Whether you’re planning to launch a new SaaS product or want to increase the sales of your current products, there are times when you just can’t do it on your own. Hiring a SaaS marketing consultant will help you get more leads and customers for your business.
A SaaS consultant will provide guidance in terms of what works best with your target audience. This is important because not all methods work well across different demographics. For example, if you have a B2B service that targets small businesses, then social media might be a good fit but would probably fall flat with consumers. On the other hand, email marketing could be effective at reaching both groups.
However, before you consider hiring a SaaS marketing consultant, you need to define a set of criteria that will tell you if they are the right one for your business. Here’s how:
What to expect from a SaaS marketing consultant
A successful SaaS company requires a lot more than just software development skills. It also takes a strong team behind the scenes to make sure everything runs smoothly. SaaS marketing consultants help your business by doing these tasks:
1. Update your marketing collateral
A SaaS marketing consultant will look at your product, analyze your audience, and update your branding and SaaS B2B marketing strategy to get your message across. They’ll create content such as landing pages, blog posts, videos, etc., that resonate with your target market, increase awareness of your brand, and convince potential customers that your product is the one they should choose.
2. Develop an omnichannel strategy
Marketing has always been most effective when businesses use omnichannel strategies. Before, it was confined to print, radio, and TV; now, social media has entered the fray. A SaaS marketing consultant helps you develop a multi-channel approach so that you reach out to your prospects through multiple channels like emails, phone calls, text messages, direct mailers, websites, apps, etc.
3. Optimize your sales funnel
The last thing any business wants is to lose money due to poor conversion rates. That’s why having a solid sales process is essential. A SaaS marketing consultant knows exactly which steps to take to ensure that every lead converts into a customer. They will optimize each step of the sales cycle to maximize conversions.
4. Utilize SEO to increase your brand visibility
Search engine optimization plays a crucial role in increasing traffic to your website. However, many companies don’t know where to start when it comes to optimizing their sites.
Fortunately, an experienced SaaS marketing consultant understands this area very well. They will perform keyword research, write meta tags, add relevant keywords to webpages, create guest posts on relevant websites, and do more to improve search rankings.
7 Best SaaS Consultants
Since we now know what to look for in a SaaS consultant, let’s look at seven of the best marketing consultants you can partner with to promote your SaaS business.
| SaaS Consultant | What We Like About Them |
| Nico Prins | Can get your website exposure on high-authority websites. Offers support with multichannel marketing campaigns |
| Sujan Patel | Focuses on demo signups for SaaS businesses, leading to higher-paid subscriptions |
| Apollo Digital | Specializes in PPC and niche social media marketing, including Reddit |
| Content Distribution | Promises rapid traffic growth through massive content production campaigns, without the use of backlinks or technical SEO |
| GrowthMentor | Offers access to exclusive consulting sessions with well-known industry figures |
| April Dunford | Places a singular emphasis on brand and product positioning |
| Josh Fechter | Takes a hands-on approach to selected startups with high valuations |
1. Nico Prins
Nico is the founder of Launch Space, a SaaS SEO agency working with enterprise clients. The company helps clients build sales pages, launch email marketing campaigns, and write ebooks and white papers. Unlike many other SaaS consultants, we charge per campaign instead of forcing clients to sign long-term contracts.
We start each campaign with a free 45-minute call where we identify your market, pinpoint your needs, and create a SaaS marketing strategy. Once we’re done creating your strategy, we boost your profile by improving your search ranking through SEO, creating white papers and ebooks, and can help design and run your email marketing campaigns.
SEO is definitely one of our strongest suits. We’ve helped SaaS companies of different sizes secure guest posts on high-authority websites, including BigCommerce, GetResponse, and HubSpot, and we can create and update content to raise your ranking for your desired keywords.
We work primarily with enterprise clients. Our approach is focused on helping you secure clients by increasing the size of your audience and converting those leads into paying customers.
2. Sujan Patel
When Sujan Patel says he can grow your SaaS business, he speaks from experience. He runs eight companies that have more than 500,000 total users. He brings that experience to each of his SaaS consulting clients, which have included the likes of Zoho, Yahoo, and Shopify.
While most SaaS marketing consultants focus on increasing sales right away, Sujan focuses on increasing demo signups. His team consists mostly of industry veterans with a minimum of 10 years’ experience, which gives both startups and established companies a good idea of what works in SaaS marketing.
Before you start your campaigns with Sujan, you need to first go through a set of questions about company size, revenue, and desired results. Sujan then uses this data to create a custom strategy that involves improving your product, improving your marketing material, and creating interest through word of mouth.
3. Apollo Digital
Apollo Digital has only been around since 2017, but it has already established itself as a major player in the increasingly competitive SaaS consulting industry. Starting out as an agency with a strong focus on content marketing, Apollo’s offerings have since branched out into managed SEO and social media. They’re one of just a handful of SaaS consultants who maintain an active presence on Reddit.
Apollo Digital has also produced solid results with PPC advertising. After five years of negligible growth, one of their clients, a dedicated server hosting provider, increased its monthly recurring revenue by 20% through content creation and PPC.
The company’s client list includes names you might be familiar with: Novoresume, Deskera, Blissfully, and NetProtect. Novoresume, for example, increased its organic traffic by 800,000 users in just 8 months.
4. Content Distribution
Content Distribution promotes itself as a SaaS consultant for ambitious brands. Its business model stands out from other consultants as it emphasizes high rates of content publishing, a concept it calls “content velocity”, while downplaying the role of backlinks and domain authority in search engine rankings.
The core of Content Distribution’s aggressive content publishing strategy is its proprietary ClusterAi tool, which allows it to turn keyword lists into unique content ideas in just a matter of minutes. This allows the company to generate hundreds of pages of content in just a few months.
You might be wondering if this approach works since it doesn’t use backlinks, guest posts, or other traditional SEO methods. One of its clients, DoNotPay.com, scaled its monthly organic traffic to 1 million visits in just 24 months, leading to a $210 million Series B valuation, so I guess Content Distribution might be on to something.
5. GrowthMentor
Unlike most of the names in this list, GrowthMentor is not a formal SaaS consultancy. Rather, it is a platform where startups can seek guidance on their business and marketing ideas. You can search and filter the platform’s extensive mentor database according to your desired objective, skillset, and technology. You can even post a mentoring request on your dashboard and wait for a mentor to respond.
When you sign up for GrowthMentor, you book a 1-on-1 consultation with more than 300 of the top figures in the SaaS industry, including marketing leads from IBM, SEMRush, YouTube, SurveyMonkey, and Shopify. Each mentor provides personalized advice on topics such as growth marketing, product launches, SEO, and startup funding. Some mentors even offer their services free — just because they want to help out.
To date, GrowthMentor has helped hundreds of businesses increase their revenue and brand awareness. These businesses include EmailOctopus, AddSearch, 1Brand, and BiosectRx, many of which have seven-digit annual revenues.
6. April Dunford
For April Dunford, the most crucial aspect of SaaS marketing is positioning. She defines positioning as defining a brand or product’s unique value proposition and using that UVP to appeal to a more focused audience.
April’s SaaS consulting business draws upon her storied career as a startup executive. Many of those startups got acquired by larger businesses. Later on, she also became part of the leadership at some of the world’s largest tech firms and still consults for them as a product development and positioning consultant.
The SaaS consulting business April Dunford leads now is her way of giving back to the startup community that gave her massive growth opportunities. Some of her past clients include Unbounce, Myplanet, and Tulip, most of which started out as niche products before finding wider use in different industries.
7. Josh Fechter
SaaS marketing consultant Josh Fechter wears many hats. He owns a product manager training platform, an HR training website, and a cloud-based writing solution. However, he is best-known for helping SaaS companies scale their business and generate more revenue.
His clients include the likes of Webflow, Lumen5, and Acadium, all companies that have seven-figure monthly revenues. That being said, Josh works only with post-Series A startups or those with seed funding of US$3 million or more. So, if you’re a company that’s starting from scratch, he might not be the right fit for you.
However, if Josh does agree to work with your company, you’ll benefit from his hands-on approach to product and marketing development. He works with only three or four start-ups at a time, which allows him to pay closer attention to every aspect of your start-up’s operations and marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
So that covers the basics. Let’s look at some frequently asked questions.
What does SaaS consulting mean?
The term “SaaS consulting” encompasses a whole range of services that aim to improve the way SaaS companies do business. Some SaaS consultants specialize in product development, while others focus on the financial aspect of business operations. In this article, though, we concentrate on SaaS growth consulting, or the practice of marketing and product positioning.
What does a SaaS consultant do?
A SaaS consultant looks at your product and branding, identifies your target audience, and aligns your product as a solution to customer pain points. They use a variety of methods, such as SEO, content marketing, and social media, to increase brand awareness and convince your prospects that your product is the best fit for their needs.
How much does SaaS consulting cost?
SaaS consulting costs vary widely, with some consultants charging up to US$700 per hour for short-term engagements or up to $10,000 monthly for retainers. Others charge per campaign.
To avoid spending too much on SaaS consulting, you need to identify your needs. For example, if you just need help with a specific campaign or problem, you can do short-term contracts. If you want sustained growth or are in the middle of a product pivot, you will need a consultant who can work with you in the medium- to long-term.
Summing Up
Whether your SaaS business is just in its initial stages or is poised for exponential growth, it’s hard to promote your product by yourself. Getting a SaaS marketing consultant will save you the time and trouble of finding out what works and what doesn’t. It will allow you to focus on creating the best product possible.
SaaS marketing consultants focus on different things. For example, Launch Space is great at getting backlinks and exposure from high-authority websites, while Content Distribution publishes hundreds of pages of content for their clients. Others, like Growth Mentor and Josh Fechter, offer exclusive access to consulting sessions with industry mentors.
The seven SaaS marketing consultants I’ve discussed are the best at what they do. However, to get the most value for your money, you need to assess where you are and what you want your company to achieve within your desired timeline.
