9 Ways for Your SaaS Business to Increase Lead Conversions
You’re fishing out in the middle of the ocean .
It’s been a slow day.
But suddenly, you get a bite.
So you frantically start to reel in the fish.
And just as you raise your rod out of the water to bring your prize onboard, a shark leaps out of the water and snags your catch away .
All that for nothing.
Incredibly frustrating.
This exact same feeling is the frustrations of you trying to increase lead conversions for your SaaS business.
Because you can put so much effort in and be so close. Yet a lot of leads just vanish—never to be seen again.
But I want to help you secure your “catches.”
In this article, you’ll read about:
- How to calculate your lead conversion rate—and the difference between sales qualified leads (SQL) and marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
- 9 ways for you to increase your lead conversions — so you can turn more of your website visitors into leads and more of your leads into customers.
- Plenty of examples of these tips being used by other companies in SaaS or other service industries.
Now, let’s begin with defining leads and lead conversion.
How Can Lead Conversion Be Defined?
A lead is someone that has shown keen interest in your product or service. For example, someone who signs up for your newsletter to stay informed.
To be clear, this would be considered a marketing qualified lead (MQL) as opposed to a sales qualified lead (SQL).
A SQL is someone further down your sales funnel — such as clicking on your pricing page or booking a demo.
Your leads can come from just about anywhere.
In digital marketing, leads mostly come from your website visitors.
Some common lead generation strategies are:
- Gated content (white papers, e-books, etc.)
- Webinars
- Newsletters
- Discounts
- Freemium offers
- SEO strategy
- Referral programs
Lead Conversion Rate
To calculate your lead conversion rate, you divide your total number of conversions by your total number of leads and then multiply by 100.
Lead Conversion rate (%) = (total conversions / total leads) * 100
Your lead conversion rate varies based on what exactly you’re trying to measure.
Sometimes, your lead conversion rate refers to the percentage of website visitors that provided you with contact information.
According to research from First Page Sage, this type of conversion rate can vary wildly depending on your industry.
For B2B software and SaaS companies, the conversion rate from website visitor to qualified lead is just 1.1%.
But for an industry like legal services, that number jumps up to 7.1%.
Generally, anywhere between 3%-5% is a solid conversion rate in SaaS.
Other times, you might want to find out at what rate your leads are converting into paying customers. For example, how often do your free trial users turn into customers?
Whatever it is, it gives you a good idea for which marketing tactics work and which don’t.
With that, let’s start off with the first way you can increase lead conversions for your SaaS company.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #1: Offer On-Demand Videos
According to HubSpot, 94% of people watch explainer videos to learn more about a product.
And 84% say video has influenced their purchasing decisions.
One of the best ways to incorporate video into your lead conversion strategy is by creating an on-demand video for consumers so they see how you’ll solve their problem.
For starters, you should have a video either on your homepage or somewhere else on your website. This can be a basic breakdown of your product.
Remember, if you target different types of consumers, you should create more personalized videos that are relevant to the segment.
As an example of this in action, cloud-based accounting platform Xero has quick videos for some of the main features its platform offers.
So if you want to learn more about how Xero can help you pay bills, you can watch the brief on-demand video.
Want to see how Xero assists with expense claims? They have a video for that too.
You see, it gets website visitors more interested in the Xero brand.
In general, people just prefer watching videos over reading. And you can’t blame them.
People are forced to spend enough time reading throughout the day as it is. They’ll appreciate you making their lives a little bit easier.
And if you want to really step up your lead conversion game, you can try using personalized video emails. According to VidGrid, sales and marketing teams who use video in outbound emails see up to 20% more closed deals.
You can use VidGrid or other platforms like Videoform to do this.
SaaS client LegitFit used Videoform to send personalized videos to leads, which resulted in:
- 62% more emails opened
- 20% higher click-through rate
- 10% more replies
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #2: Use One Strong Call to Action
When it comes to your calls to action (CTAs), simplicity works.
For best practice, make sure you use just one CTA on your landing pages, emails or wherever else you want your audience to take a desired action.
In a study done by Unbounce, landing pages with just one link see a 3% increase in lead conversions over landing pages with 5 or more.
See, your leads don’t want to get confused. Or to feel like you’re being too desperate.
That’s a good way to turn them away.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #3: Make Mobile and Tablet Users Happy
According to Think With Google, 59% of shoppers think that being able to shop on mobile is an important factor when it comes choosing a brand to buy from.
And as a report from SaleCycle found, 65% of all e-commerce traffic comes from mobile users.
To say mobile should be part of your lead conversion strategy is an understatement. It should be a top priority.
When people use their phones or tablets, they expect ease of use.
And they don’t want to encounter any sort of friction that makes it more difficult for them to make a purchase.
So by appeasing mobile users with things like faster page load times and easier viewing accessibility, you’ll be able to increase the likelihood of converting your leads.
As an example, Walmart Canada ramped up its mobile-first approach to generate 20% more conversions and 98% more mobile orders.
What they did was set up a usability test.
One version remained the same while the other website version was modified.
For the modified version, the product pages loaded faster. And it displayed 60 products per page so that mobile users didn’t have to tap and scroll as often.
One other thing the team did was remove a gray “View More Details” button for products that are out of stock.
That way, shoppers were more likely to avoid out of stock items while the green “Add to Cart” products stood out more.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead ConversionS #4: Follow Up With Your Webinar Attendees
Webinar sign-ups are great for generating leads that are most interested in your SaaS product.
But the fact is, most attendees still won’t become customers.
Don’t take it personally.
It’s just a numbers game.
Even if you have an incredibly engaging presentation that gets your leads excited, you still must always follow up with them.
Send them a thank you email.
And send more follow-up emails that dispel any concerns your audience may have and provide incentives for becoming a customer.
In one case study, tax expert Karla Dennis used a post-webinar email sequence to generate 65% of the revenue she earned from her webinar campaign.
It goes to show, a webinar alone just won’t help you increase your lead conversions. But staying aggressive will.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #5: Provide Proof That You Will Deliver
Social proof gets brought up a lot in marketing.
That’s because it works.
According to PowerReviews, 97% of consumers seek out online reviews before making a purchase decision.
And DemandGen says 73% of B2B buyers seek out case studies.
As can be inferred, your leads need some evidence that your SaaS brand is reputable.
To avoid being too pushy, it’s best to send social proof to your leads at least a couple days after your welcome email.
Besides review ratings and case studies, your social proof can come from the following:
- Customer success stories
- Testimonial screenshots
- Video testimonials
- Expert endorsements
Compile as much customer testimonials and case studies as possible from different industries so that you can end social proof that’s more relevant to each of your leads.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead ConversionS #6: Facebook Retargeting Ads
Whether it’s your email list, webinar attendees or some other lead database, you should always reach out to them with Facebook retargeting ads.
According to an infographic by Wishpond, the click-through rate for retargeting ads is 10 times higher than display ads.
With almost 3 billion active users, it’s likely that a great portion of your leads are using Facebook.
To illustrate, referral marketing platform Upviral used Facebook retargeting to increase lead conversions from its email subscriber list.
What they did was split its email list into two random segments. One group simply got an email about an upcoming promotion. Meanwhile, the other group got the email promotion as well as two Facebook ads.
In total, the team spent about $119 on the ads.
And the result was 50% more revenue for the retargeted email segment than the segment with no retargeting ads.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #7: Make Comparisons To Your Competitors
With so many purchasing options for consumers to choose from these days, why should they buy your SaaS product?
People want to know why you’re the right choice and not someone else. What makes your product different?
So it’s up to you to show them.
Although most consumers conduct research before making a purchase, you can’t expect them to know all the differences between you and your competitors.
For this to work, there’s four main steps you need to take:
- Determine who your competitors are
- Dig information up on your competitors so you use accurate comparisons
- Think of the pros and cons of using your brand versus the competitors’
- Make use of visually pleasing layout, such as a table
Once you do all this, you can sprinkle in your comparisons into your sales funnel.
SaaS marketing platform Bluecore loves to compare itself to its biggest competitor, Klaviyo.
On its website, you can see a small visual that compares the two platforms.
For any website visitors looking to purchase a new marketing automation solution, they’ll be more likely to perceive Bluecore as the better option. And from there, they may provide contact information or book a demo.
Now you don’t necessarily need to compare your business with another one specifically to increase your lead conversion rate.You always have the option to claim supreme in a category.
For example, you might be the “cheapest in the industry” or “considered most reliable.”
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead ConversionS #8: Keep a Low Word Count for Landing Pages
Your leads aren’t interested in reading a novel.
They want to know what to expect from your product or service in a short and sweet manner.
So for your sales pages, keep the copy to a minimum. That way, you make it easier for leads to digest your offering.
Remember, it’s not like a blog article or some other resource for educational purposes.
Instead, just get straight to the point and highlight your core benefits.
As found by some data unearthed by Unbounce, shorter landing pages generally convert a lot better than longer ones.
For example, in the business services sector, pages with fewer than 100 words convert 50% better than pages with 500 words or more.
To see an example of this in action, take a look at Klaviyo’s pricing page below. It only mentions the important things.
And it’s straightforward with just 121 words.
How To Increase Your SaaS Lead Conversions #9: Use AI To Streamline the Process
As you may already know, failing to follow up with your leads is a good way to lose out on acquiring a new customer.
According to IRC Sales Solutions, just 2% of sales are made on the first contact with a lead. On the contrary, 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.
But with only so much time in the day, you might struggle to reach out to all your leads.
If you’re a smaller SaaS firm, your staffing limitations could just amplify this problem.
One useful trick is to invest in a conversational artificial intelligence tool that automates your lead follow-ups.
So if you have too many leads to reach out to, your AI system can send out emails and texts and engage with them in a similar manner that a human would.
Or you could also use an AI chatbot on your website to ask new leads a few questions when they take a desired call to action, such as signing up for a newsletter.
A great benefit to an AI tool for lead conversion is that it can decide which leads are the most sales qualified.
In turn, this saves a great deal of time for you and your team by allowing you to prioritize the leads with the greatest likelihood of turning into customers.
As an example, the Los Angeles Film School’s sales team was only making 1.6 touchpoints on average with its leads as opposed to the 7 desired touchpoints. Simply put, the team’s capacity could not keep pace with the lead generation.
But by using Conversica’s AI assistant, Stephanie, the school turned things around dramatically.
The conversion results were:
- 33% increase in lead engagement
- $4.2M-$7M more in revenue
Conclusion
When you put so much hard work into your SaaS marketing strategy, you want to make sure that it doesn’t all go to waste.
That’s why you must always be looking for better ways to turn your audience into leads.
In this resource today, you read about 9 handy ways to increase your lead conversions. With these tips, you’ll turn your SaaS company into a sales-generating machine.
And you’ll no longer be left scratching your head wondering, “Where did everyone go?”
In the event that you’re still a little intimidated with lead conversion tactics, don’t fall into despair.
AutoGrow has a team of 50 (and growing) digital marketing professionals that are trained to help companies just like yours catch and hold onto leads.
With our insight, we’ll know just which of your leads are hot and which ones are cold. From there, we can focus on a messaging strategy that they can’t resist.
We’re so confident that we can help your SaaS company boost its lead conversion rate that we’re willing to offer a 7-day, free trial. No strings attached!
Start Delegating Your SaaS Marketing for Free
And before you head out, let me ask you a question.
Which of these 9 lead conversion tips do you want to start using at your company?
Let me know in the comments below.
Keep AutoGrowin’, stay focused.
Mark
