We Uncover Result-Driven SaaS Lead Generation Strategies
Table of Contents
Helpful Summary
- Overview: We cover six SaaS lead generation strategies to help your business thrive in competitive niches.
- Why Listen to Us: As a SaaS business ourselves, we understand the lead generation strategies that work and those that don’t. We’ve also supported renowned brands like BeMarketable, Linear, and Stax Payments with lead generation using our intuitive, multi-step lead capture forms.
- Why It Matters: Effective lead generation ensures a healthy sales pipeline and business growth, aids in financial forecasting, and impresses investors with a clear path to profitability.
- Action Points: Offer a freemium plan, use ToFu lead magnets, and optimize for seamless lead capture with Growform.
- Further Research: Check out the Growform blog for lead generation tool recommendations, tips, and how-tos.
Looking to Understand SaaS Lead Generation?
Surviving as a SaaS business is hard.
While traditional businesses can stay afloat with 10% to 25% annual growth, a SaaS business growing at 20% has a 92% chance of failing. Even at a 60% growth rate, success is far from guaranteed. To add to the challenge, only 26% of SaaS businesses manage to meet the rule of 40.
So, what can you do to ensure the success of your SaaS business?
It’s simple—ramp up your growth rate by mastering the art of SaaS lead generation. And in this Growform article, we introduce you to SaaS lead generation and six effective strategies you can implement today to boost your customer acquisition efforts.
But first…
Why Listen to Us?
As a SaaS business ourselves, we have firsthand experience developing a strong SaaS lead generation strategy. And beyond that, Growform is also a lead generation tool. We’ve helped top brands like BeMarketable, Linear, and Stax Payments support their lead generation with our intuitive, multi-step lead capture forms.
The bottom line? We know a thing or two about what it takes to successfully generate leads in the SaaS industry.
What is SaaS Lead Generation?
Let’s begin with who SaaS leads are.
SaaS leads are people who’ve shown some interest in your software. They could be anywhere on the spectrum—from those who just downloaded your ebook to those actively seeking a demo from your sales team.
SaaS lead generation identifies and attracts potential customers to your software. It involves creating a system that captures potential leads’ interest, nurtures them, and ultimately converts them into paying customers.
Why You Should Care About SaaS Lead Generation
No Leads, No Sales, No Business
You could have the most amazing product with perfect product-market fit (PMF). But if nobody knows about it or understands its value, your sales pipeline will be drier than a desert. Lead generation helps attract customers, keeps your sales pipeline healthy, and drives business growth.
Predictable Sales Pipeline
A steady stream of qualified leads means you can forecast sales more accurately. This helps with financial planning, staffing needs, and overall business stability. You can move forward with confidence, knowing you have a pipeline full of potential customers waiting to be converted.
Helps With Funding Rounds
Investors, regardless of their risk tolerance, need to see a clear path to profitability before putting their money behind a business. Effective lead generation strategies demonstrate to investors that your business has a reliable way to attract customers, increasing your chances of securing funding for growth.
6 Effective SaaS Lead Generation Tactics
1. Offer a Free Plan
Offering a free plan is probably the best way to generate leads for a SaaS business. It sounds counterproductive at first. After all, why would you just give away a product you’ve worked so hard to develop? But the truth is that this strategy almost always pays off big time.
Take Dropbox, for example.
This is the main strategy that helped the company amass over 700 million users and generate over $1.9 billion in revenue in 2020.
Here’s why it works so well:
- It lowers the barrier to entry for potential customers. This is especially true if you don’t ask for payment details upfront.
- It gives customers a taste of what you’re offering. As customers use your free features, they bump up against the limitations of the free plan and realize they need more.
- It builds trust and credibility. By offering a free plan, you’re showing customers that you believe in your product enough to let them try it out for themselves.
We call these people who have actively gotten value from your product for free product-qualified leads (PQL). They are among the easiest SaaS leads to convert into paying customers (studies show they convert to paying customers 25% of the time).
2. Consider ToFu Lead Magnets
Most of your potential leads are at the top of the marketing funnel.
They just realized they have a problem that your software can (possibly) solve, but they’re not quite ready to purchase anything. Instead, they search for informational content to learn more about their problem. Create this content and leads will naturally come to you (hence the term “lead magnets”).
Lead magnets can take all kinds of forms, including:
- Ebooks
- White papers
- Webinars
- Online courses
- Cheat sheets or checklists
The key is to make them valuable, relevant to your target audience, and actionable (they should provide some sort of solution or insight). Then, simply lock this content behind a form and require an email address for access. This lets you capture leads and continue to nurture them through the marketing funnel.
Here’s an example from HubSpot.
They created tons of free e-books that give in-depth overviews of complicated marketing topics. They then lock the downloads behind simple email input forms to capture leads that are interested in the subject matter.
Now, where should you place your lead magnet? While pop-ups, homepage, or blog posts are options, the best place is on a lead-generation landing page. These pages focus solely on capturing lead information, minimizing distractions, and increasing the likelihood of action.
Once your offer and landing page are ready, you can then promote them to attract leads to them. You can use SEO, social media, or even paid ads for this.
One more thing—choosing the right lead capture form for your landing page is also important. When your form is too long and ugly, like the one below, it can be off-putting to visitors, regardless of how valuable your offer is.
This brings us to our next point…
3. Use Growform for Lead Capture
Here at Growform, we let you create a complex, multi-step lead capture form for your landing pages without hiring a developer.
Here’s an example of a SaaS lead capture form built with Growform.
Our lead capture forms are backed by years of UX research and have a solid foundation in proven psychological principles. As a result, our customers often double (or even triple) the quantity and quality of their leads.
And the best part? Our no-code builder gives you drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy for anyone to create a professional, effective lead capture form. You can also get started with 100+ templates to save time and see what works best for your business.
We also integrate seamlessly with popular landing page builders like Unbounce and Instapage. So, once your form is ready, you can embed it directly into your landing page.
4. Invest in Social Media Marketing
64% of people look for businesses on social media. So, there’s a good chance that at least some of your customers are ready to engage with your brand on social media—and you need to be ready for them.
There are a few things to keep in mind when crafting your social media marketing strategy.
The first (and most important) is figuring out which social media platforms your target audience is most active on. For example, if you’re a B2B SaaS, LinkedIn is a no-brainer. But if you’re targeting consumers with a B2C product, you need to think about:
- TikTok
Once you have identified the right platforms, it’s important to create engaging and relevant content for your audience. For example, check out Salesforce’s socials. They love informational content. While that works, it’s also important to mix things up.
Source: Salesforce
You can post about limited discounts, landing pages, customer testimonials, and even user-generated content (UGC). This way, you’ll be attracting leads at every stage of your marketing funnel.
Your interactions shouldn’t be a one-way thing either. Take the time to respond to comments and messages and engage in discussions with your audience. See how Salesforce takes time to respond to? That’s how you build an engaged community around your business.
On a final note, you may also consider running paid social media ads to maximize your reach. Paid ads also allow you to target your preferred audience demographics and interests, ensuring that your message reaches the right people.
5. Speak at or Sponsor Industry Events
Imagine you have a CRM SaaS product and you’re invited to speak at an event on “The Future of Sales and Marketing Alignment.” The audience comprises those who may be interested in your product soon or are already considering it.
This means you have a great chance to introduce your product to a massive audience of qualified leads.
If you offer a B2B SaaS product, attending events is a no-brainer. According to a MarketingCharts survey, events are even more effective than content marketing and email marketing for attracting B2B leads.
Platforms like LinkedIn Events, Meetup, and Eventbrite can help you discover relevant events, whether they’re physical or virtual. You can then contact the event organizers via these platforms to pitch your expertise and inquire about speaking opportunities.
Source: Rockway
Even if you don’t get a chance to speak, you can ask to be a sponsor at the event. As a sponsor, most physical event organizers will allow you to set up an exhibitor booth like the one above.
6. Use Customer Testimonials to Your Advantage
In most cases, the leads you generate through testimonials are very close to buying. They’ve passed the awareness stage, and small factors can make the difference between them buying or not.
If you have satisfied clients, contact them and ask for written or video reviews of their experience with your product. Then, feature these reviews across your marketing collateral—social channels, websites, and so on.
Here’s an example from our homepage.
Here are some tips for getting this right:
- Give your customers targeted prompts to respond to. This lets you focus on important details like customer service experience or product features.
- Offer incentives for leaving reviews. This will encourage more customers to leave feedback (and generally produce more positive reviews).
- Ask permission before you create graphics. This is especially important for video reviews or any other material that features a customer’s likeness.
Ready to Generate More SaaS Leads?
Paying attention to lead generation is one way to ensure your SaaS business beats the terrible survival odds. This article provides a solid foundation to kickstart your lead generation efforts. Implement some of the strategies we covered above, and adjust based on the results you generate.
And let’s not overlook the importance of your lead capture forms. If you’re ready to create forms that are optimized for maximum lead conversion, Growfrom is here to help you every step of the way with our intuitive, no-code form builder.
Get started with a free trial and see what Growform can do.