SaaS Go To Market Strategy for a Super Sweet Launch

How can marketers feel smart? Invent a term. ‘Go-to-Market’ (GTM) is one of those ‘pat-on-the-back’ terms. And for all the young marketers out there, make sure you say GTM. You don’t want your colleagues to think you are a rookie. So now that we’ve got the basics of marketing culture, let’s explore SaaS Go-to-Market Strategy and the perfect tools to manage it properly.

What is SaaS Go To Market Strategy

All the things we need to do to ensure a Sweet SaaS product launch.

Top Reasons Why We Need a Special SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy

1. Mindfulness – When we launch a new product, we need the ability to be aware, to pause and think, and to ask questions like ‘Why?’
2. Expertise and Trustworthiness – SaaS customers are looking for a long-term digital solution. Be the one. Cover all the bases
3. Money on my mind. Is it worth it? Or, at the very least, is it potentially worth it?
4. You are not all that– Don’t fake it until you make it. Just make it. Work hard in planning and execution.

7 Parts of a SaaS Go-To-Market Strategy

1. Target audience
2. Competitors
3. Branding & Pricing
4. SEO Strategy
5. Lead Generation
6. Feature Marketing
7. GTM KPIs

SaaS Go To Market 1: Target audience

Target audience: Classic. Activate your imagination, talk to yourself /team and understand very well who the target audience of your product is. You can use customer surveys of competitors and relevant leads and then perform audience analysis and build personal profiles. Try Centiment, Centiment has a database of thousands of experts in various fields who answer surveys.

SaaS Go To Market 2: Competitors

Someone will hit the jackpot, preferably your company. SaaS companies with a similar product and deep pockets know how to sweat it out. Study your competitors like you study for the SATs. Try Similarweb.

Similarweb is an eye-opening tool when it comes to understanding the competitive landscape.

Competitor analysis key features in Similarweb tool:

• Free basic package, no need to register!
• User-friendly 
• Benchmark your company against the industry to inform your growth strategy and analyze market trends.
• Competitors’ analysis based on geographic data
• Competitors’ analysis based on demographic data
• Audience analysis
• Displays the technological tools and advertising tools used by competitors (an excellent tool for identifying the sources of competitors’ leads)

SaaS Go To Market 3: Branding & Pricing

What’s your Rap name?

For famous musicians, using My Rap Name (Use it, it’s fun) can solve part of the branding problem. But for SaaS companies, branding is a bit more complicated. Click here for The Complete Guide to SaaS Branding in 2024 by Desire Marketing.

Check out my post about SaaS pricing here: ‘The Best 7 SaaS Pricing Models out there.’

SaaS Go To Market 4: SEO Strategy

Hi Google, I’m gonna make you fall in love with me. Make sure potential customers can find you even if they aren’t actively looking.

Here are some quick “Battle of the words” terms to implement as part of your SEO Strategy

• Keyword research – What are potential customers searching for. Each digital tool on the list provides a range of keyword research features, such as the number of searches for each keyword, keyword ranking, related keywords, and more. Link to a free tool
• Keyword Mapping – All related keywords should appear in the content.
• Skip your instincts and let Google’s autocomplete do the work and show you how people genuinely search and what they truly type.
• Long Tail – Essentially, focus on longer and more specific key terms that can help us achieve higher rankings. For example, when considering a furniture store, the term “buy a table” is quite common on Google, and highly competitive due to the number of people searching for it. Now, think about “buy a solid wood table” – this is a long-tail key term that is less frequently searched, resulting in less competition, and it’s more accurate for targeting a specific audience.
• Improve and update existing content (Content Refreshing) and consistently add new content to the website with an emphasis on keywords.

Here are 5 basic examples that are easiest to implement.

• Try to include the focus keyword in the URL.
• The most important keywords should appear in the first paragraph.
• Include keywords in your titles.
• Internal links (links to content within your website) and external links (links to content outside your website)
• Tag photos with the relevant keywords. Link to the full list on Ben Dean’s website.

Try Ahrefs

Ahrefs, a Singapore-based SaaS company established in 2010, specializes in providing online SEO tools and educational materials for marketing professionals.

Key Features:

• 7-day free trial!
• User-friendly Interface.
• Allows analysis of search terms, including competitors’ keywords.
• SERP (search engine results page) Tracker.
• Website Link Checker.
• Enables you to identify the top-performing pages of competitors.
• Content Explorer – Content analysis with a focus on search terms.
• Advanced Reports.
• Keywords Explorer and Related phrases.
• Searcher intent
• Competitor Backlink analysis.
• Competitors’ Keywords analysis.
• PPC keywords analysis.
• Content analysis.
• Traffic analysis.
• Rank Tracker.
• One Page SEO
• Price starts at $99 a month

SaaS Go To Market Strategy 5: Lead Generation

What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation is the method of reaching potential customers, primarily through online tools. Any process that ends with us having contact details like Email, phone number, or at least an interest – is to generate a lead.

And that’s not all. Let’s not forget MQL

What is MQL?

Quality Leads/Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) are leads that, according to a set of criteria we set in advance, we estimate that they eventually can become customers for real – we identify a genuine potential for a Sale.

How do you identify lead quality?

Quality Leads are, for example, leads that read a post, ask questions in a chat, visit the pricing page, book a demo or click on a video.

Here’s a tool I use for high-quality SaaS leads:

Generate Quality Leads (MQL) with Unbounce

Unbounce, an American SaaS company founded in 2009, offers a Campaign management system and Landing page builder.

How It Works:

Unbounce campaigns are Digital Events we have created to promote promotions, increase sales, newsletter subscriptions, demo subscriptions, leave contact information, etc. For each such digital event, we create a dedicated landing page. Example of a campaign: A special promotion for Valentine’s Day.

Key Features:

• 14-day free trial!
• User Friendly
• Unlimited landing pages, popups, and sticky bars.
• Drag and drop interface 
• Optimized Page Sections
• Copy Assistant.
• Copy Insights.
• Optimize your landing pages so they bring in the qualified leads
• Price starts at $74 a month

Click here for more top Tools to Generate Quality Leads 2024

SaaS GTM (Go-to-Market) Strategy 6: Feature Marketing

What is SaaS Feature marketing ?

Feature marketing is a SaaS marketing strategy that focuses on updating existing features or adding new features to an existing product as part of a company’s efforts to retain customers or attract new customers.

I decided to choose SaaS Feature Marketing as one of the parts because sometimes our new product launch involves simply adding more features and wrapping them in a nice new package.

SaaS GTM (Go To Market) 7: GTM KPIs

While the founders are waiting for someone to pour money, or in more polite terms, raising capital, marketers need to generate demand now! Key Performance Indicators for Early-stage startup (KPIs) are particularly relevant to a Go-to-Market Strategy, which is a relatively short-term strategy.

Here are the Top 10 KPIs for the SaaS GTM (Go-to-Market):

1. Total New Leads
2. MRR Monthly Recurring Revenue
3. MQL Marketing Qualified Leads
4. SQL Sales Qualified Leads
5. LVR Lead Velocity Rate
6. Lead-to-Customer
7. Churn Rate
8. CPL Cost Per Lead
9. CAC Customer Acquisition Cost
10. SaaS Magic Number

For more information on the KPIs above, click here.

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