Four Customer Acquisition Strategies for SaaS Businesses
B2B SaaS companies have successfully implemented a number of customer acquisition strategies. Each of these strategies follows the general framework of generating awareness, supporting the consideration process, and driving conversions – but the focus and tactics are slightly different.
Product-led Growth
Product-led growth is a customer acquisition strategy that emphasizes product usage and positive customer experiences. SaaS companies following a product-led strategy will often adopt a Freemium pricing model, broadening access to the free version of their product while charging for premium or enterprise features. SaaS companies like Slack and Dropbox grew exponentially by deploying a product-led growth strategy.
Sales-led Growth
Sales-led growth is a customer acquisition strategy where sales processes and teams play the most important role in driving revenue. SaaS companies following a sales-led strategy may focus on identifying important decision-makers in target companies, conducting outreach, generating sales-qualified leads (SQLs), and closing deals through an account executive.
While a product-led growth strategy tries to create positive product experiences for the customer, a sales-led strategy tries to engage the customer directly and sell them on the value of the product.
Marketing-led Growth
Marketing-led growth is a customer acquisition strategy where marketing teams leverage multiple channels (e.g. email, social media, paid advertisements, SEO) and tactics (e.g. blogs, white papers, guides and how-to articles, video content, podcasts, etc.) to support customers throughout the purchasing journey and scale their customer acquisition.
Customer-led Growth
Customer-led growth is an acquisition strategy that leverages deep customer insights and 1st-party data to identify valuable customers and create personalized, highly-targeted experiences that drive conversions.