SaaS is a fast-growing industry, which means many people would like to invest in this business.
If you are looking forward to starting your SaaS business this year, you will need to learn some basics of the SaaS business model, marketing, and business management if you want to succeed.
Here are some of the essentials you should know about structuring and marketing a SaaS business and taking it to the next level in terms of growth.
How SaaS business model looks like
A SaaS business model involves offering software to users through subscription plans and licenses. Software as a service or SaaS is a delivery model in which a centrally hosted service is rented to customers through subscription plans. If your company is offering or leasing software services to users through a cloud-based system, you are basically into a SaaS business.
Structuring a SaaS company
The kind of organizational structure you choose to work with will depend on the number of employees you have in your business, the startup stage, the level of growth, and the expansion phase the business is at.
In most cases, the structure of a SaaS company will change significantly as the company grows from a team of 5-10 people to a company with 25-50 and beyond 100 employees who work on a full-time basis.
When you break down the roles, responsibilities, and titles of workers in a growing SaaS business, you are likely to have some structure like this one here:
5-10 full-time employees
With 5-10 employees in your business, your SaaS is just starting up. At this phase of the business, you are likely to have one founder responsible for the sales and marketing of the brand’s products and services.
The business model should also have two co-founders. The first co-founder should be responsible for product and technology, while the second will stand up for administration, operations, and processes.
All the founding members of the SaaS will be reporting to these three senior employees of the company. Each of the operations will remain vertical.
25-50 full-time employees
With a SaaS business on this site, you will need more full-time employees to guarantee your customers quality services. It means you need more employees to ensure round the clock operations of the software.
All the employees you hire at this stage of the business should all fit in the three categories of Sales and Marketing, Product and Technology, and Administration and Processes. You have to group all these employees to operate under one of the three senior employees of the company founders.
The additional employees in your SaaS company will have different responsibilities, identifiable by titles like Product Development Manager, Accounting Manager, Sales Manager, and many others.
If you realize your business is employing more than 50+ workers, you should now start thinking of inviting in more senior staff. You can include c-suite executive roles in the management of the SaaS company.
100 plus full-time employees
When you have your business expanding that fast, you should hire a CEO with effective skills in corporate leadership.
At this stage, your SaaS business is well-established with a relatively large user base. It is upon you to add more roles to the company. The roles you pick will depend on the kind of market you operate in, the business needs, and most importantly, the trajectory.
With over 100 workers in your SaaS business working on a full-time basis, you can add more roles like VP Marketing and VP Customer Success, who report to the Chief Marketing Officer.
Create other posts in the company like VP Finance, VP HR, Director Accounting, and Director Billing, all of whom report to the company’s CFO. All the c-level executives in the SaaS company should all report to the company CEO.
How to market your SaaS business
1- Invest in SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a must-use marketing tool for any SaaS company that looks to improve revenue. The importance of SEO and organic search goes without saying. In most cases, organic traffic accounts for a significant percentage of leads and traffic for some of the largest SaaS companies in the market.
You can invest in SEO services to have your SaaS company rank at the top of search engines like Google. Getting your business to feature at the top of search results improves your online visibility. Most users go online searching for the best software, which means appearing at the top makes you more visible to them.
2 – Leverage PPC advertising
Pay-per-click advertising is another strategy to market your SaaS business to millions of prospects online. There are many SaaS companies and businesses that are using Google to increase their online visibility on specific keywords.
By advertising on the top PPC ad networks, you make your software noticeable to customers with little effort. You can quickly advertise your products and services to customers and start generating instant leads.
3 – Use social media marketing
Social media is one of the best tactics for SaaS growth marketing. Several SaaS companies use social media to inform, educate, and persuade their target customers.
There are over 3.8 billion people active on social media. When you have your business trending on major social platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, you make it easy for people to discover your software.
Social media supports the buyer journey and is one easy way of taking users through the sales funnel. It is also easy to engage with 92% of B2B buyers who are active social media users. Use social media as your storefront and a platform to create brand awareness.
Final Thoughts
Starting and running a SaaS business is never that easy. To be successful, a SaaS business will need a business model that is easy to operate and a marketing team. Every employee and team member in a SaaS company should add some value to the organization and steer growth.
When starting your SaaS business, you should take things one step at a time. Hire the most qualified people to join your company and watch it grow to hire limits.
