Examples of Exceptional SaaS Marketing from 3 Notable SaaS Brands

Earlier this year, the story of an influencer who has more than two million followers but struggled to sell 36 t-shirts became viral. To add insult to injury, her post about that humiliating experience got 36K likes on Instagram. Almost everyone was baffled how on earth can she get tens of thousands of likes but have difficulty selling 36 shirts.

That example might sound laughable but it is also an eye-opener, especially in the concept of SaaS marketing.

The lesson learned is almost a cliche — not because you have a great product or service, people will kill each other to buy it.

However, there are businesses and companies that are able to hit the nail right on the head and become successful with it. Here’s a list of some of them:

Netflix (Customized Content and Innovative Ideas)

The modern consumer is not only well-informed but also clever. They know if a company is really listening to them or just wants to get their money.

While arguably more of a half Saas than a full SaaS solution, Netflix follows the SaaS-pricing model and this example is a must-know for SaaS companies out there.

Netflix was able to earn the trust and loyalty of their customers by delivering customized content to each country, region, and person. That means that the content in the United States is very different than in Asia.

What’s more amazing is that even each person also gets their personalized content – what you have is different than what your kids have. What’s more amazing is that content is delivered automatically on a regular basis to the user’s account. It saves them time wondering what to watch or what’s new because everything they need is there.

And if you think Netflix is stopping, you’re wrong. They have recently added the Netflix Party feature where you can watch the same movies with your friends at the same time in different locations. So if one of your friends does not have Netflix yet and you don’t want them to miss the fun, you will refer the service to him.

As a result, Netflix has currently more than 150 million paying subscribers worldwide and that list continues growing despite the recent setback the company faced.

Trello (Word-of-Mouth and Straightforward Product)

As of June 2019, Trello has 35 million registered users and 1 million active teams worldwide — all that for a company that is barely 10 years old.

What is Trello’s marketing secret? You’ll be surprised — None! Yes, you heard it right.

Instead of spending their time creating a marketing strategy and millions on advertising, they focused all their money and energy on building a simple yet powerful product.

Using Trello is very straightforward. If you are a company with several teams, all you need to do is register in Trello, create separate boards for different teams, and invite each team member to their respective teams. You can add tasks using cards and categorize them. Everyone on that team can see what’s happening and they can create updates when needed. No task is lost or forgotten and everyone gets informed — how cool can that be?

But what’s cooler is you don’t need long tutorials or spend hours to understand how it works. Even children and not-so-tech-savvy users can understand it.

It did not take a long time before people and businesses started to sing their praises about this wonderful tool and the fire caught on. Trello continuously stokes that fire through valuable content and amazing rewards.

Canva (Influencer Marketing and Educational Content)

There are many graphic design websites but nothing becomes synonymous with the word except Canva. It has saved a lot of people who have no graphic design training and businesses that have no in-house designers. There are similar websites but they cannot match what Canva has done.

It’s a freemium tool that gives you access to hundreds of templates, graphics, and other design tools. Creating a project is easy — you just drag and drop what you need, make a few adjustments, and you can save or share your design. If you want to hone your graphic design skills, Canva has tons of content that will help you achieve that goal

But what really helped Canva grow its subscribers was through influencers. Even before its early years, Canva sought out brand evangelists on different social media platforms to talk about them. These people not only promoted Canva but some of them created tutorials and taught classes. They even got Guy Kawasaki on board as their brand evangelist. As a result, Canva continued to grow exponentially — now that is what influence is all about!

Grow Your SaaS Company

Success in any industry takes hard work and creativity not only in creating your product but in marketing it to the public. It also takes patience to find the best method that will be compatible with your business.