Have you been searching for cost-effective lead generation ideas for your SaaS startup?
Or maybe, you just realized that your pipeline of leads for your business has dried, and you need to do something about it?
Either way, this post is for you.
In it, you will learn 20 lead generation strategies to keep your business going and revenue coming in.
Let’s get things started, shall we?
1. Convert Your Website Traffic Into Leads With Adoric
When put to good use, your website can become a lead generation machine. But how do you even make that possible?
Simple. By deploying Adoric to your website.
Adoric comes with a ton of tools specially designed to help you convert your website traffic into leads, and eventually sales.
One of such tools is our attention-grabbing opt-in popups. They let you capture your visitors’ email addresses and other contact details you may need for marketing purposes.
To make your popups more enticing, you can add a lead magnet to them. More on that shortly.
If you fear that popup might ruin your visitors’ browsing experience, consider using our floating bar or slide-in templates. They are way less intrusive, but yet attention-grabbing.
But that’s not all.
Adoric has lots of other features all uniquely designed to help you win a ton of leads for your SaaS startup.
They include:
- A Countdown timer to create FOMO with your visitors and make them swiftly sign up for your product rather than dilly-dallying.
- Exit-intent technology that lets you capture back visitors attempting to leave your website.
- Trigger control which you can use to set when your popups appear on your visitors’ screens.
- Audience targeting feature that ensures your opt-in forms are shown to the right people.
- Seamless integration with all major Email Service Providers like Mailchimp, Aweber, etc.
Ready to take Adoric for a spin?
2. Create a Lead Generation Process via Email Marketing
After capturing the emails of potential users of your product with our popups, what then do you do with them?
This is where email marketing comes into play. And trust me, email marketing pays big time.
Research has it that for every $1 you spend on email marketing, you get $44 back.
Thankfully, email marketing isn’t as hard as it might seem on the surface. All you have to do is to get an Email service provider, add the emails you collect to it, craft attention-grabbing email copies, and send them out when the time is right.
3. Build a Conversion Funnel to Generate Business Leads
Lead generation is never really complete without an efficient conversion funnel.
And the reason is simple: not every potential customer that arrives at your website is ready to make a purchase. The same holds if you generate leads through ads, social media marketing, or emails.
What to do?
Build a conversion funnel to nurture your leads across their buying journey.
But what is a conversion funnel by the way?
Simply put, a conversion funnel – or a sales funnel – is a visual representation of the path a lead goes from taking interest in your product/service to when they eventually convert into paying customers.
So, how do you build a conversion funnel?
Well, the truth is, there’s no singular effective method for building a conversion funnel. But, here’s the one we use at Adoric and has worked pretty well for us.
Step 1: Generate Substantial Traffic
SEO, Content Marketing, Facebook ads, PPC – they all work well for generating traffic. Just go for whatever hits the spot for you.
Step 2: Drive That Traffic to a Landing Page
Once you’ve generated substantial traffic, next is driving that traffic somewhere. What better place to drive it than a custom-built landing page?
Not your website’s home, about, or contact page, but a dedicated landing page. This is where the conversion will occur. That is to say, it’s on your landing page that a visitor will convert into a lead.
Need help building a landing page?
Step 3: Capture Emails With a Demo
Offering a demo to your potential customers is definitely a no-brainer. How unfortunate that many new SaaS startups miss it.
Offer a free demo, and in return, ask for their emails. Any visitor that successfully signs up for one is a warm lead.
Step 4: Follow Up Your Leads via Email or Phone Call
Like I earlier highlighted, any visitor that signs up for your demo is a warm lead. Thus, they will be welcoming with your follow-up calls and emails.
It’s only a matter of time before they shell out their money on your SaaS product.
Step 5: Rinse and Repeat
Repeat the process, and you have a solid conversion funnel in place.
4. Create Enticing Lead Magnets
How do you convince people to give you their email addresses willingly? Simply asking them to do so won’t cut it.
But enticing them with something of value will most likely.
This is where a lead magnet comes into play.
Lead magnets, basically, are resources/services you offer for free to potential customers in exchange for their contact details.
So, what lead magnet can make a good fit for your SaaS business? Well, quite a lot!
Here are free stuff you can give away to attract quality leads:
- Product trial
- Consultation
- Evaluation/assessment
- Toolkits
- Video tutorials
- Early bird discount
- Etc.
Just put your thinking cap on.
5. Generate B2B Leads via Cold Emailing
Does the thought of writing unsolicited emails to potential customers scare you? It should, of course. However, it works.
Though intimidating at first, cold emailing – when done right – can help you drum up lots of leads for your business. The coolest part is, it is cost-effective. Almost costs next to nothing.
But where do you start? Simple. Start by collecting emails of potential customers for your product.
I know what you are thinking; where do you even find the emails? Here are a couple of strategies you could use to find those emails
- Head over to Crunchbase; you will find lots of qualified leads there
- Use Email Hunter to find the emails of prospects
- LinkedIn can also come in handy along with automation tools for extracting LinkedIn search results.
When you’ve found the emails, your next task is crafting a compelling email copy that can’t be ignored.
Need help with that? Check this post from our blog archive
Keep in mind that volume is the key to making cold emailing work for you. That is to say, don’t just send out 5 awesome emails, and then sit back and wait for a response. Send 5,000 instead 😎
6. Get Active on Quora
Where likely do you think most of your potential clients/customers will be hanging out online? Among the myriad of possible places, Quora is definitely one of them.
Now, wouldn’t it make sense to also hang around Quora too? Doing so will give you a chance to get closer to your goal of winning customers for your product.
Technically, this is known as Quora marketing. Many tech companies do it.
All you have to do is to create a profile on the Q&A platform. When you have done that, get on with answering questions that relate to your niche.
Better still, find a Quora group that is parallel to your industry and get active there. With time and dedication, your efforts will definitely pay off.
7. Become a Redditor
Reddit isn’t called the front page of the internet for nothing; it’s one of the largest -if not the entire largest – online forum.
As such, it’s also a good place to hang out in the hopes of finding potential users of your SaaS product.
So, how do you then leverage Reddit to generate leads for your business?
Look for relevant subreddits that relate to your business and get active there. And there are lots of them. Just search and dozens of them would pop up.
Thankfully, unlike Quora, you don’t really have to answer questions to get noticed on Reddit. Simply reading through conversions will do. You could also take a step further by sending pitches to prospects.
8. Get On With Content Marketing
What better way to inform and educate potential users about your product than with content? So get on with it.
Content in this context isn’t only limited to blog posts: video, podcast, and even graphics are all in the mix.
When you are done creating and publishing incisive content, next is promoting them. In fact, this is where most of the work happens. After all, if people don’t know about your content, how would they consume it?
What to do?
After publishing a post, promote it on Facebook or Google via paid ads.
Open a YouTube or even TikTok channel to promote your videos. Get creative!
9. Run an Affiliate Program
For your SaaS business to succeed, you need referrals – lots of them. Friends, colleagues, and even family members can refer business to you. But they will never be enough.
To this end, you need to set up and maintain an affiliate program. When done right, such programs can bring you a steady stream of referrals.
But wait a minute, do you even know what an affiliate program is all about?
Basically, it’s a program that rewards people for every successful referral/lead they send your way. That means others get to market your product, and you reward them for doing so.
Thankfully, setting one up isn’t that hard. Simply head over to Commission Junction (CJ) and register as an Advertiser.
Alternatively, install the Easy Affiliate plugin on your WordPress website and get things rolling.
10. Reward Your First Set of Paying Users
Rewarding people for sending you business is cool. Extending the same gesture to your first set of paying users is cooler.
Now, you don’t necessarily need to reward them with money and any financial incentives. Something as simple as a full-year worth of subscription will cut it.
Better yet, offer branded T-shirts as a reward. They are cheap to print on Uberprint.
Just get creative.
11. Run a Lead Generation Campaign via Ads
Bootstrapping a business from scratch can be challenging. To gather momentum and scale up, you might have to spend a lot on ads to get eyeballs on your business.
However, it’s going to be well worth it.
So, while you are exploring free, cost-effective methods for promoting your SaaS business, be willing to spend some dough on ads.
Facebook, Google, and YouTube ads are all good starting points.
12. Attend Meetups and Events
Before the advent of the internet – and all the tech gizmos we use today – business owners mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing to promote their business.
It worked; and still works to date.
But for word-of-mouth marketing to work, you have to talk to the right people. And what better place to meet these people than meetups and industry events?
So get off your bum and go look for meetups to attend.
Not sure how to find one?
Eventbrite and Meetup can help.
13. Leverage the Power of Testimonials
Have you managed to get a handful of reviews and testimonials from your previous customers? Let the whole wide world know about them.
By doing so, you’d be building trust with potential users of your software.
You can even take things further by asking people to try your software for free and then leave reviews afterward.
14. Get Listed on G2 or Capterra
Getting listed on G2 or Capterra will help give your business a lot of exposure.
These are two review sites where SaaS users often check when looking to purchase online software.
Plus, getting listed there can help give a boost to your website’s traffic.
To this end, it makes a whole lot of sense to get listed on one – or both – of them.
They aren’t free, though, but are really worth the money
15. Promote Your Business on LinkedIn
Promoting your business on LinkedIn can go a long way in generating leads for your SaaS business.
To start, simply create a profile for your business. Ensure the profile is properly optimized for search by adding relevant keywords into your copy.
Once your profile is all set up, hunt for endorsements like your life depends on it. Take things a bit further by posting insightful content, connecting with other professionals, running sponsored ads, etc.
16. Leverage Product Hunt
The early stage of any startup is, more often than not, the most difficult. Getting your first users at this stage can be a grueling, uphill battle.
But you can ease the process by getting your product listed on Product Hunt.
Product Hunt is a website where startup founders and marketers looking to connect with product users congregate.
To use, all you have to do is to submit the URL to your SaaS product, allow users to test it for free, and then upvote it if they deem it useful.
The more votes your product gets, the better exposure it gets. That means more users for you.
17. Support a Charitable Cause
Supporting a charitable cause is one effective, yet overlooked lead generation strategy for SaaS startups.
Not only does doing so help to give your business a lot of exposure, it also helps to build trust with your customers.
Nevertheless, you need to be intentional and strategic about it by being picky about the charity you work with.
Your business goal, target audience, and cause should align with whatever charity you opt to work with.
And, don’t forget to let the world know that you support a charitable cause. Make a bold statement with it on your website.
18. Target Competitors’ Customers
Sometimes, you just have to take an unorthodox approach to generate leads for your business. One of such approaches is targeting your competitors’ customers.
How?
One is checking their Twitter profile to know the people following them. Then follow those people. Hopefully, they will follow you back.
Another is spying on them using Builtwith.
Builtwith can generate a detailed report of all the websites using a competitor’s product.
19. Medium Is Excellent for Lead Generation
One way to prove your mettle and show potential customers that you know your onions is by publishing insightful content. And regularly.
While posting content on your blog will work, doing so on Medium might be a better option.
For one thing, your content will get better exposure. Medium receives as much as 236.65 million monthly views.
The better views your content gets, the better the chances of a customer finding you.
20. Reach Out to Bloggers
Find bloggers in your industry, reach out to them and ask to be featured as a guest writer. Many will oblige.
If that proves difficult to come by, ask to publish a sponsored content. They will only charge you a fee.
Conclusion
So there you have it; 20 tested and trusted lead generation ideas for your SaaS business.
It’s my hope that you found this piece useful. If you did, be kind enough to share. You might be helping someone.
Ready to see how Adoric can help you generate leads for your business? Sign up for a free account right away.
