Doing PR for the SAAS industry isn’t quite as straightforward as in other industries. That’s largely because companies in the SaaS industry don’t have a physical presence. Moreover, the products they provide are constantly evolving, and they have a very specific consumer base. In terms of creativity and effectiveness, many technology brands perform quite well, which is something that other SaaS brands can take inspiration from.
Creating SAAS PR campaigns that are inspired by other successful ones is always a smart idea that can bring businesses a lot of success.
MailChimp
Several years ago, the popular marketing automation platform MailChimp created a promotional campaign that became very popular with consumers. The campaign was titled “Did you mean MailChimp”, and the goal behind it was for the brand to help its customers learn how the company’s name is pronounced correctly. To reach potential consumers, the company developed nine mini promotional campaigns that didn’t feature the company’s name. Instead, the brand decided to let consumers figure out who was behind the campaign on their own, by substituting the company’s name with other similar-sounding names like “KaleLimp” or “MailShrimp”.
The result of the campaign was nearly 70 million organic searches and over $3.5 million in earned media value for MailChimp. The platform even managed to win an award for it. In fact, plenty of industry experts still consider MailChimp’s promotional campaign as one of the best campaigns ever in the SaaS industry.
SurveyMonkey
SurveyMonkey is a popular data platform that helps companies create surveys, polls, and more, and it tends to rely on word-of-mouth promotional efforts to reach its target audience. The company’s product has a built-in feature that encourages virality and gets potential users to register so they don’t have to see any ads. The company has been around for over two decades now, but people rarely come across any promotional efforts from the business. In fact, most people that have signed up to the platform have likely done so when they were asked to fill out a survey by someone in their social circle.
Instead of trying to invest in promotional efforts through campaigns that reach the target audience, SurveyMonkey has decided to integrate more with other products and features that support its existing suite of products. Since the company already provides an excellent product, all it has to do is ask its consumers to recommend the service to their social circles.
Slack
Similar to the last brand, Slack, the business communication platform, also relies on word-of-mouth promotional efforts to grow. In fact, the company has even shared its website traffic sources, showing that about 95% of all the traffic on the website is direct. This brand also doesn’t do much in terms of content marketing or advertising efforts, and instead has focused on SEO efforts. The company ranks on the first page of Google’s search results for keywords that point right at the landing page of the app.
