A Complete Guide to Create a Successful B2B SAAS Go-to-market Strategy

Intro

A successful B2B SAAS Go-to-market strategy helps you launch or expand your SAAS solution to the right audience, at the right time, with the right messaging.

It increases the likelihood of a successful product launch by defining:

• who the product is for
• how to communicate with the target audience
• when to launch the product

With a well-crafted B2B SAAS go-to-market strategy, you can effectively reach the target audience at a lower cost, develop effective messaging, make efficient use of resources, successfully launch a product, and avoid failed product launches.

I have seen many failed product launches in my career where a product failed due to poor marketing. You may have the best product in the market but if you do not position it right it can lead to miserable failures. Similarly, with right marketing, an average product can performe great in the market.

In this post, we will look at how to create a successful B2B SAAS go-to-market strategy, the benefits of B2B SAAS go-to-market strategy, and how it is different from regular marketing strategy.

How B2B SAAS Go-to-market strategy is different from the regular marketing strategy?

A B2B SAAS Go-to-market strategy focuses on the launch of a new product or expansion of the existing product to a new market, rather than the entire marketing of the company’s all offerings. Thus, it is a specific marketing strategy catered to the defined target audience for the targeted market.

Just to make it easy, a B2B SAAS Go-to-market strategy is a combination of three things: B2B, SAAS, and Go-to-market.

• you need to focus on the B2B nature of the market

• you are launching a SAAS product

• you are focusing only on the Go-to-market strategy

Like a regular marketing strategy, you will not focus on all of your company’s offerings. In a go-to-market strategy, you will try to position only new products in the market or existing products in new markets in the best possible way.

Steps to create a successful B2B SAAS go-to-market strategy

In a competitive landscape like B2B SAAS market, you need a well-defined, proven, and tested marketing framework that can help you increase the likelihood of a successful product launch.

Here is a step-by-step guide to creating a successful B2B SAAS go-to-market strategy:

1. Know what solution you are offering

Every successful product in the market solves a specific problem. The first step to creating a strong SAAS go-to-market strategy is to know what value you are delivering to your clients through your product. It is called the value proposition of your product.

Understand what pain points your SAAS product is solving and design the marketing strategy accordingly. The concept is called product-market fit. It tells you about the degree to which your product fits in the targeted market.

2. Know your target audience

Once you know the pain points and value proposition, it gives you the framework to define your target audience. There are two primary concepts to do it: Ideal Customer Profile and Buyer Persona.

Ideal customer profile

Ideal customer profile defines a perfect customer. For example, if you are selling a SAAS product, say a project management software, your ideal customer profile will be the companies. Now, you need to define everything about your ideal customer such as the size of the company, industry, location, and so on.

Here are some of the characteristics you can consider:

• Industry: If you are selling to a specific industry say Energy & oil or Legal, you need to define your industry.
• Size: Define the ideal size of the company for your SAAS product. It can be a freelancer, a small business with 1 to 20 employees, a mid-size business with 50-250 employees, or a large organization with over 500 employees.
• Geography: Define where your customers are placed. For example, if you have a SAAS solution that supports the English language, your ideal geography would be the USA, not Russia.
• Pricing: Consider how much your customers are willing to pay. Target only those prospects which have purchasing power.
• Decision makers: Define how many decision-makers are involved in the decision-making process.
• Pain points: What challenges are they facing in their day-to-day life?
• Preferred channel: How your ideal customers are absorbing content? Is it LinkedIn, Websites, Podcasts, or YouTube? How do they prefer to consume content? Is it infographics, long-form content, or video?

Buyer persona

Ideal customer profile gives you an idea about the perfect target audience. But within that target audience, there are different types of people you can target. To further group those people, you need to create a buyer persona.

Buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of a company's ideal customer. For example, if you are selling a SAAS product, you can create multiple buyer personas such as CEO, manager, and department head.

Based on the information collected from ICP, you need to create a persona of your ideal customer. Give it a name, and a photo, include demographic information, such as age, gender, and occupation, add values, interests, and goals, describe challenges and pain points, and define what you can do.

3. Research your market

You defined your value proposition and you know your target audience. It is time to research your competitors in the market. Perform an in-depth competitor analysis.

• Define what solutions your competitors are offering.
• What are the market trends?
• How does your product stand against your competitors?
• What are their strengths and weaknesses, and yours too?
• How are you different from others?

This will help you develop the right brand messaging and time the product launch right.

4. Develop the right brand positioning messaging

You need to communicate the value of your product to your ideal target audience in a way that resonates with their pain points. The best way to do so is to define your key messaging according to the buyer personas that address their unique values and frustrations.

The emotional connection captures the attention of your target audience. As you are in the SAAS products market, you can go to the review websites like G2, Capterra, and Software Advice and join various tech community forms to find out the right messaging to target the pain points of your buyer persona.

5. Create a content plan

You need to take your buyer on a journey. It will start from awareness, go to consideration, and end with a decision as far as marketing is concerned. You need to create a content plan which includes two primary considerations: the right form of content and the right channel to distribute the content.

Define the channel where you will find your target audience most active. For example, for a B2B SAAS product, websites, LinkedIn and emails are more effective channels than Instagram or YouTube.

Create the right form of content according to the platform. For example, for websites, you need to create long-form blog posts, and for LinkedIn, create social media posts and visual form content.

6. Know the buyer journey

Your content plan should be in line with the buyer's journey. You have to create separate content plans based on the funnels.

There are three funnels: Top Funnel, Middle funnel, and Bottom funnel.

• Top funnel: Buyers are facing problems and researching solutions. They may not be aware of your product.
• Middle funnel: Your buyers are aware of your product and weigh your products against others. It is the battleground for marketers.
• Bottom funnel: Buyers have decided to purchase your product. But needs a little more convincing.

Create marketing content according to the funnel.

7. Tracking and feedback

Without goals, it is hard to track your marketing campaign. You can use the SMART framework to set campaign goals. SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound. Set goals using this framework.

The other thing you need to achieve your campaign goal is to set KPIs. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are quantitative metrics such as the number of website visits and ad click-throughs that help you track progress toward business objectives. It also helps in keeping your marketing and sales team aligned and making changes accordingly to achieve business goals.

Benefits of B2B Go-to-market strategy for SAAS companies

A go-to-market strategy is a well-defined approach that offers numerous benefits to marketers that will help you ace your product launch. Have a look at them.

• Helps you develop effective messaging: When you know the audience, their pain points, and the solution you offer, you can effectively develop the right messaging for your go-to-market strategy.
• Effective brand positioning: when you know the market trends and your competitor's strengths and weaknesses, you can choose the right brand positioning messaging.
• Choose the right channels: You have a clear idea of the audience and how they consume content. It helps you evaluate and choose the right marketing channels where your target audience is most active.
• Lower customer acquisition cost: You are not wasting time and resources on an audience which are not an ideal fit for your audience. This reduces customer acquisition costs and reduces the risks of failed product launches.
• Fast time-to-market product launch: When your efforts are focused, you can speed up the time-to-market of your new product. This results in high ROI and makes your campaign effective.

The Takeaway

Ad-hoc marketing strategies do not work always because you are using a hit-and-trial approach. A B2B SAAS Go-to-market Strategy is a great data-driven marketing approach to acquire new customers at low cost, ensure product success, and avoid failed product launches. Using the right marketing strategy, you can increase the likelihood of a successful product launch.