Software as a service marketing can be a tricky concept, especially for any business that is more accustomed to traditional software concepts and marketing techniques. It’s a bit of a brave new world, with the cloud and the SaaS platforms and the lack of hardware or software platform dependency.
In this new age, how does marketing really work? What are some tips that can help to successfully market and continue to hold a market share in an SaaS industry? Today, we’re going to talk a little bit about software as a service marketing, the various forms of SaaS themselves, and how the strategies may work differently depending on demographic and marketing sector.
First, let’s bear in mind that SaaS is by its nature a broad term, so it encompasses several demographics and fields of digital service and consumption, from gaming and business to social interaction and communications. It’s a big field, so we really only have room to touch a little on each field here. But, that means these will be the most pertinent tips for any given one.
For business, marketing your SaaS is all about the bottom dollar, and how much time and efficiency the service saves the business. When SaaS promises increased productivity, team compatibility and savings when updates and service are standard for a flat rate, businesses greatly appreciate this.
Businesses have to answer to their share holders and accountants, which has always been strenuous in times past, when new updates cost money, or entire new versions of software being purchased was a battle to justify. SaaS updates itself, and should do so at no additional cost. If maintenance fees must exist, they should be marginal, and relegated as a few cents extra in the SaaS standard usage fee.
Also, security is a big selling point for businesses, obviously. One final bit of advice for enterprise SaaS though, when multiple account types are available (tiers), have some logic in what features various ones do or do not offer compared to their alternatives …
For gaming, most SaaS platforms are a delivery service for multiple games, such as Steam or Gametap. For systems like this, advertise the big names in gaming you have to offer, and give people a chance to sample your wares. Gamers love demos, but demos of completed games. Let them access some of them for free permanently if you can, and then dangle the promise of newer, costlier games at a small price before them, and most of them will genuinely bite.
If you have big name games, don’t over-advertise them, though. Give the indie titles some room to shine. There’s a growing appreciation for these, and it’d be foolhardy to ignore that.
For social and personal software as a service marketing, it’s all about features and ease of use. Advertise how cooperative the bandwidth and accessibility options are for the product, and don’t charge users for access. Stick to advertising for this, or account tiers, as most private and social users will not pay for something they can already get more or less free form existing providers, or pirate in non SaaS form. It is unfortunate but true.
In SaaS, there are three general types of marketing to be conducted, subscription, free with advertising, and pay per use models. Pay per use is gradually disappearing, and this is a good thing. But, ultimately, for software as a service marketing , subscriptions work for business, tiered accounts work best for gaming, and ad-powered systems work best for personal and social frameworks.
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