Why SaaS model advocacy is extra vital than ever in 2021
It's no secret that the field of marketing is constantly evolving, and SaaS brands are not immune to the challenges posed by the speed of the field. A great way to keep up with SaaS companies is through branding.
2021 SaaS trends that affect brand representation
First, consider the overwhelming boost to personalization.
According to a Forbes article, 71% of consumers are "frustrated when a shopping experience is impersonal". 74% are dissatisfied with websites that are not personalized.
This signals the need for SaaS brands to segment their content resources and interfaces in order to improve messages that speak directly to specific customers. Personalization is expected in the years to come, and brands need to figure out how to deliver it.
In the SaaS industry, where every interaction is ideally tracked, the possibilities for personalization are enormous.
Changes to the Facebook algorithm a few years ago also caused the organic reach of pages to decrease. However, if you get creative, you may still have some success with organic pages.
There's also the rise of automation to think about.
SaaS companies, new and existing, are investing heavily in AI and machine learning to reduce churn while attracting more new customers. From services that offer A / B testing to conversation bots that capture leads on-site, brands are quickly experimenting with new ways to optimize their content.
Why brand advocacy is so important to SaaS
Simply put, your content marketing strategy is at the center of your adaptability as a SaaS brand. In addition to the fundamental benefits of increasing traffic and increasing brand awareness, an effective content strategy is essential to consistently nurture and integrate leads.
Conventional wisdom has it that we should shell out a ton of money on paid media or sponsoring influencer posts to get people's attention. However, is this type of pay-to-play strategy really the best way to go?
At a time when social proof is such a strong currency for marketers, it's more important than ever for SaaS marketers to seek trademark attorneys wherever they can.
Who could be a better trademark attorney than your own customers and employees? These people are already emotionally invested in the success of your product and know your brand better than anyone else.
Encouraging your own network to promote your content and products through their personal social accounts is a potential enabler for SaaS brands. Rather than spending the resources hunting down paid outlets and influencers, brands should focus on advocacy, which can lead to better results in less time.
"By creating a product that solved a problem many people were facing, it meant millions of people were looking for us by the time we hit the market," said Melanie Perkins, Canva CEO, to Forbes. "When they found us, they told their colleagues." , Friends and families. "
Here are some of the greatest benefits associated with branding, as well as some ways SaaS marketers can start realizing them.
1. Overcome content overload
At a time when people are on the phone for almost 4 hours or more a day, your customers obviously have a lot to look through.
While the concept of "quality content" may be a cliché at this point, keep in mind how a higher volume of approvals makes a piece of content stand out as buzzworthy. This is social proof at its best.
Content releases and product recommendations work because people trust their peers and thought leaders more than brands and institutions.
Remember, employees who act as active lawyers on social media can quickly become influencers on your behalf. In fact, converting your own employees into thought leaders is a desirable by-product of branding.
2. Expand your organic reach through brand advocacy
Regardless of how you slice it, the competition in the SaaS space is fierce.
Given that there are around 8,000 brands in the Martech space alone, SaaS companies have to fight hard for potential customers' attention.
Think of advocacy as a number game of sorts. The more people promoting your content, paid or otherwise, the more likely it is that you will break through the noise and reach the people who need your product most.
When you encourage employees to regularly promote your content to their own social media audiences, you're essentially collecting a small army of promoters to call over and over again. By becoming a social brand advocate, you exponentially increase your social reach and potential to be seen by leads.
Remember – in many cases, it is enough for the right person to see a link and sign up for a free trial to pave the way for sale.
Scott Albro, CEO of TOPO, notes that the smaller the company your prospect works for, the more likely he or she will stick with your product after the trial period ends:
"SaaS buyers will not do more than one trial. Our data shows that this is particularly the case in the small and medium-sized business market, where buyers tend to do fewer comparison deals. You need to make sure buyers find your trial first. You also need to make sure you don't miss this opportunity if you get it. "
3. Get your employees involved to increase brand awareness
Perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of encouraging trademark attorneys among employees is the actual job of encouraging them to do so.
While most employees would love to promote your content, keep in mind that brands should treat advocacy like any other type of campaign. That means having a defined strategy and measuring performance.
However, SaaS teams often have highly specialized skills. You can't expect everyone to be a skilled content marketer and social seller.
Rather than having employees post content haphazardly, consider some of the tools that will help streamline the internal branding process. You can also help them with the content of their post.
One such tool is Smarp, which combines company news and industry-relevant content into categorized feeds. With just a few clicks, team members can get the content that appeals to them most and schedule posts for their own profiles.
This reduces potential wasted time on social media and simplifies the process of sharing new content among your employees.
Features like gamification signal the most active lawyers in a given company and provide additional incentives for employees to become avid lawyers. In addition to content aggregation, Smarp provides analytics on both a company and personal level to identify top proponents.
This type of system works because employees from all departments become partners in the exponential sales growth success of your SaaS product. This process, which Roketto co-founder Ulf Lonegren compares to the growth of a tree that produces more trees:
“Make your employees proud of their work, make them feel like an important part of the process by reminding them of how the software adds value and informing them of the successes, listening to their ideas and im Engine room create a sales table that tracks progress. Set sales goals and reward those goals. Incentivize team members to make sales. In this world of mass marketing, word of mouth often offers the authenticity buyers want when they are looking for a product. So remember that any member of your team can be an oak tree, and many nuts can fall from a tree. "
4. Charge up your social selling
SaaS customers are heavily influenced by what they see on social media when it comes to making purchases.
This is true in terms of how often they see content and who owns that content. When social contributions from sales professionals, marketers, and brands themselves receive less attention than social contributions from colleagues and laypeople, your prospects are more likely to respond positively to content shared by large numbers of people.
Research by Sana, published in 2018, shows that social media is the second most important driver of digital sales in the B2B sector, just behind local buying. That way, the branding strategy can really increase your sales. The more people share your content on social channels, the more customers you will attract to your company.
According to LinkedIn, 87% of social customers have a positive opinion about products introduced to them through their own network. By promoting products through employees, you have access to personal networks that you may not otherwise reach exclusively through a branded channel.
In the past year, B2B buyers viewed 13 pieces of content before choosing a provider. Likewise, 61% of customers made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blog.
Increasing the number of brand attorneys leads to more brand equity in the minds of potential customers, making it easier for sales reps to build relationships on social channels and close more deals in shorter sales cycles.
This is a godsend as it needs to shorten sales cycles as much as possible to stay scalable. Matt Bertuzzi of the Bridge Group notes that the total order value for a SaaS conversion correlates with the number of days it takes sales reps to close the deal. According to his company, B2B SaaS sales cycles can last anywhere from five weeks to five months.
Dennis Koutoudis of LinkedIn SuperPowers told SalesHacker that he sees prospecting on social media, especially LinkedIn, as the top SaaS sales opportunities:
“I anticipate that sales teams will see a significant increase in the use of LinkedIn Sales Navigator, so they can both pinpoint their target prospects with extreme precision and delve deeper into social selling. The key here is creating value, building trust, and building solid professional relationships with prospects that will ultimately improve sales. A great emphasis is also placed on the way in which we present ourselves as sales professionals on the LinkedIn platform, as in view of the fierce competition we not only distinguish ourselves in our professional field, but also have to take measures that are significant Increase our visibility on the LinkedIn platform. "
Prospecting platforms are of great importance in this regard. Social selling teams can use them to scale operations thanks to intelligent libraries of content resources that employees can attach to posts on the fly, as well as sophisticated contact intelligence data that is used to qualify leads during the discussion and enrich CRM records can be used.
5. Keep your content budget under control
According to the Content Marketing Institute, 46% of brands were spending less than $ 1,000,000 on digital marketing budgets in 2020. Given the emphasis on automation and other tools that could potentially constrain a SaaS company's budget, a leaner content marketing strategy just makes sense.
When your employees and customers are promoting your brand, cut out any kind of middleman when it comes to advertising. While there may be time and place for paid media or influencers, SaaS brands should focus on an organic advertising strategy that keeps costs down.
Promoting brand advertising costs next to nothing compared to paid media. Plus, as you pop up on social media more and more, you can get earned media mentions as an added bonus.
Instead of paying for advertising and sales, creating your own lawyers is a more financially sound strategy.
Conclusion
With SaaS still competitive, it's important to have voices on deck to promote your content in order to stand out from the crowd.
Not only does advocacy keep content marketing costs down, it also enables SaaS brands to seamlessly signal their authority. Why not pay for the same credibility yourself?
While marketing strategies generally never stay the same for long, brand advertising persists. If you need help increasing your brand awareness or any other content marketing needs, let us know!