10 marketing tools for SaaS projects and how to use them

The best tools and softwares to help manage and optimize your SaaS project

You’ve launched a great service or a product, but it is not getting the due consideration that you’d hoped for after the release of your SaaS project. Why? Simply because no one knows about it.

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What is SaaS?

The SaaS concept as a business model has been around for quite long period of time but still very much growing and evolving in many directions. To explain it in a few words, SaaS means that users are not buying a software to install but instead sort of rent it out for a monthly or yearly fee.

So basically Saas is a leased software owned and managed by one or more providers and not hosted on a SaaS provider’s servers. SaaS offerings run in the cloud.

The Benefits of Saas

1. Lower costs. You don’t need to buy hardware to host a new software, you just pay for what you need.  Before making a purchase, customers have a chance to test the software for a certain period of time that helps to make an educated purchasing decision. The majority of vendor are also offering free live demos so make sure to evaluate the product thoroughly before you buy a subscription. There are no additional costs while running the service that is supplied by the cloud provider. There are no initial setup costs once the customer decides to use the application. All updates are automated and often free of charge for the existing users.
2. Easy customization and management. Since the software is hosted by the vendor, they maintain and upgrade the software, and make sure that it is reliable and the data is securely stored and processed. Service-level agreements assign the quality, availability, and support obligations that the provider is binding to offer to the subscriber.
3. Scalability and integration. SaaS applications exist in cloud environments that are scalable and easily integrated with other platforms and applications. You can add them via API or mashapp services. You can also white label some to add credibility to your own offering. And you can add features and options by upgrading to other plans as your business grows.
4. Work Anywhere. As SaaS resides in the cloud its accessible from anywhere in the world as long as you have an internet connection. It includes getting access to real-time data about your site, sales-related information, customer support, etc.

There are a huge variety of SaaS tools available on the market today. We’ll be focusing on marketing platforms that will help your SaaS to develop better online presence and sell more.

1. SE Ranking

First and foremost you need to make sure that your site where you are selling your SaaS from is well optimized for the search engines to find. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a very important part of your marketing strategy thus finding the platform that will help you do all your SEO projects is crucial. There are a lot of marketing tools and platforms to choose from. I recommend SE Ranking SEO Software as it offers the complete set of tools for any business size and model as well as some extra features like page changes monitoring that’s unique yet very important.

SE Ranking is an all-in-one marketing solution that works great for small business owners that are doing SEO on their own and SEO pros and agencies alike. It allows me to manage all my SEO tasks and see the larger picture in one platform using same user-friendly interface that is very convenient and effective. You can even auto-post and schedule your social media updates right from SE Ranking - a feature you won’t come across very often when using other SEO software.

SE Ranking is famous for their 100% accurate rank checker that keeps track of keyword rankings for desktop and mobile devices, including YouTube and Google Maps. The tool also shows additional info on traffic and search visibility so you can implement website changes in time and optimize your SEO strategies if needed.

2. CoSchedule Headline Analyzer

Based on CopyBlogger, at the average, eight out of 10 people will read a headline copy, and only two out of 10 will look through the rest of the article. Even well-written articles with poor headlines can go unread, but nobody wants that.

The CoSchedule Headline Analyzer is a great solution that will tell you how high the potential of headlines is for your future posts. The tool analyzes not only the quality of headlines, word choice, and structure but gives you recommendations on how to improve them. I always finish my content creation process using this tool all the time which saves a lot of time.

3. BuzzSumo

Then goes your content marketing which isn’t just about SEO. It is also crucial to get a full picture of the competitive environment and find out what types of content are resonating with your readers.

To understand how content is performing in all aspects of the web, BuzzSumo is a fantastic tool to analyze content by a topic or domain and see what type of keywords and content are the most popular on social media. It also helps you rework your sharing tactic using these insights and create different content for different social outlets.

If you don’t have enough resources for developing a lot of sharable content, you can also get some help from Buzzsumo. You can find the content with a lot of shares, reach out to the author and ask if he will be ok to write for your website.

You can also create alerts for your brand or competitors. These alerts arrive instantly after the link goes live and they are really comprehensive in comparison with other alert tools. This feature is available only for the Pro subscribers.

4. HootSuite

Social platforms play a big role in your online marketing efforts. The number of active users on social media passes over 3 billion worldwide. To stay on top of posting on different social media channels and maintain a social media presence quickly, HootSuite is my platform of choice for 3 reasons.

The first reason is the possibility to access to many social media networks and schedule posts ahead of the time on different social media platforms. The second reason is the all-in-one interface which is structured by tabs and helps users to separate engagement activity into social networks and streams. And, finally, you can monitor your brand mentions and instantly respond without signing into each social media account.

5. Trello

Trello is a very powerful project management solution that has limitless possibilities. I like Trello for its ability to show a bird’s-eye view of all my marketing projects,  coordinate the content creation process and serves as a replacement for long email threads. One of the greatest things about Trello is the option to store conversations with your team included within a card in the same place.

Trello helps marketing teams solve the problems of transparency, clarifying projects, long email threads, wasted meetings, accountability, and forgetfulness. Trello helps marketing teams arrange, control, plan, manage and organize all their current projects, events, and tasks.

6. Optimizely

Today it is not enough just to increase website traffic and build a subscribers email list. It also very important to test and optimize your website to make sure that you are actually making a positive impact on your users. With Optimizely, you get the opportunity to experiment with many multiple aspects of your website and define which option works best.

I love a drag and drop interface. It is easy to use and make some changes to do landing page testing. The tool also delivers insightful testing analytics upon which you can render informed decisions about your current site optimization program.

7. Calendly

Calendly is a time-saving scheduling tool that lets you schedule demos and sales calls without the back-and-forth emails. It is easy to set up your availability for different meeting types and send customers a link that will display your availability. You can also place the Calendly widget on your site to make scheduling easy and accessible for your visitors.

Integrated with different applications such Salesforce, Zapier, Slack, MailChimp, Calendly automatically syncs scheduled meetings with your calendar of choice. You can also send email notifications to invitees, just make sure they don’t forget about the appointment.

8. Zoho

If you are looking for a budget-friendly way to manage your small business, Zoho will be a great choice that has all the key functionalities a small business needs. Marketing teams can easily manage and automate tasks from lead gathering and workflow automation up to analytics and contact management.

The learning curve of the tool is not required. The interface is fully customizable to each company’s needs. On top of everything, the tool has call logs and calendars that can be automated to save time and increase efficiency and productivity. It also provides a lot of analytics that help your team to track performance and results at the business level.

9. HelpCrunch

There is no success without an excellent customer support. And there is no excellent customer support without efficient live chat. HelpCrunch is an excellent multi-channel customer communication solution that is supported by real-time CRM that helps online businesses stay connected with clients and enhance the experience your visitors and customers have with your SaaS. You can easily integrate it into your website or right inside your SaaS product and start chatting with your prospects, convert them into customers, drive sales, give support and improve retention.

Using HelpCrunch you can send automated messages with personalized offers sent as an in-app message or by email in case your sales manager are out of place. This tool allows you deliver messages at the right time, on the right device and stay personal to increase conversion rate and customer engagement.

10. HubSpot

If you are looking for an all-in-one marketing software with a lot of features and quality support, HubSpot comes quite close. It is a one-stop shop for everything you need - blogging, content, email marketing, social media and more. The tool keeps your data from your marketing teams and gives insights on the most important metrics on an equal basis with the tools needed to improve them.

My favourite features are workflows, social scheduling and the dashboard. The workflows provide a huge help as you can create drip campaigns and easily add leads to them. The social scheduling makes the process of connecting social media much quicker and provides key metrics what save my time not to search each site individually. The dashboard is really helpful to view the larger picture in one place and quickly find all necessary information.

Bottom Line

Nowadays the bulk of tools available to marketers is increasing, and it is really essential for your SaaS to choose and use the right tools to manage your projects or growth.

I’ve introduced you to 10 awesome SaaS tools that perhaps you haven’t tried, and look forward to hearing your thoughts. Let me know what ‘cannot-live-without’ tools you’ve found the most valuable by tweeting @DianaFord00.