19 SaaS Growth Strategies and Hacks for 2024 & Beyond

Do you ever look at the SaaS companies which are on top, and wish your business could follow their trajectory too? Well, you can. In fact you can do one better and reach the top spot faster than they did by learning from their mistakes and adopting the SaaS growth methods that they gave us all. 

When it comes to SaaS growth, it is not always going to be a straight line on the graph. But more like a steep curve that was earlier dipping and then instantly grew. SaaS growth cannot be predicted but it can definitely be worked towards with the best strategies and efforts. 

Keeping that in mind, let’s work towards your SaaS growth by using some sure shot results giving SaaS strategies curated and attested to by the top SaaS marketing agencies and SaaS companies. 

SaaS growth hacks and strategies to scale faster than ever! 

With my own experience of working with SaaS brands and with experiences of ZeroAdo’s experts’ Crew here is a list of tried and tested SaaS strategy hacks that can help you take your business one level up. 

Analyze your existing sales and marketing strategies 

If you are starting up your sales and marketing and this is a new business with no baggage from the past then you can skip this step. 

If you have been doing sales and marketing for SaaS growth but have not been able to see good results then this strategy is for you. 

Open your books and check how your SaaS marketing and sales funnel have been working. Analyze your entire strategy, how it is being implemented, and track your investment and its result on each sales and marketing strategy. 

“Why should I go through this hassle of analyzing all my strategies?”

So you can find any gaps that there might be which are adding as hurdles in your SaaS growth and you probably do not even know about it. 

Here is an example of how to analyze your SaaS strategy for both sales and marketing.

SaaS sales strategy analysis 

Checkout for the following points as per your sales cycles or more and find out any gaps that there might be. 

• Number of leads that you are getting from the marketing team. 
• Number of leads which your team is able to convert.
• The time it takes for your sales rep to close the deal. 
• How many followups it takes to close the deal. 
• Compare which sales rep is closing the most deals and which is closing the least - find out why. 
• Find out the tough point in your sales cycle where you lost most of your customers - figure out why. 
• Analyze your demo process. 

And more, which you feel are relevant as per your SaaS business strategy that you designed. After running this analysis you will find gaps, close those gaps with your sales experts. Eventually you will see a significant increase in your SaaS growth. 

SaaS marketing strategy analysis 

When it comes to marketing there is a lot to analyse, you can start by segmenting your analysis on the basis of the channel - like organic, social media, news letters, paid, and so on. 

• Figure out which channel is getting you the maximum qualified leads. 
• Find out which channel is giving you the most number of junk leads. 
• Run a thorough SaaS content audit. Go through your website, advertisements, social media posts, or other marketing content as a customer - figure out which is the point where you will stop browsing or not sign up. 

The above suggestions are just the starting point for you. Since SaaS marketing is very subjective, highly detailed, and customized for different SaaS tools you need to analyze your strategies on the basis of that. 

Analyze your competitor’s marketing strategies

Once you finish analysing your marketing strategy, you will have the following insights with you - 

• The channels give you maximum and minimum ROI. 
• The gaps which are probably making customers reluctant to sign up. 
• Any strategy where you invest time and resources but it hasn’t given any results. 

And more based on your analysis…

Now is the time to put this analysis to use, close the gaps, and make it function better. But to do that, you need to compare your marketing strategy to your competitors and find out the things they are doing but you are not. 

Create a list of competitors and analyse all of their marketing strategies. (Make it in a tabular manner to understand better, here is an example for you.) 

Once you have that picture in front of you, analyse what they are doing which is lacking in your strategy and how you can cover that up. 

However, that is not enough, also find out ways to make your marketing strategy better than theirs. Just analyzing and copying their tactics will not work, you will have to one up them. 

Cherry pick the strategies from your comparison table and only implement the ones which are highly rewarding not just in the short run but long run as well. 

Implement ASAP! 

Leverage SEO and content marketing

Among all the marketing channels SEO is the most customer centric marketing channel for being interactive and catering to customers needs. SEO and content marketing work together to give the best of the results to you. 

Most importantly both of these are relevant at all stages of your SaaS sales cycle and marketing stages as well. Be it top of the funnel or bottom of the funnel, content marketing and SEO are needed as well as beneficial for all stages. 

Most importantly, this combination gives you long term results. Once your SEO content starts converting customers there is no going back the leads just keep on flowing. The higher your content ranks, the more leads you get, and the more your revenue increases. 

The loop continues and you keep on getting leads till the time you are maintaining your content’s position with SEO. 

The best of SaaS brands leverage SEO and content marketing so what is stopping you from trying it out? Buffer, a social media tool scaled up to 70,000+ users with a solid content marketing and SEO strategy, so take some inspiration from it and get started with it already. 

Buffer utilized content marketing for search engines as well as Twitter (now X), they were their two main platforms that they leveraged for content marketing. 

“​​Up until the past 2 months, content marketing accounted for over 70% of our daily signups.

This is just a great way to provide value for readers, without full self-promotion.

If someone likes your content, they are most likely interested in finding out more about what else it is you do. “ - Leo Widrich , Co-founder and Content Manager, Buffer 

Shorten your sales cycle 

The longer your sales cycle, the longer it will take to get revenue in your business account. After working with almost 4 renowned SaaS brands in the last 3 years I have realised that the shorter the sales cycle the better it is. 

Why? Because a shorter sales cycle means faster conversions and a more motivated sales team that is ready to nail all targets. 

But why does a shorter sales cycle result in SaaS growth? 

• Because the lesser number of sales steps ensure that the customer does not go to your competitor and you can convert them fast. 
• It lowers your cost per lead as you are not spending too much time behind one customer. 
• Shorter sales cycles ensure consistent communication with clients at least on every third day basis which makes your customer feel connected. 
• Connected customers are often the loyal customers. 
• Your sales process is optimized and highly scalable. Thus, you can strive to make your SaaS brand big. 

Next big question is how to shorten your sales cycle- 

• Find out your ideal customer profiles and prioritize those profiles first during sales as their conversion potential is more. 
• Automate your behind the scenes sales tasks as much as possible. 
• Set a fixed programme/system that all your sales team members have to follow for an optimized sales cycle which gives results. 
• Finally, know the breaking point. Know when you need to stop chasing a customer and that will save you plenty of time to focus on the ones that will actually convert. 

Build product-led marketing strategy 

In SaaS your product is it! That is the only thing you have to build your entire marketing strategy on. If you want to sell your product then you also need to give it the front seat when it comes to marketing. 

Design your marketing strategy in a way that it solely focuses - 

• On your product. 
• How it solves your customers' problems. 
• Why is your product better than the competitors? 

Your product as the main base of marketing should reflect in your all marketing strategies be it for organic, paid or social media. No matter what kind of SaaS content writing you are doing, give your product the center stage. 

You want your customer to come across your product again and again. Hear its benefits, and know how it benefits them if you want them to finally buy it. 

A product-led marketing strategy helps you do that. Put your product in the limelight for your customers and make it look so lucrative that they are unable to resist the temptation to give it a try. 

Hubspot actually nails this segment, because no matter what content piece, video, or social media post you see from them, their product is always in the front.

Follow and leverage SaaS marketing trends 

The thing with SaaS growth is that the marketing is ever-evolving. Today there is one technology for product promotion and the next day is another tactic coming up to make your SaaS product viral. 

But this ever evolving aspect is also what gives you a lot of opportunities for SaaS business growth. You can be innovative with your marketing and start a trend or follow the upcoming marketing trends that have benefited others and might benefit you as well. 

The point being, stay up-to–date when it comes to SaaS marketing. Keep an eye on the SaaS marketing trends and follow the ones you can see a potential in to scale your business. 

Following trends might seem like you are becoming part of a herd, but always remember that a trend becomes a trend only because it is getting you results. 

Have an in-app onboarding process to improve customer activation 

“My customers sign up, but they are not using the product actively.”

It is one of the common problems that every SaaS brand faces and you might as well have especially if you do not have a seamless onboarding process. Consider this, you have signed up for a pottery class, but you will go and try making pots only when you have been taught how to. 

Similar is the case with your product too. If you are not helping your signee learn how to use the product, how will they be able to navigate it? 

You might think that your product is easy to understand but for your customer it might not be. If a customer does not get a good onboarding experience where they are being taught steps to use your product then there is a possibility that they will not use it actively and might as well cancel the subscription the next time. 

That can hinder your SaaS growth strategy. So if you already do not have an onboarding video or experience in place, make sure to get it and see an increase in your active customers almost instantly. 

ClickUp is one of the top SaaS tools for project management and they rose to new heights relatively recently in the last two years, thanks to their own boarding experience along with other things. 

They have a detailed onboarding process with a video and AI help centers where users can ask any questions regarding the tool. 

Uplevel with Inbound-Led outbound marketing

RB2B’s founder, Adam Robinson, has come up with a new tactic for B2B SaaS growth strategy called - ‘Inbound - Led Outbound.’ 

If you haven’t heard about it then don’t worry it is never too late for a strategy that is bound to get you profitable growth for SaaS. 

Inbound led outbound is a combination of both sales and marketing into one strategy. Here you reach out to your inbound website visitors through your outbound sales strategy. 

But how!? 

Well Adam has shared his insights in detail below. 

Summing up, his words for you, often the website visitors are just anonymous users who have visited your websites, have some knowledge about your business, but did not convert. 

Those are the users you run an outbound campaign for by finding out their LinkedIn profiles. A systematic use of automation and SaaS marketing tools help you do that. If you want to learn more about this strategy then tune into the RB2B academy and Inbound-Led Outbound podcast. 

Create ample video content of multiple kind 

Visual content is the best form of content you can create these days especially videos because they not only appeal to your customers, but also promote your product better than any other form of content. 

Furthermore, video content also gives you an edge because it is being ranked and preferred by AI overviews too. Video SEO as well has comparatively less competition than the other forms of content thus giving you another opportunity to rank. 

“The most frequently linked URLs included YouTube (3.88% from youtube.com and 2.59% from m.youtube.com), Wikipedia (3.76%), and less frequently, Southern Living (1.53%).” - A research by Rich Sanger 

Slack understands that, thus they are leveraging videos as one of the SaaS growth hacks. 

So create ample video content of kind, here are a few examples of the kind of content that can help your SaaS business growth - 

• Educational videos, to educate your prospects of the concepts in your industry. 
• Product demo videos where you showcase how to use your product and all the features. 
• Product education videos where you address the pain points of your customers and tell them how to use your product to solve problems. 
• Webinars and podcasts to build a loyal viewership which helps you in further brand awareness and building brand credibility. 
• Testimonial videos, to build your credibility, spread word of mouth, and to convert customers faster. 

Provide awesome after sales services 

The growth of your SaaS business is determined by how happy your customers are with you and your tool. After sales service plays an important role in that. 

Selling your product alone will not help you secure SaaS growth, but getting your customers to subscribe to you again and again will. Providing after sales service ensures that your customers come back to you. 

After sales service refers to helping your customers with any questions related to your product once you have sold your product. Now what most SaaS businesses need to know is that just providing the after sales service is not enough, but providing a ‘WOW’ after sales service is. 

Zoho understand the assignments and thus they have offered live chat option in their project management tool. 

You can make your after sales service WOW - 

• By making it quick and resolving any queries almost instantly. 
• Having a DIY FAQ and help center section in place. 
• By understanding your customers’ pain point and the fact that their business might depend upon the functioning of your tool. 
• Making your customers aware beforehand if there would be any time off in your SaaS product due to maintenance issues. 
• Keeping communication clear and reaching out to help your customers before they have to reach out to you. 

Have a cross selling strategy in place 

If you have more than one product or multiple product features then having a cross-selling strategy in place can benefit you and your customers both. 

Cross-selling refers to recommending a product/feature to your customer based on their current or previous purchases that can add value to them. 

For instance, if someone buys fruits from a vendor then they can suggest buying a fruit basket too. Having a cross-selling strategy in place can help you sell more with lesser efforts. 

For example, if you have a software for everyday punch-in and punch-out of employees then you can cross-sell the feature of maintaining employee’s payslips too along with the attendance. 

There are multiple ways of cross selling. You can do so by - 

• giving personalized recommendations to your customers
• bundling your product features
• creating SEO content promoting two products together
• giving some discount on bulk products
• or simply by suggesting your customer to buy an extra product/feature for better functionality. 

Utilize multiple pricing models 

A software has multiple features and not every feature is going to be relevant for everyone. But you also want your product to be sold more. So what to do in that case? 

Well, have different pricing options in place based on the plans and product features that you are offering. That way, your customers will have multiple options to choose from based on their usage. 

And you will not lose customers because of being unaffordable. Selling 10 features to 100 customers at a feasible price is better than selling 100 features at premium price to 10 customers. 

You have designed your product already, and all the resources that you have put in will probably come back to you within a year-or two to make your business break even. But to make that happen you need your product to become accessible, indispensable, affordable, and known in the market as well. 

Having multiple pricing plans help you do all the 4 things mentioned above. Mailchimp understood that early on and thus leveraged it for their own SaaS growth. Checkout below how they offer multiple pricing plans. 

Test and learn

Your SaaS growth trajectory is going to have ups and downs. Those are the phases you need to take learnings from. Especially when it comes to SaaS marketing and sales.

Do not rely on just one sales pitch or strategy, similarly do not rely on just one channel of marketing. Test your strategies fast, learn, and remove the inefficient strategies faster. 

If you don’t try multiple things, you will never exactly work. If you are unable to close your leads, then maybe test a new sales pitch and if it works better then dispose of the other. If one paid marketing ad is not getting expert results then maybe design new ones and test simultaneously. 

The point is do not stop testing and learning and do not become comfortable with just one way of doing things, because there is always going to be a better one ready to be discovered. 

Offer a free version of the tool 

Free trial is one of the best and result oriented SaaS growth strategies. Why? Because through free trials you give your customers an experience of using your tool and adding that to their processes. 

Through that, they are able to find their ‘AHA’ moment with your tool for free. Once they experience their wow moment, they are going to convert into a paid customer. Free trials are the middle ground for both you and your customer to find a spot of compromise on. 

You do not lose business by giving a few days of free trial, all you have is to gain and your customers do not lose if they did not enjoy the tool. Thus, free trials work fantastically for the growth of SaaS tools. 

Send personalized campaigns to customers 

Not every customer is similar, and the sooner you learn that the better it is. Sending personalized campaigns is not a need but a necessity now because they not only help you retain your customers but also in cross-selling and upselling to them. 

Send personalized campaigns based on your customers previous purchase history, or engagement with your brand. If they are an existing customer, maybe offer a discount to them and upsell through that tactic. 

If they are a prospect then send a highly personalized campaign addressing their individual pain points and how it solves a problem. Personalized campaigns do not always depend on the customers, they are also related to the occasion. 

For instance, a personalized campaign with a Diwali offer has more chances of being opened and responded to than a regular campaign during pre-Diwali week. 

Topaz Labs took the right notes and deployed personalized campaigns as a part of their SaaS growth strategies. Look at them sending campaigns based on the appropriate occasion. 

So personalize your SaaS marketing campaigns based on both your customer needs as well as the occasion to improve the chances of responses, thus improving the chances of your accelerated SaaS growth. 

Hire the right people who can drive growth for you 

Growth of SaaS requires team work. From a high functioning sales team to the top SaaS marketing agencies, everyone has a crucial role to play when it comes to growing your SaaS business. 

Keep that in mind while hiring which improves your SaaS growth trajectory because if you do not have the right team by your side, then you can only do so much alone. 

Hire people and agencies who can understand your vision and also have experience in your field. Hire growth visionaries that take your stress away from you and reduce your hassle of management. 

ZeroAdo, is one such growth partner to turn your SaaS business profitable. We have an Digital Growth Accelerator program in place to help brands like you achieve growth by streamlining your business processes and creating and implementing the best growth strategies. 

We can manage SaaS SEO, paid marketing, social media marketing, and even legalities of your business, you just need to sign up and get started with us! 

Keep track of your metrics 

SaaS marketing metrics and SaaS sales metrics are the only two kinds of numbers that you need to keep track of while growing your SaaS business. 

These metrics tell you what is working for your business and what is not and a lot more than that. The best part about metrics is that they give you insights almost instantly. You can see in your graph that which month your revenue peaked or decreased. You can also figure out the best marketing channel through the number of qualified leads. 

These insights help you double down on the strategies that are working for your SaaS growth and stop investing in the ones which are not. If you have not been tracking your metrics then start now because you are missing out on plenty of gaps which are making you lose business. 

Pay attention to reduce churn and improve customer retention

If you are facing a huge churn rate then it is time to focus on customer retention instead of acquisition. You can keep acquiring new customers, but you will only get SaaS growth when you make those customers stay. 

High churn rate is probably the #1 obstacle of SaaS growth, and I can tell that because I as a customer myself sign up for multiple SaaS tools but end up stop using them after a certain point. 

Why? Because the brand is not retaining me as a customer. Just releasing new features every two days does not account for customer retention. Customer retention stands for giving your customers the reason to stay with you for the long term. 

Here are a few ways to make your customers stay and retain them for a really-really long time - 

• Offer after sales services not just initially but throughout the time they are with you as a customer. 
• Have a seamless onboarding experience for your customers to help them understand your tool. 
• Offer occasional discounts and offers to them for sticking around with you. For instance, offer a month of free subscription after they have been your customer for 6 months. 
• Resolve their tickets as soon as possible. 
• Reduce your response time to their queries. 
• Have a learning stack ready to help them navigate through your tool. 
• Take customer feedback and implement it whenever possible. 

Build relationships with your customers through a customer retention cadence and gain them for the long term. Here are a few examples from brands who are utilizing the above tips to retain existing or lost customers. 

Semrush is providing a thorough guide to use their tool to retain customers and not lose any because they could not understand their tool.

The Rundown AI is reaching out to me since I haven’t been opening their mails lately and thus they sent a personalized mail to retain me back and also asked for my feedback. 

Level up your LinkedIn game to create buzz around your SaaS

You need to be where your customers are and LinkedIn is that spot. The target audience for your SaaS growth is hanging out at LinkedIn so it is only fair to have marketing campaigns planned out for the same. 

Think about ways you can reach out to your prospects on LinkedIn using organic content, DMs, InMail, and other LinkedIn strategies which can be unique to your business. The point is to leverage LinkedIn for SaaS content marketing and other relevant campaigns because that’s where your customers are. 

Along with marketing campaigns you can also leverage LinkedIn to create founder-led content like Saleshandy founder Dhruv Patel did. 

He converted his profile into a megaphone and connected to sales pros by discussing issues that touched a nerve and then gave the solution in the form of his SaaS product Saleshandy. 

SaaS growth needs consistent work and some hacks! 

You might have seen that some SaaS businesses blow up in a day or two and everyone praises them for it. But no one sees the consistent hard work that has gone behind the scenes in making that happen. 

SaaS growth needs a lot of consistency and even more hacks and tricks to be tried and tested. But along with that it needs a team, a foundation, and support that makes it happen. 

If you are looking for that support, then ZeroAdo is here to help you with that. Hit us up and become a part of Agile Growth Aggregator program which has been designed for visionaries like you who want to scale their business at speed.