It’s a well-known fact that SaaS companies deliver a unique business model. They might offer both products and services other people need, but they shouldn’t slack on developing a beneficial PR strategy. PR for SaaS becomes crucial to keep potential and current clients informed of news, updates, and more in order to drive further success.
But as practical and beneficial as they are, SaaS businesses are not the easiest to do PR & marketing for. Things are about to change, though.
Top PR ideas that could drive the success of your SaaS
SaaS companies must take a different approach than traditional marketing to reach their core audience and effectively engage their customers to renew their subscriptions.
Usually, an effective PR strategy relies on capturing the consumer’s interest at the top of the sales funnel with your product and enticing them down the path to purchase. What’s more, focusing on creating a valuable PR strategy for your company maximizes ROI by getting the most out of your content to drive success.
Keeping a perfect balance between innovation and utility is what differentiates SaaS companies. What they offer must be original and surprising and also make perfect sense. But what about the PR strategy for SaaS? How can they you stand out?
Attend or host webinars
Although at first glance webinars might seem a tool of the past, the reality is that for SaaS companies, attending or hosting a webinar provides a great platform to help you position your company as an authority in your field of business.
Over 85% of companies use webinars to educate their existing and potential clients, which in turn helps them build brand awareness and gain a notable position within the market.
What distinguishes webinars from written content is that they provide your customers the chance to directly interact with leading personalities in your field. And to make sure you truly set yourself apart from the rest, you need to follow a few steps in organizing your presence in webinars:
- Provide valuable insights that your competitors aren’t willing to share. It’ll make your webinars unmissable
- Keep your topics as green as possible, relevant, and hardly outdated, so your customers can come back to your webinar and replay it. You’ll also continue to pull in new leads if they share it with their network
- Always make sure to follow up with your attendees after the webinars, thus helping you in maintaining a relationship with your customers
Take part in Clubhouse chats
If you really want to win the game of PR for SaaS, you need to keep yourself up to date when it comes to trends and new ideas. And the rise of a new social media platform brings with it new opportunities to help you gain an edge with your PR and marketing strategies.
That’s the case for Clubhouse - a new & super buzzed social media app rooted in audio communication. To put it simply, it brings the same benefits as a conventional conference, but from the comfort of your home. It has speakers and moderators, but what makes it special is that it happens online, 24/7. While it requires an invitation from a current user to join, taking part in Clubhouse Chats will help you boost your authority and build authentic relationships with your customers.
You can create engaging collaborations with existing influencers in your field and get invited to join their virtual talks. This, in turn, will help place your brand in the top spot in front of an engaged audience.
Be active in social groups
Social media marketing isn’t about just sharing a message and then hoping that someone, somewhere, will get to it and see its value. It’s more about defining a strategy of leveraging a platform (e.g. Facebook, Linkedin, Discord, etc.) in order to create better engagement with its users.
Why does it help? Well, because it’s virtually cost-free and quick. So, whether you want to raise awareness around a future product launch or you are just trying to get more people to interact with your content, turning to social media is a great help in your SaaS PR strategy. You’ll be able to build real relationships with your customers, identify any PR threats and reach out to relevant influencers.
You need to go where your audience is - find out which platforms they use & which social groups they’re most active on. Think of relevant LinkedIn groups, Facebook groups, Slack channels, Discord channels, or Workplace groups. Being active on social groups pays off long term because they provide the best platform for you to answer your customers’ queries and help them get complex issues solved quickly.
Go to podcasts
One other powerful strategy in PR for SaaS is podcasting because it helps you gain exposure in front of highly engaged leads. When people enjoy a podcast, they’re more inclined to hit the “subscribe” button and to make listening to it a regular occurrence in their daily life.
Before you think about starting your own podcast, the easier way to gain similar benefits is to join other hosts. Think about it: their audience will spend roughly an hour listening to you. And after that episode, it’s more likely they’ll be inclined to look into your product a lot more.
It’s important to identify how you can contribute to the podcast you’re planning to join. Ask yourself: what is something the hosts’ audience will like, that they haven’t yet heard about and that you are in a position to give details about?
Start your own podcast
Then again, starting your own podcast comes with a whole different set of benefits for your SaaS PR strategy. Besides helping you build brand awareness, it will also establish you as an authority in the field while also providing a great platform to promote your products and services. Plus, many other industry-specific benefits will reveal themselves.
When deciding what kind of content to create for your SaaS podcast, it helps to keep in mind the direction you’re going for:
- Are you planning on connecting with your target audience & customer persona?
- Do you want to be known as a #1 authority in your industry?
- Maybe your main focus is to build a community around your product?
- Or do you want to simply increase your brand awareness?
Of course, they don’t exclude each other. Because if, let’s say, you focus on becoming an authority, then building your community and even generating leads will come naturally afterward.
Launch industry reports and studies
Another great PR tactic for SaaS is creating and launching original content in the form of industry reports or studies. Original content is likely to get the attention of both potential customers and journalists, and get you some backlinks and coverage in the process.
Besides, launching a SaaS PR campaign revolving around original content will also bring your SaaS company into the spotlight for eager marketers and researchers that are interested in customer insights and trends. Not to mention that it will also help you get higher in SERPs because Google considers your original content as a sign of credibility.
Launch eBooks
As a SaaS business, you will most probably want to include eBooks in your SaaS PR strategy as well. They’re visually pleasing while being easily readable and, not to mention, shareable, proving to be great B2B lead magnets - if promoted efficiently and consistently. eBooks help you appeal to your target audience, educate them about what you offer, and also provide a great resource to share during your new customers’ onboarding process.
If you plan on launching an eBook, make sure you tick the boxes below for a flawless SaaS PR campaign:
- Design and create a landing page for that eBook
- Create opportunities to showcase the eBook on your website
- Insert CTAs that lead your blog posts readers to the eBook
- Post about it on social media - this is a given
- Make sure to also invest in paid advertising for greater reach
Bonus bootstrap tip: Repurpose your existing content into eBooks. You most certainly already have valuable content that can be repurposed into other forms like infographics or even personalized email drip campaigns with the help of automation, along with email tracking and analytics to provide you with data-driven insights regarding your campaign.
Send out regular press releases
Lastly, one other tactic that you should definitely include in your SaaS PR efforts is sending out press releases on a regular basis. But be mindful of their frequency. The key here is to keep your company top of mind, without sharing trivial information that might weaken the overall impact.
Start by pointing out important timestamps in your product development like a crucial upgrade or a brand-new product launch and then create your press release around that subject. Just make sure that the updates you share are vital and helpful for your audience.
Regular press releases as part of your overall SaaS PR strategy will also drive sales because they will provide your sales teams with another touchpoint along the pipeline with your customers. Because, at the end of the day, if you aren't boosting your sales with press releases, then there's not much value in sending them out in the first place.
Press releases don’t have to be based on product updates only - there’re a lot more subjects that you can transform into valuable news: webinars, executive additions, podcast announcements, customer wins, or launching original content.
Staying top-of-mind
There’s no simple answer to how you should conduct your SaaS PR strategy. It’s important to make sure you understand the different benefits of each different strategy, so you can then invest in the platform that makes the most sense for your company, whether it’s launching your own podcasts, starting a recurrent branded room on Clubhouse, or just being a bit more active on social groups.
At the same time, it might take a few trials and errors in terms of optimizing your SaaS PR strategy to help your business stay top of mind for your audience. It helps to stay patient and ready to reposition your tactics at any given time along the way, to make sure your PR and marketing objectives are being met.
Think this all sounds like a lot of work? Well, it’s not going to be easy, but it will be worth it in the long run. Plus, there are plenty of bootstrap tactics here you can already try with close to no budget. So let’s make the best of it!
About the Author: As the CEO of Custify, Philipp Wolf helps SaaS businesses deliver great results for customers. After seeing companies spend big money with no systematic approach to customer success, Philipp knew something had to change. He founded Custify to provide a tool that lets agents spend time with clients—instead of organizing CRM data.
Cover photo by DocuSign
