A SaaS conversion funnel is simply a marketing and sales technique used by SaaS companies to nurture leads up to the purchase point.
You can also define it as a sales cycle used by SaaS companies.
Every SaaS (Software as a Service) company should have a conversion funnel (SaaS Funnel) that can track how many people convert into users or customers.
Companies can also use conversion funnels to track important actions such as filling out a form or using a feature within your website, like downloading brochures or instructions manuals.
How Should Your Free Trial Funnel Look Like?
Most SaaS funnels look like this in structure:
- Customer is aware of a need in your product.
- Customer considers alternatives to your offerings.
- Customer zeroes in on your product for potential demo.
- Customer starts a free trial and likes your product.
- Customer converts into a client and starts a subscription.
SaaS Funnel Breakdown:
Most SaaS companies follow the new marketing and sales funnel structure to acquire new clients.
1. Marketing and Site Audience
Your product is ready to hit the market, so you need to make sure you've a strategy in place for marketing and advertising to attract more visitors.
Awareness - Marketing and Advertising
- You will start here in your SaaS funnel, introducing your brand to your target audience through different marketing channels. Most Companies choose to stay with digital marketing as the most used medium for marketing.
- Start creating awareness for your product through online marketing strategies like; PPC advertising, content marketing and social media marketing. This will help expose your brand to a larger audience, where you can start targeting for potential leads.
- Your website should represent your brand at all times when you start marketing. It should also be a priority for your site to have a blog where you can share relevant content for your audience if they are researching.
- As you understand more about your audience, you can also create a paid ad on social media with a set budget.
Interest - Traffic to your site
- You are gaining steady website traffic and people are staying to understand your product more.
- You have to keep the interest levels up by continuing your marketing efforts, but give them more than what you provided in the first stage of the sales funnel. (This is usually nurturing the lead)
- Create a testimonial page and show testimonials or reviews from your customers. This helps bring trust and also enhances your credibility as a company. Constantly Share your content links on social media and other shareable platforms, providing useful tips.
- Don't stick just on sharing your content, also share content written by influencers and companies related to your industry that are well established.
Intent - SaaS Product introductions
You now have a slew of traffic your way, but where are the conversions?
- You will need to introduce your product or service and specify its features, benefits and advantages over your competition?
- Introduce your product or service through the form of content, and again be creative with what you provide, this justifies your time and patience to that potential customer.
- The content in the Awareness and Interest stages focused on the problems and challenges of the target audience. It showed your visitors that you understand their challenges, and that you are here to help. That content lets your audience know that you care.
2. Trial Signup (Trial/Freemium)
Most SaaS companies offer some kind of free trial for 15, 30 days in most cases. After a person visits your site, this would traditionally be the next step in the funnel. They will need to download something or signup fro a free trial account with no license.
Evaluation - Demos and Closing Props
- Your potential customers have enough information about you through reading much of your content on blogs and social media accounts. They are now ready to test drive your product or service or set an appointment with you for a demo.
- Make content that is suitable for this stage. Create an advanced piece on how your product works and how it is beneficial to your target market over your competitors.
- After the free trial or demo, continue to send them useful information or updates about your product or service. Keeping in touch with them will make a difference after their free trial or demo until they decide to subscribe to your product.
3. Using your SaaS
Trial signups are great, but not all of them will actually begin using your product once the trial is over. You’ll need to track the ones who do and the ones who didn't. This will help you know who is a potential customer and who is not and eliminates time waste as you search for new signups.
To facilitate paying signups, you can do the following:
- Define a customer personas
- Upgrade your customer experience
- Think and feel like your potential customer
- Ask for engagement
- Provide discount with limited time offers
4. Paying Customers
What every company needs – paying customers. This is the last step of the acquisition funnel; it triggers when a customer pays or subscribes for a plan.
He the customer is certain that your product will solve their problem, so they will sign up for a plan be it 3-12 months and you now have to stop the sales cycle and focus on customer retention which is always the easy part if your software solution continues to help them reach their goals.
Divine Tumenta is an entrepreneur and professional digital marketing expert based in Los Angeles. He has worked in digital marketing for more than 8 years. He is currently founder and CEO of backlinkfy.com and a go to consultant for startups and small businesses in the USA.
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