With 3.78 billion users worldwide in 2021, social media is ubiquitous and part of our everyday lives. Over the past few years, it’s changed the marketing game across all industries. So, it’s no wonder that the way brands communicate with their customers has changed too.
Customers used to contact newspapers to lay complaints; now, they leave comments on social media threads and create hashtags. And what used to feature on billboards or TV advertisements now pops up on Instagram Stories and Facebook ads.
Social media isn’t going anywhere. As a result, incorporating the relevant platforms into your Software-as-a-Service marketing strategy isn’t just an option but a necessity.
But doing social media marketing can be tricky. With new platforms popping up all the time, it’s becoming harder for businesses to stay up to date. Not quite sure where to start? Let’s explore the ins and outs of creating a social media strategy for your SaaS company.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn offer an alternative and affordable way to advertise your products and services. It helps you blend your product with your customer’s day-to-day activities, making your brand a constant presence in their lives.
Adding social media to your SaaS marketing strategy will give you 4 killer benefits.
• It reinforces and bolsters your other marketing efforts.
• It helps you to build brand awareness, expanding your reach.
• Social media can help you to create a community of enthusiastic, engaged fans.
• These platforms can drive traffic to your website and lead to conversions.
Social media marketing relies on social media platforms and websites to promote a product or service. But how can you use social media to reach potential customers? Before we dive into adding social media to your SaaS marketing strategy, let’s look at the different options for campaigns.
These campaigns are free to run. Brands share content with their followers on social platforms, and, hopefully, the fans interact with what’s been shared. The hope is that they share the content with their friends and followers.
These campaigns can help you to build brand awareness and engage with existing and potential customers. But organic campaigns won’t have as big of an impact as paid ones.
With paid social media campaigns, you pay the social platforms to boost the visibility of your content. Like organic campaigns, paid campaigns can help you to build brand awareness and engage with your audience.
They can also help you to generate leads and drive traffic to your website. But they do so by targeting specific people, using the platform’s algorithms. So, for example, by setting up a paid campaign, you’ll be able to target some of your SaaS buyer personas that live in specific geographic areas.
Top tip: Combining organic and paid social media content marketing is a great way to gain traction on social platforms. Paid campaigns help provide quick access to potential customers. Organic campaigns are more likely to help forge lasting relationships with them.
Like most aspects of business, success hinges on proper planning. If you want to use social media in your SaaS content marketing strategy, it’s essential to create a clear social media strategy that’s aligned with your SaaS company goals.
Your social media strategy doesn’t just become relevant once your product is out there — it’s crucial before it even goes to market.
Here are our 7 top tips for using social media before you launch your Software-as-a-Service product:
Start by using social media for market research. You can use social media tools to:
• Find Your Target Audience. Try joining groups, meetups, or online discussions on platforms that relate to your product or niche. By paying attention to the problems users discuss and the questions they ask, you’ll be able to see whether potential customers exist in these circles.
• Better Understand Your Market. Gone are the days where businesses had to invest in expensive surveys or polls to learn about their audiences. With social media, you have the option of tapping into conversations to really get to know your market. It’s also easy to run free polls. What you learn might be very useful as the nature of social media encourages unsolicited opinions. Users are more candid with their thoughts and responses, which could translate into learning more about how the current market is serving its customers.
• Learn About Your Competition. Understanding your competition is imperative to SaaS marketing and product success. Social media helps you learn about your competitors as you can discover how your target audience speaks about their brands. You’ll be able to compare your product to theirs, highlight what makes it unique, and learn where the gaps are.
There are loads of social media platforms available today, and more are on their way. Some work better for marketing SaaS products than others. When integrating social media into your SaaS marketing strategy, choosing the proper channels for your business is vital.
As you want to use social media to reach your audience, you’ll need to choose popular platforms among your potential customers. Using an automated social listening tool like Sprinklr or Socialbakers can speed up this process. These tools can provide an overview of your market and pinpoint precisely where key conversations are happening.
Once you know which social platforms these conversations are happening on, you’ll see where you need to be. You’ll also gain insight into where, when, and how others mention your brand and products.
Discover the complete list of our practical tactics to leverage your social media strategy for customer acquisition, and help position your Saas business for success on PayPro Global’s blog.