SAAS

MARKETING PLAYBOOK 2021

MORE DEMOS
TRIALS & BUYERS
"I guarantee that you'll double
your qualified leads"
Dekker Fraser, MBA
Introduction
SAAS

Do you want more SaaS demo requests, free trial

sign-ups, and paying customers? Do you want
them cheaply and quickly? This book teaches you...

The fastest, easiest, and cheapest ways to generate demo requests

and free trial sign-ups in 2021
The single most cost-effective way to acquire new customers
How I acquired users for less than 10 cents each
Specific examples of SaaS marketing that have worked for me and
others
How to build your SaaS marketing funnel
SaaS lead nurturing strategies and tactics
How to fix problems like poor MQL-to-SQL conversion rates
How my product got 15 million views
Specific tactics that worked for me in generating cost-effective sales
meetings
How to approach lead generation and demand generation in2021
 SAAS

Welcome
I’m a Silicon Valley marketing veteran with 11 years’ experience in software marketing for
companies including Sony, a Google-backed SaaS, SaaS firms at various stages of venture
funding, and numerous bootstrapped SaaS startups. I have an MBA from the #1 marketing
school in the US, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. I also wrote
numerous marketing books and taught college-level marketing. This is my SaaS
marketing playbook!

Dekker Fraser, MBA

 SAAS
Contents

• The fastest, easiest way to generate demo requests and free trial sign-ups • Write an email explicitly designed to sell the demo or trial
• ALWAYS be selling your demo request or trial, even if you’re just nurturing leads • Content marketing should start at the bottom of the funnel, not the top
• Nurturing people after they’ve signed up for a free trial • One of the most practical frameworks for building demo/trial-generating content
• Consider paying people to sit through your demo • Often the best approach to lead nurturing is to let prospects choose what they want
• The cheapest way to generate demo requests and free trials to do next
• The most efficient way to generate demo requests and free trials • Educational content is the easiest way to nurture leads
• How to find influencers • Use time as a forcing function
• How to reach out to influencers • Your website is a nurturing tool
• How to build partnerships • Stop marketing your product and start doing this one thing instead
• Latch onto larger companies • Your list
• Identify the trigger events where to interject your SaaS into the conversation • The case study is one of the most important pieces of content that you need
• Identify and address objections • Frameworks for lead nurturing
• Facebook ads (yes, for B2B too) • When to send leads to Sales
• Fix the bottlenecks in your funnel • Demand generation content
• The limitations of inbound content marketing and SEO • Common funnel mistakes
• Consider a “medium offer” that falls between a free trial and a demo request • Set a clear goal for the # of demos, trials, SQLs, SALs, opportunities, or pipeline
• Direct mail revenue
• Twitter ads • The most important SaaS metric
• Advanced SaaS lead nurturing summarized
 SAAS

THE FASTEST, EASIEST WAY TO

GENERATE DEMO REQUESTS AND
FREE TRIAL SIGN-UPS
 SAAS
SaaS companies often generate a lot of clicks from LinkedIn ads, but produce little-to-no
sign-ups. With a few small tweaks, LinkedIn advertising should be the easiest and fastest
way to generate conversions. You should be able to generate marketing qualified leads
(MQLs) immediately, without any lead nurturing. Why?

01 Landing pages, Websites, CRO 03 Purchasing or Importing Lists

You don’t need a landing page, website, or
website conversion-rate-optimization. That’s
because LinkedIn allows you to capture leads
right there on the platform, without requiring
prospects to leave LinkedIn. Imagine generating
demo requests without needing to worry about
how well your website converts visitors!
With Facebook ads, you often get the best
results when you use “custom audiences” and
import a list of prospects to target with your ads.
With LinkedIn, the targeting is so accurate and
up-to-date that you don’t necessarily need to
use custom audiences. This is particularly good
for startups who have a limited budget and
need results quickly. If you do have a list of
prospects (e.g., from a list broker) then by all

02 Targeting is Phenomenal means use custom audiences in addition to

LinkedIn’s native targeting.

You can target people with pinpoint accuracy

(e.g., anyone with the job title “physician.”)

04 Demo/MQL-Ready Prospects
When you choose the cost-per-click pricing
option, you’re only charged when people click
your ad. That means bottom-of-funnel, buyer-
ready prospects are pretty much the only people
you’re paying to advertise to. When other
people see your ad, you’re getting a free bonus.
Tips for Success with
LinkedIn Ads
Use the native lead-generation forms instead of
01
sending people to your website.
Consider promoting your offer more than promoting
02
your product.
SAAS
Promote your offer as the hero rather than your product per se. If
03
you want people requesting a demo, talk about the benefits of
the demo. If you want people requesting a consultation, talk
about the benefits of the consultation.
If you have a small budget, set the minimum allowable cost-per-
04 click, instead of using the default budgeting option. You get the
minimum CPC by putting in a very low bid (such as $1) and
seeing LinkedIn’s rebuttal in red text (e.g., $3.01). That’s the
minimum you can bid per click. Using this method, your
prospects self-select based on their interest in MQLing, and
you’re only charged when someone clicks the ad. So you see,
LinkedIn is excellent at generating MQLs cost-effectively.
 SAAS

Use negative targeting for certain functions and job Use single images or extremely short videos.In my experience,
05 06
titles, such as: the best type of ad is a few seconds of video or a basic single
image. I haven’t yet found complex carousel ads or long,
Business Development expensive videos to provide a good return on effort. It’s much
Sales easier to be agile and test different ad images and text when
Human Resources you’re producing simple, single image ads. You don’t want to
plow $2,500 into a video to find out later that your message was
I find SaaS companyes often blow their budget by off-base.
advertising to salespeople. They don't realize it because
they don't look at the audience analytics provided in 07 Enable ads outside of LinkedIn
LinkedIn

Above: although audience expansion may be risky, audience network expansion isn’t. If your
targeting is set up correctly, there is little reason you wouldn’t want people seeing your ad outside of
LinkedIn.

Above: a common problem with LinkedIn advertising is accidentally targeting people in business
development, sales, and HR. Try excluding people and companies that don’t fit your target buying
group. Additionally, consider unchecking “Enable Audience Expansion,” at least when you’re first
starting.
 SAAS

For ads where you cannot use the native lead-gen
08
form, make sure you set up conversion tracking so you
can optimize your campaigns for MQLs instead of
clicks.
Use re-targeting to advertise to people who already
10
visited your website. Be careful with re-targeting if you
were driving the wrong people to your website. The last
thing you want to do is start paying for conversions
from people who don’t represent your target customer
group. Re-build a re-targeting list if you have this
problem.

Expand your advertising by using basic text ads. These

09
are the cheapest ad type on LinkedIn. You’ll get tons of
impressions but the click-through rates are quite low.
The volume of sign-ups may be low from this ad type,
but the cost-per-conversion and setup investment are
both quite low, so the investment is worth it.

Pro tip: with the simple text ads, you’ll likely generate a lot of impressions
with few clicks. I recommend creating a dozen or more ad variants to see
which yields the most conversions and highest click-through rates. Make sure
the text pushes your offer (demo, trial, consultation, etc). Typically the best
performing images are of people (faces).
RIGHT: This ad, a video lasting just a few W
seconds, generated free trials at less than
HALF the target price.
Why does this work?

Focus on the problem Address objections

I’m assuming that the prospects I researched to find out why

are problem-aware, but not
solution-aware. In other words, I
assume they don’t yet know that
the product category (dictation) is
how they are going to solve that
problem, so I give them reasons to
believe it is.
Focus on the offer
I’m not trying to sell the audience
on the product. I’m trying to sell
them on the offer, the free trial,
simply “trying it out.”
prospects would object to using
this software and addressed each
in a bulleted list. You can surface
objections by asking on Quora,
Reddit groups, Facebook groups,
LinkedIn groups, etc. You can also
write prospective or current
customers. Ideally, you’d have
conference call (Zoom, Google
Meet) interviews, but you may
struggle to get responses unless
you incentivize people with gift
cards, money, free subscriptions,
etc.
 W
SAAS

Social proof

I included quotations from

credible insiders.

Precise targeting

I targeted people based on their

job title.
LEFT: These are two ads I
ran for myself
The first promotes the offer of getting your question answered and
the second promoted the offer of a free price quote. Surprisingly,
the harder offer, a price quote, performed better both in terms of
cost-per-MQL, engagement rate overall, and click-through rate
specifically.

For reference, a typical CTR on LinkedIn is 0.3% and here we have

0.85%. Generating $10 MQLs is very cost-effective.

One of the keys to success here is

acquiring and importing a good list.

I ran the same ad using LinkedIn’s

targeting options which just weren’t
specific enough for hitting SaaS
companies. The other major key to success
was using LinkedIn’s built-in lead-gen
forms.
RIGHT: After testing 5 ad types, this proved to
W
generate the highest click-through rate - higher
than video ads, carousel ads, and other single-
image ads that were text-heavy. It also had the
highest engagement rate when you factor out
videos.

Videos naturally have higher engagement rates

due to the “play” function.

Above are examples of LinkedIn ads designed to generate SaaS

MQLs immediately, without a nurturing sequence.

Pro tip: after someone requests a demo through your LinkedIn

lead-gen ad, use the confirmation page to push them to schedule
the demo on a calendar. This will help increase the MQL-to-SQL
conversion rate.
LEFT: Why the ad generated leads cost
effectively
Headline speaks directly to the target “Dr. Vet”
and addresses one of the main pains that they
have: working late
Clear benefit/promise: “cut your medical time
50%”
Clear offer: “Try Vet Dictation Now Free”
Pictures of people are some of the most
effective with LinkedIn text ads

LEFT: Why this ad was also effective

Clear benefit addressing the pain of the time it

takes to do medical records
Clear reason to believe in the above benefit:
“You can speak 5x faster than you can type”
Focus on the offer – try dictation
LinkedIn advertising is not only one of the fastest and easiest ways to get results, but it also
has key advantages over more conventional tactics such as SEO and Google advertising.

LinkedIn advertising, as an easy beachhead for “outbound marketing,” is easier to scale to

your TAM—whereas with SEO and SEM, you are mostly limited by the number of people
actively searching for a solution. LinkedIn can reach people who aren't even aware there is a
solution to their problem.
 W

RIGHT: Why the ad worked

Speaking directly to the audience: “Dr.

Veterinarian”
Agitating the problem: “Tired of working ‘til
9pm…the more successful you become, the
less time you’re going to have.” Here, I am
highlighting the cost of inaction. This one of
the most important keys to persuading
someone to abandon the status quo.
Proof: I mention studies AND use a case study
specific to the SaaS
Promise: cut your time in half
Focus on the offer: “[Try Dictation Free]”
 Similar to the last ad, this
one uses case study evidence
to support the promise of
going home early.
 SAAS
Always Be Selling

Always be selling
your demo request
or trial, even if
you're just
nurturing leads
You don’t actually know when someone is ready for a demo or
trial, so don’t make assumptions. Instead, ALWAYS give people
the option of choosing this for themselves.
Before they SAAS

download or
request When?
something:
Where? SAAS

On thank-you
pages, after
they've
requested
something
 In the
fulfillment
emails used
to deliver
content such
as white
papers
In other assets, such SAAS

as white papers,
videos, or interactive
product tours
 SAAS

Nurturing People After They've

Signed Up For A Free Trial

The ideal nurturing flow is based on triggers driven by

user behavior and predictive analytics. Examples:

If someone engages in a specific feature in your app, you send them an email and in-app message Below: Brand24 sends me
that deepen his/her understanding of that feature. emails based on the search
query I used in their software:
If someone has signed up but hasn’t installed your software, you send them emails educating them “dictation software.” Instead of
on how to install the app.
sending me a generic drip
campaign, they are
personalizing the emails based
If your analytics suggest that a user’s in-app behavior is predictive of abandonment, you interject on my behavior in the app.
with a phone call from a customer success manager.
But in the real world, these ideal scenarios are often pipe dreams. That’s why I’m providing
two very simple nurturing flow frameworks below.

Framework 1,
from Encharge.io
A typical structure for a Welcome flow for a 14-day trial could look like this:

Day 13:
Day 1: Day 3: Day 5: Day 7: Day 10: Day 12: Case
Welcome Product Product Case Product Case Study 3
Email Tip 1 Tip 2 Study 1 Tip 3 Study 2 +
CTA to
upgrade
Framework 2,
from Dan Martel

Email 1 Email 2 Email 3 Email 4 Email 5 Email 6 Email 7

Welcome Training Case Study Tips & Tricks Offer to Help Make an Celebrate or
Email Offer Learn
 W

Consider paying
people to sit through
your demo

Generating demos is not free, so consider just paying prospects to sign up for them. This is particularly
effective with enterprise B2B marketing because you can justify the high-CAC, and you’ll likely be
spearfishing accounts anyways.
ABOVE: this campaign is testing two incentives to get prospects to do a demo: (A) Bose
speakers and (B) an Amazon gift card. Sometimes the demo itself is not a strong enough offer
to stimulate response.
 The cheapest way to
generate demo requests
and free trials

The cheapest way to generate MQLs is through email marketing. This is because the marginal cost of
sending an email is pretty much $0. Your conversion rates won’t be as high as with other channels, but
with enough automated follow-ups you should be able to get a chunk of your demo requests and trial
sign-ups from email marketing.
How to get your email list:
Buy a list
This is typically where I’d start. I usually
just do a Google search to see what
company has already compiled a list in my
niche—e.g., a list of physicians,
manufacturing companies, etc. I buy from
different companies each time because I
find niche suppliers are better and cheaper
than going with high-profile list brokers.
Ask for a sample of emails to make sure
the list is good. Ask if they’ll refund you for
any leads that were already in your
database. I once bought a highly targeted
list of 19,000 emails (~70,000 contacts in
total) for only $40.
SAAS
You may end up paying a few thousand
dollars. To verify quality, ask about their
deliverability guarantees and how
frequently their lists are updated. Keep in
mind that when you invest in a list, you
aren’t just using it for email marketing.
The emails can also be imported into
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for
targeting. And the mailing addresses can
be used for direct mail.
Use a script
Use a script to scrape emails from
websites that have your prospects. E.g.,
associations, Yelp, etc.
 How to do cold emails:
Pay a virtual assistant
Pay a virtual assistant from Fiverr
or UpWork to compile a list for
you based on online directories,
association memberships, Google
searches, etc.
Rent a list
Programs such as HubSpot and Marketo technically don’t allow cold emailing.
I’ve seen it done, but be cautious. There are programs specifically designed for
cold emails, such as Lemlist. There are also sales automation programs
including Outreach, SalesLoft, and Mailshake.
Your subject line should be something highly personalized such as
{{firstName}} or {{companyName}}. The goal is to get opens.
Note: contrary to popular belief, a low open rate doesn’t necessarily mean that
your subject line sucks. Often low open rates are symptoms of poor
deliverability. You can fix this in various ways, such as using more
personalization, avoiding excessive graphics, and avoiding anything that
makes your email look like spam.

Rent a list from an influencer,

chamber of commerce,
association, or someone else.
Typically you’ll be charged a flat
rate for an eblast or such an
eblast will be included in your
membership fee.
The above emails that I sent have different open rates even though the subject line—the
company’s name—is the exact same in both instances. Email B is a graphic-heavy email.
 SAAS
Macro-testing

Macro-Testing
Email Sequences
When it comes to email testing, people often jump straight to very
minor tactical changes such as the color of buttons and the time-
of-day. I prefer testing entire sequences such as the following:

(A) Sending a series of emails that direct people to your

website’s gated content (B) Putting all the content into
the emails without directing people to the homepage and
un-gating everything

(A) Using Salesforce’s 3-2-1 strategy (B) Using a 1-2-3

strategy. See the following for details on this strategy.
Using Salesforce's 3-2-1 Strategy SAAS

You start with a very salesy email that talks about why you are the #1 choice. This lets you capture the low-hanging fruit: the people
who are ready to buy. The 2nd email, typically sent about a week later, might be something like a case study or another form of social
proof. This caters to the mid-hanging fruit. The 3rd email would be something like educational content on how to solve a problem.

More examples of macro testing emails...

(A) Series of purely educational emails with a P.S. at the bottom promoting your free trial (B)
Series of problem-focused emails that promote your free trial as the solution

(A) Problem-aware emails pushing your software category as the solution (B) Solution-aware
emails pushing your specific product as the #1 solution

(A) graphic-heavy emails (B) text-heavy emails

(A) list 1 (B) list 2

PRO TIP: Stop obsessing over

email timing and start obsessing
The above are data from a cold email campaign with a
over how you’re going to
very high open rate of 43% that can be explained by
educate prospects about how to excellent list quality. The open rates are comparable
solve their problem! even with vastly different subject lines.
 SAAS
Micro-testing
Micro-Testing
Individual Emails
(A) problem -> agitate -> discredit competing solutions -> solution -> proof
(B) story narrative
(C) one benefit with multiple reasons to believe that benefit (multiple features)
(D) multiple benefits with one reason to believe (one feature)

(A) subject line {{firstName}}

(B) subject line {{companyName}}
(C) subject line = problem 1
(D) subject = problem 2
(E) subject line = aspiration

Automate your emails with delays between a couple of

days and 2 weeks.

ALWAYS present your demo or free trial as an option, even if it’s just a P.S.
at the bottom of your emails or a small graphic button at the bottom. Even
if your content is pushing a middle-of-funnel offer such as a case study,
you should always give people the option to MQL by replying, requesting a
demo, or asking for a consultation: whatever your MQL offer is.
 W

The most efficient way

to generate demo
requests and free trials

Partnerships are the most underrated go-to-market strategy. That’s because most marketers define the
target market as just target customers. This is a HUGE mistake. Your target market includes your
potential partners/collaborators, and they’re usually the most efficient channel for customer acquisition.
Partnerships take different
forms, such as:
Key Influencers who use and
recommend your SaaS for free
Key Influencers who are paid to
endorse your SaaS
Integrations
Selling your product as an
add-on or bundle with a larger
software provider
Being an exclusive supplier to
a larger software company or
the government
Selling through app
marketplaces such as
Salesforce App Exchange,
Apps.com, and Clover App
Market
Selling through retailers such
as Amazon and Walmart
SAAS
Co-marketing with larger or
equally-sized companies
Co-branded webinars
promoted to their
audience (one incredibly
easy way to get more
eyeballs on your
content)
Guest blogging on their
website
Co-branded campaigns
(e.g., direct mail)
Joint presentations at
conferences
Joint tradeshow booths
Selling and promoting through
digital marketplaces such as
Udemy or Steam
LEFT: leverage existing
marketplaces and focus on
app-store optimization (ASO),
which is far easier than SEO.
ASO is often driven by keyword
stuffing and the # of reviews.
How to find influencers SAAS

Word-of-mouth is one of the most efficient ways to acquire new

customers, but how exactly do you trigger it? One of the most critical
ways is by first identifying those people and organizations that have the
strongest influence or share-of-voice in your market. These are your key
influencers.

When Klout shut down, there was

no longer any easy way to identify
influencers. Then some influencer
management platforms sprouted
up, but most of these catered to
B2C consumer brands that
wanted Instagram pseudo-
celebrities. Fortunately, the
founder of Moz created this
amazing new platform called
Sparktoro. Unlike other search
engines, Sparktoro is amazing in
that it starts with your target
audience first.
Moreover, Sparktoro doesn’t just limit your influencers to Instagram and SAAS
Twitter nor does it limit the definition of an influencer to an individual.
Rather, Sparktoro gives you data across various social media platforms,
YouTube, and websites to show which individuals, brands, and
organizations carry the most clout with your target audience!

BOTTOM RIGHT: here I

identified influencers for
medical doctors. These are
people and organizations I
can reach out to for
potential partnerships and
collaborations.
How to reach out to influencers
SAAS

Once you have a list of target influencers, you should reach out to them with
some compelling free offer. Typically, I’d start with a perpetually free account
to use your SaaS. Email them, write to their Facebook page, connect with
them on LinkedIn and message them. You may need to follow up 4+ times
before they respond—that’s fine as an employee may be managing their
inboxes anyways.

Once a notable influencer signs up, you have set a precedent for others to
sign up as well: e.g., "Hi, John, just following up. We just set up [Celebrity
You Know] with an account, and I was wondering if you’re interested as
well! Let me know.”

Note: sometimes it’s actually easier to get high-profile influencers on board

than mid-level ones.

Not everyone will care about getting free access to your software. You may
need to use other incentives such as merchandise that you physically mail to
them. Another approach is to pay influencers to do a demo of your product.
For example, you can email them and say “Hi, John, given your clout in the
community, I’d love to get your input on our software and offer you a $100
Visa gift card to see a 20-minute demo followed by 10 minutes of feedback.”

By the way, this technique also works when you
want customers to do a demo. Just pay them! Of
course, this only makes sense where your ACV is
high enough to justify the acquisition cost (e.g.,
enterprise B2B customers).
Research on how influencers want to be
compensated suggests that they just want flat-out
payments. Indeed, this transactional type of
relationship is what some more established
influencers expect. They may want $3,000 to
sponsor a webinar or $1200 for a post distributed
through their various social media channels. You
can experiment with these to see if the CAC ends
up being lower than with your other acquisition
channels.
I’ve had success working with many mid-level
influencers who didn’t expect a lot of money. Their
combined effort didn’t cost a lot to me but did
generate a lot of sign-ups for less than 10 cents
each. I’ve also had success with tier-1 influencers
who can generate tons of FREE publicity.
SAAS
An influencer once reviewed one of my
products on YouTube, garnering almost
15,000,000 views in free publicity:
You can also build a partner program that
includes incentives such as:
Certfication badge
15% recurring revenue
Co-marketing opportunities
Exclusive access to research or information
Training
Prestige (e.g., VIP advisory committee to
guide product development)
Early access
 SAAS
Other tips:

Invite influencers to be a guest on your podcast

Be a guest on their podcast
Be a guest on their webinar
Invite them to your YouTube channel or webinar
Offer them commissions in conjunction with other
compensation
 SAAS
How to build partnerships
If your company has the funds to do so, you may want to hire
someone dedicated to business development. I suggest you start by
easing your way into the relationship with low risk, low commitment
projects and gradually deepen the relationship.

Example of how a relationship can progress over time:

Offer to contribute a free blog post to the partner’s website

Offer to be a guest speaker on their podcast

Propose a co-branded webinar

Propose a co-branded presentation at a conference

Propose an integration promoted to each other's customer lists

Propose an exclusive relationship

 What a collaborator value proposition can look like:
If you’ve built enough credibility in your space, you may be
invited to submit a proposal for an RFP. You should invest a
lot of time in these as the payoff can be huge—greater than
years of demand generation. You may want to consider
allocating a small marketing budget towards maintaining
awareness with potential partners, instead of just going
directly after customers. That’ll keep you on their radar
should a partnership opportunity open up.
One of the most important concepts in partnership
marketing is the “collaborator value proposition.” Typically
when we use the word “value proposition” we’re talking
about how our SaaS creates value for customers. But our
product and company at large also create value for
collatorators.
This is where a lot of SaaS companies fail with
partnerships: they don’t understand how they create value
for partners and often overestimate the value they do
create.
Increased ACV (e.g., by tacking your product onto
existing customers, partners can increase their
ARPPU)
Increased visibility in a strategically important market
for expansion (e.g., your customers in the hospitality
industry are more likely to buy the partner’s software
if you market together with a bundled offering)
Higher commissions for the AEs
Enhanced brand perception
Expanded offering to compete with a larger
competitor (e.g., your partner may be known for a
narrow set of features but together you can offer a
complete solution that competes with a F500
competitor)
A common mistake I see in SaaS is focusing
on commissions that are nothing more than a
drop-in-the-bucket for larger partners or
commissions paid out to smaller partners that
don’t even justify the fixed cost of managing
your affiliate program. So before you invest
too much in a partnership program, you
should plan out (A) how much value you bring
to them and (B) how much value they bring to
you.
Consider focusing on a few dozen key
partners and managing those relationships
manually. If you’re going to pursue lower-
level influencers (e.g., thousands of
developers, lawyers, accountants,
consultants, etc) then think through how to
scale the program effectively. For example, a
web design agency that only sends you $300
in revenue per month is not really a good
partnership because their commission is low
and so too is your revenue.
You may as well have just gone after the end-buyer
directly without going through the intermediary. On
the other hand, a law firm that sends you $10,000 in
pipeline revenue each month is sizable enough to
justify the partnership.
Latch onto larger companies
Stop trying to do everything from scratch and start leveraging
existing spheres of influence. One of the fastest paths to growth
is to piggyback off of larger partners.
Examples:
Publishers
Marketplaces and retailers
Companies that pay you royalties or commissions
Winning major RFPs
Identify the trigger events where you can
interject your SaaS into the conversation

This is particularly important if the problem you solve isn’t a top-2 You can create content to address specific
priority for your target customers. It’s difficult to get the attention of triggers:
prospects when the problem you solve isn’t their hot-button issue.
In those cases, you want to interject at critical moments when your
SaaS will get an abnormal amount of attention.

Examples:

Building a new website. This is a critical time when

prospects are looking to invest in software such as
automations and integrations that can be set up
simultaneously with the website.

Rebranding
Bankruptcy
Meeting with a developer, consultant, lawyer, or any
professional advisor.
Hiring a new VP
Letting go of an employee
Acquiring a company
Disruption by a competitor
 SAAS

Identify and address objections

Above: this piece of content
addresses the objection “Why
Wharton’s Jonah Berger highlights how the key to changing someone’s would I need both a marketing
mind is identifying and addressing their objections. If you want to automation system AND a sales
persuade someone to sign up for a demo or a free trial, you should engagement system?”
figure out why they would object to doing so. By addressing each
objection, you improve your conversion rates.

Ways to surface objections: Ways to address objections:

Ask on Quora Rebuttal each in your advertisement or email

Ask on Reddit or Facebook Groups Address each on your website
Ask your salespeople Provide your sales team with a document showing how to respond
Look at the notes in your CRM software to each objection
Ask customers or prospects Address the objections in your sales deck or demo
Pay customers or prospects to give their input (eg. $50 Visa
gift card)
 SAAS
Advertising

Facebook Ads
(yes, for B2B too)

Facebook ads are one of the most effective ways to generate demo
requests and free trials. People are often surprised that it works even
for B2B. That’s because the key to effective advertising is reaching the
right people, and those people use Facebook…even if they aren’t using
it explicitly for work purposes.

I’d had the most success by importing a list of prospects into

Facebook and running ads to generate MQLs—again, just as with
LinkedIn, without any need for nurturing per se. So I’m not running an
ad for an ebook with some drip campaign designed to ultimately
generate the demo request. I go into Facebook ads asking
aggressively for a demo request (or free trial sign up).
Pro tip: your match rate may be less than 50%, meaning that less than half of the leads you import into
Facebook will be associated with a given Facebook account. To get a larger list, consider expanding it using
Facebook’s look-alike/similar targeting.
BELOW IS AN EFFECTIVE FACEBOOK SAAS

AD I RAN TO GENERATE DEMO

REQUESTS.

Why it worked:
Prospect identified (“As a fast-growing Amazon seller”)
Leveraging well-known brands (QuickBooks and Amazon)
Built trust (G2 Crowd badge)
Functional benefit clearly communicated (“Integrate Amazon &
QuickBooks”)
Avoided vague, high-level or emotional benefits such as “save
money” or “have more time”
Precise targeting
Lead-capture occurs on Facebook instead of a landing page
 SAAS
Here’s an example of a Facebook
ad from Jira. Notice that it
promotes the free trial rather
than some soft offer such as a
white paper or blog post.

The sign-up CTA is directly on

Facebook, bypassing the need
for creating a landing page.
 SAAS

Here’s another example for

software that integrates with
Whatsapp. Again, they’re
pushing the hard offer directly
to the Facebook audience.
 To get started, just do a
Google search for Facebook
advertising and go into the W
ads manager. Select the type
of ad you want to create,
which is likely called “lead
generation.”

Select the audience you

want, usually by importing a
list you’ve purchased or
getting Facebook to create
an audience based on who
your most valuable
customers currently are.

Lastly, use one of Facebook’s

built-in calls-to-action. Your
ads will perform better if the
user doesn’t have to leave
Facebook to go to your
landing page. I’ve had much
more success with Facebook-
native forms than in driving
people to websites.
 SAAS

Fix the bottlenecks in your funnel

Sometimes SaaS companies are particularly efficient at achieving certain outcomes such as traffic,
MQLs, SQLs, or bookings. But to be successful, you need the entire system to be efficient. There’s no point
in generating leads that can’t convert into new customers. Vice-versa, there’s no use having a great team
for converting leads into customers if you don’t have enough leads coming in. To build an efficient system,
you have to diagnose and fix bottlenecks. These benchmarks will be helpful in doing this:

So, for example, if you find out that only 10% of your MQLs are
converting in SQLs, then that’s probably where you should
prioritize your time. It could be that Sales is throwing out good
leads that have fake phone #s of perfectly fine email addresses.
Or it could be that the people requesting demos don’t fit your
target buyer (e.g., they don’t have enough money to pay for your
software).

Jason Lemkin: “About 15-20% of our Opportunities closed.”

 SAAS

Example: If you’re efficient at generating demo requests but very few of them are converting into sales-accepted leads or sales-qualified
leads, then it could be that people just aren’t booking the demo meetings. If that’s the case, when people request demos they should be
directed immediately to an online scheduling form. And when the AE follows up, s/he should have a Calendly link so the prospect can
schedule quickly and easily. This is one easy, tactical way to improve the conversion of MQLs into SQLs.

Inbound Content Marketing & SEO
The limitations of
inbound content
marketing and SEO
HubSpot built their reputation around the concept of
“inbound marketing” and have influenced armies of
marketers, especially in the SaaS space. As effective as
inbound marketing can be, it has MANY limitations that
make it inappropriate for many SaaS companies, especially
in the early stages.
To quote SaaStr founder Jason Lemkin, there is: “Way too
much SEO + SEM talk. Both are important, but in SaaS,
both likely will be relatively minor sources of customers.”
Results are slow. SEO takes a long time to yield
results. You might get start to get serious traffic at 6W
months and finally yield profitability from your
investment after year 1. Many SaaS companies can’t
wait this long.
It’s not as scalable as outbound. Without outbound
marketing, your capacity is your TAM. You can reach
pretty much everyone. With Google search, you’re
limited by the amount of people actively searching.
You reach a saturation point where you just can’t grow
anymore. In contrast, when you invest in outbound,
you’ve optimized campaigns that can be scaled to the
size of your market.
The true cost is hidden. With inbound content
marketing, you don’t invest money the way you do
with advertising. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t cost
anything. You’re just trading in advertising dollars for
time-consuming labor. Content, especially thought
leadership content, often requires time from your most
expensive labor. Writing a bunch of blog posts is
EXPENSIVE, arguably much more so than running a
bunch of LinkedIn ads. If you don’t like the marginal
costs of ads, consider the $0 marginal cost of email.
Testing is difficult and it’s not as agile, so inbound is
risky. If I spend $100 on LinkedIn ads and see no
results, I can change the ad, change the targeting, and
start getting results TOMORROW. If I find out after 6
months that my SEO keywords were off base, I’ve lost
a sizable fixed investment. Outbound is much easier to
experiment with and in many ways less risky,
especially in the early stages. Later on, once you’ve
nailed your messaging, you can invest in longer-term
payoff projects like SEO

Certain forms of inbound marketing are generally
appropriate, particularly Google advertising. Why? Because
you’re going after the low-hanging fruit, people actively
searching for solutions. They’re your bottom-of-funnel, quick
wins. Eventually, you’ll reach diminishing returns—a
saturation point where the easy keywords are taken—so in
most cases, you almost always have to start going
outbound at some point.
In SOME cases, inbound marketing will form the basis of
customer acquisition, at least in the early and mid-stages of
your company. Let’s say, for example, that your product
solves a pain for a lot of people, but that pain only exists for
a short time. Outbound won’t be as effective because the
target is defined more by timeliness than by the type of
person. E.g., the fact that someone is the manager at a soap
company matters less than the fact s/he recently faced a
lawsuit and is looking for an answer.
SAAS
If the beginning of most target customers’ journeys is
searching for a solution, then inbound may be your main
acquisition channel. You have to have a strong presence on
search so you can capture most people searching for a
solution.
So inbound makes sense when targeting is defined by timely
triggers that prompt search. Large brands overcome the
capacity limit by creating “always-on” awareness so
whenever a trigger happens (e.g., bankruptcy, divorce) their
solution is top-of-mind. Small and mid-sized companies
often rely more heavily on inbound marketing to capture
people searching for solutions.
One way enterprise B2B marketers overcome the challenge
of timeliness is by buying intent data from companies like
Bombara—to identify “in-market” prospects who are
actively looking for a solution. Here, outbound can work.
 SAAS
Medium Offers

Consider a “medium offer” that falls

between a free trial and a demo request
Sometimes SaaS companies are very efficient at generating demo requests.
This typically happens when the buying cycle is relatively simple and short.
Here, lead nurturing isn’t foremost on the marketer’s mind. When demo
requests aren’t so easily generated, companies often push free trials. Then
what happens is you get a bunch of unqualified prospects signing up for your
product and never returning again to actually use it—let alone buy it.

When your MQL is a free trial, your metrics might be overstated

When your MQL is a demo request, your metrics may be understated

One solution is to introduce a medium offer such as a 4-minute demo video. After people sign up for this, your SDR reaches out to book a 1-on-1 demo with the AE.
RIGHT: push your
W

medium offer to people

who aren’t quite ready
for your hard offer
(e.g., demo or
consultation).
What you may find out is that people are objecting to
your 1-on-1 demo because they feel too pressured.
That’s one reason people like Jason Lemkin are so pro-
webinar, even suggesting that you should do a demo
every week. Webinars are a way to get juicy
information about a product without the pressure that
comes with a 1-on-1 demo. Enterprise buyers, in
particular, love this.
 W

Group demos are

cheaper and
reduce the
pressure put on
prospects.
For SMB, Keap offers group demos, which also overcome
the pressure issue while simultaneously being more cost-
effective (your demo provider can reach multiple people
simultaneously.)
 SAAS

Pro tip: SDRs can follow up on people to watch demo videos to get the true demo scheduled…but they can also follow up on people who
abandon the demo request forms. Below is an example of how to employ SDRs in this way.
 Mail
Direct-mail
Direct mail sounds archaic, but it’s making a resurgence lately with account-
based marketing. One of the reasons for this resurgence is the decline of email
effectiveness. Open rates are low, and even those low open rates that you do
see are usually overestimated. It’s much easier to get someone to “open” or
see your message when you send direct mail. People receive tons and tons of
emails but less and less physical mail.
One of the easiest forms of direct mail is handwritten
letters. You can pay companies like Letterfriend to
write you letters promoting your free demo or test
drive whatever your hard offer is. This kind of
personalized message gets noticed.
Bulky packages also get noticed. Things like fruit
baskets, books, promotional shirts, and boxes. These
are less likely to get thrown out by secretaries. The
example here is from SaaSMQL, one of the leaders in
direct mail demand generation.
W
CAUTION: With many cost-per-click advertising options (e.g.,
LinkedIn single-image ads) your risk is minimized because you’re
only charged when people click your ad. So prospects self-select.
With direct mail, YOU are basically deciding who clicks your ad.
This is much riskier and needs more careful planning. Do not send
direct mail to everyone; instead, consider sending to the following
people
Key influencers, such as presidents of associations that
influence your target buyers
High-value prospects
Potential partners
Prospects with high purchase intent, based on intent data
Prospects with a high probability of moving to the next
stage in your funnel, based on predictive analytics
Prospects that meet a certain lead score threshold
(ideally, based on predictive analytics)
Prospects that engage in some behavior that triggers
direct mail (e.g., watching a certain video):
As with all direct-response marketing, the key to success with direct
mail is to focus on the offer. In some cases, your direct mail might focus
on something like giving away a free iPad in exchange for doing a
product demo. If you’re trying to get the attention of a C-level executive,
this just might work. Of course, it only makes sense if your product is
very expensive because iPads aren’t cheap.

Another thing to consider is that generating MQLs is not cheap. You

have to spend a lot of money on advertising, lead nurturing, etc., to get
people to take your hard offer. Consider just paying for it—either in the
form of a gift card or a gift.

Remember that the message in your direct mail needs to center on the
offer, not the product. You want to move people along the demand
funnel, not send them directly to the end to make the purchase. Focus
on getting that phone call or meeting and then sell them later. Talk less
about your company and product and more about the benefits of the
consultation, demo, or whatever the offer is.
 SAAS

Direct mail is one of

the most overlooked
ways to nurture leads.
The last thing I want to point out is that direct mail is
scalable thanks to new technology available from
companies like Sendoso. For example, you can set up
triggers in Salesforce to send direct mail to prospective
clients.
Twitter SAAS

Twitter ads
One of the key advantages of Twitter ads is that they can target custom
audiences just as LinkedIn and Facebook can. That means you can
import a list of prospects and thereby avoid advertising to irrelevant
viewers.

The most basic type of Twitter ad is just a Tweet that you

promote. So your Tweet could be text, text + an image, or text + a
video. Typically you’d include a text link in the ad (such as a bit.ly
associated with a UTM: Google “utm generator” to create a link).
The advantage of this type of ad is that you are only charged
when people click your URL.

The second major type of Twitter ad is a “card.” The advantage

with this type of ad is that you get a higher click-through rate
because the clickable area is larger—not just the little text URL.
 Email follow-up SAAS

Write an email explicitly designed

to sell the demo or trial
With lead nurturing, best practice is to always give people the option of There are different creative strategies that work with pitching your
requesting your demo or trial—often just as a P.S. at the bottom of demo or trial:
educational emails. The mindset here is that you can’t usually predict
buyer-readiness so you just always have your door open for MQLing. Problem (describe the problem) -> Agitate (make the problem
01
However, you should still have an email that sells your MQL offer more visceral, explain what could happen if nothing is done
aggressively. about) -> Discredit (talk about alternative solutions and why they
aren’t adequate) -> Solve (position your demo as the solution) ->
Some organizations, such as Salesforce, even suggest that this is the first Prove (show evidence of why your demo or product works)
thing you do when a lead enters your database: try to sell them on your
hard offer. The philosophy here is that you want to capture the low- This framework works well if your SaaS solves one problem really
hanging fruit before proceeding to nurture those at the middle and top of well. This is my default framework.
the funnel. One big mistake small companies make is not focusing
enough on the bottom-of-funnel. Large companies often make the
reverse mistake: focusing too much on the bottom-of-the-funnel at the
expense of building brand awareness.
 SAAS
Benefit + reasons to believe
02

This is the default framework used for advertising campaigns.

This works well when you provide one strong benefit and have
many features that prove that you can deliver that benefit.
PRO TIP
Benefits + reason to believe Position your demo or trial as the hero in
03 your messaging. This will produce better
results than positioning your SaaS as the
This framework works wells when you have one feature that hero. If you want more demos and trial
yields many benefits. sign-ups, then that means selling the
offer, not the product. Sell the product
later. Just worry about pitching people on
the next step, signing up for that demo,
Story and all the juicy benefits that come from
04
it.
Narratives are particularly useful when your SaaS is difficult to
explain or is so new and revolutionary that people wouldn’t “get
it” without you painting a picture in their minds of what’s
possible.

ABOVE ARE THE MAJOR CREATIVE STRATEGIES. YOU CAN ALSO EMPLOY AND TEST VARIOUS COPYWRITING FORMULAS.
Content marketing SAAS

Content marketing should start at

the bottom of the funnel, not the top
One common mistake is starting your content marketing plan with How to speed up...
thought leadership. Content marketers often get excited about Should you build or buy...?
creating thought leadership content, but often this is just too high-
How to hire...
level to help sales in any meaningful way—at least in the short-
term. If you need more sales this month, start with BOFU content… How to select vendor for...
or content that’s very closely connected to your product. How to get rid of...
How to increase...with...
Topic examples: How to stop...
How to eliminate...
Subjects closely connected to your product, a pain you solve, or an
aspiration you fulfill…as opposed to high-level thought leadership: Guide to automating...
Guide to integrating...
6 steps to fix...
Examples SAAS

Generally, with content marketing, you want to

stick to your niche. Stick to content that EASILY
segues to your product.

That generally means focusing on the problem

your product solves. I’d start with the most
immediate functional problem.

If that doesn’t generate results from your

audience, then start testing benefits that are a
little bit higher level.

So you’re starting at the bottom and working

your way up instead of starting at the highest
level and working your way down.

This is how marketing has an impact on SALES Above: as your value proposition
instead of just visibility. broadens (typically as you grow)
then your content will also
broaden.
 Demo frameworks SAAS

One of the most practical frameworks for

building demo/trial-generating content
Product
I’m basing this off the decades’ old framework in the book Breakthrough Advertising.
Essentially, you should create content for various prospects based on their levels of aware
awareness. If most buyers in your target market fall into a given category, then focus
on building content for that single level of awareness and each stage below that.
Prospects who know about your
Solution product need to be educated on the
aware fact that it’s appropriate for them.

Problem
+ MOST AWARE
aware Prospects who know the
Problem solution to their problem need The people most familiar with your
Unaware to be educated on why your
Prospects who know they have a product often just need to be told
SaaS is the BEST solution. about special discounts, time-
problem must be educated on the
Prospects who don’t solution to that problem, which may be sensitive offers, tiebreaking offers
know they have a your product category or technology (e.g., unlimited support), or things that
problem must be (rather than your product specifically). mitigate risk such as money-back
educated on this They may not even know that their guarantees.
latent problem. problem can be solved!
 SAAS

Pro tip: don’t make the mistake of positioning your content around what makes you different or the “best” when it just doesn’t matter. This is
often a waste of time when you’re selling a non-strategic purchase. It’s also pointless if the prospect isn’t even convinced that their problem
needs solving. Prospects don’t care that your product is the best when they haven’t even been convinced that anything that even remotely
resembles your product is the solution. Meet prospects where they’re at and educate them…nudge them along the awareness stages.
Lead nurturing SAAS

Often the best approach to

lead nurturing is to let
prospects choose what they
want to do next
A lot of advice on lead nurturing centers around segmenting people based on funnel stages. The problem is
that people’s journeys are different and marketers are often very bad at bucketing/classifying people
appropriately. An easy way around this is simple: let prospects decide what they want to do—whether that’s
booking a demo, requesting a trial, watching a video, reading more content on problem A, researching
problem B, or asking a question.

You can also automate nurturing emails based on choices people already made. E.g., if they used your SaaS
to search for “automation,” you can send them emails showing results for “automation.”
Educational content is SAAS

the easiest way to

nurture leads
Educational content can take many forms, including:
Text in emails White papers
Blog posts Ebooks
Webinars Amazon books
Podcasts Guides
Videos 3rd party content
Infographics Reports
Interviews SlideShares

I’m biased towards “ungated content”—in other words, content that doesn’t require prospects to sign up to
access it. When it comes to nurturing, I opt to reduce as much friction as possible. That means ungating the
information and embedding as much as possible into the email itself. For one massive nurturing test, I
decided to take all the information from blog posts, ebooks, etc, and paste it as text into emails. This proved
more effective at generating pipeline than sending people to the website (or wherever) to access the
information.
Drift did something similar with ungating their content, and the results were very positive:
SAAS
https://www.drift.com/blog/year-without-forms/

My argument for ungating content is that what you really care about isn’t “leads” so much as demo
requests and free-trial sign-ups. Email collection is not really all that valuable when you can just buy a list of
emails or even pay for content syndication leads. I’d rather my ungated content get read and spread to
nurture people towards becoming MQLs.
 There are arguments for gating content—and contexts where it’s appropriate—but as a SAAS
general rule, if I want to nurture leads along a path to conversion, I’d like to see as much
information as possible upfront, in the email itself. The conversion that matters to me is the
demo request. White paper downloads and click-through rates are more-or-less vanity
metrics.
 SAAS

As you get more

sophisticated with your
lead nurturing, you can
start segmenting. One of
the primary variables to
segment on is the
problem or topic that the
prospect showed interest
in.
Use time as a
forcing function
 SAAS

Your website is a
nurturing tool
 SAAS

Market your
offer instead of
your product.

Stop marketing your product and start doing this one thing instead
 SAAS

Urgency
Concrete Reward for Action
Low Commitment
Reciprosity
 SAAS

Ken Organization research quoted

by Bob Bly
 SAAS
SAAS

Wrong
Approach!

Stop thinking in terms of

vague demographic
personas and start thinking
in terms of precise targeting

SOLUTION Acquire a list

 SAAS

Find It
Buy It
Rent It
Compile It
Build It
YOUR LIST Stop thinking in terms of vague demographic personas and
start thinking in terms of precise targeting.
 SAAS

YOUR LIST Stop thinking in terms of vague demographic personas and

start thinking in terms of precise targeting.
Buy a List
SAAS
SAAS
 Build SAAS

your list
 SAAS

CHECKLIST
WORKBOOK
CHEATSHEET
TEMPLATE
QUIZ
SOMETHING UNIQUE

Build
your list
 SAAS
The case study is
one of the most
important pieces of
content that you
need

YOUR LIST Stop thinking in terms of vague demographic personas and

start thinking in terms of precise targeting.
 CASE STUDIES SAAS

are ideal content

for a stage in the
buying cycle when
prospective
customers might be
looking for
examples of how
other organizations
have benefitted
from a product or
solution
Stop thinking in terms of vague demographic personas and
start thinking in terms of precise targeting.
 SAAS

Example

Stop thinking in terms of vague demographic personas and

start thinking in terms of precise targeting.
 SAAS

Advice on
Product success story (about solving a problem)

800-2500 words

writing case
Makes the reader want to learn more about the
product (request more detailed info)

Written like a magazine article (not too technical) -

studies, from
focused on solving a problem

Show how the product works

Bob Bly
Incentivize salespeople to help with case study

Get lots of quotations

Use this trick: "So you are saying that _____"

Get quantitative outcomes by asking: "Did it reduce

energy consumption by more than 10%?"

You needn't be creative or reinvent the wheel when creating a case study
 SAAS

01 Who is the customer?

02 What was the problem? How was it hurting the

customers business? Most case
03 What solutions did they look at and ultimately
reject, and why? studies
04 Why did they choose our product as the
solution? follow some
05 Describe the implementation of the product,
including any problems and how they were
solved.
variation of
06 How and where does the customer use the
product?
this time-
07

08
What the results and benefits they are getting? tested outline
Would they recommend it to others and why?
 SAAS

RIGHT: the
default
funnel. Most
SaaS
companies
use some
variation of
this.
 SAAS

This is the more

modern framework
developed by the
same company
(Sirius Decisions)
which is more
applicable to B2B
enterprise SaaS
companies
employing tactics
that one might call
"account- based
marketing" (ABM).
 SAAS

This is the
model used
by McKinsey
for B2C. This
is also
helpful for
marketing
SaaS to
SMBs.
 SAAS

Here is
McKinsey's
B2B model
 SAAS

Here is the
model used
by SaaSMQL