Guest Contribution by Sherryn de Vos
The online world has transformed the way that every organization does business. Not only has it made processes and day-to-day progress much easier, but it has opened new industry possibilities. Brand new companies are popping up, offering a variety of services that were not possible before the evolution of the internet. Entrepreneurs have been able to create a brand new business to provide solutions for companies globally.
One of the new types of service providers to pop up with the evolution of online business is SaaS-based companies. But what is a SaaS business? SaaS companies offer businesses software solutions to effectively manage their day to day business and can offer these services to a global community. Not only are they highly in demand, but, depending on the services offered, are incredibly innovative.
There has been an overwhelming amount of interest in SaaS companies with entrepreneurs finding gaps in the market and creating savvy solutions of companies to make their lives easier. Services like HR management, team communication and mailing platforms (to name a few) have been developed and are currently popular buy-ins. So, if you are looking to jump on the very profitable bandwagon of SaaS.
We have found some tools that you will need to make your business a success.
Make Communication Easy
Communication is key in an organization. Not only are we talking about communication with your clients, but between your teams too. Whether you are a small startup or a large corporate with thousands of employees, communication needs to be open at all times between your workforce. There are a number of team communication tools for you to choose from, depending on the needs of your organization and the needs of the teams. There are platforms that allow you to create specific chats for various teams, individual chats, and overall company chats. There are also a number of tools that allow you to create and monitor tasks in organizations. It is an easy way to keep an eye on the company’s progress, the employee’s success as well as monitor anything urgent.
When it comes to dealing with your customers, there are also a number of vitally important tools that you can integrate into your site to make sure that your customer has contact with your company at all times. Instant chats and chatbots are a great way of heightening customer engagement and ensuring that their questions, needs, and complaints are heard and taken care of, ensuring customer success. After all, a happy customer is a repeat customer, and repeat customers are worth twenty times more than a brand new customer.
Use Content To Hook New Customers
You may have heard the saying that content is king. Well, in this digital age, it really is. If you keep up with the top saas companies, you will note how the importance of content has grown significantly over the last few years, and that it is continually evolving to maintain its relevance. Content is one of the biggest customer drawcards for online businesses. In fact, research shows that content marketing converts three times more leads than traditional marketing for online companies. So, what makes it so successful and what should you start implementing in your business?
Firstly, having a blog or a newsroom is highly suggested for your site. By posting and sharing regular content, you will be showing customers that you are trustworthy, relevant, knowledgeable and informative. You can then take the content and share it over your social media platforms, share it with partners and influencers and include it in weekly or bi-weekly mailers.
There are a number of tools and platforms to assist you with both social sharing as well as the mass mailing process. A number of the options with the mailing tools allows you to totally customize your mailers, their frequency, their tracking processes and also allows you the functionality of personalizing mailers depending on the various types of members in your audience. This means that if you do a customer profile analysis on your current and future customers, you can create a map of their interests, behaviors, and needs. You can then personalize emails for various groups, segment them and ensure that each group is getting regular content that will generate a genuine interest in your product and service.
Social sharing tools can be highly useful for your needs too. There are various platforms that you can easily make use of to lighten the burden of regular posting. You pre-schedule your posts across various platforms, ensuring that the right content goes out in the right format with the same messaging. You can also ensure that you can easily track the posts, monitor their success, ascertain how many clicks they received and calculate the leads from each post. There are hundreds of tools to choose from to heighten the success of your social engagement, so get your goals in place, and start doing some research on what will suit you.
Do Deep Dives Into Data Analytics
As mentioned before, collecting and monitoring your data is a vital part of marketing and organizational success. You can keep track of your clicks, leads, sales, bounces, customer churn, etc. This can show you, in real-time, what is working for your site and what is not. Use AB testing all the time to monitor what is working for your site, for your mailer and your posts and what is not. Do some images work or does some content just not generate the right amount of clicks? All of this data can be effectively stored and monitored over a period of time, whether it be daily, weekly, monthly or annually. Keeping this data is vital, and ensuring it is protected is even more important.
Data warehouses are really important, and getting the right data warehouse that suits your unique needs is important. This is why it is important to do your research and know the difference between warehouse solutions like Redshift and Snowflake. Make you know where each of their strengths lies, and choose which one will suit your unique organization.
Wrapping Up
Although these are some of the most important tools for you to choose from if you are starting a SaaS business, this is the mere tip of the iceberg. As you go along, you will find hundreds of different options for you to choose from and even tools that you didn’t know you needed for your organization. As you grow, you will find it easier and easier to automate your business and even find that you will outgrow some of your first choices. It is a permanently evolving world, so keep evolving with it!
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Sherryn de Vos is living in the beautiful city of Cape Town. She worked with a startup brand that launched in South Africa called GoBeauty where she was assisted with content generation, as well as conceptualized events focused on women’s health, entrepreneurship, careers, and tech to run alongside the brand. She has extensive experience in writing and uses a lot of her practical experience to create useful content in the business, finance and marketing world.