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30 Best SaaS Lead Generation Strategies

Lead generation is a long and complicated process. It has many steps and stages, and it might sound a little intimidating.

But we’ve got you covered. All you need is here in this article: 30 Best SaaS Lead Generation Strategies to get you going.

1. Set SMART goals

When you are deciding on a lead generation strategy —or any strategy really— your first step should always be setting a goal.

You can’t reach anywhere if you don’t know where you’re headed.

So, goal setting is the most crucial and initial step while creating a strategy. However, it is not just enough that you shout out a goal, you need to make sure that it is:

  • Specific
  • Measurable
  • Attainable
  • Realistic
  • Time-bound

In other words, you need to set a SMART goal for your business in order to have a driving force that will get you to form and execute a successful lead generation strategy.

2. Define your buyer persona

Think of a buyer persona as a large canvas with everything about your target audience —their pain points, aspirations, interests, buying behaviors, etc. It will help you understand your audience and align yourself with their interests and needs.

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You should focus on what your buyer persona faces. What are their problems? Why are they looking for a solution? How are they looking for a solution?

Then, you need to focus on your business. How does your products and services address their problems? How are you offering them a solution?

This will give you an idea of how aligned your strategies are with the people you aim to target. It will also paint you a clear picture of what types of leads would be more qualified.

3. Create buyer’s journey maps

What path your customers follow in order to become customers is their buyer’s journey —and that sits right at the heart of a lead generation strategy.

A buyer’s journey map is composed of different stages and it is really important for you to properly segment the map and see where your leads are.

Different buyer’s journey stages are:

  • Awareness Stage: Leads at this stage have just discovered a pain point and are eager to learn more.
  • Consideration Stage: At this stage, leads are looking for solutions to their problem and eliminating alternatives.
  • Decision Stage: These leads have been searching for longer and your company is in between their top choices.

Your strategy should depend on which stage a lead is at on the buyer’s journey map. Different stages require different types of content, information, and keywords.

4. Keyword research for high-level SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, has always been and still is one of the most essential strategies for SaaS lead generation.

How much you work on the SEO value of your content determines how much visibility you get —which essentially determines your lead generation.

You can work on your SEO by:

  • Doing in-depth keyword research that will optimize your search engine result page ranking.
  • Finding title tags with high value that are not too long nor too short to ensure search engines put them where you want it to be.
  • Writing clear and on-point description that make it easier for your content pop-up top.

5. Increase your website speed

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No one wants to wait for your website to load. Realistically, a new lead will only wait for 3 seconds. Any longer than that, they’re gone.

You don’t want to risk losing a potential customer just because your website was a little slow, right? This is why you always need make sure that your website download speed is at its optimum.

A slow website is going to make you lose leads and potential buyers, but not only that, it will also lower your search engine rank.

6. Make sure your website is responsive

Your future customers can be quite literally anywhere. They could be searching from their desks, laptops, mobile devices, or even tablets.

Ensuring that your website or website theme is responsive will let you offer a better visitor experience. Responsiveness basically means that your website automatically adjusts itself to fit in the screen of the visitor.

This might look like a minor detail, like your website speed, but it is actually very important. What your people experience during their initial visits to your website has a big say in your lead generation.

7. Optimize the use of video content

Content marketing is always important for lead generation, but it does need a little bit of switching up every once in a while.

Not every lead is interested in textual content. Video content is a great alternative to help you reach wider communities and generate qualified leads.

Video Hub by WalkMe

The beauty of videos is that you can do almost anything with it. Tutorials? You got it. Additional information? You got it. Entertainment? You got it.

And not only can you produce any type of content, but you can also easily use the tone you want. You can be more intimate or funny with videos than you can be with text. It is also makes it much easier to address more intense feelings and more closely reach leads.

8. Offer value in your blog posts

Having a blog on your website can be great way to show that you are an industry thought-leader. It is an outlet for you to share your knowledge and expertise with your audience.

A blog can help you drive more traffic as well as allow you to address leads at different stages of the buyer’ journey.

There are two key points with a website blog:

  1. Value — Your content should be at a certain quality and should offer guidance, assistance, or knowledge for the audience.
  2. Consistency — You should show that you are committed and able to produce content. Ideally, you should share at least two blog posts each week.

9. Guest blog posts

The content on your own platforms is really important, but in order to widen your marketing reach, you need to appear other platforms with different audiences.

Guest posting is not dead and if you do it right, it can still drive a lot of traffic. Here are a few tips to get you to experience guest posting at its finest:

  • Select the right site for your content. Who is your audience? Who is their audience? Where do they intersect? How does your content compliment theirs? How does their platform affect your appearance? Consider questions like these and try to find the best fit for your business.
  • Go for websites with high authority and visibility. When you work with businesses that have a certain stature in the industry, their endorsement is going to mean a lot. So, look for websites getting a good amount of exposure and those with credibility.
  • Offer valuable content. This is not just to get other websites to feature your content, but also to show their audience that you have something to offer them. High-quality content proves that you know what you are doing and that you can provide leads with solutions to their pain-points.

10. Premium content (Gated Content)

Creating gated content on your website is a great way to target qualified leads and provide yourself access to leads’ contact information.

Examples of premium or gated content could be:

  • Video tutorials,
  • E-books,
  • Step-by-step guides,
  • More in-depth articles, etc.

The people who would want access to these types of content will most probably be leads that are very inclined to become customers. So, with gated content you will get a chance to know your qualified leads and also collect their contact information.

11. Free Trial

Another very powerful lead generation strategy is offering your entire services for free over a limited amount of time.

You should of course do this in exchange of their contact information so that you can continue with more personal marketing methods that apply to leads further down the marketing funnel.

A free trial gives leads an opportunity to test out the full potential of your services and see for themselves whether you are a good solution for their problems.

It also helps you segment prospects and identify the higher-quality leads. This gives you an idea of which stage a customer is at and guides your future marketing.

12. Try hosting webinars

Webinars are a newly-rising and entertaining form of content, as well as a strong lead generation strategy.

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Webinars by Lemlist

They come with a lot of benefits for you and for your audience. You get to gain credibility and authority in your niche while your audiences have a change to obtain useful information and familiarize with your company.

There are just a few things to keep in mind when hosting a webinar:

  • Promotion — Do it on your website, on your social media, send emails. Just make sure that people know you’re having a webinar.
  • Reminders — A webinar is probably not the number one thing on anyone’s mind. So, make sure that you sen at least two or three reminder messages or emails to those who have signed up to make sure no one misses the webinar.
  • Scarcity — This is a strategy you should use to attract more potential customers to your webinar. Use phrases like “Last 24 Hours!” or “Only 5 Places Left!” to drive attention and increase sign-ups.

13. Lead nurturing

You need lead nurturing if you want to be able to form successful customer relationships that will stick around for a long while.

Lead nurturing starts with forming bonds with your leads at every stage of their buyer’s journey as well as the sales funnel.

This strategy is very powerful because it allows you to create communication between your business and your potential customers while also making you appear as an industry leader. You get a chance to form trust-based relationships and guide leads into becoming prospects.

14. Live-chat or chat-bots

Both live-chat and chat-bots are great ways to boost your customer relationships and offer better experiences while saving time and energy.

They allow you to interact with potential or actual customers with less human resources and still develop loyal relationships.

Try incorporation chat softwares into your website and you will definitely see the positive effects on lead generation and sales conversions.

15. Include CTAs in your email signature

Collecting contact information, creating an email list, and promoting content and products through that channel is a highly effective lead generation strategy. But the best way to optimize your email marketing is to make sure you are calling leads to action.

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Example of an email CTA from Canva

CTAs are not only a call for purchase, but also a sign that shows that there is more to learn. That’s why many interested leads will actually be clicking on those and moving further down the marketing funnel.

16. Repurpose content

Once again, content marketing is everything. You need to constantly create new and high-quality content to nurture leads and keep your website interesting.

But why just create the content and leave it as it is if there is a way you can further benefit from it?

If you had pieces of content that did particularly well, you can try repurposing in order to benefit from your content to its full potential.

For example, you can transform a well-performing blog article into a video explanation and if that does well, you can convert that into podcast episode.

This helps you keep your consistency as well as content quality. Many businesses like HubSpot also use this strategy to optimize their content.

17. Optimize social-media content distribution

Social media is an extremely powerful platform for lead generation. It is personal and it helps you to distribute your content to each type of lead you have.

One thing that might be tricky is that paid ads on social media tend to get ignored very often. You can work on this by really carefully picking your target audience, so that you know your posts won’t go by.

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LinkedIn might be a good option for SaaS companies since the community there is mostly professionals with business-related goals —but this doesn’t mean that other types of social media platforms won’t work.

You can still find ways to perfectly utilize Twitter, Facebook, or even Instagram. All you need is to know where your audience is and how to catch their attention.

18. Partner with established companies

Well-known and accomplished companies in Saas —and other industries too— have a certain authority. Partnering with businesses that are leaders in your niche can help you in many ways.

It is going to create a very nice impression. Just like we said in guest posting, endorsement from strong companies will really make you look good.

These big companies tend to have a very wide and qualified group of leads. Being seen on their platform —either hosting an event, creating content together, or even guest posting— is going to increase your reach and help you access their audience as well.

19. Create trust with user testimonials

There is nothing more effective than the good old word of mouth when it comes to establishing a trust-based environment.

People will listen to and trust those before them more than anyone else. You should consider including customer testimonials on your landing pages to provide that to your leads.

They will want to know what it was like for others to use your product or services. It will also prove that you care about your users’ opinions.

20. Referral marketing

Another very strong lead generation strategy is referral marketing. The goal with it is to get others to do the lead generation for you.

There are many ways you can practice referral marketing:

  • Referral programs: You can set up programs in which your existing customers would benefit from inviting other people to use your services.
  • Affiliate marketing: You can get content marketers to promote your products and services.
  • Influencer marketing: You can get in contact with influencers for them to also promote your brand.

21. Extend your influencer outreach

Influencers are authorities in their areas and each one of them has a certain audience that are very likely to be affected by the influencer’s words.

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What you need to do is target those influencers with audience bases that align with yours and work with them.

You don’t need to stay limited to the software niche. Your influencer outreach can be anyone who are close to your buyer persona. In other words, the influencers you’re searching for could be anyone who would be interested in and would purchase your products.

22. Try out click pop-ups

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Click pop-ups are basically pop-ups that are activated only when a visitor clicks on a certain image or text. They might provide additional information, ask for contact information, or include CTAs.

This certain type of pop-up has been found to be more effective than others (entry, exit, scroll, etc.) because it doesn’t feel like the message is forced. Whereas in other pop-ups, the message comes without the user taking a particular action to receive the message.

23. Google AdWords

Google AdWords help you find the right keywords and phrases so that your ad will be attractive for your target audience.

It might be a little on the expensive side, especially for new startups, but it will definitely be very useful in ad placement and visibility.

24. Social selling

Just like in account-based selling, in social selling you:

  1. Search for and reach out to possible leads,
  2. Work on developing connections with decision-makers,
  3. And build relationships you can benefit from over short-terms sales.
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What makes social selling different is that it is on a much smaller scale and mainly conducted over social media.

You should work on first finding the “ideal” customer profiles and then take action in order to create connections and build relationships.

25. Keep your content branded and special to your company

Branding is one of the most crucial points of content marketing, but also lead generation because your content relates strictly back to your leads.

The leads you hope to attract are a part of your content target audience. It is important that you natively promote your brand through those.

Make sure to:

  • Include your brand logo at each content you produce.
  • Stay loyal to your brand colors and fonts (visuals are important!).
  • Present your brand identity.

All in all, just make sure that your audience knows that they are consuming your content.

26. Provide e-books

Creating and sharing e-books is another very effective lead generation strategy that comes with multiple benefits.

First of all it is very cost-effective because all the content comes from your knowledge and expertise. All you have to do is present it.

Secondly, it is a great way to educate your market niche about a topic related to your products and services. E-books offer a lot of value for leads, and thus draw a lot of attention.

They are also in-depth and specific most of the time, so they are sign that the leads are likely to be interested in your services.

27. Email marketing

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One of the most personalized and high in ROI lead generation strategies is email marketing.

It is great for relationship building since it allows you to connect with leads at every stage of their journey. You can send various different types of emails to any lead at any stage, and it will feel personal and come back to you with positive effects.

Email marketing is very broad and can be a little tricky at times, but luckily we have an Ultimate SaaS Email Marketing Guide that will make sure you’re never lost.

28. Focus on lead quality

No one has the time, money, or resources to spend on every single marketing channel and campaign. Nor, is there any need to.

You need to direct your attention to channels that drive higher-quality leads rather than ones that bring the highest number of leads.

If a channel drives 1,000 leads but only 30 of them are qualified and ready to move on the next stage, that channel isn’t probably the best.

But another channel might only be driving 100 leads, but if 90 of them are qualified, then it’s probably a good idea to invest more in that.

29. Track key metrics and KPIs

Remember the SMART goals you set? Unfortunately just setting them isn’t enough. You also need to keep track of your goals.

There are certain Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, and marketing metrics you regularly need to measure. They will tell you which strategy works and which doesn’t.

Luckily we have prepared a Key SaaS Marketing Metrics Guide for you so that you know exactly what to look for.

30. A/B Split Testing

Last, but not least, conduct A/B Split Testing for your website. This is basically a super easy and simple testing method for you to see which different strategies work better.

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Let’s say, you want to change the position of a CTA button on your home page. To do A/B Split Testing, you will create two different versions of CTA placement and give those to two different groups of visitors.

You will then analyze which CTA position was better performing. This will help you understand which method work more effectively at lead generation.

What’s better is that you can use Split Testing with anything. Copywriting, design, colors, text font, content types, ad placements, basically anything that comes to your mind.

Conclusion

We have covered 30 different, yet each very powerful lead generation strategies. All of these strategies are going to help you through the process of lead generation —whether you have a short sales cycle, or a long one.

All you have to do now is to look back at your company and see which of these strategies would work best for your goal, and start incorporating them.

FAQ

How do you generate SaaS leads?

SaaS lead generation is very broad and can be achieved with many different methods. Here in this article we provided you with 30 different strategies that will help you with lead generation. If you would like more detailed information on different types of marketing and lead generation you can check out our blog to find out more.

What is lead generation software?

A lead generation software works with your business and generate leads, classify them, and route them to marketing and sales teams.
Here are some different lead generation softwares you might want to check out:
1. Leadfeeder
2. Prospect.io
3. HubSpot
4. Pipedrive
5. Intercom

How do you generate SaaS leads?

SaaS lead generation is very broad and can be achieved with many different methods. Here in this article we provided you with 30 different strategies that will help you with lead generation. If you would like more detailed information on different types of marketing and lead generation you can check out our blog to find out more.

What is lead generation software?

A lead generation software works with your business and generate leads, classify them, and route them to marketing and sales teams.

Here are some different lead generation softwares you might want to check out:

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