It is merely impossible to have a SaaS business in today’s world without tracking the most important marketing benchmarks and metrics. The reason being is because the market is both global and highly competitive, and everyone tries to outsmart everyone else.
That’s why you need an actionable SaaS SEO strategy but also the knowledge to make the best out of the SaaS marketing benchmarks.
Why?
Because times have changed and SaaS makes the supplier hosting applications available online, it’s expected that the traditional model is long gone. Before, the software was installed on the device, but SaaS made it possible to host the software in the cloud and be used with a subscription over the online world.
Therefore, SaaS metric benchmarks are important, and here we will see what you should focus on the most when it comes to improving your marketing. Let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Essential Visitors
These visitors are unique because their growth can represent how you are found and viewed and how extensive is your website’s reach. And in order to acquire the most accurate data and information regarding these metrics, you can use tools such as Google Analytics, which is an SEO benchmarketing tool that can show you how customers reach your site pages.
In essence, this is one of the most important aspects since no matter how effective your SaaS service may be, you won’t keep existing and attract new customers if you don’t pay attention to what people want in the first place through your SaaS benchmark.
Subscribers or Contacts
Another important aspect of SaaS product benchmarks are the subscribers or contacts. And whether you call them subscribers or contacts, it doesn’t matter, it’s practically the same thing, and these people are those who start to follow you, in fact, your business.
Your SaaS subscribers have to include people who follow your podcasts, video channels, RSS feed, or those who give you their email addresses as a newsletter subscription. Of course, you always have to remember that every marketing benchmark is not just about conversion rates, but it’s also essential to keep those subscribers to become loyal buyers in the future.
And since we’ve mentioned conversion, let’s see why it’s also essential in this process.
SaaS Conversion Rate Benchmarks for Customers
You have to measure the customer conversion through the SaaS sales funnel metrics as granular as possible, and for this, your data has to be meaningful and accurate. Some of the crucial SaaS conversion benchmarks and metrics you have to measure for your SaaS business include:
- From visitors to leads – How do you manage to turn traffic into a realistic business chance?
- Leads to customers – How does your sales funnel turn leads into customers?
- MQL to SQL conversion rate benchmark – How do you convert hand-raisers into genuine buyers?
So, in order to measure every step of the conversion funnel, you have to address these three SaaS marketing metrics.
SaaS Leads
It’s valuable to define the leads that are hand-raisers or ones that have shown interest in an actual outreach. The SaaS leads are mainly people who have made a “contact me” form or want a demo of your product. That’s why those who have signed up to get an eBook, a free gift, and the subscribers to your newsletter don’t count as SaaS leads.
And as your business grows, you have to differentiate your SaaS marketing KPIs accordingly:
- Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) – These are qualified hand-raisers since they have made more buyer signals such as asking for a sales conversation, visiting a competitive comparison guide, or downloading product information, etc.
- Sales Accepted Leads (SAL) – Once you reach out to an MQL SaaS and get in touch, a meeting is scheduled with the SDR, Sales Development Representative, for additional qualifications.
- Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) – After the preliminary meeting, these leads are determined to be suitable for the sales team Account Executive in order to manage them as a sales opportunity.
After the completion of this circle, the sales team takes over from the marketing team and adds data such as needs, budget, deal value, and decision-makers in order to nurture the SaaS lead entirely and effectively.
Customer Churn Levels
One of the crucial aspects that you have to pay attention to is customer SaaS churn benchmarks. The customer churn levels are one of the vital SaaS marketing benchmarks and metrics since they can predict the future ability to grow revenue, therefore, profitability. In addition, they also can show you if a product or service has reached a PMF with your users, which stands for Product Market Fit.
Furthermore, churn levels can indicate the quality of the customer support performance and onboarding; therefore, you will know the Customer Success. You can measure almost the exact customer churn level through the number of customers churned as a percentage of all paying customers through your IT benchmarking metrics.
CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
The Customer Acquisition Cost benchmark includes all the marketing costs, including sales and people, in a perfect calculation. You have to divide the sales and marketing costs by the entire number of paying customers for a particular period of time to get a proper CAC SaaS benchmark.
The most important thing is to be realistic about it, including all costs you should administer to your marketing and sales functions. Otherwise, you won’t get an accurate picture, and what’s the point of knowing the customer acquisition cost if it’s not the precise one. So, in order to be effective, you also have to be direct and realistic in the process when it comes to SaaS marketing metric benchmarks.
CTS – Cost to Service
Once you learn the all-up cost in order to service your paying customers, you can go a step further in the SaaS metrics benchmarks. You should include the cost of your infrastructure and product (the engineering investments and cloud capacity), the customer success benchmark team (support and onboarding), and the cost of retaining customers that use special programs such as loyalty, promotions, etc.
Remember, the ongoing cost of running a service is critical for the level of profitability of your SaaS business. And once you get an insight into the cost to service, you can target the most suitable, ideal customers.
Annual Recurring Revenue
Finally, but importantly, revenue growth is a robust SaaS benchmarks’ metric to track since it helps you find chances and adjust objectives to match the potential of the industry as a whole. Still, it has to be done precisely since if you make an annual recurring revenue across the whole SaaS industry benchmark, it would be misleading to make a comparison.
Therefore, you should see the numbers put up by companies that are at the same stage of growth as you are. These numbers will make a better picture of what your business should work towards, which is highly important since you have to know where you stand to set clear and realistic goals for the future.
To Sum It All Up
The tracking of SaaS marketing benchmarks and metrics is the cornerstone of business success, especially for SaaS companies. That’s why you have to pay attention to these most important SaaS metrics and make the best possible results for your company.
Last but not least, never forget that the answers are in the information you gather, so make sure you collect it the proper way. Once you do, you will know how to bring your SaaS business to the next level and grow your company in a way that it’s best both for you and your customers.
FAQs
What is SaaS marketing benchmarking?
SaaS benchmarking is the practice of comparing metrics of performance that provide logic behind desired targets, used to measure particular success. When it comes to SaaS, these IT benchmark metrics are extremely important since they will provide you with a clear picture of your business success.
Why are SaaS benchmark metrics important?
SaaS marketing metrics benchmarks are important because measuring them provides companies with the advantage to establish a steady growth.
