once a lead knows about your solutions, they typically still require some persuading before making a purchase. They need to trust your brand fully. 

To build rapport and overcome hesitation, SaaS businesses use bottom-of-funnel marketing tactics like testimonials, case studies, live demos, free trials, and free consultations with the sales team (as in the example from Artisan below).

Beyond the Funnel: Retention, Upsells, and Advocacy

Post-purchase marketing is used in SaaS sales to increase product adoption, prevent churn, and encourage upgrades to higher-priced plans.   

One common example is email and in-app messaging campaigns that teach users how to get the most out of the solution. 

Many companies also employ customer success managers who deepen the relationship between customers and the brand, checking in regularly and keeping customers engaged and happy. 

SaaS Marketing Strategies That Drive Growth

From cold outreach to SEO content marketing, here are the best SaaS marketing strategies for lead generation, customer acquisition, and retention. 

1. Reach Out Directly with Cold Email or LinkedIn

Direct outreach, proactively reaching out to target leads, still works well for SaaS brands, especially for early-stage B2B startups. 

Unlike inbound tactics, an outbound strategy is a rapid way to generate new leads. Why? Because it’s proactive. Instead of waiting for leads to come to you, you go and hunt.

Another benefit is that since you’re focusing on one decision-maker or target audience segment, you can create hyper-personalized messaging that converts at a high rate.    

There are two primary types of cold outreach, each with its unique advantages:

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  LinkedIn social selling: This is when sales reps engage with target decision-makers on LinkedIn, mostly by interacting with their posts and sending them direct messages. LinkedIn marketing is ideal for building relationships with B2B decision-makers.

  
  

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  Cold email: Business development reps (BDRs) send emails to leads to sell them on the value of your solution. The focus is to book a meeting. This strategy works for any SaaS brand. If you personalize messages and follow up consistently, it will likely be one of the greatest weapons in your lead generation arsenal.

  
  

The ideal outreach strategy combines all three—cold email, LinkedIn social selling, and (once contact has been made) lead nurturing. 

All these moving parts are hard to manage, but there are tools that can help. For example, Artisan automatically finds, researches, and engages target leads across LinkedIn and email, generating and nurturing leads on autopilot for your business. 

2. Let Your Product Do the Selling (PLG Approach)

Product-led growth (PLG) is a strategy in which companies make their product so intuitive, valuable, and easy to adopt that it sells itself. 

When your product gives users an amazing customer experience and quick, out-of-the-box results, they don’t just use your product. They actively promote it to their peers through word-of-mouth, social media posts, and online reviews. 

Here are the qualities your product should have to fit the PLG model: 

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  Self-service setup

  
  
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  Clean, bug-free interface 

  
  
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  Freemium plan

  
  
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  Fast time-to-value 

  
  

Here are two companies executing the PLG strategy to perfection:

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  Slack: Slack grew like crazy, in part because it's easy to use and invite teammates and vendors onto the platform. Plus, its value is immediate. Minutes after downloading it, users notice how much more efficient it is than email for internal communication.  

  
  
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  Notion: Notion’s generous free tier and product flexibility make it an obvious choice for task management. Once people start using it to organize their workflows, it’s common for them to get hooked and start using it for bigger, more collaborative projects, and they upgrade to a paid plan. 

  
  

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

3. Help People Find You with Content and SEO (Inbound Marketing)

Inbound SaaS marketing involves creating content that attracts target leads to your website, where you collect their contact information.

Here are the best types of content for inbound SaaS marketing:

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  Blog posts: These 1,000–3,000-word articles answer common customer search queries. Typical formats include how-tos, listicles, and product roundups. The goal is to educate your audience, so fill these articles with actionable tips and examples. And make them digestible with images and bulleted lists, as Artisan has done in the blog post below. 

  
  

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  Case studies: This content showcases how your solution helped a client. The best ones tell a customer story that illustrates their problem, consequences, solution, and positive outcome. They’ve repeatedly proven effective at nurturing middle and bottom-of-funnel prospects.  

  
  

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  Comparison pages: These pages compare your SaaS product to competitors. The key is to be fair but also demonstrate where your solution is better. This is a great way to attract leads in the evaluation stage of the buyer’s journey.

  
  

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  Lead magnets: Lead magnets are free offerings that are more valuable than blog posts. Templates, ebooks, and free versions of your product are all examples. Visitors access it in return for their contact information. The example below is from HubSpot. 

  
  

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  Landing pages: Landing pages are short sales pages that pitch your lead magnets, free trial, and live demos. The goal is to persuade the lead to take action—such as submitting their email address for a free product demo, as Artisan has done below:

  
  

Always follow SEO best practices so your content has the best possible chance of appearing in the search results for terms you’re targeting.

The amazing thing about SEO content is that it’s often evergreen. Once a piece of content starts to rank, it can bring your website organic, high-quality traffic without any additional work. The Artisan article below, for example, targets a lower-funnel keyword query and consistently generates leads. 

For Abhishek Shah, the founder of AI interviewing platform Testlify, the power of SEO content is undeniable. It plays a major role in his company’s growth strategy. But targeting money terms is key. 

He says,  “Instead of just writing broad top-of-funnel blogs, we focused on search terms that clearly showed buying intent, like “anti-cheating features in pre-employment tests” or “best skill assessment platform for remote hiring.” Each piece was written to match real customer pain points and led naturally to our product.”

4. Partner Up with Affiliates, Influencers, or Other SaaS Brands

Being a lone wolf is cool in Hollywood, but not in the world of SaaS. Here, brand partnerships can be extremely lucrative and cost-effective SaaS marketing strategies.

Two partnership strategies are particularly effective at driving growth: 

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  Affiliate programs: You give other businesses, creators, and media outlets a special link they can promote to their audience. If a sale is made, they get a payout. BlueHost, for example, offers a high-paying rewards program.

  
  

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  Influencer partnerships: Find influencers who have an audience that you want to tap into. Then pay them to promote your solution in their authentic voice—preferably over the long term rather than in a one-off post, as regular exposure to your brand will create better results. 

  
  

You can also partner with complementary, not directly competing, SaaS brands for content collaborations. 

For example, a CRM company and a sales intelligence tool might partner to create an industry cold calling report that both their audiences will love. You could also set up a cross-promotion program with tools that integrate with yours. 

5. Build a Real Community Around Your Product

Building a user community where customers can share use cases, find answers to questions, and troubleshoot issues is amazing for boosting customer retention, generating product feedback, and generating advocacy. 

Below are some popular online spaces to create your user community:

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  Slack groups

  
  
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  Discord

  
  
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  Reddit

  
  
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  LinkedIn groups

  
  
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  Hosted forums (like the one below, from Airtable)

  
  

However, remember that it’s important to nurture engagement, not just start a group and hope everyone starts chatting about how awesome your solution is. 

Here are four tested ways to boost engagement in your group:

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  Create exclusive content that only community members can access, like interviews with industry experts and deep dives into cool use cases. 

  
  
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  Host live Q&As where current and potential customers can ask questions and listen to you answer them over a live stream.  

  
  
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  Ask users how they’re using your product to manage a new industry obstacle or seize an opportunity.

  
  
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  Gamify engagement by creating a leaderboard, badges, and other incentives to reward those who contribute most often. 

  
  

Branded communities help SaaS companies become known to potential customers as more than a product. Their business becomes a place of connection and learning, which fosters fandom and loyalty. 

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo

6. Use Feature Launches and Events to Create Buzz

Have a new feature coming out? Make sure to promote it with a multi-channel feature launch.

Here are the best ways to promote your launches: 

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  Email campaigns: Run email marketing sequences that include launch teasers, feature sneak peeks, in-depth tutorials, and countdowns that create excitement for the launch. 

  
  
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  Blog posts: In the weeks leading up to the launch, publish blog posts that describe the new feature, explore its use cases, and explain the issue it solves. 

  
  
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  In-app messages: Create in-app notifications and banners that remind users of the upcoming feature launch. 

  
  

In addition, consider launching your feature on Product Hunt, a website where tech enthusiasts discover new software products. 

This audience of tech lovers makes it a great marketing channel for tech startups. Check out Product Hunt’s Launch Guide to learn how to market your new feature on the platform. 

7. Use Paid Ads but Keep an Eye on Your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Paid ads are great in SaaS marketing because they give you direct access to your target customers. Most platforms enable you to target leads based on behavior, demographics, and even interests. 

There are many ad platforms to choose from, but the best-performing in the SaaS space are Google PPC search ads and LinkedIn ads. 

An AdConversion survey found that 52.7% of B2B marketers ranked Google Ads as their favorite platform and 38.2% favored LinkedIn ads. YouTube ads are also effective, as professionals often use the video platform to learn about business topics.   

For a better ROI, follow these three practices:

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  Use retargeting ads: These ads re-engage users who have previously interacted with your brand. For example, you can target users who have liked your social posts or visited your product page. 

  
  
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  Run ads to lead magnets: Use ads to capture email addresses. Advertise a valuable piece of gated content, like a template, an ultimate guide, or an ebook. 

  
  

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  Run ads to demos: Like lead magnets, this is a relatively low-friction action for the lead to take compared to making a purchase outright. In the demo meeting, your sales reps can sell them on the product. 

  
  

Whatever you do, don’t waste money on low-converting audiences or ignore audience targeting features. These mistakes will burn your budget faster than a wildfire.

8. Host Webinars or Live Demos to Close More Deals

Live interactions in SaaS are critical for mid and high-ticket tools. Professionals evaluating these solutions need to trust your brand before they buy, and live demos and webinars are an excellent way of establishing this rapport and capturing contact info.  

Live demos become especially important if you’re selling complex solutions. They give your sales team an opportunity to show individual prospects how to use the tool to solve their unique set of problems. 

When promoting webinars, speak specifically to one buyer persona. This signup page from Notion, for example, targets product and engineering teams. 

In the webinar, use plenty of visuals and live demos, include an interactive Q&A, and have a clear CTA at the end to push prospects to a live personal demo or purchase. 

How to Measure SaaS Marketing Success

Measuring the effectiveness of your SaaS marketing campaigns and strategies is key for identifying ways to improve them. 

Here are the most important metrics to track. 

1. CAC

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) tells you about how cost-effectively you’re generating new customers. Low CAC suggests efficient marketing spend and strong channel performance. 

2. LTV

Lifetime value (LTV) is the revenue an average customer generates in their time with your company. Use customer lifetime value to find your most valuable customer segments and target them in your marketing. 

3. MRR/ARR

Monthly and annual recurring revenue (M/ARR) indicate the predictable income of your business. They’re important metrics for measuring revenue growth over time. An increasing ARR year over year, for example, suggests you’re doing a good job of retaining old customers and winning new ones. 

4. Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who cancel their subscription over a given timeframe (typically monthly or annually). A high customer churn rate means there’s something wrong with your onboarding process, lead qualification system, product-market fit, or retention strategy.

5. Trial-to-Paid Conversions

This metric is important if you offer free trials, as it tracks how many free users become paying customers. A low trial-to-paid conversion rate suggests you need to improve your lead-nurturing strategy, free trial experience, or paid tier value proposition.

How a Tool Like Artisan Can Support Your SaaS Marketing

Artisan is an AI-first sales automation platform that provides SaaS businesses with a self-optimizing AI BDR called Ava who can identify target leads and engage them over email and LinkedIn—without any human intervention. 

Personalization is key in SaaS outreach. Ava scrapes the web and social media for information on target leads. She then uses this intel to create personalized outreach and follow-up sequences. 

With a tool like Artisan, your SaaS business can fully automate its outbound lead generation and nurturing. That means you can hire fewer BDRs and use that marketing budget elsewhere. 

Meanwhile, your account executives (AEs) receive a constant flow of qualified leads without having to do any sales prospecting themselves. 

Marketing a SaaS Product Takes Time but It Pays Off

Marketing a SaaS product is difficult. The competition is steep. Customers are unfamiliar with your product category or the technology behind your software. And persuading someone to partner with you for a full year requires serious rapport-building and education. 

Fortunately, when it comes to outbound marketing, Artisan can help. AI BDR Ava automates outreach through LinkedIn and email, generating leads for your SaaS brand on autopilot. This means you can focus on closing deals, not opening them up.

Automate your outbound with an AI BDR

Meet Ava—your AI BDR who handles prospecting, outreach, and follow-ups, so your team can focus on closing.

Book a Demo