Make Your Boring Subject Matter Easy To Consume
For many of us, reading about software or technology is worse than stepping on a Lego during our midnight trips to the bathroom. Find other ways to present your content so that it’s easier for your visitors to comprehend and engage with. Infographics and videos are great ways to help your prospects visualize using the software and understand what it does. According to Forbes, 90% of customers report that product videos help them make purchasing decisions.
Example: would you rather download my written instructions and learn how to install WordPress yourself for FREE in minutes OR click here to watch a brief video and learn how to install WordPress yourself for FREE?
You’ve got to Optimize to Prosperize
We all know how important SEO is for getting your content out to your prospects. Today, people interact with search engines more conversationally. “Hey, Google, how do I get a stain out of rayon?” When considering keywords and phrases for your content, think about what your prospects might type in (or say) to search engines when looking for a solution. Use words that your prospects would use more often than the terms the folks in IT use.
For example:
Debug –> fix or repair
GUI –> user interface
IoT –> devices that communicate through the internet
Get Them to Engage, Then Automate
Two effective ways to do this are:
- Offer product videos/demos that people can view or try in exchange for their contact information. This type of gated content is useful for collecting information about prospects that are already interested in your product. Equipping your sales and marketing teams with this information enables them to service and nurture the prospect more efficiently through the buying process.
- Use chatbots. No one likes to pick up the phone anymore—especially to call a salesperson. It’s all about quick questions and answers without having to listen to someone’s spiel about how great a product is. Have a chatbot installed on your site and either task sales reps to respond to the chats personally, or use a service like LiveChat for around-the-clock customer engagement.
Know Your Buyers and Target Them Differently
Depending on the type of product or service you offer, you may have several different kinds of customers to target. Use your buyer personas to understand where each particular type of prospect might look for answers, guidance, and products. Creating content—blogs, whitepapers, videos—and being active on social media are no-brainers. So, I did a little research on some more unconventional, creative ways other companies have gotten their brand some attention.
Ever hear of Coke’s Happiness Machine? How fun is that? Or how about Mattel’s Pictionary Mall Surprise? Okay, so these examples are probably pretty costly, but you can’t deny the coolness factor.
For those of us who don’t have the luxury of a huge marketing budget, we just have to get more creative, and maybe a little lucky.
The Burger King Fling
Can’t say if this example is one or the other, or both.
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/guerilla-marketing-examples writer: Amanda Zantal-Wiener
People were going there from BuzzFeed, The Chive, and a multitude of other sites. These are people who otherwise wouldn’t have been looking at Burger King on social media. Whether this insta-breakup was real or staged, it got a lot of people talking, tagging, and I’m guessing hungry. I love me a Croissanwich.
VeriSign’s clever play on shopping carts
Marketing for B2B businesses can be a little trickier. This example, in my opinion, gets an A+ because of its incorporation of humor, playfulness, and relatability to its target market, eCommerce stores that lose sales due to abandoned shopping carts. The website NoMoreAbandonedCarts.com (unfortunately now defunct) was created to funnel people to their security certificate solutions designed to reduce e-commerce cart abandonment.
Be social in the right places
Social media can be tricky for SaaS companies. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are typically not effective mediums to reach your target market. Focus your efforts on platforms where your prospects might be searching for a solution to their problem. We suggest trying the following channels:
SpiceworksIf you work for a SaaS company, you’ve likely been to spiceworks.com. They host several categories of tech-related blog/forum content. The site has an enviable Alexa rating—1065 US at the time of this post—and gets a lot of engagement, making it a great place to engage with prospects.
QuoraChoose what topics you want to want to be alerted to when someone poses a question in that category. You’ll get an email when someone does and that’s your cue to showcase your expertise.
LinkedInJoin groups that align with your products and buyer personas.
TwitterFollow hashtags that match your main keywords.
YouTubeAhem, product videos.
BONUS TIP: Check out co-marketing
Many SaaS companies today are teaming up with other SaaS companies to prospect and nurture leads collaboratively. If you find the right match, it’s a win-win. Each company expands their reach by sharing contacts and followers, splits the expenses, and has extra sales and marketing team members to wow the pants off all the new prospects.
