Your Saas business can grow 2x more even with the COVID-19 crisis.
We are confident that this can happen and this is exactly what we want to share with you.
Your Saas business is affected because of COVID-19 actions and for your brand to pick up the pace, what is necessary is guiding your actions to the right route.
For this reason, we have conducted a thorough research on behalf of you and have the data in hand that can push your business on its feet much faster than you can expect.
1 . A brief explanation of how COVID-19 is impacting the Business world
2 . Opportunities COVID-19 provides to your current business
3. Top tips for the Saas industry to apply to grow during this crisis
4. Expert opinion on how to grow your Saas business during such a crisis
Let’s get started.
Businesses had gone digital but not everyone was still in the online phase.
Today you will still find brands who are still using the physical platforms to engage and sell to their prospects.
When COVID-19 stepped in, the world of business turned over. For those brands who operated online, there wasn’t much loss to be encountered but for those who depend highly on the physical platforms, it was a question of worry.
COVID-19 isn’t going to go away soon, and with the curfews, lockdowns, and minimal efforts of stepping out, your business needs to get on a solution that can help them conduct the same workflow like it used to be.
Interesting Read : Covid sales and marketing stack – how to run a business with $0 budget
One thing that is clear, with COVID-19 staying for long, it would be a wise decision to transform your lead generation activities online. There is a medium of live chat that will help engage with your prospects better and help you close deals when done right.
While we think that COVID-19 is here to put everyone at risk, you might be surprised to witness how slowly it is converting businesses more towards the digital stage.
It even provides a good number of opportunities to get started which you can see in our next category.
When was the last time you spoke in a more human manner with your prospects? Selling was always about the same scripts and the focus on achieving targets which is why closing sales deals took longer than expected. However COVID-19 is changing that. With everything happening online, this crisis is converting the way you speak to buyers.
You have just one medium to sell to your prospect which is the online medium and it is important that you make the medium more like a human engagement. This is exactly what COVID-9 is transforming in your business, increasing the volumes of human interactions for better business growth.
COVID-19 has eliminated the need for what your business is all about, it is letting you transform why your business should even be invested upon. You see the change, instead of you selling your brand, the focus here is on how can your brand value prospects better. This is a better way of selling because previously what is being sold is how great a brand is and how amazing the solution is, now that is not the case.
There are thousands of brands online and you need to be the best which can only happen when you sell your product on the basis of exposing the value it offers. Conduct research, get feedback, understand what your prospects are, and enhance your product accordingly. This will help you sell much better than you are doing currently.
While everything is going digital in COVID-19 why should you stay behind to show more human communication? Applications such as Zoom and Google Hangouts have made it easier to connect with prospects via face to face. You can capture prospects and conduct more such meetings which can help to close deals quicker. This is a unique concept which you cannot miss.
While others might be focusing on engaging with leads via chat, you can do the same thing except to take it one step higher, you can conduct a live face to face meeting where your prospect will be able to see you and interact just like how they would in a physical form.
The business world is going digital which means that your next sales or marketing strategy needs to be aligned according to that. For instance, you need to start investing in tools that can help you capture leads online or make it easier for you to send email campaigns with a click of a button and more. This takes place when you engage with the tools technology has provided.
Interesting Read : The COVID-19 Crisis Is Transforming the Way We Communicate with Buyers. Here’s How.
These tools can make your life easier in the digital world, for instance with a callback software you can connect with your leads quickly and there are tools that can help you connect instantly, for instance, Limecall. It can help you conduct conversations with your prospects in less than 28 seconds or schedule the calls according to your prospects. This will help in capturing leads quicker.
Ensure that you are investing in digitized tools because that is what will make your business activities more efficient.
Now that we have this understood, let’s take you forward to the tips you can practice to get started with your business growth.
The one clear factor that the COVID-19 crisis has taught any business is that working remotely is also not a bad option. You don’t require a physical space in order to conduct a business, if your team is efficient and are being trained to achieve the goals you’ve set, that’s all you need.
Make use of such an advantage and work on getting your business on track by coordinating better with your team, ensuring everyone is on the same page and the goals are being achieved more efficiently.
In such a situation it is understood yet ignored that an investment on a higher scale is a risky process. You need to understand here that the market is relatively low and for your business as well as the market to continue functioning better, it will take some time. Hence till then, continue to monitor your investments and the expenses so that you have enough in hand to run your business and make good decisions.
Whether it is the pandemic or not, your constant communication with prospects needs to be continuous. Use this crisis as a platform to not just sell to them, but instead to invest in engaging with them to learn more about their expectations from you as well as about the crisis situation. When this happens consistently, selling to such prospects on a later date becomes much better.
Interesting Read : Top 30+ Helpful Free Software List for everybody functioning during the COVID-19 crisis
The pandemic might have put your brand under a slow environment of brand growth but that shouldn’t stop you from growing your brand. You can still continue to understand how you can grow your business now that the situation has changed. You can extract and identify and capture new ideas and work on enhancing its presence so that when your business picks up pace, your brand will be performing better than your peers.
Never stop planning and experimenting with your brand growth. What matters here is that you continue to make goals and work on fulfilling them. Don’t let a pandemic ruin your opportunities to grow your brand. Fix on goals, create new ideas, and enhance and refine them for better brand success.
There are several experts in the Saas field that can help you conduct your saas business better. We have shared the best ones for you.
An interview was conducted and these were the answers:
1. Aggelos Mouzakitis, Growth Product Manager at Growth Sandwich,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Cutting through the noise
How are you approaching these challenges?
“Cutting through all that noise tends to become a very big problem for the SaaS industry. Users are bombarded with ads and new solutions every day. As a result, they have developed immunity in commercial messages and they start pushing back to the idea of adding another software in their stack.
Being stellar and extremely accurate in the jobs your product is doing and communicating it effectively can be achieved, in my point of view, only in one way: qualitative data.
I address these problems by dedicating, literally, half of my working week, speaking with our ideal customers, our fresh users and our power users, trying to bridge the value gap between all of them with the right product and effective communication of our value proposition.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“The best piece of advice I have given to a fellow marketer is to find answers in the following questions:
1. What is the budget you are taking from?
2. What consumes this budget at the moment within your target customers?
3. Why would make these people give this budget to your product?
They might seem like obvious questions but, in reality, having robust answers in these questions means you know what’s your competition and the jobs-to-be-done which are things any marketer must know in order to sell a product.”
2. Alva Horgan, CEO at LoanGuru
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Cutting through the noise
How are you approaching these challenges?
“More email marketing, google search campaigns, google display ads, more blogs.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Keep Going”
3. Ana Leal, Account Manager at GuestCentric,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Keeping up with the change of pace
How are you approaching these challenges?
“Through content marketing and research.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Be original and think how to make a point in a different direction.”
4. Aoife Flynn, Chief Marketing Officer at Payslip
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Brand messaging
How are you approaching these challenges?
“Mix of an extensive content strategy and paid advertising using the Google ad and LinkedIn networks.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“A consistent content strategy will improve SEO and positioning.”
5. Cristina Vila, Founder at Cledara,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Education of the market on a new problem
How are you approaching these challenges?
“A/B testing messaging and owning the idea space by attending conferences and being featured in podcasts and publications.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Don’t talk about Covid anymore and start talking about how you can help customers in the new reality we all face.”
6. Joy Corkery, Content marketing lead at Latana,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Brand messaging
How are you approaching these challenges?
“We are in the process of doing a total rebrand. In this day and age, in a time when the competition is high in all industries, we need to really connect with our target audience and show them the value we provide over the competition.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“It’s no longer good enough to concentrate your marketing campaigns on product and price. Convenience is the key trait that will hook your target audience. In this case, understanding customer expectations has never been more important and is key to building a strong brand. Take the time to understand what your target audience expects from you. Make sure there is consistency across your entire brand. If different departments are producing images, campaigns, articles, etc. with different messages, you won’t be able to hook your target audience.”
7. Max Van Den Ingh, Head of Growth at POP,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Cutting through the noise
How are you approaching these challenges?
“Cutting through the noise is simple but not easy. Especially in B2B, everybody can buy customers using ads. But that’s not a sustainable growth model (in my opinion). We’re trying to be real with our audience. We share everything we know and break it down into actionable strategies they can use today and try for free. This seems to resonate, which is the leading indicator that you’re providing something people actually need. But still, it’s a tough game to play, as it takes determination and resources to keep doing this consistently.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Marketers should be aware that a lot of companies are definitely up for buying, but simply not right now. Ignoring those people in your marketing efforts will lead to guaranteed catastrophe down the line. You have to stay top of mind, show why you’re still relevant and keep providing value. It’s always a good time to build an audience. If your budgets are cut; use it as an opportunity to shake things up. Go back to the roots of marketing, study human psychology, analyse customer behaviour and improve your messaging accordingly.”
8. Nick Dunse, Chief Marketing Officer at Shuttle,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Keeping up with the change of pace
How are you approaching these challenges?
“Reading, viewing content, employing the right people.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Be human.”
9. Wojciech Jasnos, Founder at RocketLink,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Pricing and positioning
How are you approaching these challenges?
“For pricing, we are testing different ways to include features and limits in plans. We don’t have a freemium plan, but we recently switched from pay upfront to a 10-day free trial. The free to paid conversions are good so far. We still need some changes in our pricing strategy to better address different personas. Our app is used by small brands, freelancers, SMBs but also large enterprises like RedBull, etc. What we are going to do is to add annual plans which we don’t have right now. We are also working hard to analyse the current usage of different features by specific customers. The major challenge for us is to raise prices again. We did this 2 years ago for the first time and it was a great idea. We increased our monthly prices by almost 100% and the only change we noticed was 2x higher MRR. Now we would like to create different pricing for large companies that need more complex reporting and analytic features.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Don’t spam your audience with emails about COVID-19, “uncertain times”, etc. unless you really have to. Everyone has had enough of this.”
10. Stephan Stergiou, CEO/founder at Open Claims,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Pricing and positioning
How are you approaching these challenges?
“We sell to insurers and leasing companies. Knowing their tech set-up, our position in this ecosystem and the added value our platform delivers are essential to position ourselves correctly and to build a good pricing strategy. We are currently doing three things: First of all, we are talking to our current customers to find out the real reasons for working with us and renewing their contracts with us. Secondly, we are monitoring the return on investment of our platform, which we use as input for our business case and our pricing structure. Finally, we are talking to other software providers in our domain to get a good overview of the ecosystem and get insights regarding their pricing strategies.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Our priority was to find out the impact the current climate had on our customers and prospects. We took the time to understand what their situation is by having in-depth talks and performing surveys. Based on this input, we focussed on running implementations, and the middle and the bottom of our sales funnel.
We are lucky that our customer segments are not hit as hard and that our platform directly lowers the cost base of Insurers and Leasing companies. This allowed us to scale up our activities on the top of the funnel and early-stage sales trajectories pretty fast.”
11. Sancar Sahin, VP of Marketing at Hotjar,
Biggest challenge(s) as a SaaS Marketer
Pricing and positioning
How are you approaching these challenges?
“As our product matures, so do the types of companies it attracts. We’re fully aware that our pricing can be clearer and better communicated to the Experience teams who use Hotjar. To tackle this, we are talking to lots of customers, listening to a lot of feedback, and are working on ways to simplify and clarify our pricing structure.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to another SaaS marketer during this climate?
“Something I’ve learnt in my career in SaaS Marketing is to think of every initiative or opportunity as part of a portfolio. Much like a financial portfolio, it’s important to manage the balance. If you’re doing only things that are high confidence but low return, you’ll be stagnant. On the other side, if you’re only doing things that are high-risk but possibly high return, you’ll back yourself into a messy corner. If you find the right balance, you’ll thrive.”
COVID-19 isn’t going to fade away or rather disappear immediately.
You need to learn how to deal with it and continue with your business just the way it was before. With the tips that you have at the moment, you can get started on the right foot.
So tell us, what do you think of this article? What are your views on this topic? Would you like to share your opinions on the same?
We would love to hear from you, to reach out to us, tweet us.
, November 5, 2020, LimeCall Team
Top rated callback automation platform that connects your website visitors to your team within 20 seconds through phone callback and whatsapp driving upto 40% more conversions.
Learn more
