Social media has a special role in any marketing strategy, whether it’s targeting businesses (B2B) or aimed at direct customers (B2C). And when it comes to Software as a Service or SaaS products, you have to plan carefully and think smarter in order to get the most out of your efforts.
Why? The delicate part is that in SaaS marketing, you are offering a particular digital service that solves a specific need. Most importantly, you need to reach the people that you have built your service for.
The SaaS market is forecasted to be worth 101.5 billion U.S. dollars, based on Statista estimations. And that sounds like a huge market and serious competition to deal with. So how do you stand out?
Empowering the right social media channels, tools and approaches can boost your SaaS product digital presence, reach the right audiences and increase the awareness of your brand.
Social networks are also a great source of valuable insight on your audience and the way they engage with and perceive your business.
Why Social Media Works for SaaS?
The reason why social media works for SaaS is that your clients are actually already there. For example, millennials (people aged approximately 23-38 years old) are considered the worlds’ most powerful consumers and are highly active on social media and use it to discover new products.
In addition, 74% of people follow brands on social media, and 96% of those who follow brands also interact with them on social media according to research by Manifest. It appears that your target customers like to interact with businesses on social media. This gives you a chance to connect with them through social media posts and provide content they enjoy.
Let’s jump now on some tips on how to elaborate an effective social media strategy for your SaaS products.
1. Be Present Where Your Audience Is
Before you start promoting your SaaS product on social media you need to choose the right platforms. Find out where your audience hangs out. Research and plan carefully in which channels you have the higher potential to catch leads. You want to invest time and resources only in those that promise a higher return on investment.
Choosing the right social media depends on your target audience and the product you are offering. As you know, Facebook is the most popular social media platform both for B2B and B2C businesses. Whereas if your potential buyers are professionals or other businesses, you probably want to focus your efforts on LinkedIn as this is the place where the decision-makers are more likely to be reached.
Let’s quickly breakdown a few social media channels in order to shed light on their strengths and weaknesses:
Being the most popular social media channel, Facebook is a great place to target both B2B and B2C customers. While it’s true that Facebook has 1.82 billion people on average that use the social network daily, it has great tools for audience targeting and creating effective ad campaigns. Moreover, just your presence there will add to your brand awareness as customers searching for your brand will find some verification of your business.
If your SaaS product is designed mainly for other businesses, then you need to hop on LinkedIn. The social network for professionals is a great place to engage with people from different industries, build connections and showcase your product or service. You can also use it to share content from your blog and prove your expertise in the business.
YouTube
YouTube can be really handy for your SaaS business. You can create different sections such as tutorials or training courses or any other valuable videos you can share with your customers. If you’ve launched a new version of your software or you’ve developed new features it’s easier for your customers to watch a video rather than read blog posts about it.
You might think Instagram is not the right place to promote your product, but you might be wrong. It is one of the fastest growing social media channels, and that makes it a great place to present your product in a more engaging way.
For example, check out the project management system Asana and their Instagram account and see how they use different formats such as stories, creatives and videos to engage with their audience.
Source: Instagram Asana
Twitter is a place where you can engage with your audience and increase brand awareness of your SaaS product. You can share news about your company, or post articles from your blog.
Another good practice is to follow other industry leaders or other brands and respond to their tweets or retweet useful information. By being active on Twitter you can increase the number of followers and work towards building a community around your brand.
2. Write an Intriguing Bio in Your Profiles
What’s your story? How did it all start? Was it difficult? People love hearing about real stories and seeing how people achieved success.
Each social network has a bio section where you can add either a long or short description about your business. In fact, this can have a huge impact on your buyer personas. A well-written profile bio can encourage people to follow your page and remember your brand.
Depending on the social media channel, you can include basic information about your company or elaborate and highlight the key benefits of your business. Don’t forget to add a link to your website where customers can learn more about you and your company.
For example, check out the Facebook about us page of the marketing and CRM software HubSpot. It has a pretty comprehensive info about the company, its journey and what it is offering. They’ve also added a milestones section where they share their journey – from establishing the company until today.
On other social media accounts such as Twitter and Instagram, you have limited character space so you need to summarize as much as you can in a catchy sentence or “unique value proposition”.
Here is another example of Hubspot’s page on Instagram:
3. Spark Engagement With Quality Content
After you’ve set up your social media profile it’s time to create a social media strategy and start promoting your SaaS products across your social media channels.
Customers seek out solutions when they have a problem. That’s why your mission is to create educational posts revealing how your product works and how it can solve a particular issue.
You can use different formats such as:
- Photos
- Infographics
- Videos
- Case studies
- Graphics
- Quotes
- Live Streams or Webinars
The above-mentioned formats are great ways to showcase how your SaaS product works.
If you launch a new feature – organize a webinar explaining the new functionalities and share it across your social media channels. If you have a sale on your subscription plan – create social media ad campaigns to promote it. If you have a new blog post with useful tips in your niche – share it with your audience. There are plenty of ways you can spark engagement. Let’s discuss some of them:
Explain How Your SaaS Product Works
It can be difficult for users to understand how your product actually works. One of the main challenges marketers face when promoting SaaS products is that this is not a physical product. Customers can’t see it or touch it. This is why you need to show how your product works. You can organize a Q&A session, create an explainer video, or post a series of infographics in order to educate your customers on your SaaS product’s strengths.
Watch the explainer video about the communication platform, Slack, published to the company’s YouTube channel back in 2015. The video explains how the platform works and how their customers can benefit from it.
Share Your Blog Posts
Blogging is another fantastic way to not only increase your brand awareness regarding your SaaS product but to provide valuable information to your customers. In fact, 80% of users interact with both social media posts and blogs, according to DemandMetric.
If you have a business blog, you need to share your articles across social media. You can get creative by using infographics or videos. There are tools such as Lumen5 that can extract the main key points of an article and turn them into a video. This format can be extremely valuable when explaining the benefits of your SaaS to your clients.
Use High-Quality and Attractive Visuals
Visuals are highly preferred among social media. Take a look at this data provided by HubSpot:
- Facebook posts with images get 2.3X more engagement than posts without.
- Tweets with images receive 150% more retweets than tweets without images.
- 80% of marketers use visuals in their social media posts.
In terms of SaaS software, the visuals are particularly great as they allow marketers to break down the complicity of their products. This way people can easily understand the features and the technology of the promoted software.
You can use infographics to attract people’s attention and summarize information about your product in a clear way.
Let’s use an example. Do you know what’s the difference between a regular WordPress install, a multisite WP install, and a network of independent WP websites? If you are not tech-savvy and you don’t know much about WordPress the previous sentence may not make a lot of sense. However, if you check out this detailed article on WordPress Multisite vs a Single Site vs Multiple Websites that also features a useful infographic, things make more sense, right?
Wrapping up
Social media channels boast powerful tools to interact with customers and promote any brand or business. SaaS companies can take advantage of various approaches and techniques to attract audiences and build awareness. But that requires a proper social media marketing strategy in place.
Start working on your plan on how to conquer social media and don’t forget to include engaging posts, capturing visuals, interactive content and sharing real stories. If you struggle and find it hard to manage all of this in addition to your other tasks, you can always find a reliable marketing agency to partner with.
Team DevriX
This article is crafted by DevriX's seasoned marketing team, boasting over four decades of collective expertise in crafting sophisticated marketing funnels, devising comprehensive content frameworks and pillars, implementing engaging email campaigns, and creating impactful social media content designed for scalability.
Our marketing experts specialize in the complete spectrum of inbound marketing strategies. As an accredited HubSpot Agency Partner and a Semrush Partner, we engage in meticulous research, blending our extensive experience with the unique insights of our highly skilled team.
We set benchmarks in content creation by incorporating cutting-edge marketing trends, leveraging in-depth industry research, and utilizing state-of-the-art AI tools for data segmentation and captivating content hooks. Our proficiency extends across a diverse range of sectors, including working with SMEs, Fortune 1000 companies, global B2B brands, major publishing entities, WooCommerce platforms, business directories, and affiliate networks.