While inbound marketing in Europe is steadily on the rise, it offers many opportunities that have not been grabbed by European companies yet. Inbound holds great potential for a variety of companies. But more than anything, it is a great marketing solution for Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. So what are you waiting for?
As more and more SaaS players adapt the inbound approach, the benefits become clearer and more tangible. Inbound seamlessly increases business leads and helps them convert in actual sales, and all at a lower cost for customer acquisition. That’s why it makes sense for European countries with successful or emerging SaaS sectors to invest in inbound. It presents the best solution for your marketing challenges.
Let’s see which European countries’ SaaS sectors can benefit the most from inbound and how precisely your company can employ it.
The old dogs
In 2012, the clear European leaders in the SaaS market were Germany and the UK, each scoring a 27% share of the SaaS companies on the Old Continent. This means each of them comprised 6% of the global SaaS market volume. France was next in line with 18.1% of the European market and 3% of the world market. Ireland and the Netherlands followed, with growing activity in the SaaS sector in both countries.
While many of the SaaS companies in these European countries are well established on their national and on the European and world markets, there is always more that can be done marketing-wise. Inbound marketing allows for an ever wider audience reach, with no limitations on scaling as in, say, traditional advertising. This is a point at which even big SaaS companies can hop on inbound.
As all marketing efforts, including content and social media outreach, are created with your buyer personas in mind, they can reach ever further and be useful to your prospects. The best part: even a blog post from a few years ago can still work for you, let alone more elaborate content such as a white paper that can circulate the web for much longer, bringing you a steady long-term flow of potential customers. Your only investment is the initial one – then you just let inbound work its magic.
Furthermore, inbound can help in customer retention as well. When you invest in making your existing customers happy by supplying them with awesome and useful content, they are bound to fall in love with your brand even more deeply. And you know how important brand ambassadors are.
The emerging hopes
The good news is that large established SaaS markets in Europe are not the only ones that can reap the benefits of inbound. Small emerging markets from the same region can profit a lot as well, because they can drastically boost their visibility and sales by adopting an inbound approach.
With Norway, Denmark and Finland showing great hopes in Scandinavia, as well as Switzerland down south, it seems that the SaaS sector in Europe can expect a bright future. In 2012, among the top 100 European technology companies you can see names such as the Norwegian cXense AS, the Danish Debriefing Software A/S, and the Finnish HyperIn Inc. With such a potential for growth in these emerging markets, it makes sense for these markets to use a marketing strategy that can enable their development further.
What makes inbound specifically tailored to accommodate the needs of European SaaS companies is that it can shorten the sales cycle by answering your prospects’ questions through content even before they have asked them. For a field with a longer sales cycle, such as SaaS, this is definitely great news.
Inbound also allows emerging companies to get ahead of the game, as it decreases the cost per lead from $346 for traditional marketing to $135 if inbound is used. This is very important for SaaS startups that don’t have the budget to constantly invest in expensive traditional marketing.
Inbound for all
As the examples above illustrate, a variety of European countries’ SaaS sectors can derive huge benefits from adopting and applying an inbound marketing strategy. Inbound presents a range of great opportunities not only for big established SaaS markets, but also for small emerging markets.
Ready to reap the benefits of inbound marketing in Europe? Give us a shout out to learn how you can do that.
