The most stressful time for any SaaS brand is when revenue targets are not being met.
Financial uncertainty means cutting back on risk-taking innovation, losing in-demand talent, and slowing product development. All of these can start a negative spiral in a highly competitive technology space.
The usual response to this uncertainty is to eliminate the feeling as fast as possible by throwing money at whoever, or whatever service promises to take away the bad feelings.
If you’ve already been down this road before and tried several different marketing programs without success, then I have good news!
In uncertain times, there is always one SaaS brand marketing strategy that works.
In this guide I am going to walk you through:
- Why some brands can make any marketing work
- The single most important skill every brand should develop
- Becoming, and staying relevant to your audience
- How to know a marketing message will resonate before dumping money in it
- How to build an actionable plan to implement it
How to make any SaaS marketing tactic work with branding
- Kentucky Fried chicken made a movie called: “Recipe for Seduction”
- Wendy’s trolls other Fast food joints on Twitter
- Tesla sold whiskey (and flamethrowers, and rockets, and… hole digging… machines?)
Why can big corporations do these seemingly random marketing tactics successfully, and yet smaller businesses have to toil to find “marketing that works”?
The reason is people don’t buy marketing tactics.
They buy products from brands they trust.
It doesn’t matter if they discover you reading a newspaper, watching TV, or scrolling on Facebook, what matters is after seeing the ad: do they take action?
“So how do I create a brand that works everywhere?” you ask.
The answer might surprise you:
You don’t create your brand, you discover it.
The fatal mistake of branding is the same a child might make when trying to make friends or date for the first time. They think: “How do I have to present myself so that people will like me?”
This line of thinking has very predictable results: Eventually, people figure out that you are not who you say you are and tune you out.
The same advice that works for that child will also work for your business:
Discover who you are first, be comfortable with that, and then the right people will come.
So how do you discover your brand?
A brand is more than just a logo and a catchphrase. Your brand is represented by everything you say and do; It’s how you make your products, treat your staff, and answer the phone when a customer calls.
This tells us the best way to discover your brand is to book a lunch and talk 1 on 1 with those who interact with your brand:
- Your customers
- Key partners/suppliers/stakeholders
- Employees
Simply talking to three people in each of those categories will teach you more about your brand than a survey of 10 000 people.
And if you pay attention and listen to them, you will start to see patterns in what they say about you; These patterns are your core values, personality, and beliefs. In other words:
Your brand.
Your brand is not what you say about yourself, it’s what they say about you!
As long as what you say matches up with what they say; your brand will be consistent and you can confidently market yourself in any way you wish.
But unless you have a way of communicating that brand to potential customers, discovering your brand is not a very useful exercise.
So here’s what winning brands do next:
Every SaaS brand needs to understand it’s brand before it can outsource it.
The first time I ever tried to create a video for social media, I had a 3-minute script that took me several hours to write. When it came time to record it, I tried for several hours but could not finish it.
Until that moment, I never had to think through and properly communicate my thoughts and beliefs out loud before, and I had to memorise a script just to say what I personally believed!
No wonder it was so hard to do!
Content Marketing starts with you.
If you are not able to effectively communicate who you are, and what your SaaS business is all about on your own, outsourcing your SaaS marketing is going to have to include that discovery work, which is a long expensive road to go down.
You can outsource a lot of things in your marketing: Brand designers, strategists, writers, videographers, photographers, ad specialists…
but what you can’t outsource is you!
Even if you are outsourcing your marketing, learning to create written, audio or video content is the single most important skill in business today, as it gives more ammunition for your marketing team to create winning campaigns.
Pick the medium that you find easiest or most comfortable to do, and start practising:
- Making 60-second social media videos with your cell phone
- Writing short blogs or social posts daily.
- Have a podcast and record conversations with those in your industry.
- Speak at conferences and record them.
- Join Toastmasters or Tedx and develop speaking skills.
When I started making content, it took hours to get anything done. Now in 60 seconds I can make a video and post it on social media and get hundreds, sometimes thousands of views.
And when I find a winning message, I can hand that message off to the SaaS marketing team to turn that video into a blog post, have a conversation about it in a podcast, and distribute it to millions.
Once you have built content generation skills that are true to your brand, your marketing team can spend more time distributing your content like it’s 2022, and not 1922
Constant communication is more important than clever content.
Think about someone important in your life that means a lot to you.
What are some things that make them so special?
Are they the smartest or most talented person in the world? Is it their money, success, or influence on the world that makes them relevant?
Or are they coming to mind because they show up when you need them, take time to listen and understand you?
Brands become relevant to their audience because they are in constant communication with them. They don’t just do a super bowl ad once a year and then disappear.
They have figured out how to show up every day in the conversation, whether it be on social media, in advertisements, or even simply volunteering and taking part in the communities that they are in.
They know that when you are consistently participating and LISTENING to your audience, then when it comes time to ask for the sale, the trust will be there to make it happen.
No one is going to remember your first 100 pieces of content.
What scares companies about creating content themselves is the fear that they won’t be any good at it, and no one will care.
And while it’s true that no one might remember your first 100 social posts, what they will remember is if you’ve been in the conversation listening to them every day and your 1000th post finally hit the nail on the head.
So while your marketing team is producing the quality content and focused on converting sales, every company should be building their core communication skills by:
- Posting on social
- Monthly email/text newsletters
- Learning public speaking skills
- Participating in your community, volunteering as a company or individually
- Recording conversations you’re already having, team meetings, and clipping the best parts
- Customer appreciation days, events
- Creating customer FB groups, having public roadmaps and inviting feedback.
If you’ve learned to say meaningful things, that represent your brand, and you built the skills to say it everywhere you go… your marketing team can take care of the rest.
“But what’s the point in making all this content anyway?” you might ask.
Well, if every marketing effort you’ve been trying has been getting lukewarm reactions, then creating all this content has one very specific purpose….
How to know what works before you start an expensive SaaS marketing campaign
Did you know that:
- Bubble wrap was initially designed for your wall as wallpaper?
- High heels before becoming ladies' fashion were designed for male warriors?
- Midol was marketed as headache, toothache medication, then as a hiccup cure before it was targeted at women’s menstrual cramps?
What if these companies assumed that they knew who their customers were, and what problem their product was most suited to solve?
They would have missed becoming the massive successes they now are.
Just like your SaaS product evolves over time with user feedback, your marketing evolves the same way with engagement metrics like likes, comments and shares.
Unless you are constantly testing, listening and adapting, it’s easy to assume that something will work, and have it blow up in your face.
Action plan for businesses:
- Discover what your brand actually is. Write it down so it’s easily understood.
- Learn how to create written, audio or video content internally.
- Take the best performing content, and amplify it via ads to get confirmation of what works and what doesn’t.
- Put out the quantity of content needed to be relevant to your audience and LISTEN ( get feedback ) so your marketing team can create the quality content that sells.
Because the next time you launch a campaign, you’ll have a meaningful brand, with a message that resonates with an audience that cares.
It’s not an easy road to travel, and won’t come quickly, but if you have an important technology and want to make an impact on the world, then it’s a journey worth taking.
Your thoughts, and disagreements are appreciated!
