In today's digital age, SaaS social media marketing has become an essential part of any SaaS company when looking to connect with its audience, build brand awareness, and drive sales.
Freshworks has recently become India's first SaaS startup to be listed on Nasdaq. But it isn't alone.
The software-as-a-service model continues to soar with many startups going public and writing big stories, including HubSpot, Intuit, Salesforce, Twilio, Zoom Video Communications, and Shopify.
In fact, the total size of the public SaaS market in 2020 was projected to reach $157 billion. And 93 percent of CIOs are adopting or planning to adopt cloud SaaS.
So, it’s safe to say the industry is poised for greater heights. And if you run a SaaS company, the opportunities are innumerable.
But then that’s where the good news end and the challenge begins.
In this blog, you will explore:
Here are some reasons why SaaS marketing is different:
Overall, SaaS marketing is different because it requires a unique set of skills, tools, and strategies that are tailored to the unique characteristics of selling a software product through the internet.
SaaS marketers must be highly focused on nurturing customer relationships, optimizing digital channels, and making data-driven decisions to drive growth and revenue.
The SaaS market is also highly competitive, requiring you to have a smart (and efficient) social media marketing strategy that edges the competition and unlocks a consistent revenue stream. And this is a challenge!
Social media marketing for SaaS companies can be tricky.
Whether in the B2B or B2C segment, your product isn’t very “simple”. It requires explanations and elements of storytelling.
You need to get in front of the target audience with, at times, uninteresting concepts and content that holds educational value, which may not necessarily appeal to everyone.
In addition to competition and conceptualizing your social campaigns, there are several other frictions on the way as well. Like, human’s reduced attention span, poor organic reach, and lack of brand credibility.
Also, it’s worth noting that with social media marketing, you aren’t just competing with names in your industry but also across the board.
You’re competing with the biggest brands in the world that are trying to show up on an individual’s social media feed and grab their attention.
All these combine to make social media marketing for SaaS companies challenging.
More precisely, the answer for "how to increase social media followers" becomes complex for SaaS brands.
With the above points made, there are certain approaches you can adopt with your social media marketing strategy that enable the growth of your social media followers across platforms.
Here are 23 tips on social media marketing for SaaS brands to gain more followers:
The SaaS products can be a bit difficult to understand, especially in the B2B segment.
What is it? What does it help with? What pain points does it solve? What are its features? Who is it made for?
These are a few questions about your product that should be clearly answered. And what better way to do that than with animated social media saas videos?
Animation works much better when explaining products and creating SaaS product demos. SaaS videos are more visually appealing with higher retention value. They are also more engaging.
This Saas video explains what Slack is and how it solves problems. The video is engaging and works best to explain the brand on social media platforms.
Check out 5 best SaaS explainer videos to help you lower your customer acquisition cost
It’s 2022 and the quantity of the content matters just as much as quality.
The more content you produce, the more growth opportunities you will discover.
So, if your saas social media marketing strategy is aligned to the one-post-a-day concept, it’s a mistake.
Create a content calendar for your social media handles. And make sure the posting frequency on all platforms is high; post multiple times a day. This is the cornerstone to driving awareness and engagement.
Put the face of your employees, customers, and other stakeholders ahead in saas social media campaigns. Post their quotes, pictures, and videos; tag them.
It will enhance your brand’s trust value.
Your audience will see there are real people working behind the SaaS brand and that your social media presence isn’t mechanical or robotized.
This will help you build a human connection with them, inevitably leading to higher engagement and brand sustainability.
This isn’t specific to social media marketing for SaaS but marketing in general.
Your (successful) competitors are the biggest source of learning.
Audit their social media game. Check out their posting frequency, the kind of content they publish, and how they present their brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and other platforms.
Take inspiration from them.
Identify things that they are doing right and implement those things in your own campaigns.
Influencer marketing in SaaS isn’t as saturated as it is in other industries. And this is an opportunity you can tap on!
Identify the key influencers and opinion leaders in your niche. Then, connect with them and find out a way they can put your brand in front of their audience.
Pro tip: Don’t look at their number of followers. Pick influencers who have high engagement and enjoy a good reputation among their audience.
The psychology you use Facebook with is much different than when you use LinkedIn.
Each social media platform is unique in how people use them and with which mindset.
So, posting the same content across all platforms is a bad idea. Instead, your content should be contextualized per the psychographics of each platform.
Use the tone, format, and message in your copies that are more relevant to specific platforms.
You already know it: On many platforms, organic reach and engagement have dipped significantly.
So, you need to invest in paid ads to drive brand awareness and get the wheel rolling.
It’s very difficult now to increase your social media followers from zero to a thousand based just on organic efforts.
Craft better social media ad campaigns, reach out to the right people with the right message at the right time and convert them into a follower or fan. You can try 3D animation ads, here is the reason why.
Some brands are goofy, others inspiring; some sarcastic, others professional.
Some of the biggest SaaS brands have their distinct brand identity and voice. And that’s what you need.
Define how you want to portray your brand on social media platforms; how would it be its personality. Once you have decided on that, stick to it to build consistency in your messaging.
This brand consistency, in the long run, will be your ultimate answer to how to increase social media followers.
If you have too many competitors, there are a few ways you can truly stand out from the crowd and build a separate space for your brand. Using animated SaaS videos is one of those ways.
A good animated SaaS explainer video packed with the right visuals, story, and sound can stand you out.
And if these videos are posted regularly on social media platforms, they can make a lasting impact on your audience, driving higher engagement and conversion.
Also, animated social media SaaS videos can have their viral moments, bringing you a lot of top-of-the-funnel attention and increasing the number of your social media followers.
So, make sure your social media marketing for SaaS brand has animation integrated into it.
Recommended Read: How to Make Animated Videos: A Guide to Getting Started
You will have more followers and engagement on some platforms over others. Maybe your SaaS brand is big on LinkedIn but not on Facebook.
You can implement cross-channel promotion wherein you promote your (less-followed) page on another platform (where you have more followers).
Since people already know your brand and value proposition, many of them would follow you across the board.
Note, however, this will only work the right way if you publish unique content on different platforms. (Revisit tip #6)
Your brand’s story is another one of the things that can position you apart in the crowd.
Why does your brand exist? How it came into being? What are the initial challenges it faced? What has been its biggest breakthrough?
The stories of your SaaS brand can cover these elements. And posting such stories on social media, in different ways and forms, can add depth to your brand presence, building a connection with the audience.
This can increase the number of your social media followers, as well as drive engagement, and build trust value.
Remember, people connect with stories and not information. A social media marketing strategy that uses brand stories assures excellent results in the long run.
This SaaS explainer video made for Sponsorium tells a story. It emphasizes sponsorships and how they make it easier. It uses cartoon animation to make it relatable.
Engagement is the cornerstone of building a community.
It is also a fitting answer to “how to grow social media followers for business”.
The more people engage with your social media posts, the better it is for your organic reach. Higher engagement also boosts shareability.
So, make sure your posts on social media platforms are aimed at driving engagement.
Ask questions, conduct polls, and encourage people to leave comments. This will create a snowball effect, attracting more new people to your SaaS brand and turning them into social media followers.
Ending your every social media post with prompts to like and share might look too needy for your brand.
However, once in a while, remind people that you would appreciate it if they liked and shared your post in their circle.
If you enjoy good brand identity and trust, such occasional prompts can easily convert into higher organic reach and more followers on social media.
Often SaaS products lack practicality, especially if the use case isn’t conveyed thoroughly through copies or animated video. This is more prevalent in the B2B segment.
Sharing SaaS case studies on social media can inform the audience that your product is a great solution for a certain pain point. It can explain to them the use case of your products.
You can share case studies through images or animated social media SaaS videos. You can also post website links of case studies.
So, the people who don’t already follow you on social media can come to your profile, check out these case studies and possibly convert into followers.
You have many happy customers or clients. Encourage them to leave reviews or testimonials. Then re-post these reviews on social media platforms in the form of images, screenshots, and SaaS videos like SaaS customer stories. You can get inspired from these examples.
Seeing other happy clients/customers can build a positive image of your brand in front of anyone who checks out your social feeds. It can bolster your brand’s trust, which can then enhance the level of engagement and shareability.
Using irrelevant hashtags may bring you momentary organic reach, but it does nothing more. In almost every case, it won’t impact your social media followers.
And people who do end up following you through social media posts with irrelevant hashtags, they may never choose to engage with your SaaS brand.
Something like this can really hurt your organic reach and engagement on Facebook and Instagram, especially when you rely on Instagram Videos in the form of Reels to reach a wider audience.
So, avoid populating your social media posts with irrelevant and untargeted hashtags.
This is one of the ways to increase engagement and build a strong community.
Always respond to people’s comments and replies on every platform. Even if it's with a simple “thank you” or an emoji, do it! Such small responses can do big things for your social media following and engagement.
Many big SaaS brands are on board with this, and you should too.
Topical campaigns can help you tap on the trending topics and bring you attention, which can then be converted to social media followers.
Of course, topical marketing is easier said than done. For one, you have to be smart in terms of how you’re connecting your brand with the trending topic.
Second, you want to avoid any PR disaster, which is common in topical marketing. Poor messaging or integrating your brand with the wrong topic can put you in unnecessary controversies.
So, do try topical marketing; it can bring you incredible results. But, at the same time, be cautious with how you do it.
Checkout our blog on the future of marketing in digital world.
Even when you have a defined target segment, there are many people within. And those people may have different tastes and preferences.
So, it’s usually a good idea to experiment with different types of content on social media, right from 2-liner quotes and infographics to SaaS explainer videos and polls.
Such diversity in content can help you satiate different people in your target segment. It can also break the monotony of your regular social media posts, keeping things interesting.
Real-time engagement is a great social media marketing tactic to build a big community. So, you have more than enough reasons to go live on social media platforms.
Put yourself or your employees live on social media. You can even hire people to take care of such live sessions.
Engage with your audience live. Talk to them about your products, ask them about their pain points, and encourage them to leave comments.
Regular live sessions on social media can improve your brand identity and boost organic reach, thereby bringing you new followers.
This is straightforward and a must. Spend time with your analytics tools, check out the key metrics, and determine how well your social media marketing is performing.
Check the impact of each social media post and see which ones have brought you more followers and engagement.
Find out what type of content is working better, what CTAs are driving more action, which campaigns are doing bad, and more.
Use insights taken from analytics tools to modify and improve your social media marketing strategy.
Building a large following on social media will take time.
Even when you’re investing in paid ads to get in front of people, driving engagement and building a brand will remain a challenge, demanding time.
So, if you truly want to get big on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, consistency is the most important word.
Keep putting in the work. Keep engaging with people (even if it’s just one person). Keep posting interesting copies and animated SaaS videos.
You will eventually start seeing better results and more social media followers. And as you amass more followers, the growth would be compounded.
In fact, many experts would respond to “how to increase social media followers” with “consistency”. This is how big brands are built.
You’re running a SaaS business. Your primary goal isn’t to gain more social media followers but to make sales and generate revenue. (Isn’t it why you’re working so hard to grow on social media?)
So, it’s essential to continue driving conversion from whatever number of followers you have.
Don’t wait to have a 100k following before you start focusing on sales. Even if you have just 1,000 followers, have a defined conversion strategy that takes those followers and converts them into leads.
Do not let lead generation become your secondary priority. Gaining followers, capturing leads, and driving sales – all, with their unique strategies in place, can work in parallel.
Some of these SaaS social media marketing tips are aimed at fueling your organic reach and engagement. This, in turn, can put your brand in front of more and more new people. And if your content is top-notch, these “new people” may eventually become your social media followers.
Of course, there’s much more to social media marketing strategy than just the given tips. For instance, topics like paid ads, influencer marketing, topical marketing, animated social media SaaS video, and brand storytelling are extensive conversations in themselves.
But, in the end, understand that the right social media marketing can take your business to newer heights.
And the social media marketing tips mentioned above can increase your followers, edge competitors, and positively impact your business in unimaginable ways.