Dekker Fraser - More Demos, Trials & Buyers: SaaS Marketing Playbook 2021: B2B SaaS Marketing | SaaS Marketing Funnel | SaaS Product Marketing | SaaS Digital Marketing | Marketing SaaS Platforms

More Demos, Trials & Buyers
SaaS Marketing Playbook 2021
Dekker Fraser, MBA

Do you want more SaaS demo requests, free trial sign-ups, and paying customers? Do you want them cheaply and quickly?

This book teaches you

The fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to generate demo requests and free trial sign-ups in 2021

The single most cost-effective way to acquire new customers

How I acquired users for less than 10 cents each

Specific examples of SaaS marketing that have worked for me and others

How to build your SaaS marketing funnel

SaaS lead nurturing strategies and tactics

How to fix problem like poor MQL-to-SQL conversion rates

How my product got 15 million views

Specific tactics that worked for me in generating cost-effective sales meetings

How to approach lead generation and demand generation in 2021

Im a Silicon Valley marketing veteran with 11 years experience in software marketing for companies including Sony, a Google-backed SaaS, SaaS firms at various stages of venture funding, and numerous bootstrapped SaaS startups. I have an MBA from the #1 marketing school in the US, Northwestern Universitys Kellogg School of Management. I also wrote numerous marketing books and taught college-level marketing. This is my SaaS marketing playbook!

Contents:

The fastest, easiest way to generate demo requests and free trial sign-ups

SaaS companies often generate a lot of clicks from LinkedIn ads, but produce little-to-no actual sign-ups. With a few small tweaks, LinkedIn advertising should be the easiest and fastest way to generate conversions. You should be able to generate marketing qualified leads (MQLs) immediately, without any lead nurturing. Why?

You dont need a landing page, website, or website conversion-rate-optimization. Thats because LinkedIn allows you to capture leads right there on the platform, without requiring prospects to leave LinkedIn. Imagine generating demo requests without needing to worry about how well your website converts visitors!

The targeting is phenomenal. You can target people with pinpoint accuracy (e.g., anyone with the job title physician.)

You dont need to purchase or import a list of prospects. With Facebook ads, you often get the best results when you use custom audiences and import a list of prospects to target with your ads. With LinkedIn, the targeting is so accurate and up-to-date that you dont necessarily need to use custom audiences. This is particularly good for startups who have a limited budget and need results quickly. If you do have a list of prospects (e.g., from a list broker) then by all means use custom audiences in addition to LinkedIns native targeting.

Demo/MQL-ready prospects self-select. When you choose the cost-per-click pricing option, youre only charged when people click your ad. That means bottom-of-funnel, buyer-ready prospects are pretty much the only people youre paying to advertise to. When other people see your ad, youre getting a free bonus.

Tips for success with LinkedIn ads:

Use the native lead-generation forms instead of sending people to your website.

Consider promoting your offer more than promoting your product.

Promote your offer as the hero rather than your product per se. If you want people requesting a demo, talk about the benefits of the demo. If you want people requesting a consultation, talk about the benefits of the consultation.

If you have a small budget, set the minimum allowable cost-per-click , instead of using the default budgeting option. You get the minimum CPC by putting in a very low bid (such as $1) and seeing LinkedIns rebuttal in red text (e.g., $3.01). Thats the minimum you can bid per click. Using this method, your prospects self-select based on their interest in MQLing, and youre only charged when someone clicks the ad. So you see, LinkedIn is excellent at generating MQLs cost-effectively.

Use negative targeting for certain functions and job titles, such as:

I find SaaS companies often blow their budget by advertising to salespeople. They dont realize it because they dont look at the audience analytics provided in LinkedIn.

Above: a common problem with LinkedIn advertising is accidentally targeting people in business development, sales, and HR. Try excluding people and companies that dont fit your target buying group. Additionally, consider unchecking Enable Audience Expansion, at least when youre first starting.

Use single images or extremely short videos . In my experience, the best type of ad is a few seconds of video or a basic single image. I havent yet found complex carousel ads or long, expensive videos to provide a good return on effort. Its much easier to be agile and test different ad images and text when youre producing simple, single image ads. You dont want to plow $2,500 into a video to find out later that your message was off-base.

Enable ads outside of LinkedIn.

Above: although audience expansion may be risky, audience network expansion isn t. If you r targeting is set up correctly, there is little reason you wouldn t want people seeing your ad outside of LinkedIn.

For ads where you cannot use the native lead-gen form, make sure you set up conversion tracking so you can optimize your campaigns for MQLs instead of clicks.