45 SaaS Marketing Statistics to Shape Your 2023 Strategy

2023 is looking like it will be a good year to embrace SaaS. The Software as a Service (SaaS) industry is projected to grow from $176.62 billion in 2022 to $208.1 billion in 2023. 73% of organizations are adopting or planning to adopt SaaS. 

Companies that rely on a SaaS business model have a high potential of staying in demand. 

However, as SaaS continues to pervade more markets, the industry will grow even more crowded and competitive. 

This means two things: 

• You need to sell your SaaS products (because they won’t sell themselves anymore!).
• You need to step up your digital marketing game. 

To succeed in these two areas entails adopting one key tactic—data-driven decisions. At Big Leap, this is what we do best. 

Let’s dive into the 45 SaaS marketing statistics that will help catapult your online strategy in 2023.

We’ve organized them into seven key areas: 

• General marketing trends
• SEO & PPC trends
• Content marketing trends
• Social media trends
• Email marketing trends
• Customer trends
• Sales/purchasing trends

General Marketing Trends

Let’s start with some data that offers a general overview of where SaaS marketing is headed: 

1. B2B companies are allocating 9.4% of their overall budget to marketing every year. (The CMO Survey)

2. The average SaaS business spends roughly 9% of its annual recurring revenue toward marketing. (SaaS Capital)

3. Public SaaS organizations that are one to three years old spend 80 to 120% of their revenue on marketing and sales. (Zenpost)

4. 80% of all B2B software and SaaS sales interactions are expected to be digital by 2025. (Gartner).

5. 80% of B2B tech marketers claimed in a survey that writing skills were most important for SaaS marketing, followed by content marketing skills (78%), digital media skills (77%), data analysis skills (77%), and email marketing skills (65%). (SaaSPartners.io)

SEO & PPC Trends

More businesses and customers are diving into their own independent online research to find a software solution that’s right for them. This means you need to continuously invest in and hone your SEO and paid search strategies to stay relevant. 

Here are some useful stats to carve out your SEO and PPC strategies: 

6. For large SaaS companies, organic search opportunities manifest in tens of millions of visits each month or more. (Mike Sonders)

7. In a survey of start-up founders, 90% of respondents said SEO is a key driver of brand awareness and leads for their business. (Hike)

8. SaaS company Shopify had a 16% increase in customer acquisition and a 14% lower customer acquisition cost from their Facebook PPC ad campaign. (Facebook)

9. B2B software and SaaS buyers spend 27% of their time conducting independent online research during the buying process. (Gartner)

Content Marketing Trends

SEO requires great content. Nowadays, instead of relying on technical content and language, SaaS companies are opting for more creative and authentic content to foster valuable connections. One SaaS client of ours did exactly that. The results? A 5,600% increase in organic traffic.

These stats can help you unlock the secrets to SaaS content marketing success. 

10. 85% of large SaaS businesses have a blog. (DevSquad)

11. 36% of SaaS companies use their blog to share educational content. (DevSquad)

12. Most B2B articles written in the last 12 months were 3,000 words or less. (Content Marketing Institute)

13. When SaaS company Venngage conducted a study on visual content, 41.5% of marketers said infographics and other original graphics performed the best. 25.7% said charts and data visualizations bring high engagement. (Venngage)

14. 18% of the top SaaS businesses have their own podcasts to help market their products/services. (DevSquad)

15. The technology B2B businesses use to support their content marketing efforts includes analytics tools, social media publishing/analytics, and email marketing software. (Content Marketing Institute)

16. When creating content, B2B marketers focus on the following three areas: prioritizing audience needs, differentiating content from the competition, and building content per the buyer’s journey. (Content Marketing Institute)

17. The top–performing blog posts by SaaS companies generate roughly 352 visits from organic search each month. (Emily Byford)

18. 93.5% of SaaS organizations offer educational webinars. (Demio)

19. 87.1% of SaaS organizations offer gated webinars, while 37.1% offer ungated webinars. (Demio)

20. In terms of webinar formats, 91.02% of SaaS businesses record conversations that include more than two speakers. (Demio)

Social Media Trends

To help expand your SEO content efforts, tune into the conversations on your social networks. This can give birth to new keywords and content ideas that can boost your brand awareness, credibility, and reach. 

Use these stats to help your team target the right channels and ideate better ways to connect. 

21. YouTube is the leading contributor of social traffic for 98% of the top 50 SaaS companies, followed by Facebook (96%), LinkedIn (78%), and Twitter (72%). (Mike Sonders)

22. 71% of consumers who’ve had a positive social media experience with a brand are likely to recommend that brand to friends and family. (LYFE Marketing)

23. 86% of consumers looking to buy IT products use social media for help deciding on a purchase. (SocialPilot)

24. 76% of online users purchase a product/service after seeing it on a social media post. (Retail TouchPoints)

25. For SaaS businesses that create quality content on their social pages, the median average for shares is 246. The top 10% of SaaS businesses get 2,100 shares. (Zenpost)

Email Marketing Trends

Emails are an effective way to share content and nurture leads. And with the right marketing automation tools, you can group your contacts according to common interests and automatically send messages at the right time. 

Here are some figures that shed light on how to leverage your SaaS email marketing strategy in 2023: 

26. The most common marketing emails SaaS companies send are welcome emails, onboarding emails, feature announcements, new content (blog posts, videos, etc.), newsletters, surveys, and check-ins. (Sprout Social)

27. Testing emails leads to higher ROI. (Hubspot)

28. Email is a cost-effective channel used by tech companies for driving sales and improving relationships with current customers. (Campaign Monitor)

29. Across all industries (not just SaaS), for every $1 spent on email marketing, you can expect a $36 return. (Hubspot)

30. 40% of B2B marketers believe email marketing is key to their success. (OptinMonster)

31. The average email open rate for software and internet industries is 20%. The average click-through rate (CTR) is 7.18%. (Hubspot)

32. 77% of B2B businesses use email newsletters in their content strategy. (OptinMonster)

33. 79% of B2B professionals believe email is their most successful marketing channel for content distribution. (OptinMonster)

Customer Trends

More and more businesses are prioritizing the customer experience to make key business decisions. The following numbers illuminate customer insights on what they value when choosing a SaaS tool: 

34. For SaaS companies, investing in the customer experience can increase their revenue by $1 billion. (BARE International)

35. SaaS industry churn rate in 2022 is 5.9%. (GMP)

36. 85% of customers will pay more for a SaaS product when they have a high-quality customer experience. (GMP)

37. By the end of 2023, 40% of businesses will have executed anywhere operations (a model designed to support customers everywhere) to provide “virtual and physical customer and employee experiences.” (Gartner)

38. 70% of CIOs are interested in cloud-based SaaS technologies for their agility and scalability. (BMC Blogs) 

Sales/Purchasing Trends

Looking at sales and purchasing trends in the SaaS/tech industry can help your team refine your buyer personas, sales funnel, and payment methods to improve the customer experience. 

Here are some stats to get you started: 

39. A typical B2B purchasing group involves 6 to 10 decision-makers. Each individual often collects four to five pieces of information to use to help the group decide what to buy. (Gartner)

40. The B2B buying journey is not linear. Several steps or tasks happen simultaneously, with customers revisiting each buying phase more than once. (Gartner)

41. When assessing tech purchases, millennials refer to industry analysts (37.5%), vendor meetings (36%), and websites (32.5%). Baby Boomers rely more on analysts (50%), colleagues (48.8%), and vendor meetings (47.5%). Generation X prefers colleagues and vendor sites (both 40.2%) and analysts and trade shows (both 38.2%). (Arketi Group)

42. Businesses that do not ask users for credit card info when they sign up for a free trial reel in 2x more paying customers than those that do. (Invesp)

43. Active trial users who are contacted by sales representatives are 70% more likely to convert and purchase the paid service. (Invesp)

44. The length of the most common free trial is one month. (Best Writing)

45. With service packages, the fewer, the better. Three is the golden number for paid packages. (Best Writing)

Diversify Your Digital Marketing Mix

Here’s the thing, SEO alone will only get you so far. To sharpen your competitive edge and maintain long-term growth, you need to diversify your marketing mix. 

A holistic SaaS marketing strategy encompasses the following in addition to SEO: 

• Paid advertising
• Content marketing
• Social media marketing 
• Marketing automation
• Email marketing
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO) 
• Reputation management

A varied strategy can help your team manage and mitigate risk, expand into new platforms, and achieve greater profitability. How you diversify your SaaS marketing strategy depends on factors such as:

• Who your audience is and what they want
• What your competitors are doing
• What your marketing budget looks like

SaaS Marketing in the Real World

Don’t just take our word for it. Check out these case studies of Big Leap’s SaaS clients who have earned successful online results from diversifying their digital marketing mix: 

Canopy

SaaS business Canopy leveraged technical SEO and content optimization to spearhead their brand refresh. This earned the client a 600% increase in first-page rankings and a 1,056% boost in keyword rankings. 

Workfront

With a strategy that encompassed conversion rate optimization and SEO, Workfront won back its organic search presence and improved its conversion rates. The business achieved a 104% boost in conversions and a 1,400% increase in captured keywords. 

Venafi

SaaS cybersecurity company Venafi harnessed the power of SEO and content marketing to win steady growth in qualified organic traffic and lead volume. Their holistic strategy earned them a 115% increase in lead flow and a 105% jump in organic site sessions. 

The Bottom Line

Digital marketing evolves rapidly; a strategy that works today may not work three months from now. So to maintain and elevate your online footing, you need to consistently: 

• Stay on top of online trends 
• Assess how your audience’s buying habits are shifting

You should incorporate these tactics into your strategy. Finding the right agency for your SaaS company can help your team do this the right way. 

Amplify Your Online Potential with Big Leap

The best SaaS marketing strategies involve people who are experts at what they do. If you need a hand with your 2023 strategy, the Big Leap team is here. A digital marketing agency built on trust, we thrive on establishing meaningful relationships to build lasting online success. Contact us today.