Improving the metrics we have discussed would directly translate to higher profit margins and help you cut out NVA activities from your operations.
1. Define your SaaS metrics
Every startup and SaaS company will have its preferred metrics. Measurements for success, and ways of tracking this data. CMOS and CEOs need a clear 360 overview of this information.
When trying to work out your ARR, remember to take into account those paying every month, and annually. Also, take away those likely to stop subscribing, based on current churn rates. This should give you a fairly accurate ARR.
SaaS CMOs and CEOs could also run a projections spreadsheet, based on the potential value of new customers entering the pipeline, so you can start to project forward. However, don’t count this into actual revenue, until a client starts paying, and don’t ignore the SaaS CRM time-sensitive metrics.
The SaaS CEO and marketing teams need to take the next steps to drive forward growth.
2. Set up traffic and user analytics dashboard
Use website and mobile app analytics to get insights into your traffic quality. Analyze your traffic volume, time people spend on the website or in the app, and click-through rates.
However, this is only one part of the overall marketing picture, albeit one of the best ways to track key SaaS metrics.
Whenever possible, aim to bring all the metrics you need to track into a dashboard. To ensure that SaaS leaders can have a quick overview of where the numbers are going every month.
When it comes to measuring SaaS metrics before you even put a strategy in place, you need a clear idea of the following:
Is growth going up or down?
What do the numbers look like at the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel (e.g. when a customer decides to buy, or not)?
If you operate using a Freemium model: How many sign-ups vs. the percentage who stay as paying customers?
When it comes to marketing: which SaaS metrics are working and which aren’t?
Can we then double down on what is working?
Any dashboard needs to include all of the key SaaS metrics outlined in the section above.
Make sure you’ve got a clear handle on MRR, ARR, growth and churn rates, and of course, conversion rates.
If you’ve got salespeople playing a role in the sales/marketing funnel, then it helps to understand their conversion rates too.
3. Outline your SaaS marketing strategy
Once everything is set up to monitor growth activities, you need to design and implement a marketing strategy. Base this on a few simple questions:
Who are our customers?
Where are they?
How do we reach them?
What content or advertising would be useful to attract their attention?
Once we’ve got their attention, how do we keep it?
How do we convert them from being web visitors to paying customers?
Every SaaS marketing strategy is unique, of course. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t exist.
However, many include similar components and are running up against the same challenges: Getting the attention of your target audience and converting as many as possible.
As a former CMO of Slack says:
“Marketing is the fuel to the fire. Once you’ve got great product/market fit, marketing, and all the different tools that we have, everything from advertising to nurturing to conversion rate marketing to split testing to positioning messaging, those are all the tools that can help just accelerate that growth further.”
Normally, the first year or two in the lifecycle of any startup and software company is finding what works and what doesn’t. To measure everything as effectively as possible, you need analytics and a dashboard.
That way, you can see whether the content is generating leads, or how many are coming through advertising and if social media is increasing traffic.
4. Generate traffic for your SaaS business
Once you’ve decided on a marketing strategy to implement, you need to know how to move forward. First, you must decide to whom to entrust your marketing operations.
Will you hire a marketing person, work with an external agency, freelancers, or a hybrid mix of the above?
The aim of any marketing strategy should be to get traffic to the website and app if you have one. Once you’ve got visitors visiting, the aim should be to convert as many as possible.
5. Monitor SaaS marketing performance and increase conversion rates
This is where you move from marketing into either sales or onboarding, depending on the pricing model you operate. When software sells for a higher monthly price and therefore requires custom pricing for every new client, you often need salespeople.
Whereas, the companies that operate on a lower-price freemium model often need a smooth onboarding process to generate the sort of conversion rates you need.
This is where analytics plays such an important role. When you know what the figures are looking like and what metrics to look at, you can start to identify ways to increase conversion rates.
Whether that means improving the user experience and onboarding, using AI-powered bots, FAQ sections, videos, instant demos, or other methods to generate more revenue.
Why must you track these key SaaS marketing metrics?
Setting up a dashboard, or series of interconnected analytics systems is an essential part of monitoring SaaS marketing metrics. It’s a worthwhile investment, either right at the start of a growth journey, or as soon as you can invest in this.
Once you know where you are with every measurable, you can improve and increase marketing activity, according to what’s working and what isn’t.
When marketing is working, revenue, profits and the long-term value of every customer should keep increasing, even in a recession, alongside organic referrals.
At Rampiq, we can help you get everything up and running on the analytics setup side and marketing metrics growth giving you the tools and expertise you need to measure and scale SaaS marketing metrics with confidence.
Whether you are on track to win your first 100 customers or hit $10 million MRR, we are here for your every step of the way.
Advanced SaaS Metrics Whitepaper
Download our Advanced SaaS Marketing Metrics Whitepaper PDF and read on to learn more about how your SaaS business can benefit from measuring the following sets of advanced Saas marketing metrics:
Teams interaction metrics:
- Sales accepted leads
- Not-a-fit leads
- Re-engaged leads
Recession-proofing metrics:
- Disqualification rate
- Cost per demo
- Time to contract
Time-sensitive metrics:
- 2nd class leads
- Time to reaction
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