Software as a service (SaaS) has developed into a major player in our ever-more interconnected world. As you are looking for new ways to expand your SaaS capabilities and reach, you have likely considered utilizing social media or a similar online platform to help you reach new customers. Social marketing takes advantage of the connections between your existing customers and the people they associate with online. If you have developed a SaaS product that your existing customers are willing to talk about with their friends, family, and coworkers, you are already well on the way to dominating social marketing. But if you want to supercharge your online social presence, there are certain tweaks you can make in the way you do business, while focusing on attracting new customers by leveraging the connections of your existing customers.
Targeting an audience through social marketing
As social media has evolved over the years, it has gone from a way to keep connected with friends and family to include a new means for businesses to reach new customers. As a SaaS developer, using social media and social marketing to reach a new audience can seem daunting, but there are ways to simplify the process to see a bigger return on your time investment. Because your product is a software-based solution, you do not need to worry about marketing a physical product that needs to be sold in a store or shipped to a customer. In fact, online social platforms are optimized in many ways for SaaS products.
As you use your social media monitoring tool, it will be advantageous to think about the extent you want your product to be available: everything from expanding your audience to how best to obtain customer feedback on the implementation of new features. By examining these things and your overall social marketing approach and goals, you will begin to note patterns and key areas for growth, just like any marketing plan. However, with social marketing, implementing these changes can be carried out with a few clicks of a mouse to initiate a new or updated marketing campaign.
Working closely with a social media platform
If you want to make the best use of a social marketing campaign, it will be beneficial to understand how a particular platform deploys that campaign. Each social media outlet will have different algorithms and metrics for every advertising campaign, and if you take the time to get to know the platform and how its marketing operates, you will be able to maximize your campaign to reach the largest audience of potential new customers for your SaaS product.
How a virtual private network can enhance your brand
A virtual private network, or VPN, is usually thought of as something you want to use when trying to mask your online footprint. While this can be a beneficial application of a VPN for any business, if the main focus of your product is to provide your end-users with a software solution, you may be able to utilize a VPN in other ways that will enhance not only your product but also improve how you make the best use of social marketing to expand your brand presence and differentiate your solution to future potential customers.
When you use a VPN, you connect to the wider internet through a server that is not associated with your physical location, which makes it appear as if your computer or server is located elsewhere. This is an enhanced security measure that helps keep the information your SaaS solution transmits and receives secure. When you are working with customer information, being able to demonstrate this added layer of security within your solution can help differentiate your product from others as you seek to grow your online social marketing presence.
Another use of a VPN when providing a software-based product is to enhance the security of hardware and software terminals that are in the field. If your software is a proprietary solution that can be deployed on your customers’ individual hardware, the opportunity for them to share information across their business using your SaaS through a VPN will be an excellent selling point to make across social platforms.
Getting feedback
Feedback should always be considered for any product, and SaaS products are no different. Using social platforms, you can reach out to your end-users to get their feedback on what does and does not work for them as they use your SaaS product. Using social media, you can track new customers and how they have been reached by your marketing efforts and the reach of existing customers to their friends and coworkers. These metrics will allow you to target key customers to seek feedback.
As with any product, positive feedback is most appreciated. But oftentimes, it can be constructive criticism that is the best feedback. Online, customers of all types are more willing to share their unfiltered thoughts about everything, and if you carefully parse all the feedback your SaaS product receives through social platforms, you will be able to find specific criticisms that can help you enhance your product and engage more with customers.
How to make the most of your SaaS product
There are different ways to bring your SaaS product to your customers, and the method that works best for your business will be dependent on the type of solution you offer. For most businesses, providing a cloud-based solution is the way to go. With this method, customers will sign into a remote server to access your tool or service. This is the standard method for customers to access a SaaS product, and it has been developed and refined over many years.
However, with the advent of mobile computing solutions in the form of smartphones and tablets, SaaS products can be taken directly to the appropriate customers at their sites. Many businesses interact with their customers outside an individual office. SaaS products that enable them to remain mobile and still provide quality service to their customers are a benefit that can differentiate your SaaS brand from others. As your customers are in the field with your product, they are providing a social connection with their clients, and those clients are introduced directly to your product.
