How we develop a marketing strategy for a SaaS Businesses - A quick breakdown

  • Published: 07/08/2025
  • 10 minutes read

How we develop a marketing strategy for a SaaS Businesses - A quick breakdown

  • Published: 07/08/2025
  • 10 minutes read

How many customers have you met in person? Or spoke with? You may have done that starting out, but now that your SaaS business has grown, do you know what your customers are saying about you?

That is where we go when developing our custom marketing strategy for every SaaS client. The #1 reason why SaaS businesses fail is a bad product-market fit. We have noticed that the consequence of a bad product-market fit is the lack of thorough market research. Here, we will demonstrate how we at Aeternus tackle this major issue.

Stage 1

Identify your ideal customer profile

Everything begins and ends with customers. The first thing we always do when beginning to work with a SaaS business is ask about the ideal customer profile (ICP). We want to know your customers’ pain points, how you’re addressing them, and how often you engage with your customers.

To achieve a good product-market fit, you first have to speak with your current and potential customers. Whether you are just starting out or you have an established business, you need to communicate with your customers regularly. Waiting for feedback or sending surveys is not the best way to understand how customers perceive your brand. (Although these two methods are good when you’re looking to implement a new feature and want to ask very specific questions).

If you already have a complete customer profile developed, including demographics, interests, and market segmentation, we can use that as a starting point and validate your assumptions. If you don’t have all the pieces, we can create them for you. And don’t worry – both large and small companies struggle with creating a customer persona.

Stage 1 - Step 1

Talk to you

During the onboarding phase, we need to understand your SaaS business at many levels. The more you can share with us, the better we can understand your industry, and, consequently, the better our strategy will be.

We need to know what you tried in the past, what worked, what didn’t work and why. After we talk with you about your business, we move on to your customers.

Stage 1 - Step 2

Talk to real customers

We need to validate all our assumptions about customers. To do that, we reach out and arrange to meet your customers for interviews. In our initial outreach, we state that the reason for our meeting is not to sell them something. Instead, we want to learn more about their experience with your brand. We choose customers from three backgrounds:

  • People who recently bought your product
  • People who considered it but chose a competitor
  • People who almost bought but dropped off

 

Very often, we start the interview with one simple question:

Can you take us to the moment when you decided to buy this product/service? 

Some of the follow-up questions we have from that moment are:

  • What issue made you start looking for a solution?
  • How did you search for potential solutions?
  • What almost stopped you from buying?
  • What made you choose this product over others?
  • What results do you hope to achieve with this product?

 

We want the interviewee to naturally share information that is important to us. As you can see, we don’t insinuate anything in our questions and avoid questions that can be answered with a simple yes or no.

Stage 1 - Step 3

Spot Buying Patterns

Once we have done talking to real buyers, the next challenge is to spot the patterns. By identifying these patterns, we can create relevant copy that can persuade any potential customer who has similar experiences. 

We identify the following four insights:

  1. Common pain points
  2. Decision factors
  3. Objections 
  4. Results they are hoping to get using your product

 

After we complete our research, we can share all findings with you. We can include your sales teams and potentially enhance their conversations.

Stage 1 - Step 4

Create Your Buyer Persona

All gathered information is ineffective without structure. That’s why we produce a comprehensive report on your ideal customer persona. We include:

  • Who the buyer persona is – title, company size, industry
  • Pain points
  • Buying triggers
  • Decision criteria – simple, not expensive etc.
  • Objections

 

We also try to find out their personal interests, goals, behavioral attributes, challenges, location, job profiles – anything that can give you an edge in marketing your SaaS. For example, we need to get in front of CEOs. We’re not going to use Google Ads only; we’ll explore fairs, meetups, sponsorships – anything that might bring your product in front of those who need it the most.

Stage 1 - Step 5

Use Your Buyer Persona In Marketing Strategy

Once we know what your ideal persona values the most, we apply it everywhere:

  1. Website copy
  2. Offline copy
  3. Ads strategy
  4. Pricing strategy
  5. Email outreach
  6. Social media

 

After we identify your buyer persona, we continue to the next stage – competitor research.

Stage 2

Competitors Research

The main problem companies face is where to start their competitor research. If you don’t identify your competition correctly, you can suffer from weak positioning. Proper research can strengthen your market position. But are you doing it right? Here is how we spot them.

Stage 2 - Step 1

Identify Key Competitors Based on Buyer Feedback

Those interviews we did with your customers are still used in this phase. Many customers mention competitors themselves; by listening to what and how they speak about them, we can get an interesting starting point. With customer feedback, we don’t have to guess competitors.

Instead, we ask: 

  1. What did you like most about the competitor’s product?
  2. Why didn’t you stick with the competitor?
  3. What specific feature or benefit made you choose them over us?
  4. Did you experience any frustrations or challenges with their product?
Stage 2 - Step 2

Search Direct Competitors

Once the buyer persona is identified, the problem of spotting direct competitors offering the same solution arises. The solution is to research companies that target the same audience and solve similar pain points. We use a qualitative approach and various tools to analyze different aspects.

  1. SEO tools – Ahrefs, Semrush, SpyFu
  2. Social media analysis
  3. Directories – Crunchbase, Clutch, Goodfirms
  4. Social media – used to find customer feedback
  5. AI to analyze copy and content
Stage 2 - Step 3

Search Indirect Competitors

We spotted another mistake: focusing only on direct competitors. By doing so, the marketing strategy fails to consider competitors, which the buyer persona potentially also considers. Due to this, we research companies that are not the same as our clients but offer alternative solutions that address the same customer pain points.

Stage 2 - Step 4

Analyze Competitors’ Online Presence

Our competitor mapping process simplifies tasks. We examine the following:

  1. Pricing (freemium vs subscription)
  2. Price page (if they have it)
  3. Content (blogs, case studies)
  4. Backlink strategy (we use tools such as Ahrefs and Semrush)
  5. Keywords
  6. Social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, and etc.)

 

Next, we analyze problems people face by checking G2, Trustpilot, and Reddit for your competitors’ reviews. The gaps regarding support, usability, and features in their offering can become an opportunity for your brand.  

We also examine their sales playbook. Do they attract customers with freemium accounts (free trials with restricted access) or gated content? Which partnerships or loyalty schemes increase product stickiness? We gather essential information for creating marketing strategies for SaaS companies.

Stage 2 - Step 5

Monitoring

For this stage, we are using:

  1. SpyFu, Ahrefs or Semrush – for tracking their SEO strategy and ad spend.
  2. BuzzSumo – for checking their content.
  3. Crunchbase – for tracking funding rounds, acquisitions, and partnerships.
Stage 2 - Step 6

Create a Competitor Research Report

Our report has answers to the following questions:

  1. What are your competitors doing well? What are their weaknesses?
  2. Where can you differentiate and outperform the competition?
  3. In which areas competitors may pose a risk to your market share?

 

Creating competitor reports enables us to:

  1. Fine-tune the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for your product. 
  2. Adjust your pricing model with reference to competitors. 
  3. Modify your content marketing strategy.
Stage 3

Keyword Research

Using the wrong keywords leads to unqualified leads, which wastes marketing efforts and money. What do we do here? Once we identify your ideal buyer persona and analyze the competition, we conduct keyword research, focusing on keywords that align with your buyer persona’s pain points. 

We follow this procedure:

Stage 3 - Step 1

Find Low-Competition, High-Value Keywords

1. Google search 

Search on Google for your core keyword. Then, we scroll to the “People Also Ask” and “Related Searches” sections for more ideas. 

2. Google Search Console (GSC)

If your website is already live, we always check whether you get impressions for keywords you are already ranking for and in what position. We focus especially on the keywords you rank for but aren’t getting much traffic.

3. Tools Free and Paid

There are plenty of tools you can use for your keyword research. Here are some free and paid suggestions we are using:

  1. Ubersuggest (limited free searches)
  2. AnswerThePublic (great for question-based keywords)
  3. Keyword Surfer Chrome Extension (shows keyword volume directly in Google)
  4. Ahrefs (paid)
  5. Semrush (paid)
  6. SpyFu (limited free searches)
  7. Reddit/Quora (free)
  8. Google Keyword Planner (free)
  9. Google Search Console (free)
Stage 3 - Step 2

Analyze Competitor Keywords

The competitors have already done the research for keywords, and missing to leverage them is a problem many companies are facing. In this way, they are losing the opportunity to compete and rank higher. We analyze competitor keywords to strengthen our marketing approach.

Here is how we spot their keywords:

1. Check their homepage and landing pages

Their meta titles and descriptions often contain high-priority keywords. By checking their H1 and H2 headers, you can see the topics they are optimized for.

2. Ahrefs keyword generator

Place in the search part their domain and see what keywords they rank for.

3. Check their blogs

See what blogs created a buzz, the ones that are most commented on and shared. 

Aeternus tip: Target keywords where competitors rank on page 2 of Google ( example: KD < 25, search volume 100–1000/month)

Stage 3 - Step 3

Prioritize Keywords That Can Rank

The next step is filtering keywords. Our focus is on keywords with high ROI potential, long-tail, and low-competition ones. 

Aeternus tip: Avoid ultra-niche terms and look for underserved topics. If a keyword has no great answers in the top 10 search results, it’s an easy win.

Here is the quick cheat sheet:

  1. Metrics we look at:
  • Search volume- 100–1,000/month
  • Keyword difficulty (KD)  – from < 25 to < 35

 

Aeternus tip: Instead of competing for the highly competitive keyword “CRM software,” you can easily compete with the long-tail, niche keyword “CRM software for freelancers”.

Stage 3 - Step 4

Implement keywords into content strategy

When we gather all necessary keywords, we integrate them into our content strategy and optimize it to drive traffic. We include them in:

Funnel for Content Strategy
Stage 3 - Step 5

On-page SEO

This is where we put chosen keywords and optimize even more clients’ websites.

OnPage SEO Checklist
Stage 3 - Step 6

Monitor and Optimize

Many companies overlook tracking and miss opportunities for improvement. Without tracking, you won’t know what is working and what isn’t. We consistently monitor results and further optimize as needed. The key metrics we monitor are:

  1. Rankings
  2. Traffic
  3. Conversion

 

Here’s how we make a solid strategy: Our strategy creation process

Creating a Marketing Strategy Starts and Ends With Your Customers. We Can Help You.

Contact us below to discuss.