As the SaaS industry grows, more and more companies realize that digital marketing is an excellent way to find new customers and increase revenue. But all too often, SaaS marketers fall into the trap of believing that digital marketing is a cohesive, singular discipline - one where you simply follow a list of best practices, and success will inevitably follow. In reality, every company has its own unique goals for its digital marketing strategy. Your company might be in hyper-growth mode and looking to maximize volume to scale quickly. Or perhaps your company has high churn and low customer lifetime value (LTV), so it needs to maximize efficiency by cutting ad spend while maintaining or increasing revenue. Whatever your situation, it's critical to have a solid understanding of what works and what doesn't before you start spending on Google Ads or Facebook Ads. To help you do this, I've listed three common misconceptions about SaaS marketers' approaches to marketing and how they can hurt your business if left unchecked:
Myth 1: Marketing Automation
Marketing automation is not a silver bullet. It's not just a tool but also a strategy, and it should be used as such.
But marketers often think of it as the one thing that will solve all of their problems and help them sell more stuff without having to talk to anyone. The problem with this thinking is that marketing automation works best when there's some human interaction involved in your sales funnel. Many companies have found that using marketing automation tools alone can actually hurt their bottom line by flooding prospects with irrelevant information, which causes them to tune out and stop listening altogether.
Before you go rushing off and buying every piece of software you can find on ProductHunt, make sure that it aligns with your overall goals for growing your business.
Myth 2: Closing Isn't a Marketing Responsibility
If you're in marketing and you think closing is the sales team's job, or if you're in sales and you think that only your team closes deals, it's time to realize that this is not the case! Closing is a company-wide effort, and each role must do its part for the entire process to work smoothly.
At its core, closing is about creating trust between two parties through active listening and building rapport with someone new—something that can't be done by just anyone on any given day. It also requires engaging people emotionally by finding common ground and having genuine conversations throughout the buying journey; these are both things marketers are great at!
Myth 3: Content is Key to Lead Generation
You'd be surprised how many marketers think that content is the key to lead generation. It's not. Content is not the only thing that generates leads, sales, or brand awareness and loyalty. The idea of creating a blog or a newsletter just because you think it will help you generate more sales is silly. You can't force your customers to buy from you by giving them useful information – they have to WANT to buy from you!
Content marketing has become so popular lately because it works when done correctly. But when we look at what works in other industries and then apply those same methods without considering how our industry differs from theirs, we may end up making some costly mistakes along the way!
You might have heard that the most crucial thing in lead generation is content, or that it's about closing, or even marketing automation. But those are all wrong.
Yes, lead gen has something to do with content and closing and marketing automation—but not just those things. Lead generation is actually about the customer journey and funnel.
As a SaaS marketer, you have the opportunity to be creative, bold, and unique—to stand out from the crowd and make your product truly sing. But if you're relying on any of these three myths about SaaS marketing, you'll be stunting your growth potential.
