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Every company has its most important asset – an audience that is potentially ready to buy products or services. Any B2B SaaS startup is no exception. This article is a short guide on how such startups can create their own audience of potential buyers.
If your startup is only going through the discussion stage, already at this stage it is worth thinking about who all these people are the target audience of your project, what exactly you are going to offer them and why the audience will want to pay for your product or service.
Target audience research. Preliminary preparation
The law of classical marketing – any product, service, online service requires a preliminary study of the target audience and drawing up a portrait of the ideal client. It doesn’t matter if you are targeting the B2C or B2B segment.
What does it look like in practice?
Brainstorm. Pros and cons
A startup determines the segment in which it is going to work and its target audience. This is the familiar brainstorming. The thing is necessary and useful, but clearly insufficient. Because it carries certain risks.
It is assumed that during the brainstorming process, startup representatives think like their potential customers. It is not certain that this will happen. Brainstorming is always speculation. Therefore, you can start developing and doing something that will not be in demand by the end user, whether it is a new service on the market or an excellent online service for the B2B segment.
But the portrait of the ideal representative of the target audience is the desired result of brainstorming, which will definitely come in handy for further work in order to understand who, for example, will suit the online platform that you plan to develop.
Direct poll of the target audience
If you don’t know exactly what your customers need or what another SaaS platform can’t give them, the easiest way is to ask them about it. This way you can get objective information, take into account the shortcomings of competitors and make a SaaS platform with the necessary functionality that others do not have.
How to ask?
On your own website, post a questionnaire on social networks, create a special bot with questions.
An equally relevant question is: how can a startup attract an audience and make itself known?
Audience Engagement Methods
Let’s assume that a startup has already brought a new product to the market: Let this Saas product be a B2B platform for affiliate marketing.
How to attract an audience?
The most obvious acquisition channel is paid advertising. Obvious, but far from the only one.
Here are some more B2B marketing hacks to promote your SaaS affiliate marketing platform.
- a demanded product that meets the wishes of the audience, the launch and implementation of which requires a minimum amount of time (for example, this is how the Alanbase SaaS platform is launched);
- friendly and prompt technical support. As practice shows, sometimes even advanced users need answers to some questions. And it is better not to leave a client who is at the stage of launching his own product on a SaaS platform while he is mastering a new functionality for himself. The ideal option is when the SaaS platform provides users with 24/7 support, plus it has a knowledge base, user manuals written in a simple and understandable language, does not try to exclude the participation of real people in support, completely replacing them with bots;
- interaction with the audience at all possible touch points: own website, social networks, mailing list. It is naive to think that a SaaS platform in such a highly competitive market as affiliate marketing will sell itself, and potential customers will immediately line up. It will be necessary to convey to them all the benefits of a new proposal that has appeared on the market;
- SaaS platform is not sold “on the forehead”. It is necessary to explain, tell about the differences, competitive advantages of the new solution, which means to fully engage content marketing: post educational informational articles on your website, in your social networks and in external sources. It is better to have a well-thought-out content strategy that is scheduled for at least six months or even a year in advance. First, the audience should be imbued with trust in you, and only then you can expect purchases and payment for subscriptions;
- an affiliate program can also be an incentive to promote the SaaS platform. Clients involved in affiliate marketing understand the logic of working in affiliate work very well: I tried it myself, liked the functionality of the SaaS platform, recommended it to colleagues, and received a reward for attracting an additional audience to the product.
Sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel at all, especially if you are not doing something super new (far from the fact that the audience needs it!), But better than what is already on the market. USA, Poland, the EU, far-abroad countries – not so much new as improved products appear on all markets. Often they are about the same thing, but give the audience more options.
The rule works very well here: look at the mistakes that competitors have already made, and just try not to repeat them!
In Conclusion on “Building an Audience for B2B SaaS Startups”
Audience needs – product quality – marketing and promotion. Perhaps this is the best scheme for a startup that operates in the B2B segment. It seems that everything is extremely simple, but how many projects fell apart due to the fact that they lacked such simplicity. We hope everything works out for you!
