Of the big four areas rife for SaaS business improvement — sales, marketing, customer success, and institutional readiness — marketing may be the least understood. I’m sure many of you are bristling at that idea but stay with me. That was my motive for my recent SaaS Marketing Guide eBook. Today, I’ll speak to the science of SaaS marketing. Next up is the art of SaaS marketing. The intersections and co-dependencies between them are where things get misunderstood.

SaaS growth methodologies are newer than SaaS itself and subject to the same relentless change as rapidly evolving markets and technologies. Each of the big four is a beast of data-driven metrics and levers. But SaaS marketing is a special combination of science driving art, and art driving science. If either the science or the art is weak, the machine fails. And if it’s the science that’s weak, it can be hard to know what’s failing and why. That’s why we’re starting with the science. It’s not that the art is secondary, it’s just second.

What is SaaS Marketing Science?

I say over and over again that SaaS marketing science is about knowing things rather than guessing or assuming things. What things do I mean? It starts with knowing who our customer is. Then it’s about knowing what they value. And the verbal and visual languages that resonate with them. And how about knowing where and how they get their information? Or what drives their buying decisions? These are really important things to learn and know. When a SaaS business knows these things, it’s much more capital efficient. It can win more customers with less investment.

Winning More Customers with Less Investment

That’s the holy grail of SaaS growth — capital-efficient demand generation. With all of that knowledge comes a predictable funnel. $1 poured into the top of a scientifically defined sales & marketing funnel will — with statistical confidence — result in $X of ARR. Combined with a scientific customer success methodology, that predictability can be extended to include lifetime value (LTV). If you’re growing a SaaS business, those are some pretty heady predictable numbers.

SaaS Marketing Science Starts with the Funnel

Funnels can be very different. Self-service free-to-paid looks very different than personal selling in B2B. But the science of SaaS marketing begins with defining measurable and significant funnel stages. Everything that gets tested and measured from there, contributes to funnel stage efficacies that trickle down to won deals.

Example B2B SaaS Marketing Funnel Stages

Let’s say you’re a B2B SaaS that relies on personal selling to close mid-ticket, relatively high-velocity deals. Perhaps that translates to an $8,000 average contract value and a 30-day sales cycle. Your funnel is likely a mixture of marketing generated leads (MGLs) and sales generated leads (SGLs from outbound effort).