Published On: 08/05/2019By Categories: Uncategorized

We saw the other day how to acquire traffic for SaaS companies. We saw three sources of passive traffic and how to work with them and today we are going to see the active traffic sources, which require more effort by the company but it can also bring us many benefits.

If the other day we saw direct traffic, organic traffic, links and referrals, today we see the e-mail, social media and advertising as a source of traffic for companies:

E-mail

On average, almost 5% of the traffic received by the largest SaaS companies is by e-mail.

There are two types of e-mails: Hot and cold

Hot mails are those that you send to the mailing list you already had, that is, you send it to people who have given you permission to write to them in one way or another. The return on investment (ROI) is 38:1, that is, it is worth it because you are not going to find that traffic sources as safe and cost-effective. If you are a small company it is highly recommended to increase that mailing list of people who have given you permission to send them an e-mail. And it is even more advisable to nourish that list. The worst thing you can do is to forget it.

Cold mails are those that reach people who do not know you. That does not mean that they are sent to random people. It means that you have to find who can be your target audience, for example, you can find a company that could benefit from your product and find who could take purchasing decision. That is a good goal for a cold mail. So it is important to make a search of senders and personalization (and the more you personalize it, better).

E-mail is one of the classic ways to acquire traffic for SaaS companies and the most effective one.

Social Media

If your SaaS is B2B, forget about social networks. That clear. Although there are nuances: Facebook no. Twitter, so-so. LinkedIn Ok.  The average rate of participation per post on Facebook is 0.09 and on Twitter it is half. Worth it? Do not.

If your business is B2C then do not forget social media.

Social networks have many functions: they not only are used to attract customers, they also serve to monitor if they talk about you and to inform your customers. Of course, if you are going to have them abandoned, close them. It is better not to have a social network than to have it abandoned. If you have abandoned it, you will give a poor image of you. A social network also offers to contact you easily: for many people it is more convenient to contact by Twitter than by mail.

The purpose of social networks is to reach two kind of people: your current customers and your potential customers. That is why you have to locate where they both are and choose those social networks: a labor lawyer is not the same as a dress shop: probably the first one finds LinkedIn its natural place and the second one can succeed on Instagram or Pinterest.

And if you have resources to create a video, YouTube is one of the biggest sources of traffic. But, if you have it you must keep it, if you do not do it you will give a feeling of being abandoned.

Anyway, every company is a world and you have to experiment. Maybe for a company Facebook is the best platform, for another it is Instagram, Quora or a subreddit … etc. You do not know what is going to work until you try it. And the same goes for paid ads on social media: there are many social networks and many ways to set up ads in each one. You can target ads, remarketing, promote a post that has been successful, etc. And the important thing is to experiment: as we have said, Instagram does not seem the best social network for a labor lawyer, but perhaps someone knows how to take advantage of it and find a good niche there. Testing is the best because every business is different.

So, social networks are not always the best way to acquire traffic for SaaS companies, but they can not be ignored.

Google Ads

Google Ads is Google’s advertising service. It’s those ads that come out at the top of a search on Google. 50 of the largest SaaS worldwide companies, 47 of them have used Google Ads campaigns.

Google Ads has the advantage that it can be used with little or a lot of investment, which is why it is perfect for companies that are just starting out.

To optimize the investment as much as possible it is worth using keywords for people who are already in the last step of the purchasing process. This is very clear: you can use keywords trying to attract a user who wants to know, for example, the differences between a tablet and an e-book, but that is far from buying, maybe it is better to use one that tries to attract someone that look for ‘best price e-book’.

And without leaving  Google ads, there is another way to advertise that is not on the search pages and sometimes seems to be falling into oblivion: to appear as a banner on other websites. Google is also a leader in this system, but there are other providers.

The problem with ads is that it is not a long-term investment. As soon as you stop paying, you stop receiving, because your ads stop appearing. Unlike SEO, it’s not something you invest in and it keeps giving you revenue. In addition, although you continue paying if you do not change the advertising, it ends up becoming invisible to the reader, because we have a certain selective blindness towards advertisement.

Being something that is paid is even more important to optimize the acquisition of customers than alternatives that “only” involve work, so ads are not usually used to attract customers, but to close sales of customers who are already in a state of decision.

As you can see, there are many ways to acquire traffic for SaaS companies. The important thing is that you try it out yourself because each company is different and what is useful for a few, does not work for another.

So, take tests and more tests!

Source: Mike Sonders

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