Global Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies have experienced tremendous opportunities for growth in the past decade. As of 2021, this industry is worth $152.18 billion. Investors are particularly in favor of these companies as they generate consistent cash flows.
SaaS businesses end-user spending worldwide from 2015 to 2023
However, the Russia-Ukraine war and pandemic-induced economic crisis have signaled several possibilities of recession in the upcoming years. This has risked the growth possibilities of SaaS companies.
In fact, majorities of SaaS startups are struggling with two critical challenges - generating fresh leads and retaining existing clients. Most SaaS startups are plunging towards varied cost-cutting measures as a preventive measure.
Nevertheless, cost-cutting can chop down your revenue streams further! SaaS companies should shift toward a performance marketing mindset to stand out in this situation.
This blog will discuss how SaaS companies should prioritize outbound and demand generation and performance marketing activities to cope with the global recession.
Ideally, outbound and demand generation strategies are key in SaaS lead generation and retention processes. However, the approaches followed by these two forms of marketing are completely different.
Outbound marketing is about reaching out to the prospect or customer directly. On the contrary, demand generation is another lead generation and retention approach where marketers follow a planned, step-by-step framework to grab prospects’ attention.
Unlike outbound marketing, where the sales team finds the prospects, in demand generation, the prospects develop an interest in your services and eventually find you.
Demand generation is essential for your business as it helps you achieve the following:
The success of a demand generation campaign lies in building trust and nurturing a prospect over time to convert them into loyal customers.
Demand generation process
Outbound marketing activities also have their fair share of benefits. Here is how outbound marketing can help out businesses:
While demand generation and outbound marketing strategies have some critical advantages, one question still pertains here.
Should a SaaS business rely solely on either strategy to fight the global recession? Let’s find out in the next section.
Until now, we explained the advantages of demand generation and outbound marketing. However, there is more to it. Trust us when we say demand generation and outbound marketing come with a few challenges.
Let us explain those quickly.
As we told you at the beginning of this section, demand generation and outbound marketing are not easy!
A more effective approach is - performance marketing. More on this in the next section.
Performance marketing is a result-driven marketing approach. Instead of relying solely on demand generation or outbound marketing, performance marketing focuses on multiple channels like social media, videos, search engines, and more with a single goal - improving performance.
The performance marketing process
Performance marketers track the number of clicks, impressions, shares, and sales generated by an advertisement and plan their ad spending accordingly.
If SaaS businesses embrace performance marketing in its full functionality, the opportunities for scaling become huge! Here’s why:
Performance marketing helps businesses to keep their ad campaigns up and running. This means that even though the recession hits an organization, it can expect some revenue streams through performance marketing campaigns. During the recession, such supplement income streams can make a lot of difference for small businesses.
Performance marketing also helps organizations with significant data points to fine-tune their ad campaigns. This means higher efficiency and visibility. During the recession, all businesses are a little tight on the budget. Performance marketing ensures that return is maximized and ineffective spending areas are removed from the marketing campaigns.
Traditional marketing would demand spending money on ads without knowing whether they generated sales. Performance marketing is far more transparent and enables you to track every click. Hence the trackability of performance marketing is based on real results.
In performance marketing, SaaS companies can pay only for successful transactions. Here, each transaction defines buyers’ actions. Performance marketing provides complete visibility into the Click-to-consumer path for each prospect. Hence, deciding which path or channel you should spend more on is easier for better results.
In performance marketing, you only pay when the desired action takes place. Therefore, the customer acquisition cost is much lower, with high ROI earning potential. Hence, marketers are left with more budgets to explore various performance marketing initiatives and boost growth.
Performance marketers are a team of marketing sensations who can promote your brand across different channels. Some of them are experts in niche-specific markets and can help your SaaS brand reach its targeted audiences.
Therefore, with performance marketing by your side, you don’t need to focus on a single sales channel. Hence, even if a particular channel lags in generating sales, multiple other channels exist to explore.
Are you looking for a result-driven SaaS performance marketing agency that relies on data to multiply your growth?
Well, you have reached the right destination - Tripledart Digital!
We are a team of performance marketers who know how to blend different marketing approaches to create the best lead generation formula for your brand. Our strategies are 100% compatible with the changing algorithms of social media and search engines.
Here’s why you should talk to us at the earliest:
Book an intro call with us and discuss how we can help you!
Join 70+ successful B2B SaaS companies on the path to achieving T2D3 with our SaaS marketing services.