Tune Your SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy for Success
Key Takeaways:
- Focus on generating high-quality leads and nurturing them into customers for your SaaS product
- Be precise in aiming your strategy by looking at metrics like contract value, cost of acquisition, and total return
- Forecast your lead volume and the associated revenue, so you know how much sales support help you’ll need once the leads start rolling in
- Know your audience and focus on being the obvious solution they need – carefully craft content to turn a target persona into a lead
- Hone your value proposition and make sure you’re talking real numbers and results, not just general benefits
Having a fantastic software-as-a-service product is awesome (congrats!) but it isn’t the end-all, it doesn’t automatically ensure your success. You need a plan to bring it to market by creating awareness among your ideal customer profile (ICP), turning prospects into marketing qualified leads (MQLs), and nurturing those leads into sales qualified leads (SQLs) who convert to paying customers.
Your SaaS go-to-market strategy is your blueprint for a successful product launch and projectable, sustainable growth. It takes a refined, thoughtful strategic framework to present your product in an appealing way to the right audience at the right time. The SaaS market is constantly evolving and increasingly crowded, which means it’s essential you are mindful of every aspect of how you present and sell your product.
From its inception, SaaS as an industry has grown from $31.5 billion to almost $172 billion in 2022. Businesses that don’t launch their product with a solid strategy for lead generation and nurturing are at a disadvantage in such a competitive market.
Don’t let your business get caught missing the mark. Instead, be careful to separate your offering from the rest by putting real thought into your go-to-market strategic framework. Below are our top three tips for putting together an amazing SaaS go-to-market strategic plan.
What Is a SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy?
Your SaaS go-to-market strategy is your plan of action for successfully bringing your service to market. It includes your target audience, your messaging, your marketing channels, and how your service delivers value to your prospective customers. It’s how you’re going to generate leads and nurture them into customers. Finally, it’s how you’re going to rationalize and manage your marketing investment related to customer acquisition, ensure a return, and positive forecast your revenue success.
3 Tips for Maximizing Your SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy
Here’s how you can build a strong SaaS go-to-market strategy framework:
#1: Measure the Right Metrics
Your performance metrics are an essential indicator of how effective your GTM strategy is, and the only way to be certain you are on the right path. Without understanding your performance on multiple levels, you’ll be unprepared to handle the leads you acquire, and you’ll risk losing them due to poor nurturing methods. Some important numbers to measure include:
- Total Monthly Media Spend
- Prospective Cost Per Lead
- Prospective Lead to Close
- Average Total Contract Value
- Potential Monthly Return
- Potential First-Year Return
This data can help you understand how to prepare your sales team for the influx of net new leads. The average person can probably support about 30 leads without automation. Let’s say you’re investing $3 million per year and turning that into 3,200 leads per year, which works out to roughly 62 per week. At that rate, you’re going to need at least two people on your team to handle lead nurturing. If you’re investing even more, you need to grow your team, add automation tools, or possibly both.
#2: Know Your Audience
It’s critical to know who you’re targeting by having a clearly defined client profile. What size company are you targeting with your product? How much spending do you need from each client, ideally, to hit your revenue forecast? What’s your client’s biggest pain point and what does your product do to deliver them value? The better you know your audience, the more likely your messaging will speak to them directly.
#3: Make Your Value Proposition Abundantly Clear
Don’t just tell your audience about the top-line benefits. Show them with numbers and results how they’ll get value out of investing in your platform. Tell them how your product actually performs in the wild by showing how it reduces costs or increases revenue for the businesses that use it. Case studies are a valuable tool for showing a clear value proposition. Whenever possible, provide client testimonials as proof of impact, as social proof is often one of the strongest ways to fuel lead progression.
Final Thoughts About Your SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy
Your SaaS go-to-market strategy framework isn’t quite the same as a normal marketing framework, so you can’t approach it in the same way. Your value proposition includes service, since your software only has true value for the customer when it’s updated and maintained regularly, so your messaging needs to reflect that.
Plus, while you’re marketing to individuals – you’re also marketing to a buying committee inside each company, so your sales team has to know how to identify the right stakeholders to approach (like decision-makers who actually have the power to buy your SaaS product). Your strategy also has to take into account the company size you’re targeting since this affects the number of people you’ll need to convince, the likelihood they’ll need support from an executive sponsor, and ultimately, your revenue forecast.
Boost Results and Cut Costs With Blueprint
Consider using an omnichannel media tool like Blueprint from Model B to support your go-to-market strategy. Blueprint works by connecting four critical dimensions of the advertising ecosystem to make it easier to execute your paid media strategy. Those points include:
- Audience segment targeting and intelligence
- AI-driven media planning and performance projections
- AI-driven optimization recommendations
- Realtime multichannel performance analytics
When you use Blueprint to power your go-to-market strategy, you’re receiving AI-fueled intelligence that tells you not only which ad platforms to invest in but also what audiences to target with each message. By leveraging all available data Blueprint is constantly testing all key factors in maximizing performance to ensure you realize the full potential of your media investments at all times.
Businesses that use Blueprint report up to a 40% increase in e-commerce revenue, a 43% decrease in cost per MQL, and a 95% reduction in cost per signup. Get the most out of your SaaS go-to-market strategy by using Blueprint to simplify growth and transform your results. Go beyond cross-channel intelligence by contacting Model B today!
