17 SaaS Lead Generation Strategies For Driving Business Growth
Regardless of your product’s stage, getting your SaaS lead generation strategies right is crucial to successful product growth.
As the competition for the SaaS market surges, an effective lead generation strategy will ensure you continue acquiring new customers at a low cost.
In this article, we examine what B2B SaaS lead generation involves, how you can create an effective strategy, and sample strategies to get you started.
What is SaaS lead generation?
SaaS lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to your product. It involves converting strangers who show an interest in your product into potential customers (known as leads), with the goal of converting them into paying customers.
What are the different types of leads?
Before implementing any lead generation strategy, it’s important to understand what qualifies as a lead and what doesn’t. You should also be able to distinguish the different types of leads to avoid confusion and inaccuracies.
Here’s a breakdown of the key players:
- Sales-qualified leads (SQL): SQLs are the hottest types of leads in the traditional market. Due to their interaction with a sales representative, these leads typically understand their needs and your product’s value. This makes them more likely to convert.
- Marketing-qualified leads (MQL): MQLs, on the other hand, are warm leads. They may have shown some interest in your product by signing up for a free trial or downloading your content, but they need further nurturing.
- Product qualified lead (PQL): PQLs are unique to the SaaS market and just as hot as SQLs. These are users who have engaged with your product through a free trial or freemium plan and have indicated a strong appreciation for your product’s capabilities.
4 Steps to create a lead generation strategy for your SaaS business
Leads can be generated through a variety of methods, from advertising to email marketing, social media marketing, and more. To successfully generate leads, though, you need a well-defined strategy.
1. Set SMART goals
Your first step is to decide on your business goals. Setting SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals fills your lead-generation efforts with purpose and clarity.
For example, rather than vaguely hoping to increase your leads, you can aim to “increase the number of MQLs by 25% over the next quarter.” You can tie these goals to relevant KPIs, such as “running paid ads on LinkedIn and getting 10,000 impressions over the quarter.”
These could provide you with even more measurable targets, such as conversion rates, customer acquisition cost (CAC), return on investment (ROI), and customer lifetime value (CLV).
2. Define the user and buyer personas of your SaaS company
Once you’ve defined your goals, you need to determine your audience. To do this, you must consider the demographics, pain points, needs, goals, and buying behaviors of your target customer.
The more thoroughly you understand your perfect customer, the easier it’ll be to tailor your messaging and marketing efforts to address their specific needs and preferences.
Note that personas are not static and should be regularly updated. This is especially important in B2B SaaS lead generation, where users’ needs and motivations change based on emerging technologies; keeping them accurate increases your chances of converting leads.
3. Build a customer journey map to understand the lead generation process
Before diving into specific lead-generation strategies, it’s crucial to understand your ideal customer’s journey. Customer journey mapping helps you do just that – create a visual map of the customer’s progress from initial awareness to conversion.
Customer journey mapping visualizes the key touchpoints a user follows – the moments where they interact with your brand. The touchpoints vary, from reading a blog post to attending webinars, downloading your app, etc.
Once you know how customers progress, you can create targeted lead-generation strategies for different customer journey stages. This should also help you create an effective sales funnel.
4. Decide on the acquisition channels
Armed with all the info, you must now choose the channels that align with your ideal customers’ behavior and preferences.
Here, the question you need to answer is simple: Based on my ideal user’s behavior, where and how am I more likely to reach them?
For example, SaaS businesses may find LinkedIn to be a better source of leads than social media platforms like TikTok or Instagram. You may also need different channels for different journey stages.
17 Effective B2B SaaS lead generation strategies
Now that we’ve explored the different types of leads and how to create a winning lead-generation strategy, let’s examine how you can generate leads for your SaaS business using industry examples.
Host industry webinars to generate leads
Webinars are a great way to interact with potential customers and generate leads for your SaaS business. These events enable you to educate your audience and build relationships with them.
By offering valuable insights to attendees, you position yourself as an industry leader. You’re also able to showcase your product’s features, foster engagement through Q&A sessions, and more.
You must be intentional, however, to ensure your webinars drive your B2B SaaS lead generation efforts. First, you’ll need to promote your webinars to the right audience.
You must also optimize your landing page to capture leads (contact details) during registration. Finally, send a thank you email after the event and invite attendees to take the next step (free trial, demo, etc.).
Use the “engineering as marketing” approach to generate leads
Another way to ensure you are generating leads is by creating free useful tools that provide value to your target audience. This is known as the “engineering as marketing” approach.
For example, Moz has a suite of pro-level tools designed to improve SEO rankings, boost domain authority, and track your rankings. In addition to these tools, they also offer a suite of complementary free tools for link building, keyword research, and more.
The idea is simple: a person who begins using any of their free tools will likely need even more features provided only by the paid tools. Thus, the free tools become lead magnets for the paid ones.
Use content marketing and SEO to reach relevant audiences
There are few better ways to generate organic leads than content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO).
Content marketing involves creating informative content, such as blog posts, ebooks, whitepapers, and other resources, that address your target market’s pain points and showcase your expertise.
By providing your potential customers with helpful content, you build your credibility and trust with them. Paired with a good SEO strategy, it improves your brand’s visibility and boosts your conversion chances.
Optimize your landing pages to improve conversions
Landing pages are critical to most lead-generation processes. It’s important, therefore, that you have a high-converting landing page to capture traffic and generate leads.
Landing page optimization is a whole subject of its own, but there are simple ways to approach it, including:
- Use compelling content with a clear value proposition.
- Avoid ambiguous or unclear language in your write-up. For example, a referral landing page should clearly state how the program works and what the rewards are.
- Include a clear call-to-action (CTA) on your landing page so there’s no uncertainty about the action visitors need to take.
- Ensure your landing pages capture contact details for future follow-up and lead nurturing.
Connect with your target audience on relevant social media channels
The one unmissable secret to effective lead capturing? Be where your potential customers are. The success of your social media marketing efforts, therefore, will only be as good as your ability to find the right channels.
For example, LinkedIn is a great platform for reaching business decision-makers and showcasing company culture; Twitter is effective for thought leadership and product updates; and TikTok is excellent for reaching the younger generation.
Wherever your customers may be, find them, engage with them, and build relationships.
Reach your potential customers with email marketing
Email marketing remains an effective tool for nurturing and converting B2B SaaS leads. They can be utilized in a variety of ways, depending on the customer and your business.
For instance, MQLs may receive information that addresses their pain points, while PQLs who have engaged with your product receive emails highlighting advanced features or case studies similar to their use case.
You can also craft nurturing email sequences to educate leads about your product and guide them through the sales funnel.
Implement a referral program to streamline your SaaS lead-generation efforts
A referral program is a great way to incentivize your existing customers to bring in new business. You can incentivize customers by offering them discounts, redeemable points, or extra features.
Referrals are a great source of organic, high-quality leads as they come from friends, colleagues, and family members. The word-of-mouth marketing by these satisfied customers can supercharge your lead-generation efforts and foster a sense of community.
Leverage Product Hunt to find high-quality leads
One of the best ways to generate warm leads is to find and interact with niche communities. That’s exactly what Product Hunt is, a niche community of techies who come there looking for the latest tech product.
You can leverage this community to create a buzz around your product. The community engages with your product, leaving votes, reviews, feedback, and praise, all of which are essential to your growth.
You also have a chance to be recognized as the top product of the day and get even more reach.
Build trust with potential customers on 3rd party platforms
Speaking of online communities, platforms like G2 and Capterra have built a reputation for credible product reviews. You can, thus, drive your SaaS lead generation efforts by listing your product on these platforms.
Once that’s done, encourage (or incentivize) loyal customers to leave public reviews on these platforms and boost your social proof.
Create efficient lead magnets
A lead magnet is an incentive offered in exchange for someone’s contact information. There are various incentives you could offer, including:
- Ebooks
- Templates
- Infographics
- Certifications, etc.
For example, Userpilot’s Product Adoption School highlights valuable lessons on successful user onboarding and product adoption. You’ll need to provide your email address to enroll, though. 😉
Use YouTube video marketing to reach relevant audiences
YouTube is a powerful tool for reaching relevant audiences and generating leads. It is one of the least used SaaS lead generation strategies on this list.
To harness its potential, you’ll need to craft a diverse video library targeting different stages of the buyer journey. This can be explainer videos for new audiences, product demos for MQLs, and more.
This is your chance to position your brand as a thought leader through valuable content creation and capture a new market.
Share case studies and testimonials from existing customers to build trust
Much like third-party reviews, case studies and customer testimonials serve as social proof for your product.
The power of social proof is unrivaled. As social beings, we are moved to take action if others are doing so. By showcasing the success others have had with your product, you encourage others to try out the product.
In addition to writing case study articles, you can boost your brand’s social proof by encouraging loyal customers to share their successes on your social media account.
Complement your marketing efforts with cold calling
All of the approaches we’ve discussed so far have targeted those with some interest in your product or service. But what about those who may have an interest but aren’t actively searching online?
This is where cold calling excels. It enables you to directly target decision-makers who aren’t actively seeking you out. It’s simple – reach out to them, discuss, gauge their interest, and qualify the lead.
The goal here is to build rapport with the lead, understand their needs, and potentially schedule a follow-up demo session to provide them with in-depth information.
Utilize chatbots to nurture website visitors
Live chat is a great way to engage with potential customers when they are most interested in your product. Chatbots make your job easier, offering 24/7 interaction with visitors.
Chatbots provide immediate and personalized responses to visitors’ inquiries. They can also pre-qualify your leads and direct them to the appropriate resource or personnel for their needs.
Showcase your product value with live demos
Offering a demo is a no-brainer for SaaS businesses. On the one hand, it provides a chance to collect emails from warm leads.
On the other hand, though, product demos are an opportunity to demonstrate your product’s features and benefits. Live demos also help you engage with prospects, showing them how your product solves their problems.
Ultimately, good demos help you close deals, turning warm prospects into paying customers.
Offer free trials to generate product-qualified leads
Most SaaS products today offer free trials or freemium packages. Both of these offer potential customers a hands-on experience with your software, without any initial monetary commitment.
This direct product interaction is critical to the product-led growth strategy for a SaaS company, as it turns your product into its own marketing tool.
As users engage with the product, they assess its value and are encouraged to convert to paid plans.
Organize offline events in your target market
Finally, you can expand your reach by participating in or hosting industry events. These events are a great opportunity to showcase your product, meet customers, and build relationships.
For example, Userpilot hosts a yearly Product Drive Conference where SaaS leaders discuss all things product marketing and growth for free.
Although the event has typically been organized virtually, in 2024, it’ll be held both online and offline, enabling even more interaction between product growth enthusiasts.
Conclusion
To be truly successful, you need a mix of varied SaaS lead generation strategies. Go through the strategies on this list again, then experiment with them (mix and match) to find your ideal combination.
Whatever your approach to lead generation, though, an excellent product experience is the best lead magnet. Book a demo to learn how Userpilot helps you create the ideal experience.
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