Advertising a brand can be a tricky task, no matter what your business is. Some would say that advertising is a science that requires full-time attention, while some would consider it as an art form that integrates a bit of technical know-how, with, and luck in order to be effective.

Yet, regardless of your advertising approach, you cannot be a hundred percent sure if your advertising efforts will pay off. For SaaS companies, advertising could be a lot more challenging. Due to the complexity of the SaaS industry, people do not tend to make impulse buying decisions.

SaaS companies must keep in mind that appealing to the right target audience will require a balanced and calculated effort to succeed. That’s why in order to succeed in advertising your SaaS brand, sticking with best practices and proven techniques in digital marketing is not enough. You must have a keen understanding of these best practices to know which could apply and which does not.

To help you advertise your SaaS company, here are nine common SaaS marketing mistakes you could easily avoid. Underrated Brand Awareness The competitive SaaS industry commonly favors quantifiable growth indicators and sales conversions over target audience brand awareness, which are often considered as a vanity. After all, conversion and sales are much more solid metrics to keep track of than brand awareness.

However, an experienced SaaS marketing agency might say otherwise. With a thoroughly-planned remarketing strategy, your customer’s brand awareness can serve as the seed that could eventually become the start of their buying journey.

Do not take brand awareness for granted. Consider guest posting, social media marketing, or pay-per-click advertising if you have the resources. This is vital in widening your top-level sales funnel, which increases the probability of conversion.

1. Going For A Broad Audience

In marketing, knowing your target audience well is a vital foundation for a cohesive and effective advertising campaign. You do not want to spend too much on advertising costs just to reach a broad population. Doing this will just make it hard for your company to sustain an effective advertising campaign, or you might not even tap the right people for your business. 

This means you should be able to find the right target audience size that could sustain your expected leads and sales, which could be tricky to achieve. In fact, a survey among SaaS marketers found that 71.4% tend to target an audience that is too broad. While this might appear logical at first, it is actually a risky approach. What usually happens is that you try to get your message across to everyone and end up with no specific audience at all.

To combat this, you need to build a client persona. This is a representation of your target customer based on demographics (e.g., age, gender, job title) and psychographic (why would they need your software?) data. Doing so allows you to set the right audience parameters whenever you run a paid advertising campaign. It also lets you create content that will resonate with them.

2. Not Creating and Promoting Engaging Content

In order for your marketing campaign to be effective in the long run, you should start investing in quality content in order to keep your target audience and current customers engaged.

Content is a very important part in advertising because almost all the search engines, especially Google, use quality content as a key component to rank websites on search results. Your website’s content also plays a vital role in your page bounce rate and page engagement rate.

Quality content is a sure way to serve value to your potential customers. Luckily, there are plenty of techniques to help you create killer content for your marketing and advertising needs.

Some examples are:

1. Blog posts
2. Infographics
3. Data and statistics
4. Case studies and white papers
5. Ebooks
6. Demos and webinars
7. Podcasts

It is just a matter of choosing the right content format that suits your time and budget constraints, as well as what the majority of target users consume.

3. Overlooking UGC Opportunities

Let me be honest about content generation: There will be a time that it will become hard for your team to churn out content at a healthy pace. It could also be too costly to hire seasoned writers to keep your content stream flowing. This is where the wonders of user-generated content come in.

UGC is probably one of the most powerful persuasion tools that your business could use. Potential customers tend to be more enticed to try your SaaS product if they see real-life testimonials from your customers. It is also more relatable for them as they may find the same situations in some of your customers.

With user-generated content, you will be able to give potential customers an idea about your product without spending too much time creating new content.

4. Alienating Current Customers

Because the SaaS model relies on customer subscriptions, retention becomes an integral part of your business. This is why you should not forget about your current customers when advertising your brand. In fact, selling to an existing customer is 6 – 7 times more affordable than acquiring new clients.

Gaining new customers should not be the main focus of your SaaS business, but rather, you should put more effort into keeping your current customers.

5. Failing to Recognize Audience Intent Signals

When searching for information online, the words that users type in their search bars do not just help them find what they are looking for. It is also a way for marketers to find clues on what they are looking for and understand the context of their intent. 

Let’s take Asana as an example. Their marketing team prioritizes people who are searching for a “team collaboration software,” as these people are more likely to be leading a team in their companies and are likely to be decision-makers.

This also explains why you would not see Asana search ads when you simply search for “free productivity tools.” Even without explicitly saying that they are willing to pay, the first set of users could be more likely to pay for a service that can allow them to collaborate with their team with the least friction.

6. Overlooking The Benefits Of SEO

Here’s the thing, unless you are a popular SaaS provider like Slack and Shopify, there is a big chance the Internet users come across your website through Google search.

Thus, it is imperative that you also leverage SEO to your company’s advantage. This is to help have an online presence, improve your website’s ranking on organic search results, and be visible to your target customers. Doing so prevents you from losing out to your competitors.

7. Underutilizing Social Media

Most SaaS companies tend to approach their marketing through a B2B perspective. This often results in social media underutilization, where they only stay active on LinkedIn. However, your potential target audience might not even be on LinkedIn.

Using various social media platforms allow you to connect to your potential customers on a level deeper than their business environment. Some companies are even taking it up a notch as they use Snapchat and Instagram to engage their customers and share thoughtful insights and sneak-peeks into their processes and company culture.

This gives your potential customers an idea of the kind of brand that you are trying to embody. Moreover, social media tells your audience that there are people behind your brand. If you are going to focus on a single social media platform, make sure that you know your target audience well-enough so you can confidently market on your chosen platform. 

8. Forgetting About the Competition

Nowadays, it is fairly easy to build a SaaS platform. Startup companies tend to appear in the landscape every now and then, making the playing field more crowded and competitive.

In any industry, staying aware of your competitor is crucial right from the inception of your business up to your day-to-day operations. This allows you to figure out your SaaS product’s unique value proposition (UVP), as well as properly differentiate your product and provide better service than your competition. This will also help your business to adjust your offers and entice customers to choose your SaaS platform over other companies.

9. Not Using Tracking Pixels To Your Website

One of the easiest and most effective ways to catch customers that got away the first time around is by using tracking pixels on your website. Without this, customers who visited your website will have a lesser chance of remembering about you and your brand.

What’s amazing about using tracking pixels is that it leaves a trail for your ads to reach people who already showed interest in your product by visiting your website. Plus, you can install the tracking pixel code on your website even if you do not have an ad running yet. When paired with a strong advertising campaign, tracking pixels could significantly increase your conversion.

As the digital marketing and advertising landscape undergo a constant change, be sure to know these pitfalls by heart. Avoid these SaaS marketing mistakes and significantly increase your competitive advantage.