When you are faced with a newly created product, that you want to get out to the world, it is easy to think that potential customers are ready and willing to ‘buy off the page’. Never having to interact with another human, this process effortlessly plays into the demands of the self-empowered contemporary consumer. As a direct result, the ‘Free Trial’ approach is born.
The problem arises when the SaaS entrepreneur, excited with their new product, believes that by offering a free trial, it will convert SaaS trial users immediately due to their momentously game-changing solution. However, with 75% of SaaS companies offering a free trial for their products - only 66% of those surveyed had a free-trial-to-paying-customer conversion rate of 25% or less. Although 25% is not awful, knowing the clear majority will not convert is a difficult pill to swallow.
For Marketing Directors, this leads to two key questions:
- How can I increase the number of leads converting to trial?
- How can I improve the number of trials that result in purchase?
The possible reasons for poor conversion rate:
- Prospect isn’t ready for the trail
- Prospect doesn’t understand the trials value or how it can address their pain points
- They find the software to complicated so don’t understand benefits
- After trial, there is not enough nurture to close/purchase
- Product cost too high compared to apparent value
To boost SaaS conversions, a marketing strategy must address these concerns from first contact with the prospect. Many SaaS companies don’t always gravitate towards inbound marketing when trying to convert trial users. This is a real shame! We discuss the benefits of inbound marketing, more specifically how social media is vital for B2B tech companies, in another of our blogs. Inbound marketing techniques can help you craft an effective and efficient strategy that will convert your SaaS trial users to fully fledged customers.
And here are 3 ways to do it!
1. Make Buyer Personas
Inbound marketing is built around buyer personas. By using the correct SaaS buyer persona, you can attract the right people off the bat, avoiding common barriers such as cost or integration concerns. With the right persona, you can reach more prospects who are most likely to start a trial and go on to purchase.
We’ve written a whole blog on technology sector buyer personas which you can find here.
2. Nurture at Every Stage
Supporting your SaaS free trial users is be one of the most important influencers in boosting your conversation rates. Nurture is essential to inbound. By addressing purchase barriers such as value for money and installation timing with specialised content unique to their needs, your company will build a strong lasting relationship throughout your free trial users buyer’s journey.
In inbound marketing, this is usually called ‘Lead Nurturing’. This can be implemented through supportive emails and a ready social media presence to response to any questions from the moment they begin their free trial. Continual connection and support will show them that you value them as a customer and can gently help them towards becoming a converted lead.
3. Educate Your Users
Remember I mentioned specialised and unique content? By aligning your content to educate and help leads to convert, dependent on what buyers stage they are at, (whether that be awareness, consideration or decision) it can inform their process and see if your product is the right fit for them. If you want to learn more about the buyer’s journey, click here.
The aim is to help your free trial users, not push them. This way you can show that you are a trust worthy and reliable company, meaning that even if they don’t purchase with you this time, they may when it better suits them.
When your prospects sign up for the free trial, you will have key pieces of invaluable information that you can use to specialise the content. Put yourself in the shoes of the trial user and consider what questions they may have about the product, value, case studies, or usage.
E-Books – Provide detailed value and encourage initial lead conversion. You could send it out viva email as a free download after the initial download of your SaaS product to serve as a beginner’s guide.
Blog – Target key challenges that consumers may face, with your product as the solution and free download page as a call to action.
Case Studies – Makes the value of your product clear to your lead. Make sure they address a similar niche, challenge or business size to resonate best with your chosen buyer persons or best fit leads.
Webinars – Make sure webinars run at same intervals as your free trials to best match your users journey. Explain software functionality and answer questions.
The key is to identify potential knowledge gaps that may stand in the way of purchase. Through inbound marketing, you can educate your users and remove these obstacles.
Improve with Inbound
By completing and understanding your buyer personas, nurturing their needs and pains, and solving them through perfectly matched content, your inbound marketing will increase conversion from trial to purchase.
However, inbound will affect more than just your SaaS trial conversations. A detailed and efficiently executed inbound marketing strategy, will increase ROI, build client relationships and produce more profitable leads in other areas of your business.
To find out more about how inbound marketing can benefit your technology company, download a copy of our ultimate guide to inbound marketing.
Comments