B2B SaaS Lead Generation - 3 Key Strategies for 2024

Software as a Service (SaaS) is the largest and fastest-growing market sector of the last few years, according to HubSpot. And SaaS is still predicted to keep growing for some years yet.

Businesses now rely on numerous cloud-based solutions offered by SaaS companies for dozens of different functions, from HR and marketing to accounting and customer service, to name just a few. 

But with thousands of businesses all competing to win new customers, how does a SaaS supplier find new audiences and entice decision-makers to consider their products? 

That's where B2B SaaS lead generation comes in, and the key lies in offering something tangibly valuable for your potential leads.

Read on for our favorite lead generation ideas for SaaS.  

What Is SaaS Lead Generation?  

SaaS B2B lead generation is about finding new potential buyers for your technology products. Generating new leads is the only way a business can grow: by finding potential new customers and nurturing them through your marketing funnel to the point where you can sell your products or services to them.

As SaaS products are often subscription-based, the process doesn't stop when the customer buys the product. You know that great customer service is paramount for SaaS businesses, and that same mindset should feed into your lead generation strategies. 

That's right: from the very top of the marketing funnel, lead generation for B2B SaaS companies should be the start of the customer service journey, showing your leads what they can expect from your business once they've signed up.  

Many SaaS businesses use growth marketing strategies for their lead generation, which involves adapting quickly, trying new methods, and not being afraid to drop any tactics that aren't showing results.

Some strategies are long-term, such as demand generation, SEO and linkbuilding, which are designed to generate inbound leads. While other methods take an outbound approach; generating high volumes of leads in a much shorter time frame.

There are lots of powerful lead generation strategies out there. However, the best B2B SaaS lead generation ideas emphasize the 'service' part of the acronym and showcase your brand's personality. 

SaaS Lead Generation Example

WorkHappy is a (fictional) SaaS business in the HR sector. With strong competition, it has recently found its stock of organic leads from its demand generation efforts are harder to come by.

The marketing team have created a spreadsheet-based tool that allows HR professionals to calculate staff engagement over time, based on quarterly surveys, and have made this available as part of a toolkit with other educational content.

They are looking to promote this toolkit to a wider sector-specific audience to gain leads. After weighing up several SaaS lead generation companies, they chose award-winning Headley Media to deliver content syndication campaigns for them.

Through IT Corporate and HRTech Corporate, two of Headley Media's in-house content syndication platform, WorkHappy are able to reach the exact target audiences they need. For their SaaS product this is a mixture of IT and HR professionals.

Like many modern marketers, WorkHappy’s team favor account-based marketing (ABM) to reach leads in a personalized, targeted way. They choose a Single Touch campaign for their toolkit, enhanced with ABM. They also use intent data targeting.

With Headley Media's help, WorkHappy are able to build out their Target Account List (TAL) to thousands of potential leads. With intent data targeting, they’re also able to understand the buying signals of each of their Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

Many of their new leads are regularly using the tool WorkHappy provided, which is warming them up in a subtle way for when they're ready to buy. WorkHappy also create a lead nurturing strategy that complements the toolkit they originally downloaded.

Although the example of SaaS lead generation above is fictional, you can see how outbound lead generation for B2B SaaS can work in principle, and how many different targeting and enhancement options there are based on your objectives. 

How to Generate Leads for SaaS 

As we've just explored, we think the best practices for SaaS lead generation involve dangling a juicy metaphorical carrot, such as a valuable piece of content.

Whether it's a part of your software or an educational piece of content, giving decision-makers something for free builds awareness of your brand, gives prospects an idea of what they can expect from your product, and allows you to capture their contact details – so it's a win-win.

Here are our top three B2B SaaS lead generation strategies for 2024.

Strategy 1: Use Your Product 

SaaS companies have a significant advantage in lead generation: you can make parts of your product available for free for lead generation purposes.  

Many B2B SaaS businesses, such as Slack and Mailchimp, offer a 'freemium' product as the base, allowing them to capture thousands of users to whom they can upsell. They often have varied pricing structures based on either software features or the client's business size.  

It's a great model when it works, but be careful of offering too many valuable features in your 'freemium' version: you might never convert those users into paying customers.  

One of the most popular B2B SaaS lead generation ideas is to offer a free trial. Allowing customers to use your product for free for a period – typically seven to 60 days – has a huge conversion rate. According to UserPilot, the average conversion rate for opt-in free trials is 25%.  

Finally, you can utilize your product for SaaS lead generation by offering a free tool. Depending on your software, you can isolate a part of it and make it available for free on your website; either adjacent to a free trial, or gated to ensure you get people's contact details for lead generation.  

Strategy 2: Work Your Online Presence 

The next lead generation B2B SaaS strategy goes back to basics. It's about ensuring you have a solid online presence: your website is up-to-date, useful to potential customers, and fully search-engine-optimized. Think quality links back to relevant websites, with strong calls to action on your own site.

This is especially critical in B2B lead generation for SaaS companies. We are officially in the age of the self-service buyer, with only about 20% of B2B buyers saying they ever want to interact with sales reps in person (that includes zoom) again.

That means decision-makers want to explore your offering at their own pace. They want to educate themselves on your brand and find out the key information they need, without being hassled by your Sales team - until they're ready to buy, of course.

So, with your SaaS solutions hosted online, your website is likely to be one of the first places people will look for more information about your brand, so making sure it's fully optimized is one of the first steps to capturing more inbound leads.

But your online presence isn't just your website.  

It's back to our theme of giving stuff away for free: this time, useful content, such as blogs, videos, or webinars. Many SaaS businesses have a side hustle of publishing educational industry content, in the process positioning themselves as thought leaders – and, crucially, generating leads.

Content marketing used in this way is a great example of demand generation, whereby your aim is to increase the number of inbound conversions your website delivers.

With a solid social media presence, sharing your content will also boost your reach and grow your brand awareness.  

You might not generate many leads from a single blog. But it can help signal to search engines that your company is an expert in your field. And it can grow your social media following too, which works as lead generation for SaaS companies over time - going back to our demand generation vs. lead generation example.

Strategy 3: Content Syndication for Lead Generation  

Some content is simply too good to throw on social media for free, and that's partly why the third of our lead generation strategies for SaaS is so satisfying: content syndication for lead generation.  

Content syndication for SaaS companies works by partnering with a B2B lead generation specialist, who will publish your content on content syndication platforms, to generate relevant leads.

Side note: we only recommend working with suppliers who use their own platforms and do not outsource your lead generation to 3rd parties (like so many do, unfortunately).

For content syndication, we're not talking about blogs now, but deeper and more educational content such as eBooks, whitepapers, research reports, videos and case studies.  

These content libraries form useful and trusted sources for busy professionals looking for relevant business information. The content library should be specific to your industry – such as the IT industry, Cybersecurity, MarTech, FinTech, or HRTech industries.

The content you share is free but gated, which means at the point of downloading, the user is asked to give their business card information: name, company, job title, and email address. And once they've downloaded your content, they're eligible to become a lead. 

Transparent and trustworthy B2B content syndication vendors will validate your leads to ensure they are relevant and high-quality, so it's important to do your research when choosing the right B2B content syndication services for your business.

Take a look at our lead generation process for an example of how we generate and validate B2B technology leads for our clients. You can also download our ungated Quality Lead Generation Checklist to help you uncover what to look out for when choosing a supplier.

A reputable content syndication agency, like Headley Media, will also be able to deliver your technology leads on a cost-per-lead (CPL) basis, helping you budget more easily.

There are lots of other ways to enhance content syndication for lead generation campaigns, too. For example, you can require each lead to have downloaded at least two pieces of your content to increase their awareness of your brand, or by adding qualifying questions to your gated form, to assess their intentions better.  

The major challenge for SaaS companies is finding a reputable content syndication lead generation agency. Unfortunately, many shadier players in the lead gen industry can't tell you where your leads have come from, often because they've used a 3^rd party content library and don't own one themselves.  

For the best lead generation for SaaS, look for an agency that publishes on its own content syndication websites, authenticates each lead, and tracks every step of the reader's journey digitally. 

A good SaaS lead generation company will also work closely with you from beginning to end, helping to identify your target audiences and advising you on the best approach, allowing you to enhance and fine-tune your lead generation for SaaS campaign.  

At Headley Media, we are a trusted and transparent B2B SaaS lead generation agency specializing in technology brands.

Read our Complete Guide to B2B Technology Lead Generation 2024 to find out more (it's ungated!), or explore our testimonials to hear from some of our SaaS and technology clients.