It’s no secret that influencer marketing has become one of the most efficient ways to market products and services in the digital age. Influencers hold sway over their audiences and can help brands reach highly focused users.
Sports, lifestyle, fashion, and beauty are industries that benefit highly from influencer marketing. Influencers can pose with the products they are promoting, and their followers will visit the product page to make a purchase or learn more about the items.
But influencer marketing isn’t only a privilege for world-famous sports and fashion brands. All brands can benefit from it, including SaaS businesses.
In this blog post, you’ll learn how SaaS influencer marketing can help you promote your product to the right audience.
How To Leverage Influencer Marketing For SaaS Products
Let’s say you are launching a video editing software called EpicVideos. You can have two marketing messages for the product.
Message 1 – You are the author: “Our team has launched software for recording and editing high-quality videos. We’ve just entered the market, but we have used our passion and industry knowledge to create a tool you’ll enjoy using. Give it a try for free!”
Message 2 – The influencer is the author: “Recently, I used EpicVideos to create great quality videos for my YouTube channel. Excellent design, easy to use, and creative features. These guys know what they are doing. I will be waiting for your feedback after you try it. See you soon!”
Can you feel the difference between the two messages? Customers would rather trust other consumers who have used the product than hear brands promote themselves. When you work with SaaS influencers to promote your product, the tone is always full of proof and motivation. The message is a kind of testimony, and since their audience is specific, you will connect with users who are highly interested in what you are selling.
As you can see, influencer marketing is the strategy you need to appeal to your target consumers. Here’s what you need to do to leverage this SaaS marketing strategy to grow your business.
Find Common Threads
Finding the right influencers to work with is one of the biggest challenges brands face when setting out their marketing strategy. You may find an influencer with the exact audience you are looking for, but their values don’t match your own. Working with such an influencer may be detrimental to your company since you will be associated with the creator’s poor values.
For this reason, you need to be careful when searching for influencers for your SaaS marketing plan. Take time to find the commonalities between your brand and the potential influencer. What do they care about? What channels do they use to promote their content? What brands have they worked with in the past?
Pay attention to the minute details, and you will be able to determine if an influencer is the right pick for your brand.
Big isn’t always better
The biggest influencers in your industry aren’t always the best option for your campaign. Of course, they may have many followers who may be interested in your product, but such superstar influencers may fail to respond to your request if you don’t offer them something substantial for their time. So, instead of catching the biggest fish in the sea, go for micro-influencers who are open to working with small brands.
One thing that makes micro-influencers an excellent choice for your campaign is that they have an audience that pays attention to them. When the influencer makes a recommendation, the followers are open to trying it, which will generate a lot of interest in your product or service.
Work with a SaaS marketing agency to find appropriate influencers for your marketing campaign.
Nurture Relationships
Once you’ve put together a list of potential SaaS influencers to work with, spend some time observing them on their pages. Examine the type of content they create and how they interact with their followers. It’s essential to know the influencer deeply before you even reach out to them, hence this due diligence.
When you are convinced the influencer is a good fit for your brand, you need to engage them. Comment or share their posts to show that you are interested in their content. Don’t leave generic comments like “nice post” or “lovely piece”. Instead, go into detail about what makes the content good and the value you have gained. This will help you get the influencer’s attention, and you will be able to nurture this relationship into a full-blown SaaS influencer marketing campaign.
Incorporate Campaigns into the Sales Funnel
Your campaign needs direction if you are to gain maximum value from it. That’s why you should incorporate the influencer campaign into your SaaS marketing funnel. By tying your efforts to your sales funnel, you will achieve your goals faster by using the right messaging that appeals to your users at that particular moment.
If you have just launched your SaaS product and want to create awareness, you can partner with influencers with a large following to help you make many people aware of your product. But at the later stages of the campaign, you want to work with micro-influencers who have a focused audience and are likely to buy the products they recommend.
Always be measuring
Before you start the campaign, you need to determine the SaaS marketing metrics that define your success. Discuss these metrics with the influencer, so they know what you will use to gauge the campaign’s success. There are many tools like Google Analytics that you can use for campaign measurement. For example, if referral traffic is one of the critical metrics for you, Google Analytics will help you track the amount of traffic the influencer generates for your site.
Understand SaaS Influencer Marketing Better With Examples
Here are a few examples of SaaS brands that are doing influencer marketing right:
Example 1: Adobe working with influencers to spread inspirational thoughts
To encourage people to be their authentic selves, Adobe worked with several influencers to spread inspirational thoughts. Several women influencers shared messages on how they deal with the challenges they face in their lives without compromising their values and ideals. With Adobe providing tools for creativity and self-expression, the campaign helped the brand appeal to the large creator community.
Figure 1: Adobe influencer marketing. Source – Instagram
Figure 2: Adobe influencer marketing. Source – Instagram
Why do we like this!
- Puts a face on the company: SaaS companies can be very dull on social media. All those posts about software and technical issues can be very dull, resulting in little engagement on your posts. Adobe put a human face on the company by working with influencers, making the brand very colorful and vibrant.
- Share shared values with the community: Customers are more likely to buy from companies that support the causes close to their hearts. Through this campaign, Adobe shows its support for self-expression and creativity, two issues that matter a lot to its target users.
- Entertain their community: Through these two posts, Adobe shares a light moment with its audience.
- It shows what their tools can do: Adobe shows how content creators can use Adobe Illustrator to create stunning designs. Viewers can view Adobe’s story for inspiration for their next creation.
Example 2: Nord VPN partnering with Liverpool FC in the US
Nord VPN is a VPN service that provides complete online protection for its users. The tool helps users browse securely and protects them from online threats. To show how strong its defense is, Nord VPN partnered with Liverpool FC, which has one of the best defensive records in the world of soccer.
Figure 3: Nord VPN influencer marketing. Source – Instagram
Why do we like this!
- There’s a real incentive to trigger engagement and grow one’s audience: Nord VPN offers its users tickets to see Liverpool FC play live in the US. Liverpool is one of the best soccer teams globally, making it difficult for users to ignore the incentive.
- Nord VPN makes it about (not Liverpool) Nord VPN: This post is all about Nord VPN and not Liverpool. Nord uses Liverpool’s reputation to show its users what they are good at – dealing with all manner of threats.
SaaS products will always require a very specific approach to influencer marketing. One of the biggest mistakes brands can make is focusing purely on the software rather than the actual value it provides. Ultimately, your brand’s objective is to utilize experts (read, influencers) who know how to appeal to not just consumers but the very idea of progress in a particular field.
The great news is that whatever your business’s focus, there are thousands of trusted influencers you could rely on to reach out to new audiences and reinforce your brand awareness. AtisfyReach, our AI-based influencer marketing platform can connect you with the right influencers in your niche. The platform’s algorithm matches brands with the ‘right fit’ influencers based on the campaign’s goals – be it an increase in brand awareness, more engagement, or boosting revenue at scale. Launching soon!
Register your interest today!
