SaaS marketing challenges

Software-as-a-Service (Saas) is a distribution model for software, where the provider hosts and provides access to the system over the internet. The primary draw of SaaS providers is that you do not need to install and set up the application in-house. Promoting SaaS applications poses a unique set of challenges.

Lead generation

The biggest challenge is trying to balance SEO and lead generation. The traditional model for SaaS is to provide high-quality gated content that helps capture leads. The problem is that search engines will not spider that content, so it takes marketing dollars to promote the gated content. You have to decide at some point if you want lead generation or traffic using SEO.

Content protection

Google will index anything that it can spider. Often, it spiders content that should not be public. Check Google returns for your domain regularly to make sure that no internal or customer data is public unless that is the intention.

Visitor segmentation

One of the benefits of a SaaS application is that existing customers will go directly to the login page. The login page is a completely different domain or sub-domain. Lead generation and visitor tracking are easier when only prospective customers come to your main website. However, use Google Analytics to filter out any customers who come to the main website to find the login link.

These are just three examples of challenges that are unique to the SaaS space, there are many more, although they will vary on the vertical and type of software.